The author is a poet, counsellor, and occasional scholar-in-residence. Musings on everything from advaita ("non-dualism") to sustainable living, interspersed with poems. Thanks to Zvi Jaspan of Kibbutz Tzora for the name for this blog.
I live voluntary simplicity. Grow my own veggies, recycle, plant trees on my neighbourhood verges, consume and produce carefully and thoughtfully, and align myself politically with not for profits and political movements that prioritise steady state economics, sanity, integration and sobriety, rather than the madness of spurious and disconnected consumption. I identify completely with those who want bio-diversity, unpolluted seas and skies, temperate weather, viable ecosystems and a habitable planet. (habital for whom? the dinasours... or for those of us here now?)
But, as someone very sensitised to language, and the thinking it expresses, it wearies me to see the hysteria, hyperbole, lack of self awareness and in group-out group dynamic that characterises those using climate change advocacy as the vehicle to drape their identity on. And Greta's fiery rhetoric, while enchanting, thrilling, and heart-warming, is also nonsense. The old do not have a monopoly on demagoguery and melodrama. ("You have stolen our childhood" etc. A starving Zimbabwean or Yemenite child has not had their childhood stolen by coal fired power stations...or at least no more so than by a hundred other factors. Causation is complex, and really everything causes everything. To selectively disentangle the complex web of causation is always to leave some of the story untold. Besides, I know lots of children whose childhood is intact, despite the terrible things that are always going on.)
"The end of the world as we know it." All statements about the future are "don't knows." The unexpected is bound to happen and always has. Who at Woodstock would have predicted Trumpfs America?
Death will come to our bodies and our children's bodies irrespective, as it always has, on time and in place. Who by fire and who by water. Managing climate change, which is just a subset of all change, which is relentless and ongoing, will not stop the creation and destruction of name and form. "Change is coming" said Greta. And of course it is - it never left.
Anything which facilitates the evasion of our own contradictions will not stand. When our deepest aspirations get muddled up with our shallowest judgements, they cancel each other out. The movement generated by the aspiration is blunted by the resistance generated by the blame and shame. Always it has been so: we have met the enemy and she is us.
The same psychological mechanism which makes it possible for many people to seemingly effortlessly flip flop between the friend vs food paradigm in the way they relate or disassociate from animals, makes it possible for many men to flip flop effortlessly between the madonna vs whore paradigms in the way they relate to women. When someone can post a picture of a beloved pet animal, and then post a picture of a meal made with a slaughtered animal that has undergone various mutilations prior to death, without pain relief ( such as horn debudding, beak, tail and teeth amputation, castration - all routine practices on most factories) they have moved from the category of friend - humanised, related to, object of affection and recipient of kindness, to the category of food - a mere means to satisfy a need or want or desire.
The same recategorisation makes it possible for men, in more patriarchal or traditional societies, to dote upon, venerate, rely upon, respect, and 'protect' a mother, sister, faithful wife - madonna, or to see a female merely as a means and tool for his own sexual/emotional gratification. In more modern societies the madonna may be replaced by a category of females as partners and allies and assets - in both personal intimate relationships, and in the world of survival, where they may show up as colleagues, bosses, professionals providing services, etc. But in the nether worlds of pornography, sex work, marketing, advertising and commodification etc the female is recategorised ...perhaps in an adjacent clump of neurons, so near and yet so far...as a mere means to the satisfaction of a need want or desire. And so it is with prejudice vs embrace, inclusion vs exclusion, dehumanisation vs humanising, indifference vs empathy, friend vs threat. It allows some animal rights advocates to be completely indifferent to human suffering. It allows pro life advocates to turn a blind eye to street children and homeless adults and the abandoned elderly - and so on and so forth. We all have the capacity to mercurially move between I -Thou and I -It simply by shifting our orientation, and most of us do this with some segment of our relational field, everyday.
Even 21 months after my wife (the person I had grown used to thinking of as "my wife") walked away from/ out of our 25 year long relationship, I dream about her intermittently, heavy opressive dreams in which I am found to be lacking, and another is preferred over me.
