Poetry

B.Z. Niditch
PROFILE About me Poetry (81)


B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016

AUGUST DOG DAY

Seizing to protect a pug
by the kiosk
tasting bread and wine
amid the chants
of the choir at St. Paul's
in Harvard Square
forgetting all triangular
morning masks and mysteries
near Cambridge Common
you eye Elizabeth Bishop
stopping at the crosswalk
returning from Brazil
with her luggage
in the glittering heat
of August's still noon
amid a phalanx of red birds
reaching out to a blue slate sky
when the first light
decides to shine
in taciturn airless hours
feeling the angst
of Sisyphus
amid the purple flowers
burning from
a high mountain
as a stone unable 
to move or rise for us
hearing word lines of poetry
from the ancients like Ovid
sharing on divine 
solitary horizons
transfigured by gold star dust
or listening to sister
in a far voice dreams
from a Greek chorus
burning your imagination
as we are a little changed
in sleepwalking liquid silences
of endless fervid fevers
as David among his flock
like old Cinna or bold Catullus
among the Caesars.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016

MONDRIAN'S UNIVERSE

Art with all senses
the colors that sets you apart
hits you in the reality
in each of design 
of a Dutch grittiness
in the sponged face
of your "Christmas Card"
along with twice 
the combinations
of past and future space
leveled in the linear unknown
at touching up 
the avant-garde
for when your
propeller splashes
us on this nape of orange
in a museum canvas
we observe merely the surface
of red sashes
of geometric shapes
Mondrian's fusion drapes 
in an illusion 
of luminous shadow
of eccentric waves 
of ink dreams
brushed between two oceans
in a parachute of our senses
hushed as an eccentric painter
craves to line and draw on
all of our anxious emotions.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016

TELL ME EVERYTHING

Tell me everything my friend
about lighting candles
for the victims of fascism
about your love for the lost
of Christ,
for the scarred
from my voice's mouth
with Mary's eyes of sorrow
wishing to speak your parables
for those who look at tomorrow
with only an abstraction
yet turn it into
the avant-garde
migraine times
of Simone Weil
the writing letters
of Kierkegaard
Kafka and Gogol's
death wish
not to be known who yearn
to burn their life's works
as you start learning
about the trains of thought
those about to perish
when the late day shadow
of the sun remembers
the half observed,
those who served
the "Master Race"
or who still turn
away their Stalag face
at the cross in the Gulag
we still ask as Mary 
for His grace.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 27 june 2016

IN A TREASURE TROVE

In a treasure trove
of living words
there is no border
to love or define forgiving
it is already done
yet here we are in the sun
listening to Charlie Parker
deciding to explore nature
and reach a nest of birds
caught in dark branches
or here at the beach
we assure that inside
of a shell and rock
that a hurting turtle
is well protected,
we make our ways
through Platonic caves
until we motion
to divine a measure
that we will be connected
in a snorkel of wishes
through the ocean waves
to find and save the fish
from man's leaving plastic
and all sort nets and metal
to save part of our planet
below our earth's
geological shadow
we let go
from the diving board
and swim in our words
in a dramatic mile below
like Jacques Cousteau
surfing with
an environmental smile.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 27 june 2016

SYLVIA PLATH

Sylvia walked in a hallway
of pained light
through the window
it was always night
living for words
always in the shadow
of living out the hour
in her poetic insight
from an already blemished day
astonished at her nerve
at a man's wrath
Sylvia moved giving flight
on her own contemporary path
from a finely shaped mind
in a new confessional school
that others hardly would find
a bard to be understood
and cast out with an icy cry
of harassed laughter
wishing to write her name Plath
on the encased blackboard
rejecting all chalk sounds
that would be erased
to reinvent her past,
no one knew whom
was stalked after
such was her lot and rule
recognizing her own fame
she composed by the mirror
taking out her lipstick
not realizing any blame
and shut the door.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 24 september 2016

ASHES

"Have a nice day"
say the living neighbors
who do not envy the lost
as news reports
on victims ashes
in Europe and Asia
cannot speak or reply
to the unthinkable
in an absence of gazes
from tiny snapshots
ex camera
in a former life
concealed among caves
and white stones
along the beach
your luminous eyes
cannot hide ourselves
on the unspeakable.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 24 september 2016

