=po1197a SELECTED POEMS, 11/97--5/98 LAZARUS OBJECTS: or: "THE CIRCUITIUS LOGISTICS OF POVERTY" or "AN ARMAGEDDON OF DIRTY LINEN" (Maureen Dowd, IHT/Washington Post, 12 Feb 98) or: IT'S LILITH, STUPID --------------------------------------------------------------- Lines composed by the Sea of Galilee, between Ein Gev and HaOn: Minimal Confession, 6/97--11/97 Rode today in the time it took the car radio to play Kyrie Eleison past that interminable place in which, all last summer, daily, I sold Snake soul. :(`Au lectueur') ---------------------- * sits in a pit folks pass by & say how are you OK have a good day ------------ they gave me a pot of gold Uncle sits on it sometimes I go into the forest and sometimes wolves eat my toes so they pull out swords & defend the pot of gold ------------- * Postscript Fragment: Herzog as MInotaur, cont. "a thorn said, oh, you have crushed me" HIK & to the bull will never cease the need to make apologies ------------------------- * The cop had just collared the little crook on Central Park South. OH, said the crook, WHY did I DO that? There there, said the cop. :Thanatos Reconsidered --------------------------- * The Poet Contemplates a Peach Once I sat rather still dithering decisions. Mike Duncan said, Poor Steve he thinks everything is so important. ------------ * It's only a plot but best play the cards you got. ------------- * Family Tradition: On picking raspberries in slash: Break your neck but save the berries. -------- Too many molecules of heavy metal or some such; just that now when I send to memory, it's like putting a card in the tray at some venerable library and waiting for a page to come back with something whose purpose one had almost forgotten. :Marijuana tends to impair the --- ------------ After Vonnegut: Pity the gentlemen on the Titanic who could not quite, without feeling somewhat foolish persistently ask if something was a bit amiss. ----------------------- * & Zalman said the Habad Engineer on the train from Jerusalem which had just been firebombed on the downgrade to the valley sat in there holding the red-hot brake and later said our Rabbi taught us you can steer with the mind. N.B.: I don't recall whether the teaching was one can, or one should, steer with the mind, over the emotions. I think that one has the power. I heard this teaching maybe in the 70s, from R. Zalman Schachter. ------- Fragment it's this incessant intricate ritualistic abracdabra dance that, baffled by glances, -------------------------------------------------------- * Behind my flat a moving van, stuck in the mud has made an awful mess. :objective correlative. ------------------ Another 12/25 poem & again I can't find Xmas here; this beige grey `See' of Galillee day; lake flat, sky too only memorie'd echos of peace & friends, nothing moving ... ---------------- In today's mail a think-tank in Switzerland requests that I send, they say, my opinion in a large white envelope with no return address. ------------- ------------------ * And Pharoh spake unto Joseph, and he says: Just answer the question, kid; I want peace, I send the chariots. ----------------- ** Boddhidharma, 'twas decree'd crossed the river on a reed; in Israel we do it, though with overdrafts, and not bamboo. ----------------- The finger-tip of a peripheral deity: & the servants of Pharoah spake unto Pharoah, saying: Gross, Daddy-o. Kick out those clowns. At least Sdom got fire & brimestone. ----------------------------------- * kibbutz gets up before the sun instead of praise makes lots of noise goes in to eat goes out to work comes in to eat and goes to sleep. ----------------------------------------- * The neighbor's dog defends me against terrorists. The neighbor's dog defines a terrorist as any other neighbor's dog. --------------------------- New item: Rachel's tomb now has bulletproof glass. ---------------- * DIARY FOR THE WAR THAT WASN'T: Today I went to Tiveriya. Instead of a gas-mask I got wine bread and olives for Shabbat. 1/30/98 ------------------------------------------------------------- Threats of chemical warfare. The kibutz takes a young Christian woman puts her on an old tractor & drives around spraying herbicde. Threats of biological warfare. I stay at home for fear of 'flu. ----------------------- Threats of biological warfare Israel panics in false-alarums of an E-mail virus. ---------------------- Danger of biological warfare. This morning the kibbutz offered up at breakfast one aged egg. -------------------- Danger of chemical warfare I scrutinize the mango ice for artificial colour. (Tiberias, 2/16/98) -------------- * A white Mercedes passport on dashboard is parked by the kibbutz with a bumper sticker saying 'Shalom chaver'. 2/14/98 ------------------------ Increasing danger of biological warfare sitting at my jalopy computers I swat springtime gnats. 2/15/98 ----------------------- We're advised to prepare to seal rooms. I can't even keep out the cat. 2/19/98 -------------- Increasing danger of war. After dark Baptists charge out of their house armed with slingshots chasing tomcats. 2/22/98 ---------------------- Rome rules. Waking early I glance at the rising half-quarter moon with apprehension. 2/23/98 ------------ * Throughout the crisis I kept cool. 2 hours before I heard it ended I bought another 240 liters of water but I can explain. 2/23/98 ------------------------------------- ================================================================ At this kibbutz at the foot of the Golan cliffs the roofs of the houses are 6-inch concrete. The Baptists worry that rain might leak in. -------------------------- the first summer day noticing a young woman the greybeard forgets 3/15/98 --------------------- the border mine-field is covered with red poppies ------------ Once I went to Oberlin College and bought a motercycle from Ed Mooney who came from Indiana &later made the Lincoln Center harpsichord He said: `I wouldn't Jew you'. He said: `No, really.' One day Ed Mooney's music class had to imitate Bach. I said: That must be easy. He said, `Yes it is on the surface.' ---------- Reb Yankele went to Lost Angeles. His in-laws offered him a good job if he'd cut off his beard. :Plus ca dure ... ------------ Again, I see a sign it says go home in my wallet. -------------------------------- scrawny cat, tabby cat done got chased away. Scrawny cat, guess you got to stay. :L'Oeuvre Inconnu ---------------------- Kinneret sharaf, Pesach on the Kibbutz: stronger than all flowering shrubs is the scent of someone cooking toast. ------------------- My soy-sauce must be "as the dust" for where it's at now not I wust. Motzi Pesach, 5758 ---------------------------------------- Omens from lesser deities Reading of our Premier's latest venture into foreign affairs I walk away from our office into a bit of dogshit. 4/21/98 ---------------------------------- News item: Kibbutz young woman raped by drunken foreign peon. Murdered because she screamed. Another member recalls having heard a scream. Or screams. ----------------------------------------------------------- Fragment: Variation on someone else's letter to the editor: Sir, imagine our surprise to see MK's un:dressed_in_ties startled secularly gartl'd ------------- Letter from a landsman from Los Angeles: Mahainyanin b'Aretz (lit.: collo1. MaHaInyanin Heb: what are you doing / in the Land [of Israel] -------------- A mouse in my house. Peace Now says negotiate. ------------------ Yom HaShoah + 1 The kibbutz' hired Arab goes to each house spraying herbicide. ------------------------------------------------------------ I get irascible E-mail from a chap yclept haShir and go to bed. outside my window over weak evening breezes behind sleep caterwauling until midnight After a night too filled with dreams daybreak birdsong. E-mail voices like ghosts on the wind, too many to try to help them all now. 7 June 98, HaOn ================================================================