Paramedics are busy working on a man at the side of the road, who has been involved in a bad motor vehicle accident. The man is on a stretcher, with a neck brace, and an oxygen mask over his face. He has a bloody bandage on one leg, and appears to be barely conscious, only the occasional slight movement of his eyes indicating that he is drifting in and out of consciousness. A bearded tatoed paramedic with a bald pate straightens up, having stabilized the patient, and admires his handiwork, before launching:
" What were you thinking mate? You could have got yourself killed. You could have killed someone else too. People like you shouldn't be driving mate, its a priviledge, not a right. And I bet you've been drinking, hey mate. I guarantee you knocked back a couple of schooners tonight, hey buddy? I'm partial to a few myself, but that's why you have to have a plan B. You could have died mate, understand that? If we had got here 10 minutes later your leg would have bled out, mate, and you'd have been a gonner. Kicking up daisies mate. Chatting with your ancestors. I don't even think you had your seat belt on mate, judging by the broken ribs and head injuries. Never drive without a seatbelt. Now we've had to come out and sort out the mess, and that means we're unavailable for someone else. Bloody stupid of you mate, you should be ashamed of yourself."
The patients eyes have closed, although he is still breathing. A second female paramedic comes, and the two raise the wheeled stretcher up, and slide it into a waiting ambulance. As they close the doors we cut to:
Ambulance interior. The patient is lying there unconscious. The same paramedic sits next to him, holding up an infusion bag, and continuing his lecture to the unconscious man.
"Its dickheads like you what make our job difficult. You need to think about your family mate, about your mom and dad, your nan and pop, before you start playing silly buggers in our streets. I hope you've learnt your lesson buddy, I really do.
[ patient whimpers, possibly in pain]
I'll give you some more mate, but it serves you right. I've got no sympathy for your sort.
[adds ampule of analgesic to infusion]
Next time wear a helmet and walk home. I can even show you on the website what the terms and conditions are for P Platers. How fast were you going mate. 60? 70? 150? Just having a laugh with your mates eh? Well who's laughing now, mate?
I tell you what, you're luck you're so badly injured mate, else I'd be tempted to give you a piece of my mind."
When I ask myself what is important to me, the words "home" and "family" come up. And when I enquire as to what about these things are important to me, I come up with the word "safety" - both home and family represent some kind of safety, some kind of reliable constant in an ever shifting world over which I have little control.
As I ponder this further, I ask, "what wants to be kept safe? What imagines itself vulnerable and threatened, and so longs for refuge, for bedrock which will not crumble?" And I also ask "what might be already safe, unassailable, unthreatened, that sees itself not as a separate entity threatened by changing circumstances, but perhaps as those changing circumstance themselves, in all their uncontainable and undirectable such-ness."
Once there was a man who had a small farm on which he planted beans, pumkins, cucumbers, potatoes, eggplants, tomatoes, peanuts, garlic and onions. He also had a lemon tree, two plum and two almond trees. At a certain point he acquired a heifer, and called her Rivka. Unfortunately Rivka ate a lot of the man's vegetables, and insects and fungus ruined the rest of the crop. The man was hungry, and decided to eat Rivka.
But when he went out to her at night, to slit her throat, she looked at him affectionately with her big brown eyes and licked his hand which held the knife. The man was unable to kill her, and told himself he would let her live another month. But when he returned again in a month's time, his belly grumbling and his pants loose about his waist, Rivka sat quietly in her muddy stall, thinner too, and gazed at him with the trusting eyes that a young child gazes at her father with.
The man realised he was unable to take Rivka's life. he decided, instead, that he would wait for Rivka to die from old age, or disease hastened by hunger (there was not much food or fodder on the farm, for man or beast), and then, when she had died of natural causes, he would eat her. And so he waited several months until, in the spring, Rivka closed her eyes, exhaled with a sigh, and returned her soul to her creator.
But by then the man was too thin and weak to butcher Rivka's carcass, so he lay quietly next to her for a while, and then went back into the farmhouse, to lay for awhile on his bed, to rest.
