An Australian Epistolatory Novel in Two Petit Parts

Bla bla bla

Corporate Creep

Welcome to Australia, But

My life as a chameleon....


I've long felt a bit inferior
to plumbers and tradesmen
who come in
and do their job
brick by brick
who resolve leaks
restore tiles
rewire circuitry
and leave
their job done
while I
work with words
on jobs that have no
beginning
or end
____________
during the war
I hid in an office
for seven years
until it was safe to come out
pizza delivery men
smuggled food to me
that tasted the same
as the boxes it came in
I watched the world go by
on a wind-up DVD player
and watered the plants
with my pee
it was only
when I grew tired of hiding
that I came out into
whatever was there 

_________
as I get older
it becomes increasingly important to me
to maintain balance
and to grow the brand
of Immanuel Suttner
___________

As the story of your body's ageing unfolds
everything just keeps on getting easier and easier
you find yourself simply doing
whatever needs to be done:
making school lunches
flipping a cockroach back onto its legs
reversing into a lamp post
attending an art exhibition or rally
picking up the scans which reveal arthritis
restructuring your insurance
shouting at a teenager
burying your parents
and the dog
enjoying your coffee
writing in your blog
going bankrupt
picking up the dishes from the caterers
lying awake at night consumed by anxiety
enjoying and often grateful
as you slowly become
exempt from it all
unable to move
even a millimeter
from the invisible trajectory
of the bullet fired by life
with your name on it 

(just seeing everything
happen by itself)
________________

poetry is my affliction
poetry is my contradiction
poetry is my addiction
poetry is my benediction

____________

It aint personal said the slaughterer
so please don't bleat
we don't want to hurt you
we just want your meat

______________

Michael's Boat is Sinking

After the seduction
I wake up bruised and sore
the green lawns and loving families
in the margarine ads
has turned out to be trench warfare
the food they said would make me healthy
has made me fat
the car they said
would take us on adventures
ran over someone's beloved dog
I look out all around me
whadda I see
I see a row of cosmetically whitened teeth
coming for to swallow me
____________________

For Pessoa

I've had this strange pain in my side
I think G-d is trying to make
a woman out of me

If I had known you
like Adam knew Eve
I would not lie
in the dark and grieve

later
coming through customs
I try to look innocent
despite the fact
that I am

_____________

please don't bring the war here
leave it at the door
U think you want excitement
but you want peace much more

please don't bring the war here
you burn to prove your right
but peace is what you"ll come home to
when shadows call the night

_______________________________

Walking to the
celebrating-multiculturalism
"Welcome-to-Australia" March
from shule, a kipa unusually and ostentatiously
on my head, so as to flag that Jews
are also sensitive to these issues
I need to pee
so I step into a pub
in William Street, all pints of beer
and blaring tv screens
to use the loo
but before I do
I cover the kipa with a baseball cap
just in case
____________________

Glimpses of Home

Secular love songs
are really songs of love for the Divine
only their composers do not know it
yet

___________________

Its hard
No, maybe its not that its hard but that its
hard for me
No, maybe its not that its hard for me but that its
actually me that that makes it hard
No, maybe it not me but its my thoughts that make it hard
yes, that's it, its my thoughts
which thought?
the thought that
"its hard"
_____________

its easy
I like that thought
I like thinking that thought
its easy to get born
its easy to die
easy to find yourself
doing what you're doing
______________________

Finding my voice

They said once you find your voice you’ll be ok

and its fine to imitate and anyway

even your imitations are original

because everyone has been set ringing

with their own song

but years and years of trying to figure out what other people want to hear

and give them that

can make it really hard to hear

like a woman who weights 350kg

and has no idea if she’s hungry or not

and can’t taste anything she eats

or if she's unhappy

or perfectly fine.

