=po041201 Poems, starting 1 Dec '04 and untidily filled up out-of-order on 23 Dec '04 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 NU POEMS I don't wear a tallit here because someone might look in the window and think I look unusual. Agnieska said, 'Nu?'. :Imaginary dialogue on a snowy morning. --------------------------- Sonia went to India and studied Iyengar with Master Iyengar. I said, 'Are you still Jewish?' She said, 'Nu, do I look Hindu?, ------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- =po041121 Poems from 21 Nov '04 ------------------------------------------------------------------ I showed Susie a picture of her at my home on Thanksgiving 10 years before as I'd remembered her when we should have married. She said, 'Oh, that naive girl.' ------------------------------------------------------------------ Gentlemen nowaday demand that the poor stay off not merely their lands, but their feelings. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I walk down to Olivone two hours of ice and snow. There's FAULTY re-opening his own hotel so I ask him for a ride back up. All he says is, 'I'm not going up until later.' Hotel Arcabelo, Upper Olivone, 27 Kislev 20:00 Footnote: "He just smiled and shook my hand and 'No.' is all all he said." (Big Pink, "Take a load off Fanny") ---------------------------------------------------------------- Minor Swiss Businessman or Homage to Moroccans: He'd be a mamzer but he lacks style, class, smarts and koach. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Fragment: Watching naked whales & women scanty-clad on insomniacs TV I (27 or 28 Kislev, loc. cit.) (Cf. as objet trouvee, a Fragment of Saphho, ?To Anaxagora? ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Poet Contemplates his Second Childhood: QUOTE FROM JOHNNY CASH ARTICLE "The resulting video was shocking ... because it featured explicit images of mortality and infirmity. [Mark] Romanek discovered a trove of archival films ... and intercut them with new scenes of the messy, uncatalogued jumble of stuff in the House of Cash and of the feeble, tremoring Cash himself, seated in his dark living room, surrounded by his collection of bronze Remington sculptures. At one moment during the filming, June [Carter Cash] descended the stairs above the living room to watch the proceedimgs. 'I glanced over and I saw June on the stairs,' says Romanek, 'looking down at he husband with this incredible complex look on her face -- filled with love and earnestness and pride, and a certain amount of sadness. With her permission, Romanek included a couple of shots of June as she looked on, and these shots, of her stricken, loving gaze at her dying man, are the most devastating part of the whole film.... I cried like a baby when I saw it, I was sobbing' says Rosanne [Cash]. 'June was just sitting there, just watching it, patting me. See, they had a kind of unflinching eye. They weren't sentimental in that way. It's like they're artists -- they use their life for their work.'" (David Kamp, "American Communion", Vanity Fair, October '04) ------------- 'Trade all my poems for a hardon' I said, & glimpsed my wish to be an erect idiot. ------------- NOTES: "Please nake sure that you have had enough, for a worn-out blade makes shaving mighty tough ..." (Baseball radio commerical for Gillette Blue Blades, USA 1950's) "I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener." (US Advertising Jingle, 1970's(?) "accept gracefully the counels of ageing" ("Desiderata", USA, 18th cent., Anon.) --------------------------------------------------------------- George Bush Jr. Enters the Gates of Hell: (after Vachel Lindsay, William Booth enters Heaven) The voluntary trumptets gave an off-key flurry for Georgie Bush, who said: "What, me Worry?" a little bit tipsy on rot-gut whiskey 'I've put in my hours, can I go home to my ranch now?' ------------------------------------------------------------------ A note on Hamlet: Fortinras (last line of play): "Prithee, let the trumpets sound." Fortinbras is a rather pure, naive soul, motivated by his estimati9on that "and were like, had he been put on, to have proved most worthy". Well, maybe but maybe not, that ditherer might, had he taken th4e thrown, have destroyed Denmark (as he did with his passive aggressi9on, totally distracting the King, who, for all that he was a usurper, did seem a strong and decisive character. This is a sad, off key dissonant flurry. Four soldiers carry Hamlet offstage, on some sort of richly decorated oranamental board that they rip off the wall, accompanied by the trumpets. But it doesn't quite work, an arm and worse, a leg slip off and drag along the ground., so Hamlet exits in the disgrace appropriate to one who threw away his life and opportunities. It highlights Hamlet's shameful failure, his adolescent self- rightous impatience. I mean really, what a prig. He dstroys the two women who loved him. My mother wrote in the 1980s a play on the Hamlet theme, I glanced at a few lines and threw out all the copies in the house, afraid that it did not show me in my best light (as Jack Benny might have said in 'To Be or not to Be' (Ernst Lubitch, director). Jack Benny was delightful at parodying himself. A gentle, witty soul, they named a very nice walkway up to the Old City of Jerusalem after him, Ma'alot Benny. So no doubt he paid for it, for all his pretense of parsimony. So anyhow, that play was presented for a play-reading group in Belmont hosted by Sue Greenberg, the wife of Dr. Mort Greenberg of Mt. Auburn Hospital. So maybe she still has a copy. ------------------------------------------------------------------ FAULTY slices the pie each day a little bit thinner. