Inconspicuous, his presence noted only by the obscurity and the ever growing number of spent cigarette stubs that littered the ground.  It had been a long day and the rain, relentless in its tenacity had little intention of stopping, baleful clouds still  hung heavy, dominating the lateness of the afternoon sky, a rain laden skyline broken only by smoke filled chimney pots and the tangled snarl of corroded television aerials.

     The once busy street was fast emptying now, the lure of shop windows no longer enticed the casual browser as local traders closed their premises to the oncoming night, solitary lampposts curved hazily into the distance, casting little more than insipid pools mirrored in the gutter below, only the occasional stranger scurrying home on a bleak, rain swept afternoon, the hurried slap of wet leather soles on the pavement, the sightless umbrellas, the infrequent rumble of a half filled bus, hell-bent on its way to oblivion.

     In the near distance as the working day ended, a sudden emergence of factory workers told Beamish it was 5-o'clock, most would be hurrying home to a hot meal, while others, for a quick drink perhaps before making the same old sorry excuse... for Jack, the greasy spoon would be closing about now, denying him the comfort of a badly needed cuppa' and stale cheese sandwich.  A subtle legacy of lunchtime fish and chips still lingered in the air, Jack's stomach rumbled, there was little chance of a fish supper for Beamish tonight, it protested again... louder.

     From beneath the eaves of the building opposite several pigeons broke cover, startled by the rattle as a shopkeeper struggled to close the canvas awning above his shop window.  Narrowly missing Beamish they flew anxiously over the rooftops, memories of the blitz sprang to mind as Jack stepped smartly to one side, he stamped his feet... it dashed a little of the weather from his raincoat, just as the rain dashed a little of the pigeons' anxiety from the pavement... the day couldn't get much worse if it tried.  Shielding his face, Jack struck the Ronson one more time and cupped the freshly lit cigarette between his hands, it was the only source of heat to be had that day... and still it rained.

     'By Appointment to Certain Personages...' the letter heading rang out loudly... 'Jack Beamish ~ Private Investigator...' a throat choking mouthful by any stretch of the imagination, thought Jack and shot every vestige of credulity plummeting straight through the office window and amidst a fanfare of trumpet voluntary, nominate itself for a prodigious award in the New Year Honours list.   Having formally served in a professional capacity for a well known purveyor of pickled condiments, who  incidentally, brandished the same patronage emblazoned upon their extensive range of relish as the one Jack had more recently purloined from them... a paid commission no less, which by Jack's certain understanding had made him, albeit fleeting in nature, a professional consultant of said company... and consequently, if they could flaunt the auspicious emblem, then according to Jack's infallible logic, so could Jack.  

     The recently appropriated letterhead possessed certain distinction... in much the same way, Jack reasoned, that a blank piece of paper did not... and whereas correspondence bearing the heading 'By Appointment' may not exactly strike terror into the hearts of man... unlike a really strong pickled onion, it nevertheless made people think twice before playing him for the fool, which sadly, Jack had to concede, they still invariably did... and he would often catch them wagging an accusing finger or two in his direction with such platitudes as... "watch where you put your foot", they'd whisper, "that Jack's a right Shamus...", and when you'd misplaced your footing as many times as Jack had, then he reasoned, that by default the celebrated Shamus must have landed himself in more piles of indiscretion than he would readily care to admit, but that wouldn't be quite accurate either, in Jack's line of work it was the malefactor that actually dropped him in them more often than not.

     A cold shiver suddenly ran down his spine, another quickly followed as a spurt of icy water from a broken rain spout spattered across the back of his neck, he grimaced... Jack's expression spoke volumes as he took one final pull from his half soaked cigarette and flicked it, amid an eruption of sparks against the adjacent brick wall.  Sinking further into the shadow he tipped his fedora against the oncoming rain, then, digging both hands deep within his pockets, he huddled behind the upturned collar of his gabardine... watching.

     It was times such as these when Jack's mind would slip back, in much the same way you might slip back on a discarded banana peel, when a matter of some consequence, or in particular this case the pavement, would suddenly leap up from behind and give the back of Jack's head a resoundingly good slapping and tell him to "stop loafing around in office hours... or else", then drag him, albeit kicking and screaming back into the 20th century.  This intellectual assault and battery re-focused Jack's mind wonderfully as he whiled away the long weary hours until his next cigarette; cup of tea, or the last bus home, his capacity to endure such mind boggling tedium called for nothing less than sheer ******-mindedness and very little else... Beamish had long suspected that he possessed all the necessary qualifications.  

     Jack had come a long way since the early days, it had been a long haul but he'd finally arrived there in the end... and managed to pick up quite a few ***** looks along the way.  Whilst he was with the Police Constabulary... and it was only fair to stress the word 'with', as opposed to the word 'in'... although the more Jack considered, he had been 'with' the arresting officer, held 'in' the local Bridewell... detained at Her Majesties pleasure while assisting the boys in blue with their enquiries over a minor infringement of some local by-law that currently had quite slipped his mind at that moment.  Throughout this enforced leisure period he'd managed to read the entire abridged editions of Kilroy and other expansive works of graffiti exhibited in what passed locally as the next best thing to the Tate Gallery, whereupon it hadn't taken Jack very long to realise that it was always a good place to start if you wanted free breakfast, in fact the weeks bill of fare was tastefully displayed in vivid, polychromatic colour on the wall opposite... you just had to be au-fait with braille.
                            
     No matter how industrious Beamish laboured to rake the dirt there always appeared to be a dire shortage of gullible clients for Jack to squeeze, what would roughly translate as an honest crust out of, and although his financial retainer was highly competitive he understood that potential clients found it bewildering when grappling with the unplumbed depths of his monthly expense account, which would tend to fluctuate with the same unpredictability as the British weather, the rest of Jack's agenda revolved around a little shady moonlighting... in fact he'd happily consider anything to offset the remotest possibility of financial delinquency... short of extortion... which by the strangest twist was the very word prospective clients would cry while Jack beavered around the office with dust-pan and brush sweeping any concerns they may have had frantically under the carpet regarding all culpability of his extra-curricular monthly stipend... and they should remain assured at all times... as they dug deep and fished for their cheque books, and simply look upon it as kneading dough, which eerily enough was exactly the thick wedge of buttered granary that Jack had every intention of carving.

     Were there ever the slightest possibility that a day could be so utterly wretched, then today was that day, Jack felt a certain empathy as he merged with his surroundings... at one with nature as it were.  The rain, a timpani on the metal dustbin lids, by the side of which Beamish had taken up vigil, also taking up vigil and in search of a morsel was the stray mongrel, this was the third time now that he'd returned, the same apprehensive wag, yet still the same hopeful look of expectation in his eyes, a brief but friendly companion who paid more attention to Jack's left trouser leg than anything that could be had from nosing around the dustbins that day... some days you're the dog, scowled Beamish as he shook his trouser leg... and some days the lamppost, Jack's foot swung out playfully, keeping his new friend's incontinence at a safe distance, feigning indignance  the scruffy mongrel shook himself defiantly from nose to tail, a distinct odour of wet dog filled the air as an abundance of spent rainwater flew in all directions.   Pricking one ear he looked accusingly at Jack before turning and snuffled off, his nose resolutely to the pavement and diligently, picking out the few diluted scents still remaining, the poor little stalwart renewed its search for scraps, or making his way perhaps to some dry seclusion known only to itself.
  
     Two hours later and... SPLOSH, a puddle poured itself through the front door of the nearest Public House... SPLOSH, the puddle squelched over to the payphone... SPLOSH, then, fumbling for small change dialled and pressed button 'A'..., then button 'B'... then started all over again amid a flurry of precipitation... SPLASH.  The puddle floundered to the bar and ordered itself a drink, then ebbed back to the payphone again... the local taxi company doggedly refused to answer... finally, wallowing over to the window the puddle drifted up against a warm radiator amidst a cloud of humidity and came to rest... flotsam, cast upon the shore of contentment, the puddle sighed contentedly... the Landlady watched this anomaly... suspiciously.

     The puddle's finely tuned perception soon got to grips with the unhurried banter and muffled gossip drifting along the bar, having little else to loose, other than what could still be wrung from his clothing... Beamish, working on the principle that a little eavesdropping was his stock-in-trade engaged instinct into overdrive and casually rippled in their general direction...  They were clearly regulars by the way one of them belched in a well rehearsed, taken-a-back sort of way as Jack took stock of the situation and was now at some pains to ingratiate himself into their exclusive midst and attempt several friendly, yet relevant questions pertinent to his enquiries... all of which were skillfully deflected with more than friendly, yet totally irrelevant answers pertinent to theirs'... and would Jack care for a game of dominoes', they enquired... if so, would he be good enough to pay the refundable deposit, as by common consent it just so happened to be his turn...  Jack graciously declined this generous offer, as the obliging Landlady, just as graciously, cancelled the one shilling returnable deposit from the cash register, such was the flow of light conversation that evening... they didn't call him Lucky Jack for nothing... discouraged, Beamish turned back to the bar and reached for his glass... to which one of his recent companions, and yet again just as graciously, had taken the trouble to drink for him... the Landlady gave Jack a knowing look, Beamish returned the heartfelt sentiment and ordered one more pint.

     From the licenced premises opposite, a myriad of jostling customers plied through the door, business was picking up... the sudden influx of punters rapidly persuaded Beamish to retire from the bar and find a vacant table.  Sitting, he removed several discarded crisp packets from the centre of the table only to discover a freshly vacated ashtray below... by sleight of hand Jack's Ronson appeared... as he lit the cigarette the fragile smoke curled blue as it rose... influenced by subtle caprice, it joined others and formed a horizontal curtain dividing the room, a delicate, undulating layer held between two conflicting forces.

     The possibility of a free drink soon attracted the attention of a local bar fly, who, hovering in the near vicinity promptly landed in Jack's beer, Beamish declined this generous offer as being far too nutritious and with the corner of yesterdays beer mat, flipped the offending organism from the top of his glass, carefully inspecting his drink for debris as he did so.

     A sudden draught and clip of stiletto heels as the side door opened caused Beamish to turn as a double shadow slipped discreetly into the friendly Snug... a little adulterous intimacy on an otherwise cheerless evening.  The faceless man, concealed beneath a fedora and the upturned collar of his overcoat, the surreptitious lady friend, decked out in damp cony, cheap perfume and a surfeit of bling proclaimed a not too infrequent assignation, he'd seen it all before... the over attentive manner and the band of white, Sun-starved skin recently hidden behind a now absent wedding token, ordinarily it was the sort of assignment Jack didn't much care for... the discreet tail, the candid snapshot through half drawn curtains... and the all too familiar steak tartare... for the all too familiar black eye.

     To the untrained eye, the prospect of Jack's long anticipated supper was rapidly dwindling, when it suddenly focused with renewed vigour upon the contents of a pickled egg jar he'd observed earlier that evening, lurking on the back counter, his enthusiasm swiftly diminished however as the belching customer procured the final two specimens from the jar and proceeded to demolish them.  Who, Jack reflected, after being stood out in the rain all day, had egg all over his face now... and who, he reflected deeper, still had an empty stomach.  Disillusioned, Jack tipped back his glass and considered a further sortie with the taxicab company.

     "FIVE-BOB"!!! Jack screamed... you could have shredded the air with a cheese grater... hurtling into the kerb like a fairground attraction came flying past the chequered flag at a record breaking 99 in Jack's top 100 most not wanted list of things to do that day... and that the cabby should think himself fortunate they weren't both stretched flat on a marble slab, "exploding tyres" Jack spluttered, dribbling down his chin, were enough to give anyone a coronary... further broadsides of neurotic ambiance filled the cab as the driver, miffed at the prospect of missing snooker night out with the lads, considered charging extra for the additional space Jack's profanity was taking...

     And what part of 'Drive-Carefully', fumed Beamish, did the cabby simply not understand, that pavements were there to be bypassed, 'Nay Circumvented', preferably on the left... and not veered into, wildly on the front axle... an eerie premonition of 'jemais-vu' perched and ready to strike like a disembodied Jiminy Cricket on Jack's left shoulder, looking to stick its own two-penny worth in at the 'Standing-Room-Only' arrangements in the overcrowded cab... and at what further point, Jack shrieked, eyes leaping from his head as he lurched forward, shaking his fist through the sliding glass partition, had the cabbie failed to grasp the importance of the word 'Steering-Wheel...' someone wanted horse whipping, and as far as Beamish was concerned the sole contender was the cab driver...

     In having a somewhat sedate and unruffled disposition it had fallen to Beamish... as befalls all great leaders in times of adversity, to single handedly take the bull by the horns, so to speak and at great personal cost, alert the unwary passing motorist...  Waving his arms about like a man possessed whilst performing acrobatic evolutions in the centre of the road as the cabby changed the wheel came whizzing around the corner at a back breaking 98 on Jack's ever growing list... and why, Jack puzzled, why had they all lowered their side windows and gestured back at him in semaphore..?  Rallying to its aid, Jack's head and shoulders now joined his shaking fist through the sliding glass partition and into the cabby's face, "Who" Beamish screeched with renewed vigour ,"Who Was The Man", Jack wanted to know... *"a

EFFECTS OF CHILD ABUSE ON PERFORMANCE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL IN KAPYEMIT WARD, TURBO CONSTITUENCY, UASIN-GISHU COUNTY.





BY
ERICK NYAKUNDI
KIS/03013/14




A RESEARCH PROJECTSUBMITED TO THE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY IN THE PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SOCIOLOGY



MAY, 2014

DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, declare that this project is my original work and that it has not been presented in any other university or institution for academic credit.

Signature...............................................­..... Date...................................
ERICK NYAKUNDI
KIS/03013/14






SUPERVISOR
This project has been submitted for examination with my approval as university supervisor
DR. W. O. ABUYA
Signature..................................................­.. Date....................................




DEDICATION
I dedicate this work to my Dad, Mom, my sister Lydia and my lovely brother Dun who contributed in one way or another to make this project to be successful.


















ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank all individuals who contributed and sacrificed their time towards completion of this project.
To my supervisor, for the guidance and support in the development of this research project, His advice and criticism made this project what it is.
Thanks to colleagues and friends for their suggestions, advice and encouragement. To all of you may God bless you abundantly for your tireless effort.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents Page
DECLARATION i
DEDICATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF TABLES vii
LIST OF FIGURE viii
ABSTRACT ix
CHAPTER ONE 10
STUDY OVERVIEW AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 10
1.1 Background of the Study 10
1.2 Research Questions 13
1.3 Research Objectives 13
1.4 Justification of the Study 13
1.5 Significance of the Study 14
1.6 Scope of the Study 15
1.6.1Assumptions of the Study 16
CHAPTER TWO 17
LITERATURE REVIEW 17
2.1 Introduction 17
2.2 Common Forms of Child Abuse 17
2.2.1 Child ****** Abuse 17
2.2.2 Physiological or Emotional Abuse 17
2.2.3 Physical Abuse 18
2.2.4 Child Neglect or Abandonment 18
2.2.4.1 Physical Neglect 19
2.2.4.2 Educational Neglect 19
2.2.4.3 Medical Neglect 19
2.2.5 Child Fatalities 20
2.3 How Child Abuse Affects Academic Performance 20
2.3.1 Child Abuse and Academic Performance 20
2.3.2 Child Abuse and School Image 23
2.3.3 Child Abuse and Dropout Rate 25
2.4 Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 26
2.4.1 Role of Public Regulation 26
2.4.1.1 Nurturing and Attachment 27
2.4.1.2 Social Connections 27
2.5 Theoretical Framework 27
2.5.1 Learning Theory 28
2.5.1.1 Relationship with the Study 28
2.5.2 Family Dysfunction Theory 29
2.5.2.1 Relationship with the Study 29
CHAPTER THREE 30
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 30
3.0 Introduction 30
3.1 Site Description 30
3.2 Research Design 30
3.3.1 Target Population 30
3.3.2 Sample Size and Sampling Procedure 31
3.4 Description of Research Instruments 32
3.4.1 Research Instrument 32
3.4.1.1 Questionnaire 32
3.5 Data Collection Procedure 32
3.5.1 Validity and Reliability of Research Instruments 33
3.5.1.1 Reliability of Research Instruments 33
3.5.1.2 Validity 33
3.6 Data Analysis and Presentation 33
CHAPTER FOUR 35
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS 35
4.0 Introduction 35
4.1 Background Information 35
4.1.1 Age of the Respondents 35
4.1.2 *** of the Respondents 35
4.1.3 Education Level of the Respondents 36
4.1.4 Marital Status 36
4.2 Specific Information 37
4.2.1 Effects of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 37
4.2.2 How Child Abuse Affects Dropout Rate of Students in School 38
4.2.3 Proposed Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 41
CHAPTER FIVE 43
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 43
5.0 Introduction 43
5.1 Summary of the findings 43
5.2 Discussion of the Findings 44
5.3 Conclusion 45
5.4 Recommendations 46
REFERENCES 47

LIST OF TABLES & FIGURES
Table 3.1 Target population 32
Table 3.1 Sample size 33
Table 4.1 Age of the Respondents 36
Table 4.2 *** of the Respondents 37
Table 4.3 Education Level of the Respondents 37
Table 4.4 Marital Status 38
Table 4.5 Effects of Child Abuse on Academic Performance 38
Table 4.6 How Child Abuse Affects Dropout Rate of Students in School 40
Figure 4.1 Views of the Pupils on Abuse 41
Table 4.7 Proposed Strategies that Schools can Employ to Curb Child Abuse 42





















ABSTRACT
Child abuse is the physical, ****** or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. The consequences of child maltreatment can be profound and may endure long after the abuse or neglect occurs. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of child abuse on school performance in Primary Schools in Kapyemit ward, Uasin-Gishu County. The objectives of the study were: To assess the impacts of child abuse on academic performance; to determine the effects of child abuse on schools image, to identify the impacts of child abuse on pupil drop out rate, to investigate the effects of child abuse on pupil transition rate. The study employed a survey study design. The study targeted 160 respondents which includes; 5 Head Teachers, 40 Teachers, 70 Pupils and 35 parents of which a sample size of 48 was obtained from using 30%. Purposive sampling technique was used in selecting the head teachers while simple random sampling technique will be used to select the teachers, Pupils and parents who formed the respondents of the study. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used as data collection instruments. Data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively and presented in form of tables, percentages and frequency. The study helped in the understanding of the effects of child abuse on the school performance, the realization of the roles parents and teachers play in the curbing of child abuse among pupils and raising awareness on the same.
 