___________

I am an example of the uncommon lesser donged shy poet
I have to be ferreted out from the cracks in which I take comfort
_________

Poems on Desire

May I lie against the small of your back
may I may I
May I knead the tips of your rack
may I, may I?
may I move about in your crack
may I, may I

may I take and not give back
may I, may I

__________

100 Women

Although my outsides are greying
inside my desire feels fresh and new
to lick the skin
of a 100 women
and know the different tastes of each
what do I imagine
that will give me?
immunity from desire?
a body knowledge that makes me complete
women as bestower
man as receiver
sometimes to be serviced
sometimes to kiss their feet
a young slim hand
on an elder penis
that never aged
though its owner did.

___________

My peace time feels like a war zone

bills landing all around me

like kassims from Gaza

obstacles to the left

unknowns to the right

regret behind 

anxiety ahead  

sleepless nights

my bed my trench

and every morning

I go over the top

_________________________

all depends
upon a balance
of presence
and absence
parenting and
partnering
leadership
the wheel's grip and go
the rests in music

the pauses in our conversation

bread rising

life on earth
not too much
and not to little

_______

Crossing the line

Suddenly
sometime in the sobre 40s

I crossed a line
invisible
unnoticed at the time
where the could be's became might have beens
expansion became contraction
I thought less of what might be attained and more of what might be retained
and body scribbled notes in joints and eyes that it would not serve for ever
unexpectedly soon my vitality drained out of me like water drains out of a bath tub
one moment there, the next gone
like a cruise ship white and immaculate
that sets out from its home port
but gets battered by storms, runs aground on reefs
and can't quiet remember
why or who set sail 

__________

Crossing the line

Suddenly
sometime

we cross a line
invisible
unnoticed at the time
where the could be's became might have beens
expansion became contraction
we think less of what might be attained and more of what might be retained
and body scribbles notes in joints and eyes that it will not serve for ever
like a cruise ship white and immaculatethat sets out from its home port
but gets battered by storms, runs aground on reefs
and can't quiet remember
why or who set sail

______________________

I had a friend

I inherited from my mom

who grew older

alone

without a husband or children

and when she thought about taking flight said:

I can't just get up and go

I have responsibilities, there are things I must look after, things I must come home to

like my flat
and I

who have a wife and two children

and some pet mice

and a house

am like that women

only my flat is a little bigger

_____

she spoke passionately 

her voice growing louder and her eyes more blazing

about how the Jews had been chased out of Hebron in 1929

how 67 of them  – including many women and children – were murdered and 

another 50 wounded and how this savage attack

was accompanied by wanton destruction and looting

with synagogues desecrated, and the  Jewish hospital, 

which had provided treatment for Moslems, attacked and ransacked, 

and only the personal courage displayed by Raymond Cafferata  

the one British Police Officer in the town (who was Jewish)

prevented the number of Jews massacred from being even greater

and how the cowed Jews of Hebron had turned down offers of help from the Haganah

the day before and that we could never allow such a massacre to happen again

and I nodded and all the time stole hungry glances

at the rise and passionate fall

of her breasts 

_________

they call me a mexican beaded lizard
i wrestle for hours and hours
i don't know why
(just as Yaakov didn't know why he wrestled with His Self
and called it G?d)
if i win
i mate before i die
______________________________

I like to hide
under a job
inside a pub
next to a book
beneath a film
locked up in
a bank account

____________
The indignities of emigration #74: the household inspection

Friends of ours, emigrants, and economic refugees from Sydney, live in a hired house in Cairns. Once a quarter they have a house inspection by the letting agents, and the husband, who by virture of not having been able to find work for several years, is a house husband, begins cleaning and polishing several days before each inspection. During the last inspection he was given a "unsatisfactory" on the oven and so this time, determined to improve his score, he bought some highly toxic oven cleaner, b

However he was failed on the washing line, which still had washing on it (albeit clean and dry) when the inspection began 
_____________

Courage there is
scoop it up by the handful
the great sea of courage
is never emptied
________

everyone is ripe
for some transition
but not necessarily the one
you have decided for them
______

our dreams and wishes
paper boats set asail
on the burning lake
__________

eyes
come back into your sockets
cheeks release
your taughtened brow
hands unfurl
your clutching fingers
mind stop
your grasping plans
make way for the blessing
that's already here
__________
on the one hand
the fire of resentment
on the other
the icyness of the grave
so...
do I call you?

