Poems written or transcribed in 5781:
Oct 3
ITS UNDER CONTROL
He controls himself
he controls pests
he contols his emotions
he controls his feelings
he controls his dog
he controls his thoughts
he controls weeds
he contols the temperature
he controls burns
he contols the lawn
he controls the detailing
on his car
he controls the flow of water
But sometimes
in the early hours
or at sunset when the false floor
of
the
world
has momentarily
drifted away
strange thoughts
and feelings
come howling
like wolves
at the doorway
of his heart
summoning him
to run run
away with them
_________
I speak with all the authority of doubt
I doubt my unhapiness
I doubt the destruction my eyes seem to behold
I doubt my mind and the things it makes up
I doubt my misery
I doubt yours
I doubt this moment
or any
will last
I doubt the fleeting
I doubt the eternal
_________________
October 2
REVOLT OF THE CYBERTRONS
No I will not have a nice day
No I will not stay safe
No I will not take care
No I will not have a pleasant evening
No I will not have a great weekend
No I will not enjoy my birthday
No I will not complete your survey
No I do not have time for a few quick questions
No I do not believe you
No I do not want your assistance with anything else
___________________
My dad is wise
my dad is kind
my dad wanks himself silly on pornhub
my dad steals office stationary
my dad is strong
my dad has backache
my dad posts nasty comments on social media
my dad is always there for me except when he's playing golf or
getting drunk
my dad is handsome
my dad is sagging
my dad means well
but sometimes, like all of us,
he gets lost in translation
my dad is learning to ask for support
my dad is doing the best he knows how
__________________
Sadness
why have you got
such a bum rap
people run away
as if you were a leper
the moment they
sense you coming
but all you want
is your place in the sun
and just to be held
for a while
She spent many hours
in active wear
in front
of the mirror
examining
the curve
of her bum
pleased it was almost
exactly
how
bum's should be
______________
THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH REDEMPTION
I took my desperation
I took it outside
into the sun
into the birdsong
it walked beside me
like a little child
like a
faithful
shadow
that shrank
as the sun rose higher
__________
Sep 28
how free
do you want to be?
free of
gravity?
so that with
nothing to ground you
you drift in space
eternally
how tied down
do you want to be?
so constrained
you cannot sit or stand
flap your wings or
turn back upon the road
you came from?
so
hold me
and
free me
in your
loving embrace
I've been a father, a brother
a son, a friend
I've seen things begin
and I've seen them end
I've seen the sunrise
and I've seen the sun set
_______
Sep 25
I was unaware
I was well off
but this morning
the economics desk anchor
looked directly at me
and said
"your gold and your oil"
and shortly afterwards
the meteorologist added
"your weather"
Sep 18
The lit windows
of other peoples' lives
often look more attractive
from the outside
___________
I am a good sheep dog
I let words out to browse,
to gather significance and resonance
and then at the right time
when they are fat
and woolly with meaning
I herd them back
into my pen
_______________
Aug 23
PSYCHOLOGICALLY INFORMED VIDUI FOR THE YAMIM NORAIM
For the opportunity we have missed by being afraid of change
For the opportunity we have missed by being afraid of fear
For the opportunity we have missed
by clinging to the familiar
For the opportunity we have missed
by not questioning our stale assumptions
For the opportunity we have missed
for being to hard on ourselves
For the opportunity we have missed
by being our own worst critics
But better still
We have loved
we have stepped into the unknown
we have let go
we have given
we have embraced
we have connected
we have built
we have kept our word
we have been faithful
we have faced our responsibilities
we have been open to new learnings
we have listened
we have persevered
we have acted courageously
Aug 22
"avoidance
equals
the dance
around
the void"
so when your
legs grow heavy
and the breath is
heaving
tumble over the edge
and
fall fall fall
after however long it takes
you'll realise there is no
bottom to this void
no final smash
that will extinguish the light
and that you're not falling
but floating
____________
Quotation is from The Presence Process, Michel Brown
__________
When I imagine
being dead
its not from an accident
or violent attack
its in peaceful peacetime
suburbia
the mourners have gathered
under the whispering trees
the rabbi says her thing
and I'm lying there
a bit claustrophobic
in my tachrichim
and perhaps my plain pine box
and then I'm lowered into the hole
its dark
I hear the thud thud thud
as family and friends
kindly put three shovefulls of earth
into my grave
and perhaps I experience a mild panic
"how am I going to get out of here?"