בלבבי משכן אבנה להדר כבודו
ובמשכן מזבח אקים לקרני הודו
ולנר תמיד אקח לי את אש העקידה ולקרבן אקריב לו את נפשי היחידה
יצחק הוטנר
My translation of the above, a beautiful 19th century devotional poem by Yitzchok Hutner:
In my heart I will make a sanctuary
to amplify the beauty of His glorious presence
and in this sanctury I will place an alter
to catch the rays of His magnificence
and as an eternal light I will take the fire
from the binding of Isaac up on the hill
and then, as a sacrifice, I will surrender up
my false sense of self as a unique seperate person
in order that He and I and Now
may be revealed
as one
__________________
"To die every moment into love"
Byron Katie
__________________
Poem Without an End
Inside the brand-new museum
there’s an old synagogue.
Inside the synagogue
is me.
Inside me
my heart.
Inside my heart
a museum.
Inside the museum
a synagogue,
inside it
me,
inside me
my heart,
inside my heart
a museum
by Yehuda Amichai
translated by Chana Bloch
__________________
"Freedom is never of the person but from the person"
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Just like orthodoxy, it seems to me that reform / progressive Judaism
is located in particular sociological and economic circumstances. In
the 20th and 21st century it has appealed to middle class or aspiring to
be middle class people, with its recasting of Judaism as somehow
synonymous with a tolerant, human rights oriented, socially and
economically progressive liberalism ( by carefully selecting source
texts and omitting or ignoring all of the source texts that are diametrically opposed to these ideas, which are arguably alien to, or unknown to, pre 18th century Judaisms.)
It seems to me also that poor Jews, Jews living in beseiged societies,
or in places where there is endemic or state-sponsored anti -Semitism,
will turn more readily - if they turn to a religious identity at all -
to a more visceral, irrational, tribal and demanding orthodoxy than
they will to the polite, anaemic, politically correct and not really
individuated from the broader culture (hence its appeal for Jews in
countries where they want to, and are allowed to, belong) reform,
reconstructionist and renewal Judaisms.
Cooler conditions
are suing fire fighters
for taking advantage of them
________
By G-d's grace
everything takes place ________
Trueism
At the time and
place
that the river dies it is born again as the ocean ____________
A deeper love
how i loved
every moment
of the journey every rock and pebble every fish and slime the sluggishness of silt and the rush of the canyon but now a greater love calls _________
Can the ocean become the ocean? Can the sun shine on itself? ___________
do you see yourself as the river the ocean or the riverocean? ___________
may all beings be happy and free starting with me __________
(for South Africans of my vintage:)
three things I remember:
public telephone booths reeking of urine
trolley buses __________
I played hide and seek with G-d and G-d found my hiding place. That's All. ___________
GOING DOWN
Man dies
in submerged
elevator
______________
Mayachorei HaPargod
There is a three dimensional cinema
without ceiling or floor or walls
and into it the universe is projected and behind the lens of the projector is a curtain and behind the curtain is __________
MYSTERY
Although the atoms are enraged
I remain calm
__________
someone is always
ripping a hole
in the heart of the world
and G-d is always
turning it into a skylight
_________
I come home to the dog and the boys have tidied up and G-d is all over the house __________
Sometimes on the long trip back to the office when I get lonely if I could give G-d a call I would __________
I stop at a lost in time eatery in the shire staffed by a humble hard working immigrant Chinese man and wife team whose children will be proctologists and actuaries and order fish and chips which arrives not as greasy as I remember but just as burpacious and wash it down with plastic tasting coke just to be who I was forty years ago _________________
I saw on the news there has been a serious outbreak of contentment the government and chamber of business are working hard to contain it but in the meantime new car sales and divorce rates are down
______________________
Please G-d turn us into
a wall of steel
that stops the trophy hunters' bullet
into medicine
that heals the sick cassava that feeds the hungry a blazing fire that warms the cold a waterfall that slakes the parched
__________________________
Now that the fires have abated a little let us use the reprieve wisely to build containment lines around out-of-control marketing which invites us to endlessly devour more than the body can contain or the earth can offer
let us rebuild our neighbour's houses and our own not out of inflammatory convenience and instant non-gratification but out of slow-burning, meaningful journeys which are long enough to reveal the true value of things
