Forgive me
the rage of youth,
the senseless
towering frenzy
of childish
interception.
the malignity
of immaturity
Now that I am
old enough.
Old enough to be dying
with dignity.

Il n’y a pas un croix qui surmonte mon église
ni une etoile à six branches.

On n’y trouve pas un croissant
ni un ******* non plus.

Cette église n’existe que dans mon imagination
mais elle est plus puissante que la pierre.

Do not plant a rose bush
in the shadow of an oak
and expect to see a beauteous flower.

Instead exult in the beauty
that is the mighty tree.

Sow the seeds of kindness
in the meadows of your life;
and reap the harvest of love
in the orchards of your heart.

When that which once
did touch my heart
and left it
torn in shreds,
then sought
to reappear
and readdress
the trespass
it had wrought,
I first believed
the end had come
and nothing good
remained,
but common-sense
prevailed
and though
still pained
I took the path
of least
resistance,
half-shrugged
one shoulder;
half-filled
the bucket
of my vanished
dreams.
Half-shrugged
the other
shoulder
and said
**** it!

The diversity of peoples in the world
is like the diversity of instruments in an orchestra;
they provide different sounds
but they produce the same music,
and by collaborating
they enhance it.

If you seek freedom
Search within your mind and clear
The shackles inside

Faith is belief without reason
Reason is belief tempered by doubt.
Faith is instinctual.
Belief is cerebral.
The vast majority of people
Prefer faith to reason.
Our choice of leaders
Bears witness
to this assertion.

The words I use are no better
Than those of any other poet,
But the spaces between the words . . .
The spaces . . . aah, those are my poetry.

I heard a voice that spoke to me
in tones so sweetly mellifluous
they filled me with a strange delight
and rendered speech superfluous.

These hips are made for bearing,
And that’s just what they’ll do.
One of these days these hips
Are gonna bear a child or two.

I disengage the padlock of my mind
allowing thoughts free access
to what lurks behind the spread
of undisclosed agendas
and secrets unconfined.

I have spoken many cruel words
I have harboured many unkind thoughts
I have been guilty of many unconcerned feelings
And these are all shameful.

But, at the end of the day,
I am not defined by what I say;
I am not defined by what I think;
I am not defined by what I feel.

I am defined by what I do
And I have done nothing
for which I need to feel ashamed.
Thankfully my deeds define me.

She wore her heart upon her sleeve
displayed, though vaguely risible,
with no intention to deceive,
her love spilled out naively visible.

The path was dark
hushed were the twitters of her belovèd birds.
Silent dove and muted lark.
She wore her heart upon her sleeve,
and unheard were her dying words:
“I believe”.

I arouse myself from joyful slumber
and contemplate the assault
on all my senses
that I know will aggravate me
as I anticipate

the odour of freshly chopped onion
that assails my nose,
in contradistinction
to the aroma of freshly mown grass
that elevates my soul.

When politicians speak their lies
my nostrils twitch,
in complete contrast
to a metaphysical debate
that enchants my essence.

I consider the “gherkin” in London
that degrades my sight,
so divergent from
the view of the Parthenon in Greece
that arouses my spirit.

And as I make the best of it,
I grit my teeth
and hold my nose
and settle back to contemplate
my inner peace and calm.

Parfois je me regarde dans le miroir
et c’est le visage de mon père
qui rend mon regard.

Et je sais que dans ce moment
il est toujours en vie
parce qu’il habite en moi.

C’est ainsi que nous atteignons l’immortalité.

Un jour peutêtre mon fils
va se regarder dans un miroir
et c’est moi qui rend son regard.


*Based on my poem written in English and published in Metaphors and Matzo *****, ASPEN 2015.

I believe in the power of positive thought
I believe I can affect the future and that
the natural course of events is not immutable.
I reject the normalcy bias which assures me that
because it has never happened, it can never happen.
Sometimes life’s greatest lessons come from the
most unanticipated experiences.

And yet,
and yet . . .

My favourite Scripture Ecclesiastes assures me that
what has happened before will happen again;
what has been done before will be done again;
and that there is nothing new in the whole world.
Resonance of the “history repeats itself” dictum
whose lessons Santayana warns us to ignore
at our peril.
Whereas
my favourite history teacher “Tinny” Newman
had a more appropriate prescription:
“History does not repeat itself, historians do.”

How do I reconcile these apparently conflicting beliefs?
[Silent screams]
It is a precious lesson to be learned.

And perhaps my belief that the power of my thought
is sufficient to alter the course of my life
is merely another example of
the Ecclesiastes’ “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”.
[If there’s a telekinetisist in the house, will you please raise my hand]

At one time I could not recall experiencing anything
that I had failed to envision and
this had always enabled me
to make due provision
for any nasty aftermath such as the
problems involved in leaving a slippery bath.