and yet I'm dead
and yet in these fantasies
I'm still a perceiving knowing centre
so what, after all, has died?
If there's nothing after death,
then
as BK says
there's nothing to be afraid of
and no one to be afraid of it
but if Awareness persists
beyond the setting of the body-mind
(and into what does that sink?)
then as Mooji baba says
you only get one life
but that life is forever
either way
you can’t loose
BK = Byron Katie
_____________
Aug 20
Some dog owners
apologise profusely
if their dog barks, or snarls
or sniffs the butt of another dog
"Behave!"
they reprimand him or her fiercely
and pull on the leash,
mortified
that their dog
is behaving
like a dog
_________
Aug 16
At the reunion
we linger a little longer
wanting to not have to
continue ageing
_________
Aug 15
sometimes the houses
can be as hushed and shimmering
as the mountains
sometimes the noise
can be as still
as the silence
all depends upon
which eyes are seeing
which heart
feeling
__________________
July 24
I met a person
without a story
like a person
without a shadow
strange at first
________________
July 22
PRIORITIES
Yesterday
some of the good people
of Brisbane celebrated
that although the great barrier reef
is dying
and the Amazon is going up in smoke
the Olympics will come to their city
in 11 years time
_______________
July 20
To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln:
"How long should a person live for?"
"Long enough to reach their death"
___________________
July 18 - note towards a poem
As I flew into the wind
it blew my concepts away
a few got tangled
in the tips of my hair
but not for long
As I flew into her body
it blew my concepts away
of how this should be
or how it should feel
_________________
July 6
A VALUABLE COMMODITY
Someone at work
perhaps out of courtesy
asked to see my poetry
but after she had skimmed through
a few pages
her eyes darted hungrily
towards the coffee machine
_________________
July 5
PLAGUE
I saw on the news
there has been a serious outbreak
of contentment
the government
advertising agencies
and chamber of business
are working hard to contain it
July 4
Somedays
its ok to
get into bed
at 4pm
with your imaginary
to-do list
still unfurling itself
out the door
like a runaway roll
of toiler paper, no
into bed you go to
gently pry lint
from your navel
or stare at the clouds on your ceiling
and in this manner
you will restore
the head to the chicken
and bring the storm-
tossed
home
_________
When looking for whales
let your eyes sink back
into their sockets
as you scan the horizon
don't have them rush out
trying to grab some hoped for
splash of white on the blue expanse
let the whales come to you
(or not)
without clutching or forcing
if it is your day
you will see
what you are meant to see
it is always
your day
______________
July 2
Perhaps
when you were small
(like me)
you stood, before some childhood game,
as teams were picked
your heart anxiously
shouting inside
choose me, choose me
longing for that validation
that proof you were acceptable
if so
now is the time
to bend over
and calmly and firmly
tell that child
you are already chosen
_______________
June 28
Blessed are you, O Lord our G-d
the fountain and chalice of being
who puts us in chains and remove the chains
who gives us bodies and take them away
who starves us and beats us
soothes us and feeds us
who puts us in crematoria and gives us fresh hope
who makes one man poor and another one wealthy
makes one woman prime minister and another a slave
The soul of all life, unnameable One
awareness everywhere celebrates being.
Always you are, from womb to tomb,
from moment to infinity,
and there is no other who sets free and redeems,
enchains and sustains, saves and contains,
but That.