let us prepare stockpiles of joy and connection so that people do not stream like lemmings to horse races and bars, cruise ships and neon malls hungry for excitement and escape but instead nourish themselves with a soft internal rainfall that falls in a measure that the earth heart can absorb,
and dance like the breeze that wafts from nowhere to caress and kiss new growth
__________________
BURNT OFFERING
אבינו שבשמים
ובארץ
שבתוככי ובתוכך, שרק האשליה החולפת של העור מפרידה בינינו תן לעלות על דעת היודע שהפריחה הנצחית חודרת לכל מצב וצורה ומקום וזמן
Our father
who art in heaven
and in the earth
in me
and in you
and that only the fleeting illusion
of skin
divides us
may it arise
in the awareness
of that which is aware
that yourmy eternal blossoming
infuses every form, every state
every time and every place
_________________
On the last day of the world
the shops held a mega sale
the flames were licking at the door
as people exalted
in their bargains
_________________________________________________
Poems 2019
Calmness makes the limbs wise
_____
Thankfully my resistance
to change
will change
_______
Someone smashed
the tombstone
of a person who died
fifty years ago
someone else carefully put some pork chops in the kosher section oh how sweet their revenge what a blow they have struck against the thoughts that haunt them so ______________
Intimations of Immortality
at 2am
a 93 year old woman
tried to escape the aged care facility
she waited til the guard went
to make himself a cup of tea
then moving as fast
as her walker would allow
shuffled through the marble lobby
and the sliding glass doors
out into the parking lot but
trying to scale the fence
fell and broke her hip
so she's back on the ward
again
yet for a moment
she was so close
to how it used to be
she could smell
wafting through the palings
from her recently
put-up-for-sale house
the
frangipani
in the garden
blooming, its arms open
to receive her.
_____
The first time I saw the Sky
___________
A disposable nappy in paradise
_________
In an eatery
a man
playing a role of waiter
and I
playing a role of patron glimpsed each other briefly but he did not know how or did not want to take off his mask and I did not know how or did not want to put mine on
______
WEALTH
I have enough funds
to draw the next breath
__________
On this
heating
cooling
flooding
drying dying birthing expanding contracting planet vastness and vaster above above beneath beneath and more than more here it is this this here now _____________
Getting Naked
When you take off your makeup
and I take off my hunger
then I can really see how beautiful we are
________________
Grace
On my death bed I finally accepted my Life
______________
The light was too big to contain
Its a puzzle: from the scattered seemingly shattered pieces of your old life you assemble a new one _______________
If you wish to be here your wish has been granted __________
not everyone wants informed debate some people just want to hate _____________________
I'm still waiting to see
the subversive website
where hungry people can go
to watch the pornography of intimacy
which shows people tenderly
offering to do the dishes
brushing their lover's hair
giving or receiving a foot rub
bringing the other a cup of tea
or when the other is unwell or unable helping them dress or go to the toilet and still keeping in sight and heart their irreducible dignity _______
“Have a nice day” (for Keane)
No don’t have a nice day because nice excludes 99.99 percent of human experience have an awful day have a sad day have a numb day, if that’s what’s there today have an ever shifting day have an inscrutable moonbeam palace day have a real day have an authentic day have an awe inspiring sink to your knees rise to the heavens day have a dirty day have an incoherent, fits of laughter day have a surprising day have a don’t have day have a peaceful contentment and acceptance day have a step in shit day have a glorious day of ease have a dunno what kind of day this is day have a rough hewed jagged day have a lie in bed paralysed day have a day you have day ____________
A sea of dancing cosmos in the breeze may the heart find peace beholding these ____________
as far as the ears can hear being as far as the eyes can see and everything the senses know a signpost pointing back to me _____________
From FB Nov 18 2019 Puzzle II
when someone asks "how are you? " what they mean is "how is it that you are? " and for that I have no answer ________________
Nov 16
If you have been to signal school and grown ever more adept at reading and heeding the signs Life grows ever more effortless ___________
Nov 14
where are you going? here when will you leave? now when will you arrive? now
CIRCLE
I am anxious about the future
because I don't know if I'll be
able to retain what I have now... which is anxiety about the future
_________________
THE SHADOW'S BENEDICTION
Blessed are you, O Lord, our G-d
who brings troubles to the peaceful
weariness to the energetic silence to the talkative slowness to the quick sadness to the wedding the subtle shade to the harsh light death to the birth the last to the first ____________________
What can I do?
