WORDS FROM JERUSALEM
with grateful acknowledgment to Gostinaya
Here come the words
Stretching winged rainbows
From Jerusalem’s temple mount
To the Rockies icy heads
Pastel wishes for a humbler planet
Where each man wields his own plowshare
Content in the bounty of his lot
And leaves his tithe of golden harvest,
His bucket of clear spring water
For all hungry and thirsty to share
Thankful for the blessing
The giving
May our words touch yours
May our spirits mingle
May our seeds sprout, flourish
Grow tall, flower, grow their own pollen
May the birds take their petal-hues
And spread them, curving to distant places
From red to ultraviolet and back
And remind those with doubt in their hearts
Of the promise made to Noah
When the dove returned with a leaf
And rainbows ringed the world
A DESCENDANT OF KING DAVID IN JERUSALEM
with grateful acknowledgment to Poetica
If you can crawl, nose to bumper, up Rehov Agripas’ perspiring length
twist wheel across oncoming traffic
into the rancid alleyway behind the kosher emporium
avoid hungry-eyed cats and yarmulke sidelocked bikers
and find a sandy parking in Uncle Ezra’s lot,
where for ten shekels you’re treated like King David’s charioteer,
then wend your way back along Jaffa road, past the dusty Internet hostel,
past the chicken giblets fry man scraping browned onion rings across his grill,
past the sticky dough confection stand, where angry bees and flies are shooed
from borekas and baklava, shoveled with cheese filling, pistachio greened
or oozing mushrooms and mashed potatoes into brown paper bags.
If you manage the ticking blind pedestrian crossing before the shuk
and escape the gum-chewing guards scrutinizing you as you enter,
then and only then will the cacophony of brilliance and abundance
that is Mahane Yehuda market burst into your vision,
alive and raucous, filled with bustling humanity and shouting vendors.
But beware, it’s Shabbat eve and in front of every stall a buzz of shoulder bumping,
fruit inspecting housewives and black-coated zealots with whom you must compete
to snatch the choicest specimens into your bag, scoop after luscious scoop,
raise your right hand high clutching booty and declare at the top of your voice
‘Please weigh this’.
When you’ve repeated this ritual the required number of times,
fighting your way through cucumbers, plump tomatoes, plucked chickens,
mounds of fish on ice and carp nosing for air out of their water tanks,
when you’re through with choosing green onion, parsley, celery root and white radish
You may gratefully dump your treasure in a shady corner
and stand in line for one of Jerusalem’s most delicious moments –
Dod Levy’s falafel, where once again you are treated like King David’s direct descendant
as between deft insertions he asks you, tehina, salad, chili paste, pickle, French fries?
Quickly you translate; a dollar and a quarter. King David himself never had it this good.
TO PROTECT MY HOME
with grateful acknowledgment to Gostinaya
There’s a fence
atop a wall
around the garden
that surrounds my home
There’s a wall
within the fence
and there are wires
above the wall
around the garden
that surrounds my home
There’s a fire
licking over the wall
over the fence
burning the garden
that surrounds my home
There are eyes
behind the wall
that light the fires
that melt the wires
that blacken the walls
that burn the trees
in the garden
that surrounds my home
And so I flee
flee from the flames
that blacken the walls
flee from the fires
that surround my home
Flee to a new land
flee to a desert
flee to a valley
beneath a mountain
to rebuild my home
There are eyes
inside the mountain
eyes that glint from treetops
eyes that lust from caverns
and so I build a higher barrier
to surround my home
UNNOTICED ON A BUS
with grateful acknowledgment to Gostinaya
she still glosses her lips
that moon girl
wears long sleeved sweaters
up to her nostrils
dark slits for eyes
moonbeam catching eyes
vigilant and bright
layers of halos
she spins out of limbo
while dressing
coffee she sips through
a kaleidoscope
between her glossed lips
he still uses his prayer book
lest memory err, that moon man
praising the Lord he winds and unwinds
strips of leather, cramped text
recites solemn syllables thrice daily
at bus stops, in bomb shelters, again
and again, and again again
a comforting ritual, like stirring tea
waiting for mercy, limp as a rag doll
to drop from heaven; one spoon,
two spoons, no moons, all moons
squeezed beside themselves
in a bus
moon girl, moon man
avert eyes into a fashion magazine,
a pocket sized bible,
under the sweater
a full-breasted moon
slit eyes deciphering
ink blot hieroglyphics,
bracketed eclipse, moon meets moon
on a bus
between limbo and heaven
TEL AVIV RHAPSODY
with grateful acknowledgment to Gostinaya
On Tchernichovsky Street where the King of Falafel
vies with Shlomo Butbul’s underwear store
for colorful magnificence; a pair of prostitutes
fresh from new republics who do not remember
Gorbachov or Mao Tse Tung, stroll between the stands.
