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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, 24 september 2016
WATCHING
Watching from a telescope
heights of stars
after my bicycle ride
rests along the Bay
meeting a lost sailor
who caught yellow jack
in islands far from home
here at a frozen shore
ice fishing in a few holes
that he plummets
in halting waves
on waters
at the home harbor anchors
rescuing my orange kayak
still anchored for the spring
as a Canadian robin appears
along the shore.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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.
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, 14 september 2016
AT THE THEATER
Watching
"The Seagull"
with my friends
up in the balcony
with a confessional
love poem
slowly emerging
in my smiling
imagination,
there is no language
that could sabotage
or upstage
the Beat in me
with my sax of a soul
out here
in the provinces
of France
anyway
it is starting to rain
off the islands
and my girl friend
suddenly asks me
for tickets
to see Adele
wondering if our life
merely repeats
the family dialogue
from any generation
in any lyrical play
or musical language
will send me back
to my early childhood
making my thoughts
and aching spirit rise
between two continents.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
A FUTURE POET
Who will wish
to become a poet
is a dreamer
of the surreal
who dresses
in a white suit
and coat of many colors
speaks in dada
from two tongues,
Polish and French
plays hide and seek
by a bench of a monastery
under hidden garden walls
the winds rise up
from the dusty rain
round his eyelids
near the edge
of the shore.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 september 2016
IN A DARK GROVE
In the dark grove
near the Seine
at the finish line
here at a church
near a Paris road race
midnight becomes the tree
of life in an Eden's garden
where exiles are conceived
in river bed dreams
of prayers to St. Joan of Arc
to deliver
a murmuring baby
who emerges smiling
by the greensward park
in a laurel crib's
smiling stroller.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016
T.S. ELIOT AT ROCKPORT
It is to the rocks at Pigeon Cove
watching the cormorants
and not to the monotonous tide
at St. Ann's sandbar
that will salvage your name
it is to the ocean
and not to the fluid borders
that will embroider you
by the stones and surf
in the morning mist
of your mineral waters
that will anoint you
from the anchors
of the tourist boat
from Boston
through a water song shadow
that will offer prayer
to your conscience
in a cup's communion
and it is to the silence
of the eagle
perched on the harbor dock
in the windshield of the sun
that will lock your eyelids
into your torpor of mind
familiar though
a threatening storm
that will save the whole sky
in a flushed warm
August dog day
of a fevered heat wave
that leaves
your conflated memory
in language
by a daybreak sentence
to make any sense
as the birds chatter
and the clouds scatter
why does it matter,
by the parking lots
of visitors with their mirrors
of the past that enfold across
their own corridors
as maps are lost on bridges
and are caught by the lone sail
down the hills
by the rails of the last train
that sought to visit by the dunes
or pursue a wanton shadow
of days that are narrow
as you kneel by your bed
by nail scarred hands
knowing as the noon bell rings
and a choir sings
inside you believes the face
of a memoir
is being composed
and small birds are clinging
to Evergreen branches
by the muggy rose garden
to pardon us all in grace.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016
A KID AT THE CHELSEA
In a hotel room with a small t.v.