CHAPTER ONE
STUDY OVERVIEW AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
1.1 Background of the Study
Child abuse is the physical, ****** or emotional maltreatment or neglect of a child or children. The consequences of child maltreatment can be profound and may endure long after the abuse or neglect occurs. The effects can appear in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, and may affect various aspects of an individual's development (e.g., physical, cognitive, psychological, and behavioral). These effects range in consequence from minor physical injuries, low self-esteem, attention disorders, and poor peer relations to severe brain damage, extremely violent behavior, and death. In extreme cases, child abuse affects the performance of schools in the affected region (Daniel, 1978).
Performance refers to how students deal with their academic studies and how they cope with or accomplish different tasks given to them by their teachers. Performance is also the ability of a school to portray a good image which can influence the public (Decastro, 1978). There are several factors that influence the performance of a school at large, however, there is a critical factor that most researchers have avoided to discuss, and child abuse has been a crucial factor that has contributed to children’s dismal performance. Apart from children’s personal intelligence, child abuse is among then key factors contributing to poor performance of learners. Child abuse can lead to school dropping, emotional trauma or can even be fatal, hence destructing or even terminating the educational ambitions of a child. (Harris, 2005)
Worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO, 2000) approximately 40 million children are subjected to child abuse each year. According to Human Rights Watch (2001) about 30% of all severely disabled children relegated to special homes in the Ukraine died before they reached 18 years of age. UNICEF estimates that two million children died as a result of armed conflict during a recent 10-year period and that another six million were injured or disabled. In Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, over 6.5 million children annually are exposed to unwanted ****** materials over the internet; over 1.7 million of these report distress over exposure to these materials. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department for Children and Families (DCF) define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or other caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child. Child abuse can occur in a child's home, or in the organizations, schools or communities the child interacts with. Each year, approximately one million children around the world are introduced into commercial ****** exploitation despite this problem; these developed countries have put measures to curb the vice. Rehabilitation schools have been formed and introduction of counseling centers as well. Despite the prevalence of child abuse in this developed nations they narrowly affect the academic performance since there are organizations put in place to curb the situation e.g. child associations, guidance and counseling institutions, and school based counseling programs (Giles, 2001)
Concern for victims of child abuse in Africa expressed by the African network of the International Society for The Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN) which gave five main presentations of child abuse: child labor, street wandering, ****** abuse, child battering and abandonment (Elma, 1977). Child labor according to the international labor organization (ILO), about 10 million children less than 15years in Africa are in formal employment, working long hours with poor pay and are exposed to substantial health hazards. Wandering of children refers to children, usually unkempt and with delinquent propensities, living rough in town. The reasons for children taking to the street remain poorly understood particularly in relation to factors in the child rather than parental hostility and economic (Dubowitz, 2002)
****** abuse is another. For example, arranged under-age marriages are common in some parts of the continent and doubt was often expressed as to whether a young girl fully gave consent to being betrothed (Galdsone, 1965). Prevalence rates in Africa are very difficult to ascertain because of the fear of disclosure by victims and lack of proper documentation. Most of the girls by reasons of shame fear or surprisingly respect for their usually older perpetrators. Physical battering is also eminent. Physical abuse of children is widely claimed to berate in the third world; however, there are anecdotes from east Africa skeletal frame or localized body areas of all first attendees aged 0-12 years at this hospital during the four-year period 1 January 1987 to 31 December 1990 (Garbarino, 1975). Sixty-nine of these reports reveals evidence of multiple bone fractures wither without evidence of rib or skull fracture. Abandonment of children to roam around the streets in what we call street children is also eminent in Africa, though valid and adequate information on abandonment are difficult to obtain due mainly to failure of offending parents to show up out of guilt, shame, judicial repercussions or a combination of these. However, some euro-American missionaries identified inter alia breech birth. (Erickson, 2003)
Child protection measures in Kenya are currently not implemented effectively and fully (Galdstone, 1965). Compliance with such legislation would increase if the magnitude of the problem and better knowledge about the factors that put children at risk was available. Additionally, involving stakeholders, especially agencies charged with protection, as well as involving affected children, will highlight the issues and thereby promote adherence to protection policies. Kenyan children, child activists and children organizations are pinning their hopes on the implementation of the Children’s Act to improve the lot of the nation’s youth. The Act, which came into effect on 1 March 2002, puts in place full safeguards for the rights of the child. Its passage was a giant stride in harmonizing the national laws with international agreements which Kenya has signed such as the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 2002)
There is hope that the new legislation will dramatically change the inattention, neglect and abuse towards child rights. The Act outlaws any form discrimination of children, and forbids Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), child prostitution, and child labor, among other forms of abuse. The Children’s Act has immensely improved the lives of many Kenyan children plagued with high illiteracy levels, frequent **** cases and child labor since it guarantees children the right to health and medical care, provision of which is the responsibility of the parents, the extended family and the government (Erickson, 2005).
Cases of child abuse in Uasin-Gishu region have been so eminent in the recent years ((Kenya Media Report, 2004). In the year 2010 and the year 2011, there was a program started to rehabilitate this behavior. This problem is clearly evident when you first arrive in Eldoret town, it is among the towns in the country with the highest number of abandoned children who keep on moving from one Centre to another seeking help from passersby. Parents have developed behaviors of abandoning their children and deliberately sending them to the town so that they can benefit from their borrowing. So to say this has led to child labor in this region. High profile cases of school dropouts have been recorded regarding the environs of this region. Young school children from different locations in Eldoret converge in town to persuade people to offer them financial assistance. Some attend school in numbered days and decide to spend some good number of days out of school.
The communities and societies around tend to assume this situation and term it as norm. A few who might seem concerned lack cooperation from the rest. This has adversely affected the performance of most of schools, hence leading to poor living standards of the people and a poisoned future of a young citizen. The problem has affected learners in regions like many areas in Uasin-Gishu County. It has really affected child development and affected their attendance and performance in school. Little intervention measures has been taken to advocate the holistic development of the children. It was to this reason that the researcher conducted the research in the named above region
1.2 Research Questions
The study was guided by the following questions;
1) What is the effect of child abuse on the academic performance of students in Kapyemit Ward?  
2) What are some of the proposed strategies that schools can employ to curb child abuse?
1.3 Research Objectives
The study was guided by the following research objectives;
1) To identify the effect of child abuse on the academic performance of students in Kapyemit Ward.
2) To identify proposed strategies that can be employed to help curb child abuse.
1.4 Justification of the Study
It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate child abuse prevention into separate categories. For instance, strategies on the societal level include increasing the “value” of children, increasing the economic self-sufficiency of families, discouraging corporal punishment and other forms of violence, making health care more accessible and affordable, expanding and improving coordination of social services, improving the identification and treatment of psychological problems and alcohol and drug abuse, providing more affordable child care and preventing the birth of unwanted children.
Very little analysis has been done to estimate the total cost of preventing child abuse and neglect or the long-term social costs of not preventing it. There is now a move to situate child abuse and neglect within the continuum of intervention which addresses multiple aspects of family behaviors. The efficacy of tackling portions of the problem of child abuse apart from broader societal needs is not known. And, perhaps prevention can only come in tandem with efforts to reduce poverty, improve health care and make children’s issues a national priority. However, despite these constraints, evaluations of prevention programs can be improved by coming to terms with definitions of key varia

The tide collects it all by morning;
The drama and the ***** napalmed across the path.
The scenes at second warning for most had been swept away
Before they wiped the sand from their shoes.

Empty cans of Dutch and Tuborg slouched on the dunes
Are tight-lipped about the Velvet Strand's secret ecosystem;
An underground microcosm;
A peripheral cluster of seething emotions drowned.

Memories of those years - although some expired,
The vestiges take pride of place - hold a cosmic clump of smells,
Tastes, firsts, goosebumps, hangovers, and ends.
I never before understood what I was holding on to.

Winters down in the shelters nearly killed us but we
Huddled through the cold, lit cheap firelogs and
Found our oblivion. It didn't take much for me to develop  
A stagger - tolerance for a lot of things was learned later.

I narrowly recall my first taste of poor judgement and
Hazy-headed stargazing. Six cans of Stonehouse
Dry cider - most of which ended up on the hillside -
Was a ridiculous endeavour that will always be sublime.

At the heart of it, I did it to impress a girl;
The one every boy has or has had that sticks;
Who holds your firsts and your hands and makes
Things simple if only for her complexity;

The one that never fails to bring upon digression when
Pens are involved. Revisiting reminiscence on a jarring note,
I think of my Junior Cert exams and a cross-dressed man
Exposing himself to two uniformed boys behind the public toilets.

This one doesn't stir the joy of the others.
This one I wish would dissolve;
An ugly, awkward blotch on a childhood.

Luckily fondness trumps disgust when recalling that place
Because of sunrises and sunsets absorbed from the roof.
The Summers spent jumping the gap and drowning in the
Heat of the sun were everything.

The fugitive sand between our toes and under finger nails
Became an accepted nuisance, a part of the territory;
A lingering grain or two to drag you back.
I miss waking up with the smell of last night's faded fire.

Never should I love,
For never will you love me.

Never will your deep, blue eyes
Look in mine and read my mind,
Like a psychic running her fingers along the lines of my palms.
Palms that belong to hands you’ll never hold,
And handle with care like you would antique china
And at the same time grip with a firmness that tells me you’ll never let go.
You’ll never let go because you’ll never wrap your soft,
warm arms around me in the first place.
Your soul will never entangle with mine and fill that void
Left by a **** sliced deep within me.

A **** left by my father’s youth,
And my mother’s faith,
Whose knife cut out their acceptance for me
And gouged out my trust in them.

Can’t you see that you are the antidote to my lifelong suffering?
The Accutane to my welted face,
The braces to my crooked teeth,
The nitro to my aching heart
The rhino to my bulging nose
The morphine to my broken mind,
The running to my fading health
Running, running, running away
Far away from this broken house
Where your dreams never do come true and
Where you come out to yourself alone in the bathroom and
Where they can’t ever know the truth because my house is
Where God resides in the attic and
Where Jesus is the only one you should let in your room at night and
Where The Holy Spirit has possessed us all to live a lie because my house is
Where lifelong love is dead at the delivery room
And who is there to blame but me?

Who is there to blame but me?

But none of that matters to you.
It can’t matter to you,
Because all you do is love
And love
And love
And love
And love.

But you never love me.

Each year I have known you
I have reached out farther than the last,
Yearning for something I could never obtain.
Fifteen pushes past Fourteen,
Both of whom fall short of Sixteen’s growing arms,
Which are narrowly outpaced by Seventeen’s spindly, wirey fingertips.

Every Year’s efforts have met the same fate;
Failing to reach their target they instead grasp fruitlessly
Into a dark, brewing storm,
Full of tears,
And of crackling sparks of hope
That are met with the resounding booms of fate
Telling me that I am doomed to be alone.

Telling me that never should I love,
For never will you love me.

But I never listen.
Because I know you too well.
And I know that someday,
Someday soon,
You’ll make the happy accident
Of stepping too close to my many straining hands,
And I’ll pull you near to me
And you’ll realize that you never loved her at all.

And that you always,
always have loved me.

-The Boy Who Loves You Too

A late hour indeed, darkness over land, but
A bright light shines from a moon above
As a shadow sweeps across the surface.
For a moment, it stands emblazoned, precarious
Adumbrated phoenix in the sky,
But it does not flare out.

Sweeping lower, the form resolves,
Alights narrowly on a fine branch.
For a moment, it struggles for balance
But soon it finds a niche, stands true;
Visage of wisdom in the night
But not without flaw

Not the swiftest, lacking in grace
Lost territories in cunctation.
Still, secure in its plumage,
Into the night, ready to fly:
Hunter poised in the trees
It soars aloft

Nearby, another branch inhabited
Not a vision this one, a voice.
A lighter weight, a softer presence
Harmonious to the calm
Tones of beauty to the air
It rings forth

Awhile, this one too struggled
It tried the songs of the mockingbird
Some rang esthetic, others strange,
But now its own song found:
Anthem sung for the heart
Chorus all may hear

Birds of the night. Dark to dawn
Their habits thus have been.
Now with the new morning,
A change in the season;
Mind and Song together to the sky
Light out for the lit horizon …

~D.B. Guy (May 2008)

She stands where the river blows her hair wild

no youth and no favor for her
no hands to clean the salt licks on her skin
her palms are dreams wrinkled dry
yet craving an offer.

You come from a distant land, she says,
heavens bless you.

I got no small change, I respond,
my mind drifts to ponder,

a small change, I need that too,
always hungered for
and faltered through
like I missed the vessel narrowly
to be on the river's other side.

Maybe when I come back,
I turn toward her.

She was gone.

This story is called death of a superhero.

We see the superhero flying at full speed after a getaway vehicle.  A group of armed men just robbed over one million dollars in cash from the bank and are now speeding through the city.  He darts back and forth to dodge the shower of bullets flying at him from the car, which was preventing him from getting any closer.

"I can't let these crooks get away," he grunted to himself as he curved back and forth through the air.

Suddenly he was blind sighted by a large black object coming from the car.  It was a high powered electric tazer.  It hit him in the side and his muscles locked up, he stopped mid air and went crashing down and smacked and bounced on the ground.  This bought the thieves time to escape from his view.  By the time he got out of it and regained control of his muscles enough to fly, the crooks had maneuvered the city like a maze, and he didn't know where to look, they had gotten away.  He looked over several city blocks and couldn't find him, and was forced to give up.

"****" he said to himself.

He flew off to the nearby park and found a secluded spot to meditate and heal.

That was the forth unsuccessful attempt to catch bank robbers this week!



On the news that night

"The Tomerarenai purotto corporation just received over $5 million dollars in donations from an anonymous donor this evening for their new project on Zenchō hill outside city limits.

The project to build a new factory there has been underway for three months now and they've really been moving along thanks to the help of all these private donors that must really believe in their cause, which of coarse is to develop new "greener" technology to help the environment and cut down on pollution.

We have a spokesperson for the organization here with us now how are you?"

"Good and thank you, I'm really honored to be part of this amazing organization and to see such a great turn out of donors for such a good cause.  It's been amazing with over 37 million dollars donated by private, anonymous donors over the last three months, it's amazing..."

About half the city watched that news broadcast stream into their homes on their television sets.



It was about 2am when the superhero came out of his meditative state in the park.  

He got up energized and flew around.

He saw some guy trying to steal some lady's purse, he zipped down and stood right behind the guy without him even noticing.

The guy got the purse turned around and ran right into him and knocked himself down.

"What do you think you're doing?" the superhero said authoritarily.  Then he lunged in grabbed the guy by the shirt at the scruff of the chest.  With his other hand he picked up the lady's purse, handed it to her, and told her to go home and get out of the dangerous night city streets.  Then he flew the criminal to the police station, told them what he had witnessed, and took off.

Suddenly he heard police sirens all over the city they seemed to be closing in on a specific area, the superhero flew to that area to see what was going on.

He found a police sergeant standing next to a cop car, and stopped to ask him what's going on.

"A masked lunatic just killed 19 people and is now trying to escape in a small silver car, we've got every available unit trying to hunt him down."

He wasted no time, taking up in the air leaving a wind in his wake, the superhero started quickly combing the city for a small silver car driving conspicuously.  He found one, and when he flew over it to check it out, all of a sudden he had gunshots being fired at him from inside the car.

"This must be it," he charged the car with full speed but the driver sped up to keep ahead of him.

This isn't going to work, he thought, I should make them think they lost me and follow them secretly and see where they go.

The next time a gunshot was fired the superhero grabbed his chest and purposefully fell down, to make them think he had been shot.  Once their guard was down he followed them in secret.

They drove outside of the city thinking they had lost all tails, down a couple winding roads, then climbed Zenchō hill toward the Tomerarenai purotto corporation's construction spot, then went inside.  

The superhero landed outside the building and contemplated his next plan.  He noticed an open window to an office on the second floor, he carefully peered through the window and saw no one in the office, he flew in and landed on the floor careful not to make a sound above a mouse squeak.  He quietly crept through the empty hallways until he reached the staircase, when he heard voices whispering downstairs, "He's gonna be here any minute/ get everything ready."  

The hero thought he had no time to lose, he took to the air, bolted down stairs and with a loud dramatic voice yelled "Halt!"

"He's here!" they yelled as one of them ran toward a giant device that looked like a satellite dish, and the other one ran and pulled a rope, dropping piles and piles of smoldering coal around the superhero that immediately made him so sick he could barely move.  industrial type smoke was his weakness.  

"We've been planning for you to come here," the guy in the mask said firing up the satellite dish looking weapon and pointing it at him.  

"W-What do you want?" the superhero asked weakened, frail, and short of breath on his hands and knees on the floor.

"To **** you so you won't stand in our way"

The superhero was growing weaker, and weaker, as the giant atomic laser pointed at him started glowing red, I told you this story was called "death of a superhero".

"Death, of a superhero?"  the superhero grunted, "DEATH, of a SUPERHERO!?!" he shouted again, "YOU'VE BEEN ORCHESTRATING MY DEATH!" The superhero yelled at the narrator.  

Yes I have, the narrator said all the people in the room could hear me, I've been planning your death since before you went after that getaway vehicle, I have such omnipotent like power over your world, I'm the reason the taser gave the one's working for these two time to escape, I'm the reason you never checked this place out until everything was ready, and now I get to watch these two **** you, and laugh, knowing that you'll never find me and there's nothing you can do to change events.

Now, the beam was fully charged

"No!" the superhero thought, "up till this point, I thought I had to go along with everything the narrator said, but no!"  He started to slowly manage to get up.

The masked killer hit the button, fired the laser, and killed the superhero instantly.

Wait what?

"You think you can just **** me by saying so," the superhero grunted out louder slowly rising to his feet.  Mentally forcing his body to work even in the presence of his weakness, in reality, contrary to what the narrator said, the beam was still charging.  

"No!" the superhero continued, getting stronger and healthier, "THERE WILL BE NO DEATH OF A SUPER HERO!!!" suddenly the superhero's personal energy was strong enough to clear a bubble around him of fresh air pushing the smoke around it.  He flew through the air at bullet speed and punched the masked killer across the room and out of consciousness.  Then he went for the assistant who was running to the door, in the heat of the moment, the superhero, hitting him up from behind, punched a hole straight through his skull and he fell to the ground head-gored-dead.  The superhero deactivated the laser. and stood and looked around to try and find that supervillian mastermind, the narrator.  

"You will never find me," the narrator said, "I exist in an inexcusable part of your reality."

Then another voice broke through, "I will open up a portal to the narrator for you" the author said, "be wary though, even in his own part of this dimension, he is very frippery and slick, you must not let him break free into you're general reality, lest he end your world."

Suddenly a glowing golden sword appeared in a light before the superhero, he took it and bowed, understanding what he was to do.

A shimmering white and grey portal swirled out of thin air.  He looked at it for a second as it grew outwards until it was big enough for him to walk through.  He slowly marched into it, guard heightened as he did not know what to expect, carrying the glowing golden sword behind his back.

Inside the portal was a large white room where the narrator lived.  there was a large white shelf, four walls and a ceiling, the portal remained open.  

He looked around but didn't see the narrator at first, when he realized the narrator had filled half the room with a thick white fog to mask himself.

"Show yourself you coward!" the hero yelled.  Sudddenly a large fist came out of the fog and punched the superhero right in the face, he stumbled back a few steps, but didn't let it knock him over.  Suddenly a humanoid figure stepped out of the fog, it had a body like a man but a head like a king cobra.

"S--sssss--o" it said, "you found a way to find me," "Hisssssssssssss..."

"I found you and I will destroy you to free my world from your evil," the superhero said.

"Is-s that sssssssssso" the beast said.  "And how do you plan to do that? Hisssssssss".

Then the narrator's eyes widened when he say the glowing gold sword behind his back.

"I will cover myself in armor that that sword can't pierce." He said.

"And an armor appeared around the narrator, except it only appeared to cover his head, and his face was still bare." The narrator said and it happened.

The superhero lunged at the narrator with the sword but the narrator slipped to the right and shot ***** of fire at the superhero, but the superhero dodged.

"And his hand got shaky and it greatly effected his aim," the narrator hissed out.

The superhero swung at the narrator, but missed everytime.

"I've got to steady my aim" the superhero thought to himself, putting most of his energy into his arm to hold it steady.  The narrator backed away from him, hissing and darting back and forth as if antagonizing him, perhaps trying to distract him and his focus.

Suddenly he felt a surge of energy push back from the sword, flow up his arm and flood his body, the sword glowed brighter and he was in control of himself again.

He went after the narrator full force, swinging and jabbing the sword, but the narrator dodged every attack.

"You'll never defeat me!" the narrator hissed.

But while he said that he lost focus, and the superhero swung the sword right into the side of the human part of the body, so deep it hit something metal and stopped.  

"Then he dropped the sword," the narrator said quickly and it happened.  The superhero's hand snapped wide open before his willpower could stop it, and the sword dropped to the ground with a "shink".

Acting super fast, the narrator dropped to the ground and picked up the sword with his teeth, and slithered out of his fake, damaged human body into his true form, a giant king cobra looking snake, covered in a heavy metal armor that was scaly and didn't restrict his movements.  Quickly, he slithered  over to the portal, but the superhero grabbed his lower armor before he got a chance to escape into the hero's world, and used his body to anchor the snake to that spot.

The narrator swung and slithered his body to try to free himself from the hero's hold but he was holding on to well, and the serpent could not escape.  

The hero did not know what to do, he needed to get the sword back and slay the serpent, but he had to keep both hands on him to keep him from getting free.

He had an idea, he used his legs to help anchor the serpent, and climbed him to get to his head to retrieve the sword.  Slowly he worked his way up the snake as he slithered and struggled to get free.  When it seemed inevitable that the hero was gonna get the sword back, the serpent spit it out and it landed next to the door.  Then he shot fireballs out of his mouth at point blank range at the superhero which distracted him enough for him to loose his grasp, and let the serpent break free.  The serpent quickly slithered over to the portal, hissed "goodbye sucker", mouthed the sword once again, and slithered out the portal.

The superhero jumped up and flew after the serpent, and crash landed onto of him on the other side of the now closing portal.  

"The masked murderer woke up and came over to help the narrator," the serpent hissed out.

Suddenly the masked murderer came over and the hero was trying to get him on his side to break the stalemate.

As the snake and the superhero wrestled, the superhero called out to the masked murderer, "Don't help him, if he escapes me now, he'll destroy the world!"

"Don't listen to your enemy," the narrator hissed out, "**** him!"

"Don't listen to him," the superhero tried to reason with him, "he's just manipulating you, everybody, he's the reason you wanted to **** me and do this whole project in the first place, YOU ultimately have free will! and we need to **** him."

The narrator strikes and bit the superhero's arm for telling the masked killer he had free will.  

"What do you need!" the masked ****** shouted when he got over there.  

"**** him" the serpent hissed out!

"The sword!" the hero shouted.

The masked murderer, not knowing what to do, picked up the sword and handed it to the hero.

The superhero used it to pry off a piece of the serpent's armor, poised it into position and struck down.  The narrator shifted his body however so the sword narrowly missed, and curved his tail so the open spot in the armor was underneath him, "Grab him!" the superhero said, hold him steady so I can get a good shot."

The Masked murderer did just that, and the hero drove the sword through the opening and impaled the narrator right there, and actually cut him in two.

"But then the narrator's body sealed at the womb and he slithered free" the serpent said and it happened, and he slithered at full speed toward the same door the masked murderer's assistant tried to escape through, and he was making distance.

"And then a layer of cement formed around the superhero's ankle so he couldn't chase the narrator." and a piece of cement attached to the floor formed around his ankle.

But the superhero made quick work of that, a **** of the leg and it reduced to crumbles and he got up and chased the serpent.

The serpent got outside the door and mumbled something, suddenly the door was a pure steel wall.  Three punches by the superhero weakened the steel and severely dented it, the forth punch and it went flying off and the superhero ran outside and saw the narrator escaping into the brush.  He knew what he had to do, he lunged at him and grabbed him just by the head, and ****** the sword through a hail of fireballs straight into it's mouth, the narrator couldn't speak to reverse that action and he died shortly after.

The antique shop,
a cauldron where memories
from far and near boil and froth,
where chronological order
didn't matter, time stood still,
part real, as much magic,
different lives from distant lands and time
rolled in to one.
Here they met, by chance,a man
and a mysterious woman,with an eye for unusual,
among what was  on display were
things a conman would seek
and also favorite stuff fit for  kings,
artifacts and articles they must have used
or hankered after.

