Israel Lewis-- Poetry and Some Prose
In my dotage I took up writing. What I did in my previous life is irrelevant, having to do with the other side of my brain. I've heard that there's an analytical side and a creative side, but I'm not sure which is left and which is right. Apollonian and Dionysian. So be it. Let this be my chapbook-- the accumulation of the poems, stories, and essays that emanated from my rather-late-in-life literary career.
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The pages grow. These are the Sections: click the links--
Erato "Erato, errata, eroto..."
Thou and I
Olio It means a mixture. Hodgepodge, medley, masala
ClioThe muse of history. Includes other peoples' autobiographies; I'm the "as told to" narrator of the memoirs of Holocaust survivors Zachary Greenbaum and Ana Sherman.
Stories: Fictional and Non-
Prose Includes the writings on Thomas Paine, and Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Award,
Our 2007 Trip to Israel (A large file, pdf format. Please be patient. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader).................................................................................(Updated 10/24/08)
The snowy peak in the foreground is my head. The others are Rocky Mountains.
Poems
Erato
The Cymbalists
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.....precisely precisely at the proper time
.....plays his single note
the errors
.....and yet and yet
.....with so little margin
.....there were errors
Horse Opera
.....In the dreams of day I have this horse
.....Day mare? Ha. Day stallion.
ED: Not Short for "Eddie"
.....Amor, amour: it comes now in a pill
The Young Ones
.....the young ones/ it's their first time
.....How frightened they are.
The Tin Man
.....the little one, apple of my eye... And I would pick her up
.....in my lap in the ruckus of arguments and laughter
...........smoke of cigarettes cheap cigars and kiss her hair.
Elevator
.....All right, she wears dove gray...
.....O, girl of Caryae
My Golem
.....a girl golem, slight, with pixie hair, dressed
.....in the manner of a poetess
The Mysterious Beauty of Benson
Absentia
Arthur Murray
.....sun streaming through the open windows phonograph playing loudly scratchy above the whirring of electric fans eruptions of flatulent cars on melting asphalt...
USO
.....and time isn't linear
.....it was you then it's you now...
Waltzing with Cherenkov
.....her body fills with light
.....lovely and ghostly she dreams of dappled colors circling
.....a ballroom floor
Billy's Last Desire... it never dies
.....never dies does it"
Among Other Things, Desire Flags
.....and he says he hasn't thought
.....much about it and I say if you don't think about it
.....then you don't have it and if you have to think about it you
.....don't have it either...
"If Angels Knew.."
....."Rapt in our infinite conceit
.....we knew nothing..."
The Voyeur: Remembering Rudy Vallée
....."If you remember the tune,
..... you're older than I'm."
Araby
......" -----------wrinkly twinkly blue eyes
.....past beauty's prime
.....which is, of course, relative to one's own time
.....(I speak for myself)....".
The Old Union Station, Even Before the Metro
......" notwithstanding she was married at the time
........(but that was Charley's worry, not mine)."
Fedora A voyueuristic hat.
Cantor: Not Eddie The finitude of life and orgasms
Marxism: Groucho, Not Karl "I would never join a club that would have me as a member" (or words to that effect)-- Groucho Marx
My Sweetheart's Stone I suppose that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Cinematografo: Donna con l'Ombrella Rosso
.....fading memory fantasy old movie...?
La Gatta che Sorride
......"and shining out of the semidarkness;
.......red lipstick, teeth, the smile
.......of the disembodied smiling cat."
Madame Szymborska Smoking A Cigarette (a new version)
.....Stirred recall of breaking
.....loves-- of one great love-- ecstatic, ancient.
The Heart by Stephen Crane (aha, another son of Newark). "Because it is bitter...." A great poem.
Wherein "Roxanne" (a Modern Woman) Tells "Cyrano" (a Modern Man) That Life Isn't Poetry, After All
What This Country Needs Is a Good Five-Cent Cigar
The Restlessness of Old Men
Prologue You may ask, "To what?" Advice to my grandson on reaching his fourteenth birthday.