They purchase black panties with red lips
pouting across the crotch and sample crisp brown
fried delicacies before parting with their ten shekels.
The sun is out, the tourists are arriving again,
business is picking up - during the war everyone
stayed home watching the news replays, counting
the Katyushas and Kassam rockets. Hisbulla had
threatened to bomb Tel Aviv but Butbul had put a
sign up in front of his stand Israel is Strong and
another Fuck off Nasralla which seemed to have
kept them at a distance.
For Katerina customers had been few; the soldiers
were away in Lebanon, the furtive black-coated
ultra-religious were busy praying and only old Hezkiahu
whose wife had never given him a blowjob continued to
arrive for his weekly ritual.
Marina does not mention the black Reuters correspondent
who had sent her letters from a hotel in Metulla promising
to make her an honest woman if she would let him make
her come (or pretend to convincingly). But she could not
stand the pain of his huge dong every night and besides that
her daughter would give her hell – she dislikes Moslems,
Blacks, Ethiopians.
In the Ukraine everyone had been blonde and beautiful
and Marina had worked less hard, stayed home more often
making piroshki. She examines a bra made in China -
one day she will open her own boutique with fine silk
from Paris and embroidery from Hungary. It is pleasurable
to daydream in the sun – and Maccabi Tel Aviv still has
a chance of winning the Euroleague.
Overhead a pair of F-15s wings their way to an international scandal.
SABBATH SUN
with grateful acknowledgment to Gostinaya
We fought
after three days of pouting silence
oh how we fought
one of those unpin your mouth fights
Unearthing corpses
-years of tatttered corpses
What I said when we were looking for a hotel
and your back hurt
What I said when you sent the food
back to the kitchen for the second time
How I ogled that girl on the escalator
How I refused to ask for directions
when you were tired and hungry
It was two in the morning,
five in the morning,
the fire had left our bones
we spoke about
the children
redecorating the lounge suite
The sun came up to warm us
it was a Sabbath sun
we made love
sank into each other again, so close
so warm, so wonderful
Like finding a favorite article of clothing
that you were sure you had lost
and it was there all the time
under the pillow
WATERS OF GAZA
with grateful acknowledgment to Gostinaya
They moved out of Gaza
not without protest, not without prayer
feeling like ivy ripped off the walls
like irrigation pipes torn from the soil
they moved out on unwilling legs
on buses to nowhere
fathers, mothers, children
and children without fathers
without mothers
They moved into Gaza
not without covet, not without envy
feeling like water released from a dam
bursting into surrendering fields
carrying all before it, trees, houses
places of prayer, fences, gardens
waves breaking over alien temples
again and again till water covered all
After the water came briny hatred
lusting for a redder liquid
and the skies darkened again
lightning and thunder returned to Gaza
rained on this thin strip of unhappiness
writhing between the wrath of history
and the dark depths of the sea
A GIFT FROM CHINA
with grateful acknowledgment to Manifold magazine
I received a gift, a box of coloured pencils
made in China, their finely
sharpened points all lined up
like rainbowed ballerinas
three sultry violets, five different moods of blue
reds, greens and yellows, forty-eight in all
centuries of Chinese tradition captured in a simple
cardboard pack; entranced I hold them, one
by one and rub them gently on the paper
Frozen into a moment of beauty
a Chinese child emerges, faint at first,
then taking breathless form
red painted lips, white frozen leg,
rainbow skirt finely etched around her hips
She skates down rainbows laughing
delighted between the red strips
and the purple ones
one foot hissing through sparkling ice
the other pointing behind, stiff and delicate
frozen into a moment of beauty
Perhaps some Beijing worker
dreaming of a rest-day in the park
packed her in there by mistake
an unintended New Year gift
ANTS IN THE MORNING
with grateful acknowledgment to Manifold magazine
On my way to make
the early morning coffee
snapped in the fingered fluorescent light
a sudden army of tiny ants
have made their way up from
outside, through microscopic cracks
in the brickwork
waves of them sporting around
over the kitchen counter
I grab the water hose
one unscheduled deluge will
sweep them away, tumbling into
helpless chaos down the drain,
–and pause