Thus it was with an absence of concern
that, having suffered a really bad fall,
I immersed myself in a bath and then found
I could not escape at all and this stimulated me
to reflect on other instances
where prescience, or the lack of it,
had failed to intersect.

How do I recover these memories?
[Knee ****!]
It is a potential hazard.

Saddest of all is not what is or what might occur
so much as what might have been.
What we do not realise, or are reluctant to accept,
is that we inhabit the world we deserve.
Returning, equally reluctantly, to my thesis,
and returning to Scripture, we are told that
one generation gives way to another
but earth abides, and I cannot decide
if this is a cause of regret or one of delight.

And when I am told
in wisdom there is grief
and that increasing knowledge
will also increase sorrow,
I’m tempted to set it all aside until tomorrow.

Okay.  Oy veh!
I’ll leave it for another day.

Un silence profond.

Pour un instant
tout mouvement cesse
et mon esprit achève
le sommet
de la solitude.

Et puis
tout à coup
le bruit recommence
comme un ruisseau
brédouillant.
Le vacarme assourdissant
remue
les enchevetrêments
de mes pensées.

jusqu'à ce que. . .
jusqu'à ce que. . .
jusqu'à ce que
la paix
revienne.

Et c’est une
situation
qui se répètent
sans cesse.
Comme un robinet
qui coule.

Les gouttes de la
mémoire.
Les gouttes des espoirs.
Le bruit exaspérant,
épouvantable
qui monte,
qui fait revenir
des expériences
qu’on a cru
bien cachées.

Et après
recommence
la lutte.,
la bataille
entre
les souvenirs joyeux
et les chagrins.

Et
au moment où
je me sens crevé
. . .
un silence profond

Oh, where has that god gone?
Oh, what has that god done?
How shall we live alone
that once depended on
a heavenly father who defended us
and now is made superfluous?

Oh, where has that god gone?
Oh, what has that god done?
What can replace
that heavenly grace?
Can ear or hand or eye
supplant its mirthless majesty?

Perhaps it’s not that god has gone
but rather god has been
replaced by many other gods.
Unholy gods, ungodly sods,
who offer no exemption
from time-past sin’s redemption,

but just provide a shining light
to illumine a fearful night,
colonized by miscreants
and similar recipients;
and what remains in that confusion
is nothing but a vast illusion.

There is no plan, there is no haven
to escape from images engraven.
The trumpet that was played by god
is merely a connecting rod
to nothing but a shooting star
a sound drowned by Satan’s guitar.

So often the god that we thought great
is ******* of no more than hate.
We see them in all walks of life
with gordian knots that lack a knife,
or weavers of a nautical shroud
more shocking than a mushroom cloud.

I would choose to have it gone
that secular phenomenon,
that we might build trust up again
far from the place where corpses reign,
to somewhere safe for everyone.
And now I vow my verse is done.

I love the susurration
of sibilant sounds.

The word “bliss”
is blissful.

The word “fuss”
is fascinating.

The word “stress”
is surprisingly soothing.

Tennyson has long enchanted me
with his sibilant Lotus Eaters.
His land of streams,
some like a downward smoke,
slow dropping veils . . .

His sweet music
that softer falls
than petals from blown roses . . .
and music that brings sweet sleep
down from the blissful skies.

I am enamoured
not with the sounds of silence
but with
the sounds of sibilance.

I wake still and far too often
with the all-too-slowly
but oh so evanescently
fading memory of her voice.

Ever since that odious event,
that heinous malevolent and
deafeningly persistent
drumming in my head

that disturbs my sleep
distracts my thoughts
and haunts the daymares
of my diminishing life.

The blaring, blasting bluster,
the eruption of molten viscous sound
that barks, yaps, yelps and yowls,
that sounds, resounds and reverberates.

How can I escape the cacophany
that threatens to enmesh me?
How can I return to the
tranquillity of a serene silence?

Poetry is like
the stars one cannot see
in the daytime.
It is a sense of fright
in the night.
It is metrical
but does not need to be
symmetrical.
It is knowledge
that precedes sentience
but lags behind
sensitivity.
It is fuelled
by consternation
and ****** by
flocculation.
It is ambiguity;
it is obscurity;
it is enigma.

There we were
on the grass
legs threshing
and thrashing
fondling on the grass
stroking on the grass
hands searching
and seeking
and finding . . .
Stop it you fool
now you’ve scratched me!
Should have cut my nails,
should have been gentler.

I try to draw an angel
drawing on the wall
with wings outstretched

drawing patterns on my chest

painting the sun
in a trance
and drawing down the moon

I try to draw your face
from memory

Until I draw my final breath
death
shibboleth of shirt
worn outside the pants

There was a time
when words appeared
mysteriously, magically
magnificently
upon the previously blank page.

