Emil Pitkin

I cast a wish to sit with Goethe’s Faust

And ask him if the sale was worth the price,

To buckle up my cuirass for the joust

And charge but once at Lancelot – or twice;

To stand unmoving like a pillar when

Attila’s dusty horde will gallop at us,

To sit in council with free Roman men

And recollect the deeds of Cincinnatus;

To walk with Abraham before the Lord

And learn from him the art of fatherhood,

To hear the clang of hammer on the sword –

The first, when blacksmiths learned that bronze was good.

I cast a wish and deeply dipped my quill.

What life won’t give, the cursive letters will.

“Since you’re contending, if an ox gores the torso

The neighbor’s owed payment for damage incurred

Then it must follow, how much the more so

When the goring is fatal, or no one’s deterred.”

Outside the window, a harsh snowy layer

Has covered the oxen, the neighbor, the field.

Pools of blood seeping, heedless of prayer,

Young cattle slaughtered, soldier dead on his shield. 

Inside the cheder, the boys are debating

Some points that their grandfathers left unresolved. 

Forever debating, while the oxen die waiting:

Some Jewish questions will never be solved.

***

A cheder is a religious school for Jewish boys

Laws related to the goring ox are given in Exodus, Chapter 21. Their interpretation and disputation in the Talmud, the essential compendium of Jewish thought, form a classic part of religious education.

The ripples race apart,

the echo of the smack

Of stone on water blows me back

To simple rhymes,

To silent times,

To a child by the water

Whose preoccupying bother

Isn’t that the ripples one day stop,

Or that every stone must drop –

But how to make the loudest plop.

From the feast hall, dim and vacant,

Where the plates are piled high,

Where celebratory raiment,

Soaked in wine, is left to dry;

Where the wedding programs settled

(As did toppled-over chairs)

To the ground with pockmarks freckled;

Where the cleaning-girl despairs;

You’ll infer a celebration

For a bride and for a groom,

You’ll see proofs of their elation

In this mirrored, gilded room.

But I see little relevance

In this second-hand tableau:

From the dried-up bits of cheese below

From the brassy chandeliers above

Nothing will you learn of love.

You buzz and buzz and write your honeyed lines. 

I am prepared to sting the page with ink, and die.

Paint me a river,

A river of paint

That, oily, quivers.

Paint and acquaint

Me with rivers

Of boyhood, of pain

That grow full with the rain

Of the painter’s best years.

What can he fear,

Who knows rivers and years,

Who knows well that both tend

To the oceans, that both end

Just the same,

Just outside the

frame?

At the Berkowitz home, on 14 Nisan,
A menagerie gathered for seder.
Left to right, on my word, on the satin divan,
Sat Mubarak, Ralph Nader, a satyr.

Abe recounted the plagues, frogs and hail, the first born,
With the zeal of a bee after pollen,
And Mubarak replied, not a little forlorn,“I lament how the mighty have fallen.”

“Ye were mighty, at least,” someone plaintively said
(You are right, gentle reader – it’s Nader).
– “So much longer the fall, when by fate I was sped
From the pyramid’s point to my nadir.”

“Not by fate but by God!” Mrs. Berkowitz flushed
All the talking and chomping were suddenly hushed
(You’ll soon find, gentle reader, the rhythm impaired –
For the sake of transcription I rhythm foreswear.
Thus she bellowed –)

“Look on my charoset, ye mighty, and despair!”

Mubarak ran off like a hare.

Then the satyr perked up, by her outburst aroused,
And he lustfully bleated his praises.
Dr. Berkowitz saw, understood, and then doused
The half goat’s inappropriate blazes

With a strong Chad Gadya, looking straight in his eyes,
Slowing down every time at the moment
When the cat eats the goat (who in consequence dies),
That two zuz bought the satyr’s opponent.

So the satyr slunk off, taking care not to kiss
The mezuzah his ancestors feared.
While Ralph Nader crept out, and his absence was missed
Not at all when Elijah appeared.

This incredible night when we all sat reclined
I have faithfully, briefly described.
I was there and I drank four complete cups of wine
Plus the four which our fathers prescribed.

The crumpled paper crumbles into ash;
The envelope is licked by thorough flames
Until the addresses, until the names
Themselves turn into one long sooty dash.

If I were young again I’d have believed
A missive from a mistress was received.
I’ve lived enough of life to know it meant
A letter that was written wasn’t sent.

I am writing to promote the ancient rites of Bacchanalia

That the Puritans and Quakers have together watered down.

They have stripped young Dionysus of his laurel-wreathed regalia

And have made him out to be a drunken, wanton red-nosed clown,

As if he, in middle age, were lusting flesh and spilling drink.