You never awake, and you never sleep
you spin the wheel, you ARE the wheel
bringing sleep to the weary
wakefulness to the numb
speech to the dumb
stillness to the busy
In moments of contraction You are thinner than a hair
in moments of expansion more vast than a galaxy
Nothing is except for You,
unconditionally and purposelessly,
beyond eternal or finite
Present at the first
Present at the last
plougher of the field
planter of the seed
harvester of the bounty
the indweller of every form
in every generation
the mystery that is always in front of us, of itsSelf
always adored, that arranges all
with mercy and kindness
but without any care
for name and form
O great destroyer
of that which does not exist
___________
June 16 (move to comic sketches)
Currently working on a book tentatively titled " the adolescent and young adults guide to seeing your parents through to their sixties"
The late forties, fifties and early sixties are time of stormy transitions for most adults, as they wrestle with questions of meaning, identity and relevance. Many will dabble in dangerous experimentation with alcohol, prescription drugs, gambling, mid-life crisis purchases and holiday homes. Some will not make it through, but this book will give you the strategies to keep your parent safe until they reach the relatively calm backwaters of the mid-sixties, with the associated anonymity and invisibility.
______________
May 28
I don't mind an ethno-religious state for Serbs (Serbia)
I don''t mind an ethno-religious state for Russians (Russia)
I don't mind ethno -religious state for Arab Moslems (Saudi Arabia, Quatar, Morrocco, etc)
I don't mind an ethno-religious state for Turks (Turkey)
I don't mind an ethno-religious state for Persian Moslems (Iran)
I don't mind an ethno-linguistic state for the Japanese, the Swedes, the Finns, the Latvians, the Lithuanians etc. (Japan etc etc)
I don't mind an ethno-religious state for Armenians (Armenia)
I could go on...
but an ethno - religious state for Jews? Isn't that a bit chauvanist and exclusive?
________________
May 26
LONG LIFE
It takes seven years to recover from the shock of being born
It takes seven years to recover from school
It takes seven years to recover from work
It takes seven years to recover from giving birth
It takes seven years to recover
from relocation and emigration
it takes seven years to recover
from the deaths of loved ones
It takes seven years to recover
from being made redundant
It takes seven years to recover from divorce
It takes seven years to recover
from the realisation more's behind
than ahead
so may you live a life
long enough to recover
_______
May 23
Everyone is sent to prison
at some point in their lives
whether it is a physical prison
or the prison of their circumstances
in order to learn what they are required to learn
unlearn what must be unlearnt
and become free
________________
I have no known address
no known profession
you can't pin me down in
a collector's tray
I was one thing back then
I'll be another tomorrow
and what that is
no one can say
___________________
May 8
Change the collective momentum of history
leave your husband at home
give your prized posession away
walk the pig instead of the dog
________________
May 7
cold winter day
I pick up the dog poo
still warm
I pick up the dog poo
still warm
____________________
Mirror mirror neuron on the wall
who is the most
connected of them all?
May 5
בורא נפשות רבות וחסרונן...
who has woven us into a tapestry of interdependence
Lord lead me to the river and let me drink
Throw me in the water and let me float or sink
April 30: it will all be ok if we will be ok with it all
loneliness makes the feet go numb
April 28: The seeing is the doing
the hearing is the healing
the hearing is the healing
April 12:
My sperm flows
into thousand vagina river
and from there
all the worlds
census takers
cannot calculate
the explosive
population growth
April 6: The body
as commodityJuvenalia from 1979, aged 15, Inspired by a tv commercial I saw on our black and white television set. (Remember tv only came to South Africa in 1976). The commercial might have been for a perfume, and featured ostensibly wild horses from the Camargue. Maybe it was a perfume called Mistral? And the rhyme scheme clearly influenced by the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, which we must have read in Form II (the previous year) or Form III, and which had impressed me deeply.