staring at cartoons, commercials
game shows and comedies
where at noon in a grainy stall
you leave your lame worry
for all the walled slogans
of graffiti
in a flushed shower
of a vocabulary
of assaulting words
(while I'm all in prayer
of St. Francis
with melancholy
but hope to attain
better in an after life)
with this continued
rainy abyss
waiting for a brief
answer of "Yes"
near my Advent clock radio
without an hour's prohibition
of sister doing
origami for a stranger
wanting to be spent anywhere
than in this hourly
Kafka burlesque
by the florid window
hearing a flock
of pigeons and a crow
in a metamorphosis
of humoresque
when the time is set
for creation
or to be at another
train track
to visit the 14th station
or else crossing
in another direction
at no man's land
at Christmas time
to be near Bethlehem's manger
yet an art director
wants to view
my play tomorrow
about Roualt's colorful clown
and coming down from
the bay at Boston
to audition on
off-off-Broadway
racked by sorrow,
I try to pray.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 june 2016
BY THE HOTEL ELEVATOR
By the hotel elevator in Paris
on an impalpable holiday
is the loneliest scene
as sleep walking suit cased
hearing the AM
speaking of raging war
ethnic cleansing
final solutions
yet tranquilized survivors
by half -open faced sagas
of oblivious tourists
sandwiched between
bar and lobby
provide and divide space
to these seasoned travelers
reaching for teapots
and glasses of white wine
doled out with napkins
under doubled chins
from slow kitchen helpers
because it is always
a long trip and cold
from another's hands
looking up to the balcony
in the latest fashion show
losing yourself in mirrors
of soft lights moving you
away from Mozart's muzak
stumbling up the steps
to your inner sanctum
to celebrate sounds
of your lost appearance
by the vacuum
at sauntering in lost thoughts
by habitable towels
undressed by the sink
your mind not intact
or awakened by the rush
of blinded window last light
from your secret location
in a glance's view
of new information
as yet unknown saga
yet may be true
from any vetted apology
yet unspoken to atone
in any regretted vocation
or out of the blue pardon
among the wood's rock garden
there is a moonstone,
as in Stravinsky's"Firebird"
many notes of elocution's force
before a dancer's outside call
in full curtained voice
by the concert hall
with blinding secret wonder
a ballerina emerges in a theater
among nature's belladonna
on steps of connections,
out of rain and thunder
in a poetic word's
language's ballet
by answers and questions
to the critics' directions
at night and every day.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 june 2016
AFTER A RUN
The breadth of a bardic Beat
venture returns to my memory
after a run on Boston Common
on Memorial weekend
Elizabeth still photographs me
after a minor marathon
resting my feet
along the Charles River
in the blazing sun
taking off my sweat shirt
on the Esplanade
up to the mirror of fountains
where children play cards
laughing in their fun
now on the edge of the shore
a sail boat moves us in the harbor
where sparrows make their way
circling the azure sky
brushing by the trees maypole
concealed in birch branches
by the morning river bed
where a poet adds a parenthesis
and the bee keeper keeps watch
on this New England colony
in the shed with my amanuensis.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 june 2016
AT THE AIRPORT
Betting for a wait
before Memorial Day
inspectors arm wrestle
an innocent passenger
with a bandaged pulse
in a straight jacket
when four hours
turn into dusk
trying to shadow box
to bracket my own lines
of free verse poetry
in my daydream mind
encountering dizziness
from past turbulence
unaware of air pressure
from the force of sadness
my memory goes back
to my adolescence
of wearing a poppy
for Uncle Jack
year after year
on the green grave
with fresh flowers
and now removing
my Red Sox cap on backwards
taking out my sunglasses
yet speaking to another soul
with huge outrage who is here
burying her Dutch daughter
studying American history
at night and shadow
who was at a vacation tavern
given a date drug in a drink
at a good bye graduation party
trying to make sense of it
over the mirage of waters
when times are loveless
and war has cursed us,
with her luggage lost
filling out so many forms
in the commotion of flight
feeling so much alone
we share forgotten photos
our past hidden love notes
inked in a sleepless hour
by fortune cookies
flashing car keys
expired passports
in long corridors of stone
awaiting a holiday weekend.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 june 2016
SOME MAY DAYS
Some May days
one does not wish to think
too deeply, just do push-ups
on the gym floor
or sing a Sabbath hymn
that our spirit can't ignore
yet a poet emerges
through the library door
so contrary to his plans
locked without priorities
that he will stay
by the motioning clock
watching a coiled
garden snake in shadows
overgrown with mossy grass
submerged through a path
at my kitchen window
acting defensive in the garden
rattled without demands
makes natural sorties
as his shadow succumbs
and just slinks away
on this May doldrums day
waiting to swim in the waters
along the iron life-line fence
near a threshold
of sea shells
along Degas' blue rocks
waking up my memory
of the gold finch
with long wings
flying by a jetty's wharf
who sings us a song
by a tied row boat
now take a short swim
in the rush of a wave.