Past uses these museum pieces
as baits for us, secretly preparing us
to surrender before future,
unkind and rude in mind;
he changed roles as both con and king,
there was a constant yes,
she was the mate in each
he couldn't take  eyes  off her,
and she asked what he looks for,

"The famous ****** quilt,
that was to be mine twice before,
I missed making it mine,
narrowly every time"
He wondered how did he
make up that story so quick.
"I can take you to the quilt,
but it isn't here" she said
not a bit  hesitant
He was flabbergasted by
the turn of events,as if
a hidden scripted move shows the way
They left by her car,
she was eloquent about
the effects of the ****** quilt.

As they stood near the ****** quilt,
in this room he thought was part
of an antique shop, the place looked deserted,
and her eyes shone when she suggestively said
"Want to test the effect? Don't be disappointed"
It wasn't. How could one  imagine, that
the quilt can be so voluptuous.

That secret shook him out of his shell,
she had  nothing to do  with antique of any kind,
just another visitor like him, and the quilt
was an ingenious plot she hatched
in keeping with my sudden flourish,
the quilt, was a new addition in her bed
patch worked in silk, light weight,
it wasn't a blanket, but ****** in its very touch
it was them, the moment of adventure they found
had brought the rapture,who would regret?

A bisel: A little
A biseleh: A very little
A breyre hob ich: I have no alternative
A breyte deye hob'n: To do all the talking (To have the greatest say or authority)
A broch!: Oh hell! **** it!! A curse!!!
A broch tzu dir!: A curse on you!
A broch tzu Columbus: A curse on Columbus
A brocheh: A blessing
A chazer bleibt a chazer: A pig remains a pig
A chorbn: Oh, what a disaster (Oh ****! an expletive)
A choleryeh ahf dir!: A plague on you! (Lit., wishing someone to get Cholera.)
A deigeh hob ich: I don't care. I should worry.
A farshlepteh krenk: A chronic ailment
A feier zol im trefen: He should burn up! (Lit., A fire should meet him.)
A finstere cholem auf dein kopf und auf dein hent und fiss: (a horrible wish on someone) A dark dream (nightmare) on your head, hands and feet!
A foiler tut in tsveyen: A lazy person has to do a task twice
A gesheft hob nicht: I don't care
A gezunt ahf dein kop!: Good health to you (lit., Good health on your head)
A glick ahf dir!: Good luck to you (Sometimes used sarcastically about minor good fortunes) Big thing!
A glick hot dich getrofen!: Big deal! Sarcastic; lit., A piece of luck happened to you.
A groyser tzuleyger: A big shot (sarcastically.)
A grubber yung: A coarse young man
A kappore: A catastrophe.
A khasuren die kalleh is tsu shayn: A fault that the bride is too beautiful
A klog iz mir!: Woe is me!
A klog tzu meineh sonim!: A curse on my enemies!
A langer lucksh: A tall person (a long noodle)
A leben ahf dein kepele: A life on your head (A grandparent might say to a grandchild meaning "you are SO smart!")
A leben ahf dir!: You should live! And be well!
A lung un leber oyf der noz: Stop talking yourself into illness! (Lit., Don't imagine a lung and a liver upon the nose)
A maidel mit a vayndel: A pony-tailed nymphet.
A maidel mit a klaidel: A cutie-pie showing off her (new) dress.
A mentsh on glik is a toyter mensh: An unlucky person is a dead person.
A mentsh tracht und Gott lacht: A person plans and God laughs.
A metsieh far a ganef: It's a steal (Lit., A bargain for a thief.)
A nahr bleibt a nahr: A fool remains a fool
A nechtiker tog!: Forget it! (Lit., "A day that's a night.")
A nishtikeit!: A nobody!
A piste kayleh: A shallow person (an empty barrel)
A ritch in kop: Crazy (in the head.)
A schwartz yor: Bad luck. (LIT., A black year)
A schwartzen sof: A bad end.
A shandeh un a charpeh: A shame and a disgrace
A shittern mogn: Loose bowel movement
A shtik fleish mit tzvei eigen: A piece of meat with two eyes (insult)
A shtik naches: A great joy
A shtyfer mogn: Constipated
A sof! A sof!: Let's end it ! End it!
A tuches un a halb: A person with a very large backside. (Lit., A backside and a half.)
A volf farlirt zayne hor, ober nit zayn natur: A wolf loses his hair but hot his nature. "A leopard cannot change his spots."
Abi gezunt!: As long as you're healthy!
Achrahyes: Responsibility
Afn gonif brennt das hittel: "He thinks everyone knows he committed a crime." (a thief's hat burns)
Ahf mir gezogt!: I wish it could be said about me!
Ahf tsores: In trouble
Afh yenems tukhes is gut sepatchen: Someone else's *** is easy to smack.
Ahf zu lochis: Spitefully (Lit: Just to get (someone) angry.)
Ahntoisht: Disappointed
Ahzes ponim: Impudent fellow
Aidel: Cultured or finicky
Aidel gepotchket: Delicately brought up
Aidim: Son-in-law
Ainikle: Grandchild
Aitzeh: Advice
Aiver butelt: Absent minded; mixed up
Alaichem sholom: To you be peace. Used in response to the the greeting Shalom aleichem.
Ale:bais - Alphabet; the first two letters of the Jewish alphabet
Alevei!: It should happen to me (to you)!
Alle ziben glicken: Not what it's cracked up to be (all 7 lucky things)
Alles in einem is nisht do bei keine: All in one (person) is to be found in no one.
Alrightnik: One who has succeeded
Alrightnikeh: Feminine form of "alrightnik."
Alteh moid: Spinster, old maid
Alter bocher: Bachelor
Alter bok: Old goat
Alter Kocker: An old man or old woman.
An alteh machashaifeh: An old witch
An alter bakahnter: An old acquaintance
An alter trombenick: An old ***
An emmisse meisse: An (absolutely) true tale
Apikoros: An unbeliever, a skeptic, an athiest
Arbit: Work
Arein: Come in!
Aroisgevorfen: Thrown out, wasted, (wasted opportunities)
Aroisgevorfene gelt: Thrown out money (Wasted money)
Arumgeflickt!: Plucked! Milked!
Arumloifer: Street urchin; person who runs around
Aydem: Son-in-law
Ayn klaynigkeit: Ya, sure!! (very derogatory)
Az a yor ahf mir.: I should have such good luck.
Az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde!: If my grandmother had testicles she would be my grandfather.
Az mir vill schlugen a hunt, gifintmin a schtecken: If one wants to beat a dog, one finds a stick.
Az och un vai!: Tough luck! Too bad! Misfortune!
Az tzvei zuggen shiker, leigst zich der driter shloffen: If two people say you're drunk, the third one goes to sleep. If two people confirm something, it's true.
Azoy?: Really?
Azoy gait es!: That's how it goes!
Azoy gich?: So soon?
Azoy vert dos kichel tzekrochen!: That's how the cookie crumbles!
B
Babka: Coffee cake style pastry
Badchan: Jester, merry maker or master of ceremonies at a wedding; at the end of the meal he announces the presents, lifting them up and praising the giver and the gift in a humorous manner
Bagroben: To bury
Baitsim: Testicles
Balebatim: Persons of high standing
Balbatish: Quiet, respectable, well mannered
Balebatisheh yiden: Respectable Jews, people of substance and good standing in the community
Baleboosteh: Mistress of the house. A compliment to someone who is a terrific housekeeper. "She is some baleboosteh!"
Balegoola: Truckdriver or sloppy person of low standing.
Balmalocha: An expert (sometimes used sarcastically- Oy, is he an expert!)
Balnes: Miracle-worker
Bal Toyreh: Learned man, scholar
Bal: Sure
Bandit: Menace, outlaw, pain-in-the-neck
Bareden yenem: To gossip
Baren (taboo): Fornicate: bother, annoy
Barimer: Braggart, show-off
Bashert: Fated or predestined
Ba:yekhide - A female only child
Bashert zein: To be destined
Batampte: Tasty , delicious
Batlan: Someone without a trade or a regular means of livelihood
Baysn zikh di finger vos: Regret strongly that........
Becher: Wine goblet
Behaimeh: Animal, cow (when referring to a human being, means dull-witted)
Bei mir hust du gepoylt: You've gotten your way with me.
Be:yokhid - A male only child
Benken: "To yearn for" or "to long for."
Benkshaft: Homesickness, nostalgia
Bentsh: To bless, to recite a blessing
Bentshen lecht: Recite prayer over lit candles on Sabbath eve or Holy Day candles
Beryeh: Efficient, competent housewife
Bes medresh: Synagogue
Bialy: Named for the Polish city of Bialystock, the bialy is of Jewish origin. A Bialy is a fairly large (about 6 inches) chewy round yeast roll. Somewhat similar to a bagel, it has a depression rather than a hole in the centre, and is sprinkled with chopped sauteed onion before baking.
Bikur cholem: Visiting the sick
Billik: Cheap, inexpensive
Bist meshugeh?: Are you crazy?
Biteh: Please
Blondjen: To wander, be lost
Boarderkeh: A female boarder
Boch: A punch
Bohmer: *** (masc.)
Bohmerkeh: *** (fem.)
Boorvisser fiss: Barefoot
Boreke borsht: Beet borsht which the wealthy could afford.
Borekes: Pastries with cheese inside
Borsht: Beet soup
Borsht circuit: Hotels in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, with an almost entirely Jewish clientele, who are fond of borsht; term is used by entertainers
Borviss: Barefoot
Botvenye borsht: Borsht made from beet leaves for the poor.
Boychik: Young boy (term of endearment)
Boykh: Stomach, abdomen
Boykhvehtig: Stomachache
Breeye: Creature, animal
Breire: choice
Bris: Circumcision
Bristen: *******
Broitgeber: Head of family (Lit., Bread giver)
Bronfen: Whiskey
Broygis: Not on speaking terms
B'suleh: ******
Bubbeh: Grandmother
Bubbe maisse: Grandmother's tale.
Bubbee: Friendly term for anybody you like
Bubeleh: Endearing term for anyone you like regardless of age
Bulvan: Man built like an ox; boorish, coarse, rude person
Bupkis: Nothing. Something totally worthless (Lit., Beans)
Butchke: chat, tete-a-tete, telling tales
C
Chai: Hebrew word for LIFE, comprised of the two Hebrew letters, Chet and Yod. There is a sect of Jewish mysticism that assigns a numeric value to each letter in the Hebrew alphabet and is devoted to finding hidden meanings in the numeric values of words. The letter "Chet" has the numeric value of 8, and the letter "Yod", has the value of 10, for a total of 18.
Chaider: Religious School
Chaim Yonkel: any Tom, **** or Harry
Chaimyankel kooternooz: The perennial cuckold
Chaleria: Evil woman. Probably derived from cholera.
Chaleshen: Faint
Challa: Ceremonial "egg" bread. Either round or shaped long. Used on Shabbat and most religious observances with the exception of Pesach (Passover)
Chaloshes: Nausea, faintness, unconsciousness
Chamoole: Donkey, *******, numbskull, fool
Chamoyer du ainer!: You blockhead! You dope, You ***!
Chanukah: Also known as the "Festival of Lights", commemorates the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. Chanukah is celebrated for 8 days during which one additional candle is added to the menorah on each night of the holiday.
Chap a gang!: Beat it! (Lit., Catch a way, catch a road)
Chap ein a meesa meshina!: "May you suffer an ugly fate!"
Chap nit!: Take it easy! Not so fast! (Lit., Don't grab)
Chaptsem: Catch him!
Chassene: Wedding
Chassene machen: To plan and execute a wedding.
Chas v'cholileh!: G-d forbid!
Chavver: Friend
Chaye: Animal
Chazen: Cantor
Chazenteh: Wife of chazen (cantor)
Chazzer: A pig (one who eats like a pig)
Chazzerei: Swill; pig's feed; anything bad, unpalatable, rotten. In other words, "junk food." This word can also be used to describe a lot of house hold or other kinds of junk.
Chazzershtal: Pigpen; slovenly kept room or house.
Chei kuck (taboo): Nothing, infinitesimal, worthless, unimportant (Lit., human dung)
Chev 'r' mann: Buddy
Chmalyeh!: Bang, punch; Slam! Wallop!
Chochem : A wise man (Slang: A wise guy)
Chochmeh: Wisdom, bright saying, witticism
Choleryeh: Cholera; a curse, plague
Choshever mentsh: Man of worth and dignity; elite person; respected person
Chosid: Rabid fan
Chossen: Bridegroom
Chosse:kalleh - Bride and groom; engaged couple
Choyzik machen: Make fun of, ridicule
Chrain: Horseradish
Chropen: Snore
Chub Rachmones: "Have pity"
Chug: Activity group
Chupah: Canopy under which a bride and groom stand during marriage ceremony.
Chutzpeh: Brazenness, gall, baitzim
Chutzpenik: Impudent fellow
Chvalye: Ocean wave
Columbus's medina: It's not what it's cracked up to be. (Columbus's country.
D
Danken Got!: Thank G-d!
Darf min gehn in kolledj?: For this I went to college? Usually said when describing a menial task.
Davenen: Pray
Deigeh nisht!: Don't worry!
Der mensch trakht un Gott lahkht: Man thinks (plans) and God laughs
Der oyg: Eye
Der tate oysn oyg: Just like his father
Der universitet: University
Der zokn: Old man
Derech erets: Respect
Derlebn: To live to see (I should only live to see him get married, already!)
Der oysdruk: Expression
Dershtikt zolstu veren!: You should choke on it!
Di khemye: Chemistry
Di skeyne: Old woman
Di Skeynes: Old women
Di skeynim: Old men
Die goldene medina: the golden country
Die untershte sheereh: the bottom line
Dine Essen teg: Yeshiva students would arrange to be fed by various householders on a daily basis in different houses. (Lit., Eat days)
Dingen: Bargain, hire, engage, lease, rent
Dis fayntin shneg: It's starting to snow
Dis fayntin zoraiganin: It's starting to rain
Dos gefelt mir: This pleases me
Dos hartz hot mir gezogt: My heart told me. I predicted it.
Dos iz alts: That's all.
Dos zelbeh: The same
Drai mir nit kain kop!: Don't bother me! (Lit., Don't twist my head)
Drai zich!: Keep moving!
Draikop: Scatterbrain
Dreidal: Spinning top used in a game that is associated with the holiday of Chanukah.
Drek: Human dung, feces, manure or excrement; inferior merchandise or work; insincere talk or excessive flattery
Drek auf dem teller: Mean spirited, valueless Lit.crap on a plate.
Drek mit Leber: Absolutely nothing; it's not worth anything.
Druchus: The sticks (way out in the wild)
Du fangst shoyn on?: Are you starting up again?
Du kannst nicht auf meinem rucken pishen unt mir sagen class es regen ist.: You can't *** on my back and tell me that it's rain!
Dumkop: Dumbbell, dunce (Lit., Dumb head)
Durkhfall: A flop or failure
Dybbuk: Soul condemned to wander for a time in this world because of its sins. (To escape the perpetual torments inflicted upon it by evil spirits, the dybbuk seeks refuge in the body of some pious man or woman over whom the demons have no power. The dybbuk is a Cabalistic conception)
E
Ech: A groan, a disparaging exclamation
Ech mir (eppes): Humorous, disparaging remark about anything. e.g. "American Pie ech mir a movie?"
Efsher: Maybe, could be
Ei! Ei!: Yiddish exclamation equivalent to the English "Oh!"
Eingeshpahrt: Stubborn
Eingetunken: Dipped, dunked
Einhoreh: The evil eye
Eizel: Fool, dope
Ek velt: End of the world
Emes: The truth
Emitzer: Someone
Enschultig meir: "Well excuuuuuuse ME!" (Can also bu used in a non-sarcastic manner depending on the tone of voice and situation.)
Entoisht: Disappointed
Eppes: Something
Er bolbet narishkeiten: He talks nonsense
Er drayt sich arum vie a fortz in russell: He wanders around like a **** in a barrel (aimless)
Er est vi noch a krenk.: He eats as if he just recovered from a sickness.
Er frest vi a ferd.: He eats like a horse.
Er hot a makeh.: He has nothing at all (Lit., He has a boil or a minor hurt.)
Er hot nit zorg.: He hasn't got a worry.
Er iz a niderrechtiker kerl!: He's a low down good-for-nothing.
Er iz shoyn du, der nudnik!: The nuisance is here already!
Er macht a tel fun dem.: He ruins it.
Er macht zack nisht visindicht: He pretends he doesn't know he is doing something wrong. Example: Sneaking into a movie theatre, or sneaking to the front of a line.
Er toig (****) nit: He's no good, worthless
Er varved zakh: Lit: He's throwing himself. Example: He's getting angry, agitated, ******-off.
Er zitst oyf shpilkes.: He's restless. (Lit., He sits on pins and needles.)
Er zol vaksen vi a tsibeleh, mit dem kop in drerd!: He should grow like an onion, with his head in the ground!
Eretz Yisroel: Land of Israel
Es brent mir ahfen hartz.: I have a heartburn.
Es gait nit!: It doesn't work! It isn't running smoothly!
Es gefelt mir.: I like it. (Lit., It pleases, me.)
Es hot zich oysgelohzen a boydem!: Nothing came of it! (Lit., There's nothing up there but a small attic.)
Es iz a shandeh far di kinder!: It's a shame for the children!
Es iz (tsu) shpet.: It is (too) late.
Es ken gemolt zein.: It is conceivable. It is imaginable.
Es macht mir nit oys.: It doesn't matter to me.
Es iz nit dayn gesheft: It's none of your business.
Es past nit.: It is not becoming. It is not fitting.
Es tut mir a groisseh hanoeh!: It gives me great pleasure!(often said sarcastically)
Es tut mir bahng.: I'm sorry. (Lit., It sorrows me)
Es tut mir vai: It hurts me.
Es vert mir finster in di oygen.: This is a response to receiving extremely upsetting information or news. (Lit., It's getting dark in my eyes.)
Es vet gornit helfen!: Nothing will help!!
Es vet helfen vi a toiten bahnkes!: It won't help (any)! (Lit., It will help like blood-cupping on a dead body.)
Ess vie ein foygl sheise vie ein feirt!: Eat like a bird, **** like a horse!
Ess, bench, sei a mensch: Eat, pray, don't act like a ****!
Ess gezunterhait: Eat in good health
Essen: To eat
Essen mitik: Eating midday or having dinner.
F
Fahrshvindn: Disappeared
Faigelah: Bird (also used as a derogatory reference to a gay person).
Fantazyor: Man who builds castles in the air
Farbissener: Embittered; bitter person
Farblondzhet: Lost, bewildered, confused
Farblujet: Bending your ear
Farbrecher: Crook, conman
Fardeiget: Distressed, worried, full of care, anxiety
Fardinen a mitzveh: Earn a blessing or a merit (by doing a good deed)
Fardrai zich dem kop!: Go drive yourself crazy!
Fardross: Resentment, disappointment, sorrow
Farfolen: Lost
Farfoylt: Mildewed, rotten, decayed
Farfroyren: Frozen
Fargessen: Forgot
Farklempt: Too emotional to talk. Ready to cry. (See "Verklempt)
Farklempt fis: Not being able to walk right, clumsy as in "clumsy feet."
Far Knaft: Engaged
Farkakte (taboo): Dungy, ******
Farmach dos moyl!: Shut up! Quiet. (Lit., Shut your mouth.)
Farmatert: Tired
Farmisht: Befuddled
Farmutshet: Worn out, fatigued, exhausted
Farpitzed: To get all dressed up to the "nines."
Farschimmelt: Moldy or rotten. An analogous meaning could be that a person's mind has become senile.
Farshlepteh krenk: Fruitless, endless matter (Lit., A sickness that hangs on)
Farshlugginer: Refers to a mixed-up or shaken item. Generally indicates something of little or dubious value.
Farshmeieter: Highly excitable person; always on the go
Farshnickert: Drunk, high as a kite
Farshnoshket: Loaded, drunk
Farshtaist?: You understand?
Farshtopt: Stuffed
Farshtunken: Smells bad, stinks
Farshvitst: sweaty
Fartik: finished, ready, complete
Fa:tshadikt - Confused, bewildered, befuddled, as if by fumes, gas
Feh!: Fooey, It stinks, It's no good
Feinkoche: Omelet, scrambled eggs
Feinshmeker: Hi falutin'
Fendel: pan
Ferd: Horse, (slang) a fool
Ferkrimpter ponim: Twisted-up, scowling face
Ferprishte punim: pimple-face
Fet: Fat, obese
Fetter: Uncle (also onkel)
Finster un glitshik: Miserable (Lit., Dark and slippery)
Fisfinger: Toes
Fisslach: (chickens'/duck's) feet, often in ptsha
Fliegel: Fowl's wing
Focha: Fan
Foigel: Smart guy (Lit: bird)
Foiler: Lazy man
Foilishtik: Foolishness
Folg mikh!: Obey me!
Folg mikh a gang!: Quite a distance! Why should I do it? It's hardly worth the trouble!
Fonfen: Speak through the nose
For gezunterhait!: Bon voyage! Travel in good health!
Forshpeiz: Appetizer
Fortz: ****
Fortz n' zovver: A foul, soul-smelling ****.
Frageh: Question
Frailech: Happy
Frassk in pis: Slap in the face
Freint: Friend,
Mr. Fremder: Stranger
Fress: Eat....pig out.
Fressen: Eat like a pig, devour
Fressing: Gourmandizing (By adding the English suffix "ing" to the Yiddish word "fress", a new English word in the vocabulary of American Jews has been created.)
Froy: Woman,
Mrs. Frum, (frimer): Pious, religious, devout
Funfeh: Speaker's fluff, error
G
*** avek!: Go away
*** feifen ahfen yam!: Go peddle your fish elsewhere!
*** gezunterhait!: Go in good health
*** in drerd arein!: Go to hell!
*** kaken oifen yam!: Get lost (Lit: Go **** in the ocean!)
*** mit dein kop in drerd: "Go with your head in the ground." "Stick your head in the mud"
*** platz!: Go split your guts!
*** shlog dein kup en vant!: Go bang your head against the wall
*** shoyn, ***.: Scram! also, Don't be silly!
*** strasheh di vantzen: You don't frighten me! (Lit., Go threaten the bed bugs)
*** tren zich. (taboo): Go **** yourself
Gait, gait!: Come now!
Gait es nit!: It doesn't work!
Galitsianer: Jewish native of Galicia
Gants gut: Very good
Gantseh K'nacker!: "Big Shot"
Gantseh Macher: "Big shot."
Gantseh megilleh: Big deal! (derisive)
Gantseh mentsh: Manly, a whole man, a complete man; an adult; a fellow who assumes airs
Gatkes: Long winter underwear
Geben shoychad: To bribe
Gebentsht mit kinder: Blessed with children
Gebentshte boych: Literally-blesses stomach (womb) (Said of a lady with a fabulous child or children,
Gebrenteh tsores: Utter misery
Gebrochener english: Fractured English
Gedainkst?: Remember?
Gedempte flaysh: Mystery meat
Gedicht: Thick, full, ample
Geferlech: Dangerous
Geharget zolstu veren!: Drop dead! (Lit., You should get killed.)
Gelaimter: Person who drops whatever he touches
Gelibteh: Beloved
Gelt: Money
Gelt gait tzu gelt.: Money goes to money.
Gelt is nisht kayn dayge: Money is not a problem.
Gembeh!: Big mouth!
Gemitlich: Slowly, unhurried, gently
Genaivisheh shtiklech: Tricky, sharp, crooked actions or doings
Genevishe oigen: Shifty eyes
Genug iz genug.: Enough is enough!
Gesheft: Business
Geshmak: Tasty, delicious
Geshtorben: The state of being dead.
Geshtroft: Cursed, accursed; punished
Geshvollen: Swollen, puffed up (Also applied to person with haughty pride)
Get: Divorce
Getchke: Statue
Gevaldikeh Zach!: A terrible thing! (often ironically)
Gevalt!: Heaven Forbid! (Exclamatory in the extreme.)
Gevalt geshreeyeh: good grief ("help" screamed)
Gezunde tzores: Healthy troubles. Troubles one should not take too seriously.
Gezunt vi a ferd: Strong as a horse
Gezunteh moid!: Brunhilde, a big healthy dame
Gezunterhait: In good health
Gib mir nit kain einorah!: Don't give me a canary! (Americanism, Lit., Don't give me an evil eye)
Gib zich a traisel: Get a move on
Gib zich a shukl: Hurry up! (Give yourself a shake)
Gitte neshomah: good soul
Gleichvertel: Wisecrack, pun, saying, proverb, bon mot, witticism
Glezel tai: Glass of tea
Glezel varms: comforting or soothing (Lit: Glass of warmth)
Glick: Luck, piece of luck
Gloib mir!: Believe me!
Glustiyah: Enema
G'nossen tsum emess!: The sneeze confirmed the truth!
Goldeneh chasseneh: Fiftieth wedding anniversary
Goniff: Crook, thief, burglar, swindler, racketeer
Gopel: Fork
Gornisht: Nothing
Got in himmel!: G-d in heaven! (said in anguish, despair, fear or frustration)
Got tsu danken: Thank G-d
Got zol ophiten!: G-d forbid!
Got:Vorte - A good piece of information or short concise Torahy commentary.
Gotteniu!: Oh G-d! (anguished cry)
Goy: Any person who is not Jewish
Goyeh: Gentile woman
Goyim: Group of non-Jewish persons
Goyishe kop: Opposite of Yiddishe kop. Generally used to indicate someone who is not particularly smart or shrewd. (Definitely offensive.)
Greps: Blech; a burp if it's a mild one
Grob: Coarse, crude, profane, rough, rude
Grober: Coarse, uncouth, crude person
Grober finger: Thumb
Groi:halter - Show-off, conceited person