THE CHILD SOLDIERS

The child soldiers
smile and gaze 
in a nightmare
as your furniture
and personal pictures
are being removed,
then you are taken away,
there are few
photos of you left
bathing on the sea
or up on skis
or on a white mountain
vacation,
no one to greet you
in the city market
without any fruit
or vegetables
in a time of war
reporters visit
after the horror
who now stare
at your losses.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 24 september 2016

FALL BLUES

A Beat poet
cooped up like a canary
in a New England winter
tired of TV. screens
and faded old films
clouded over
his bloodshot eyes
wanting to be a runaway
or a Rimbaud 
here in Vermont
a red French wine
takes out his sax
to play riffs
along the Green Mountains
yet afraid to be
terrorized from a water bed
abandoned from home
and his made up
spiritual exercises
with a crusade
against his lost friend
shows me her balancing act
in his disturbed universe
by throwing a football
from the Patriots
telling her a Chinese proverb,
"Tension is who you think 
you should be, relaxation
is who you are."


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 24 september 2016

TWELVE CANDLES

Riding on my bicycle
with a broken right arm
and break in shoulder
after soccer practice
hurting from
a bully's wound
in days of Mercurochrome
still smarting on your body
of thought when left 
with a shadow of memory
yet your anger smolder
over a first leather jacket
from your birthday party
after seeing 
a James Dean movie
here on an Autumn day
you walk with a free ticket
to the Cape Ann museum
a pug on the sidewalk
accompanies you
with a Van Gogh postcard
from your Dutch uncle
still intact
in your side pocket
broken sunglasses
from today assaults
of an insensate encounter
you climb up 
the art house steps
waiting to visit the moderns
taking out your oils,
notebook and poet's pen
unwilling to take any blame
for being an origin


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 19 september 2016

IN MY GARDEN

Six outgrown petals
in a corsage
of last summer rose
not forgotten by time
a first woodland love
by wandering days
over my album leafs
page of my poems
in mute muse and stone by
the waiting hedges of vines
by yellow hyacinth groves
I'm in a Fall blue blazer
with apple scents
in faint trills
from my sax
playing in my backyard
along wind swept trees
along the home harbor Bay
by dangling shadows
of now ripened raspberries
on my walking path
holding my life within.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 19 september 2016

ON LENGTH OF DAYS

Words fall on me
on length of days
with the same pulse
of verse 
as on my kayak
rolling on the bluest sea
on unexpected hours
or trekking 
over back roads
watching cardinals sing
over Jacob's ladders
in an open language
of seasonal herons
climbing on mountains
a woman in red high heels
tells me she has lost
her tourist visa
and passport
on the last ship at eventide
holds my matches
on the sandy coast
for a neon campfire
near my hammock
out in the neighborhood
under the town's light
hearing my sax sonata
in the white deserted sand
my words wash over you
with a butterfly net
at the freshly
painted gazebo
by the lighthouse
luminosity
in wonder 
of woodwinds
over blanket
quilts of love.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.
 


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 27 june 2016

THE DISAPPEARED ONE

June showers in a heat
fall into our picnic basket
it must have taken hours 
when the barbecue flames
rose on the lawn
in the smoke by the gate
under the tent of crickets
this Sunday after church
we heard a Beat poet's
parched voice
fading from view
on the street between rains
reading of his experiences
in locating the names
of orphans from the Argentine
called "the disappeared"
of whom Jesus was one
were hunted and rounded up
by the military state
almost vanished
whom he saved
as a jazz brother invited
a young man who was famished
for a Spanish meal and wine
offered a kiss of peace
and we passed the plate
and he stayed overnight
until dawn.
 


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 27 june 2016

JUNE NIGHT: 1990

We sat in the parlor
while on the piano
we played the sonata
of Mozart in D major
for two parts
and from wayfarer songs
of Gustave Mahler
composed from his heart
after being caught
by the Bay's spring rains
played some alto sax riffs
and tried my best
even as a romantic
on the sofa to relax
we sang melodies
against sturm and drang
and sought refrains
while we enjoy blue birds
hanging by a hedge
near a cherry tree
knowing life is a gift
this June night
we rehearse Chekhov
of the "Orchard"
and in my own poetry words
of a bard's night verse
we acknowledge a kept love
even the cat slept tight.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 27 june 2016

A BALTHUS DREAM

A tableau of color
filled in my sequences
of a Balthus dream
knowing of the artistic relationship
of Rilke's friendship as a poet
between these critical innovators
elicited in the Swiss mountains
his paintings grow in demand
in credited creator's portraits
of Alice in Wonderland
this cat or kabuki
only few acknowledging
his matured Polish genius
or understand you
like Giacometti,
Bataille or Camus
with a mind's eye to capture
what his later celebrity brings
in his divine nurtured rapture
from the nature of things.


