"aviv" poems
Excerpts from “Travels with Einstein”
by Michael R. Burch
for Trump
I went to Berlin to learn wisdom
from Adolph. The wild spittle flew
as he screamed at me, with great conviction:
“Please despise me! I look like a Jew!”
So I flew off to ’Nam to learn wisdom
from tall Yankees who cursed “yellow” foes.
“If we lose this small square,” they informed me,
earth’s nations will fall, dominoes!”
I then sat at Christ’s feet to learn wisdom,
but his Book, from its genesis to close,
said: “Men can enslave their own brothers!”
(I soon noticed he lacked any clothes.)
So I traveled to bright Tel Aviv
where great scholars with lofty IQs
informed me that (since I’m an Arab)
I’m unfit to lick dirt from their shoes.
At last, done with learning, I stumbled
to a well where the waters seemed sweet:
the mirage of American “justice.”
There I wept a real sea, in defeat.
Originally published by Café Dissensus
Keywords/Tags: Einstein, Adolph, ****** Berlin, Jew, Jews, Arab, Arabs, Palestinian, Palestinians, Vietnam, Vietnamese, American, Americans, Yankees, Domino, Theory, Dominoes, Jesus, Christ, Bible, Christian, Christianity, Slave, Slaves, Slavery, Israel, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020 at 4:11 AM UTC
New York, Tel Aviv, Moscow, London, Netanya,
Bali, Istanbul, Riyadh, Beslan, Nisanit, Dublin
Londonderry, Glasgow, Manchester,
Spin Boldak (district), Kuta
Kano, Baghdad, Kandahar
Mumbai, Karballa, Boston
All for God, the almighty
God, the inhumanity in his name
God, the creator
I am weeping for the latest terror victims
141 injured in Boston
3 dead in Boston
Jesus Saves...tell that to the dead
When will it end?
I have nothing....just tears, and an emptiness
Confusion
I leave you all with your prayers, for all of those lost
Over time, to terrorist attacks listed and not listed
I pray for the lost, the living and the future
I remain confident in mankind....
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 11:25 PM UTC
Boston Sydney Oslo London Berlin Montreal Ibiza Stockholm Lisbon Dublin....where are you?..Chicago Madrid Turin Liverpool....I need you home!....Tokyo India Rio Helsinki Milan Botswana....please come home....Gibraltar Alice Springs Zurich Tel Aviv St Helier Jerusalem....I really miss you x
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 7:50 AM UTC
The first time I fell in love was on a basketball court
Adrenalin was pumping
The sound of sneakers squeaking across the floor echoed in our ears
I rebounded the ball and passed to the point guard
We quickly adjusted our offense
I was in the pocket
Bounce pass to me
Quick lay-up
It’s in
But it wasn’t long before I fell in love again
The second time I fell in love was with painting
I painted anything and everything
My room, bathroom, lamps, clothing
And sometimes even canvas
The satisfaction of prying open a new can of paint
Watching the wet paint gather then drip off the lid and slide into the can
Or looking at your dried palette after completing a painting
The feeling is indescribably in words
But I still played basketball
The third time I fell in love, I neglected my old hobbies
This time it was with a boy
Pale face, auburn hair and green eyes
He had a kind smile and assured me the world could be ours
And it was
For two years
And even though the last time I played ball was
A drunken night outside a brewery in Tel Aviv
And even though the last time I painted I used
A sponge and toothbrush
And even though the last time I saw that smile
It was no longer mine to behold
I still love all these things
But now, I see them in a different way
Aug 27, 2012
Aug 27, 2012 at 12:52 AM UTC
1979, A live broadcast, my father bid me come
to our new color TV set, the high pitched whine
it gave off muted by meaning
"remember this moment" he said
and we watched, in awed silence as
two men, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shook hands
and our President presided
a cold peace at last
In retaliation for... Sadat was later shot through
the skull and died on a stage in a pool of warm blood
surrounded by his brethren
A letter dated 1944
My father's fingers trembled with it in his hands
He brought it out to show me
"I am the only survivor...all the rest are gone...