And then came
a period of total
dissatisfaction.

I would read them once . . .
and then again.
And suddenly
involuntarily
they would cease
to make sense.

I would say to myself
“I can do better”.
And then –
“Better than what?”

What can she know of love
who never love has known?

The mistakes we make and then
occasionally the paths we take,
as we attempt to reach
the topmost pinnacles
of long sought for success,
may be nothing more than the sad contrail
that precedes our choice of a crooked trail.

And we may frequently end up
unable to achieve those sought for graces.

Sometimes we make the wrong choices
to get to the right places.

Many years ago
I had a dream.
I believed in innate goodness
and considered myself
an optimist.

Alas for Nature’s
nasty habit
of bringing one
face to face with
reality.

In sport
the arts
and politics . . .
Indeed
in every aspect
and area of my
existence
idols crumbled;
beliefs disintegrated;
hopes evaporated.

And now that dream is gone.

Why’d my train of thought
Halt before it got away?
It ran off the rails.

Tout ce que je veux, c’est toi.
Tout dont j’ai besoin, c’est toi.
Tout que j’admire, c’est toi.
Rien ne me manque, sauf toi.
Et
si je quitte le monde
je le quitterai content,
car
je t’aurai connu,
et toi, et toi, et toi.

Don’t tell me . . .
nothing
lasts forever.
I reject it.
And so far,
so good.

Don’t ask me . . .
to escape
my situation
by moving
to another place.
I am already there.

Don’t deny me . . .
my right
to grieve
For it is
my weapon
against anger.

Don’t mock me . . .
and tell me
where
you think
I ought to go.
I am already there.

Our lives were always
so interconnected,
so entwined.

Despite her years
of pain
and suffering,
her concern
for my wellbeing
was always
evident.

Since her death
my own health
has
miraculously
improved.
I am fitter now
than I have been
for years.

This morning
I awoke
to the most absurd
thought:
did she die
that I might live?

There is a tendency among
those poets who may be very young
frequently to put in verse
those foreign phrases, or much worse
the now dead words of oh so ****** Latin
to boast of classrooms that they’ve sat in.

And just in case you’ve never heard ‘em,
Let’s reduce a few to ad absurdum.
It was amore a prima vista
until he left her for her younger sister
for, after all, who could resist her,
so moving on to secunda vista
he took that step and boldly kissed her,
behaviour that is hardly utopista.

The trouble with modus vivendi
is that it sometime rhymes with eye
but there are those who don’t agree
and think that it must rhyme with tea.
Who cares? It’s all the same to I.
Or should that be the same to me?

You may say it is not de rigueur
that I defend with so much vigour
what surely is no more than hubris
that I attribute to Confucius
for he surely ha detto tutto
albeit un po convoluto.

And everyone’s heard of carpe diem.
If not, then I have yet to see ‘em.
But I prefer to seize a waist
which may be thought somewhat unchaste
though far more likely to have shocked ‘em
would be to carpe in the noctem.

Perhaps you think it’s ipso facto
that I’m intolerant of lacto
unless it comes directly from the breast.
I think it’s better that the rest
of this is left to your own opinatus
for which I offer no blank cartus.

Then there’s the modus of my own vivendi
that I indulge in cacoethes scribendi
the itch to write for which I daily
scratch myself or play my ukulele
which is my form of modus operandi
before I pour myself a king-size brandy.

And thus we leave this boring dull citare,
by this time you have certainly grown quite weary
of any further venture into tedium
Or as ***** Harry might say, fac ut gaudeam
For after all a day senza sunlight
Might altrettante facilmente be night

I strain my ear
to hear
a song that has never been written.
To hear it I need to explore
the innermost depths of my soul.
The song is me
and if I do not know it,
then how can I know myself?
And if I do not know myself,
how can I know another?

I thought she was my greatest love.

For more than half a century
I’ve nursed and cherished
a memory that haunted me.
My tinnitus and hearing loss
dating back to that bitter,
cruel and hateful
time,
has always been
attributed
to that recollected period
when I sat huddled and lonely
upon the vastness of
that couch in Antibes
and sobbed and sobbed,
and sobbed until I thought
I might expire.

And now . . .
having suffered a loss
that demonstrates how trivial
was that earlier experience . . .
and now . . .
having truly the need
to express my pain
in overtly demonstrable ways,
I find myself
unable to shed a single tear.
The pain is cutting me up
inside,
but no sign is visible
to others
and no physical relief
presents itself
to me.

Bite back pity.
Bite back pain.
Bite back remorse.
Disabuse myself
of trivia.
Embrace the exigent
and shed the
nugatory.
And then perhaps,
just perhaps,
I will learn the truth
about myself and others.
Perhaps I will learn
to accept my innocence
and place the guilt
where it truly belongs.
Perhaps after fifty years
I will finally see her
as the faithless creature
she truly was.