Make way for the king of glory...
______________
farewell to pomegranates
farewell to dust
farewell to peeling paint
farewell to rust
________________
I say to the trees, straggling
between asphalt and the mall
rescue us please
I say to the milk cows
lowing for their stolen calves rescue us please I say to the shark sinking finless in the depths rescue us please for we know not what we do ______________
her veins
under her
well used skin
declare
her worth and when they kissed his sweat rolled down her face like tears of joy _______
Now human's best friend
was the dog
of time
that chewed up
everything
_______________
And so it has come to naught
as we knew it would
but weren't the sums
magnificent
_____________
I wonder if my poetry can survive a nuclear war? If so, I will use it as a bomb shelter
_____________
What are the minimum requirements for celebration?
Is a body required, and if so how much of a body?
_______________________
Can mold go moldy?
___________________
All generalisations are untrue, which means at least one generalisation IS true.
Which one is it?
________________
Is revenge really sweet. And if so for how long does the sweetness
last?
I suppose it depends on the meaning maker's story about "revenge"
______________
Isn't it wonderful that we don't have to worry about dying or being born
at the right time, and that G-d takes care of this for us?
________________
who was the one who did not want it, and who was the one that got it anyway? Are they two, or the same?
______________
I am not
sorry
that G-d
did not
give you eyes to see me through the veils of day to day drugery yet ________
with apologies to Arnold Benjamin
fava beans
will set you free
_____________________
"eff off"
we used to say in South Africa
to express
the in eff able
______________
Throughout this entire crisis G-d has been incredibly strong, and we
have not seen Him buckle or compromise even once. He has arranged
everything impeccably.
__________________
DEPRESSION
After May comes June
and after June July
and so on and so forth
______________
All of us have equity in G-d
________________
When the king said " will someone rid me of this turbulent knave" he was, of course, speaking of the mind.
___________
Apparently Australia
has a lot of space
but not much room
_______
Do you take this sky to be your lawfully wedded wife?
And do you take this earth to be your lawfully wedded husband?
Behold, in sadness and joy, in terror and ecstacy
I am betrothed to You
by the laws of Moshe and Israel
_____________
I don't know
how many people should be on the planet
how hot or cold it should be
how many species should appear and dissapear
how many countless billions of animals should live and die on factory operations what thoughts and feelings I should have how much fear and resentment and blame should be on the internet how many tears I should shed but fortunately Reality does ____________
(Got up to jun 26)
The Silence of the Jackfruits
scrub the skin off the jackfruit
pull the jackfruit
push the jackfruit punch the jackfruit smash the jacfruit mash the jackfruit with a splork. roast the jackfruit toast the jackfruit singe the jackfruit unhinge the jackfruit beat the jackfruit rub salt in the wounds insult the jackfruit jack the fruit off leaving only a bit to hit the road, jack fruit can be packed firmly into a small colander, drain it until pale and listless leave standing for 24 hours release give a little air immerse in water for a few minutes allow the jackfruit to breathe then put the jackfruit in the fridge until it squeaks when ready place in oven at Farenheit 461 and then deny you had anything to do with it _________________
letters to a dead living wife
written while accepting the apology
that will never come
________________________
POEM FOR SHABBAT
Things happen to people
that they struggle to make sense of:
why was I born to this mother why did our father leave us why did I lose my job why did this one live and that one die why am I not content why do I hunger so?
