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B.Z. Niditch, 19 september 2016
WALDEN POND
On the Concord river
we sail my kayak
in denims
by a swarming
nest of hornets
a fawn is rustling by trees
we're spreading
lines of Thoreau
at my students
orientation
wishing to hold
the hands of language
flashing love and nature
by first circles of light
with a glow
in companions
breathing hard
in a marathon
from grassy hills and dunes
under dry orange leaves
as new Fall acorns drop
we run into shadowy strides
as a horse back rider waves
to us down hills
of open songs
over Walden Pond trails
by breezy gestures
of the wind.
B.Z. Niditch, 19 september 2016
SMOOTH JAZZ
Smooth jazz playing
at a natural good night
for my last gig
buried over
quarter notes
drowning in
poetry pockets of sax
asked to play
at a birthday party
warmed by wood stoves
in a Fall midnight hour
watching a bird
through windows
chirping under trembling oaks
in the soft showery rain
the whole length of hours
remembering
the French onion soup
and vanilla pancakes
on the fire near
the floorboards
to watch dancing
and propose
a toast that persuades you
that the thirst
and hunger
of our menu wheelhouse
is perfectly arranged.
B.Z. Niditch, 19 september 2016
THE MOON'S SOLITUDE
In the moon's solitude
waiting to read
new poem sequences
among the last red leaves
waiting to play sax
in the breathing of waves
from a montage of pages
in my impatient mind
outside my window
are stars too embarrassed
by grieving
for the silent woman
a longtime friend, Anna,
who has family in Paris
telling her the only answer
is to love a heart that is light
and she asks me to play
a lucid French piano tune
of her childhood
before she left for America
the Germans invaded
her luminous memory.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
SCATTERED TIME
On solitary horizons
loosed as days lost
combing through
scattered time
of metamorphosis
with hours to appease
us in a poet's analysis
by stardust fleeting words
on nature's face of it
in a poet's abyss
from a visiting memory
breathing in my initials
by lunar landscapes
telescoped on Maple trees
mulling over Chopin's
waltzes once composed
in another century's breath
losing myself
in a dusk of shadows
out in the French countryside
on a rose garden bench
praying for peace
in an open field of orange
and red leaves
over Monet-like river beds
near the monastery fence
at daybreak's solitary sun
here on meadow fields
of strawberries
gathered in Autumn
when the nascent doves
of Picasso in a reddened sky
fly away South to keep warm
like a runaway adolescent
fleeing parental storms.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
PLAYING CHOPIN
Playing Chopin etudes
under his miniature
on the piano
by my twenty-somethings
with my gestures
disclosing my unshaven years
that spilled out
the lyrical muse
of a musical romanticism
that faintly enfolds us
at my recital on pages
of belated practice
here in a sheltered hall
north of the city harbor
for a poet needs to live
and play by a river
as he needs
the saints of Jesus
reading aloud as a debut
the Romantic music
of my apprenticed verse
from my rustling hands
practicing in three languages
suddenly in the thunder
of my audience's hands
the applause like the wind
was deafening.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
MEETING UP WITH BEATS
There were five of us
who spoke together
after our shielded reading
during a partial sax recital
when time came to a stop
and were translated
to passing glances
in a memorial of the Beats
on a free wielding
rush of our words
by keeping
the lamp burning
at my dancing verse
out in a changing season
of a strong voice
aiming at
swaying at your cool
flirting audience
suddenly inescapable silence
as if to say,
we are taking off
in our night shirts.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
MANHATTAN RIFFS
Wherever a moon is sealed
here for my waiting gig
to play new sax riffs
the street lights shine
on a leafless tree
my girlfriend trembles
shading in
an oil portrait of us
or when fading out of love
watching a silent red sky
having lost hope
by the seaside green
yet composing a jazz solo
among swaying dunes
under a solitary gazebo
from my old telescope
viewing the meteoric stars
above Brighton Beach
when Whitman or Crane
visited the Brooklyn Bridge
those spans between
parental storms
of my own visibility
here in Manhattan
writing in nine circled bars
on this voiceless night
by an unmade bed,
anonymous sunglasses
a live elm
with my initials on it
a comatose clock,
with my name and memory
returning to me.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 september 2016
WAITING TO FISH
These October mornings
waiting for a line of bass
or any fish to appear
losing no time
on the shore's tall grass
by dawn's dock
in a row boat or kayak
over the motionless shore
on Atlantic's ocean waters
embracing an opening wave
by a back up school
of salmon in a frenzy
then motionless
in an A.M. silence
of too much cool memory
already tasting the filet
fried and cooked
along the sea.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
THE TAXI CAB MAN
The poet asks how much
as his Dutch friend
puts his hand
on the meter
does not dare
to talk about money
at new year's time
they are both tired
and stood up tonight
by their double dates
two bouquets of roses
lie on the front seat,
the poet needs to
study French
in the library
on the back bench
waiting for his exam,
but he will not take
the cab driver away
from his grave yard shift
lasting a life time.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
TO ROCK THE BOAT
To rock the boat over me
knowing an aging poet
is always in exile
shipwrecked on the ocean
or by merely visiting
the company of another.
