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Ken Pepiton Sep 2019
Attendees at the game of the gods,
come in three
Pythogorean sorts:
First kinds are the lovers of wisdom,
the second are the lovers of honor and
the third are the lovers of gains. 
----------------
Ah, now, now

There is a demon
of the old kind attempting me
to lashout
my flagella and wipe my competitors from the stream
in this
only race that counts,

first and only, no second place in this race
to pass
through
into the egg, where life, as we know it begins.

All I brought, my entire being
as a cellulate entity with a will to win, is absorbed into
her.

Here, she perfects that which concerns me,
my will is done. I won.

Or did the others fail? Should I have slowed and let
another pierce this egg

and marvel at its works, while I am left useless forever?

Nay, or why would I retain this will to win?
Or this will to
calmly carry on, knowing now, this final phase in the course
of compleat being becoming,

slow and steady sets the pace,

right

up to now, k-pow, push meets shove and I win again,
recalling the joy when
I, the wiggly carrier of all that made me possible,

pass through your attentive staring, sorting egg-eye
maybe,

osmotical magical silliness wells up in me.

I was chosen. Or formed to fit, this
complex knot
lock meet for me, the key
ingredi-ant,

in ever stories provoking old men to grow on.
----------
Strange though it be, true,
Isaac Bashevis Singer inspires me, with words he left behind
for just this reason.

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IsaacBashevisSinger>
Shorter breaths, longer steps
"Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions."
            - Isaac Bashevis Singer

*

There are wars and rumors of wars.
machineries and machination of

singular dark days
and singular dark clouds that hang

like props above our city.

We shut the window, we avoid their play.

Hungrily we take refuge between
each others' legs.

How comforting this is to us,
to love without armies or tanks

or generals of reasoned love.

*

From the narrow street, they can see us
wrestling with an angel -

the tugging of limbs and hair-
You speak low so they can’t hear

your seditious talk of love,
where my callused hands get tangled

in your low moaning - while I hold you down

to the bed,
                    my captive.

The occupation has begun —

your occupied body
            my undiminished country of so many
                                                            ardent prayers.

*

The soldiers are all leaving for the front.
Not us, we will stay

        and wage our war
                                of tenderness.

They are all leaving this morning.

Give them your applause for their sad
theater, and all their war ships
                                      and planes.

Soon

they will write letters home
which will arrive without them.

A few men will return,
        return gaunt; much less
than before
        with more sadness and less
dancing.

And when they do
   our war
        will have ended
        with a flag of white
                        bed sheets,

only a little blood,
            Victorious,
                 writing love letters on each others' bodies.
Poem was previously Published i VAYAVYA

http://www.vayavya.in/leibow.html
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2020
Leonardo da Vinci was a vegetarian
Isaac Bashevis Singer was a vegetarian
Kafka was a vegetarian
Pythagoras was a vegetarian
Shelley was a vegetarian

Etc...
(alternatively titled: tardy duff fender of assertiveness,
especially after adjusting following insanity clause
affixed with rubber baby-buggy bumpers)

Methinks I nearly got snookered
courtesy CVS employee at store number 7569
(address: 1206 North Gravel Pike,
Zieglerville, Pennsylvania 19492)
September ninth, two thousand and twenty.

Saleswoman rattled off spiel
regarding CVS Carepass program
the missus immediately
became suspicious of aforementioned deal
every month five dollars
debited from checking account,
figurative highway robbery,
and/or outright steal.

The above trifling
unspectacular wrought scenario
an exception to rule,
whereby yours truly usually
spurred Manichean inner duel
witnessed by guns ablazing
trampling outspokenness
giving Isaac Bashevis Singers,
Gimpel the fool

run for his in dove viz hubble money
now forced into dire straits,
where chicks free yea
how **** sapiens cruel
nasty, short and brutish beastly species
devises sadomasochistic tool
hankering, and hungering to starve
think also about anonymous
innocent tortured soul (me, ha)

kept in solitary confinement,
with no chance of parole
a convict for life i.e. hard skool
of knocks alum deceived
hired, and lobotomized
slave driven human mule
donkey *** tee (hee hee hee),
and fed diet of worms
in tandem with thin gruel.

Far to often annals
constituting mein kampf,
I experienced oblivious naiveté
undergoing blitzkrieg linkedin
with scapegoat honorific,
now sortie give snort against
mine passivity harrumph!