Things happen for people
that they struggle to make sense of:
I was born to this mother
Our father was someplace else
I have become available
everyone died and everyone lived
I can not accept anything less than the real
Why though my belly is already full
have you spread out a feast before me?
__________________
RIPENING
there is that moment
when you suddenly glimpse
that something you have been stuck on
no longer matters
and you can let it go, when you feel returning to it is no longer natural but something you prop up out of habit and that aroma of the letting go is like the time you first saw the ocean or heard the whisper of the stars
______________
RIPENING
Even when it happens
so slowly
or so deep beneath the surface that the flitting gaze does not notice it the alchemy of ripening is taking place all the time everywhere even in the eye that
misses it
______
Often at work
or interacting with the broader world
I adopt an unnatural and
exaggerated generosity
lending money
and not asking for it back
contributing more than my share
to the farewell present
of a colleague who is leaving,
bringing in cake
for people to share
all just so as to make it harder
for those carrying stereotypes
about Jewish miserliness or supposed
love of money (and what the f%ck does that even mean)
to apply them to me
and unwittingly I nominate myself
as a representative
of an entire community
as their ambassador, vigilant to be on
my best behaviour
trying to be inhumanly perfect
in the vain hope
this will disrupt the projections
that hang unstated in the interpersonal air
or are obliquely referred to
by fellow workers who have never mixed
with Jews and who grew up in communities
where Jew-despising slurs
were common coin used to cement
group cohesion. And witnessing this tendency in myself
I recognise it in others. So walking in a
national park, with difficulty down some steep steps
to a waterfall, a bearded Moslem man, with his family,
politely steps aside for me and says "go ahead Sir",
and I sense that same urge to make a good impression, to show he is of the right stuff, civilized, belonging, acceptable,
and understand.
______________
Just like
a shimmering light
can not unblock the sink
or get you to work
so my poems
cannot feed
a starving child
or set a broken limb
or turn around the cattle truck
on its way to the abbatoir
but still they might warm you
a little at night
__________________
the sound and sight and feel of waves
can be very soothing and peaceful
if you have somewhere safe to go
when you've had enough of them
and so it is with everything... that seems to offer a promise of something better, sweeter easier and kinder when you arrive know how to depart _______________
if we are lucky
by the time we reach our fifties
we have become very schooled
and skilled
in
this is how it is now
_____________
It seems to me
there is a natural order
and that animals were given limbs
to enable them to move
so that a pig prevented from standing up or turning in his rusting iron cage or a chicken imprisoned so she cannot flap her wings is a perversion of that order and stains and dams that river of innocence that flows in childhood and could still flow freely to the great ocean of mercy
____________
Learning to be alone peacefully not at war with my thoughts or feelings is a wonderful journey of discovery ____________
Every year I go to the grave of my wife and say a little prayer for her even tho she's not dead ____________ What's your line?
Lost in the depths of a cartesian plane I stumbled across an ex "you are nothing to me" I said. "Why?" they responded. "You are nothing too" I plotted, and placed them on a table. then I followed that line up with a run and a rise but in a gradated way, placing the latter above the former and, after a surprising reversal reached the places where that line cut the axes instead of the other way round
_________________
I don't like it when human beings use dogs to hunt pigs or any other animal I don't like it for the dogs I don"t like it for the pigs I don't like it for the human beings I don't like it for me I don't like the sight of it I don't like the sound of it I don't like the thought of it. Yes G-d created agression so it must have its rightful place and G-d created death and every single one of us are deaths' messengers at one time or another. I am trying to understand these things I am trying to accept what I apparently cannot change. And yes, the past is a graveyard, and it takes memory and imagination to go digging amongst the bones of suffering that is already over. Perhaps aggression can be alchemised into risk taking and courage in the service of Life although I do not yet know what that looks like, but surely the abbatoir owner and the abbatoir customer and the abbatoir bystander will lie down with the lamb and neither they or their children shall want and in the meantime brother bird sister snake hurting hunter be elegant messengers that we may awaken speedily from the dream for suffering that is impermanent cannot have any more absolute reality than the joy that is fleeting the intention matters supremely so let all intentions be swallowed up by the intention to realise without delay even in hell, amidst crematoria and piles of hair and glasses. the absolute freedom that must always be here _______________