Groisseh gedilleh!: Big deal! (said sarcastically)
Groisser gornisht: Big good-for-nothing
Groisser potz! (taboo): Big *****! Big *****! (derogatory or sarcastic)
Grooten: To take after, to favour.
Groyser finger: *******
Guggle muggle: A concoction made of warm milk and honey for sore throats
Gunsel: A young goose. Also used to describe a young man who accompanies a ***** or a young *****.
Gut far him!: Serves him right!
Gut gezugt: Well said
Gut Shabbos: Good Sabbath
Gut Yontif: Happy Holiday
G'vir: Rich man
H
Haimish ponem: A friendly face
Haiseh vanneh: Hot bath
Haissen: To hate
Haken a chainik: Boring, long-winded and annoying conversation; talking for the sake of talking (Lit., To bang on the tea-kettle)
Hak flaish: Chopped meat
Hak mir nit in kop!: Stop bending my ear (Lit.; Stop banging on my head)
Hak mir nit kayn chainik (arain): Don't get on my nerves; Stop nagging me. (Lit., Don't bang my teapot.)
Halevei!: If only...
Hamoyn: Common people
Handlen: To bargain; to do business
Hanoe hobn: to enjoy
Harte mogen: constipation
Hartsvaitik: Heart ache.
Hecher: Louder
Hefker: A mess
Heizel: *******
Hekdish: Decrepit place, a slumhouse, poorhouse; a mess
Heldish: Brave
Heldzel: Stuffed neck flesh; sort of a neck-kishke
Hendl: Chicken
Hert zich ein!: Listen here!
Hetsken zich: Shake and dance with joy
Hikevater: Stammerer Hinten - Rear, rear parts, backside, buttocks; in the rear
Hit zich!: Look out!
Hitsik: Hothead
Hitskop: Excitable person
Hob derech erets: Have respect
Hob dir in arbel: Lit., I've got you by the elbow (Used as a response to a derogatory remark as you would use "sticks and stones"
Hob nit kain deiges: Don't worry
Hoben tsu zingen un tsu zogen: Have no end of trouble (Lit.,To sing and to talk)
Hobn groyse oygn: To be greedy
Hock mir nisht en chinik: Don't hit me in the head. or Dont' give me a headache.
Hoizer gaier: Beggar
Hoizirer: Peddler (from house to house)
Holishkes: Stuffed Cabbage
Host du bie mir an avleh!: So I made a mistake. So what!
Hulyen: A hellraiser
I
Ich bin ahntoisht: I am disappointed
Ich bin dich nit mekaneh: I don't envy you
Ich darf es ahf kapores: It's good for nothing! I have no use for it. (Lit., I need it for a [useless] fowl sacrifice)
Ich darf es vi a loch in kop!: I need it like a hole in the head!
Ich hob dir lieb: I love you!
Ich eil zich (nit): I am (not) in a hurry
Ich feif oif dir!: I despise you! Go to the devil! (Lit., I whistle on you!)
Ich *** chaleshen bald avek: I'm about to faint (from sheer exhaustion)
Ich hob dich in ***!: To hell with you! (Lit., I have you in the bath house!)
Ich hob dir!: Drop dead! Go flap you ears! (Lit., I have you....!) (Americanism!)
Ich hob es in drerd!: To hell with it.
Ich hob im feint: I hate him.
Ich hob im in ***!: To hell with him.
Ich hob mir fer pacht: I have you in my pocket. (I know you for what you are.)
Ich hob nicht kain anung: I have no idea.
Ich ken dir nisht farfeeren: I can't lead you astray
Ich loif: I'm running
Ich vais: I know
Ich vais nit.: I don't know.
Ich vel dir geben a khamalye: I'll give you such a smack
Ich vel dir geben kadoches!: I'll give you nothing! (Lit., I'll give you malaria or a fever.)
Ich yog zich nit.: I'm not in a hurry.
Ich zol azoy vissen fun tsores.: I should know as little about trouble (as I know about what you are asking me)
Iker: Substance; people of substance
In a noveneh: For a change; once in a blue moon
In di alteh guteh tseiten!: In the good old days!
In di oygn: To one's face
In drerd mein gelt!: My money went down the drain! (Lit., My money went to burial in the earth, to hell.)
In miten drinen: In the middle of; suddenly
Ipish: Bad odor, stink
Ir gefelt mir zaier.: You please me a great deal.
Iz brent mir ahfen hartz.: I have a heartburn.
K
Kaas (in kaas oyf): Angry (with)
Kabaret forshtelung: Floorshow
Kabtzen, kaptsen: Pauper
Kaddish: A mourner's prayer
Kaddishel: Baby son; endearing term for a boy or man
Kadoches: Fever
Kadoches mit koshereh fodem!: Absolutely nothing! (Lit., fever with a kosher thread)
Kaftan: Long coat worn by religious Jews
Kakapitshi: Conglomeration
Kalamutneh: Dreary, gloomy, troubled
Kalleh: Bride
Kalleh moid: A girl of marriageable age
Kallehniu: Little bride
Kalta neshomeh: A cold soul
Kalekeh: A new bride who cannot even boil an egg.
Kalyeh: Bad, wrong, spoiled
Kam derlebt: Narrowly achieved (Lit., hardly lived to see)
Kam mit tsores!: Barely made it! (Lit., with some troubles) The word "Kam," also is pronounced "Kom" or "Koim" depending on the region people come from.
Kam vos er kricht: Barley able to creep; Mr. Slowpoke
Kam vos er lebt: He's hardly (barely) alive.
Kamtsoness: To be miserly
Kaneh: An enema
Kaporeh, (kapores): Atonement sacrifice; forgiveness; (slang) good for nothing
Karabeinik: Country peddler
Karger: Miser, tightwad
Kaseer: enema
Kasheh: Groats, mush cereal, buckwheat, porridge; a mess, mix-up, confusion
Kasheh varnishkes: Cooked groats and broad (or bowtie) noodles
Kashress: Kosher condition; Jewish religious dietary law
Kasnik, (keisenik): Angry person; excitable person, hot head
Kasokeh: Cross-eyed
Katchka: Duck (quack, quack)
Katshkedik (Americanism): Ducky, swell, pleasant
Katzisher kop: Forgetful (Lit., Cat head)
Kaynahorah: Lit: the evil eye. Pronounced in order to ward of the evil eye, especially when speaking of one's good fortune. "Everyone in the family is happy and healthy kaynahorah."
Kazatskeh: Lively Russian dance
Kein briere iz oich a breire: Not to have any choice available is also a choice.
Kemfer: Fighter (usually for a cause)
Ken zein: Maybe, could be
Kenen oyf di finger: Have facts at one's fingertips
Ketzele: Kitten
(To) Kibbitz: To offer unsolicited advice as a spectator
Kibbitzer: Meddlesome spectator
Kiddish (Borai pri hagofen): Blessing over wine on the eve of Sabbath or Festivals
Kimpe:tzettel - Childbirth amulet or charm (from the German "kind-bet-tzettel" meaning childbirth label containing Psalm 121, names of angels, patriarchs
Kimpetoren: Woman in labour or immediately after the delivery
Kind un kait: Young and old
Kinderlech: Diminutive, affectionate term for children
Kish mir en toches: Kiss my backside (slang)
Kishef macher: Magic-worker
Kishkeh: Stuffed derma (Sausage shaped, stuffed with a mixture of flour, onions, salt, pepper and fat to keep it together, it is boiled, roasted and sliced) Also used to describe a person's innards. "You sweat your kishkehs out to give your children an good education, and what thanks do you get?"
(A) Kitsel: Tickle
Klainer gornisht: Little **** (Lit., A little nothing)
Klemt beim hartz: Clutches at my heartstrings
Klaperkeh: Talkative woman
Klipeh: Gabby woman, shrew, a female demon
Klo: Plague
Klogmuter: Complainer, chronic complainer
(A) Klog iz mir!: Woe is me!
Kloolye: A curse
Klop: Bang, a real hard punch or wallop
Klotz (klutz): Ungraceful, awkward, clumsy person; bungler
Klotz kasheh: Foolish question; fruitless question
Kloymersht: Not in reality, pretended (Lit., as if it were)
Knacker: A big shot
Knackerke: The distaff k'nacker, but a real cutie-pie.
Knaidel (pl., k'naidlech): Dumplings usually made of matzoh meal, cooked in soup
Knippel: Button, knot; *****, virginity; money tied in a knot in a handkerchief. Also, a little money (cash, usually) set aside for special needs or a rainy day. (Additional meaning thanks to Carl Proper.)
Knish (taboo): ****** [this translation is disputed by at least one reader]
Knishes: Baked dumplings filled with potato, meat, liver or barley
Kochalain: Summer boarding house with cooking privileges (Lit., cook by yourself)
Kochedik: Petulant, excitable
Kochleffel: One who stirs up trouble; gadabout, busy-body (Lit., a cooking ladle)
Kolboynik: Rascally know-it-all
(A) Kop oif di plaitses!: Good, common sense! (Lit., A head on the shoulders!)
Komisch: Funny
Kopvaitik: Headache
Kosher: Jewish dietary laws based on "cleanliness". Also referring to the legitimacy of a situation. "This plan doesn't seem kosher".
Koved: Respect, honour, reverence, esteem
Krank: Sick
Kran:heit - Sickness
Krassavitseh: Beauty, a doll, beautiful woman
Krechts: Groan, moan
Krechtser: Blues singer, a moaner
Kreplach: Small pockets of dough filled with chopped meat which look like ravioli, or won ton, and are eaten in soup; (slang) nothing, valueless
Kroivim: Relatives
Krolik: Rabbit
Kuch leffel: A person who mixes into other people's business (cooking spoon)
Kuck im on (taboo): Defecate on him! The hell with him!
Kuck zich oys! (taboo): Go take a **** for yourself!
Kugel: Pudding
Kukn durkh di finger oyf: Shut one's eyes to....., connive at......, wink at.....
*** ich nisht heint, *** ich morgen: If I don't come today, I'll come tomorrow (procrastinator's slogan)
Kumen tsu gast: To visit
Kuntzen: Tricks
Kuni leml: A nerd
Kunyehlemel: Naive, clumsy, awkward person; nincompoop; Casper Milquetoast
Kuppe dre: A piece of ***** matter (s--t)
Kurveh: *****, *******
Kush in toches arein! (taboo): Kiss my behind! (said to somebody who is annoying you)
Kushinyerkeh: Cheapskate; woman who comes to a store and asks for a five cents' worth of vinegar in her own bottle
K'vatsh: Boneless person, one lacking character; a whiner, weakling
K'velen: Glow with pride and happiness, beam; be delighted
K'vetsh: Whine, complain; whiner, a complainer
K'vitsh: Shriek, scream, screech
L
Lachen mit yas:tsherkes - Forced or false laugh; laugh with anguish
Laidi:gaier - Idler, loafer
Lakeh: A funnel
Lamden: Scholar, erudite person, learned man
Lamed Vovnik: Refers to the Hebrew number "36" and traditionally each generation produces 36 wise and righteous persons who gain the approbation of "lamed vovnik."
Lang leben zolt ir!: Long may you live!
Lange loksch: A very tall thin person , A long tall drink of water.
Lantslaite: Plural of lantsman
Lantsman: Countryman, neighbour, fellow townsman from "old country".
Lapeh: Big hand
Layseh mogen: Diarrhea
(A) Lebedikeh velt!: A lively world!
(A) Lebediker: Lively person
(A) Leben ahf dein kop!: Words of praise like; Well said! Well done! (Lit., A long life upon your head.)
Lebst a chazerishen tog!: Living high off the hog!
Leck, shmeck: Done superficially (lick, smell)
L'che:im, le'chayim! - To life! (the traditional Jewish toast); To your health, skol
Leffel: Spoon
Leibtzudekel: Sleeveless shirt (like bib) with fringes, worn by orthodox Jews
Leiden: To suffer
Lemechel: Milquetoast, quiet person
Lemeshkeh: Milquetoast, bungler
Leshem shomaim: Idealistically, "for the sake of heaven."
Leveiyeh: Funeral
Lezem gayne: leave them be
Lig in drerd!: Get lost! Drop dead! (Lit., Bury yourself!)
Ligner: Liar
Litvak: Lithuanian; Often used to connote shrewdness and skepticism, because the Lithuanian Jews are inclined to doubt the magic powers of the Hasidic leaders; Also, a person who speaks with the Northeastern Yiddish accent.
Lobbus: Little monster
Loch: Hole Loch in kop - Hole in the head.
Loksch: An Italian gentleman.
Lokshen: Noodles
Lokshen strop: a "cat- o- nine tails"
Lominer gaylen: Clumsy fool (a golem-Frankenstein monster -- created by the Lominer rebbe)
Loz mich tzu ru!: Leave me alone! (Lit., Let me be in peace!)
Luftmentsh: Person who has no business, trade, calling, nor income.
Luch in kup: A hole in the head ( " I need this like a luch in kup").
M
Machareikeh: Gimmick, contraption
Macher: big shot, person with access to authorities, man with contacts.
Machshaifeh: Witch
Maidel: Unmarried girl, teenager
Maideleh: Little girl (affectionate term)
Maiven: Expert, connoisseur, authority
Maisse: A story
Maisse mit a deitch: A story with a (moral) twist
Makeh: Plague, wound, boil, curse
Mameleh: Mother dear
Mamoshes: Substance, people of substance.
Mamzer: *******, disliked person, untrustworthy
Mamzerook: A naughty little boy
Mashgiach: Inspector, overseer or supervisor of Kashruth in restaurants & hotels.
Mashugga: Crazy
Matkes: Underpants
Maynster: Mechanic, repairman, workshop proprietor
Mayster: Master craftsman, champion,
Mazel Tov: Good Luck (lit) Generally used to convey "congratulations".
Me ken brechen!: You can ***** from this!
Me ken lecken di finger!: It's delicious!
Me krechts, me geht veyter: I complain and I keep going.
Me lost nit leben!: They don't let you live!
Me redt zich oys dos hartz!: Talk your heart out!
Mechuten: In-Law
Mechutonim: In-Laws (The parents of your child's spouse)
Mechutainista: Mother-In-Law
Megillah: A long story
Mein bobbeh's ta'am: Bad taste! Old fashioned taste!
Mein cheies gait oys!: I'm dying for it!
Mekheye: An extreme pleasure, *******, out of this world wonderful!
Mekler: Go-between
Menner vash tsimmer: Men's room
Mentsh: A special man or person. One who can be respected.
Menuvel: A person who is always causing grief, can get nothing right, and is always in the way.
Meshpokha: Extended family
Meshugass: Madness, insanity, craze
Meshugeh: Crazy
Meshugeh ahf toit!: Crazy as a loon. Really crazy!
Meshugeneh: Mad, crazy, insane female.
Meshugener: Mad, crazy, insane man
Meshugoyim: Crazy people
Messer: Knife
Me zogt: They say; it is said.
Mezinka: A special dance for parents whose last child is getting married
Mezuzah: Tiny box affixed to the right side of the doorway of Jewish homes containing a small portion of Deuteronomy, handwritten on parchment.
Mies: Ugly
Mieskeit: Ugly thing or person.
Mikveh: Ritual bath used by women just prior to marriage as well as after each monthly cycle. This represents a "spiritual cleansing after a potential to create a new life was not actualized. There are some religious men who also use mikvehs prior to festivals and the Sabbath. Some Chassidim immerse every morning before praying.
Min tor nit: One (or you) mustn't
Minyan: Quorum of ten men necessary for holding public worship (must be over 13 years of age)
Mirtsishem: G-d willing
Mitn derinnen: All of a sudden, suddenly
Mitn grobn finger: Quibbling, stretching a point
Mitzvah: Good deed
Mizinik: The youngest child in an immediate family
Mogen Dovid: Star of David
Moisheh kapoyer: Mr. Upside-Down! A person who does everything backwards. Not knowing what one wants.
Mosser: Squealer
Mossik: Mischief maker, prankster, naughty little boy, imp
Moyel: Person (usually a rabbi) who performs circumcisions.
Mutek: Brave
Mutshen zich: To sweat out a job
Muttelmessig: Meddlesome person, kibbitzer
N
N'vayle: Shroud; inept person
Na!: Here! Take it. There you have it.
Naches: Joy: Gratification, especially from children.
Nacht falt tsu.: Night is falling; twilight
Nadan: Dowry
Nafkeh: *******
Nafkeh ba:is - *******
Naidlechech: Rare thing
Nar: Fool
Nar ainer!: You fool, you!
Narish: Foolish
Narishkeit: Foolishness
Narvez: Nervous
Nebach: It's a pity. Unlucky, pitiable person.
Nebbish: A nobody, simpleton, weakling, awkward person
Nebechel: Nothing, a pitiful person; or playing role of being one
(A) Nechtiker tog!: He's (it's) gone! Forget it! Nonsense! (Lit., a yesterday's day)
Nechuma: Consolation
Nechvenin: To *******
Nem zich a vaneh!: Go take a bath! Go jump in the lake!
Neshomeh: Soul, spirit
Neshomeleh: Sweetheart, sweet soul
Nisht geshtoygen, nisht gefloygen: neither here nor there
Nifte:shmifter, a leben macht er? - What difference does it make as long as he makes a living? (Lit., nifter means deceased.)
Nishkosheh: Not so bad, satisfactory. (This has nothing to do with the word "kosher", but comes from the Hebrew and means "hard, heavy," thus "not bad."
Nisht araynton keyn finger in kalt vaser: Loaf, not do a thing, be completely inactive
Nisht fur dich gedacht!: It shouldn't happen! G-d forbid! (Lit., May we be saved from it! [sad event] )
Nishtgedeiget: Don't worry; doesn't worry
Nisht geferlech: Not so bad, not too shabby (Lit. not dangerous.)
Nishtkefelecht: No big deal!
Nisht gefloygen, nisht getoygen: It doesn't matter
Nisht gefonfit!: Don't hedge. Don't fool around. Don't double-talk.
Nisht getoygen, nisht gefloygen: It doesn't fly, it doesn't fit
Nisht getrofen!: So I guessed wrong!
Nisht gut: Not good, lousy
Nisht naitik: Not necessary
Nishtgutnick: No-good person
Nishtikeit!: A nobody!
Nishtu gedacht!: It shouldn't happen! G-d forbid!
Nit kain farshloffener: A lively person
Nit ahin, nit aher: Neither here nor there
Nit gidacht!: It shouldn't happen! (Same as nishtu gedacht)
Nit gidacht gevorn.: It shouldn't come to pass.
Nit kosher: Impure food. Also, slang, anything not good
Nit heint, nit morgen!: Not today, not tomorrow!
Nito farvos!: You're welcome!
Nitsn: To use
Noch a mool: One more time
Noch nisht: Not yet
Nochshlepper: Hanger-on, unwanted follower
Nor Got vaist: Only G-d knows.
Nosh: Snack
Nosherie: Snack food
Nu?: So? Well?
Nu, dahf men huben kinder?: Does one have children? (When a child does something bad)
Nu, shoyn!: Move, already! Hurry up! Let's go! Aren't you finished?
Nudnik: Pesty nagger, nuisance, a bore, obnoxious person
Nudje: Annoying person, badgerer (Americanism)
Nudjen: Badger, annoy persistently
O
Ober yetzt?: So now? (Yetzt is also spelled itzt)
Obtshepen: Get rid of
Och un vai!: Alas and alack: woe be to it!
Oder a klop, oder a fortz (taboo): Either too much or not enough (Lit., either a wallop or a ****)
Oder gor oder gornisht: All or nothing
Ohmain: Amen
Oi!!: Yiddish exclamation to denote disgust, pain, astonishment or rapture
Oi, a shkandal!: Oh, what a scandal!
Oi, gevald: Cry of anguish, suffering, frustration or for help
Oi, Vai!: Dear me! Expression of dismay or hurt
Oi vai iz mir!: Woe is me!
Oif tsalooches: For spite
Oisgeshtrobelt!: Overdressed woman.
Oisgeshtrozelt: Decorated (beautiful)
Oisgevapt: Flat (as in "the fizz has gone out of it.)
Oi:shteler - Braggart
Oiver botel: Absentminded: getting senile
Okurat: That's right! Ok! Absolutely! (Sarcastically: Ya' sure!) Okuratner mentsh - Orderly person
Olreitnik!: Nouveau riche!
On langeh hakdomes!: Cut it short! (Lit., without long introductions.)
Ongeblozzen: Conceited: peevish, sulky, pouting
Ongeblozzener: Stuffed shirt
Ongematert: Tired out
Ongepatshket: Cluttered, disordered, scribbled, sloppy, muddled, overly-done
Ongeshtopt: Very wealthy
Ongeshtopt mit gelt: Very wealthy; (Lit., stuffed with money)
Ongetrunken: Drunk
Ongetshepter: Bothersome hanger-on
Ongevarfen: Cluttered, disordered
Onshikenish: Hanger-on
Onshikenish: Pesty nagger
Onzaltsen: Giving you the business; bribe; soft-soap; sweet-talk (Lit., to salt)
Opgeflickt!: Done in! Suckered! Milked!
Opgehitener: Pious person
Opgekrochen: Shoddy
Opgekrocheneh schoireh: Shoddy merchandise
Opgelozen(er): Careless dresser
Opgenart: Cheated, fooled
Opnarer: Trickster, shady operator
Opnarerei: Deception
Orehman: Poor man, without means
Oremkeit: Poverty
Ot azaih: That's how, just like that
Ot kimm ich: Here I come!
Ot gaist du: There you go (again)
Oy mi nisht gut gevorn: "Oh my, I'm growing weary."
Oy vey tsu meina baina: Woe is me (down to my toes)
Oybershter in himmel: G-d in heaven
Oych a bashefenish: Also a V.I.P.! A big person! (said derogatorily, sarcastically, or in pity)
Oych mir a leben!: This too is a living! This you call a living?
Oyfen himmel a yarid!: Much ado about nothing! Impossible! (Lit., In heaven there's a big fair!)
Oyfgekumener: Come upper, upstart
Oyfn oyg: Roughly, approximately
Oyg oyf oyg: In private, face-to-face
Oys shiddech: The marriage is off!
Oysznoygn fun finger: Concoct, invent (a story)
Oysergeveynlekh: Unusual (sometimes used as "great.")
Oysgedart: Skinny, emaciated
Oysgehorevet: Exhausted
Oysgematert: Tired out, worn out
Oysgemutshet: Worked to death, tired out
Oysgeposhet: "Well grazed," in the sense of being fat.
Oysgeputst: Dressed up, overdressed; over decorated
Oysgeshprait: Spread out
Oysvurf: Outcast, bad person
P
Paigeren: To die (animal)
Paigeren zol er!: He should drop dead!
Pamelech: Slow, slowly
Parech: Low-life, a bad man
Parnosseh: Livelihood
Parshiveh: Mean, cheap
Parshoin: He-man
Partatshnek: Inferior merchandise or work
Parveh: Neutral food, neither milchidik (dairy) nor flaishidik (meat)
Paskidnye: Rotten, terrible
Paskudnik, paskudnyak: Ugly, revolting, evil person; nasty fellow
Past nit.: It isn't proper.
Patsh: Slap, smack on the cheek
Patsh zich in tuchis und schrei "hooray": Said to a child who complains he/she has nothing to do (slap your backside and yell "hooray")
Patshkies around: Anglicized characterization of one who wastes time.
Patteren tseit: To lounge around; waste time
Payess: Long side-curls worn by Hasidic and other ultra-Orthodox Jewish men.
Petseleh: Little *****
Phooey! fooey, pfui: Designates disbelief, distaste, contempt
Pinkt kahpoyer: Upside down; just the opposite
Pipek: Navel, belly button
Pishechtz: *****
Pisher: Male infant, a little squirt, a nobody
Pisk: Slang, for mouth; insultingly, it means a big mouth, loudmouth
Pis:Malocheh - Big talker-little doer! (man who talks a good line but does nothing)
Pitseler: Toddler, small child
Pitshetsh: Chronic complainer
Pitsel: Wee, tiny
Pitsvinik: Little nothing
Plagen: Work hard, sweat out a job, suffer
Plagen zich: To suffer
Plaplen: Chatter Plats! - Burst! Bust your guts out! Split your guts!!
Platsin zuls du: May you explode
Plimenik: Nephew
Plimenitse: Niece
Plotz: To burst
Pluchet: Heavy rain (from Polish "Plucha")
Plyoot: Bull-*******; Loudmouth
Plyotkenitzeh: A gossip
Ponem: Face
Poo, poo, poo: Simulate spitting three times to avoid the evil eye
Pooter veren: Getting rid of (Lit: making butter)
Pooter veren fon emitzer: Getting rid of someone; eg: "ich geh' veren pooter fon ihr" - "I'm going to be getting rid of her!"
Poseyakh: Rolling out dough
Potchke: Fool around or "mess" with
Potzevateh: ******, someone who is "out of it."
Praven: Celebrate
Preplen: To mutter, mumble
Prezhinitse: Scrambled eggs with milk added.
Prietzteh: Princess; finicky girl; (having airs, giving airs; being snooty) prima donna!
Pripitchok: Long, narrow wood-burning stove
Prost: Coarse, common, ******
Prostaches: Low class people
Prostak: Ignorant boor, coarse person, ****** man
Proster chamoole: Low-class *******
Prosteh leit: Simple people, common people; ******, ignorant, "low class" people
Proster mentsh: ****** man, common man
Ptsha: Cows feet in jelly
Pulke: The upper thigh
Pupik: Navel, belly button, gizzard, chicken stomachs
Pupiklech: Dish of chicken gizzards
Pushkeh: Little box for coins
Pustunpasnik: Loafer, idler
Putz: Slang word for "*****." Also used when describing someone someone as being "a ****."
Pyesseh: A play, drama
R
Rachmones: Compassions, mercy, pity
Rav: Rabbi, religious leader of the community
Reb: Mr., Rabbi; title given to a learned and respected man
Rebbe fon Stutz: A phrase used to explain the unexplainable. Similar to blaming something on the fairies or a mystical being.
Rebiniu: "Rabbi dear!" Term of endearment for a rabbi
Rebitsin: Literally, the rabbi's wife (often sarcastically applied to a woman who gives herself airs, or acts excessively pious) ; pompous woman
Rechielesnitseh: Dowdy, gossipy woman
Reden on a moss: To chatter without end
Redn tzu der vant: Talk in vain or to talk and receive no answer (Lit. , talk to the wall for all the good it will do you)
Redlshtul: Wheelchair
Redt zich ayn a kreynk!: Imaginary sickness
Redt zich ayn a kind in boich: Imaginary pregnancy (Imaginary anything)