the six o’clock news headlines
come on, we’ve all been holding
our breath for the Tsunami survivors
as the barometer of death crawls over
a merciless hundred thousand and
still rising, we see two yellow-jacketed
relief workers helping a limping survivor
off a craft, he’d been picked up
still alive after hanging on to a plank
in the ocean for four days…
I pause
replace the hose
unused in its mooring
my tiny unsung prayer
a hushed contribution
to the sanity of the world
ANITA
with grateful acknowledgment to The Poetry Victims
Childhood on a lazy summer afternoon
Sucked reflectively like a sweet sour ball
In a dusty Orange Free State town
Skinny dipping in the river
With the turtles, the fish and Anita
Anita of the long hairless legs
Clad in clinging water wrinkled panties
Splashing in mid-stream
Performing kaleidoscopic somersaults
Painted toenails pointing to the overhanging branches
Giggling with bubbly glee
At some Grade Two joke
While high in the sky a small plane
Drones its way to Bloemfontein
And the scent of a distant braai
Reminds us that the peanut butter sandwich
Eaten at break was already long ago
It’s not there anymore, they say
Innocent corner built up by multiracial progress
Or turned into a garbage littered picnic spot
But I say it lingers on
Preserved in a fading brown rectangle
And Anita…does she smile at her grandchildren
Or dream a giggle in the clouds?
NIGHT COFFEE, DAY COFFEE
with grateful acknowledgment to The Coffee Press Journal
East of the morning
hurrying buttoned up through steaming streets
the night people toil on
coffee repeatedly renewed and neglected
polishing the latest scandal
they sit in smoky rooms
counting the gains and the losses
the wounded and the dead
shuffling the cards of signs hopes and warnings
food for the slumbering millions
Their work completed somehow
as dawn pushes the cobwebs from the sleepy sky
then alarm clocks beep
coffee machines clear their throats
clock radios snap on
computers start their endless daily conversations
lovers reluctantly disengage
open eyes ears toothpaste tubes
and the bombardment of babble begins again
good morning coffee world
WORDS OF FIRE
with grateful acknowledgment to Assume Nothing Press
O earthbound Zar and bouldergeists
hearken now to smouldering forests
where Trist the westwind furled its gates
in Jade and Amethyst estates
to harness Phyrr the underflamed
whose powers heaven and hell reclaimed
and glazed now from the pinnacled range
came forth an armored Hierwal strange
that snorting fire and consequent jewels
millennium’s distant worlds now rules
But scant now from these frowning skies
the real message Drysten lies
where hearkened into conchlike probis
a mystery from its deep discloses
that rears and phrenzies from the boulders
with flame and flander geists shoulders
and head of swords and lances smitten
the words of fire enflamed are written
to smoulder down millennium’s rivers
and light the way to jeweled evers
Hark O Zar the Phyrr is one
Hark the Hierwal’s words be done
STARTING OUT IN CREATIVE WRITING THREE
with grateful acknowledgment to Ascent aspirations
Remember when you changed schools
all bushy tailed with memorized passages
from bards, ballads and bible books
with Tennyson and Ted Hughes all neatly tabulated;
you even had a medal for coming second
in the hundred meters breast stroke (males under 21),
last years train coupons, all useless now
When it’s your turn you read your piece,
the one that earned you honors last semester,
they don’t look at you, someone sniffs
you feel clammy as if you’ve wet yourself,
look down ashamed, like one of those archetype
‘caught naked in the street’ dreams,
no trace of fig leaf or erection
They move on, ignoring you, into the name dropping
routines, obscure artists, deities from Chinese prehistory,
nymphs and Griffiths, a host of tongue-blistering
mythical creatures, mouthing foreign phrases,
obscenities blatant between indented or out-jutting
expletives, prepositions occupying lines by themselves,
some printed upside down in colored pen. Your head
spins like a gyroscope freed from its moorings,
off on an unguided tour of the universe as it now is
At break they eat sushi and something that looks like
dried shoelaces on chopped lettuce, extracting occasionally
objects that seem to squirm fatly, almost alive. You eat
your apple and peanut butter sandwich alone in the corner,
considering your next move and Dante’s Inferno
Then she slips up next to you, a doe faced vision, myopic eyes
shining behind thick glasses, short denim skirt hitched up
unconcernedly exposing a faint bruise above her kneecap.
