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rommelgto
Philippines    Batman!
Joseph Rommel

Poems

Jim Davis  Apr 2017
Touching
Jim Davis Apr 2017
In the last
three decades,
after we became one,
I touched
amazingly beautiful things,
horribly ugly things,  
unbelievably wondrous things

I touched nature's majesty;
hued walls of the Grand Canyon,              
crusty bark of the
Redwoods and Sequoias,
live corals of the
Great Barrier Reef,
dreamlike sandstone of the Wave

I touched magical and strange;
platypus, koalas and
kangaroos Down Under,
underwater alkali flies and
lacustrine tufa at Mono Lake,
astral glowing worms
in the Kawiti caves

I touched holy places;
Christianity's oldest churches,
the Pope's home in the Vatican,
Hindu and Sikh temples and
Moslem mosques in India,
Anasazi's kivas of Chaco canyon,
Aboriginal rocks of Uluru and Kata Tjuta

I touched glimmers of civilization;
uncovered roads of Pompeii,
fighting arenas of Rome,
terra cotta armies of Xian,
sharp stone points of the Apache,
pottery shards from the Navajo,
petroglyphs by the Jornada Mogollon

I touched fantastical things;
winds blowing on the
steppes of Patagonia,,
playas and craters of Death Valley,  
high peaks of the Continental Divide,
blazing white sands of the  
Land of Enchantment

I touched icons of liberty
and freedom;
the defended Alamo,
a fissured Liberty Bell,
an embracing Statue of Liberty,
the harbor of Checkpoints
Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie

I touched glorious things
made by man;
the monstrous Hoover Dam,
an exquisite Eiffel tower,
a soaring St Louis Arch,
an Art deco Empire State Building,
the sublime Golden Gate Bridge

I touched sparks from history;
the running path of an
Olympic flame just off Bourbon,
the last steps of Mohandas Ghandi
at Birla House before Godse,
******'s Eagle's nest and the
grounds over Der Führerbunker

I touched walls of power;
enclosed rings of the Pentagon,
steep steps of the
Great Wall of China,
untried bastions of
Peter and Paul's fortress,
fitted boulders of Machu Picchu

I touched strong hands;
of those conquering
Rommel's and ******'s hordes,
of cold warriors of
Chosin Reservoir,  
of forgotten soldiers of Vietnam,
of terrorist killers of today

I touched memories of war;
the somber Vietnam memorial,
the glorious Iwo Jima statue,
the cold slabs at Arlington,
the buried tomb of USS Arizonians,
Volgograd's Mother Russia  

I touched ugly things;
shreds of light in
Port Arthur's prison,
horrible smelly dust
in the streets from 9/11,
ash impregnated dirt
in the pits at Auschwitz

I touched oppressed freedom;
open ****** plazas
of Tiananmen Square,
smooth pipe and concrete
of the Berlin Wall,  
tall red brick walls
of the Moscow Kremlin

I touched constrained freedom;
heavy ankle and
wrist slave chains
in the South,
little windows
in Berlin's Stasi prison,
haunted cells in Alcatraz  

I touched remnants of madness;
wire and ovens of Auschwitz,
stacked chimneys and
wooden bunks of Birkenau,        
Ravensbruck, and Dachau,
the tomb of Lenin,
toppled Stalins

I touched hands of survivors;
of Leningrad's siege,
of German POWs and
of Russian fighters
of Stalingrad's battle,
of Cancer's scourges  

I touched grand things;
deep waters of the Pacific and Atlantic,
blue hills of Appalachia,
towering peaks of the Rockies,
high falls of Yosemite Valley,
bursting geysers of Yellowstone,
crashing glaciers of Antarctica and Alaska    

I touched times of adventure;
abseiling and zipping in Costa Rica,
packing Pecos wilds and Padre isles,
flying nap of earth Hueys to Meridian,
breaking arms in JRTC's box,
fighting Abu Sayyaf, and Jemaah
Islami in Zamboanga City

I touched through you;
wet sand beaches of  Mexico and Jamaica,
mysterious energy of the monoliths of Stonehenge,
rarefied air in front of the
Louvre's Mona Lisa,
ancient wonders of Giza,
Egypt's tombs and pyramids