*****: Rich, wealthy
Reisen di hoit: Skin someone alive (Lit., to tear the skin)
Reissen: To tear
Retsiche: ******
Rib:fish, gelt oyfen tish! - Don't ask for credit! Pay in cash in advance! Cash on the barrel-head!
Riboyno:shel-oylom! (Hebrew) God in heaven, Master of the Universe
Richtiker chaifetz: The real article! The real McCoy!
Rirevdiker: A lively person
Rolleh: Role in a play
Rooshisher: Definitely NOT a Litvak; coming from Ukraine, White Russia; the Crimea, Russia itself.
Roseh: Mean, evil person
Rossel flaysh: Yiddish refritos
(A) Ruach in dein taten's taten arein!: Go to the devil! (Lit., A devil (curse) should enter your father's father!)
Ruf mich k'na:nissel! - I did wrong? So call me a nut!
Ruktish: Portable table
S
S'vet helfen azoy vie a toytn baynkes: Lit: It will help as much as applying cups to a dead person.
S'art eich?: What does it matter to you? Does it matter to you?
Saykhel: Common sense
Schochet: A ritual slaughterer of animals and fowl.
Se brent nit!: Don't get excited! (Lit., It's not on fire!)
Se shtinkt!: It stinks!
Se zol dir grihmen in boych!: You should get a stomach cramp!
Sh' gootzim: Plural of shaigetz
Sha! (gently said): Please keep quiet.
Shabbes goy: Someone doing the ***** work for others (Lit;, gentile doing work for a Jew on Sabbath)
Shabbes klopper: A resident of a neighbourhood who's job it was to "klop" or bang on the shutters of Jewish homes to announce the hour of sundown on Friday
Shadchen: Matchmaker or marriage broker. There is the professional type who derives his or her living from it, but many Jewish people engage in matchmaking without compensation.
Shaigitz: Non-Jewish boy; wild Jewish boy
Shaigetz ainer!: Berating term for irreligious Jewish boy, one who flouts Jewish law
Shaile: A question
Shain vi der lavoone: As pretty as the moon
Shain vi di zibben velten: Beautiful as the seven worlds
Shaineh maidel: pretty girl
Shaineh raaineh keporah: Beautiful, clean sacrifice. Nothing to regret.
Shainer gelechter: Hearty laugh (sarcastically, Some laughter!)
Shainkeit: Beauty
Shaitel, (sheitel): Wig (Ultra-orthodox married women cover their hair. Some use a shaitel)
Shalach mohnes: Customary gifts exchanges on Purim, usually goodies Shalom - Peace (a watchword and a greeting)
Shamus: Sexton, beadle of the synagogue, also, the lighter taper used to light other candles on a menorah, a policeman (slang)
Shandeh: Shame or disgrace
Shandhoiz: Brothel, *******
Shpatzir: A walk without a particular destination
Shat, shat! Hust!: Quiet! Don't get excited
Shatnes: Proscription against wearing clothes that are mixed of wool and linen
Shav: Cold spinach soup, sorrel grass soup, sour leaves soup
Shayneh kepeleh: Pretty head (lit) Good looking, good thoughts
Shemevdik: Bashful, shy
Shepen naches: Enjoy; gather pleasure, draw pleasure, especially from children
Shidech (pl., shiduchim): Match, marriage, betrothal
Shih:pihi - Mere nothings
****:yingel - Messenger
Shikker: Drunkard
Shikseh: Non-Jewish girl
Shlissel: A key
Shissel: A basin or bowl
*******: Sparse, lean, meager
Shiva: Mourning period of seven days observed by family and friends of deceased
Shkapeh: A hag, a mare; worthless
Shkotz: Berating term for mischievous Jewish boy
Shlak: Apoplexy; a wretch, a miserable person; shoddy; shoddy merchandise
Shlang: Snake, serpent; a troublesome wife; ***** (taboo)
Shlatten shammes: Communal busybody, tale bearer; messenger
Shlecht: Bad
Shlecht veib: Shrew (Lit., a bad wife)
Shlemiel: Clumsy bungler, an inept person, butter-fingered; ***** person
Shlep: Drag, carry or haul, particularly unnecessary things, parcels or baggage; to go somewhere unwillingly or where you may be unwanted
Shleppen: To drag, pull, carry, haul
Shlepper: Sponger, panhandler, hanger-on; dowdy, gossipy woman, free-loader
Shlimazel: Luckless person. Unlucky person; one with perpetual bad luck (it is said that the shlemiel spills the soup on the shlimazel!)
Shlog zich kop in vant.: Break your own head! (Lit., bang your head on the wall)
Shlog zich mit Got arum!: Go fight City Hall! (Lit., Go fight with God.)
Shlogen: To beat up
Shlok: A curse; apoplexy
Shlooche: ****
Shloof: Sleep, nap
Shlosser: Mechanic
Shlub: A ****; a foolish, stupid or unknowing person, second rate, inferior.
Shlump: Careless dresser, untidy person; as a verb, to idle or lounge around
Shlumperdik: Unkempt, sloppy
Shmaltz: Grease or fat; (slang) flattery; to sweet talk, overly praise, dramatic
Shmaltzy: Sentimental, corny
Shmatteh: Rag, anything worthless
Shmeis: Bang, wallop
Shmek tabik: Nothing of value (Lit., a pinch of *****)
Shmeer: The business; the whole works; to bribe, to coat like butter
Shmegegi: Buffoon, idiot, fool
Shmeichel: To butter up
Schmeikel: To swindle, con, fast-talk.
Shmendrik: nincompoop; an inept or indifferent person; same as shlemiel
Shmo(e): Naive person, easy to deceive; a goof (Americanism)
Shmontses:Trifles, folly
Shmooz; (shmuess): Chat, talk
Shmuck (tabboo): Self-made fool; obscene for *****: derisive term for a man
Shmulky!: A sad sack!
Shmuts: Dirt, slime
Shmutzik: *****, soiled
Shnapps: Whiskey, same as bronfen
Shnecken: Little fruit and nut coffee rolls
Shneider: Tailor; in gin rummy card game, to win game without opponent scoring
Shnell: Quick, quickly
Shnook: A patsy, a sucker, a sap, easy-going, person easy to impose upon, gullible
Shnorrer: A beggar who makes pretensions to respectability; sponger, a parasite
Shnur: Daughter-in-law
Shokklen: To shake
Shoymer: Watchman; historically refers also to the armed Jewish watchman in the early agricultural settlements in the Holy Land
Shoymer mitzves: Pious person
Shoyn ainmol a' metse:eh! - Really a bargain
Shoyn fargessen?: You have already forgotten?
Shoyn genug!: That's enough!
Shpiel: Play
Shpilkes: Pins and needles
Shpits: end, the heel of the bread
Shpitsfinger: Toes
Shpitzik: Pointed sense of humour, witty, sarcastic, caustic
Shpogel nei: Brand-new
Shreklecheh zach: A terrible thing
Shtarben: To die
Shtark, shtarker: Strong, brave
Shtark gehert: Smelled bad (used only in reference to food; Lit., strongly heard)
Shtark vi a ferd: Strong as a horse
Shteln zikh oyg oyf oyg mit....: To confront
Shtetl: Village or small town (in the "old country")
Shtik: Piece, bit: a special bit of acting
Shtik drek (taboo): *******; ****-head
Shtik goy: Idiomatic expression for one inclined to heretical views, or ignorance of Jewish religious values
Shtik naches: Grandchild, child, or relative who gives you pleasure; a great joy
Shtikel: Small bit or piece; a morsel
Shtiklech: Tricks; small pieces
Shtilinkerait: Quietly
Shtimm zic: Shut up!
Shtoltz: Pride; unreasonably and stubbornly proud, excessive self-esteem
Shtrafeeren: To threaten
Shtrudel: Sweet cake made of paper-thin dough rolled up with various fillings
Shtuk: Trouble
Shtum: Quiet
(A) Shtunk: A guy who doesn't smell too good; a stink (bad odor) a lousy human
Shtup: Push, shove; vulgarism for ****** *******
Shtup es in toches! (taboo): Shove (or stick) it up your ****** (***)!
Shtuss: A minor annoyance that arises from nonsense
Shudden: A big mess
Shul: Colloquial Yiddish for synagogue
Shule: School
Shushkeh: A whisper; an aside
Shutfim: Associates
Shvach: Weak, pale
Shvachkeit: Weakness
Shvantz: tail, *****
Shvartz: Black
Shvegerin: Sister-in-law
Shvengern: Be pregnant
Shver: Father-in-law; heavy, hard, difficult
Shvertz azayan ***: It's hard to be a Jew
Shviger: Mother-in-law
Shvindel: Fraud, deception, swindle
Shvindeldik: Dizzy, unsteady
Shvitz: Sweat, sweating
Shvitz ***: Steam bath
Shvoger: Brother-in-law
Sidder: Jewish prayer book for weekdays and Saturday
Simantov: A good sign (lit) Often used with mazel tov to wish someone good luck or to express congratulations
Simcheh: Joy; also refers to a joyous occasion
Sitzfleish: Patience that can endure sitting (Lit., sitting flesh)
Smetteneh: Sour cream; Cream
Sobaka killev: Very doggy dog
Sof kol sof: Finally
Sonem: Enemy, or someone who thwarts your success.
S'teitsh!: Listen! Hold on! How is that? How is that possible? How come?
Strasheh mich nit!: Don't threaten me!
Strashen net de genz: Lit., Do not disturb the geese. (You are full of yourself and making too much noise)
T
Ta'am: Taste, flavor; good taste
Ta'am gan eyden: Fabulous (Lit: A taste of the Garden of Eden)
Tachlis: Practical purpose, result
Tahkeh: Really! Is that so? Certainly!
Tahkeh a metsieh: Really a bargain! (usually said with sarcasm)
Taiglech: Small pieces of baked dough or little cakes dipped in honey
Tallis: Rectangular prayer-shawl to whose four corners, fringes are attached
Talmud: The complete treasury of Jewish law interpreting the Torah into livable law
Talmud Torah: The commandment to study the Law; an educational institution for orphans and poor children, supported by the community; in the United States, a Hebrew school for children
Tamavate: Feebleminded
Tamaveter: Feebleminded person
Tandaitneh: Inferior
Tararam: Big noise, big deal
Tashlich: Ceremony of the casting off of sins on the Jewish New Year (crumbs of bread symbolizing one's sins are cast away into a stream of water in the afternoon of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashoneh)
Tateh, tatteh, tatteh, tatteleh, tatinka, tatteniu: Father, papa, daddy, pop
Tate:mameh, papa-mama - Parents
Tatenui: Father dear (The suffix "niu" in Yiddish is added for endearing intimacy; also, G-d is addressed this way by the pious; Tateniu-Foter means G-d, our Father
Tchotchkes: Little playthings, ornaments, bric-a-brac, toys
Teier: Dear, costly, expensive
Te:yerinkeh! - Sweetheart, dearest
Temp: Dolt
Temper kop: Dullard
Ti mir nit kayn toyves: "Don't do me any favours" (sarcastic)
Tinef: Junk, poorly made
T'noim: Betrothal, engagement
Toches: Buttocks, behind, ***** (***)
Toches ahfen tish!: Put up or shut up! Let's conclude this! (Lit., ***** on the table!)
Toches in droissen: Bare behind
Toche:lecker - Brown-noser, apple-polisher, ***-kisser
Togshul: Day school
Toig ahf kapores!: Good for nothing! It's worth nothing!
Traif: Forbidden food, impure, contrary to the Jewish dietary laws, non-kosher
Traifener bain: Jew who does not abide by Jewish law (derisive, scornful expression
Traifeneh bicher: Forbidden literature
Traifnyak: Despicable person; one who eats non-kosher food
Trefn oyfn oyg: To make a guess
Trenen: To tear, rip
Trepsverter: Lit. step words. The zinger one thinks of in retreat. The perfect retort one summons after mulling over the insult.
Trogedik: Pregnant
Trog gezunterhait!: Wear it in good health!
Trombenik: A ***, no-good person, ne'er-do-well; a faker
Tsaddik: Pious, righteous person
Tsalooches: Spite
Tsaloochesnik: Spiteful person
Tsatskeh: Doll, plaything; something cute; an overdressed woman; a **** girl
Tsatskeleh der mamehs!: Mother's favorite! Mother's pet!
Tsebrech a fus!: Break a leg!
Tsedrait: Nutty, crazy, screwy
Tsedraiter kop: Bungler
Tseereh: Face (usually used as put-down)
Tseeshvimmen: Blurred
Tsegait zich in moyl: It melts in the mouth, delicious, yummy-yummy
Tsemishnich: Confusion
Tsemisht: Confused, befuddled, mixed-up
Tsevishe:shtotisheh telefonistkeh - Long distance operator
Tshatshki: Toy, doo-dad
Tshepen: To annoy, irk, plague, bother, attack
Tsigeloisen: Compassionate, rather nice
Tsiklen zich: The cantor's ecstatic repetition of a musical phrase
Tsimmes: Sweet carrot compote; (slang) a major issue made out of a minor event
Tsitskeh: Breast, ****, udder
Tsivildivit: Crazy, wild, overwhelmed with too many choices
Tsnueh: Chaste
Tsores: Troubles, misery
Tsu undzer tsukunft tzuzamen: To our future together.
Tsutsheppenish: Hanger-on; unwanted companion; pest; nuisance
Tsum glik, tsum shlimazel: For better, for worse
Tsumakhn an oyg: To fall asleep
Tsvilling: Twins
Tu mir a toiveh.: Do me a favor.
Tu mir nit kain toives.: Don't do me any favors.
Tumel: Confusion, noise, uproar
Tumler: A noise-maker (person); an agitator
Tut vai dos harts: Heartbroken
Tzadrait: Scattered
Tzedakeh: Spirit of philanthropy; charity, benevolence
Tziginner bobkes: Jocular, truly valueless. Also used to describe black olives. Lit: goat droppings
Tziter: To tremble
Tziterdik: Tremulous or trembling
Tzitzis: Fringes attached to the four corners of the tallis
Tzufil!: Too much! Too costly!
U
U:be-rufen - Unqualified, uncalled for; God forbid; (A deprecation to ward off the evil eye)
U:be-shrien - God forbid! It shouldn't happen!
Umgeduldik: Petulant
Ummeglich!: Impossible!
Umglick: A misfortune; (masc) A born loser; an unlucky one
Umshteller: Braggart
Umzist: For nothing
Umzitztiger fresser: free loader, especially one who shows up only to eat (and EAT!)
Unger bluzen: Bad mood. Swollen with anger.
Ungerissen beheiman: A totally stupid person. Lit., an untamed animal. Not wild, just dumb.
Un langeh hakdomes!: Cut it short! (lit., Without a long introduction)
Unter fir oygn: Privately
Unterkoifen: To bribe
Untershmeichlen: To butter up
Untervelt mentsh: Racketeer
Untn: Below
Utz: To goad, to needle
V
Vahksin zuls du vi a tsibeleh, mitten kup in drerd: May you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground!
Vahksin zuls du, tsu gezunt, tsu leben, tsu langeh yor: May you grow to health, to life, to long years. (Each may me said when someone sneezes)
Vai!: Woe, pain; usually appears as "oy vai!"
Vai is mir!: Woe is me!
Vai vind iz meine yoren: "Woe is me!"
Vais ich vos: Stuff and nonsense! Says you! (Lit., Know from what)
Vaitik: An ache
Valgeren zich: Wander around aimlessly
Valgerer: Homeless wanderer
Vaneh: Bath, bathtub
Vannit: Where (from) "Fon vannit kimmt ihr?" (Where do you come from?)
Vantz: Bedbug; (slang) a nobody
Varenikehs: Round shaped noodle dough stuffed with meat, potato, etc. and fried
Varfen an oyg: To look out for; to guard; to mind (Lit., To throw an eye at)
Varnishkes: Kasha and noodles
Vart!: Wait! Hold on!
Vas:tsimmer - Bathroom, washroom
Vas:tsimmer far froyen - Ladie's room
Vas:tsimmer far menner - Men's room
Vayt fun di oygn,vayt fun hartsn: Far from the eyes, far from the heart. Equivalent to "Out of sight, out of mind."
Vechter: Watchman
Veibernik: Debauchee
Veibershe shtiklach: Female tricks
Veis vi kalech!: Pale as a sheet!
Ve:zaiger - Alarm clock
Vemen barestu?: (taboo) Whom are you kidding? (Lit., Whom are you *******?)
Vemen narstu?: Whom are you fooling?
Ver derharget!: Get killed! Drop dead! (Also "ver geharget)
Ver dershtikt!: Choke yourself!
Ver farblondjet!: Get lost! Go away!
Verklempt: Extremely emotional. On the verge of tears. (See "Farklempt")
Ver tsuzetst: "Go to hell" (or its equivalent)
Ver vaist?: Who knows?
Ver volt dos gegleybt?: Who would have believed it?
Veren a tel: To be ruined
Veren ferherret: To get married
Vi a barg: Large as a mountain
Vi der ruach zogt gut morgen: Where the devil says good morning! (has many meanings; usually appended to another phrase)
Vi gait dos gesheft?: How's business?
Vi gait es eich?: How goes it with you? How are you? How are you doing?
Vi gaits?: How goes it? How are things? How's tricks?
Vi haistu?: What's your name?
Vi ruft men...?: What is the name of...?
Vi ruft men eich?: What is your name?
Viazoy?: How come?
Vie Chavele tsu der geht: Literally: Like Chavele on her way to her divorce; meaning "all spruced up."
Vifil?: How much?
Vilder mentsh: A wild one; a wild person
Vilder chaiah: Wild animal or out of control child or adult
Vilstu: Do you want...
Vo den?: What else?
Voglen: To wander around aimlessly
Voiler yung!: Roughneck (sarcastic expression)
Voncin: Bed bug
Vortshpiel: Pun, witticism
Vos art es (mich)?: What does it matter (to me)? What do I care?
Vos barist du?: (taboo) What are you ******* around for? What are you fooling around for?
Vos bei a nichteren oyfen lung, is bei a shikkeren oyfen tsung.: What a sober man has on his lung (mind), a drunk has on his tongue.
Vos draistu mir a kop?: What are you bothering me for? (Lit., Why are you twisting my head?)
Vos failt zai?: What are they lacking?
Vos gicher, alts besser: The faster, the better
Vos hakst du mir in kop?: What are you talking my head off for?
Vos hert zich?: What do you hear around? What's up?
Vos hert zich epes ne:es? - What's new?
Vos heyst: what does it mean?
Vos hob ich dos gedarft?: What did I need it for?
Vo:in-der-kort - Capable of doing anything bad (applied to bad person; Lit., everything in the cards)
Vos iz?: What's the matter?
Vos iz ahfen kop, iz ahfen tsung!: What's on his mind is on his tongue!
Vos iz der chil'lek?: What difference does it make?
Vos iz der tachlis?: What's the purpose? Where does it lead to?
Vos iz di chochmeh?: What is the trick?
Vos iz di untershteh shureh?: What's the point? What's the outcome? (Lit., What on the bottom line?)
Vos iz mit dir?: What's wrong with you?
Vos kocht zich in teppel?: What's cooking?
Vos macht a ***?: How's it going?
Vos macht vos oys?: What difference does it make?
Vos macht es mir oys?: What difference does it make to me?
Vos macht ir?: How are you? (pl.); How do you do?
Vos Machstu?: How are you? (singular)
Vos maint es?: What does it mean?
Vos noch?: What else? What then?
Vos ret ir epes?: What are you talking about?
Vos tut zich?: What's going on? What's cooking?
Vos vet zein: What will be
Vos vet zein, vet zein!: What will be, will be!
Vos zogt ir?: What are you saying?
Vu tut dir vai?: Where does it hurt?
Vus du vinsht mir, vinsh ikh dir.: What you wish me, I wish you.
Vuhin gaitsu?: Where are you going?
Vund: Wound
Vursht: Bologna
Vyzoso: Idiot (named after youngest son of Haman, archenemy of Jews in Book of esther); also, *****
W
Wen der tati/fater gibt men tsu zun, lachen baiden. Wen der zun gibt men tsu tati/fater, vainen baiden.: When the father gives to his son, both laugh. When the son gives to the father, both cry.
Wen ich ess, ch'ob ich alles in dread.: (Lit. When I am eating, I have everything in the ground.) When I am eating, everybody can go to hell!
Y
Yachneh: A coarse, loud-mouthed woman; a gossip; a slattern
Yachsen: Man of distinguished lineage, highly connected person, privileged character
Yarmelkeh: Traditional Jewish skull cap, usually worn during prayers; worn at all times by observant Orthodox Jews.
Yahrtzeit: Anniversary of the day of death of a loved-one.
Yashir koyech: May your strength continue
Yatebedam: A man who threatens; one who thinks he's a "big shot"; a blusterer
Yedies: News; cablegrams; announcements
Yefayfiyeh: Beauty; woman of great beauty
Yenems: Someone else's; (the brand of cigarettes moochers smoke!)
Yeneh velt: The other world; the world to come
Yenteh: Gabby, talkative woman; female blabbermouth
Yente telebente: Mrs. National Enquirer
Yentzen (taboo): To fornicate, to *****
Yeshiveh: Jewish traditional higher school, talmudical academy
Yeshiveh bocher: Student of talmudic academy
Yeshuvnik: Farmer, rustic
Yichus: Pedigree, ancestry, family background, nobility
Yiddisher kop: Jewish head
Yiddishkeit: Having to do with all things relating to Jewish culture.
Yingeh tsat:keh! - A young doll! A living doll!
Yiskor: Prayer in commemoration of the dead (Lit., May God remember.)
Yom Kippur: Day of Atonement (the most holy of holy days of the Jewish calendar)
Yontefdik: Festive, holiday-ish; sharp (referring to clothes)
Yortseit: Anniversary of the day of death of parents or relatives; yearly remembrance
Yoysher: Justice, fairness, integrity
Yukel: Buffoon
(A) Yung mit bainer!: A powerhouse! Strongly built person
Yung un alt: Young and old
Yungatsh: Street-urchin, scamp, young rogue
Yungermantshik: A young, vigorous lad; A newlywed
Yusoimeh: Orphan
Z
Zaft: Juice
Zaftik: Pleasantly plump and pretty. Sensuous looking (Lit., juicy)
Zaftikeh moid!: Sexually attractive girl
Zaideh: Grandfather
Zaier gut: O.K. (Lit., very good)
Zaier shain gezogt!: Well said! (Lit., Very beautifully said!)
Zee est vee a feigele: She eats like a bird
Zeh nor, zeh nor!: Look here, look here!
Zei (t) gezunt: Be well! Goodbye! Farewell
Zei mir frailich!: Be Happy!
Zei mir gezunt!: Be well!
Zei mir matriach: Be at pains to... Please; make an effort.
Zei nit a nar!: Don't be a fool!
Zei nit kain vyzoso!: Don't be an idiot! Don't be a **** fool!
Zeit azoy gut: Please (Lit., Be so good)
Zeit ir doch ahfen ferd!: You're all set! (Lit., You're on the horse!)
Zeit (mir) moychel: Excuse me! Be so good as...Forgive me!
Zelig: Blessed (used mostly among German Jews in recalling a beloved deceased ----- mama zelig)
Zeltenkeit: Rare thing
Zetz: Shove, push, bang! Also slang for a ****** experience (taboo)
Zhaleven: To be sparing, miserly
Zhlob: A ****; slob, uncouth
Zhu met (mir) in kop: A buzzing in one's (mind) head
Zhulik: Faker
Zi farmacht nit dos moyl: She doesn't stop talking (Lit., She doesn't close her mouth)
Zindik nit: Don't complain. Don't tempt the Gods.
Zingen: To sing
Ziseh neshomeh: Sweet soul
Ziseh raidelech: Sweet talk
Ziskeit: Sweetness, sweetheart, (Also endearing term for a child)
Zitsen ahf shpilkes: Sitting on pins and needles; to fidget
Zitsen shiveh: Sit in mourning (Shiveh means 7 which is the number of days in the period of mourning
Zitsflaish: Patience (Lit., Sitting meat)
Zog a por verter: Say a few words!
Zogen a ligen: Tell a lie
Zogerkeh: Woman who leads the prayers in the women's section in the synagogue
Zoineh: *******
Zok nit kin vey: Don't worry about it (Lit: Do not say woe)
Zol dich chapen beim boych.: You should get a stomach cramp!
Zol dir klappen in kop!: It should bang in your head (the way it is bothering me!)
Zol er tsebrechen a fus!: May he break a leg! He should break a leg!
Zol es brennen!: The hell with it! (Lit., Let it burn!)
Zol Got mir helfen: May God help me!
Zol Got ophiten!: May God prevent!
Zol ich azoy vissen fun tsores!: I haven't got the faintest idea! (Lit., I should so know from trouble as I know about this!)
Zol makekhs voxen offen tsung!: Pimples should grow on your tongue!
Zol vaksen tzibbelis fun pipek!: Onions should grow from your bellybutton!
Zol ze vaksen ze ve a tsibble mit de kopin dreid: You should grow like an onion with your head in the ground.
Zol zein!: Let it be! That's all!
Zol zein azoy!: O.K.! Let it be so!
Zol zein gezunt!: Be well!
Zol zein mit glik!: Good luck!
Zol zein shah!: Be quiet. Shut up!!
Zol zein shtil!: Silence! Let's have some quiet!
Zolst geshvollen veren vi a barg!: You should swell up like a mountain!
Zolst helfen vi a toyten bankes: It helps like like cupping helps a dead person.
Zolst hobn tzen haizer, yeder hoiz zol hobn tzen tzimern, in yeder tzimer zoln zain tzen betn un zolst zij kaiklen fun ein bet in der tzweiter mit cadojes!: I wish you to have ten houses, each house with ten rooms, each room with ten beds and you should roll from one bed to the other with cholera. (not a very nice thing to say.)
Zolst leben un zein gezunt!: You should live and be well!
Zolst ligen in drerd!: Drop dead! (Lit., You should lie in the earth!)
Zolst nit vissen fun kain shlechts.: You shouldn't know from evil.
Zolst es shtipin in toches!: (taboo) Shove it up your ******!
Zolst zein vi a lom:am tug sollst di hangen, in der nacht sollst di brennen - You should be like a lamp, you should hang during the day and burn during the night!
Zolstu azoy laiben!: You should live so!
Zorg zich nit!: Don't worry!
Zuninkeh!: Dear son! Darling son!

