"kaddish" poems
Cockroaches in striped pajamas
stained by the scent of snow-melted blood
under a compassionate moon.
No reflection to admire
other than the eyes of a thousand
miserable and sordid puppets
with shaven heads and wooden clogged shoes.
God and their souls
murdered by a vile evolution,
crucibles of Jewish remains.
Rabbis and priests,
scholars and the poor:
moving targets with stars on their sleeves.
Naked souls waited,
listening to the gods of old Germany.
“Zieh dich aus! (Take off your clothes!)”
They shouted, pushing
them further into the chamber.
The doors
closed shut behind them.
A deathly fog clouded
among them,
putting them to drown
under a thick green darkness.
Agonized voices
shredded apart
as their nails clawed
at the concrete walls.
Women and children held each other tight,
whispering Kaddish,
hoping and praying.
Twenty minutes
of shouting and stumbling,
Twenty minutes
of spluttering and gargling.
The little ones witness the eyes
of their guardians writhe and turn white,
as their bodies jolted
as their lives were stolen.
The gods finally entered
to clear the room,
to pile the dead onto the carts,
to visit the crematorium.
To finally shovel the mounds of
striped clothing,
to recycle and burn the rest.
But this end comes
as a sweet release
as their ashes
were sent through the chimneys
and into the air
to rest in their graves.
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 3:16 PM UTC
In the dream Ginsberg tells me I am beautiful,
he moves his stool a little closer to mine
to see me in the dull glow of the bar.
I sip at my cocktail as he takes Howl from his briefcase,
tells me Jack loves my baby-blue eyes.
Somewhere at the back of the bar
I can hear the jazz men munching sandwiches,
chatting to the girls who bring them empty beer glasses
for coins to be dropped into, for requests to fill.
The old poet with his Buddhist waistcoat
wants to change the world with his masturbatory atom bomb,
wants the President of the United States
to be silent, to be silent, to be
silent.
So Ginsberg calls the barman Moloch,
wants him to find himself in a wounded page
filled with Christmas catalogues that make the children sing.
It’s a bald-guy thing he tells the beer puller,
‘Look at the jazz boys **** the metal,
sweet sounds, Jimmy The Joe makes , sweet sounds.’
The barman wants the music to end
just long enough for him to miss the woman he loves.
‘So get your heart in a sonnet,’ Ginsy tells him
‘Get your heart in a ******* sonnet, gypsy caravan boy.’
I put my fingers to my temples, try to bring the poems together,
try to imagine the perfect microphone in the Kaddish hand.
Tell me another three line joke, Alan,
tell me the one about the Arabic love call you never heard
when your papyrus was just desert dust.
You know the one, Allen. You know the one.
The jazz boys find their lips as Ginsberg finds his tear ducts;
I want him to chant his evolution into the mind of the sax solo.
‘It’s just us,’ he tells me, ‘we’re saving the world, Johnny Boy,
the greatest minds of my generation were ****** up the ***
so you ungrateful rhyming ******** could put colour on your book covers;
you see Lawrence throwing his spanners into the printing press?
That’s our little revolution: cherubic haiku page numbers
just waiting for the computer evolution to do something worthwhile.’
So Alan sorts his papers and gives that little attention-seeking-cough
the barman has been waiting all night for.
He pours the drinks, cuts the lime,
lets the poets supply their own anecdotes for this one-night-stand
that’s going to set every ******* pulse racing,
every heartbeat breaking for the goatee beard going grey.
In the dream Ginsberg tells me I am beautiful.
I tell him his spotlight is shining.
Dec 29, 2011
Dec 29, 2011 at 5:47 PM UTC
Though I know I’m just
Pleading with my palms -
I say a prayer anyway
May 1, 2019
May 1, 2019 at 4:57 PM UTC
Dora! People with big noses are beautiful!
Anyway, Dora of the Noble Nose
as a single rose
as a solitary diamond
so brilliantly in love with Gilbert!
Married
and years later...
She kept the paper folded
in her jewelry drawer...
the paper from the hospital
that said...
she was pregnant!
With you!
in her jewelry drawer!
Joan, My friend
It was you
she kept as folded treasure
till her death at 82
I read your Kaddish, Dora
I watch the shovels fly
as stones collect like children of the prayers
upon your grave
Thank God, Joanie!
You have no heir
At grief’s end
there’s no one left...
to die of love’s enfolding
leaving everything
to...
Joanie Treasure!
Joanie Only!