How I Said Goodby "My sweetheart wears Red Wing Shoes.."Thou and I
Autobiography: First Date
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.....I said your nose goes off to one side
.....just a little bit and she said nothing to this life is perfectly
.....symmetrical or how we chose it
Autobiography:Erotica Rated "pg"
Leaf Raking
.....a mountain of leaves piled up along the back fence and then
.....my grandson running diving headlong disappearing into the pile...
Salt
.....She wants to say
.....I can't go there without you
The Kernel
.....Now, at this time, having been diminished
.....I diminish further--
.....You understand how it is.
Rain
.....still in the rawness of loss--
.....Sunday morning a gray day with rain
.....Was it May?
The Graveyard of Automobiles
.....from the Lies I Told My Children
4.b. The Muscles of the Eyelid
.....Waking in the gray half-light of early morning, I gaze
.....across the pillow at my wife's shuttered eye..
Dancing with Cherenkov: The Blue Palace
.....in a hall of mirrors and tender light. We dance
.....to Old World strains on violins.
Myths of My Father: The Fighters
.....the raucous clamorous crowd shouting its bloodlust haymaker
.....puts you to sleep among the daisies-- tweet tweet tweet
The Pit
..... my little brother..... I almost killed him.... not intentionally fratricidal
..... you understand.
"Blood is Thick," Said My Cousin Arnold.
The Romanian Restaurant." Scenes from my bougeois life... "
The Iceman
.....( From "The Lies I Told My Children")"
Brooklyn..... a floating island held anchored to the
.....land by a beautiful bridge and a tunnel under the
.....water in which ran a train called Canarsie. (More lies) "
What I Will Do Now
.....".My belly will grow fat and hang out over my belt
......and I will laugh with a big ha ha"
My Wife, Who Didn't Skate Like Sonja Henie
....."sealing my lies with kisses on her eyes."
The Island of Derelict Cars
.....Like Odysseus visiting in Hades the ghosts of Achaean heroes
.....I commune with the spirits of my old automobiles.
Anent the Finitude of Earthly Tenure
.....Who are you when inside is from everybody-- people, animals,
.....plastics,
.....and
.....tin
.....like a junk shop?
Spare Parts
.....As above. Another take.Olio
Provenance of a Very Small Poem
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.....well then, only love a stanza, I say. And she says,
.....tasting a piece of cake, there is such a poem.
.....I like a stanza, but not all of it.
A Fable
.....The Book of Job. Horse and wild ass
I Find My Faith in the Flatness of Space
Laptop Pastorale .....Citied poets in chic coffee shops
.....(at their elbows cappuccino cups)...
Who Steals My Trash...
.....to slit into ribbons the evidences
.....of my Identity/ Grinding in whining lamentation
.....it cries for me.
Things That Happen on Elevators
.....He said, You have to live on a high floor.
.....Later he moved to Kuala Lumpur
Leaves
.....Seasons, solstices, flutter down
.....and lie about my feet. I kick them like dry leaves...
Iron
.....Oh, irony upon irony, ferrous, ferrous, ferrous...
Objet d'Art: Écroux et Boulons O.K. Nuts and Bolts
Everything About My Hat
I remember
.....forgetting to remember
.....forgetting to forget
Crows Caw caw caw...
Interstate
.....up for a little waterfowl fun
.....knowing duck ectasies
Diptych
.....Same as above plus "What I Will Do Now."
Why Elizabethport, New Jersey is the Most Beautiful City in America
....for Dusan Otrin, wherever he may be
The Third State.... DoubleyouDoubleyouDoubleyou Dot.
.....The ether crackles.
.....What do they want? What's all the clamor?"
The Universe is Nothing but a Big Dust Bunny
.....why the offense....what did we ever do?
Fur
.....All night I wandered in a wilderness
.....howling at the moon...
Radar
.....Is anyone out there?....do you know the square root of pi?
Young Eliot, in the persona of Prufrock, expresses some doubts about his career.
.....Do I dare, do I dare, with a bald spot in the middle of my hair?