We shared soft touches;
drifting in Bora Bora's
surreal waters,
joining hands camel trekking the
Outback's dry sands,
strolling along Tasmania's
eucalyptus forest trails

basking in swinging hammocks
under Fiji's bright sun,
scrambling in
Las Vegas' glittering and
red rock canyons,
kissing under the
Taj Mahal's symphony of arches

We shared touching deep waters;
propelled in gondolas
through the city of canals,
Drifting atop Uru cat boats on Lake Titticaca,
Swooping in jet boats
up a wild river in Talkeetna

Racing in speed boats
around Sydney's great harbour,
skimming in pangas in Puerto Ayora,
paddling the Kennebec for
East's best petroglyphs,
cruising Salzbergwerk's underwater lake

We touched scrumptious things;
Beignets and chicory coffee at DuMonde's in the Big Easy,
Hot *** with sesame sauce
in the walled city of Xian,
Peking duck, dimsum, scorpions,
snake and starfish on Wangfujing Snack Street

We touched delicious things
Crawfish heads and tails at JuJu's shack
and ten years at Jeanette's,
Langoustine at Poinciana's, Fjöruborðinus and Galapagos,
Cream cheese and loch bagels
at Ess-a' s in the Big Apple

I touched your hand riding;
hang loose waves of Waikiki,
a big green bus in Denali's awesomeness,
clip clopping carriages of Vienna, Paris,
Prague, New Orleans, Krakow,
Quebec City, and Zakopane,
the acapella sugar train of St Kitts

We shared touching on paths;
the highway 1 of Big Sur,
the Road of the Great Ocean,
the bahn to Buda and Pest,
the path to the North of Maine,
the trail of the Hoh rainforest,
and time after time, the way home

Yet,
I could spend
the next three decades,
in simple bliss,
having need for
touching nothing,
other than you!

©  2016 Jim Davis
A poem I wrote last year for my wife!  Posted now since it matches the HP' theme for today - "Places"
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
wasze ulice, nasze... kamienice...
    
boasting Jews of Poland...

Kraków "snow"
  (ashes from Auschwitz
falling on the old capital,
of human remains...
they called it:
     szaryśnieg -
                 grauschnee)...

the marching hybrid
song
         ich bin zu schuld...
   ich bin deutsche nicht
deutsche: ich bin
alles: europäisch...
  die letztemann!                

feminism according
to Leni Riefenstahl...
no women among
the Nazis?
my my... how sexist!
eine makellosfrau!
            eine schnellblond!

oh my! my!

mein mutter
still confuses

  joseph goebbels with
hermann göring -

did you know...
****** was a commoner,
but heinrich himmler
was of the noble sort?
yeah... why expect
a nobleman to exhort such
banality to re-compensate
                          the guillotine?

two decent Nazis though:
Rudolph Heß...
und...
       Erwin Rommel...

   die zwei!

  beside the two?
             curators of evil,
these h'amricans...
with their puritanical excuses...
always the army of excuses...
the Americans constitute
an army of excuses...
never an "ideology"...
but always the "excuse"...
purposive in being adamant
on the metaphor of good,
never the metaphor of evil...

      always the crux-built
fracture of foundation...

die dritte...

                  Karl Dönitz...

hamburger army...
sure... love you...
              Chinese Levi -
Bangladeshi shirts...
Kenyan hamburgers...
and you wonder why
there is an economic displacement?
my people were happier
under a Communist regime...
with an iron-works factory...
simply because...
McDonald's didn't provide
jobs for a hundred people,
but because the iron
factory provided work for
1000 people...

       war... there were always too forms
of war...
          oddly enough:
i'll find you the Nazis i admire...

       because, "oddly" enough,
there are some i admire...
   well... let's call them the trinity...

     you can't make the bargain of reverting
totalitarianism on all the ****...
the argument follows:
there were some,
who resisted...
            and i name, but three.

your turn to play the poker;

what did
amon goeth say about
the Polish king Casimir the great
welcoming Jews into Poland?
very little...
either gassed them,
or shot them doing
beside the menial tasks
of quasi-labor.