_________________

After the massacre
the attribution of blame begins
it was the killer
with his 6000 rounds and weird message on the answering machine
it wasn't the lax gun laws
it wasn't the tv shows
it wasn't the dismissal in "have a nice day"
inflicted ten thousand times
it wasn't the macdonald's "rester aunts"
or 20 years of the bbc calling people who blew up arbitrarily selected victims "militants"
it wasn't the stream of illusions and images
(we were supposed to know they weren't real)
if we can just get ahold of the oiled fish of causation
we can make it jump through the hoops
of our likes and dislikes
______________________

I'm sitting in my car

and next to me is a big breasted young woman

unpacking her shopping

I'm a fine upstanding citizen by day

and because of that

a crazy absolutely normal impulse

to flash my pekelach

wells up in me

so that I may go from 0-100 with her

without an inbetween

so that a spark of recognition

can flash between us.

I reach down and unzip my pants

wrestle with my undies

but to my horror

there's nothing there

my penis has vanished

she puts the last bag away

gets into her car

and drives away

____________

I am mature
and I have a wedding ring
that no longer fits my finger
to prove it
but still I look at young women and adore them
in the abstract
sans breath and blood
they are my greatest aspiration and inspiration
after peace
itself

________

The good old days

Ah bring back the good old days
when people weren't so rude and impatient
when things were so much simpler
when everyone had a place
(Jews in ghettoes or cattle trucks
blacks on slave ships or sans hands on rubber plantations)

ah bring back the good old days
when people had time
to attend public executions
and children respected their elders
so much so they did not interrupt
even if their elder raped them

ah bring back the good old days
when people were honest
and knew what it was to work


When desire goes out the door
true love comes in through the window
__________

the non-biological taboo: mommy, daughter, lover

_______________

"I embrace all of my son with love
(beginning with him it will move to me)
as he becomes a sexual being
and perhaps disappears into the
solitude of his room to masturbate
and delight in the new feelings
his body can provide

as his answers in monosyllables
eyes averted
as he challenges and misinterprets
my every word
as he accepts my good night hug
as he comes near and goes far"

_____________________________

If only the Tanach had commanded us:
young men and women are urged to have protected sex daily
as a thanks giving offering to the Lord
and old men and women
may take willing young partners
as their heart desires
but responsibly
___________________


running in the morning
trees chiselled against the sky
things that were One
now apart
_______________

running in the morning
trees chiselled agains the sky
even the gravestones
look better

(Boston Literary Review)
__________

running in the morning

trees chiselled agains the sky

even the gravestones 

are bursting with being

See also I hold me

Alice Walker and Torquemada Tutu

Alice Walker bravely declares her solidarity with the one party, mysogynistic, homophobic, civilian-targeting, supremacist monocultural regime in Gaza, but her penetrating and morally pure gaze somehow misses the bloodbath in Syria just a few hundred kilometres further north, the Kurd's 40 year struggle for autonomy and the Turks ruthless repression thereof, the ethnic displacement of Tibetans by Han Chinese and Chinese domination of the Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang "autonomous" region, the plight of the Saharawis in Morroccan claimed Western Sahara  the Russian dismemberment of Chechnya and a dozen other disputes around the world.

Yes I understand these conflicts - despite the fact that they have taken more lives and arguably caused more suffering than the Israeli Palestinian conflict - aren't as sexy in the West, and a fading intellectual has to ensure he/she remains relevant,  Or perhaps it is not a blatant populism that motivates the acclaimed novelist, but rather that she went to the same seminary as Bishop Tutu,  her grandstand stance underwritten by the assumptions that Tutu suckled on from the missionary breast that fed him - that Jews must and always are intrinsically guilty of some extraordinary misdeed. But perhaps, Ms Walker, the myopic focus on the Palestinian issue is what has allowed the other opressions to continue largely unchecked in the background - dictators and demagogues have long used the "blame the Jews" strategy as a way of distracting from their own machinations and destructive agendas. 