I am going to Israel"
Written hastily with pen and ink, our last
surviving relative who we know not of
bid farewell to Russia and was on track to a new land from the wellspring
of grief and ******
A Jew, my father
A half Jew am I and would have been all the same
to the **** killing machine I thought one languishing summer day
as I ate unripe apples with small wormholes at a farm
full of horses
Safe in the quiet, if uncaring peace of a world far away
from dead Nazis and the abandoned killing centers
Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, 2003
We walked through at night, my husband and I
A large empty space in a city without largeness or emptiness
We walk without recognition
as it is now just a place and not only a shrine
But I linger to look at one corner
At an embedded sculpture of confused cement blocks
jagged angles and useless plains, rendered in immobile lasting cement
a testament to futility
It is pain, frustration and the sickness of human violence--
Itzak Rabin
who was shot and bled to death
in a crowd in the dust of his also unknown and forgotten ancestors
in retaliation for the hope of peace
News of more bombs today
Fresh death
Mangled human potential rendered useless
In retaliation for...
Nov 20, 2012
Nov 20, 2012 at 10:35 PM UTC
"You never get closure in an abusive relationship"
the advocate looked at me, softly, as she could waiting to see the hard news
soak in
the other women in the room were silent
Their "hes" were still around town, coming in and out
interfering, lying low, but at least paying attention,
abandonment is worse than punishment I thought
I was on the other side of the world, a reverse time zone
falling into the abyss
He took my wedding ring and engagement ring out of my luggage
then brought it up the stairs to me
and waited for the shuttle to come
I hugged him, but he didn't hug back, he shoved the bags inside
I was crying, he was stone cold, he payed the driver of the "sherute"
the shuttle to the airport in Hebrew, people stared but I didn't
care anymore, I was so used to people staring as he now
spoke to me and offered me a cigarette in front of the Mercez Horev, the mall
siting on the ***** concrete benches watching the line of people having
their bags checked before going in
Here I was smoking like I'd done my army service and gotten bored
and smoked to relieve the boredom and the stress
then something would go wrong and he'd get up, screaming at me
in English, and I'd run after
I didn't look at anyone in the sherute but I just knew they felt sorry for me
as we pulled away, after twelve years together, the last I saw of him
was him heading down the stairs
and now, the people at that job
I am learning new things in my classes
and, for one crazy moment I think:
I want to share this with them
so I write to my former boss
and that's the last thing he would ever want from me
He is the smart one, I am not, no one is smarter than him
He will never listen to me
Like I hugged my husband
not knowing he'd stolen my engagement ring and my wedding band
just like the Tel Aviv lawyer told me he would
the end. you never get closure in an abusive relationship
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 8:00 PM UTC
I spoke to a man today
with kind eyes and contagious laughter
his passport identified him as Israeli, mine american
but for a moment, we were both just human
He told me he was a combat medic for the IDF
as we began our descent into a discussion of politics
he spoke of giving medical care to victims
of a suicide bombing, just weeks earlier
Life is fragile in places like his hometown of Tel Aviv
He showed me an app on his iPhone that
notifies him of places that were just bombed
or when to take shelter, in case of an incoming missile strike
How people must savor life in war zones like his
friends and family become temporary oases
bringing happiness and fulfillment for a moment
then gone the next
For once
there were no borders between us, or
cultural divides, just two men
discussing life, or something like it
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 12:16 PM UTC
They died; they all died, without a moan;
their final passage writ in stone.
Dark shadows here and there you see
where Jews passed to eternity.
In these silent streets no children play
No trees survived the heat that day.
A suicide martyr some call a hero
was detonated at ground zero.
Nine hundred thousand are believed lost
in this second, instant, holocaust.
The suitcase he held in his hand
was the latest weapon from Iran.
My team has come here to retrieve
the evidence from Tel Aviv.
No one will be living here
Not for another fifty years.
• * * * * *
A damsel with a dosimeter,
in a vision I once saw,
warned me that appeasement
nearly always leads to war.
Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 8:43 AM UTC
Got up to turn the pages
Let up so I can burn my wages
I spend time like Its money and I am a Forbes CEO
Just when I think I can supersede myself the confusion begins to glow like an expected sunset on the drive home
I smile at an elderly woman leaving a tacky hotel wedding in a wheelchair, cheap dress draped with an oversized man's coat
It's cold in Philly
And the sharp bending wind whips my soul
Like a favorite eerie movie I inevitably watch again we fight on the phone and you say it's everything that I've done
I sit down with my coffee and smoke a cigarette
I don't gamble with numbers - but the chances I get
Far away in a jet soon to tel aviv
banks' charge conversion rates for currency
the door opens and closes
the places my heart goes when I remember you have to say yes before you can learn to say no
May 26, 2013
May 26, 2013 at 2:57 AM UTC
I thought I saw my sister
outside the window,
carrying Tel Aviv in her mouth.
Making a bracha with her teeth,
grinding poems and hair,
her jaw opened up and showed the world
boiling behind her molars.
My Vishnu sister, made of words, needing none.
Little and towheaded I’used to pick hair after hair from
my scalp to see what I thought
was a piece of brain at the end.
Sitting in the backyard,
eating fistfuls of grass, ripping bundles of yellow
What you feel is
irrelevant, but
What you taste is
holy
shabbos kodesh
salty mouth dirt
sister mother
yellow tufts of mind
Jun 12, 2011
Jun 12, 2011 at 6:52 AM UTC
Who is she?
She's not from around here.
Suspicion surrounds me like fog.
These are tough times, she's from out of town.
A stranger. Should she work here?
She grew up over an hours drive away.
And I've lived on the other side of the Earth and found comfort
in the company of others
and found that human throughline
written still in cultural, spacial, geographic differences
that sameness, those recurring human themes
Returning home, another town away
I am unknown
Can't you feel the lesson I've learned?
Can't you know what it's like to walk through
the streets of Tel Aviv
The back alleys of Paris
and see human struggles
playing themselves out before you?
And know them from deep inside
as the ones you felt on another continent?
She's not from around here
And I speak English
Don't you know what it's like a
bond in a crowded subway pushed up against
those who don't speak your language
swimming in a different culture every hour of the day
And I am a stranger here.
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 10:39 PM UTC
sometimes it just feels like
having to make an interjection,
accompanied by,
and listening to, and making do away the
slightest spiderweb tickle...
sometimes it just feels like
you writing something and your muse is
only an insomniac radio d.j.,
and it really does feel
like a freefall sometimes,
having taken the time to possess
a library of music, giving it all
up to simple turn on the radio....
it can appear pointless at times...
but then you can hardly stomach
the need for adverts...
and because of adverts you started
building up a music library...
but then again, once more:
you end up only writing
for a niche... i live a few miles from
London, but given my holiday to
the most obscure place in Poland...
London is about as far as the moon
from where i'm criss-crossing...
tango of a daddy-longshanks spider...
confirming that with the
crown beheld by Edward IV...
was radio, always the necessary
blockage, the necessary sound
when you woke up?
i built a music library
and became prone to listening to the radio
at 3a.m.... nice... real nice,
i'm about to do a Borat impersonation
with the words: jak sie masz?
i.e. how are you?
don't know, given a jew asked it,
i'm starting to wonder what it means
to be alive in Tel Aviv these days....
and that really is: balaclava worth
a statement on it own.
if i knew i'd come back to listening
to the radio, i wouldn't
care to make a compendium of obscure
music, i'd throw the television out,
and i'd read a poem more often than
taking to the ritual of ingesting
a newspaper...
see the ailment?
bound to wishing to be blown up
in a terrorist attack?
for most days, i feel like
a street-cleaner of the past ought-nots
and did-in-fact happenings,
later slimmed into a new year's eve
firework sadness concealing
a claim to a celebration.