B.Z. Niditch, 1 june 2016
BORGES' LAST EXIT
The city opens in Buenos Aries
thinks of its good fortune
in having Jorge Luis Borges
upon the literary ladder ring
as a poet's higher critic
researching amply for orations
reaches on the library wall
for life's diction of explanations
located by antiquities design
here in his Eden of a living room
explores paraphrased commentary
rooted by vast heirloom histories
when beseeching a scattered fiction
located at pastimes, places, signs,
in presences, phrases by art masters
covers bizarre geometric lines
on global geographical maps
as an intelligent mind encounters
visions,awakenings,horizons
epiphanies,memoir and diary
in a glossary of personal testimony,
as Titian and Tintoretto appear
on his artistic projecting screen
over Borges recent revelation's lips
silently records what shapes
all of man and woman kind
from Creation to Apocalypse
when a sculpture of Donatello
closes the the curtains of his mind
which drapes his world era,
then Mexico landscapes appear
on a Spanish veiled scrim
drapes a freeze of Diego Riviera
and Frida Kahlo vanishes with him
Jorge suddenly hears far off notes
of Mozart's musical miniatures
in a played sonata part on his piano
as he leaves with his last exit
at the contrary atheneum's archives
with a good friend driving with him
after a morning's addendum,
returning from his study guide
now rests on the patio
under a generous sunshine
as he feasts on salad, filet of sole
and a pepper mint herbal tea at noon
feeding over his verbal finger tips
with a mouth of shared herbal wine,
soon this scholar Borges is reading
his parchment of a Torah scroll
sent as a day dream fiesta arrives
reading his Aleph, Bet it seems
as a thousand birds rise to circle
their way to the South pole
from an Argentine celebrated sky,
later a twilight lit city will dazzle
the stars through dusty blinds
by guilds of a history's wrinkle
he yearns for an hour in the park
listening on a hilly breeze
to jazz sax riffs till dark
by wide greensward of trees
as a Cinereous Mourner's ashes
rise on the shading
of a seasonal four lateral wind
a black bird sneezes on branches
for an exile's miracle kiss
near a rural cattle ranch lawn
on a bench by coral flowers
he hears an astral visionary's call
on an hour's masked starry sky
to sip from a proverb's looking glass
in a talisman's floral flask
disclosing a new lyrical translation
and reading his creative reviews,
yet hearing of the burning books
on the news from Germany
upon learning of persecuted Jews
how a carnival festival
or a holiday maker can quickly
turn to war and fascism's sins
in a devil's abyss,
Borges has compassion
from his depth of thinking
in an alpha and omega's creation
to span over a radical fashion
at a magical realism's generation
to challenge millions of poetry fans.
B.Z. Niditch, 18 december 2015
UP GREEN MOUNTAINS
How close are we
to verge of our journey
up the Green Mountains
as our hiking boots turn
in an unseen silence
sighting a deer in first light
a morning fills with frost
encircled in a path of snow
sheltering words in these lines
which emerge outliving our time
from an earth-wise nature
on this Fall
seasonable pike
as flakes drift trekking
from Vermont's
long memory
saying canticles
of St. Francis
in white coated anonymity
walking into a concert
of Chopin
crowded with patrons
of the symphony
by lovers of music.
B.Z. Niditch, 18 december 2015
MARATHON (2) 2000
Rising to a jazz rhythm
keeping in the lane
forgetting past riffs
by helping one beside us
to get up from the grass
of a recent blueberry harvest
grinding around us
with four hours left
to mimic last night's sleep
yet pressing toward
the recondite right landmarks
gambling on this day's calling
with no stop watch
not quitting until dark
until the yellow finish line
appears out of nowhere
near crooked peaks
and red birch
as runner ups in landslips
over greensward dales
trying to be undaunted
but not fully understanding
why here at my age
taking turns over this time
off and on windy lashes
unlaced in a chalk circle
following an eagle
on the Bay
not frightened by a scarecrow
on the side of the road.
B.Z. Niditch, 18 december 2015
MARATHON 1990
Jolts in my body
hitting the wall
hearing barefoot fans
interceding for us
by road beds on river ruts
our shaken up bodies
near birds on statues
singing by tree stumps
at the first hour of dawn
by indelible tracks
on distant paths
crosswise near green hills
some recounting time
others wishing to make
a record for themselves
under bridges
soon with wobbling knees
and sweated shoulder pain
bodies with feet blisters
cramping hope
on rugged terrain
far from home
with one hand clasping
from two sidelined
recumbent leaning bodies
wishing us well
all in search for meaning
or here for charity
as our salt eyelids
rivet from its blur
wanting oxygen
and a bottle of water.