Since its creation in June 2006 the so called UN Human Rights Council"  has criticized Israel on 27 separate occasion. Obsessed with condemning Israel, the Council in its first year failed to condemn human rights violations occurring in any of the world’s 191 other countries. In its second year, the Council finally criticized one other country when it “deplored” the situation in Burma, but only after it censored out initial language containing the word “condemn.” It even praised Sudan for its "cooperation." 

The Council’s preoccupation with Israel is not limited to resolutions. Israel is the only country listed on the Council’s permanent agenda, and Israel is the only country subjected to an investigatory mandate that examines the actions of only one side, presumes those actions to be violations, and which is not subject to regular review." For detailed information on the pathological obsession with Israel see UN Watch 

Yes Israel is a stumbling democracy where the rule of law is being savaged on a day to day basis, and where increasingly fear and resentment of the other has come to dominate national discourse and strongly impact on policy. Yes Israel hangs in the balance as a democracy. Yes there is no proper separation off synagogue and state in Israel. Yes Israel has a poor track record of service provision to its Moslem citizens, and of discrimination against Conservative and Reform Judaism. Yes Jewish supremacists murdered an Israeli prime minister because he sought a historic compromise with the Palestinians. And yes Israel has the freest press in the middle east, the most minority group and female representatives in the Knesset and High Courts, the largest and freeest gay community in the middle east, and many other wins that some western democracies still have not achieved.

And yes, Israel's enemies are not democracies, do not extend the hand of peace to Israel, do not acknowledge the validity of Israel's narrative, and do not talk the talk or walk the walk of co-existence. And yes Israel's neighbours - including the Palestinians both in Gaza and in the West Bank (the biblical Yehuda and Shomron) supress difference and dissent amongst their own poulation with a savagery and furiosity Israel has never adopted.

Examine your own unconscious predjudices Ms Walker! And on your grand imperial tour of Gaza, please skip across the border to Sderot and Nachal Oz and Kfar Aza and Mefalsim and Gevim and Ashkelon and the other tens of towns and villages where children spend their days cowering in bomb shelters to try and stay safe from the Hamas missiles and mortars aimed indiscriminately at schools and hospitals.

  __________________

 

I hold me

See also Poems 2012 - 5772 and Welcome to Australia, But

What happens in group
stays in group

battered old suitcases are opened
rummaged through
to reveal fresh emotions
each one dares
what she or he may
______________

I long so much
to have everything done for me
someone else pay my bills
someone else write my poems
someone else to face down my challenges
If I could just side step my life
goes the story
I might be able to tackle it

(Published in Boston Literary Review)
_________________________________
Hero 1:01am

I have a friend
who cannot sleep at night
he listens to music
or stares at the dark
outlines of trees. Like sheep

his mistakes pass before him
and he numbers them one by one
but with dawn he rises
and does what needs to be done
_________________

Hero 1:01am

I have a friend
Who cannot sleep at night
He listens to music
Or watches the dark shapes of the houses and trees
Like sheep his mistakes pass before him
And he counts them one by one
but with the dawn he rises
and does what needs to be done

_______________________

the toffee apple of the world

turns out to be an onion

but an onion when alchemised

is also quite sweet.

(Published in Boston Literary Review)

________________

sometimes I want
the world to kneel on its feet before me
and sometimes I kneel on my feet before it
and beg for sweet mercy
_________________

He began to get ahead in the world
he planted a vegetable patch
he acknowledged himself and those he lived with almost every day
He allowed the things that brought him joy without sorrow
he nurtured himself in order to nurture others
and found nurturing others very self nurturing
he lied less and less
imagined less and less
the stories he told
and the seeds he planted
were ripe with possibility
_____________

When I think about the Holocaust
I get very tense
when I think about doing some gardening
I relax
will my tension serve
someone who'se suffering
ended 68 years ago?