Jan 25, 2017
Jan 25, 2017 at 10:08 PM UTC
oh don't get me wrong, i loved Midnight in Paris,
but with this latest movie i realised
the technique he was using, like someone reading
from a book in a bookshop -
and with every film i ever saw by Woody Allen
i just had one plot line running through my head:
a Jew looking for Auschwitz -
i bet there's a whole bunch of them feeling they missed
out on something grand like paying the gas bill,
and true to the word, the ones who have will
be stoic and silent, while the ones who haven't will
start a queue of mouthing everyone off;
is that short for ceramic marionettes or snowflakes
or something? you ain't made from sugar, go
run in the rain, you ain't gonna melt;
now, is that short of a straitjacket? i was gambling on
banking in my air miles by now - if i was born
on an aeroplane in the 1980s i'd have a U.N. passport;
citizen transcendental, ethnicity: helium.
i preferred the Woody Allan choke though, about
how each of his films have the plot: a Jew looking for
Auschwitz; i should really write a petition to the Polish
parliament about shifting that dung-heap of bricks to
Germany or Israel or something, i don't mind
the Malbork castle, that shit-pile can stay -
but can these chimneys be moved elsewhere, i'm getting
this itchy cockroach feeling Poland will have it
hard on advertising tourism if it's only Jews that come
here to only one place, and nowhere else,
on memorial day...
i mean, Czechs have Prague, the Hungarians have the Danube...
it seems the only fascinating thing about Poland is
the former capital of Israel, Auschwitz - well thank
**** we have the Dead Sea and the scrolls or i'd
never imagine why i'd pity Jesus and not Isiah prior -
disembowelled, cut in half... hello?!
- and that great Tel Aviv chandelier sprout -
or that thing in the desert we call the shopping mall -
Dubai, that's the one - get a camels' teeth necklace
all year round - and a free ****** massage by another
set of camels, free of charge - ooh gucci gucci goo,
look at those fluffy lips... can imagine just dunking a
leprechaun right in there for a *** of pearls.
Jun 24, 2016
Jun 24, 2016 at 3:49 PM UTC
There once was a man who drew lines in the sand
daring Bashar Al-Assad to cross.
When “the Lion” so dared he was so unprepared
our man looked like the back of a horse.
Now the same man says he’ll stare down Iran
There’s no need for advice and consent.
John Kerry, his proxy, the Ketchup Queen’s mate,
Ignores deadlines that he never meant
He’ll bargain some more til he sells out the store
The Jews, our lone allies, be dammed.
When the I.C.B M.S rain with bombs they’ll obtain
Tel Aviv will melt into the sand
Then we’ll all learn the true cost of “Peace in Our time”
with the murderous thugs from Iran.
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 12:35 PM UTC
"Yeah, that's 'Almost' with an 'A', yup, kind like
'John Amos' but with a 't' on the end, also with
an 'l' between the 'a' and the 'm'..."
"Huh? Who's John Amos? jaysus feckin christ,
'Good Times'? The guy with the wide nostrils?
Bad example, sorry, let's move on..."
"...that's 'a' as in 'aardvark', 'l' as in... no no no, only
one 'a'... 'l' as in 'lemur', 'm' as in... 'murder' (this
person knows how 'aardvark is spelled?) 'o' as in
'o my god', 's' as in... 'seizure'- yeah, that's 'seizure'-
S,E,I,Z,... no no no! not 'c'! 'z' as in 'zoo'... 'u' as in
******* christ) 'UNICEF'... yeah, UNICEF, I think it's
an anagram... huh? ANAGRAM! with an 'a'! 'a' as in..."
"Okay, so that's 'a'... where the **** were we? NO
I WON'T WATCH MY LANGUAGE! Anyway where
the **** are you? Mumbai? As in former Bombay?
(why'd they change the name?)... and why do they
only train you in English cuss words? What was that?
What I just said or how do I spell my name? o crap just
never mind."
"...'o'? What's after 'o'? You mean you're actually keeping
track?!? wow! Forget what I said about your training-
you're a ******* genius... O... no, not 'o'! Only one
'o'! So, one 'o', not two, not..."
"In fact, **** it, I don't give a **** anymore, add an 'o'
to my name, call me "Almoost" call me "Bitchface", huh?
You wanta know how I spell Bitchface?"
"Where were we... 'o'... NO! NOT A THIRD 'O'!"