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, 30 june 2015
YOUR LYRICS
Unknown words
seep in your ears
but like Van Gogh
a painter shapes
his thimble of fears
a poet is often unaware
of hieroglyphics
until his symbols
of his enigma
become the grammar
of his poem's lyrics.
B.Z. Niditch, 30 june 2015
ALONG HOLLYWOOD BLVD.
Outside the squirrels
hide in the leaves
of Evergreen branches
on the hillside
a solitary singer
offers her blue Monday
tune in a raindrop
moistened by the language
planted from her tongue,
it is a time of morning silence
when our initials
are hung over
by the summer rosebushes
on a rubbed-out signature
in pure gestured breathless fire
the wind rushes to the memory
of a young poet's nature
in the wilderness woods
dressed by a motionless hour
near passer-by processions
of soccer stars on summer floats
along the corner
as a child with a new compass
wishes to be easily assured
to live in tourist pictures
from a pretense and charade
on a cash in Hollywood
and Vine lines delivered by
finely dressed actors for hire
on Los Angeles admired time.
B.Z. Niditch, 30 june 2015
SZYMBORSKA'S BIRTHDAY
July 2
1923-2012
Words aglow
even as you sleep
in spilled out memory
we recollect
your pocket poems
in our ringed memory
from secrets,wonder,voices
we have to love
with no hours to lose
when you open our secrets
from your nature's language
and tomorrow in Warsaw
the birds will be out
sunning themselves
in your house's ledge
returning to their shadows
and the four winds
of you translated in silence.
B.Z. Niditch, 30 june 2015
COMMODITY (1943)
to Symborska's memory
What an oddity
the world thinks of us
as a commodity
at a blink and loss
we are not to be sold
for forty pieces
of silver or gold
yet we are told daily
not to be temperamental
we are by the threshold
of a bidding war
to skin us alive
yet we want to console
our flesh to survive
hiding the yellow stars
in cattle cars
in the far country
we stand by the manger
as a stranger to the creche
or by Jesus cross
with 1943 nails
upon the tree
three souls are bargaining
for their lives
by Warsaw's ghetto gates
it starts to snow
we ask for angels
as a poets life waits
not lost to our manifold soul.
B.Z. Niditch, 30 june 2015
PEACE
At the light
of day that gives
us peace
by a labyrinth
of branches
in a hyacinth warmth
at the name
of the sea
which gazes at us
reaching for a shell
at a shadow of stone
by the beach lighthouse
squirrels climb the hill
at noon in a quandry
when life is at a standstill.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 june 2015
DIEGO VALAZQUEZ
born June 6, 1599
As a painter of the brothers
who brought to their father
the fiery bloody coat of colors
of a disfigured Joseph
dropped once in a well
like those who once desired
to hide from their guilty crime
yet we watch Joseph raised up
in Egypt to interpret dreams
became a Jewish dreamer
and beloved prime minister
to be honored for all time
for sin is shamed in history,
yet justice reigns, it seems.
B.Z. Niditch, 14 june 2015
THOMAS HARDY'S DAY
June 2
1840- 1928
Your novels and poems
leave us melancholy
to the accidents of fate
before we make decisions
we make alterations
from any rhyme of folly
and reach any probabilities
wrestling on words to wait.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
B.Z. Niditch, 20 april 2015
MARCH MUSIC
Shadows fall
near the mirror, coat
and once soiled banner
held on a marathon run
in March
from another time,
wanting to play sax
as my notes dance
in a good mood
vibrating a curious scaling
from our chilled out tones
to sway smooth jazz.
B.Z. Niditch, 20 april 2015
ON A NEW CHAIR
Someone is whispering to me
about the chaos
of intangible memory
our shadows hidden in Warsaw
by a Milosz library
near a lemony canary in its cage
as seen in the sunshine
at the edge of a wine glass
left to me by grandmother
my guitar standing in silence
near the serene reading room
waiting to be played
by a visiting exiled poet
full of suspicion
murmurs at his own fate.