 ____________

Australian - ness is a vehicle
Jewish- ness is a vehicle
South African-ness is a vehicle
Israeli-ness is a vehicle
Palestinian - ness is a vehicle
Gayness is a vehicle
White-ness is a vehicle
Black-ness is a vehicle

where is your vehicle taking you?
__________________
When the teacher said "let's go round and everyone say one thing they are good at"
David said "I'm good at soccer"
and Shira said "I'm good at drawing"
and Dani said "I'm good at mathematics"
and Mahmoud said "I'm good at baking"
and Phillip said "I'm good at solving riddles"
and Katherine said "I'm good at Karate"
and I said "I'm good at liking myself"
_________________________________


 
They say that Rashi is wise
but from little I have read of his commentary
I do not find advice
on what to do with errant thoughts
or how to love and respect myself more
or how to be light and easy and clear
and have my outside like my inside
yes Walt Disney said
there's no magic, its all in the details
and Rashi microscopes the details
so travelling with him
the Torah text is clearer
or at least more thought about
but I am to myself
no clearer
only a whirl of thoughts and ideas
and am I my thoughts which come and go
true in one place and untrue in another
true for one day and untrue on another
or am I a spark of the eternal?
Rashi has not told me this yet
and so I l look elsewhere

__________________


looking back on episodes
involving woman's bodies and touch
and me
when we took off our clothes
and our thoughts
it always felt
like I was coming home

__________________

I like the nurturance of the breasts

but I fear the demands of the vagina

milk is life

but sex is life and death

__________________

The importance of labelling

Labels are often decried as being destructive, and indeed often they are. People rightly see labels as ways of boxing other people into fixed roles which limit their ability to be all they can be and give all that they have to give. A child labelled "the troublemaker" or the "class crown" or "the responsible one", a work colleague labelled "a shirker", an  old man labelled as 'dirty", an ethnic minority labelled as "stingy" or "criminal" or "subversive" - these labels are ways of discounting the other, and often of holding them to the worst or least appropriate of their behaviours. They have been rightly challenged, as has been the need to assign (and reduce) people labels in the first place.

But like everything, labels also have a positive side. labels sometimes allow pople to articulate to themselves their usefulness, their value, and as such become the platforms from which people can operate more effectively in the world. They can also put other people at ease so that they have enough of an initial "take' on you for an ineraction to begin with some (admittedly arbitrary) orientation points they have in terms of their framing of you:: "Hello, I'm an...a accountant / farmer/ revolutionary / poet / in sales / fitter and turner / mechanic/ lawyer/ publisher/ social worker/ full time mom etc."

I often what label to asign myself when presenting myself to people, what label I can produce that adds value and dignity to myself, gives a comfortable sense of solidity and area of expertise. I have variously across the years presented myself (in person, or perhaps on a busines card or CV)as a student, soldier, journalist, writer, poet. scriptwriter, lecturer, teacher, film maker, wannabe filmmaker, corporate worker when I was at Liberty Life, blogger, instructional designer (for elearning) online content creator, dad, husband, cousin of, bar mitzvah teacher, Hebrew teacher, Jewish studies teacher/ children's author etc - depening on the time and context. Some of these labels ring more sexily in my ears than others, are seen as bestowing me with more dignity and value than others, as having the capacity to help create an intial orientation on the side of my interlocutor of interest or "respect."Now as I decide what ticket to present to the world next I cast around for convincing and solid labels; poet and psychotherapist; counsellor and poet; counsellor and communicator bla bla bla. Eventually I will come to something that feels reasonably solid, that reflects some of what I am and do, which i can occupy for a good few years, and which enhances my usefulness and value both in my own eyes and in the eyes of others.