‘Would you like a piece of sushi?’ (fingernails painted
alternately orange and blue), ‘I liked your poem very much’,
she laughs, ‘so different, a throwback to forgotten values,
reminiscent in a modern way of Chaucer or Homer’
I bite into my apple, which now tastes of Dunkin’ Cardboard,
try a small mouthful of rice wrapped in seaweed. I think I’m
going to like Creative Three
A HAND FROM MISS GODDARD
with grateful acknowledgment to Ascent aspirations
The yellow pages are stained, all of them
from when I knocked over
the coffee cup in my excitement
over her thin lines back in sixty three
I sketched her furtively under
the school desk, between the pages
of my opened history book covering
my growing manhood
She was like a lamp post talking about
the civil war, all in black
so elegant and covered up
inexplicable somehow,
her indigo blouse buttoned firmly
to the top, faint aureoles of her
breasts behind the prim fabric
sketched with a subdued pencil
I thought of mannequins in shop windows
When she accosted me, I nearly fainted
from the closeness of her strength
black skirt slit
civilly down to the ankles
showing the barest hint of her
perfumes higher up, slaves yearning
to be freed
What a pity digital cameras weren’t invented
back then, but I’d sketched her sufficiently
as Alfred Waud or Toulouse Lautrec
might have, captured the essence of her
and now as the tide of war turned in favor
of the North, my hand recalled her
while staring at the page and
she stepped out, smiled shyly,
slowly opened the black and purple
softness of her, peeled herself
to the pith, knelt gently in front of me
and after asking questions about
the Gettysburg Address, grasped
me, her laquered fingernails explaining a point
As treasure island appeared between
her parted thighs, dedicated to that
delicious principle that all men are created
equal, I knocked over the coffee, which
spilled thickly, spurting hot from me onto
the page and when I looked
through the dabs
she was gone and all that remains now
are the stains
GENEOLOGICAL SCHIZOPHRENIA
with grateful acknowledgment to Muddy River Poetry Review
Our ancestors did not commence their ancesting with Adam
we hear they’re saying people started even farther back
Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and other apelike forebears
waders, swimmers, reptiles creepy crawling out of brine,
carbon dated double helix twists of sandy history
their snail and fossil features petrified in rock and ice
So say the scientists and who are you and I to doubt them
yet yesterday I met a man who’d taken on the vows
he told me very earnestly that I had things mistaken
that world and all that’s in it was just six millenniums young
and quoted learned sources to assure me that the truth is
everything that creeps and crawls was fashioned in a week
And sometimes when I look up at the dark and dust-lit bowl
and wonder if there’s life on planets centuries away
and think how from our loved ones lost we haven’t heard a word
and how to pray for rain and peace and isn’t it absurd
we can’t agree if Eden was another Aesop fable
or whether Adam’s apple dropped a billion years before
Perhaps the scientists, you and I and that sincere young cleric
should go together to the garden, munch something psychedelic
FLYING INTO THE WIND
with grateful acknowledgment to Across the Long Bridge
Who understood her?
I graft snippets of her wanderings on to my page,
so many faces, all the same, all nothing.
’I touch you and you’re gone’, she said
unbuttoning my pajamas, taking me in
’Are you going home tonight? Yes. Never mind’
she wiped the words carefully away,
next moment she was gone again. She floated away
as I kissed the back of her neck, popped
a tiny piece of crystallized ginger into her mouth.
’It’s difficult to swallow. You’re gone again’, she
said into my eyes, seeing a startled world, so
many pieces of blank floating there. ‘You are
in pain’, she said, ‘I will heal you’. I laughed
at the way she mispronounced the words,
it was her pain.