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B.Z. Niditch

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.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 14 june 2015

A POET'S REMEDY

When you are down
and cannot think
and everything seems 
to be wrong
drowning in words of ink
by broken mirrors of love
suffocating from the heat
we take a kayak
like Charon's oars
over the high sea
to enlighten us
in the cool sunlight
and breathe in ocean air
as once in the Adriatic
away from fields of wheat,
when a friend is in grief
open the doors to her
and offer Natalia a greeting
of daytime flowers,
give her no obstacles
in any dance of hours
for all miracles are welcome
in a luminous belief,
try to draw or paint
a number of pictures
as a bas relief,
when you were far 
from home
and needing a plumber
in Rome
by the marble carrara sink
was dripping
by your Trevi fountains art,
we choose transparency
to do my visible part
and drew Natalia in a flight
of angel bird-song above
the shimmering mountains,
when you need any remedy
drink from a parlance
to command your vocabulary
at a sunlight's window
outside the cape,
or call on the Parisian poets,
Baudelaire or Pierre Reverdy,
or give ear to saint Malachy;
when I try to exercise 
or play sax in the attic 
to maintain my wise balance
by the music's stands weight
and not be sycophantic.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 14 june 2015

ON MEMORIAL DAY

After every war
we invent silence
even memory,
inside the quiet rooms
of our nerves
in the recall of him or her
will find us offering a prayer
when the sunlight appears
on Memorial Day
through windows of birds
who flutter up over our windows
covering May's cool heavenly air
hands outstretch to poppies 
is reflected in our mirrors
along the surf's breeze
knowing we exist as words
become our lives
in every whisper
and tiny gesture
we choose to pick flowers
as a poet's shadow
turns in the high tide
drowning a remembrance
as rainbows in the waters
rise by the sea's headstones
choosing to revere 
the silver thoughts
from our angel's occupation.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 14 june 2015

JUNE

It is June; 
in the fresh air breeze
off the shore
we sight
as in my visionary dream
all week
as these bountiful trees appear
with its the small grass dunes
seen nearby 
from a wooden bridge
when the sun is over us
and the air is clear
and we peek out to see more
of the ocean
at the tourist ships alight
to motion over the high tide
and Jesus is in us,everywhere
what a privilege it is
to worship as You are revealing
the spring to us
in a chorus of green and blue 
to see the birch so white
now feeling renewed
and all His earth is bright.
 


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 20 april 2015

PLAYING HANDEL

Playing Handel
in my mind and head
playing you
for a month at a time
at the end of the war
hearing the rain
falling like the 1945 nails
of the Cross
on one small corner
of the universe
in sound proof studios
on the ball infields
or by the ocean sands
under a beautiful foreign sun
washed bodies of water
with you swimming out,
your notes not lost in visiting
to honor the righteous
in the concentration camps,
when you feel
like a thousand days
of long suffering,
we can always hear you.
 


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 20 april 2015

WHAT IS NATURE

Say to the clouds
give up your rain
to the scaffold
give up your poets
who want to live,
to the grassland
stay back for March
for soccer games
to the dunes
crush the sap of Maple
for your morning pancakes,
by the marshes
have a cup of Bourbon
from Paris here in Warsaw
to remember me by
who will always
be back to the edges
of nature.


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B.Z. Niditch

B.Z. Niditch, 20 april 2015

WHEN A NEW VOICE ARRIVES

The sun disquiets
our memory
as a surrealist poet
signs autographs
against the elm
after his urban read
then after a party
in his honor
plays his alto sax
from chapped blinded lips
addressing the eager crowd
on the riverbed peace garden
recounting my a double life
as a poet and musician
asking only
that millstones be created
from language into bread
on a hungry street of fountains
for a surrogate future
making even a lily blush.
 


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