Despair Is Darkness
DESPAIR IS DARKNESS
Despair is darkness-
Despair is death inside and death in the world and death in one’s own sad soul-
Despair is no way out -
Despair is the place where one is forever stuck -
Despair is the realization that one has done what one could – and one is not going anywhere else-
Despair is the admission of failure-
Despair is no sign of help anywhere around-
Despair is so much lost-
Despair is one‘s life is over-
Despair is regret-
Despair is the sense that one will never have the time to have another chance -
Despair is ‘it’s finished’-
Despair is no way out-
Despair is going down and more down and more dark and more afraid all the time -
Despair is the scream which hurts and does not stop the hurting -
Despair is the understanding that even Death will not save one -
Despair is that the pain will never end-not even with death.
Despair is no way out again and again and again- without end.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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An Old Man Wants Life To Be Pleasant
An old man wants life to be pleasant
He does not want to know too much
About the wars and conflicts of the world
He does not want to hear too much noise
He does not want to hear people argue
And know about other peoples quarrels
He wants life to be pleasant
He knows he will not save the world
The others will have to do that
He has done what he has done
And done it for a long time
It has made little difference
And what else he can do will make less-
He wants life to be pleasant-
Without disturbances and disorders
Without too many demands upon himself
Quiet
Able to do his own things
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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For All The Poets
FOR ALL THE POETS
This is a poem for all the poets who have no name,
For all those who have written and failed,
And for those who have not written,
And failed.
This is a poem for all the poets who dreamed themselves poets,
And were never, and will be known as poets
To the world.
This a poem for all those
Who after years of effort
Still live in an oblivion
They will die in.
This is a poem for all those
Who whether they have poetry in them or not,
Will never be heard or read,
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poem To A Dying Man
I see you in the synagogue almost each night now-
I have seen so many in the condition you are in now-
The frailty, the thinness, the cough,
The intense concentration required to do the smallest thing,
The great difficulty in small motion-
Like most of them you are a good man
Worked hard all your life
Raised a family
Knew dislocation and suffering
Struggled for survival
Made a new life after the old world collapsed-
A good man-
I see you now
My heart goes out to you-
It’s the human condition after all
Living and dying-
And who am I to do anything about it?
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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Oh The Poems
OH THE POEMS AND THE POEMS AND THE POEMS
Oh the poems and the poems and the poems
Oh the love of Literature
Oh all that stuff
I have given my life to-
Words and meanings and feelings
Pages and pages and pages –
What it is all this literary life for?
When out the window out the door
With our eyes we see in an instant other worlds other dreams?
I don’t know and I will never know
And Literature is certainly far more than I can say it is-
Oh the poems and this poem and this day turning grey
And all my life old and old and more old and more old-
Oh why oh why oh why
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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If A Human Being Can Be Alive In One Second
If a human being can be alive at one second
And a second or perhaps many tormenting minutes or hours
later be dead
with a bullet in his brain or gas in his lungs or fire going all through his body
Then I too can be suddenly never breathing and never conscious again forever-
I too can be an incident and accident
Here one second not here another-
I too could be like one of those millions the Nazis murdered in just this way
Or one of the millions threatened by terror or nuclear night
One of those millions who through the centuries were just killed in the most cruel and violent ways simply because they were Jews
Or one of those who actually knew the burns and the radiation and the heat storms and the bleeding inside and out
And are threatened now simply because they are other than their enemies
It has happened to others and could happen to me and mine
To any and all of us-
How I pray to God no great and evil disaster will come to us again-
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Where Does A Poem Begin?
WHAT DOES A POEM MEAN?
Where does a poem begin
And where does a life end
And what does it all mean?
The life the poem who and what we are
The stars will go on until they burn out and die in a time we will never see
The earth itself will go until it dies in the heat given by a dying sun.
All things lovely and beautiful
Grass and trees and lilacs and cities of love and people who care for each other
All good and great things-
Greater poems by far than this will forever not be
And music that makes the heart and mind more sublime.
All is vanity of vanity says the preacher.
Though not because it all returns to what it was
And repeats without end what it will continue to be
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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Why Can't They Leave God Alone?
Why can’t they leave God alone?
They curse God for not existing-
While blaming God for every evil in the world-
They mock God-
They hate God -
They laugh at God -
They continually prove that God does not help anyone-
They say God causes the wars -
They put all their heart and mind into driving God out of our hearts and minds-
They do not stop
They cannot be quiet
They try day after day to show that our universe
Has no need of a Creator-
And that we are not in any way cared for or loved
By any higher personal power-
They want to hurt not only God
But all those who believe in God-
They call us deluded -
They say we are ignorant and primitive and stupid-
They try to revenge themselves on God
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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This Poem Is Not A Dream
THIS POEM IS NOT A DREAM
This poem is not a dream
It comes from where so many true poems come
From the other side of the mind
When it does not know peace -
From the waking desire
The hunger that is not satisfied
The lonely life and the lonely mind-
It comes from the search for love
And the love itself – the joy of love-
And from the memory of what we most deeply know when we are ourselves in love of another-
This poem is not a dream-
It comes from the waking world and the waking words-
The hard truths the bitter small things
The disappointments and rejections
The endless small humiliations which Time and Chance make of us all-
This poem comes from where we are most human
With the pain of those closest to us-
And our longing to save them and be loved forever by them-
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Should Have Seen More of the World
I should have seen more of the world
It has so many things -
I should have touched the details down to the slightest difference
And made each perception – meaningful
I should have had a kind of mind different from my own
Less general and abstract and more able to make sensations real-
I should have spoken of what touches the earth and the actual lives
Of so many kinds of different people -
But I did not -
I sang my poem in my own small way about my own endless self
And thought and made my poems of thought
And I too writing this
Remembering how I always vowed to never repeat my father
And live in regret
Try to not say, ' Should and could and would have been’.
There are other things and other people and other worlds and much I cannot do and be -
Let me sing my own song
Others have what they have
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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