It seems to me - and this is really the point of this post and the rest a long preamble - that a really useful thing that a therapist can do with clients is help them find affirming labels for themselves, even when at first this seems like a very big challenge. Not with a high functioning client who is a CEO or CFO or who has a distinct professional identity (dentist, tax consultant, architect) or commercial identity (real estate agent, commodities broker), or a "tradie" as they call them in Australia (plumber, electrician, builder) but with someone who may be unemployed, unemployable, between jobs, wrestling with an addiction, awaiting trial or post incaceration, a survivor of some kind of abuse - they too have their story and they too could benefit from a calling card. What could the card of a homeless schizophrenic be? If she sometimes manages to walk dogs, or do a bit of gardening, she could be a "household assisstant" or "botannical worker" or, if she just walks around the streets a "neighnbourhood patroller." "Survivor of domestic abuse" or perhaps just "Survivor" Street poet? Cleaner? "Evoket of compassion." "addiction expert" - the call is to get creative and find something that fits for the client and facilitates new movement. That allows them to present themselves to themselves (and then to the world) in a new way.

Obvioulsy phony and politically correct labers which try to avoid substantial work JUST with a new label are not going to do the trick. we are talking here of providing labels which are a starting point towards wellness, which help provide people with a few cms of psychic turf onwhich to stand as they try to figure out how to be usefully in the world.  
______________________________

The therapist as parent...yes, but also sometimes the therapist as witness, modelling for the client how it is to be with what arises, without acting out or suppressing, just gently meeting, being with, seeing - "the seeing is the doing" (Krishnamurti)
_________________________

Psychotherapy is like poetry; there are more people teaching and offering it than those who want to consume it....as it says in the Talmud "more than the calf wants to suck the cow wants to suckle"
___________________

To Gerday Boyesen:

my peristaltic rythms testify 
I am ripe
so let me be harvested
_______________________ 

At the borders of the body-mind entity
somatic psychotherapy

_______________________

The best "therapy" (and what a loaded term that is)
happens between a good enough mother *
and her infant
in the first year
of embodied life
get that kind
and every other you receive
will just be a refresher course
______________________

* (or father or caregiver)
 
 

BDS and Political Correctness

Is the BDS (Boycott Dirty Semites) campaign just another vehicle for people to express their resentments without having to own that that is what they are doing? Does it offer people a way to express and nurture and feed their resentment of Jews while supposedly doing it for the sake of Palestinians? Does it allow its groupies to express profoundly visceral and irrational and ugly predjudices in a cloak of pseudo rectitude as if they were serving some noble cause? Possible payoffs are:the togetherness of communities built around shared resentment, the avoidance of one's own real issues, the false self esteem that comes with sanctimoniousness, the chanelling of agression and violence towards a relatively safe target (if a few suicide bombers attacked protesters outside a Max Brener shop you'd see a marked fall in attendance by the recreational protestors who are the mainstay of these events) but as it is at the moment there is no overt personal cost for anti-Israeli protestors. (Other than that blindness of lemmings who sacrifice clarity and personal power for the safety and abdication of reponsibility offered by the mob.)

For those who say that the central organising principle of the BDS phenomenon ( I wouldn't dignify it with the name "movement" - is pornography and the millions of people engaged by it a movement??) is a concern for human and Palestinain rights, and not simply a conscious or unconscious visceral resentment of Jews, then why are these same fervent 'campaigners' not organising similar boycotts against Turkey for its ruthless supression of the Kurds and its denial of an autonomous Kurdish homeland, Russia and its brutal suppression of Chechnya, China and its repopulation of Tibet and supression of The Uyghurs (a mainly Sunni Muslim group found throughout Xinjiang Province), Morocco for its occupation of Western Sahara etc.

And how would robbing Israeli Jews of their statehood serve Palestinian interests? Obviously it would only create an enduring passion for Israelis, robbed of their autonomy and rights, to subvert any Palestinian state errected on the ruins of the Jewish one. Are there calls for the dissolution of Turkey so that the Kurds may be free? Or of Russia so that Chechnya can gain its indepenence? Clearly the triumphalist paradigm of BDS does not emerge from real compassion for anyone, but from the desire of people to handle their own psychic garbage via projection, disassociation and splitting.