No! The god is young, his cheeks flare red, his flesh is fresh and he spills ink!

To every thing there is a season –

Can’t you see that that’s the reason

Why it’s clownish dissipation

When it’s practiced by the old

But succumbing to temptation

For the young and beautiful and bold?

Life is short. Go find a mate:

Celibate and celebrate

Don’t rhyme.

Crush grapes, spill seed, spill rhyme,

Spill time.

Epigraph: There’s none who dies.
I was there. I saw them rise.

This night the fiddle creaks, and the flute
Reflects the owl’s plaintive hoot
When the call to moonlit dancing’s spread
O’er the osseous silence of the dead.

By the gravestone something whispers.
It’s alive! — A flash of whiskers
Of a frightened cemetery mouse
Who this night darts from his house.

Now we hear the first bell chime,
Chime, chime, chime, chime, chime…
On the echoing twelfth time
Skeletons sit up and climb

Into the dancehall of the night,
All shades of chalk and pearl and white.
The marauder, child, pope and king
Dance together, dance and swing

On jerky bones that click and clatter,
Shaking skulls that grin and chatter —
Imitations of maracas
In the swaying danse macabre.

Now the rooster crows his first,
Dancers hurriedly disperse,
Climbing down into their beds,
To give weary bones some rest.

Epitaph: There’s none who dies.
I was there. I saw them rise.

In his Origin of Species

Charles Darwin demonstrated

That an organism’s feces,

Feather, antlers subtly weighted

Will equip it for survival;

Will equip it for survival

And will hasten the arrival

Of succeeding generations,

And preserve the chance mutations

That promote their genes’ election

Into natural selection.

***************

At her jeans I stared enraptured,

By her curves my will was captured,

And I thought of procreation

As a means of recreation.

****************

“Have a whiskey? Take the tumbler,

You’re so pretty, what’s your number?”

So I asked her and she answered,

As I hungrily looked pantsward:

“Six-one-seven, four-two-seven,

Thirty-seven thirty-seven.

But delay your celebration:

That’s my number’s permutation.”

***************** 

Friends: this digital mutation

Helped forestall our procreation –

Seems ill-natured evolution

Can withstand my elocution,

And my gene pool’s days are numbered.

Darwin smiled as he slumbered.

Eve, unstable and distraught,

Said “I’m going on a bender!”

So the serpentine bartender

Hissed approvingly and brought

The sex on the beach

Within reach.

At the banquet of the gods
They pledge their fealty to him.
Through greedy gullets (lightning rods)
The currant liqueurs swim.

Today his grapes are ripe and sweet;
To rites and romps the god invites us.
Over diffidence and virgins (oh how neat!)
Reigns mighty Dionysus.

Tomorrow, chastened, he will rise,
His spirit crushed, its hollowness resounding,
His temple, desecrated, pounding,
His agony fermented.
From husky moans we must surmise
That until dusk he’ll be tormented.

I wonder if it’s really so,
The tomorrow hereunto described.
I hope it is, for then my woe
Is equal to a god’s. My friends: I have imbibed.

“Economic with the truth,” your remaining friends insist,

While the others, with your lies, in transgressing you persist.

To aggrandize reputation was your secret, ardent goal,

But you’ve met with condemnation, and you’ve dug yourself a hole

Out of which your reputation never will crawl out and rise –

You engraved the dour inscription, that begins and ends “Here Lies.”

From the head of the children’s table the son looked at his dad,
Hands open, beaming, causing the table to laugh. He was glad
He would also one day think important thoughts, and wondered what they’d be.
Then he turned to entertain his tablemates, ages seven, six, and three.
The elegant host, in between anecdotes, turned to look at his son,
And strangely wondered what he used to think about when young.

Here’s a classic dilettante:

All he wanted was to vaunt

Of the beauty of his raft.

We agreed it rather daft

For it wanted for a plank

When he pushed off from the bank —

And in consequence it sank.

Here’s a fitting epitaph:

“Always happy with the draft.

Never thought to fix his craft.”

The solitary hunter, cloaked in fog,
Expects the shouting of the dogs,
Prepares to shoot the unseen hare
Between the birches, slim and bare.

The solitary artist, in the hush,
Draws a hare out of the brush
And retreats behind the screen,
From the cold pastoral scene.

A rejected proposal

I said: “Lips! Open

And kiss me.” They, mockingly:

“Til death do us part.”

Antiquity

Socrates, we’re told,

Would play with play dough when young,

With Plato when old.

Academia

Statistics mastered

by Masters in Statistics;

doctored by Doctors.

Universal Grammar

Grammar fiend tells wife:

Shortest sentence is “I do.”