And then . . .
and then, perhaps,
I will be able to dispose
my grief where it truly
belongs.
And then, perhaps,
I will shed those tears.

My body has long surpassed
its use-by date
But despite so many
gloomy predictions
I believe its best-before date
is yet to come.

I have been stupid,
I have been wise;
and I know this will come
as no surprise.

Stupid is
more fun.

I bought myself a pencil.
I had a lot to write.
I bought myself a notepad too
it was a gleaming white.

I started to write upon it
but the words were very faint.
I went back to the paper shop
to tell them my complaint.

With the pencil in his hand
the shopkeeper scratched his head
and said “you need to change this
for a darker form of lead.”

I asked him most politely
with no hint of aggression
“2B or not 2B, " I said
"that has to be the question"

                                               Bill Shakespeare

This is an experiment.
I hope it causes merriment.
If you think it rocks,
just tick the box.

Now that I live in a flat
and there’s a lift to use
I rarely have to scale the stairs
up to the second floor.

However sometimes I feel that
I need to take a little exercise
and then I use the stairs,
and engage on a strategic pause
at the half-way stage.

But soon I fear this practice
may have to have its ending.
Yesterday I took a pause
upon the first floor landing
and when I started off again
my face produced a frown.
I simply couldn’t recall if
I was going up or down.

It was a sudden impulse that
directed me to stir myself
and remove a well-thumbed dusty
volume from its shelf.

I opened it with fingers that
lacked the youthful dexterity
before osteo-arthritis had
curbed celerity.

I started to turn pages with
a reminiscence of delight
until becoming bothered by its,
failure to excite.

What is the cause of this despair
the loss of Nature’s circuit board,
a fevered stirring in the *****
fails to be restored.

Must I now accept as fact
that there are simply no springs left
in my body’s potency?
Is all now bereft?

Those springs may now be lacking in
my physical displays.
But please grant a mental Spring
in the
Autumn of my days.

You may say that she has gone to meet her maker
now that she is with the undertaker.
Or possibly it’s passed, passed on, or passed away
that you prefer to mark the day
on which finality did overtake her.

It’s fine to think she rests in peace
now that she’s pronounced deceased,
departed, gone, or finally succumbed
these metaphors have me benumbed
as a substitution for surceased.

She lost the battle, lost her life,
freed from further agonizing strife,
gone to heaven, breathed her last
and now has found eternal rest,
that mother, daughter, friend and wife.

She has gone to meet her Lord
from further pain she has been spared
I hate to break this sad news to you
sorry if it does confuse you,
but it simply must be said.  She is dead.

It’s all right
to admit my blame.
It serves
no useful purpose
to deny
and not confess
my complicity
in your distress.

The greatest gift
I can bestow
is to listen
to your words.
To still the idle chatter
of my brain
and take on board
your clear-cut pain.

It does not make me
weak to face
my weaknesses.
It brings me
close to you,
perhaps emotional,
well that’s fine too.

Bless you for
being with me
while I unburden
my heart.
It’s good to know
that you still care,
so thanks for letting
me share.

When I share my feelings
I feel closer to you
But I also
feel closer to me.

Clear your mind of CAN'T
Do away with OUGHTism,
Quit MUSTerbating.

There is this; that when I lay there
Unable to move more than my limbs,
Or my eyes, my thoughts, my dreams,
I yearned to cross the bridge between feeling and thinking.
  
There’s this; when I moved the pictures in my mind,
My thoughts began to follow.
I saw the many walls between thee and me.
I wanted to climb over, crawl round, see through.
  
I felt hemmed in, bound by love and affection,
Yearning to move hither and yon,
Longing to be somewhere else,
Yearning for a sense of direction.
  
And there’s this; when I began to crawl,
I wanted to fly.
I yearned to reach wide enough
to touch the edges of the sky.

When I began to walk, I longed to ride.
From here to there - and back again
To here, there, anywhere. Anywhere!
When I was riding, I wanted to soar.
Wanted my dreams to follow as far and as high as my eyes could see
And my heart could feel.
  
And when I could see, I wanted to run.
I wanted to feel the wind on my face
And the raging fire of. . . what?
I didn’t know.
I don’t know!
I only know I yearned to cross the bridge between longing and knowing.
  
And there’s this; when I thought I knew, I wanted to forget.
When I thought I’d forgotten, I yearned for recall.
When I tasted freedom I looked for walls.
When I found walls I reached for doors.
When I found doors, I often wanted to close them.
  
And still I dream, and when I lie here
Unwilling to move more than my limbs,
Not ready for giving and too tired for taking.
I yearn to burn the bridges between dreaming and waking.