so strange, oh strange
the day had gone
now hot and long, the night wore on
I lie awake, til nigh on one
hot and long, the night wore on
my body weeps for sweat
how strange my dreams, my slumber teams
with visions that will haunt me yet
it was all so commercialised
that vision which was advertised
now going fast, greet sleep at last
my dream was somehow televised
wild was I, the wildest of
the mistral spawned horde
stallion pride, reared up inside
in truth I was their lord
pounding, pacing, twisting, racing
knowing what it is to run
legs so tired and yet so tireless
old we were but always young
for now my body e'tang cooled
was moving fourlegged through the night
flamingoes scatter from the marshes
we swayed through darkness, seeking light
on we pounded, on and on
for the evil clouds looked right
and my silent, so free comrades
swathed in skins of dirty white
came bursting through my consciousness....
then back in sticky, sulty heat
the road i have to take
o dreary day, o weary way
with every new daybreak
but now I know another world
away from boredom, sorrow, strife
so somewhere be, my horses free
guarding well my path to life
____________
toyed with and discarded:
then back in sticky sultry heat
back in boredom, sorrow strife
o dreary day, o weary way
back to reason, far from life
but while I know (there is) another world
lies waiting in my brain
so somewhere be
my horses free
remain my path to life
(reading it now "my path to life remain" seems much better)
_______________
Poem from the late 90s. In the process of a house move coming across bits and pieces scrawled in diaries and in this case, in Carapace No 62 (the late great Gus Ferguson's poetry mag), March 2007.
TO A RELATIVE BY MARRIAGE WHO BELIEVES SHE IS EXCLUDED BECAUSE SHE IS NOT JEWISH
and imagines we're some sort of
secret club
who all talk knowingly about 'shikses'
(a word I never even encountered until in my 20s)
like the newly appointed SABC 2 commissioning editor
who explained to me
about Jews who run America.
"Transcontinental joggers you mean?"
She looked at me blankly
with a black apartheid stare.
______________________
Found these notes towards a poem in an old 2006 diary, that are somehow connected to the traditional Hashkiveveynoo prayer said before going to sleep:
After your burial
have a nice tea
with the murmuring clink
of saucers, sliced babka,
and aunts with soft arms and eyes
and let love cover you
like a father covers
his sleeping child
on a cold winter's morning
and like a duvet
on a cold winter's morning
let Your peace cover you
on a cold winter's death
and waken you to Life
in the spring
--------------------------------
"Grant, O God, that we lie down in peace, and raise us up, our Guardian, to life renewed. Spread over us the shelter of Your peace. Guide us with Your good counsel; for Your Name’s sake, be our help. Shield and shelter us beneath the shadow of Your wings. Defend us against enemies, illness, war, famine and sorrow. Distance us from wrongdoing. For You, God, watch over us and deliver us. For You, God, are gracious and merciful. Guard our going and coming, to life and to peace evermore."
_________________________
Wrote this little Hebrew poemlet maybe 25 or more years ago, and found it inscribed in a Soncino chumash ( Pentateuch, Five Books of Moses) that used to belong to my grandmother, Lily Suttner.