Wife thinks: life sentence.

Carpenters’ Tools

The old carpentress

Gets hammered and nailed well by

The old carpenter.

Royal Dating Service

If you’re a black queen

Seeking interracial mate

May I suggest chess?

Harvard men are born to rule

The alumni of that safety school

From the city that’s a haven

For the great unwashed, unshaven

Masses with decidedly plebeian tastes.

Sons of Eli, spare no haste,

Give in, go home!

You are second best in Rome. 

Or maybe first in Gaul. 

Whatever. On the football field you’ll fall.

2013

Already, I liked you a priori.

But after you implied

That you’d present your other side,

I loved you a posteriori.

I love you still. You still don’t know I loved you once,
And never will. I will retreat into the months
In search of days before I loved you first,
Before I could not live without the salve of verse.

By my negligence you burned.

My Cretan labyrinth has earned

Me all of mankind’s praises.

How could I neglect to show

You how to grope through mazes

That only teenagers can know?

ONE two three, orchestra strikes as the glistening marble

Reflects two-three chandeliers’ glamorous sparkle

And One floating couple’s divine sweeping grace

As they One two three surely with hopes to retrace

The forgotten and swept away steps of the waltz

They had Won two-three times. When the orchestra halts,

Though the revelry stills, still, their reverie fills

Their soft glistening eyes with their waltz.

While the city sleeps and slumbers

Silent, stalking, untold numbers

Walk atop the city walls

Risking loneliness and falls,

Loss of heart, and limb — and cold.

May the Guardian of old

Protect the guardians he set

To walk their watches while we slept.

At night, the parchment burned. Above the roar
The letters soared back to their source and turned
Into a field of desert flowers, red as flame,
The scattered letters gathered into names.

We were the land’s before the land was ours,
Before the dew first settled on the stones
Our fathers consecrated with their bones,
And morning knew the names of many flowers.

There is a word
For just how stirred
I am by you.
I need a word
For how absurd
It is that I
Both try
To find that word
And still prefer
It not be found,
Lest it be overheard.

She and I, we’ll fight for our fill

Of each other. Give us some sild

And a jar of sweet preserves

To build and strengthen our reserves

Before we two envelop into one

Beneath the roving midnight sun.

The fjords grow warm, the glacier breaks.

We’ll carve our memories with our lips.

We’ll drift across the hundred thousand lakes

On the memory of wooden Viking ships,

That drive us north and back into the night,

The refuge of the trolls, the province of the light

Of aurora borealis, or maybe it’s our light,

The light of loving in the night.

*******

Give me Bergen, Tromsø, and Christiania!

Ja vi elsker dette landet!

I could pretend
I love you not
But don’t intend
To leave a lot
Of things unsaid
And so instead
I’ll slip this note
Inside your coat.

I am writing a novella

While I glug a glass of Stella

Just like Ernest Hemingway.

No, my sentences don’t stray

From the manly, lean, declarative,

As they punch the dusty narrative

With Madeira, fishing, and the bulls,

With uprootedness that pulls

A man from place to place.

It isn’t bad, so on I plod. Except my face

Is wrought from his image,

And his from the image of God.

2014

At the threshold of senility,

Past the failing of virility,

When the memory of flaming youth

Fights to dull the saw-toothed truth

That the reservoir of lovers’ tokens,

Of their symbols, soft, unspoken

Is by now forever fixed and really frozen,

You will wish that you had chosen

To create a lovers’ jargon;

That you’d stopped to kiss at every fountain.

I was smoking marijuana

Across the border, in Tijuana,

Where the grass — first among flora

And the dealers among fauna.

I stood smoking marijuana,

In that humid, hazy sauna,

Clad in sandals and fedora,

While I waited for nirvana.

I sat smoking marijuana

And I counted the iguanas

As I wondered why the Torah

Made no mention of Madonna.

At the lengthening of shadows,

Having smoked my marijuana

Hungry as a desperado,

I consumed ten avocados.

To be honest, I felt hollow

Smoking reefer in Tijuana.

So I shipped ten avocados

To my flat in Colorado

And discovered–holy moly!

I had just made guacamole.

2014

Have you contacted the agency

That books trips to the Aegean Sea?

Nine to five they man the phones,

Coaxing you in blessed tones

“Treat yourself to something nice,

Rediscover paradise.”

This to me seemed like a venture

Worthy of a small adventure

So I sailed and paid their price

To rediscover paradise.

Sparkling blues and fragrant whites,

Old museums and olive, humid nights,

And only waves for friends.

There, I heard the Aegean Sea’s advice –

I sailed for home, and rediscovered paradise.