She rubbed almond oil into my warmth, starting
to dissolve. ‘I had a dream’, she said with her
fingers. ‘I was on a ship, sailing home to nowhere.
I stowed away. Two sailors were looking for me
but I was naked, invisible. I touched their legs.
They did not move. Then I heard a tune in the wind.
as I rubbed, they disappeared, but the tune
remained. The ship turned into a gull, spread its
wings and flew to the horizon. I watched it sink’.
‘What do you think?’ She opened her eyes at me.
I looked into her irises but she was gone, flying
into the wind.
‘Close my page when you go’, I said. She did not
hear me. Flying into the wind.
CANTATA FOR BUS AND MOBILE PHONE
with grateful acknowledgment to Poetica magazine
Ten a.m., Haifa Bay bus station
green buses lined up like panting athletes
at the starting line, dirt, diesel fumes
and oil slicks greet passengers sipping coffee
smoking, talking into cell phones
soldiers lean on railings, rifles
and submachine guns slung carelessly
between their legs
Everyone here has mobile phones, each with
its own musical overture, the air is so thick
with conversation, you could slice it
with a metronome into scintillating fragments.
- Where are you, you said you would be here at nine?
- She said to me, I said to her, she said to me, the bitch!
- Did you give the children to eat? And don’t forget your keys again.
and soldiers’ slang repeated everywhere
in acronymic anagrams of military shorthand
that only parents of conscripted children
can attempt to decipher
Here we all commingle, zealots and hobos,
gum-chewing youths with pierced tongues and nostrils,
mothers with bottle-fed babies, all rubbing shoulders
in the rush to go home, back to the base, visit friends
in hospitals; three dozen and more assorted life stories
thrown together for two brief hours into a green, caged
tiger on wheels
The morning paper tells the news that might have been:
a terrorist was captured on his way to explode his body bomb
at the central bus station in Tel-Aviv
Three dozen mobile phone users continue their conversations
almost uninterrupted. They’re used to this routine,
tomorrow they’ll be repeating it again
KING OF JAZZ
from Sonatina
Smiling he sits alone at the piano
cigarette burning in an ashtray
composing toothpaste blues
honky-tonk sarsaparilla solos
cool clarinet cascades
Evening news snaps on
the tea lady clinks her cups
birds chatter to each other
rustle to their nests
a dog barks in the distance
but he, alone in his house of deafness,
hears nothing but the music of his mind
Caught in the wonder of the mood
he hears her voice again
sees her flying skirts
the seventy-eight girl
spinning between bass man and guitar
both hands holding the mike like a lover
she throws a throaty hello to the crowd
Now he is dancing with her again
crouched over keyboard, his fingers
thrust softly into the sound, the blues drift out
linking him, her and the crowd
in a dusky cloud of notes and cigarette smoke
Then the number ends
the crowd shouts for more
but he only hears the ghost of the seventy-eight girl
standing beside him
smelling of raspberry and wild fruit
spelling the notes into his pencil
onto the sheet, bar by blue bar
The cigarette burns itself out
the melody sits completed on the stand
smiles back at him
the seventy-eight girl wheels him back to bed
tucks him in between the blankets
kisses his dark brow
turns off the light
and King of Jazz
slips smiling into paper dreams
VARIATIONS ON A BLUE THEME
from Sonatina
Thirteen twists on a blue theme’s chest
yo ho ho and a bottle of fun
sing till the rhythm beats fast in your breast
yo ho ho and the dance has begun
Twelve dapper crows on a willow tree branch
cawing caw caw at the river’s run
cawing after breakfast, cawing after lunch
cawing after dinner as moon outshines the sun
Moonlight dancing in a blue theme’s dream
skipping round the bodies of the sleeping tree’s trunks
when the rushing river paints the eleven shades of green
they scuttle back to heaven in gleaming yellow chunks
Ten years old skinny dipping in the river
legs flashing pinkly at the tiny silver fish
as the sun sinks westward she gives a little shiver
wriggles clothes over shoulders and makes a special wish
Crows caw caw into sleeping themes
hoarsely intruding her pink and blue dreams
nine-o-clock teen slips into her jeans
brushing teeth she ponders what the blue dream means
Secretary gets to the office after eight
fixes up her lipstick at the coffee machine