Do you know what *****?
Not being good at everything.
I sat down at the piano
To practice for the umpteenth time
Millions of thoughts rush through my head:
My form *****
I can't hit the right notes
My fingers don't want to work together
I can barely read the music
I will never be able to do this
I ****.
I was born to believe that I needed to be the best
At everything I did
To please my parents
And get the recognition I deserved.
The truthful "well done" from my mother.
But there came a time where getting A's is all they expected from me
So when I would get above and beyond 100 percents
I got nothing
No well done, no good job.
Yet my brother who would narrowly pass his spelling tests
Would get commended for his work.
Pushing myself harder and harder to be the best
Every second of every day
Has lead me to be unhappy whenever something isn't to the level I think it should be.
I know that perfection is impossible
And that you can't be good at everything.
But every time I fail
It feels like I'm dying a little inside.
Frustration. Anger. Depression.
I can barely hold it all together.
This pressure to be perfect may seem unbearable,
But it's my way of life.
Without it, I have no idea who I would be.

We are flighty creatures
Always narrowly escape love
Tip-toeing the tepid water of
Forever or not-at-all

Dancing the day-rentals of
Bridesmaid and groomsman
Always hastily tucks in
Always casually skirts out

Dig in and fly out
Flying away before digging in
Day dream the day dreams come true
Dream the day dream I will say to you:

All                                                        ­                               just
I                                                           ­         so                   you
want                                    I                    ­                          to
is                                  ­                                                       back
to                   can                                                              ­ fly
fall                                                         ­                             to
so                               ­                                                         time
dee­ply                                                              ­                  life
in                                        ­                                                a
love                                                            ­                         take
with                                                        ­                            will
you                             ­          that                                        It

H arrowing abundance rife with result
O ur minds narrowly try to cope
U nder pressure facades and near **** haute
R estricts the leisure of bare beauty
G rowing impatient by the cover of makeup
L oving imperfection is now a rare duty
A ttributes of wear benign hope and
S ecede scars born of cataclysm while
S carcely inhibiting a chance to forgive them

That day was brutally hot, and the cannon incessantly roared
It was the twenty eighth of June in the third year of the war.
Mary Hays was with her soldier, John, as he fought against the King.
Men would call out “Molly Pitcher” and she brought water from a spring.

The action began badly; Cornwallis pushing back Charles Lee.
Who’d have bet a continental that this would be a victory?
Then Washington brought up fresh troops and held Cornwallis back
Rebel cannon from Hays’ battery stalled Cornwallis’ attack.

John Hays , at his cannon, had succumbed to wounds and heat.
But his gun must not go silent or we would go down to defeat.
That was when Mary Hays decided she would take her husband’s place.
She ran to serve his cannon and kept up the firing pace.
She narrowly avoided death when the Redcoats returned fire
But bravely stood her ground and fought, and a legend was inspired.

Mary Hays survived the war and lived a ripe old age.
She was honored for her service and a State pension was paid.
That day at Monmouth Court House, we proved we could stand and fight.
The British army left the field in the darkness of that night.

I don’t know what I’m reading.

I stare and stare and stare at the book given to me by my professor but can’t bring myself to open it, because I don’t know what I’m reading. It’s not in a foreign language that I’m having a hard time translating, because ironically, that would be far too easy. It’s in my native language, the words registering to my brain like breathing, but I still don’t know what I’m reading.

What are these authors saying, as they twist and weave their words into a world that everyone around me seems to understand? I can see the surface level of what the author is trying to say, and if I try hard enough I know I can scratch at it to see the layer right underneath, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

“Don’t give excuses,” my professor says, and I know it comes across as an excuse as I try to explain that I can’t tell anyone what the underlying meaning of this scene means, or the symbolism it’s supposed to represent, since it goes flying over my head like a bird narrowly avoiding collision.

“You need to participate,” my professor says, and I know I need to try but how can I when everything that takes ages for me to think of is said within the first five minutes of class discussion? What takes me an hour takes my classmates a minute; what takes time for me to raise my hand for takes my classmates to the next topic, my contribution long past relevant.

How do I survive college this way? How do I get by when writing is what I’m good at, but I can’t understand the writing of other authors and poets who put just as much work into their stories as I do? I am a fraud; the looks of confusion and shame I receive when I state my major to the world are well-deserved.

“Could you share with the class?” my professor asks before we are dismissed, the eyes of my classmates tearing into my soul as I try to bring the words to my lips that I know will never come. What could I say to everyone that expects an intelligent conversation from a college senior?

“I’m sorry professor,” I say. “I can’t.” And I sag under the weight of disappointment.

It’s not my fault, after all. I don’t know what I’m reading.

I wish to peer at Paris, under-dressed and ***** in all of its neoclassical splendor.

For that, there are things I would give up.

I wish to see a prehistoric forest, verdant, overgrown and jumbled.
Before evergreen mysteries I would be ever humbled.

For that, there are things I would give up.

I wish to see Rhodian gardens and from them, smell the flowering fig and taste succulent honey suckle.
I wish to glimpse zaftig temptresses dancing twenty thick amidst courtyards of ancient Persian palaces.

For that, there are things I would give up.

I wish to be blessed into an inenarrable life on an unalike mysterious planet.
I wish for an Atlas resembling and proportionate soul.

For that, there are things I would give up.

I've demanded an even temperament from my unruly emotions.
I've settled for continuous disbelief at the loquacious ignobleness of humanity.

For change, there are things I would give up.

I've sequestered my innocent dreams and bloomed monetary means.
I've avoided death narrowly, my fingers gripping, fear will always transfix, while barreling down 36'.
I've inhaled profits and installed transformation.

For change, there are things I would give up.

I've burned my midnight oil, taken offensive slander, and burned bridges with gratuitous candor.
I've witnessed coal falsify a beautiful gloaming sky.
I've had gasoline dreams filled and fuming with intensity, all drowning under an ocean of oil.
I've envisioned bleached beaches to hide stained soil.

These are moments I would give up.

There are things I've realized outside my reality, outside my internal soliloquy and physical tactility.
I've come to understand my words are nothing more than symbols on a closed door.