If a man increaseth sorrow

In proportion to his knowledge,

What a fool he is to borrow

Heaps of dough to go to college,

Sit in libraries til sunrise,

Cram new terms until the fun dies

Watching seconds ticking clockwise

Through insouciant trust fund eyes.

Her: “Honey, look at that white column!

It’s a blue-blood, top to bottom,

Fluted, dignified, and solemn,

Not a Pilsner…whaddya call ‘em?”

Him: “That’s a plain, banal pilaster

Made of brittle, crumbly plaster:

Imitation alabaster,

A conceptual disaster.”

Do you think they’re happy? Ask her.

When I walk in the valley of the shadow of death

Without fear, without cringing, without scorn on my breath

I remember my fathers in their hour of plight:

They survived. Therecan only be shadow where there is still light.

Reverentially she frowns

While she reads the coffee grounds

That like rivers trace our fate

(or stain the cup). At any rate,

She says the meaning is provisional

And would be strengthened with additional

Readings of the grounds.

I invite her to another round.

We talk more. Then she mentions that her Mom

Used to peer into her palm,

Trace the lines, the bumps, the carvings,

And then prophecy Prince Charming.

I feign skepticism first,

But I put my hand in yours.

What’s your zodiac? she wonders.

I don’t know, do you? She numbers

Them, from Capricorn to Taurus.

Palm in palm we step outdoors,

Constellation of two stars,

To look above and then infer

If I am compatible with her.

Hand in hand these questions we pursued

While the coffee brewed and brewed and brewed.

“Son, good morning. I’m the herald,
Sergeant Major Tom Fitzgerald.
Do I want to see your fort?
Gosh, I do, but my visit is too short.
Who am I? Well, I’m the herald,
Master Sergeant Tom Fitzgerald.
Where’s your mother, son? Go get her.
Say a man’s here with a letter.”

“Ma’am good morning, I’m the herald,
Sergeant Major Tom Fitzgerald.
Oh, no thank you, it’s still morning.
Is there somewhere we can sit?
It’s my duty to transmit
That it happened without warning.
He was readying his pack
When a sudden flank attack…”
End scene. Fade to black.

He walks with stately, measured steps
Atop the pine sealed, polished deck
Beneath two gleaming epaulets.

The many shipmen stand impressed:
His princely gait, his manly neck.
He walks with stately, measured steps.

He chose the waves and not the steppes:
Across the seven seas he’ll trek
Beneath two gleaming epaulets.

He chose. He chose, he’s now distressed.
He fears no surf, he fears no wreck,
He walks with stately, measure steps.

He left his father’s fishing nets,
With ache for home he’s now bedecked,
Beneath two gleaming epaulets.

Beneath the man lay his regrets
Above the sea where he’s a speck
He walks with stately, measured steps
Beneath two gleaming epaulets.

The day Odysseus came home

To a Telemachus as old

As the Odysseus the day

He held Penelope and told

Her – I am sailing to the plains

Of ancient Priam’s fortressed Troy.

You will be young when I come home

With tales of glory for our boy –

He considered all the time had swept

Into the sea, and wept.

The bow’s bent tight, he plucks the string,

The swallow sings, the music spreads

To a mosquito’s hum, and now it’s dead –

The bowstring’s eloquent reaction

To its forcible contraction

In Odysseus’s hand.

Every gesture timed and planned,

He considers all his arrows,

All his eager, jumping sparrows,

Slowly reaches for the first,

While the suitors cry commands,

He calmly aims; the feast is cursed;

The sparrows sing;

The arrows sting.

The palace assembles,

The courtiers dissemble,

The pageant resembles

A meadow that trembles:

The hoofbeats of herds,

The squabbles of birds,

The wind’s easy gust,

And fall’s early rust.

Narcissus kneels and blows his kisses.
The kisses blown reflect Narcissus’
One belief that there is none
Who can believe as one believes in one.
He draws his lips, the river’s lip
Invites his kiss, he starts to tip,
He almost laps with tip of lips
His pal’s reflected tip of lips.

He slips

Kiss, kiss

Finis.

Misterioso, scherzando, andante grazioso, cantabile, piu mosso, allegro ma non troppo, accelerando, con anima, con forza, vivace, marcato, con fuoco, il piu forte possibile! Maestoso! Tutti!

Fermata.

Dolce, calando, smorzando, morendo.

Bravo!

Bis!

One hears “bravo” and “wow”

At the Concertgebouw.

The conductor in rapture

Has practically fractured

His entrusted, encrusted baton.

My, the percussionist’s brawn!

