=po9804
Poems, 4/98

Justin Case said,
"Steve's trying to be a hippy:
the rest of us sort of figure
we've got it made."

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"Wherever I go
 I go too
 and spoil everything."

             Anon.

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I said, "I'd like to take a pill,
and be strong like you."
She said,
Don't; it's bitter.

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Today before breakfast
I made a mistake.
I stepped on a scale.
It said:      You live in the past.
I  said back:  
              whatever's real.


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On the other side of the border fence
birds still sing.

                    (Bialystock Kuznitza---Grodno train
                     12 April 99)

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Spring surprised me
in Wroclaw, in Warsaw
budding green amidst the grime
& the apple blossoms --
ok, cliches now;
even Eliot said it.

Warsaw--Bialystock train, 11 April 99

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You stupid donkey --
used to gbe ok:
just tkae me where I want now
& don't talk back.
You ain't a Mercedes
worth fixing.

(Zurich--Linz train, ca. 26 March 99)

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after a week of rain in Warsaw
the sun came out
& folks came out
selling umbrullas

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dream fragment:                                     

"Bodidharma, 'twas decree'd
 crossed the river on a reed"
 or bamboo flute,
 flute of Orpheus, if you please ....

			
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(after Steve Slaner):

& Bayard said,
Sir, I am a Socialist, a Negro, and a homosexual;
I simply do not have  t i m e 
for any more minorities.      

               :The Poet declines to blame Poles for the Shoah

                   
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Breindel grew up Yiddish
on the Lower East Side.
In the 60s she moved to Meor Modi'in.
She finally got to go to Poland.
She came back & said,
It's a graveyard.

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Peter took a backpack
& went around the world.
"How was it."
"Overwhelming."

                  (Wroclaw, 14 Nisan)

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Things, sir
dislike me; they
disrespect my intention,
like knives that won't quite cut,
pretending bluntness;
or even sometimes fingers.

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The Pinkas Synagogue of Praha is filled
with laughing tourists.
At the Altneuschul
the Guided Tour
is only in German.
On the Jewish Memorial Cemetary
a flock of crows caws.

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Glimpsed from the trian
a neaatly dressed Austrian couple
out for a Sunday stroll
led by their chained bulldog.

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in front of the Deliktasen
watched by his muzzled pit-bull
a man curses the Magic Money Machine

                   (Warsaw)

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