I imagine, this is what I’ll trademark
The impossibly early morning commute
I’m still drunk
It’s 6AM
And I’m still wearing my shoes

My phone sings with an urgency
It ferries the exhausting burden of responsibility

It’s 6AM
I’ll keep reminding you
Or myself
Because I have to

sigh

****

I have to make The Commute

6am

My body hangs from my brain
In a disjointed way
A detached manner
Like a consciousness manifesting through a coma

If I could forge the willpower
Gather some strength in my arm
To push my phone off of the desk
And silence the alarm

I’ll regret it in some way
Not even a second thought considered
It wasn’t even a hard decision

7:20am

As I inhale, and sigh
For maybe the seventh time
I’m suddenly aware
That in this very moment, I’m being held prisoner
I’m being forced to make a choice
I’m being forced to consider

My mind is awash in the buzz of last night
And the fade of this morning

Austere
Varying shades of whites & greys
Ohio in December
Ohio, the way I’ll remember

This is bleak
Wearing all of my previous evening
Inside and out
I feel like sandpaper
I smell like 3am
Friday night
Saturday morning
It’s Monday morning
And its a dreary 7:30

7:32am

I’m wearing this to work
This is how well I wear exhaustion
I’ll flaunt it in a professional setting
In a professional manner
A white collar show & tell

I’ll groom the bare minimum
But I MUST shave my face
Just to save face
So it doesn’t look like I have a drinking problem
Because I don’t
I just like to party

I treat my body like a machine
It’s regarded like a car I can’t afford to keep gas in
But I can afford to drive to New York at night and explore

A special kind of neglect

7:35 am

A single apple
A bowl of cereal
A bag of chips
Some energy to pursue The Commute

Literally, running on fumes
Literally, every morning
Between 6am to 1pm
Literally, running late
Everyday

Responsible living escapes me

7:41am

GO! GO! GO!
I hit the basement
I braced my knees
I covered my hands
Adjusted to bike the streets

Covered in gear
Drunk and exhausted
The idea of just staying here
Is so attractive and real

I can ******* doggedness
I can still taste the air in my bedroom
While I’m in the basement
I can also taste….unemployment
So, I go.

7:45am

Bleak
Varying shades of whites & greys
Ohio in January
Ohio, all the time really
Atleast it has the feeling
Biking in the elements

The air I breath stings something awful
In my chest
Ice cubes
In my breath
Snowflakes

The blue collar effort
Two feet of snow
And its still coming
This workout//THE COMMUTE
For a white collar job
Dealing with billing disputes
The upkeep of my finacial cause

I’m a pest
The snow is deep
Almost up to my knees
I’m a menace
I’m an obstacle among perpetual obstacles
And we’re all just trying to avoid each other

MARKET//MAIN ST.

As I start to pick up speed
My body begins to adjust
My senses waken up
And narrowly avoid
This, assaulting Mack truck
Speeding on a 10speed
Down the wrong side of the street

Whoops.

I’ve got no choice really
I can’t see or hear what’s behind me
Behind my own panting
And Kendrick Lamar’s ranting
So down the opposite side of the road I go
Around Mack truck smoke & mounds of snow

I reach the edge of the street
And depending on the day of the week
And how generous those patrons are, of St V
I could exercise the sidewalk

No such luck,
So, **** it
I’ll fight traffic
I’ll keep to the streets
And dogde the fleets

This is the real challenge
This is the adventure…
Side to side with traffic
Hand in hand with danger

Car horns & headlights
This lifestyle might really **** me

7:42am
Oh, hey look
Another *******
Middle aged driver
Righteous anger
Righteous motorist

STOP!
It was on Old Main St.
At 7:47am
I was almost on the news
This is a stanza of dediction to the man in the grey Toyota
I’ve developed wonderful instincts
I almost died
This man sped through the incorrect traffic light

So I stopped!
Or else I would’ve been on the news
At roughly 8:38am
Vehicular manslaughter would probably be the charge
Probably a hit and run
I would not have stopped either
I’m this ******* in the middle of the street
On a bike
I’m an early morning, urban menace

I hit the pavement

Desolate
Varying shades of whites & greys
Ohio in February
Ohio all the time really
Atleast it has the feeling
Sprawled, laying in the elements

My mind is awash in the buzz of the night
Before
And the fade of this morning

*******!
I’m shouting now
On the ground, at the sky
In the snow, to the ice
At these ******* motorists, at my ******* bike
A special kind of entitlement

I was born in the wrong state, in the wrong place

I hit the pavement
I skinned my knees
And scraped my hands
Numb & exhausted
The idea of just laying here & giving up is so attractive and real
But I can’t…because bill$

I treat my body like a machine
I regard it like a toy I can’t put down
Even if I choose
If afforded the chance, I wouldn’t know what to do

Dreary
Varying shades of whites and greys
Ohio in March
I won’t even ******* start

8:01am

I show up to work
Half drunk and overworked
Sleet and snowy down my side
And rehearse this white collar ritual
After my blue collar effort
I’m so ******* tired

Living on the edge has this embrace
Like something most people couldn’t stomach
Most people aren’t built for it
Most people aren’t meant to

Don’t take this as a challenge, gentle tweeter
Or take it as one
I’m not saying it can’t be done
I accomplish this, twice a day, four in a row, and roughly an odd fifth one.

beluga whales surfaced, floating ghostly white
ferocious tides ripped, sands sinking

cowslip tripped the cloud's crashing sky
sunbursts cracked storm walls, with fire yellow light

rain far-off sheeted, poured - hillsides weeping
fireweed bowed, bent heavily sleeping

the rutted road curved swerving narrowly upward
leading me to the sweet summer of Girdwood

early morning
and the same sun rises over distant lands
and close-by skyscrapers
searing rusting infrastructure
with its harsh orange glow
spreading westward,
stretching over asphalt pathways
that connect, divide, structure, and destroy
alighting wearied faces of automobile drivers
careening through their morning commutes,
consuming caffeine like *******
while they deftly maneuver their 2,000 pounds of steel behind,
along, aside, and ahead of their neighbors
this,
is New Jersey,
where all roads lead to Newark
and there is nothing left but roads

approaching the colossus,
the cars cram and crawl into curb-side cases
narrowly avoiding calamitous collisions and condescending traffic cops
doors, fly open
and a mad flurry of arms and legs,
boxes and backpacks
come whirl-winding out onto the entryway
rushed goodbyes and abrupt adieus
color the palette of the doorway
dripping inside,
bleeding into the harshness of late businessmen
and screaming families.
Shoes Off.
Laptops Out.
and pray dearly that the TSA
doesn't shove their fingers inside of you
today.
arms up, legs spread
exposed to the imperceptible energy of American exceptionalism
the magnetic arm swings,
impregnating its subjects with the Joy of Fear
and the awe of empire
swings again,
and releases the hapless passenger from its total control
Through.
Checked.
Complete.
Pass Go, collect $200.
and into the international installation itself.
Enjoy your flight.

Is poetry the last bastion of the scarred mass of humanity lost to the subtle truth that words are signs from the divine that we are all one and nothing, because if so then I must hope that mine are worth the lasting
If what is both false and true heard by no one but the mute passed trembling from his unused lips sealed with venom by a scarlet kiss and gassed silently on by occultist grips narrowly worth the waiting
Then and only then will we learn both the where and when as the spirit goes on laughing

Falling further farther down clutching tightly golden crowns mimicking Gods with emboldened sounds riveting emotion flicker round
Theater is what we’re asking
Days upon days without any end the trigger lingers shoot again imprisoned here by our own command lost in thought not acting
What will it be our own device to save us suffering from the pain and strife the mortal coil lust and vice perpetually worth the asking
The snake he calls with warm lit clouds and the sun is ever shining

Uproot the tree out of sodden ground the branches broken crash and pound
litter ridden strewn across the burial mound the eagle cries in distance
Sparrow flies upon the wing angels make joy and forever sing our ears in whispers but never bring consistently the frequency to our brains
My foot falls but once upon the wither winds softly like a child carrying me to the end
the bridge between the forest creek meandering mends uplifting me from sorrow.
So long until tomorrow.

when i wear
a suit
i look like
exactly
the kind
of old man
who would
wear a suit,
the kind
of old man
i almost
was
but never
became.

   ~mce

My Heart Was Saying One Thing, My Mind Another ...

Some things you just know — like the feeling I get when looking at my children or the way I felt the first time I looked into the Grand Canyon. Some experiences are too strong for reason or words. There are some things, that even though they defy all conventional wisdom in your heart and your mind — you just know.

Never dying on a motorcycle is one of those things. I can’t explain it rationally, it’s just something that I’ve always known. It’s a feeling that has been deep inside of me since I first threw my right leg over the seat of that old powder blue moped. I knew I was never going to die as the result of a motorcycle crash. In many ways, I feel safest when I’m back on two-wheels and headed for points previously unknown.

Lately Though, I’ve Been Made To Feel Differently

I now had my daughter on the back of the bike with me. I’ve started to wonder whether my premonition covers just me, or does it also protect all who ride as co-pilot and passenger? Would the same Gods of 2-wheeled travel, who have watched over me for so long, also extend their protection to those I love and now share my adventures with?

Our flight from Philadelphia had arrived in Idaho Falls five days ago. We hurried to the dealership, picked up our beloved Yamaha Venture Royale, and then began our quest of another ten-day odyssey through the Rocky Mountain West. This was Melissa’s third tour with her dad, and we both shared the intense excitement of not knowing what the next week would hold. We had no specific destination or itinerary. This week would be more important than that. Just by casting our fate into the winds that blew across the eastern slopes of the great Rocky Mountains, we knew that all destinations would then be secure.

Then We Almost Hit Our First Deer

Three days ago, just South of Dupoyer Montana, two doe’s and a fawn appeared out of nowhere on the road directly in front of us. Melissa never saw them as I grabbed ******* the front brake. The front brake provides 80-90% of all stopping power on a motorcycle but also causes the greatest loss of control if you freeze up the front wheel. As the front wheel locked, the bike’s back tire swerved right and we moved violently into the left oncoming lane just narrowly missing the three deer.

They Never Moved

The old axiom that goes … Head right for the deer, because they won’t be there when you get there, wouldn’t have worked today. They just watched us go by as if it happened to them every day. Judging by the number of dead deer we had seen along highway #89 coming South, it probably did.

Strike One!

We pulled into Great Falls for the night and over dinner relived again how close we had actually come — so close to it all being over. Collisions with deer are tragic enough in a car or SUV, but on a motorcycle usually only one of the unfortunate participants gets up and walks away — and that’s almost always the deer. The rider is normally a statistic. We thanked the Gods of the highway for protecting us this day, and after a short walk around town we went back to the motel for a good (and thankful) night’s sleep.

The next morning was another one of those idyllic Rocky Mountain days. The skies were clear, there was no humidity, and the temperature was in the low 60’s with a horizon that stretched beyond forever. If we were ever to forget the reason why we do these trips just the memory of this morning would be enough to drive that amnesia away forever. We had breakfast at the 5th Street Diner, put our fleece vests on under our riding jackets, and headed South again.

We had a short ride to Bozeman today, and my daughter was especially excited. It was one of her all-time favorite western towns. It was western for sure, but also a college town. Being the home of Montana State University, and she being a college student herself, she felt particularly at home there. I loved it too.

We stopped mid-morning for coffee and took off our fleece vests. As I opened the travel trunk in the rear to put the vests away, I noticed that two screws had fallen out of the trunk lid. These were the screws that secured the top lid to the bottom or base of the trunk. I had to fix this pretty quickly, or we were liable to have the top blow off from the strong winds as we made our way down the road. We spent most of that afternoon at Ackley Lake, in the Lewis and Clark National Forest, before continuing South on Rt #89 towards Bozeman. I was still worried about the lid falling off and was using a big piece of duct tape as a temporary fix.

It was about 5:45 p.m. when we entered the small Montana town of White Sulphur Springs. They had a NAPA automotive store and by luck it was still open until six. I rushed inside and found the exact size screws that I needed. Melissa then watched me do my best ‘shade tree mechanic’ impersonation. I replaced the two missing screws while the bike was sitting in the parking lot to the left of the store. We then had fruit drinks, split a tuna salad sandwich from the café across the street, and were again on our way.

The sun was just starting to descend behind the mountains to our west, and we both agreed that this was truly the most beautiful time of day to ride. We were barely a mile out of town when I heard my daughter scream …

DAAAAAD !!!

At that moment, I felt the back of the bike move as if someone had their hand on just the rear tire and was shaking it back and forth. Then I saw it. An elk had just come out of the creek bed below, and to our right, and had misjudged how long it would take us to pass by. It darted across the highway a half second too soon brushing the back of the bike with its right shoulder and almost causing us to fall.

This time my daughter saw it coming before I did, and I’ll never forget the sound of her voice coming across the bike’s intercom at a decibel level I had never heard from her before. She is normally very calm and reserved.

We had actually made contact with the elk and stayed upright. If it had happened in front of the bike, we wouldn’t have had a chance. Thank God, with over forty years of experience and some luck, I didn’t lock up the front brake this time. That would have caused us to lose control of the front tire and as we had already lost control of the one in the back, it would have almost guaranteed a crash to our left.

Strike Two!

We rode slowly the rest of the way to Bozeman. We convinced each other that two near misses in less than a week would be enough for five more years of riding based on the odds. At the Best Western Motel in Bozeman, we unloaded the bike and went to my daughter’s favorite restaurant for Hummus. As the waitress took our order and then left, Melissa stared at me across the table with a very serious look in her eyes. “Dad, I don’t think we should ride anymore after about four o’clock in the afternoon. The animals all seem to drink twice a day, (the roads following the rivers and streams), and it’s early in the morning and later in the evening when we’re most at risk.” I said I agreed, and we made a pact to not leave before 9:30 in the morning and to be off the road by 4:00 in the afternoon.

This meant we wouldn’t be riding during our favorite part of the day which was dusk, but safety came first, and we would try as hard as we could to live within our new schedule. Our next stop tomorrow would be Gardiner Montana which was the small river town right at the North entrance (Mammoth Hot Springs) to Yellowstone National Park. There were colder temperatures, and possibly snow, in the forecast, so we put our fleece vests back on before leaving Bozeman. At 9:30 a.m. we were again headed South on Rt. #89 through Paradise Valley.

After a few stops to hike and sightsee, we arrived in Gardiner at 4:10, only a few minutes beyond our new maxim. It had already started to snow. It was early June, and as all regular visitors to Yellowstone know, it can snow in the park any of the 365 days of the year. We hoped it wouldn’t last. There was not much to do in Gardiner and as beautiful as it was here, we wanted to try and get to West Yellowstone if we were going to be stuck in the snow. We had dinner at the K-Bar Café and were in bed at the motel by the bridge before nine. All through the night, the snow continued to fall intermittently as the temperature dropped.

When we awoke the next morning, the snow had stopped but not before depositing a good two to three inches on the ground. The town plow had cleared the road, and the weather forecast for southern Montana said temperatures would reach into the high 40’s by mid-afternoon. The Venture was totally covered in snow and seemed to be protesting what I was about to ask it to do. I cleaned the snow off the bike and rode slowly across the street and filled it up with gas. I then came back to the motel, loaded our bags, and Melissa got on the bike behind me.

“Are we gonna be alright in the snow, Dad?” she asked. As I told her we’d be fine if it didn’t get any worse than it was right now, I had the ******* crossed on my left hand that was controlling the clutch.

We swung around the long loop through Gardiner, went through the Great Arch that Teddy Roosevelt built honoring our first National Park, and entered Yellowstone. As we approached the guard shack to buy our pass, the female park ranger said, “You’re going where? There’s four inches of snow at the top. We plowed it an hour ago, but you never know how it’s going to be until you get over it.”

‘OVER IT,’ is where we were headed, and then down toward the Madison River where we would turn right and continue on to West Yellowstone. Even though the Park is almost 100% within the state of Wyoming, two of its entrances (North and West) sit right inside the border of the great state of Montana.

“If you keep it slow and watch your brakes, you’ll probably be fine.” “Two Harley riders came through an hour ago, and I haven’t heard anything bad about them. They were headed straight to Fishing Bridge and then to the Lodge at Old Faithful.” “Well, If the Harleys can make it we certainly can” I told my daughter, as we paid the $20.00 fee and headed up the sloping, and partially snow-covered, mountain.

We made it over the top which was less than a ten-mile ride headed South through the park. This part of the trip didn’t require braking and would be easier than the descent on the backside of the mountain. As we started our way down, I noticed the road was starting to clear. Within ten minutes, the asphalt on this side of the mountain was totally dry and our confidence rose with each bend of the road. It was just then that my daughter said, “Dad, I need to stop, can you find me a restroom?” A restroom in Yellowstone, not the easiest thing to find. If I did find one, at best it would be a government issue outhouse, but I told her I’d try. “Please hurry, Dad,” Melissa said.

In another mile, there was a covered ‘lookout’ with three port-a-potties off to the right. I pulled over quickly, and my daughter headed to the closest one on the left. I then walked over to the observation stand and looked out to the East towards Cody. As most Yellowstone vistas, the beauty was beyond description, but something wasn’t quite right, and …

Something Felt Strange

I looked off in the distance at Mt. Washburn. The grand old mountain stood majestic at almost 10,000 feet, and with its snow-capped peak, it looked just like the picture postcards of itself that they sold in the lodge. I still felt strange.

Then I Understood Why

As I looked off to my right to walk back to the bike, I saw it.

Standing to the left of my motorcycle, and less than thirty yards in front of me, was the biggest silver and black coyote I had even seen. Many Park visitors mistake these larger coyotes for wolves, and this guy was looking straight at me with his head down. As I walked slowly back to the bike, he never took his eyes off me with only his head moving to follow my travel. I got to the bike and wondered if I should shout to my daughter. I knew if I did, it would probably scare the Coyote away, and this was shaping up to be another of those seminal Yellowstone moments. I wanted to see what would happen next.

I slowly opened the trunk lid on the back of the bike. We always carried two things in addition to water — and that was fig-newtons and beef jerky. The reasoning was, that no matter what happened, with those three staples we could make it through almost anything. I took a big piece of beef jerky out of the pouch and showed it to the hungry Coyote. His head immediately rose up and he pointed his nose in the air while taking in the aroma of something that he had probably never smelled before.

I don’t normally feed any of the animals in Yellowstone, but this encounter seemed different. This animal was trying to make contact and on instinct alone I reacted. As I walked slowly to the front of the bike, I ripped off a small piece of the beef jerky and threw it to the coyote. He immediately jumped backwards (coyotes are prone to jumping) while keeping his head and eyes focused on me. He then took two steps forward, sniffed the processed beef, picked it up in his jaws, and in one swallow it was gone. He now looked at me again.

This Time I Was Two-Steps Closer

He was now less than fifteen feet away with his head once again down. He was showing no signs of aggressive behavior, and as I still had my helmet and riding suit on, I felt like I was in no danger. I didn’t think a fifty-pound coyote could bite through Kevlar and fiberglass, and I was starting to feel a strange connection with this animal that was getting a little closer all the time. I threw him another piece.

Was It About The Beef Jerky, Or Was It Something More?

Again, he took two steps forward to retrieve the snack and then raised his eyes up to look at me. At this close range I started questioning myself. What if it is a Wolf I asked, and then once again I looked at his tail. Nope, it’s a Coyote, I convinced myself, as I held my ground and continued to extend my hand out in the direction of my new friend. This time he didn’t move. It was now my turn. I was down on both knees in the leftover snow from last night and started to inch my way forward by sliding one knee in his direction and then the other. He took a small step back.

I then started to talk to him in a low and hushed tone. He moved one step closer. The beef jerky at the end of my hand was now less than five feet from his mouth. We stayed in this position for the longest time until I heard a loud “DAD!!!” coming from the direction of the port-a-potties. My daughter was finished and saw me kneeling down in front of the ‘Wolf.’

When she screamed, the Coyote bounded (jumped) again and ran off in the opposite direction (East) from where I was kneeling. He ran about fifty yards and then turned around to take one more look at me. He then slowly entered the tree line that bordered the left side of the road up ahead.

“Dad, what were you doing?” my daughter asked. “Do you think you’re Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves?” I laughed and said no, “just trying to communicate with a new friend.” My daughter continued to shake her head in my direction as she put on her helmet. I started the bike, put it in gear, and we headed again South down the park mountain road.

We had gone less than a quarter of a mile when something darted right out in front of the bike. It was that same Coyote that I had tried to feed just minutes before. He was about twenty yards in front of me and thank God I didn’t have to do any fancy maneuvering to miss him. I didn’t even have to use the brakes.

Still, this was now three encounters in less than a week. Or was it three? I convinced myself that running over a Coyote wouldn’t have been fatal. Painful maybe, but we would have survived it.

Strike Two And A Half!

We couldn’t help but laugh as we wondered if the Coyote had done it on purpose. Was he trying to scare us for not leaving the rest of the beef jerky or just saying goodbye? We’d never know for sure, but I wanted to believe that the latter was true. I will always wonder about how close he may have come.

As we got to the bottom of the long mountain descent, the sign announcing the Madison River and the road to West Yellowstone came up on the right. We made the turn and then spent what seemed like forever marveling at the beauty of the Madison River. It looked like an easy ride into West Yellowstone until it started to snow again. We crested a large hill with only ten miles left to go. At the bottom of the hill was what looked like a lake covering the entire road. The bottom of the road where the hill ended was lower than the surrounding ground and was acting like a reservoir for the melting snow from the hills that surrounded it.

This Low Spot Was Right In The Middle Of The Road

We approached slowly and stopped to survey the approaching water. We needed to decide the right thing to do next. The yellow line that divided the road was barely visible through the water, and we both guessed that it couldn’t be more than twelve to fourteen inches deep. I decided guessing wasn’t good enough and put the kickstand down on the bike. Melissa held the clutch in to allow the motor to keep idling. I then walked into the water in my waterproof riding boots. The boots were over sixteen inches high. “Yep, no more than six or eight inches,” I yelled back to Melissa. “It just looks deeper. If we go slow, we’ll be fine to go through.”