Raising mallet and mallet

He smashes and splashes the palette

And covers the painting

Of his ancestor dreamer

Who struck with a femur

Of the lion he slugged

A stone that he lugged

To his cave.

I sat thinking there, glum:

Civilization: as thin as the skin of a drum.

That “the dogs bark, but the caravan passes”

Is a glib fib that’s sold to the masses

By the cunning and eloquent priests.

They recline at their feasts

While exchanging true wisdom, ancient and stark:

That the caravan passes, but the masses still bark.

Polyglot

Ladies and gentlemen!

I present to you The Polyglot!

Meet the man who knew a lot

Of ways to say “je t’aime.”

His “I love you”s by the Thames,

And “Uhibbuk”s by the Nile,

Like “Ti amo” by the Tiber

Met abashed, believing smiles

(Every woman is the same).

Not by one was he beguiled,

Each one’s hot words tasted mild,

Smoky, damp logs to his flame.

After dizzying world travels,

Ties established and unraveled,

By the ancient Congo River,

Sat the Polyglot in winter.

She approached him from behind

(That’s the fate of all mankind)

When she said it with cool ease

In his mother’s Congolese.

One was moody and ill-tempered and his shoelaces undone,

He’d convulse when he would sneeze and he would wheeze when he would run,

And the other – pleasant, gracious, with a pocket square fresh pressed,

Rowed regattas, helped the homeless, passed her each and every test,

And despite these overt differences I’ve emphasized, my friends,

She awoke one sunny day, and chose “the other” in the end.

I set my watch to the humming of the stars
And dance the tango to the booming waves.
I own two things: a cutlass and some scars
I purchased from my company of knaves.

My eyes – the color of the sea.
My mind is natural and free.
My skin – the color of the mast
And taut like sails held fast.

Dark rum and women I’ve enjoyed
To the final drop
And then refilled my leather flask
From the trusty oaken cask.
How often have I poured? Don’t ask.

I’m fully full at age nineteen.
I don’t feel much, a little spleen.
My life attracts uncivil strife.
I’ve grown unused to civil life.–
But if it’s destined to be short
At least I won’t have died in port.

In the depths of Tiktu Island by a little inlet grows
An exotic and resplendent, rich and green vanilla grove
That invites you, that excites you, that entices and delights you
With its sweet pulsating fragrance, with the crackling underfoot
Of vanilla pods just fallen. Rouse yourself, come on, and put
Aside your strict adherence to the pallid world of prose.
Follow me, tonight, my life, to the green vanilla grove.

Never trust self-styled sages

Who extract their daily wages

By promoting old-new cages

In their millions of pages.

“Don’t you jump without preparing,”

You will hear these penguins squeak,

While they’ve spent their whole lives staring

At the jump pit, never daring:

Intellectually chic

But embarrassingly meek.

Poet! Spring into the inkwell,

Don’t you mind the blue-black splash.

Swim for life upon the inkswell

In your momentary flash.

Write, erase, write more, efface

The difference between time and place,

Revise the plot, cross out and blot.

One day your smudged hands will have caught

A bird of paradise, and then

You will have earned your plumaged pen.

You wish for me a life without laurels,

Since “recognition brings with it quarrels,”

Since “nothing flees faster than fame.”

Thank you. I wish for you the same.

In the darkest hour of the night

He repeats his father’s sacred rite,

Pecks his sleepy wife and fixes his comb,

Dismisses fatigue and struts from his home.

He clears his throat and yells into the night,

The darkness presses in and he calls out to the light,

He yells again, he crows until he’s won

The daily duel with the sun.

His cry sustains a pitch of morning beauty.

Ennobled by his sense of duty,

He proudly earns his daily bread

And yells away his daily dread

Before the dark and pressing question WHY,

If the sun might rise without his cry.

We are one mile in,

Here she comes, flash of rust

Clods of earth, clouds of dust,

Streaking past on the rail,

Granite flanks, sweeping tail. 

Now the first violin

Hears the hooves, strikes the beat

Of the feet, and the heat

Of the bows grows insane,

Ripping hair from the mare,

Winning fame,

Rippling mane.

Once tradition stood as sentry,

Unconditionally barring entry

To the portals of the gentry,

So the people breached the portals,

Smashed the portals, smashed the mortals

That stood guard over the portals,

And displaced the ancient idols

And effaced the ancient titles —

Titles, idols, to the gentry being vital.

After wanton desecration

And relentless condemnation

Leaders issued proclamations

That plebeians must have sentries

To protect them from the gentry

Who, duplicitous, seek entry,

And they gave the people titles

(With the license to be idle) —

An accommodated people being vital.

Thus the uprising evolved.

Manifestos thus dissolved.

Revolutions — they revolve.