ISRAEL

moben@barak-online.net 

a love poem if there ever was one

When your body was stone

I
 was
                a cat

When your breast was a leaf
I
 was
       a tree

When your eye was a star
I was
         a shoe

When your were a river I
was a lake

When your hand was a stone I
                                               was
a wallet

When your smile was a highway
                                                 I was a monument

When your lip was a continent I was the amazons

When your sleep was an arch my lips were a horse
when your hair was a lantern my legs were elephants
when your past was a bridge I was not your future
when your echo was a town I was not your cowboy

when you slept under foreign pillows I wasnt a memory
when you laughed like a summer girl I was not in your thoughts
when you were a whore I was not your client
when you were a mother I was not your son
when you were the virgin Mary I was not Jesus

when you were the sea I was not the shore
when you were a pigeon I was not the sky nor the riffle
when you were prison I was not the bird at your window
when you were the lover I was not your eyes
when you were a lesbian I was not a woman
when you were a daughter I was not your mother
when you were a grave I was not sand
when you were a raincoat I was under the sun
when you were an umbrella I didnt need shelter
when you were my body I was not yours

so how,
how can we say we are in love
                                               after all these years
trying to find each other
                                     under the caves
            of our decaying
temples.

Love is never blind

When love was blind our eyes could see
the beauty in our ugliness
Now love is wise and things are nice
all is dead around us in this house

When love was our eyes we were
blind to the beauty of the flower
every plant in the universe was inside
our funny looking sunny glasses

When time has come to live
how do you say goodbye
poems and songs are nothing
but another shameless lie

another excuse to keep talking
about things that don't use words.

To Rumi

It is when I finish the poem
that I ask myself
how will I be able to make sense
of this world until the
next
poem

The only silence I know is the silence
of the written words
pleading to be part of this world
pleading to make it a better place to be.

Noble Prize

Ginsberg didn't get it, Buk neither
was a bum
Borges some said was facist
but Garcia Marquez got it
Did you know
Winston
Churchill got the nobel
of literature, have you read his prose,
Toni Morrison yes but not Amiri Baraka
not Kerouak died too young O.K.
But why not Henry Miller
died too old?
Maybe Ferlinghetti still can get it
Burroughs? too crazy or too american
now we need someone from the east
now we need a jew, an african
in the mean time my favourites writers
all dying not getting nobel prizes,
most of the winners just bore me
Czymborska O.K. though,
then what are my chances,
too crazy yes, but also African,
born Morocco, jew, live in Israel,
write poetry in Hebrew, Spanish some English
like this poem, and if I win I promise
will read this one when they give it to me.

Prohetic poetic

Four years after the war is forgotten
and the people become part of a history book
four young lads in Denver
will start a band named
The Kossovo Survivors
They will be marketed as the Denver scene
play alt country-rock
and sell 25 million cd's
in their 4 years existence,
then the lead singer and guitarrist
know by the name of John Kossovarvich
will hang himself
because his girlfriend
died in a car crash.

© All Copyright, 1999, Moshe Benarroch.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.