Dan D. yankee from Schwenksville,
Pennsylvania didst doodle and dawdle
planting feather in figurative cap - yay
perceptive sixth sense analogous to xray,
yours truly more wise

to the insidious mean way
dominant nasty, short
and brutish human beasts
Machiavellian bullies instill fear
for egoistic personal gain oye vey

immediately judging me as prime target
oh my dog... early in grade school
threatening hateful taunts got underway
I attest suffering verbal abuse
persists even today

offtime couched within feigned concern,
yet sinister motives at heart stay
anger toward able, eager and ready
poetic tactics launched courtesy shipshape quay
zee reasonably rhyming literary barbs to portray,

how creative poetic technique can outweigh
Norse (er horse) sense
scrawled by Lake Woebegone
bachelor farmers' guardian angels
originally harkening from Norway
deported to Normandy Farms,

including me nonagenarian papa,
cuz they (you decide who)
started to trumpet melee
predicated when power of attorney
given to a girl named Amélie,
dime a dozen teller (of tall tales)
at Wells Fargo Bank.
Lawrence Hall Apr 19
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate
Anti-Semitism
(alternately titled: Typical daily mindset today –
July 17th, 2020)

The following words
mostly unredacted, nevertheless finessed
for curbed poetic/prosaic appeal
lock, stock and barrel
codify, and edify (hoopfully not mortify)
any reader unbeknownst and/or familiar
with unsteady state of yours truly,
(an ordinary garden variety generic guy)

who ofttimes expresses suicidal ideations
merely freed pent up
watery melancholic thoughts
(pitted within his psyche)
to experience vicariously personal impact
how such Earth shattering words of finality
might affect (or not) an anonymous reader.

Additionally I gave literary weight
to morbid topic confounding
moost every sentient and sensate human being
unable to escape her/his ultimate demise
eventually laid claim
by grim reaper
who unfailingly claims corporeal essence

which accepted fate
impossible mission to envision,
yet as chronological orbitz figuratively accrued
heightened awareness proportionately pronounced
(at least within mine cerebral cortex)
thus teasing out mortality
to comprehend (even minimally)
such mind boggling concept.

No immediate recourse sought
to compromise, exorcise, jeopardize, et cetera
the mailer daemons powerfully fraternizing
gamesomely cavorting, ripsnorting,
and yes terrorizing
sinusoidal undulations whatsapp

pining within mine approximately
deux clenched fist sized brain
temporary organic matter
lodged within the noggin
of one contemplative, intuitive,
and ruminative **** sapien.

Mine skeptical papa helped beget me,
a stranger in a strange land,
I experience difficulty breathing
despite pitch perfect cloudless ether
analogously steeped in foreign air,
as surviving foreigner,
one doubting Thomas
(English muffin) niggling heir.

Nostalgic reminiscences venerated zealously
violently pound every square inch,
where thinking transpires
within convolutions characterizing fifty shades
of gray matter lodged
clapping hands upon ears
renders a feeble attempt
to block deafening mind chatter.

I precariously perch
(albeit metaphorically)
perch upon precipice
staring into infinite abyss
hesitant to bid thee world
of the livingsocial adieu
trembling, kickstarting, fumfering...
apprehensive, tentative, wary

regarding permanent solution
to temporary emotional ill
afore taking leave,
where family bids me good riddance
bon voyage into netherlands
long sought realm of hereafter
abounding with peacefulness
of body, mind, and spirit.

Linkedin with hypothetical
undertaking that envisions me dead
preceding lines fell shy describing scenario
analogous to internal civil war playing out
inside formerly nasal twanging talking head,
(above attributed to submucous cleft palate)
yours truly characterized asthma worst enemy led
imagine pacifist sent into battle without mercy

futile effort foregone conclusion,
hence pointlessness witnessing
prayer for salvation, which I ne'er pled
akin to Isaac Bashevis Singer Gimpel the fool
and/or kamikaze pilot
one and/or another rushed in
where angels feared to tread.

More'n devilish tomfoolery,
I disclosed wretched mental state
no, not necessarily continuous
unbridled intense self destruction within me pate
more so chronic **-hum ambivalent attitude
quite upsetting thee missus, i.e. me mate

more often than not
no surprise predominant moody blue
exhibited courtesy yours truly,
twould be antonym of jubilate
tis the exception when I feel
(likened to Tony the tiger) grrrrrreat!
Qualyxian Quest Feb 2021
Said Isaac Bashevis Singer.
David Markson
This is Not a Novel and Other Novels.
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2020
We have to believe in free will.
We've got no choice.

Said Isaac Bashevis Singer.

— The End —