thanking her blue luck that the old crow is late
she types another memo to the head office team
Seven willow trees line the dancing river’s banks
tresses bowing down from lipstick green shoulders
sipping at the river’s rhythm, watching fishes’ pranks
admiring bubbly themes floating in-between the boulders
At six o’clock each day Willow brushes her teeth
washes blue dreams from her sleepy morning eyes
slips on sexy panties and a skin tight blue sheath
wishing once again she could go down one more size
In the Blue Theme nightclub at a quarter past five
a loving pair gaze sleepily into each other’s faces
the pianist plays oldies from the sixties and before
and jazzes up some classics in between slow embraces
Four blue streams merge and sweep towards the ocean
gushing river melodies play morning themes to crows
colors mix and match in melodious commotion
rainbow dancers swirl in flamenco to’s and fro’s
Moonlight streams bluely on the willowed river shores
ghosting lunar rhythms through the swaying theme trees
centuries old melodies return to dream encores
willow fronds play waltzes in gentle one-two-threes
Thinking about Rachmaninov’s Paganini variations
the poet wets his pencil in the leafy moonlight gleam
feeling like a florist making dance music creations
he slips a single rose into a blue theme’s dream
THE GOLDEN LOCKET
from Sonatina
Playing to herself
she plucks music from a bowl of flowers
floating water lily fragrances,
rose water, jasmine, turkish delight,
pink, white and scented with pollen.
‘Listen’, she says, dropping notes
from her fingertips, splashing into the bowl,
each note a ballad, a flower of youth,
under trees, scent of passion, hidden
fragrance of lost love, broken promises
deep blood red roses of artillery shells
spilling from the sky, staining soil
with fragments of regret.
‘Look’, she sings, plucking a daisy
petal-by-petal, I loved him, I loved him not.
A wind blew over the bowl causing
the leaves to rustle from the trees
and dance around her hands
rusting into ochre.
‘Once there was a young officer’, she
plucked him from her book,
golden buttons dripping from his uniform
golden notes into the bowl
‘He went to war, fought bravely, never
returned’.
‘See’, she said,
‘he’s still here, my first love’.
She opened a golden locket, inside was
a tiny music box turning
an old refrain under the moon,
a bed of grass and leaves between trees
and not far away, a small hill,
a row of graves, each grave an album
of memories played less frequently
over the years
through sunlight, through moonlight.
I looked, the water was clear, the roses white,
the petals white, translucent,
her hair white, her music reflected
in the snow.
Sometimes in winter, I revisit her,
frozen by the pond, her fingers white
to the moon, white as snowflakes and icicles
silvering from her touch to the frozen
mirror of the pond. Once I heard her music
in the air and beheld a young girl in white
riding a bicycle, singing up a hill
disappearing into her own song.
LITTLE MISS MUSICAL PHRASE
She is only a breathful of music
just a handful of measures
yet with a shape of her own
her own theme, motto and meaning
asking her own questions
providing her own answers
part of the whole to be sure
but melodiously standing out from the crowd
She has her own life, emotions
tossed on waves of polyphonic oceans
she is passionate, joyful
whirling into shapes and sprays of excitement
like a musical fountain in a full-moon night
and at times she is calm, soothing
a sea of peace lullabying baby fish to sleep
or plucking a plaintive guitar
in the stillness of the deep
She has her own signature line
instantly recognizable
her own voice
conforming to tradition
yet daring to be bold
pleased with her own adventures
confidently knowing that
today’s avant-garde
will be tomorrow’s fashion
She is an actress too
and like an exquisite coconut soloist
amidst a bevy of blonde choir girls
she strides barefoot down platforms
over audiences, proud of her own dusky allure
striking a quick flash of a pose
then turning, returning, accepting the applause
Once heard and seen, many fall in love with her
breathlessly wait for her return
but no encores tonight for her
she’s off on a bus
packed with performers and instruments
and all the paraphernalia of a traveling band
laughing and drinking a beer on the road
from village to village, town to town
school hall to concert auditorium
to thrill new crowds, capture new hearts
She is only a phrase
just a breathful of music
on her way to stardom