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A Quiet Life – Baron Wormser
What a person desires in life
is a properly boiled egg.
This isn’t as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
and furnaces and factories,
of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
of women in kerchiefs and men with
sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
the ace in any argument for God.
Only God could have imagined from
nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
take it out on you, no dictators
posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
that came from nowhere.
Poetry
A Wreath to the Fish – Nancy Willard
Who is this fish, still wearing its wealth,
flat on my drainboard, dead asleep,
its suit of mail proof only against the stream?
What is it to live in a stream,
to dwell forever in a tunnel of cold,
never to leave your shining birthsuit,
never to spend your inheritance of thin coins?
And who is the stream, who lolls all day
in an unmade bed, living on nothing but weather,
singing, a little mad in the head,
opening her apron to shells, carcasses, crabs,
eyeglasses, the lines of fisherman begging for
news from the interior-oh, who are these lines
that link a big sky to a small stream
that go down for great things:
the cold muscle of the trout,
the shining scrawl of the eel in a difficult passage,
hooked-but who is this hook, this cunning
and faithful fanatic who will not let go
but holds the false bait and the true worm alike
and tears the fish, yet gives it up to the basket
in which it will ride to the kitchen
of someone important, perhaps the Pope
who rejoices that his cook has found such a fish
and blesses it and eats it and rises, saying,
“Children, what is it to live in the stream,
day after day, and come at last to the table,
transfigured with spices and herbs,
a little martyr, a little miracle;
children, children, who is this fish?”
from Water Walker, 1989, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY
Poetry
Shivering in Majesty
1.
I have earned and care for a small plot of land
A small cottage
A dog
Sometimes a woman
My son.
2.
My daughter has found a good man
She has love, wisdom, and a daughter of her own
If they keep loving one another
They will be lucky
That’s what the owl in my yard says
3.
In the yard are Tibetan prayer flags.
Brought and hung by my sister.
When the breeze blows in off the bay
The things I’ve wished for come to me
The smell of the salted air
Birds at the bird feeders
A sense I belong
That I do not consume more than my share
Some seaweed, some flax seed
Though I give back so little –
Juice for the hummingbirds
A house for bats
My flesh to feed the worms and earth
in a pauper’s grave
by a sacred lake
4.
When the breeze goes out
it takes my hopes and wishes with it
they ride over the Tibetan prayer flags
and are made holy
My wish for peace
for relevance
for the happiness and well being of others.
my compassion washes over the banners
carrying words I do not understand
5.
These words reach the bay
where small fishes
are being chased by bigger fishes
chased by men
in boats with two hundred horse power engines
towed to the beach in three hundred horse power cars
to catch one poor fish
to remind them of the hunt
the cycle
the natural order
of the big eating the small
forgetting the grace of small nets
6.
And beyond the bay
Are the wars I finance
Fueled with jealousy, envy, hunger,
The wish for relevance,
An inherent primate consciousness,
And a sense of mission,
A desire to be of use,
to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide
so that plants too may live
shivering in the majesty
of immense rolls of summer thunder
stretching out to remind us
of our tasks
and our roots
in the heavens.
© BRTaub – 8/8
POETRY
She Has Loved 100 Men
She asks
How is it possible
She has loved one hundred men
And at their impaired age
This is the best love making she’s known.
He says it’s an illusion.
She asks
Can he make her taller
With blue eyes
And unwrinkled skin
And can he really unearth the dead
But what she is really asking
Is that he hold her
And promise to never let go
She says
You are so solid
And means the flesh she draws near
And the man inside the flesh
With his flaws and foibles
And a willingness to be weak
Stands in his power and strength.
Then she says his name
Speaks it into the ether
In ways he’s never heard it spoken
Radiating out into the universe
Before she herself goes out
Radiating who knows where
Although before getting far
She taps on the glass
Peering in through the window
And again mouths his name.
©brucetaub – 02/08
POETRY
Cheerio Box Speaks of Love
Cheerio box speaks of love and nutrition
and makes the days I share with her happy,
as well as providing a reduced risk of heart failure.
She uses all three parts of her whole grains,
a serving of nutrients,
the strength of iron,
all allotted in half cup servings.
She is enlarged, whole, overflowing.
contributing her non genetically modified ingredients
into the very depths of my being;
(though trace amounts of engineered materials
may be slightly present,
all a result of unavoidable cross contact
with others, with sugars,
with omnipotent grains of corn.)
See how she makes my mornings
with a positive start that brings forth my happiness,
that invites me to consume her,
and to love her back.
Mi amor Integral.
Sharing positive enhancements
my Cheerio box explicitly tells me
that her freshness may be preserved
and that the essence of her character
ought be measured not by volume
but by weight,
the truest measure of her contents.
Enlarged to show her soluble fiber in detail
any one patented serving
contributes to my limited recommended daily diet.
Best if used before her expiration date.
She welcomes my questions and comments.
POETRY
The Love Letter of a Delerious Man
I want you to know you exist as my animal mate and how truly savage that love is.
I want you to watch a video of the mating ritual of eagles and then dive out of the tallest tree with me.
I want to roll in tree sap that never comes off and causes us to stick to one another
inseparably, the incipient amber fusing our skins and our bodies into one big gem.
