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

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

__________________

Poems 2012 - 5772

See also: I hold me


My poems could definitely benefit from some more persona "attitude" - a bit of strut and a bit of playfulness and a bit of gesture...
________________

Poems and Aphorisms
Immanuel Suttner

__________
I could get up and walk out
and never come back
just keep walking
past the trucks and houses
garbage bins and trees
junk mail softened by leaves

I could get up and walk out
without turning off the computer
and keep on walking
and never kiss the brows of my boys goodnight
I could walk 'til night falls
and my body shivers in the chilly air
so that all I can think of
is warmth and light

I could walk past the loud
the troubled the stony
until they lost interest
and left me alone

I could walk through green hills
down vaulted dusty roads
past olive groves and spinifex grass
and kangaroos killed by cars
I could rest awhile amongst dancing cosmos flowers
til small crawling things
tasted my flesh
and my flesh walked on
shoes in my hand
gravel piercing my soles

I could crane my neck at the clouds
or stare at the drinks in the back of a shop
so simple these choices
the joy of the road

I could try to leave leave these habits behind
the habit of waiting, the habit of regretting
the habit of fearing what waits on the road
I could walk to a grave yard

where cold winds blow the autumn leaves
and sit and weep at the grave of my longings
for the phantom what-might-have-been

and then I would walk
to a maternity ward
where small beings babble
and despite my accretions
be seduced and make plans
for a wonderful world

and in that walking
that resting
that walking
come to a place
that hangs in the balance
stripped of illusions
kneel in the dust
or stretch to the sunset
and gather wood for the fire.

_____________

The General Theory of Ephemerality

There is a heavenfull of household pets

stocked with time struck love objects

a well worn shoe, a well worn song

that lingered before moving on.

You, who were once, who filled this house

where a phantom cat mauled a phantom mouse

where a phantom dog caked with garden muck

stained the rug, but left time untouched

have gone. I hear time trickling through

while I wonder what else was I meant to do?

Vanished the ghost, and also the wall

into which it fled. Coherencies fall

gravewards, lured by gravity

to weightless amorphicity.

________________________________

the toffee apple of the world

turns out to be an onion

but an onion when alchemised

is also quite sweet.

___________________

I am teaching Yehuda
with a wave of my wand
I pull out the last line
there are oohs and ah's
- an exhalation of emotion
you can always rely
on Amichai magic  

_____________________

she holds down two jobs
gets the kids each day
somehow puts
her anxiety away

washes the dishes
and sobs in the sink
collapses at night
but then can't sleep a wink

goes for a run

_________________

I want peace
to see
what looks out
and becomes disturbed

___________________

 

We are playing tennis
at the time of the third meal
tennis balls whizzing like tehillim
up to heaven
others caught in the net
of earthliness
 _______________
scenario: 4 people are on a tennis court, all of them crouched down,twirlng their rackets, bouncing from foot to foot as if ready to receive serve. This carries on for several minutes with no change - no one serves or receives a  ball. Eventually one of the players "breaks" and says "all right I'll get the bloody balls this time"....

___________________-

When someone you were close to dies
there is paradoxically a heightened sense of life
the petty concerns
of the daily grind
dissapear from view
and a strange kind of freedom
pulses within
inviting Itself to be taken up
before the gates swing closed

_______________________

words are historians
inside breakfast
is break-fast
inside shabbat is to sit

______________

you do not need poems
to make you special
and you do not need 'special"
to make you valuable
feel the solidity of
family, home, an income
the power to acknowledge
express yourself
more fully
to those you meet
every day

life signs

traces of margarine in the jam jar
a to-do list receding into the unreachable distance
ants devouring a

dehydrated worm

bird poo on the

brand new car

__________________

 "Why don't you Jews stop moaning about the six million and just bury you're dead and get on with it."
Oh you can't bury your dead because they were cremated or you can't locate the mass graves where Lithuanian and Latvian collaborators shot them ...well then have a memorial ceremony and move on"

_______________

God is the Joy
that dissolves name and form 
I will not die
and I was not born

 ________________________

a plea to suicide bombers:
turn back, he or she
who so chooses
is not a coward
give it another day
don't be so afraid of life
we will hold your hand, we know
though hard and encrusted with bitter thought
it once was soft and warm

______
It's OK for us
to have a little hug
and if I find my hand moving around
to cup your small breast
then let us slowly settle into that too

---------------------

yes we can hug
and if we find my hand
settling on your small breast
that too is just right
________________

I exist
in the creative tension
between left and right
secularism and fundamentalism
rigidity and flexibility
body and soul
if one voice is not representedI feel the tug of redress inside me
reject me or make me wrong and I harden
into what you deny me
embrace me and
I dissolve
___________

Stuck in the cellar
of late capitalist consumerism
and internal contradictions
and running in circles
to be able to look my children and wife in the eye
sometimes the best I can do
is stuff electronic notes into virtual bottles
and set them adrift
on the faceless book

____________________

Sometimes I get a crazy desire to fix things
not the world
for which I don't have a license
but something like an iphone 3
into which a zealous child has stuffed
the sim card the wrong way round
and then i will wrestle with the phone
for hours and hours
until both it and I
are broken

_______

keep your own bees at home
grow your own mushrooms at home
recycle your own sewrage at home
develop your own space industry at home