Dear G-d
Let the dairy cows keep their calves
soften the hearts and hands
of those who take the calves
and those who buy the milk and soften their eyes as well so they see the cows not as food but as friends _____________
My older son
is spreading his wings
and no longer wants
much hands-on parenting
so
anticipating redundancy
am contemplating applying
for another role
once I find out
what that is
___________________
Babble on
Not knowing what to do
I ate
and not knowing what to do after I ate
I drank
and not knowing what to do after I drank
I tried to get a little sleep
and not knowing what to do when sleep evaded
I went out into the streets
where people went about their business
and saw what they saw
and did not see what they did not see
and not knowing what to do with the loneliness
I sat down and wept
and remembered me
Zion
_________
Sometimes
I give G-d
an encouraging word:
"Come on Big Boy"
I tell Him
"you can do it"
'tho I have no idea
what it is
_____________
Conundrum
Because I found myself unable
to fully articulate a truth
I said things that sounded
like they could be true
and that's the truth
__________
The universe
will not sit down
and behave
I have given it
a stern talking to
on numerous occasions
but it just keeps on doing
its universe thing
___________
Women are born
with a body
that most men crave
sometimes they bestow it
at the top of a long flight of stairs
_______________
Like a gunslinger
who blew into the valley
and became a farm hand for a while
but was pushed by circumstance
to return to what he was
and move on
so I blew into this world
and. became for a while
a son, student, brother, soldier,
worker, husband, teacher, father
but am pushed by circumstance
to give up these roles
and return to being
uncast
_____________
Suddenly
mysteriously
the evening
manifested
__________________
Song of descents
One persons’ partner had an affair
anothers’ son turned out to be gay
someone’s body got something called cancer
another lost their life savings
to the extent
that people manage to
let go of the mind’s fantasy
of how it would and should be
the smile on their lips
will one day return
and descend
to the heart
____________
I am bitter
for it seems unavoidable
when vacuuming the house
that I destroy
some tiny creature
that does me no harm.
From the moment this body
was pulled
out of my mother's womb
born of a ceasar
whose cut weakened
her stomach muscles
it has been an unwitting
sometimes unwilling
but often willing accomplice
to the way things are
____________
Finding a Cure for
Scientific Curiosity
In memory of the kitten
whose eyelid was sown up
and became blind in that eye...
in memory of the monkey
that had its finger amputated
and the one
that had its fingers sown together
and the one that had
its mother taken away
in memory of the nameless mice
each one with eyes
and a tiny
beating heart
while I am grateful
for the discoveries
about neuroplasticity
and positive psychology
and cancer
I felt the need
to mention them
and apologise
_______________
SELF PORTRAIT WITH FLOWERS
my child
immanuel suttner is famous
because he had a house...
immanuel suttner is famous
because a dog with large paws
would follow him
wherever he did go
immanuel suttner is famous
for relocating mice
immanuel suttner is famous for the
spirituality of his semens
immanuel suttner is famous
for his commitment to cleaning up chicken shit
immanuel suttner is famous
for being a father of note
immanuel suttner is famous
for the way he picked words like flowers,
and arranged them in a see through jar
is famous
for the bargains he triumphantly brought home
is famous
for his nagging
is famous
for his anxiety that things would not get recycled
is famous
for embarrassing his family
by crawling backwards on the beach
Here lies Immanuel Suttner
feet splurged outwards
asleep, asnoring,
one eye open
listening to the
news in Hebrew
by ministerial decree he will henceforth be known
as is
is is famous
for creating businesses
that never got a single client
is is famous
for the milk and cruelty-free shampoo wars
is is famous
for resting a while
is is famous
for his timorous roaring
from behind the screen
is is famous
for his free floating intellect
is is famous for collecting
family artifacts and resentments
is is famous
for his identification with the
underthingamajig
is is famous
for his verbal smokescreen
under cover of which
he got away
is famous
for his bird like
head
is famous
for gazing at trees then bowing
in heartfelt prayer
is famous
for his oppression of mosquitoes
is famous for his shabbos burps
is famous for suddenly darting
into massage parlours
is famous for his love of song
is famous
for blowing his nose
and discreetly thumbing it
here lies is
pomegranates growing from his groin
wild oregano from his hair
in the golden fields
of eretz yisrah'ail
now all has been heard,
here is the verdict:
is is a sweet man
tho' he howls and moans
so if you see him
please give him a hug
rest awhile in his shade
and send the fruit of his heart
home to
Me
__________________________
Tefilah - Petition
If I can help you and me
from primness to insanity
from prudence to abandon
from vigilance to letting-go
from past and future to now
please let me know how
__________________
Lost in time and lost in space
can we win the human race?