" 's' as in **** **** **** and 't' as in um, Tel Aviv
... hello? HELLO???"
"O my god o my god omygodomygod I just got
disconnected!"
"NOOOOOOOO"!
Nov 21, 2019
Nov 21, 2019 at 12:56 AM UTC
3 days in Vienna
All that beautiful snow
2 days in Tel Aviv
A wedding, doncha know
Don't really have friends
Grateful for my dad
Time tick tocks
Sweet Sir Galahad
Vegetarian nachos
Basketball tv
In my solitude
Wasn't meant to be
3733
Nov 11, 2023
Nov 11, 2023 at 3:53 PM UTC
gender
neutral pronoun
application,
and...
and an awareness
for the "concept"
of... space...
like...
being
inquisitive
of
a spatial
standard...
of...
he:
ought to do
and
she: ought to take...
men do better cooking
than women...
i am to blame,
as what point?
now?
**** you, cubicle
Humphreys!
i die by the solid tactic
of
subscribing to
paying tax...
you *******
increment
of i.q. worth!
i'm your friend,
am i?
friendly as a *******
mosquito...
i don't want
to be part of this,
"war",
no more than
i want to be involved in, "it"...
savvy?
i forgot to chant...
is that a "bad" thing?
i keep forgetting
to ensure...
that...
piling on skulls
in a pyramid fashion
was a...
good "thing"!
**** "wasn't, wasn't?!"
afghan rebels,
all readied
to misgender
the crop
of...
waiting for the vagina-cock
****** & ****
dynamic in the obstruct
format for teenagers...
but hell...
let's rebel contra
grammar...
you are,
dear, mother,
your father's wishbone...
and what am i?
wish...
a...
hotel
abdandoned to
encompass filming
the shining...
you are,
most, most, welcome,
in claiming to focus
on a diatribe;
yes?
i call it a leisure...
to fake anti-gravity
levitation
tactics...
activity...
a streisand-hoffman
effect...
born a jew:
never die a redford...
or a tony curtis...
or a newman...
blue eyes...
blue tongue...
ate more testicles'
worth of a circumcision
in the parade of humor....
gimmick than...
the allowance
of extracting ********
for...
the skin leaving scoop
of allowed tattoos!
plenty of
alt-fiction
sci-fi
b-movie templates...
and
that house is in order...
do we have to fake
playing bargain economics
for the remains of
Damascus?
no? good...
i don't want to visit
tel aviv either.
Feb 17, 2019
Feb 17, 2019 at 9:48 PM UTC
i’m siding with the barber of tel aviv and the butcher from jerusalem, what the hell do you mean by trying to salvage celebrity culture with the crucifix clenched into the 22nd century?! we've got dinosaurs to mind... this is no time to be a monkey!
to quote st. paul: i left behind childish things
and started to toy with serious words
like toys having
found very little meaning in them, and so
in order that i ironed and tailored a banker’s suit
with the words: i took for inspiration,
and i did forget the childish things i once cherished,
but the phoneticism after, which i kept,
dwarfed the childish things i bosomed once,
and even though i took great depth to monk myself into
kissing the first corinthian like a samaritan,
i forgot the testament of cato, and instead spoke
like nero although through the mouth of seneca;
because i did abandon all childish things,
but i changed concepts of love hope and faith
into frivolity spoken of frequently but exercised as if a memory of youth
in that rarity worth a marketplace and religion.
Sep 29, 2015
Sep 29, 2015 at 12:49 PM UTC
Qboy dancing with Lee-tal’s cousins
late into the Tel Aviv night,
driving back from the ceremony
to Jerusalem
The jazz club in Tokyo
after the ceremony,
gratefully talking with Rieko and Takahiro
thrilled to soon see Kyoto
Yes, Rabbi Hillel, every bride is beautiful.
Jan 5, 2019
Jan 5, 2019 at 12:15 AM UTC
God stopped in Tel Aviv
on the way to meet the rabbini
He sat on the beach and
watched the girls in their bikinis
the Rabbi was waiting at the station
But He just had to admire
his greatest creation
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 4:23 PM UTC