B.Z. Niditch, 12 october 2016
ANDRZEJ WAJDA PASSES
We remember your films
"Ashes and Diamonds"
"Kanal," "A Generation"
"Danton," "Man of Marble"
and more;
we will not forget
your historic movies,
nor the patriotism
of a life affirmed
in a ragtag century
of Auschwitz and the Gulag,
that poetry will choose life
in spite of the Nazis,
and the Communism of the Soviets;
we will plant red poppies
on the solitary grave
of a Resistance fighter,
wishing a solidarity of peace
for a new generation,
with your films still shown
to our own underground.
B.Z. Niditch, 18 december 2015
LET THIS DECEMBER
Let this December dawn
be a morning
of such American perception
that signs and wonders
will be in our
hiking direction
thinking to pause
on windows
to watch chimeras
of songbirds
hearing cicadas
and cardinals go South
on whatever road
by Robert Frost's birches
or James Dean's cycles
thanking life's moments
for a worthwhile day spent
bemused by glimpsing times
of recluse J.D.Salinger
in Vermont
looking for miracles
of Kerouac's prose
or visiting Emily Dickinson
at Amherst groves
where we park
on the right routes
over expressway obstacles
by a thick river of cars
as a cool mortal Beat
and a smooth jazz guy
within my hands,
toes and feet
may pardon, circle
and disclose
of their memory.
B.Z. Niditch, 18 december 2015
A WARSAW LETTER
You sent me a letter
from Warsaw
in between my phlox
and rock garden chores
with pebbles from the sea
the dead stones come alive
from my noon daydream
of busy tackle fishing
on the other side of the Bay
here for a last run
miles away from the shore
as trout survive
seconds, seasons, times
now remembering
my headlight
of the motorcycle
needs to be switched off
e mailing my sailor friend
Ringo over predicable waves
who is going to my
Beat poem reading
hoping he would become
an ecologist
traveling like on roads
always of exodus
living in tabernacles
over desert borders
to protect and rescue turtles
sea lions, whales,
other mammals
by outposts
of crowded sails
under chromatic rays
by sunshine
with look-outs
over grassy island
Ringo is now
riddled by his own jokes
in his blue angler kayak
who says he noticed
my old Harley and fixed it
in the parking lot on the dock.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 march 2014
REAL TIME
In major acts
of witnessing
these cynical times
as a minor clerk
from the bench,
at a system which passes
out sentences
by corrupt judges
acting like Platonic cave
dwellers all over the world
with soap operas
drama kings and queens
having transgressed
any real time truth
without irony,only rumor
or any sense of humor
by exploiting motives
of personal innuendo.
Over beaten up pages
of records
at a hearing
a thousand lines long
these long robed guys
having explored
words through cases
of evidence
with dull domestic faces
looking like tombstones
in a Dickensian world
to judge and jury
saying in a straight face
who is guilty or not.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 march 2014
RECITAL
The thunderstorm
daydream leaps
over a mushroom search
my eyes are volcanoes
at the grand piano
opening here in Warsaw
chasing my sunny breath
on the bridge
late for an afternoon recital
the "E" string
walks away from me
unsuspecting the passages
of Chopin's embracing notes.