yes... the holocaust did happen...
6 million+ jews died...
as 6 million+ cows die in a
slaughterhause (schlachtenhauß)...
but who did really die
in the holocaust?
   beethoven died,
            wagner died,
         leibniz died...
            mozart... goethe...
nietzsche...
     they died...
der deutschegeist sterben!
                 and the german spirit
is not the hebrai spirit
                  what dies remains dead...
unless it's born from
a hebrews' stubborn pact of
agitating a god to continue his promise:
one divine intervention,
mythical at this point...
and then... yo-yo toying with
promises, with prophecy upon prophecy...
but never delivering, only teasing...
till the people believe themselves...
   and a load of other drunken *******...

lucky me to write this drunk,
the sober me gets to appreciate
the cricket world cup.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2019
before i begin, a pre-scriptum...
         in my hand, this minute?
                   what a rare delight...
the Beauties of Sterne:
                                with some account of his life...
printed for J. Walker,
published by J. Walker, Paternoster Row &
   J. Harris, St. Paul's Church Yard...
London... 1811!
    and being a big "fan boy" of the fiction
that a bibliophile might have an adventure:
Roman Polanski's the Ninth Gate...
   now, for a book that's... 208 years old?!
it's not in bad shape... sure...
the hardcover is missing by a half...
but all the text is intact...
              obviously colouring of the pages...
but hey... i'm not a museum...
             the book is still fiddled with...
ha ha, the opening page with a picture
reads as follows:
   there are worse occupations in this world,
than feeling a woman's pulse...
perhaps a quote about... insensibility?
   it reads as follows:
       it is the fate of mankind, too often,
to insensible of what they may enjoy at
the easiest rate (sermon XLII)...
   besides, lucky for me youtube continues
to glitch from time to time...
    now looking more in line with channels
than individual artists...
   notably? Harakiri Diat (channel)...
eh... :wumpscut, the soft machine,
demdike stare, vomito *****, feindflug
weren't enough...
          turns out... there's more...
beyond penta, matutero and GloOMy
PhAntOM... well, please, allow me:
   filmmaker - the love market,
              la ***** bianca - demian...
hell... if you want to venture into the past?
i know one band that freaked out
my ex-girlfriend... gong - flying teapot...
or that song by greenskeepers, lotion...
               i thought i'd never see someone
become freaked out about music...
curios and also highly curious, yes...
but freaked out?
                 primitive knot - puritan...
demolition group - you better...
          1986 Yugoslav minimal electro...
Bruce Roach - Gut...
              and as it turns out...
    i look from this corner of the internet and find
absolutely no need to delve into
the dark web... install Tor...
           if you really want to...
  you'll find all you need... but you need
to sift through a bibliography of a book prior
to... it's all here... this sort of material
has an inbuilt filter... it filters out
             mainstream consumers of content...
i should know...
    3 websites that banned me,
1 suspended me...
                   i crossed the threshold...
    normie poetic: outcast *****...
           yet i still sometimes happened to chance
upon a will...
           lao che - soundtrack (the whole album
is decent) -
              


.i once heard it was based upon the following maxims: bogatemu wszystko wolno (the rich are allowed anything), siła razy gwałt (force multiplied by ****)... well... over the years, that much was true... but then i conjured a reply: nie wszystko wolno bogatemu (not everything is given an allowance to be expressed by the rich) and wola odiąć gwałt (will, having substracted ****): otherwise it's still wola razy gwałt (will, multiplied by ****).