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Doctor Lawyer Ambulance Chaser: Reflection on an Icy Terrace: He does as little as possible but when something must be done he tells someone to do it. ------------------------------------------------------------------ "Remember what '' did to Miriam" or PVK_TO131 -- When the world seems chaotic I tell Nico stop in if you need coffee or anything, so one morning he stops in and carries out both washing machies single-handed (one in each hand) for spare parts to make a new computer. Next Shabat morning (just as I was getting my trip together) Sr. comes in when I'm about to make kiddish and, unknowing I suppos,e to impress a prospective renter, swabs the floors (though they washed them last summer) with something rather bad called Mr. Proper ("Citrusfrische citrons d'ete") which "contains among other ingredients: amonic surfactants and soap <5% ionic surfactants 5-15%. Contains preservatives. imp. Procter & Gamble DCE Switzerland 2 cups to 5 Liters" the subtle effluence of which has doubtless carcinogenofied all my open food (a hundred dollars and two trips downtrail to town) and scared off all the pixies too. ================================================================== ================================================================ NEW INPUT 23 DEC 04 FAULTY slices pie each day just a little bit thinner. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Notes on PVK TO131. Truth is a Divine Attribute. But of course one sometimes does not tell the truth. Because truth is only one of the Divine Attribute, and they must all harmonize. -------------------------------------------------------------- Jane Norman said, The good thing about having money is that you don't have to do things you don't want to. -------------------------------------------------------------- Title without a poem: "1,491,308 minuti alle fine del processo" ---------------------------------------------------------------- A right-wing think-tank is a contradiction in terms. Or for Bush, 'think tanked.' ----------------------------------------------------------------- Josef in a well. People pass by 'Well, well'. (Shabat V_Y_Shuv , '04) ----------------------------------------------------------------- 'That nigger came here to rip us off' said Mrs. Portiphor. 'Most likely running from the cops.' 'Enough said. Bag him.' said Sugar-Daddy. ------------------------------------------------------------------ At the Campra Restorante the no-smoking section is my table. ------------------------------------------------------------------- The Restorante has a new manager. He will do anything to make money except work. ---------------------------------------------------------------- If we survive the next 4 years, it will be as members of a country which has been raped. ---------------------------------------------------------------- This is not a poem, I just put in here because I'm in a hurry: Steve's socks contest* (socks counted singly) Steve bets: 213 handicap: 50 socks. Steve's socks count includes an unspecified number of 5-year-old socks saved for this --- egret? ------------------------------------------------------------------ The political correctness of sociatal feminization: The Swiss are very neat. (eg Gentlaemen will please pee seated for fear they may dirty the toilet bowl. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Blue-white city nights: Now Bush would go to planet Mars who cannot even see the stars. (Campra, 25 Kislev '04) ----------------------------------------------------------------- USA Porno Chic: Our New Frontier's interior now that we've trashed the rest. ---------- The Vanzetti's as 'The Misfits': Last of the Titans in a place of perpetual snow Only the Swiss would do it like this: Instead of plains and endless lakes a circle of prfectly pressed tracked paths for Italian motorists brightly dressed on Sunday Holiday in fantastic Spandex ski-suits. ---------------------------------------------------------------- USA democracy is a live-in comic-book set. The Republicans pervert political debate into Gotcha Hucksterism. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fragment: Self-Portrait of the Poet with his Muse: "And a grombly guest I'm sure was he." Up at all hours piddeling and scribbling byx clicked electric light clad in surplus army underwear and a would_be__wool watch_cap -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Rosh Gadol, Rosh Katan except the white-flour pasta he will do anything to make money except work -------------------------------------------------------------- Maybe once a week I go down to the valley and eat the Osteria. Everything is just a little bit getter than one might have imagined except the Merlot. BASIL FAULTY runs one too. Everything is just a little bit worse than one might have thought except the white-flour pasta. In the morning he drives up bareheaded shovels the snow just enough to get to tghe door sits down at the best table and calls the waiter to bring him a cappacino while he reads the newspaper. Mr. Surley the waiter has made of efficiency an Italian sneer. He whisks away dishes the minute it's finished A gentle spray from Planet Jupiter drufts toward my hot chocolate as FAULTY's now-cowed man polishes the windows incessantly. Nobody else in here now for breakfast -- rubber croisants stale bread with pre-packed butter and supersweet jam. Once I asked for an omltte and was told, wait until evening. (Campra, 5 Dec '04) :The Poet Dines like a Gentleman on the Never_Never