B.Z. Niditch, 28 february 2014
MARCH BLUES AND BLAHS
Today's sky
will not be missed
in a sorry shade
of black and blue
when Arctic air
quietly smuggled in
from the East freezes
our lifeless bodies
of snow into ice
bright figurines
and my sax
is exposed
as my three oranges
eaten on my motorcycle
on the jazzy corner
for my timely gig,
yet a surreal poet is still
a Beat for life
in his runaway suit
when the same shade
shines in darkness
from a downtown club
on the window blinds
as a stranger offers
to help me
staring back at him
with a sponged fog
fills up the gas
both knowing the blahs
will not outlast
the skittering waters
on our faces
from snow kisses
and that spring
may be early
when words again flow
and my sax
will again beat out
its underground notes
to play the Blues.
B.Z. Niditch, 28 february 2014
RECITAL
The thunderstorm
daydream leaps
over a mushroom search
my eyes are volcanoes
at the grand piano
opening here in Warsaw
chasing my sunny breath
on the bridge
late for an afternoon recital
the "E" string
walks away from me
unsuspecting the passages
of Chopin's embracing notes.
B.Z. Niditch, 27 february 2014
ROZYCKI EMERGES
Unwinding language
being shy
for the cameras
now all over
this metropolis
with words
in an attache case
holding only
cold luggage
held by four strings
containing
a life's work
of vital plays
on language
on one hand
a murdered pastry
in the other
shaking off
a coffee cup
on a Polish
hamlet road
in a runaway time
such as this,
faced with
a poet's newness
you may
not recognize him
or an age trembling
for enlightenment.
B.Z. Niditch, 27 february 2014
NATURE'S WOODWINDS
Deep down
at the crag's edge
the leaves tumble across
the great green hills
as portents
of your solitude
knowing the path
to climb
up the shadowy mountain
and deserted peaks
will be clear
for a lone traveler
with his backpack
full of pure poems
the shadows blush
at first light
expecting
the woodwinds
to sound
near the saxifrage
with blackberries
all around
as I spy
a mapped trail
shielding me
from quivering trees
a piano sonata
in the distance
with an echo
of capturing
a passage of Chopin
from this moment.
B.Z. Niditch, 27 february 2014
SURPRISED
Surprised
by the anonymity
of a veteran hunger
digging for clams
trembling by
the frozen shore
in the shameful
staring eyes
of distracted tourists
eager for a ride
on duck boats
who toss
pocket money
and jelly beans
for good luck
in the ocean
watching for Leda
the last swan
who must have known
my visits
and not kept away
since we are
childhood friends
dripping with pre-war
memory's exposure
now wrapped
up in a jacket
with pocket poems
of my last collection
in an actor's words
on breathless wind
swept air
I'm always
carrying notes,
new and sundry
on my sleeve.
B.Z. Niditch, 26 february 2014
BY THE THIRD PERSON (for Tadeusz Rozewicz)
Without having much
of an employment resume
slumped out all day
eating lima beans
on the sun shined city bench
and as yet not yet shaving,
red eyed at the moment
in the uncertain noon,
hearing of a male model job
and an actor's workshop
both in the same building
on a flattering part
of a Warsaw street
and when you are a teen
not knowing much
of the world's vague talk
linger with open hope
and observing gestures
as your soul beats wildly
for any work with words
eager to stumble
on a sea side conversation
leading to changing roles
from this fast pacing student
and going to the address
with a heavy suitcase
before the war
yet willing to try anything
within reason of expectation
as I meet the director,
looking consumptive
at the pool table
asking me with book in hand
to do him a favor
by reading the lines
of Coriolanus
and he tells me
he also runs the model agency
and I would be a perfect fit
for his new tennis ware
if I would walk the plank
where nature is my own mirror
along the red carpet
and offering me a salary
yet wondering
if there was something
to all this rumor
not reported
by the third person.
B.Z. Niditch, 26 february 2014
AT THE POLISH DRAWBRIDGE (for TOMASZ ROZYCKI)
It was ancient
for long forgotten journeys
but the brown shirts
blew it up,anyway
there was nowhere
not in harm's way
even the cat
did not survive its cry
in the salt ditch water
by the wide silence
if it would be built up
after the beasts had left
that icy spring
that no one could cross
not even a boy
on a bicycle.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 july 2012
WARTIME PASSAGE Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)
Footsteps follow a cat
on snowy streets
near the central station
shadowing Warsaw's night
In a half asleep city
no one sees either of you
stretching silence
by sweet shop windows
Everything disappears
even milk for the cat
moonlight hides
a few ragged strangers
Deportations rise
every quarter of an hour
with dawn's finality
on brownshirted platforms
Angels are not welcome
on your shaved head era
when beasts seize beauty
on a pile of books
Disorder takes on
a life of its own
but you, Wislawa
will have a keepsake.