_______________
Ah, Presence, my bride
how mysterious your shifting veils:
anxiety
fear
grief
anger
uncertainty
helplessness
sadness
thank you for the way they part
to reveal your heartfelt
embrace
____________
After divorce
a tree is still a tree
a cloud is still a cloud
a smile is still a smile
the grass still sings
tears and
rain are
still wet
______________
The next dance is with sadness
she will twirl you round the floor
sometimes there'll be less
and sometimes there'll be more
but she will hold you tight
and guide you how to go
and when its time for the dance to end
both she and you will know
_______________
the cords that bind, the rope that keeps us safe
_____
Hello!?
You don’t have to be dead
to be Rumi
__________
With a bow to Kahil Gibran (perhaps
put in fathers’ and sons section)
Once I was an arrow
now I am also a bow
please o archer
steady me
____________
(From Dec21 2018…have got up to
Dec 15 on FB)
In the shopping mall
I saw
a small young woman
with enormous breasts
and there was absolutely nothing
I could do about it
_______________
Immigrants
shaved of substance
by unexpected twists and
turns
seemingly condemned
to shades of isolation and solitary confinement bravely search for beads of joy and string the shards of their shattered self-belief together as best they can before stepping out the front door
________________
The ground is pushing at my feet
The clouds weigh down on me / The clouds they way me down
because wherever I may go
my thoughts accompany
If I can find that verdant isle
where thought was never seen
I'll gently lay my heavy head
upon its fields of green
__________________
"Evidence based therapy?" Reminds me of a saying re the mountain of
meaningless statistics gathered by the US army during the Vietnam war:
"if you can't count what matters, the make what you can count matter. "
______________
QUESTIONS FOR A POTENTIAL CANDIDATE (posted FB Dec 8 2018)
will you bathe me in mother's milk
will you listen to me whine
will you clean my soiled washing yet still see my light shine?
will you lead me to water
and take me to dine
will you give me your heirlooms
will you give me your time?
will you take me to the moon
will you fetch me from mars
will you wrap me in shrouds
at the feet of the stars?
____________
FB December 5
Set the judgemental mind aside
o sons and daughters
of Chava and Adam
and return to the garden
of Eden
____________
I find that as I get older I get older. Does anyone else have this experience?
__________
The stages of change:
You have a belly button
You contemplate your belly button
You remove the fluff from your belly button
You have a belly button
______________
FB - Nov 30 2018
Like a kohen
I place my fingers
on her breasts
and bless them
as they bless me
______________
FB Nov 26 2018
Like breath
love gathers
in a certain
time and place
and then exhaled spreads out diffused to every corner of the universe and waits for the gathering once again
________________
FB Nov 26 2018
Ch ch ch ch cha changes
A google maps image
November 2015
some trees and bushes
the fence a bit younger
two familiar cars parked outside a house everyone's still home
Thanks to Raise Your Hands’ support, various charities — like Football
Beyond Borders — have grown so much they’ve passed the £2 million threshold
the or...
a "hogeh deyot" - Hebrew for someone who thinks a lot about things that are not directly related to the daily round. I worships two G?ds, that are probably one and the same - creativity and balance. Sat. Chit. Ananda. Gila Rina Ditza ve Chedva. Adoshem Hu Elokim. Veshal-om shanti shanti.