B.Z. Niditch, 18 january 2015
ANDRZEJ WAJDA, DIRECTOR
Your Polish films
in black and white
under fascism's history
gave us deeper insight
into hunger, tyranny and misery,
knowing the thunder of war
from our lack and poverty,
that only in such dialogue
have we a brilliant diary,
with a wish again
to be in laughter.
B.Z. Niditch, 9 january 2015
PERHAPS
(for Tadeusz Konwicki
22 June 1926 – 7 January 2015)
Perhaps watching
the Konwicki film
"Salto"
with Zbigniew Cybulski,
the Polish James Dean,
last night,
brought back
the times
after lectures
when we would sneak
into art theaters
for two foreign films;
then afterwards
how we would lay
on warm blankets
intertwined with
the grass
by the Charles River.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 january 2015
"IDA," A POLISH FILM
Only if you had been
an adolescent Marxist
in a post revolutionary era
or a later day Christian
after a religious age
has passed you by
at a May Day march of time,
when only children
inspire your absence
from the lost crowd
by the river's edge
alone with your notebook
holding onto a birch branch
with your carved initials
waiting for your lover
or in the silence of a monastery
from a retreat by iron doors
could you expect "Ida"
to surprise you.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 january 2015
POLISH NEW YEAR
Despairing of fathomless cold
birds wait on the fountain
for rain water over stones
by the war memorial,
two friends from the country
wrapped in leather jackets
sleep in turn after celebrations
of the new year's century's peace
one wakes with a poem
the other turns his back
and finds his lost motorcycle
by a church's stained window.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 january 2015
POLISH WINTER
(in memory Stanislaw Baraczak
died December 27, 2014)
Old walls of Warsaw
joined in your silence
shadows disappear
over voiceless hours
in the blood of snows
writing a diary
to friends back home
staring from fallen words
of ink from my desk
at my proof-read letter
wanting to be dispersed
from our own reflections
of my film and poetry
twentieth century reviews
now translated.
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, 8 february 2013
DRAWING
It seems to me,
the Polish painter
near the pond
drawing in
my welcome
to his own service
by jagged lines
on his canvas
in a white blouse
has an endless
watch for color
with a dialogue
between this poet,
a charred surrealist
as well,
gathers around
an easel of aesthetic
interpretation.
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, 19 july 2012
ORIGINAL
Taken for the voice
of a sage
after resistance
to the contary,
refusing all laurels
for nearly being
only a memory
for truth,
without an echo
in annals
of tormented
ridicule,
Buried
as red flesh
without ashes
or speech,
no airs
only whispers
from crowds
who look away.
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.
B.Z. Niditch, 17 july 2012
APPOLINAIRE'S ROOM
Days after your death in Paris,
that town square in Poland
still recites parables of survival
at your passing
making us feel orphaned
as solitude,
older than the most tortured
dog under a tree
begotten by whispers
in the child's art
of dreaming kaleidoscopes
in cathedrals of the blue Madonna
begging for bread and sun
lit by a poet's miracle
of words in unquiet radiance
putting on your pawned
overcoat covering a jacket
of rain showers
walking with a cane of images
outside a tiny room
with the cold bulb
now broken.
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.
Latest comments:
4 may 2024
Weronika
Boli bo rektoskop to nie gadżet analny, więc
4 may 2024
Jutro jest niewyrażalne i nie do odgadnięcia.
3 may 2024
violetta
Drzewka do jedzenia:)
1 may 2024
Tak;)
1 may 2024
kb
złotej*
1 may 2024
kontoler żłotej poświaty
1 may 2024
samo życie, każdy swoje brudy ma, lepsze czy
1 may 2024
romantyczny to romantyczny, prawdziwy taki
1 may 2024
ten ketchup to fakt, trzeba przypilnować przy
1 may 2024
interesujący przekaz, jak dla mnie o własnej
1 may 2024
ucieczka z przewidzianym powrotem to też stabilizacja...
29 april 2024
Nie jest niczym podyktowany:)
6 may 2024
Satish Verma
5 may 2024
wiesiek
5 may 2024
absynt
5 may 2024
Satish Verma
4 may 2024
absynt
4 may 2024
kalik
4 may 2024
wiesiek
4 may 2024
Satish Verma
3 may 2024
absynt
3 may 2024
wiesiek