_____________

Walt Whitman and Alan Ginsberg were list makers, and so am I

____________________

Sri sea

The mottled sea

The throttled sea

The mottled throttled bottled sea

____________________

the dream of abundance

rows of lettuce heads
the smell of ripe manure
worms writhing their fertile dance in the worm farm
dignified deaths
mushrooms bursting out of the decaying log
enough breasts and penises for everyone
the dream of abundance
reclaiming the desert
when I'm lonely
instead of a tv set or pornography
a circle of friends
a dream of abundance
laughing and dancing
hard work and rest in measure
everything coming into balance
once again
_______

An ode to balance
_________

Woman

with a blouse full of

promises

Your nipples

Are the pegs

Which nail my eyes

To your chest

__________

When I die will fish nibble my toes

Will I die with snot in my nose

Will I be buried where nobody knows

And from my belly spring forth a rose?

will I live in silence and doubt

afraid to go in and afraid to go out

or will I sprout like mushrooms after rain

from doubt and decay emerging again 

___________________

I am both the spider and the moth
I have spun a web of ideas
and now am stuck to it

(tell me beloved
do you know of a patent
that dissolves the sticky cords
of our stories?)

______________

What can I do
but listen more and more
attentively
to the river
that flows within

(is it the Ganga
is it haYardayn
or perhaps best of all
the one with no name)
_________________
If I weren't a Jew
I might also say
"you Jew you"
or "you Jewed me"
or "don't be such a Jew"
in that comforting
banter of mateship
where we're us and they're them

etc etc

Does a person
falling into a mass grave
like ae tree in the earless forest
make a sound so feint
that after six decades
it cannot be heard at all?

______________________
At this point
the biggest projects
I can conceive of
are buying a house
and trying to be there as a resource
for my children
ending the predjuidices
outside myself
and more significantly inside myself
seems to big too tackle

_________________

I don't want to die in the middle of things
I'd much rather die when everything has been folded up and put away

________________________

I

If we could build old aged homes
facing the sea
some of the inmates
might be soothed
by the changing constant water
bathing their eyes
on the simple true elements
and if it could not be the sea
then outside the window
birdsong and tree
and if that too cannot be
then a potplant on the window sill
that has been there for years
hardly attended to
a friend indeed
very still and quiet

and if even that is too much then
let it be a mass produced picture on the wall
or if not
perhaps a vivid memory
will bring comfort without even or ever knowing why
and if memories will no longer be summoned
then
_______________________

The Israel=Apartheid charge is unhelpful and will not decrease the suffering of either Israelis or Palestinians. Like all charicatures and stereotypes, it settles upon and exagerates a few features, while ignoring and minimising all evidence to the contrary. Far more important than the validity or not of the charge is to ask: who are the accusers? Who are the people who associate around it? Does their self declared concern for "justice" manifest universally, or only re this particular issue? What are their true motives? Before you read the history, ask who the historian is.

______________________

James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake might have said something like this: Sordid Arabia is using ItsRreal as its stewge to fight a closet whore against Iranium

___________

NEWSFLASH:
A 47 year old man has escaped from work. A massive man hunt has been launched. residents are advised to stay indoors.

UPDATE
The fugitive has been found. A community member tipped off the police, who surrounded the escapee. He was on a parkbench, feeding crumbs to the sparrows, but they managed to subdue him.

By the time I turn 50 I would like to have:
ended world hunger
liberated Tibet
made the unconscious mechanism of projection so visible no one could vomit the disowned parts of themself onto the "other"
paid of our large screen television set at which I stare blankly should I not accomplish the preceding items

Imagine

Imagine if wheat got a warning:
now hear this
in 10 hours you will be cut off at the roots
taken from your moist earth fields of gold
and baked to brown in ovens

imagine if cows got a warning:
now hear this
in 10 hours men with prods
that sting like wasps
will bother you to crowd together
for a long thirsty journey
in a cattle truck
to a place that smell of blood and dung
where shuddering one by one
what's done is done

Imagine if the Jews got a warning
now hear this
in 10 hours you will be cut off at the roots
taken from the muddy streets and thin lipped forests
and cathedral cut throat towns
crowded together
for a long thirsty journey
in a cattle truck
to a place where something smells wrong
where
men and women
with guns and dogs
will crowd you together
one after one
bake you in ovens
and what's done is done

A Man is a Home

See also poems 2012-5772 and sulam yaakov

Above the village of Koke
sits Moimango
watching over his people
sometimes his son
Gematsu
now also old
comes to pay his respects
in Moimango's abdominal cavity
rodents have made their nests
on his toes and fingers
lichen goes
his head nods forward
around his people
the jungle grows

__________

Island

The rain forest

picabeen palms and giant ferns

perfumery of

eucalyptus woodland

and rolling coastal heaths

shimmering with wildflowers

that make soft the hardest gaze

are all the children

of mycorrhizal fungi

that send their slender threads

into the golden sand

and gently pry

from silicate fists

the building blocks of life

______________

bubbles of regret

like soggy spears

well up, wrench me

if only I had made something of myself

if only some one had told me at 30 or 35 that money counts

more than almost anything

and that as you age no one cares about anything much

except that you pay them for services rendered

______________________

Stuck in the cellar
of late capitalist consumerism
and internal contradictions
and running in circles
to be able to look my children and wife in the eye
sometimes the best I can do
is stuff electronic notes into virtual bottles
and set them adrift
on the faceless book