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

It has now gone an epical song
like the fables of Homer and Ramayana,
or else a national anthem like the poem of Tagore,
in India and lesbian song of Brenda Fasie in south Africa,
that six million Jews were killed in the  world war II ,
that they were killed at Dachau,that it was holocaust,
That the Jewish Holocaust  was  protege of ******.

As if  the war was between the Jews and the world,
as if the Jews alone died in the war,but none else,
as if Africans' death  is not death,but ethics of war,
as if more than six million Africans who died are not news,
as if humongous compensation with state of Israeli to the Jews,
means nothing  until what we know not must happen.

African deaths in the second world war  lacks statistics,
given the sub-human conditions of the Africans  by then,
before thrones of colonial psychology of white civilization,
they were more than six million black men  and women,
conscripted by white man's force in kings African Rivals,
They were fronted  without training to shoot and take cover,
they were placed as front guard,white soldiers the rear guard,
then they became shield and human barricade to ward-off,
volley of bullets lest the white soldiers get wounded.

Black men  and women rarely came back alive,
once taken into war that was death as a must
those who survived the war in Panama or wherever,
were never taken back home, they were left there,
to walk on foot thousands of miles back home ,
without food ,clothes,arms or  map to guide,
some were even shot by the their own  fellow white soldiers
on the grounds of the race, because the war was over,
Black men as such died of hunger,thirst,exhaustion and Malaria,
they were eaten by wild animals in the bush,their cadaver went to dogs,
Millions of black men  never got home for ceremonial burial
and this was not Black holocaust, only the Jews had a holocaust.

Black men had no stake in the second world war whatsoever,
they had no interest , they were not in any colonial scramble
they were not in any  arms race nor imperialism of any sort,
Jews had what they wanted; land or money whatever it was,
but where can you get land and money without the cost ?
loss of lives or personal heritage can be the cost,Pyrrhic or Byronic,
Jews are obviously truth bound to accept this virtues of history,
to accept their lot as a swallowed misfortune
from the universal holocaust but not Jewish holocaust.

The Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima will say what,
was not the atomic bombing of their land
occasioning mass death of the Shintos
and sons of Japan the owners of the Sun
immense enough to be a Japanese Holocaust ?
Nagasaki and Hiroshima is not an anthem in Japan,
but  blurred number of Jewish death in Dachau
is a universal anthem as the Six Million Jewish Holocaust,
what a selfish motivation to commit collective lies?

Jews who died were not six million,
Germany by  then was not such populated,
Germany had less than ten million people,
Kwani, were the Jews more than the native Germans ?
if then war is the game of numbers ,
couldn't the Jews  defend themselves from less Aryans?
Jews died, yes like any other race and community,
like the French,Britons,Germans,Russians and Indians,
Just like more than six million black  Africans who died,
But Africans have forgotten and forgiven their  conscriptors
they have never made the Black Holocaust  their epical anthem,

Black men were compensated nothing for their wounds in war,
Ask Richard Wright the Native son of America in the realm of ancestors,
he has a story in the black boy , he will tell you ,We black men ,
We swallowed  the most  bitter bill of  global history,
were toyed between the extremities of cruel historicities;
from slavery to  colonial terror to world war back to colonial terror,
The Jews were given Israel as a compensation for their wounds,
The  UNO wanted to Give the  country of Uganda to the Jews,
As  saucer compensation in addition to state of  Israel,
imagine brutality that Black man harvests ,
from his relation with the white  world.

How  many Arabs have the Israelis killed since 1948,
the year when Jews had Palestine's Atlas get shrugged
in the American  efforts to pamper the Zionist  Israelis,
are they not  more than six million Arabs , or they are less,
Arabs are not ****** who told the Jews to take a shower,
A lethal shower of ammonium gas at Dachau chambers,
Arabs are not Joseph Goebbels who ployed death of  the Jews,
But Jews have amassed all type of menacing weapons,
they have killed men,women and children of Arab nation,
in the past six decades, Jews have killed violently and brutally,
more than six million Arabs, is this  not an Arab Holocaust,
or no a Palestine Holocaust or no the Gentiles' Holocaust ?

the events of second world war were universal in dint
they never befall a single race,community or faith,
every community lost its people through death,
But Africa had the worst experience of all the cases,
absence of statics cannot make this sham claim,
Jews must stop lies and make genuine claims,
Jewish Holocaust is a misnomer for war event,
we all suffered and agonized in equal measure
why again formulate lies to justify avarice.