****, i only just "woke" up from
this game,
you know that game...
oh i'm pretty sure you know it...
it's called
   pass the jew along...
   rudolf höss
      cited, among the list:
ibrahim ibn yaqub,
         radhanites (there's a surd
H in there, rad-'anites)
    casimir III...
esp. the latter...
           so.. give the current h'americans,
we're still playing the globalist
nomad game of: juggling the jews,
yes, no, maybe?
so my mother tended to
two old jewish women,
because, just "because"
their sons were active in
the "economics" of passing law
and techno-literacy?
oh... right... i "see"...
                            i... "see"...
in defence, of the "neglected" ones...
makes perfect sense,
de facto 51,
                  area 51 was always
a propaganda convert term
for Israel, rather than some area
bound to Nevada, wansn't it?
wasn't it?
                      ask me again
one year from now,
did we live peacefully among the jews?
they'll tell you the joke...
didn't the jews shoot,
with riffles,
   with bent barrels / sights
aiming at themselves rather
than the nazis?
       no, no soap jokes when
it comes to yews...
the yids...
      everyone in poland just
wondered: why so pacified?
        so blatant in walking into
an inferno?
                      you know...
it took Poland longer to surrender,
while being attacked by both
the Germans and the Russians,
than it took for the Fwench
to be attacked by the sole effort
of the Germans?
    funny... that...
                               i truly admire
some nazis, for their ingenuity...
notably? erwin rommel...
   lothar von arnauld de la periè(re)...
(subtle, i give you that one,
per-y'eh...
                 'old 'ack 'old 'ck
   h-b-h-b,
                                    rein in...
otherwise perié... ergo without
                                           the -re)...
michael wittmann...
and i'm a ******...
      **** me...
they didn't bomb paris,
might as well state:
they also didn't bomb
  marienburg or most of danzig...
Warsaw? taken down,
levelled, brick by brick,
        until no brick stood on brick...
              what?!
i thought the western capitalist-ico
communist insurgents
wanted target practice?
          i thought these people
wanted nazis, no?
          i'll admit... tiki torches?
you must have never looked
at european football hooligans...
tiki torches?!
you having a bbq?
            never heard of flares?        
- mind you...
you know what's worse beside
beind ridiculed?
having your intelligence
insulted...
i.e. do i look like someone
who managed to ****
your mother with a *******
harmonica,
or, am i, bound to the responsibility,
of your parents playing
the irresponsibility card,
attempting to convey a child
into existence aged circa 50
circa 45,
and what comes out is
an autistic cucumber?!
    **** me...
try giving ****** lessons
to circa 50 year olds;
and now the paradox...
   "i'm" the "schizophrenic"...
cool cool, coolio...
     i'll just hide in that "harem's"
worth of a brothel with
the prostitutes who tell
me they get s.t.d. checks on
a regular basis, o.k.?
_____

what am i to add to this?
not much, is there...
was the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald
ever great?!
  how satisfying it is to be unable
to please the crowd....
words, after all, are not bread...
how one wishes
for an anathema rather than
a martyr's embrace...
            one begins to imagine...
then one loses interest...
then...
                    peering through
the eye of a needle
watching a camel walk through...
one spots something outside
the realm of the metaphorical miracle...
do i have to?
      what if i remain to this side
of the eye of the needle?
what riches do i have that i cling to...
books & music...
does that make me rich?
what are the sort of riches where either
people plunder readily (music),
or do not engage with to begin
with?
who are ready to read...
i can claim to be a book thief...
i stole two books from my high school
library... the quran and the scarlet &
the black by stendhal...
            "stole"... i extended their
licance of being borrowed...
how am i rich: if my riches are the riches
no one would want to steal?!
i am rich... though...
               but i am rich in a both
materialistic / non-materialistic paradox
frame...
                what i own no one wants to
steal! why steal a first cheap edition
of a dickens' novel if you're not going
to read it!
              
       **** **** ****.... if they were such
philistines... when blitzing London,
why did st. paul's remain intact?
   "coinicidence"? i don't think so...
and why did they steal all those
art-works? again, "coincidence"?

                    they were people:
i find it uncomfortable to suit them up
in transcendence,
to be: epitome evil...
  to be the übermensch...
                   they loved art as much
as they loved being the antithesis
of the golden horde: gucci, dolce & gabbana
zz top: well dressed men...

     nazis loved art and fashion,
by far the best dressed army in the world
and history...

   ol' herman and otto came back
from the eastern front to a scared wife and mother...
people! they weren't mythical creatures...
the nazis can hardly become
chimeras as they become in the minds
of pseudo-communists of the western lands...

they are hardly the epitome of evil,
i know the 21st century narrative
deems them: "the perfect example"...
come on... they're not evil embodied
with not subsequent examples to be given
to... historical capitalism of evil:
there's always someone waiting,
some group of people to stage
a competition libra... and they will...
overcome the nazis...
it's only a question of ingenuity /
imagination...
           gas chambers was only industrial...
it will become personal in the years to come...
methodologically trained cultured
barbarians woken from a slumber...

the nazis were not: philistines...
   in no defence: didn't they speed up the creation
of the state of israel?
   didn't they? **** uncle:
   lavrentiy pavlovich Beria is going to state
the matters differently?
like hell he is...