Ana: The Peaceable Kingdom.....I expect a lion to walk in from the woods
.....lie down with a lamb"
The Salmon reaching at last, bruised and exhausted, the quiet pools in which they were spawned"
Sunlight in Seattle.....The child points too.
.....They stand like that,
.....squinting, warming their faces.
Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.... The world glowers dark without an eye
.....Waits for the great red love. "
And Let the World Bereaved Be...
.....Veiled women in black silk stockings will cry
.....out my name-- Lewis! Lewis!
.....and throw themselves into the grave.
Earth I: The Cosmic Discreteness of Sand
.....how
.....within this smallish jot of matter
.....whirls a universe:
Earth II: The Pebble's Obdurate Silence
..... The pebble is dignified and stubborn,
.....filled only with itself,
.....empty of desire.
Earth III: The Memory of Rock Lava, magma, ice, and water.
Laughing Horse (Happy)
.......When I was in Arizona
.......I bought a horse..."
Laughing Horse (Sad) Same horse.
Einstein on a Bicycle "The master of gravity by gravity undone..."
The Advocate, or, Who Killed the Author? Lawyers and authors deconstructed.
The Death of the Free-Solo Climber The inexorable pull of gravity.
A Fable of Flies ".....the high-life of the incandescent...."
Nature Abhors Perfect Circles
"....nor the indeviate
....... sphere, preferring the oblate, the prolate, and the ovate."....
Silver Wings A villanelle, courtesy of United Air Lines
The Poem That Will Destroy the World
....."There is a poem to be written.
.....It will be the last poem ever,...."Clio
The Pews at Bradley Beach
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.....Jack Stein
.....He loved his family, the beach, the sun, and Sugar Buns
Our Thin Books
.....from The Tales I Tell My Grandchildren
Railroads had Names Then The history of America in the heyday of railroads
Weequahic High School Cheer, Newark, N.J. ca '42. If it's 1942 it's gotta be history.
Wierzbnik, Vilna, Washington: The Story of My Life and the Miracle of Surviving the Holocaust by Zachary Greenbaum. Growing up in a small town in Poland, the Polish army, escape to Vilna, surviving the slaughter, the wanderers in Europe, a new life in America. He told it and I wrote it down.
Ana's Story-- My Life: A Holocaust Memoir by Ana Sherman. ".....So I engrave this memoir, telling of my early life when I was a suffering orphan in pre-war Poland, and then how I survived Hitler's war against the Jews. For historians, my experiences are part of the fabric of that war, that Holocaust. For my children, grandchildren, and generations to follow, this is my story." She told it and I wrote it down.Stories: Fictional and Non-
Ninety-eight Cents
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.....Ruefully I put out the five treasured volumes, on each a little stick-um label: de Maupassant, "Racy;" Poe, "Scary;" Stevenson, "Adventure;" Tolstoi, "Love and Death;" and Hugo, "French Romanticism." The price, 98 cents.
Brisket of Beef
...her mother remonstrated. "Janey, you are a pretty girl. Why do you let yourself go like that? You should dress nice, fix up your hair. A little lipstick maybe wouldn't kill you!"
....."That's mens' idea of pretty."
....."So what's wrong with that?"
......"I am the way I am."
......"Oh, Janey."
Goodbye, Brenda Patimkin I had known the real Brenda ."... not only had I known her, but she had been the object of my yearning, a great youthful yearning, sweet in the mind, hard and anguished in the body."
The Unbearable Lightness of Benson Not a parody. I wanted to write about Benson and the title was unbearable.
The Chimney When I started to write I thought I would write about the war. But war is too big. What can one write about a war?
Loxfin Soup I think it's about friendship. Includes a recipe for ptchah
How Shlomo Carlebach was the World's Greatest Hugger
Epitaphs A memoir of Bradley Beach
Call Me Melvin Melvin Herman, unable to find his final rest before his grandest novel sees the light of day in print discovers his benefactor in Dirty Book Sam.Prose
Thomas Paine and the Prophetic Vision of Common Sense
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Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Award
