"bernstein" poems
I've decided that I
Hate
My
History teacher
His name is
Mr. Bernstein.
I hate him.
Why,
Might you ask,
Do you hate your history teacher?
I hate him
Because
He
Took
Off
Points
From my
HISTORY
Test
Because of my handwriting.
And thus,
I hate him.
Your 'y's,
He said,
They look like 'g's
And so he read
Mainly
As
Mainlg.
And I was
Marked
Down.
And remember,
Folks.
This is a
HISTORY
Test,
Not a
CALLIGRAPHY
Test.
There
Ought
To
Be
A
Law,
There ought to!
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 2:26 PM UTC
_the mythic Esther notwithstanding_;
the only Jewish Miss America was
Bess Myerson; Miss New York, &
exemplar of classic beauty c.1945
studying German philosophy
living on the upper east side;
surrounded by rich Park Avenue
Jews - spewing Nietzschean
Nihilism causing them to _shudder_
at the thought of relatives dragged
from homes never to be seen
again; they don't want to hear
that **** - my buddy Mingus Jr.
bringing mechanical bebop to
his constructed paintings;
on
the other hand, I'm going on & on
about Heidegger & Schopenhauer,
Brian Eno, David Bowie, Hegel,
****** Goebbels & Riefenstahl;
my paintings are violent; as if
Jack the Ripper & James Whistler
were the same guy; all women are
beautiful by nature, but I would've
done it different - put the snooch
on top, the udders on the bottom,
*** in front, arms & legs splayed
out to the sides; yes, that's better,
Diane Arbus, Ann Frank, Hannah
Arendt, Dori Bernstein, Alison
Linefsky & Eva Hesse are more
beautiful than Lilith & Eve mixed;
I hate being called a antisemitic;
it's a painful reminder that at the
moment I don't have a Jewish gf
Aug 21, 2018
Aug 21, 2018 at 2:17 PM UTC
The bittersweet harmonies of
Barber’s song of ruing
carry me back two score years
to that day I sat intent on the bench -
Barber’s accompaniment on the stand.
Ben Walker exploded into the room
“Have you heard about the president? ”
My blankness answered,
“Kennedy's been shot! ”
My stiffened fingers lifted from the keys.
Dread-filled I stammered,
“Will he be all right? ”
Unable to utter the words,
Ben shook his head.
Scenes flicker on our mindscreens
like scratched newsreels -
tears staining Bernstein’s face,
Eroica and Resurrection
weeping our televised agony,
Oswald doubled over Ruby’s bullets,
a toddler's unbearable salute.
Watching motorcade frames
repeat in slow motion,
we careen on rubber legs:
a nation’s heart shattered in Dallas.
The somber song plays on:
Housemans’s words
Joined with Barber’s melodies:
'With Rue my Heart is Laden.'
April, 2007
Jul 30, 2013
Jul 30, 2013 at 1:25 PM UTC
dimitri was a music man who paid attention to life's subtleties
he chiseled at a block of notes, hammering them down to sculpted perfection
music did he use as a platform to disguise his controversial contexts
distracting his judges with thin air before delving into the matter at hand
a scherzo, to illumine Stalin's atrocities
sewn into the playful boom-chuck, dangerous melodies and complex harmonies
in one instance, the William Tell did he use to comment on
power to the people and their triumph over the regime
it was a strategic ironic play
Rossini's light, airy music brewing with tumult in fact
une blague, a sort of joke to mock society
an unsettling fiddle bit later echoed in the likes of Bernstein
dimitri read his part at a UNESCO convention--
--deadpan, not looking up once from his paper
it was clear, he had his own opinion
a voice rang in the distance, an approaching bell
at a time when all were violently silenced
the opposition cleverly fashioning his statements
one only had to listen to his symphonies to find
dimitri's was a very attuned mind.
Mar 28, 2012
Mar 28, 2012 at 7:39 AM UTC
for Sia and Gia
~
actionable,
seeking perfection,
yet this morning,
an unnecessary.
lying in bed, window gazing,
Barber's Adagio for Strings
fills the inner ear's atmosphere
in tandem, in cahoots
with
a new day's pastel palette,
whose new hues
hew away
half-remembered distasteful recollections
of rapid eye'd drowsed darker dreams.
bereft of cares,
'to do' lists
do not exist,
t'is only merest minorest inconvenience called
gravity,
preventing,
my physic shell from
being jet seat ejected
to ascend heavenly sky'd
even love's labor lost,
a pained yet pleasurable strife,
the best of the best
of a worn and torn cycled life,
all shed, all put to one side
like incidental music.
seeing light earthed birthed,
perfection granted to the early risers,
Massenet's Meditation turn violins
from soothing turns to sudden orchestral tumult,
causing a misstep of doubtful questioning,
a momentarily soul stumbling
crashing cymbalic disintermediation
Copland's Appalachian Spring replaces,
retracting, sealng wax away
all concerning distractions
of my concerting pastoral.