        my family also suffered in that war...
sure, not in a concentration camp:
but on the front...
             there's even a joke that my
grandfather remembers:
the jews were shooting with bent nozzles
of riffles...
   as he also remembers two ss-men
who he asked for sweets,
and they would give them to him,
he'd as them: herr! bitte bon-bon!
   sweets so sweet that he would have
to rinse his hands under water
to unglue them from the sickly in-between...
how all the insurgent soviet soldiers
were teenagers and preferred to
sleep in pigstys and among the goats
in the hay...

how did the nazis become mythological
i will never understand,
at uni i had a **** history teacher,
canadian, she really liked my essay
on napoleon... how he was a great
strategist...
akin to?  

   erwin rommel wasn't a ****...
erwin rommel was, erwin rommel...
a great strategist...
        am i supposed to thrive in this
current year of polarized *******?
it's the current topic,
i can't escape it,
  sure, i'd love to have a Wordsworth
moment, lurking in me,
or an anna akhmatova breakthough...
instead?! i'm given this sort of *******
on a platter,
  and all that's missing are the wedges
of lemon and the eager oysters to
be gulped down... lucky me!

no, i don't like how the nazis are misrepresented
as both the übermenschen:
these mythological epitomes of evil
(no greater evil is to come? really?!)
and at the same time
as philistines: they stole art,
they ensured that critically cultural
documents of architecture were left
undisturbed... st. paul's cathedral...

         it's not like some otto or moritz
didn't come back home to a wife
and children... no...
he came back to the shadow cult
of the ******* hanging over him...

you know what the most haunting experience
i have ever experienced was?
Ypres... world war I site...
visiting a german cemetary...
compared to the allies cemetary?
**** me, what a meagre sight!
           the allies were burried with marked
graves, each man to his own cross...
the german burial ground?!
  mass graves....
eh: one marker: 200 bodies in one pit...
                 and here's the 21st century with
games about shooting: zee nat'zees...

   just visit the world war I cemetaries...
the ally cemetaries? square miles...
each man with his white cross...
german cemetaries? as mass graves go...
one marker per 200+ troops...
so... not that much space required...
less: bombast!
               pride & prejudice /
   pomp & circumstance...
   which the english speaking world is...
of the latter convenience to suit the narrative.

to reiterate...
   as a ******... the whole german fetish
isn't my kind of gig...
what with my grandmother being born
on the front... given opiates at an early
age so she would not cry and allow
the soldiers to locate her and my gread-grandparents...
but...
   they were the best dressed army in
the history of warfare...
they were not philistines and they certainly
weren't the mongolian golden horde...
i.e. they stole art, notably jewish artwork...
and if a luftwaffe squadron were to drop
a bomb on st. paul's? they'd probably
be shot...
  after all... Posen wasn't destroyed,
Breslau wasn't destroyed...
        Danzig wasn't destroyed...
Cracow wasn't destroyed...
             o.k., half of Warsaw was,
but we know why that happened
(or at least i do... idealist students who
thought they could fight the enemy
with slingshots and air-pistols)...
why? the Germans were simply thinking:
oh... we'll just be moving back...
i once explained it to myself...
they weren't exactly some mythological
grand evil template...
so i started thinking about them as:
Hans von Seeckt...
  or Otto Hertz...
              or some other german random
soldier...
      well... you should travel to Ypres,
Belgium... and visit a German cemetary
from war world I... then visit
the allies graveyard...
       each soldier, individually buried...
with his pwetty pwetty weißkreuz -
mostly named...
                 now visit a german cemetary...
mass.... graves...
                they just dumped them,
heaped them...
                        to me they were people...
you can't exactly reason with a mythological
evil - an archeological evil,
   an archetypical evil...
          for an archetypical evil?
try the nuclear family...
                         ******... that sort of thing...
child abuse... too many actors
were involved in this story,
too many mistakes, too many naive blunders...
evil on this scale is easily diluted...
which is why it's taught as history,
in schools...
   no one will teach children about...
oh... say... the Wiener Blut scenario...
   Josef Fritzl...
                    i'm pretty sure this will not be
taught in a history class...
                or... the H. H. Holmes Hotel story...
but it might become a jack the ripper
tourist-fetish... might it not? well, it already is.