THE MAN WHO LEFT
HIS UNDERWEAR IN JAKARTA*
Barbed Wire Surrounds My House!
How to Hire and Fire Servants
The Echoing Sunrise Pray Call - 4:30 Everyday
Family Transport: Five on a Honda Motorscooter
Discovering Real Chocolate
"Do they really use THAT water for cooking?" - comment
while passing
huge pots and pan by the open
street sewers.**
Lock All Your Doors - Even the Closets!
Vendors: the Street People of Jakarta
A Night at Pizza Hut - Paid with 15,000 Rupiahs***
Yes, I Make
One and a Half Million a Month - Rupiahs
10,000 Miles Away from Home....
"Ardath are just as good as Marlboros - at half the price."
"I found the best
place for....."
"You can't get it here."
"Singapore
is so clean!"
"Wanna do it the Western Way or the Asian Way?"
Yellow taxies - If the Near Misses Don't Get You,
their Exhaust Will
Under the Table with the Taxman****
World Series, Scores
Only from VOA, Voice of America
No Air Conditioning?!
Cholera? Typhoid?
Gamma gamma shots? Gado Gado for
dinner?*****
Christmas in Burma or Bali?
* This is a prose
writer's lazy poem: these are titles of travel articles never written while living in Jakarta,
Indonesia
** No, they don't use the sewer water. The street people get their water from a local
pump in the area.
*** l,640 ruphias equal $1.00. One and a half million rupiahs equal $914.63
****
All employers must pay the military a 10% unofficial tax because Indonesia is a police state.
***** An Indonesian
vegetable dish with peanut sauce.
1987
MA
Her last tear
at the end of a 70 year
old waterfall
leaves the blind eye
coursing down
her face
called Babe
called Ma
called Mother
called Granny
Her body
ice blue
as I touch
the fingers
curled around
my years.
They clasp
the rosary
more tightly.
She speaks
to no one now.
Listens
to no one now.
Except
her God
who calls her
Daughter.
1979
THE ANCIENT MARINER'S MIRROR
What ancient age turned me into a grandfather?
What French philosopher's wild nightmare from a drunken haze
pulled off this coup and said
it was true, true, true --
but a monstrous truth, as mysterious as Pythagoras's school?
What twisted fate changed my gait?
Why has clarity come, like a god
begged for when young,
only to descend now with acute precision
on illusion
and lost vision?
How can my children's sweet breath
occupy
so much unearthly space
as they race youth into middle age
when I am as yet
unfinished?
Whose children are those,
with me and my wife's
nose,
our family stamped onto their
ears, eyes and freckled faces?
They seem so foreign yet blood-known
from ages past.
To be an old man, father of a clan,
scattered across foreign lands.
Why
is it now, when God seems so near,
I feel my youngest, most transcendent self
finally
born?
How funny life is
that the best wine
is served at last.
circa 1984
TO MY EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD NIECE - UPON HEARING
THE DEATH OF HER SECOND FRIEND
Upon the dead and dying
who lie in houses beyond
our crying....
Should they breathe, live again?
Would God's cruel-kind sun
mold their last moments or
change their
love within our breasts?
We weep and bring sorrow
upon the grave of tomorrow
while those we love
sleep the peace of doves.
Alchemists mix the blood and bone
of spirit and headstone
until what's left
is what's always has been:
LIFE.
circa 1990
THE POETRY READING OF JAMES DICKEY - -
AS INTRODUCED BY MY TEACHER AND FAMOUS POET: LAURENCE LIEBERMAN
When you introduced the movie-man poet,
he tripped on his own gold chain and
brought his large Southern frame
down on the wooden stage with a bang.
His
head missed the podium,
but landed with a bloody gash by the waterstand.
The crowd was mortified,
they shouted, they cried
when he died offstage.
But this was a poetry reading!
The crowd stood in their seats
Calling
and pounding,
Banging and stomping,
"WE
WANT POETRY, WE WANT POETRY!"
You stood there aghast,
your own words had died fast
with his last breath.
I jumped from the floor
where I had
sat so quietly before.
I laughed and waved you off the stage
with my own introduction of me.
I opened my mouth
-
out flowed published words.
I opened
my mouth -
the crowd snatched at each verse
and with wild applause burst forth.
They threw Atlantic Monthly contracts
at me,
flowers and olive wreaths,
my
copyrighted books, silver dollars.
Even United Artists demanded my work
for their movies and music.
They
threw applause
with their constricted stomachs
of shocked and touched eyes,
their thighs twitching for more.
I gave them more.
I bandied my choice to
match their voice
and when they thought there was no more,
I hit them quick to the core.
with my inventive
metaphors.
I had them, they had me.
I gathered their gifts, their promises and rewards.
Waving them wildly above
my head,
still sprouting my poetry,
I
left them hysterical
and laughed offstage
at the beginning of my legendary history
of the young upstart
who overthrew the
king of the published poets.
1972
DINING IN PARIS
Wait-er!
A glass of absolute reality,
Pierre, May '68, please.
Relativity on the salad,
lots of lumps in that.
Good for the digestion.
Avoid the prana in the red meat, my dear,
Americans always overdo it.
Neptune's special will fortify
your nadis, like oatmeal for
your synapses.
As for veggies, my little cabbage,
try the Ganges mushrooms,
a bit unwashed but sauteed to perfection.
Here, sprinkle a koan or two on that.
Go lightly with the bhajans,
too much rhythm strains the belly button.
Ah, for dessert, coriander seed in
our Nirvana and a toast to
The
oldest wisdom in history:
May
all your moments
be as
NOW.
_____________________________________
prana - form of energy in red meat
nadis - occult term for an, as yet, undiscovered nervous system of the body which feeds on light
koan - Zen riddle used to make the thinker think beyond logic and therefore reach Nirvana
- Enlightenment
bhajans - Indian songs of worship which are very lively
circa before 1980
I Dreamt a Dream as a Child
of Bedu and caravans
crossing my path
twin-ing my soul
to mud-brick winters
with thatched roofs
and opened tent summers.
Camels with Baghdad souk colored ribbons
and bells pull water from our
well
and welcomed home the
men from
their Fujairah fishing
as sunset prayer calls
to those who hear
the voices of
dead ancestors.
Gene-studs on my silver
bracelet,
I am no longer foreign
to these
ports and parts.
We rest
inside the old village,
between
the date palm oasis farms
and newly lighted town.
Donkeys and mountain goats
still walk the shadowed paths
while
we, who have overgrown
our roots, lounge beneath
and shaded tree of life.
1990
Bedu - Arabic name and spelling for "bedouin".
souk - Arabic word for "market".
prayer call - in Islam,
religious leaders intone the Prayer Call, "Allah Akbar...." (God is Great) five times
during the day, calling the men to the mosque to pray; one of the five times is at sunset.
silver bracelet - bedouin bracelets were often made of silver and had sharp studs projecting from them. Some
bracelets were made from copper then dipped into silver and sold as silver bracelets (to me) in the Women's
Bedouin Souk in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Fujairah - one of the seven United Arab Emirates' states
(emirates) and name of the main city of the emirate
on the Eastern seaboard of
the Gulf of Oman with a mountain range separating it from the other UAE
emirates.
old village
next to the new village - the United Arab Emirates government built new villages for the people, supplying them with electricity
and running water. The new villages were often built next to the old villages so the people could continue to tend their date-palm
tree farms. The old villages are now fast becoming ruins. This is true even for major cities, including
a port city of Fujairah.
Life and Death -
the
end of philosophy
Why grieve
for the seed's struggle
against earth?
1996