and tho a season too late,
for this is my time,
summer time,
the time of my music,
my seasoned, annualized
concerto with the Earth,
his music is most
well come
these,
the Summer Man's
days of awe,
days of tranquility,
days of simplest tones,
no atonal atonement requests necessary,
for mellifluous harmonious in everything,
perfection is given, not taken,
well received
in calming serenity,
Bernstein's West Side Story then presents,
so out of place
to where I current am,
a natural sensational day beginning
on the very near-to-the-end
of a long isand
(tho the West Side, en veritas, was
my teeming small town community, my noisy, honking
rooting birthplace story)
Lenny composes a dance of reminder that
*somewhere,
there is a remainder,
somewhere,
there is a place for us,
even me.*
and it is
here, now,
in the uncontested sky
over my blue-green grass,
that leads to my Peconic shoreline,
where I hear a new world symphony
of cawing birds and silent bunnies,
dancing deer and zzzzing insects,
completing my
natural composition,
the playlist perfection of
me
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 6:29 PM UTC
Make mine a Bernstein
a double,
Arias for chasers
stir with a lyre
and violins to .
pace out the night.
Jul 11, 2014
Jul 11, 2014 at 5:22 AM UTC
Inevitable
Situations that is unavoidable.
A little nod to Charles Bernstein
A college without students
Facebook without members
*** without a partner
A man without woman
A keyboard without the keys
A bath without soap
Donald Trump without passion
A twitter account without his followers
A night without rest
A day without snapchat
A bank without money
A soap opera without a plot
A Rally against poverty
A poem without rhyme
A nurse without the doctor
A train without the tracks
A death without weeping
A horse without its carriage
A car without its wheel
A wingman without his buddy
A lotto ticket without a dream
A day without a crime
A lady without her *****
A politician without ambition
A bar without alcohol
A patient without insurance
A day without rain
A memory without recollection
Childbirth without fear
A judge without the jury
A school without teachers
A nightmare without vision
A bed without headboard
Sesame Street without bid bird
Football without violence
A seamstress without training
A story without a dialogue
A baby without its mother
An election without voters
A couple without children
Inevitable
~~~~
Mar 29, 2017
Mar 29, 2017 at 8:34 AM UTC
(Song title from “West Side Story” by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim)
My heart is lighter than air,
For I have found a special heart,
An everlasting beating,
From which I’ll never part,
For I have a love that flows deep to my core.
Aug 28, 2012
Aug 28, 2012 at 7:13 AM UTC
Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]
“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
Apr 19, 2024
Apr 19, 2024 at 12:12 PM UTC
After all the crowds had gone, we came to the Rotunda where
Our murdered President lay in state, resting in his coffin there.
We shuffled in with our winds and woods to play a requiem for him.
Leonard Bernstein, with his grey tousled mane, motioned that we should begin.
Our fingers danced upon the strings as wood winds sounded sad and low.
In Life he loved to hear us play and we had loved him too you know.
Notes flowed in the November air, up to heaven for all we know,
Music taking the place of prayer; for many of us its long been so..
We’ve played before Thousands in New York and in concert halls around the world,
But this night we played just for him,
for Massachusetts favorite son.
We played Mahler’s requiem
for an audience of one.
Nov 6, 2016
Nov 6, 2016 at 9:35 AM UTC
Before I woke this morning
this title was peeking through the cobwebs,
eventually waking me before dawn.
Now with Bernstein’s Grofe Grand Canyon Sunrise
is playing before first light, violins barely audible,
mules waking up with their weird wail
ready to hit the high trail.
Those magnificent odd beasts.
My old body still dull,
my left hip protesting the early wake,
my brain puzzling with this title
me saddling the mules
for their trudge down the curvey canyon walls,
young adventurers on their old swaying backs.
Here I am looking out over the trees beyond the back yard
into the gray dawn.
I write with the thought of visiting my old friends
on the poetry website,
they probably wondering where I’ve been for the last several months
with nary a word posted there.
Last night, the Beatles’ White Album played,
those young shaggy heads
awake with popping images
tunes and words tumbling from John and Paul,
they too, like me, oblivious of where the trail would lead.
Put me back together.
That’s what the Great Spirit is trying to do
between my synapses
while they still stir up there in the attic
among the dusty old books and broken furniture
and the all but forgotten dreams there
among the silverfish.
Recently Moses was trying to teach me and the new generation
in Deuteronomy
before they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land.,
his old body still holding on in the mountains
where he would finally be laid to rest.
I never thought I would get anything from that old book
but Moses had one more old mind to reach.
I am grateful his words were preserved
for me before I too make it up
beyond the top of the mountain
finally put together.
Sep 12, 2024
Sep 12, 2024 at 9:04 AM UTC