I walked back, got on the bike, and retracted the kickstand and then put it in first gear. Just as I started to approach the pool, I noticed a huge shadow to my right. Two large Moose were standing just off the apron on the right side of the road. It looked like they either wanted to cross the flooded asphalt, or drink, as they stood less than twenty-five feet away from where we now were. Every time I moved closer to the water, they did the same thing. Three times we did this, and a Broadway choreographer couldn’t have scripted it better. The two Moose moved in concert with our timing getting closer to not only the water, but to us, each time we moved.

Moose, like Grizzly’s, have no real natural enemies except man, and unlike all other members of the deer family, they have a perpetually bad disposition. They seem to be permanently in a bad mood and are not to be trifled with or approached. Even the great Grizzly gives the Moose a wide berth. I stopped the bike again unsure of what to do next.

It Was A True Mexican Standoff In The Woods Of Wyoming

“Melissa then said, “Dad; Let’s try banging on the tank and blowing the horn like we do with Buffalo. Maybe then they’ll cross in front of us, and we can get outta here.” I thought it was a good idea and worth a try. I again put the kickstand down and told Melissa that if they charged us not to run but to get down low beneath the left side of the bike. That way, the Venture would hopefully take the brunt of their charge. I started banging on the tank, as I pushed the horn button with my other hand …

Nothing, Nada!

Both Moose just held their ground stoically looking at the water. It was a true ‘Mexican standoff,’ where we were Speedy Gonzalez faced off against the great Montezuma. No matter how much noise we made, the Moose never budged an inch. After fifteen minutes of this, we decided to go for it. I put the bike back into gear, and going faster than I normally would, I entered the reservoir on top of the still visible yellow line. With a rooster tail of water shooting out from behind the bike over twenty-feet long, we crossed the flooded road.

Once across, we went fifty yards past the water and then stopped to look back. Both Moose had turned around and were headed back into the woods from where they had come. They either had no more interest in traversing the water or had been playing with us making our crossing difficult, while at the same time memorable, and another great story to tell.

Strike Three!

We pulled into West Yellowstone, and the snow was coming down in blizzard like sheets. We spent the next two days touring the shops and museums and even visited the Grizzly Bear ‘Habitat,’ which neither of us will ever do again. Grizzly Bears belong in the wild and not in some enclosure to be gawked at by accidental tourists. We also talked about our past four days ‘communing’ with the animals. We both agreed that we had been lucky and that we would continue to live within our 9:30 to 4:00 schedule as we continued our trip.

I lay in bed that night both thankful and in wonder of all that had happened. I thought about the deer, elk, coyote, and moose that had crossed over into our world. As hair-raising as it had been at the time, I wouldn’t have a changed a thing. I also thought about my over forty years of motorcycle riding. It was just then that a familiar maxim was once again forefront in my mind — as well as my heart. I repeated the familiar words over to myself as I slowly drifted off to sleep …

“When I Die, It Will Never Be On A Motorcycle”

Plick,
Pluck,

the tiny little strings in my mind.

dancing to a different tune each and every day,
the world plays my songs.

eyes wandering around the room while I play with my thoughts,
like the child I never won't be.

cross-legged and slumped over as the heated droplets dribble down my spine,
and fall from my weary lips,
that which are worn from the words I never got used to saying,
singing the songs of my each and every day,

coalesce the thinkings that have somehow let me dance to where I sit today,
forlorn petals fall from my branches in beautiful pastels, cursed to live in the winding winds.

Aday to each and every day that I sing and prance within my tiny little heart,
washing my pains away.

ill-weighed upon my shoulders,
as yet i dance some more,
beneath the turbid downpours engulfed in shades of red.

i wish't to see the blue,
the green,
the steam, arising from my skin.

narrowly weeping within my little box of horrors i keep by my side,
in remembrance of each and every day i have and will yet shed a tear.

haunted lullabies revel on and on,
each and every day,

i crave the pieces of the peaces i'd once known.
to here,
today,

i shut my eyes,
and into the blackness bursts forth colors i've never seen,
and will never see again.
to see that which i've never seen.
silent shapes shaping away falling through my fields of vision,
and inform themselves to the visions I write today,
so here,

i simply continue,
to plick,
and pluck,
the tiny strings inside my mind,

each,
and every day.

~Robert van Lingen

Scene I


Rodolfo Graizani is seen sat in his new office in Addis Ababa .
A messenger salutes and hands him over a telegraph  letter saying " it is from Benito Mussolini."
Graizani reads the message loud

Dude,
We have done
Things good!
Hurrah at long last,
Using banned
Poisonous gas,
Ancient Ethiopia
We have subdued.

For our damaged moral,
We nurse after
The battle of Adwa,
The aforementioned news
Will be a nourishing food.
Slavish obedience
To fascism
In Ethiopia
We shall advance
Be firm
In our iron grip stance.

Hurrah, Ethiopia
Will be Italian
Infuse that
We can
With the dictates
Of  the gun.

(Graiziani stands up and walks in the room with a jubilant mood while the messenger watches him wide-eyed.)

Yes our subjects,
Ethiopians, serfdom
We shall teach
Hence summoning
Addis’ residents
Tomorrow
I have to make
A grand speech.
And also
I will
Coax priests
Slavish obedience to us
To subtly preach.

When our subjects lose
Their identity
We shall
Enjoy liberty
To siphon their wealth
Or property,
Also as a tactic,
Among citizens,
We should promote disparity.


Messenger what can you say?
Tomorrow will be my day!

(Messenger putting both hands on his head)

Good God
But I’m afraid
You may not do that
Unless every nation-loving
Ethiopian
You behead.

Be it luring them with a gold
Or threatening them with a sword
Unflinchingly, religious leaders
Will prefer to be a sod.
They will call down
On you a curse
If you try
To desecrate
Their abode,(Pope Petros)
You see
Preachers and the laity
Have a genuine faith
In God.
Also to
Fight back
They are bold.

(Graiziani pointing his finger towards the messenger)

Get out
Me don’t try
To flout!

Rather, let me practice presentation
To grab the audience’s attention.

Tomorrow putting on my uniform,
Bedecked with medals,
This message
I will drive home
Also the video footage
I will send to
Musoloni in Rome!

 Scene II
(Grizani dances into a podium. A messenger asks congregants to stand up for a tumultuous applause)

On nationalistic bombast
We have set a ban
Like it or not
Ethiopia is Italian
By the virtue of the gun.

(Among the congregants stands up a hoary-headed man)

We are citizens
Born free
Yield shall not we
To your crazy decree
Haven’t you read
How Emperor Twedros II
Lodged a bullet
Into his head?
Not to surrender!
Why don’t you look
After he fought hard
Why his life into his hand
He took.

How do you try
To subjugate
A nation,
With freedom that surfed
The tide of time to date?

(Angry Graziani answers)

How do you fail to realize
In the meantime Italy
Will help you
To civilize?

(Two two young adults(Moges Asgedom/Abrham Deboche) threw bombs )

Swish blast
Swish blast

Graiziani realized
How the breath
That could be his last,
Drew close fast.

To Graiziani
After it became stark
He narrowly escaped
A bomb attack
And his speech of
Subjugation
In Ethiopia is
An empty talk,
Still on the floor
He ordered attack.

 Scen III
(In front of the Yekatit 12 Martyr’s monument a small kid asks his father how Ethiopians regained their independence after the massacre ordered by  Griziani, who  soon after surviving the bomb attack, gave instruction for a cold blood retaliation.

The father dressing the hair of his child and looking him said patriots that  ambushed at the valleys and mountains of Ethiopia vowed to fight out invaders. They succeeded in doing so after a five year occupation of Ethiopia)

Waging a Guerilla fight
Shortly we shall gain our right
"Aiming from a tree high
We have patriots
That hit fighters’ jets on a dark sky!"(Patriot Belaye Zeleke)

“ As hitting a nail on the head
We have fighters
That pierces through
A tight tread.”           (Patroit HaileMariam Mamo)

“In the nook and cranny
And every gorge
We will wage
Many heroic fight
Enemies from
Our soil to dislodge”(Geresu Dukie/Jagama Kelo/Abbebe W/Aregai/Omer Semeter/Balcha Abanefeso...)

“We have heroes smart
With an artillery missile
That pierces artillery apart!” (Patroit Bekle Weya)///

Symphonic
My fist was first five fingers
Flowing Favonian into the palm of my radiant mother
As cheeky as a sprite, soon I revelled in the
Crisp light of the fridge and all its chilled visitors,

A skin-deep draft last week, a raging harmattan yesterday,
Barren among the fruitless lands of Mesopotamia.
Crawling, my sergeants and I led the way through our childhood fantasies.
Ali Baba's fortress, the ruins of Babylon, and up to the lately perturbed Euphrates.
I dropped my automatic rifle,
hurriedly snatched it up in the unforgiving desolate,
just in time to
narrowly dodge the absent onslaught of enemy gunfire
Only to witness a serpentine strike and an explosive splash
Of metal violating my infantile hand, a hand that was trusted and was caressed
Now merely a bludgeon to satisfy the steel-clawed slash of the shrapnel
A buffer to the skin of my wide-eyed physiognomy.

Waking up in the loose sheets of a completely unremarkable beige bed,
With the deoxygenated breath of the novice surgeon liquidizing in my veins,
It was almost too much to handle (if you'll pardon my pun).

These days it is
The good hand with which I
Uncork, pour, and serve.
It's with the utilizable limb with which I
Ignite, shift, and steer.
It's with my brain that I
seethe
And it's with my stump
That I knock.

silence
sadness
regret
remorse
fortitude
and defiance
permeate
the
bricks
made
by
convicts
for this
old church
so far far
away
from
english
shores
and on
the pews
so narrowly
wrought
they
listened
to the
chaplain
say
heaven
was the
place to
seek
repentence
was the
key....
and on
the cobbled
floor
they
scratched
their marks
before
they
made
their way
back to
the convict
barracks
the hell
of each
and every
day....

You thought you drove a nail into my heart
When you said goodbye
Left me here to stand alone
Thinking I would cry

Your nail it only pricked a bit
As it narrowly missed its mark
Because the point that it was aiming for
Did not contain my heart

Walk away and take your tools
Your hammer and your nail
And the next time that you aim
You'll only hurt yourself

You see the heart that you were seeking
To drive your nail into
Does not belong to me
As I gave it to you

Sisters: my veins drain into the sand.
My grave exists on wood.
My eyes close.

The crows pick at my womb; my brain.
Each nail tattoos my blood
into my bones.


My dying started long ago;
it started in my youth,
when Teacher told us

boys pull our pigtails,
shove us down on playground pavement
to show their love.

It started in high school,
where bare shoulders blinded boys
from their books.

And now we are twenty.
Now men's fingers pull us into the dark.
Now the alley concrete burns.

Now a suit and tie
asks if his defendant
could see your breast and thigh.

One out of every three;
if we escape their claws
we do so narrowly.

If we flee when they call,
we risk the slice of a knife
or an exit wound

or an asphalt tomb.
Whistles peel at our skin,
the wolves to our moon.

My body is a temple.
I open my womb
to expel all who intrude:

wrinkled politicians with withered pens,
with legalese, God's pharmacists,
the filthy, forceful tongues of men

who chain my worth to fertility.
I drive them from my holy rooms
with whips of cords.


My body is limp on these boards.
My skin is an ossuary
for relics women will soon possess.

It is easy for me to die.
I bleed for my Chinese sisters,
slain before they speak;

for my Indian sisters,
doused with acid,
stolen while they sleep;

for my Saudi sisters,
given a warden,
kept from their own streets;

for my American sisters,
losing their bodies
to others’ strict beliefs.

I bleed, I bleed;
come, stand in the scarlet mud.
Come, bathe your feet,

wash your hands
in the dregs of my end;
come, purge unwanted seed.

Come, drink of my last breath,
women who wear veils,
women who sell ***.

The crows circle,
the vultures too--
I smell of death.

I am not weak.
I will not forgive them;
they know just what they do.


Now, my slaughtered sisters.
Now, my survivors.
Set down your stones.

Take the nails from my feet,
plunder my bones.
Wear them as amulets.

In three days,
I will rise
and forge weapons from your cries.

judaic moral absolutism vs. christian moral relativism (alt. title).

whenever i hear people talk about
forgiveness for past ills,
and how not being able to forgive
someone an ill, will never mean
you can transcend the past ill...
i find this a horrid teaching -
if someone did ill unto you there
is absolutely no reason as to why
the ill transforms into a forgiveness,
esp. if the said party has no
honour to realise the ill deed -
and soon forgiveness spirals into
the christian *mea culpa mantra
and instead of forgiving someone
you start blaming yourself,
self-laceration (if jesus really was
a hippy, and not a prophet from
egypt who the jews thought
was egyptian - can't really argue
with the unearthing of the lost
scripts of st. thomas etc. in egypt,
and how he tried to storm jerusalem
with 30,000 followers, escaping
narrowly with - probably a dozen -
back to egypt, cf. the historian
josephus) -
   which i find strange that no one
has made the dot dot dot connection...
besides the point,
   i don't believe in forgiveness -
but at the same time i don't believe
in revenge...
   what i believe in a continual exercise
of punching that bag of resentment...
you can only believe to become the master
of never allowing resentment to creep
into your system,
    but whenever someone mentions
"forgiveness" i start to think of
the mea culpa spiral, and the inkling
into: so, we do not need courts of law
anymore?
     i'd still champion the old testament
motto of oculus per oculus
   (eye for an eye) -
           so if the old testament motto is
absolutist, the new testament motto
is relativistic... and as much as people
sprinkle wonder-dust on the liberating
prospect of reaching a point of mending
an ill by forgiving the party who
did the ill, i can't but sneer at the person
making the suggestion...
   e.g.? oh, you mean the sort of
"forgiveness" expressed by a relative
of one of the victims of the charleston church
shooting, tears in her eyes, and the culprit
behind bars? or like john paul ii
in the prison cell of mehmet ali ağca?
   that's forgiveness?!
         as far as i know, the only "person"
to have ever genuinely forgiving someone,
was god forgiving cain...
      and he said unto him: hey,
the siberian wilderness is all yours!
   and he even branded him with a sign
that read: untouchable.
         there is no need to work of forgiving
someone,
  the thing you have to train, pet,
   and take care of, is to never allow
  resentment to overpower you, overcome you,
submerge you...
     putting it bluntly: **** forgiving,
just ensure you are never close to perpetual
resentment;
  once more, i'd choose judaic moral absolutism
(oculus per oculus), over
  christian moral relativism -
    that a ****** is relative to 20 years in prison,
rather than the gallows;
so never, ever feed the mollusk of forgiveness,
feed the mountain of climbing the summit
and standing on it, breathing the clean air
of having overcome resenting the climb.

One step forward and you shall fall.
Tumbling down hear the DoDo bird call.
Casing that rabbit down his tiny hall.
Through singing gardens you crawl.
One makes you smaller and one makes you tall.
Escape from the tea party narrowly missing a brawl.
In the cute little house you wish to be small.
Don't eat anything here you should always recall.
Look at that grin as the he curls in a ball.
This way, that way on all the signs they scrawl.
With homesick tears many eyes you enthrall.
Don't laugh at the Queen painted up like a doll.
In the court room the Cards hold you thrall.
Run through the roses that make up the maze wall.
That was a good dream you think, all-in-all.

1661

Guest am I to have
Light my northern room
Why to cordiality so averse to come
Other friends adjourn
Other bonds decay
Why avoid so narrowly
My fidelity—

I'm back in the psyche ward again.
It's my home away from home,
next to jail and the emergency room.
I sat under the bridge the other night.
It was January, and extremely cold.
I was jonesing for a drink—I knew what I had to do.
I had only been out of jail for a
couple of days for another public intox.
I narrowly avoided going back to the can today.
My nut-job girlfriend said,
"Why don't you get us some wine? " "Sure, " I said.
Shaking and sick, I walked a mile to
my favorite store that I steal ***** from.
I arrived, and had a bad feeling, but I
don't pay much attention to feelings anymore.
In and out is always the plan.
A bottle of chardonnay down the front
of the pants, and one in the coat.
I thought I had it. I was wrong.
A customer saw me and snitched me off.
I went with the manager to his office.
A cop showed up shortly afterwards.
I engaged the store-guy with talk of literature.
It turned out he was an
English major.
I wrote down the title of my book,
and slipped it to him. He put the paper
in his wallet. He told the cop that I was very cooperative.
Instead of taking me to jail,
the cop gave me a citation with a
court date on it, and let me go.
Sometimes, providence smiles on me.
On my way back to the apartment,
I was already planning the next store to hit,
I needed a drink.
The cop, from the store, pulled up along side of me,
and said,
"Your girlfriend called, she said she didn't
want you at her place anymore.
All your stuff is in front of her door."
I felt like I'd been run over by a rhino.
The cop said,
"I'll give you a lift, jump in."
When I arrived, there were two loosely
packed bags of clothes weighing around 100 pounds.
There was no way in hell that I could
have carried all that crap eight miles to Iowa City.
I grabbed a back pack, and stuffed it with a pair
of jeans, two shirts, my writing, and a copy of Don Quixote.
I went outside and waved to the cop, then headed towards town.
I finally made it back to the bridge.
I waited to get the nerve to make
my next move—steal wine.
I did it, and with no cork *****,
I opened it with a broken ink pen.
I'm not complaining, it was the needed elixir
and it went down like nectar of the gods.
I drank it quick, it was three degrees out.
Life had to change.
This was getting real old.

& so my bones are brittle now
they crumpled & it's crippling
slipping over simple things
that never used to get to me
the strain on my marrow
is just narrowly missing these
pieces of a vessel just barely deceased.
so i'll pick up my packages &
peace out to paradise
& finally start living
so i wont be scared of life
let my skin see the sun
let my mind find the sky
& expose my broken bones
to the reasons i'm alone

the big fat bus
with the big fat yellow bootay
soon
began to see
steam billowing
out
from under her
big fat yellow hood.

so trembling,
and idling rough
she pulled into the first stop,
a rough-looking roadhouse
to set a while and cool off.

sidling up next to
a brand new big shiny
new tour bus,
she
rather pleased,
for he,
was a
sweet lookin',
and kinda handsome lookin',
kinda thing,
till he opened his mouth.

reminded immediately
of an old song,
her enamor
did not last long.

"when i need something to help me unwind
i find a six foot baby with a one track mind.
smart guys are nowhere
they make demands
just give me a *****
with talented hands.
i go bar hopping
and they say last call.
i start shopping for a
neaderthal.
i like em big and stupid
i like em big and real dumb.”

ah that Julie Brown…
there’s a girl who knows how to belt ‘em out!

she cast a furtive glance
at Mr. Oh SO Brand New Bus  
the big galoop,
waiting for his load,
when out of that rough
roadhouse spilled,
THE drunkest,
MOST obnoxious,
herd of redneck cowboys,
she had ever seen
or would care to ever
see again.

hootin' and hollerin'
shootin' off their guns,
just narrowly missing
her big fat yellow face.

a shovin' and a punchin'
blood flying here and there,
sounds of a cracking
bone or two.

shaking her bumper gently
from side to side,
quietly eased she,
her way
back on to the throughway.
and off she shot!
into the night!

pedal to the metal!
like a bat out of hell!

another
romantic fantasy disaster
narrowly
averted!

I have been bright, hovering for weeks with the edges of ovals I so narrowly believed to be bicycle wheels,
discovering good friends in places right under the windowsill, freshening up the roses
in the pots I'd forgotten about on the back porch.

and there's you, a dream perhaps,
a sliver of pecan pie left over from the holidays but increasingly fresh
I'd like to twinge the tremors in your body that make you hum
and satiate pulsing bodies in flat, parallel lines of desire and decisiveness
I'd like to be the twisting ivy on the brimming edges of tentative youth,
to scale your walls and snuggle in the safety of wonderment and lack of knowing,
any better.

I'd like to make the bluebirds sing with throats of slim-cut rubies,
to have contentment and a battle born, hand held, period of time in which
I can enjoy a piece of dessert, well deserved

My maker named me Universe and now I make you read this verse.

Subtle transfers will be missed.

The train has already left the station; it left you and me behind as well.

You will never be able to believe that your opinion has also been left behind and will be left behind again, but it’s true, and always was.

At the time, you are busy yelling “help” in a crowded theater.

Three individuals are injured in the rush to your aid.

That’s will be on you, not me.

Let’s not cut hairs here; maybe you should have yelled “fire” instead.

Then, at least, you’d know in advance you were buying the bath water and could throw it wherever you **** well wanted to.

Baby or no baby, a duck is a duck.

Truth is what you want, capitalized beneath this thin distraction which pitters off...

At first you denied it, but then again you are always ignorant of its honest weight at first.

Patience lent perspective to our narrow mind, allowing it to, eventually, glimpse us, narrowly, just out of sight of one another.

Humility, begging pardon, but who needs such company?  Me?

I will just keep my head down, and quietly push whatever buttons I can.

These, for instance, are both mine and yours.

One can share, but we've never needed to.

There is no reason, either.

Never try to believe a fallacy; that would be insanity.

Quietly, like thieves, stealing the point, we'll slip into our ritual

I've been here before.

This is the beginning.

You’ll likely end up here again as well.

What is happening has always felt like déjà vu.

While you’ve been talking about yourself I’ve lost my train of thought.

I assume I will never find it.