To my friend, her mother, and father
May 28, 2017
May 28, 2017 at 10:55 AM UTC
ran into a whispering angel at the cemetery today,
customary to have a small ceremony
when the monument finished,
the grave now well and truly marked,
an unveiling held, the kaddish said,
a small stone
placed upon the monument,
a five thousand year old tradition,
started by Jacob
we line up to place our rock of ages goodbye token,
an opportunity to angel whisper one last goodbye,
but good bye is not on my mind,
no, my own approaching deceasing dead,
for the pains come regular now
in the places that means trouble ahead,
and no one knows but me
so to my friend Al,
who once asked me
where do the poems, the words, come from,
I whisper in your six feet underground ears,
though I swear I hear ya laughing both
right behind me both
at your jokes, and at me,
“see ya soon, buddy, see ya soon”
Jun 30, 2019
Jun 30, 2019 at 5:49 PM UTC
Oh Allen, the moment I read Howl I fell in love, Oh Allen the moment I read Kaddish I cried in beauty. Oh Allen the moment I read an article about so called beat poets I was content.
Allen for no man may ever be as beautiful as you. For no man may ever be as wise as you.
At night I sit reading obbsesevly over the big book named "collected Poems. 1947 to 1997, Allen Ginsberg.
Oh Allen for I love your gayness, oh Allen for I love your talk of obscenety, oh Allen for I love your poems which ring threw my mind during everyday caseual conversation.
I wish for that death could have delayed the taking of your beautiful soul, so we could sit down at Weeds cafe drinking coffee as we read 1861 by Walt Whitman. Or sit down in A new York Jazz club listening to A trio as we read each other's newest work.
When I daze in the light of the day I dream of you Allen. For some dream of sex,hourses or streak I dream of you Allen Ginsberg... I dream of you.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 2:01 AM UTC
Assiduous aster couple
Defendant's of moral code,
Picking plenty of garden truffel's
Elation of electrology gonidium grove
Flex branches
Flexed to granial proportion,
Mad hatter like parkway's
No psychedelic distortion
All is real here
Tis the Jasmine's are kept in Jardiniere's
Kaddish shalt be spoken in different language
Blessed holy every seven years
No keno like chances
All is predetermined fate,
Candles on ourn table
Lap-robes to fit ourn date
A dame to all remission
Whilst Damiana to lax ourn sense
Chocolate bag's of smothered kisses
Ourn bodies to eachother to taste as mints
We shalt leave the world on doorstep
Coronet's upon ourn domes
Coroniform shapely spirit's
Corposants of ourn own ghost
Correlation of childer childe
Chimeres to glaze ourn agile
Fragile as pottery
Ourn story is painted upon!!!!
Jun 5, 2015
Jun 5, 2015 at 11:57 AM UTC
Ninety-Three Daughters of Israel
a Holocaust poem by Chaya Feldman
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
We washed our bodies
and cleansed ourselves;
we purified our souls
and became clean.
Death does not terrify us;
we are ready to confront him.
While alive we served God
and now we can best serve our people
by refusing to be taken prisoner.
We have made a covenant of the heart,
all ninety-three of us;
together we lived and learned,
and now together we choose to depart.
The hour is upon us
as I write these words;
there is barely enough time to transcribe this prayer ...
Brethren, wherever you may be,
honor the Torah we lived by
and the Psalms we loved.
Read them for us, as well as for yourselves,
and someday when the Beast
has devoured his last prey,
we hope someone will say Kaddish for us:
we ninety-three daughters of Israel.