B.Z. Niditch, 16 october 2012
CZESLAW MILOSZ 'S AUTOGRAPH
We exchanged autographs
in our slim volumes
between university streets
and picture card Warsaw
on country roads
of pre-war optimism
huddled between whispers
of childhood traveling
from rag pickers of the mind
hearing etudes of Chopin
as any Parisian exile
sinking between
premature fears
over bridges
of history and expatriation
passing sleep houses
from a voiceless hour
on a late train
when a mute shower
of ashes came down
from the heavens
on the tracks
leading to our own
death in life departures.
B.Z. Niditch, 16 october 2012
RETURN TO WARSAW
No inspection needed
at the border,
caught by authorities
reading "Trans-Atlantyk"
on a train
with the picture and odor
of the Katyn forest
and Treblinka,
from an old obituary notice
in a tabloid newspaper
stuffed in my shabby suitcase,
with a faded cross and star
on the luggage logo
by aimless trees
returning to Poland
after forty years of rain,
does anyone leave here
or return
without radar or passport
marked exile, pious
or cosmopolitan
stamped in one's conscience
of a lost soul.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 october 2012
POST COSMOS (For Witold Gombrowicz 1904-1969)
A lost button
from your coat
of many colors,
a pale carnation
crumpled
in your suit lapel
dies in your seams,
a lazy red eye
between two oceans,
noon and dusk,
evening and day;
angels hide
in darkness,
only death pops out
of nowhere,
where language
is as tentative
as your life.
B.Z. Niditch, 12 august 2012
KATYN FOREST
Fascism wears a red shirt
in the woods,
no one
expects photographs
with a revelation,
only hear-say or rumors
from still cries
as in the crematoriums
or in the Gulag;
we read now
in school or in the news
about the Hitler-Stalin pact,
when
truth died
in the Katyn Forest
there was only silence
for decades
of expressionless faces
with decrees of death
still being ordered
by the wolf man
in the Kremlin
until he departs
unannounced
for Hades.
B.Z. Niditch, 10 august 2012
GOODBYE 20th
Twenty centuries
of hushed secrets;
Stalin grins
like a bad toothpick,
sending away souls
to the Gulag
in caravans of archangels
somewhere in snowy
Siberian towns;
the "new man"
building on ant hills
of humanity,
in Warsaw
a roll calls your name
in a manacled world
of arrivals and departures
that never make
the daily news.
B.Z. Niditch, 19 july 2012
OBLIVION
No reprimand
of the present
into the light life
without any hour
of being moonstruck
by the past dust
staying on us,
we take our leaves
from dioramas
of a whitewashed time
on easier pathways
than any subterranean
road of emptinesss,
hiding below
white blinds
of broken windows,
smashing rotted fruit
yoked at barren gardens
or castigating
any romantic ruins
of pubescent journeys
at secomd guesses,
those mad expectations
of a fateful gaze
with a glance back
at futile games
in a hopscotch universe
circling toward
separate horizons
we wish to forget.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 july 2012
ACCOMPLICES
A bird dances
on a branch
of evergreen,
not knowing
you're distracted
on your bicycle,
when a soul
with a Slavic accent,
says "After you,"
and holds you up
down the road,
for a divine
appointment.
Latest comments:
27 may 2024
sam53
mentalnie...
22 may 2024
zmieniłem :)
22 may 2024
violetta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gagrjoOJBA
22 may 2024
Yaro
czujemy się oszukani , okłamani karmieni kłamstwem
21 may 2024
piórko
Ostatnia zwrotka szczególna "W dłoni piasek
21 may 2024
Ludzie cobie upodobali :)
21 may 2024
Wojna już trwa:)
21 may 2024
Śliczna jest:)
21 may 2024
Ja futro :)
21 may 2024
Ja tutaj zapomniałam o was, cieszę się za
20 may 2024
Jaga
Na szczęście życie zmiennym jest...
20 may 2024
Dziękuję za plusy i komentarze :)
28 may 2024
wiesiek
28 may 2024
Satish Verma
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Jaga
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26 may 2024
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Jaga
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Satish Verma