I want to find you wet and make you wetter, to chew you and be chewed by you.
I want us to struggle as if we were taffy, to be molded, stretched, broken, rejoined.
I want to wring you out.
I want to suck the water that is in the towel you dry yourself with to sustain me in the desert.
I want you to know how much I adore you, and I want you to enjoy being so adored, from your brain to your toes.
I want to make children with you, even if we chose not to, I want to honor that I want to.
I want to sit inside your mind and be visited by me there.
To lift you on my shoulders and twirl you around like a little girl laughing and fall down together with you, the world spinning in a jumble.
To protect you from everything, even me.
To shed my ambivalence, then my skin, then my flesh; then be the bones you build your house with.
To lay down with you, and rise up with you, and fly off with you, and sink to the bottom with you.
I want to change the world with you.
I want you to scream, “Enough, I cannot take any more, it is too intense.” And I want you to mean it.
I want to be somewhere where no one knows us, or knows we are there; then I want to ask you to leave me, then I want to fall down on my knees and beg you not to.
I want to bury my head inside your flesh and cry.
To separate your labia and lick them, first inside on the right, then the left, and then slowly and deeply down the middle, your fingernails, pressed hard into the flat of my back, moaning in sensual agony.
I want you to say whatever is inspired in you to say and know it is received by me as a symphony.
I want you to put my face in between your hands and squeeze me until I am your face, and then I want to squeeze you hard enough to get myself back.
I want you to tremble, verily tremble, before the mighty power of what we share, barely understanding.
Then I want you to see the fierce possessive eternity you are reflected in the teardrop you evoke.
Then just say, I love you, to me in your native tongue.
Then say my name.
Then put your head down on the pillow, complete, safe, eager to sleep, eager to be cuddled with, eager to rise again.
Know that I give to you the best and only that I have.
Know that I give to you until I can no longer rise up beside you, no longer rise up inside you.
May it warm you, and heal you, and bring you great joy.
And may we wear it well together.
MISCELLANEOUS
Feel Mo
Feel Mo – for Mo Shooer on his 70th birthday – by Michael Korson, M.D.
Feel Mo
More of Mo, so much Mo,
Hale-Bopp blazing over Yosemite mountains
And that ballet of shooting stars over strawberrys.
Mo words, a galaxy of words,
Q’s and A’s,
Mo politics, Mo sports,
Mo man on second one out and a single up to the middle.
Mo jubilation,
Mo Super Bowls,
Mo sorrows and Mo tears,
Mo arms to comfort and hold.
Mo belly full laughs,
Mo broken rules,
Mo hopped fences,
Mo ignoring signs,
Mo towed vans at Candlestick Park.
Mo music, saxophone, Middle Eastern,
Mo Omar Sosa in MOMA,
Mo plays and discussions and opinions and questions.
(To be a Jew is to question. Mo told me.)
Mo tennis balls, lawn bowls,
Regular bowels,
No Mo broken bones.
Mo families, everywhere,
cousins, ex in-laws, friends’ families, friends’ friends,
All one big family of Mo,
Mo, Larry and Curly,
Mo parties, Mo ecstasy,
Mo hanging from monkey bars.
Mo mentum … No you’re retired. Relax.
Mo ney please.
Mo dogs (Donovan added that.)
Mo hikes.
Mo lying on the grass.
Mo clutter, Mo mo clutter!
Mo of everything
Mo beautiful.
Many Mo years, Mo.
Lots more Mo, Mo.
Poetry
Ja’ayus
These are the lands of my father
And his father before him
and his father.
That pile of rocks
Has been in my family
And in my family’s sight
Since they were pulled from the earth
By a blade
drawn by oxen
stronger than even my old tractor
to make a terrace
to plant this very tree
this one
Here,
touch it.
Meet my dead brother
Shot by the Israelis,
My wife who at sixty
Stood 11 hours at a checkpoint
a good Muslim woman
forced to empty herself
on the open road
My sons who do not
Have permission to come onto my land.
Here, meet this land
The clay, the rocks,
Their fruits.
I saw father yesterday
Sweating in the olive grove
Heard mother’s voice calling
Felt in my bones the insane yodel of my brother
Passed by grandfather’s grave
And grandmother’s
How is it possible
Others can claim this land, our land,
Take it at will
Harvest and sell our olives?
Is this not illegal?
A crime of aggression?
A theft?
To whom may I appeal
When all have forsaken me?
You there, here, touch this earth.
POEMS FOR PALESTINE
They Said – (messages from my parents that accompanied me)
“Stop behaving that way!”
“Why are you acting like that?”
“What are you, sick?”
“What are you, a little baby?”
“What are you, nuts?”
“Grow up!”
“Act your age.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Stop behaving that way or else.”
“There is no reason for you to feel that way. None.”
“Pull in your gut.”
“Your behavior is ridiculous.”
“How can you even say that?”
“How can you even think that?”
“I’m ashamed of you.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“You are strong, handsome, and intelligent,
and can be anything you want to be.”
MISCELLANEOUS
Wage Peace – Mary Oliver
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble;
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothespins, clean rivers. Make soup.
Play music. Learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries
Imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish. Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived. Don’t wait another minute.
Poetry