Amen
In 1943 Meir Shenkolevsky, the secretary of the world Bais Yaakov movement and a member of the Central Committee of Agudas Israel in New York, received a letter from Chaya Feldman: "I don't know when you will get this letter and if you still will remember me. When this letter arrives, I will no longer be alive. In a few hours, everything will be past. We are here in four rooms, 93 girls ages 14 to 22, all of us Bais Yaakov teachers. On July 27, Gestapo agents came, took us out of our apartment and threw us into a dark room. We only have water to drink. The younger girls are very frightened, but I comfort them that in a short while, we will be together with our mother Sara [Sara Shnirer, the founder of the Bais Yaakov Seminary]. Yesterday they took us out, washed us and took all our clothes. They left us only shirts and said that today, German soldiers will come to visit us. We all swore to ourselves that we will die together. The Germans don't know that the bath they gave us was the immersion before our deaths: we all prepared poison. When the soldiers come, we will drink the poison. We are all saying Viduy throughout the day. We are not afraid of anything. We only have one request from you: Say Kaddish for 93 bnos Yisroel! Soon we will be with our mother Sara. Signed, Chaya Feldman from Cracow." Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, Chaya Feldman, daughters, Israel, washed, cleansed, pure, purified, immaculate, 93, ninety-three, death, God, prayer, heart, covenant, Torah, Psalms, Kaddish
Mar 13, 2020
Mar 13, 2020 at 5:14 AM UTC
You weren't the poetic one, but I just read Kaddish
and thought of you;
of 1998 beach photo, Sussex somewhere - as I
remember you, perhaps a bit younger;
of sweet peroxide blonde, hiding brunette. I was
naive to the dye 'til I saw 'the Hepburn shot' - that 1950
something print, you in Rembrandt light,
or the black beehive wig in family portrait—
1970ish— dicky bows and cocktail dresses - Dad, aged
seven, in a shirt and trousers;
of youthful snapshots: Portobello Beach, Edinburgh
(4), with parents in Kent (8), your gang of girls some snowy
place (14), painting the house with Raymond in Croydon (20);
of latter digital images, 2012, more gaunt and wrinkled,
but ever-beautiful - seemingly ageless, as you wished;
of care and trust and overdone vegetables, thin gravy,
brussel sprout production lines - beautiful, mundane memories
at Cowfold breakfast bar or Langley Green kitchen tops;
of seaside trips to Shoreham, Portsmouth, Brighton, dogs
homes and holding my hand past the loud ones;
of picking roses from the garden for 'perfume' - sticky
hands, wet floors and beautiful smells;
of early morning rude awakenings, met only with cheer
and offers of tea and toast - I still have your butter tray
(hospitable even in death);
of my brother's wedding, taking time to jive and seem
alive whilst everyone else was dying inside, despite the fact
that it was you, and you only, who should care the most (and
thus, if you didn't, why should we have);
and of that very temperament, infamous tempers never
shown—at least to us—just pure, kind acceptance and
forgiveness.
You weren't the poetic one.
You were; the ninth child of a ****** and his wife
the girl with the Scottish accent
the wife of an engineer from Mitcham
the mother of three, the loser of one
the stern face of discipline
the BT telephone operator, the masseuse
the grandmother of three boys
the ageless face of beauty
the one I remember best
You told me you couldn't recall your siblings' names -
I've looked into it. Ada, Jack, Edie, Emmie, Mabel, Joyce,
Raymond, Terence.
Jul 11, 2018
Jul 11, 2018 at 11:19 AM UTC
There are more poems inside me, but I intuit it is longer fair to impose on you by sharing more. The deep seeded infection of my spirit waxes and wanes, and there is no antidote, and unlike the virus itself, there never will be, a future cure, an inexpensive replacement cost for the spirit spent, the time and futures spirited away.
Perhaps you recall I was one mile away from Ground Zero on September 11th. Rarely do I walk there.
The coronavirus poetry inserts itself unaided, never asking permission, a like minded, but a contra-cousin to the coronavirus.
I live in New York City, the epicenter where now, close to 800 die daily.
Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on Hart island, mostly for people whose families can't afford a funeral, or who go unclaimed by relatives. In recent days, though, burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day.^^
Each dies with no last words, no Kaddish recited, Last Rites, too late, no Ṣalāt al-Janāzah or Om Namo Narayanaya. Each one, a numbered pine coffin, and each one will have at the very least, a poem of their own, so help me god.
Buried side by side in large trench, room plenty for new arrivals,
I hear the banging, protesting, resisting, this is not the way, I was promised, my ears left pounding! Hillel, the great scholar in this dream, reminds that “the time is short, and the work is great.”
He paraphrases, though, “the bodies many, the poems too few.”
There ain’t no anonymity in heaven, but I’ll reconfirm that with you later.
Apr 12, 2020
Apr 12, 2020 at 10:48 AM UTC
THE SUPREME SURREALIST
****** has had
too much.
He has passed
his Art Diploma.
He is very drunk
and happy.
His paintings sell
quite well.
He meets a nice
Jewish girl
gets her in
the family way
does the right thing
by her.
He has 7 children
over seven years.
Dotes on his two
sets of twins.
He is happy.
Changed his style
the one Surrealist everybody
knows
he is interested in History.
Devours books.
The Second World War
doesn't happen.
It's an "...a what if. . ."
People thought it was
all going to blow up back then.
How the history books
got it wrong.
"How many shall pass on and how many shall come to be.."
A ****** now will sell
for quite a bit
at the time of his death
oh...a million or more.
He and Dali
the two most recognisable
moustaches
in the world.
He is a big
Alan Ginsberg fan.
****** dead in '68
there isn't a dry eye in the house
It is the day of Atonement.
His son says
Kaddish.
"No more to say and nothing to weep for!"
Apr 20, 2018
Apr 20, 2018 at 5:20 PM UTC