<>

Hebrew calendar says Summer Sabbath,
the day of rest has, as scheduled...arrived

wryly, ironically, bitterly,
poet rhymingly thinking nowadays...survived

more apropos,
#even survived alive,
for therein is a concomitant, under-the-surface implication,
of the uncertainty of forecast  future,
for no matter how theoretically normalized and organized,
even a trip to a shopping mall...deadly

survive - a far, far bitter...but better fit

not sure of the why-well of my being here,
poem composing scheduled, always on this day of pause,
this week-ending demarcator of the who I am

I am among the many of little understanding,
who having garnered no solace nor rest,
that a seventh day supposedly, is purposed to beget,
for the world is in a ****** awful mess

with neither the rhyme or the reason,
the single breath I expirate, as proof of life,
is this season's perfect, sufficing hallmark,
symbolic of the reign of unceasing confusion that has left our minds
damaged and contused,
secretly selfishly thinking to oneself,
#my life matters


this Sabbath, I speak German,
the language of my father and his father's,
all my ancestors, even unto the years of the Age of Enlightenment,
today, spoken in the ironic dialect of Munich

Am Morgen borning glorreiche
the morning borning glorious

poet seeks an answer, mission to permission,
to rightly explain
how he visions in unsightly confusion
how he divines loving in Munich's tribulations

sitting in the poet's nook, upon the ancient Adirondack chair,
nature listens to the poet discordant chords
of musical tears upon musical chairs,
wet-staining flesh

all around, the other noise makers gone quiet as well
for they are pityingly, eavesdrop listening for what happens next

The Chair speaks:

"this day,
I am happily,
made of wood,
my living cells
long dispatched,
so that I can no longer
weep in time
with my poet-occupant's
struggling lines,
verses upon the decomposing
of the worst of times,
though in compathy,
my silence, by and to him,
is gratefully unnoticed"

the poet  has no visitors this fine day,
none human or divine anyway,
but not alone

for a gaggle of old ones have early come,
from Rebecca's and his mother's Canada dispatched,
my regular geese guests southbound have returned for their
summer stopover,
but so early,
for the calendar must be telling lies,
it says these are the days of July,
so named  for all  to recall
another murdering assignation~assassination,
that of a fallen Caesar,
another-man-who-would-be-god

my summertime flying audience comes yearly to share the bounty
of this, my sheltering isle,
good guests who in payment for their use of our facilities,
honk Facebook  "likes" in appreciation
for every writ completed in the nookery

this year of fear, the geese are newly self-tasked,
seeking solace to share and understand the world weariness,
so strongly encountered in the roughened atmospheric conditions
newly facing all of us

everybody's needy for respite from the next

where next?

a plump audience of eleven
on this grayed sunny day,
greet me, honking, feverishly, excitable honking, but!

auf Deutsch,
in German

full of questions about predatory man
which I fluently comprehend but of answers,
have none completed, none sealed as of yet,  
any writ by my hand to give away or
even keep

so when the temperature cooingly cools,
on their way further south, them,  it sends,
they will not be burdened with the empty baggage
of inexcusably and poorly manmade
naturalized, pasteurized, synthesized,
crap excuses

the poet's own reflection in the fast moving bay waters,
is not reflected,
these, no calm pond waters, but his own internal reflections,
beg him, explain this poem's entitlement,
this designation of confusion and its inflection,

confusion as something lovely?

no good answers do the witnessing waters or the winds sidebar provision,
the geese, the chair, all unfair,
only have similar quarreling questions for him to dare

foremost and direst first,
where is there loveliness in confusion the poems sees?

poet stands on the dock, as if in the dock,
noticed, the waters pause, the winds into silence, swept,
the gulls grounded, the geese aligned in rapt attention,
all to the poet, as jury, they steadfastly attend
to his creation, this poem's titled curse,
an answer even barely adequate, some solution?

In Munich,  ****** born and welcomed,
Dachau, the very first death camp,
sited a mere ten miles away

one could conceivably could demand that

this poet, this Jew, this could-be-Shylock,

having seen a pound of flesh extracted,
might accept this balancing as a compensation
of history's scales weighted by the concentrated demise
of millions of his very own flesh and faith

but he does not...

a nation takes in a million strangers and refugees,
not without peril costly,
visible now, these side servings of risk,
that noble gestures so oft bring

what he feels, why he cries is for the

loveliness of forgiveness,

he unashamedly honest borrows the words he confesses,

any innocent man's death diminishes him

now the winds kicks up, the waters refrosted frothy,
the gulls go airborne, the geese fly away,
searching for another poet to respirate, infatuate and inspire,
clearly, neither satisfied or enchanted with the one
presently available

only the aged Adirondack fair, his aged long time companion chair,
remains moved - but unmoving,
in the domaine of their unity, in the vineyard of
their conjoined, place of quiet contemplation

a woman observes tear stains upon his cheeks,
noticing them upon the chair's open arms now all-fallen,
tho a surface wood hardened,
the tears are softly welcomed and storingly embraced,
absorbed

the three,
the woman, the chair, the poet-me,
all as one, tearfully, no longer cry in vain,
having  found a white coal seam amidst the black bunting
that decorates their glum apprehension of tomorrow's tidings

<>

Saturday,
July 23, 2016
10:29am
Shelter Island