Poem 80- Poetry from my visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York

Poetry from my visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York

One who understands
( Paul Klee)

I am one who understands
I understand all concepts
All thought, all action
And higher level processing allows
Me to be calm and rational
In the face of any foe.
I am one who understands
This understanding allows me
To rise above all hardship
No need to pontificate, I understand
In fact, I understood before you
Cared to explain
I had made sense the swirling
Uncertainty you hastened
To propose
But I am the one who understands
No need to protect my schema
Or my soul
For I am one who understands

Poem 79 - Poetry from my visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York

Poetry from my visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York

Carry home your own reproduction

As I walk around the Metropolitan Museum I find myself pulling my
Phone from my pocket and snapping shots of the Warhol’s, the Sargent’s and
The Picasso’s, and I realise I am trying to take home a painting more beautiful than the pixels my phone could never capture, my intellectually advanced smart phone cannot compute the pure forms, brave ideas and exceptional clarity of paint so enlightened no human since can understand the talents of its maker and me with my little BlackBerry, trying to steal a bit for myself

I think I’ll just take my poems as a going home presents and leave the irony here, at the Met, for other generations to perplex about after I’m long gone

“NO FLASH PLEASE”

Poem 78- Discussions with a deity

Discussions with a deity

Let’s talk about G-d
Let’s talk about your connection with G-d
Let’s talk about Him/It and
How you converge here in
This public forum
In this place of G-dlyness
Let’s walk in to the holy of holies
And proclaim our worth
And right
Together
Here, holding hands

Let’s talk about kosher
Let’s talk about candles
Let’s talk about when you
Decided you would/wouldn’t
Eat with G-d’s thanks on your food
Prepare the table
Smell the spices
How the wandering and the diaspora
Grabbed your innate senses
And rebelled

Let’s catagorise prayer, practice
And life and judge ourselves
And each other as we walk precariously
On the path of the land

Poem 77- Characters in foreign lands

Characters in foreign lands

It’s a different time there in your habitat
As far as I know you could be in a
Pagoda, or an igloo (which would be
Fun) or a house… on stilts
You could be painting or sleeping or
Smelling a flower only native to
Your back garden

I put my hand up to this picture
And refill it with more plausible
Options. The house I saw out of the corner of the screen, the flat we
Passed the evening in, the house you signaled
With your hand as we drove past
That night when it was cold enough
For there to be frost on the edges of the
Windows, or the small house at the back of the block, that you don’t
Really live in because you haven’t lived
At home for years

I raise my hand again and place
You all in a myriad of scenarios in my life
And you all fit in all the places
I have newly prescribed for you
I have this suspicion, though, that none of you would fit in all of them.
You might not fit as my friends and I discuss the implementation
Of a new campaign, or a night on the
Sofa in my living room eating recently purchased
Sweets and chocolates, you might not
Fit at the theatre, talking about my poems, music, films. You may not fit even if you are clever or handsome or nice or you like
Dancing sometimes and you don’t mind when I sing in the street
And now I am worried none of these fractured pieces will
Fit together even with the magic of dreamland and I don’t know
If I am awake enough to know
Or check the validity of any
Of this