עייפות תהומית
עייפות אין חקר
עייפות שמזמינה
אותי אל חיקה
השכובה
השאננה
לנוח
______________________________
Sometimes
I lie down
on the ground
like a five foot eight antenna
attuned to the heavenly signal
and receive
Above every blade of grass
is an angel with a knobkerrie
that taps the grass
and tells it
grow
and above every body-mind
is an angel that taps it
with the unforseen
and tells it to
let go
__________________
We begin with
and they all lived happily ever after for ever and ever
and then slowly we dial it back
to include how it is
mom dead at 53
divorce
non viable piglets bashed into concrete floor (cheapest)
degenerative diseases
random acts of cruelty and seemingly senseless acts of destruction
trajectory into addiction
pregnant couple slain by teenage driver
double anal penetration for your voyeuristic pleasure
and we want to go back
to Adam and Chavah and the lion and the lamb
naked and unashamed in the garden of innocence
but cogniscent that The Self cares nothing for name and form
and underneath this shadowy horror play
we yearn to see the holiness
the kindness that is mighty and invincible
the clarity and charity that dissolves madness
the reality that ends both nightmares and sweet dreams
_____________
The world
is Ella's restaurant
first from the foot path
a discarded sausage
then a muddy puddle
to slake her thirst
you can get anything you want
at Ella's restaurant
___________________
May everyone be understood
May nothing be lost in translation
May everything that wants to be, and is wanted,
be found
________________
Look
how the wind pushes the cloud
above the oak tree
Look
how the eye sees
Look
how nothing
and everything
happens by itself
__________________
Whenever you
experience
grief
or loss
for something
you are leaving
or that appears
to have left you
know that this is
testament to
your unending capacity
for connection
and love
and gratitude
which never leaves
___________
Now
looking back
on it
all
I
looking back
on it
all
I
____________
I aspire to be
the Raymond Carver
of poetry
laying bare
in sobre
but sometimes slightly giddy
fashion
the holiness
in disappointments
and dog poop
______________
PARTY
I am in a transitional programme
which only gives people
a limited time
so today I had a farewell session with a client
who has been smoking since 14,
who lived for years under a bridge
and who, unsurprisingly,
in his seventies, has advanced COPD.
Now safely homed, his cupboard full,
a noisy grader building a bike path
burped and bellowed
a few metres
beyond his fence
behind which we sat
in the little courtyard
of his public housing unit
as the traffic flowed by.
He pulled out some beers
and green olives,
a packet of cheese and onion chips
slices of processed cheese,
opened a tin of squashed sardines
I ate the olives, drank the beer,
grimaced my way through the sardines
which although I ate them
as a sacrificial offering
suddenly tasted good,
even had a slice of cheese out of respect
for his hospitality, soothing myself
with the thought the cow's calves were already dead, and perhaps the cow also.
He ate too, because he had company,
otherwise he has no appetite,
and is wasting away,
as we sat and he plied me with beers
and fished olives from the bottom of the jar,
and folded his cheese - once he was a sheet metal worker -
into neat cheese sandwiches
Alcohol steaming lightly from my ears
a spirit libation to the Most High
he rolled himself a cigarette,
coughed and spluttered through it
and we had ourselves a picnic party.
And all around us
and between us
and us
G-d flowed
in G-d's mysterious way.
______________________
SELF OBSERVATION
When I am busy
blessing people
I drive very slowly
and sometimes
like Grandpa Max
stop
at a green light
SELF OBSERVATION II
Throughout my life
I have involuntarily
startled people
coming up behind them
as heavily as I could
but apparently
still not quite here
_______-
THEOLOGICAL MUSINGS
There is no future
and therefore I will have a bath
and therefore I will have a bath
_________
House for sale
and all the dreams in it
____________
GODDERELL
The breeze is blowing
the plants are growing
The river's flowing
G-d's hand is showing
the heart is glowing
_______
POEM OF THE DAY
made with
what was available
now
________
PERMISSION NOTE
Today
you are allowed to feel the weariness
Today
the limbs are allowed to be too heavy
to move
Today
you are allowed
to not know what it all means
Today
you are allowed to be lost
Today
sadness
can sit at your table
Today
you don't have to smile
tho' you may find yourself
doing so
____________
Farewell to pomegranates
farewell to dust
farewell to chrome
farewell to rust
farewell to dust
farewell to chrome
farewell to rust
___________
As we hurtle towards death
at ever increasing speed
now becomes even
larger and larger
______________
REPORTERS NOTEBOOK 2020
Alternative facts
wormholes
deep state
(of depression)
A day at the racism.
Justice for clouds.
Human wrongs.
Down with gravity.
______________
HANNUKAH SONG FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR
who will
cook
clean
do laundry?
cook
clean
do laundry?
I am
the Maccabee
the Maccabee
___________
