When A Person Does Not Know What
When a person does not know what to do with himself
When a person feels empty
When a person feels everything he had done and everything he can do do is meaningless
When a person is bored
When a person does not know what to do with himself
And wonders why he is on this earth
And how he will endure more of it
When a person does not know what to do with himself
He must do any little thing he can do
To get himself going-
He must wash the dishes or clean the house or take something to eat or take a small walk or read a page
Or do any one of a million or more other small things to get himself going
And once he is going he must somehow go on and on and from this to something else
So that at some point somewhere along the way somehow
He is doing something
Perhaps not that great
But doing something
And in doing something
Perhaps forgetting about himself
A bit
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Real Poets
THE REAL POETS
The real poets are few in number and largely known by name
The rest of us are endless frustration in aspiration
Words upon words upon words
Dreams upon dreams upon dreams
Getting and going nowhere forever unheard
The real poets find their anthologized place
And we know them over and over and over again
The rest of us just appear this only once
If we appear at all
And our words and our hearts and our minds
Do not encompass and inspire the endless rereadings
Time and Time’s Wounds make again and again and again
We are once only always forever losts
Nothing will save us
These words too coming in the wake of a long night’s reading
Of the poems of others
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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These Words Too Say What Love Was
ATHESE WORDS TOO SAY WHAT LOVE WAS
These words too say what Love was-
Though I am long from that love and those feelings-
Once there were songs in the night and great passion
And we were a kind of happiness that only the very blessed know-
I had dreamed of such love for so long
And you in your beauty were all Beauty could ever be-
We loved for a long time
And in that love I learned forever that Love is real-
But somehow in a way I will never understand
For you that love died-
And I was left loving without being loved
And had to go a long time in the pain of longing for you again-
But that was long long ago
And now where our love is no one can ever know
For it is only in memories that cannot truly capture what it really was-
Love it is true is the most beautiful thing we know
And I knew this with you
And will be grateful for it forever-
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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When I Think Of Myself As Dead
WHEN I THINK OF MYSELF AS DEAD
When I think of myself as dead
I think of what it will mean for my loved ones
I pray they will not lose heart and hope because of it-
When my father died my brother lost hope-
When I think of myself dead
I wonder about God and God�s purpose
Is there really an afterlife?
What could it mean?
Will I meet again those who have gone before me?
When I think of myself dead
I think about a body in the ground
Worms eating it, cold paining it-
When I think of myself as dead
I think about never feeling anything again-
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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No Adequate Poem Will Be Written Against The Darkness Of Another Life
NO ADEQUATE POEM WILL BE WRITTEN AGAINST THE DARKNESS OF A DIFFERENT LIFE (Reflections after reading “ To See You Again”(A True Story of Love in a Time of War) by Betty Schimmel
No adequate poem will be written against the darkness of a different life-
There are people in this world who have known horrors beyond my poor imagining-
Priviliged to have been safe throughout my life
How can I possibly understand those who saw human lives taken in an instant?
Millions of innocent have been murdred in this world-
And we live our everyday lives as if there has never been such a thing in the world -
Were we to constantly pay attention to the worst that there has been
We would perhaps curse God and die –
The worst has happened many many times to others-
As good as me or mine-
How I fear the incidents and accidents and not so accidents
In a world in which we have so many enemies who would destroy us
Who hate us with all their envy and stupidity
And who would wipe us out completely –
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Words Ceased To Want Themselves And Longed For a World Outside
THE WORDS CEASED TO WANT THEMSELVES AND LONGED FOR A WORLD OUTSIDE
The words ceased to want themselves and longed for a world outside
The world outside dumb and beautiful wanted nothing of anyone
We the intermediaries plied our trade describing and revising whatever we perceived
But we were not the ones we thought we should be
We were not the messengers of Light and Hope to distant worlds
They had their own forms of speaking that we cannot hear
And so we programmed our great messages down through the ages
To read only the cryptic path of our own troubled minds
We are not the code of every living thing
Or the final messenger to the last star
Or the only single secret sound God wants heard over and over again
We are not the prayer- leaders of the sacred congregation of the galaxies
Deeper than all darkness and dark- matter deeper even than our own souls
We are a faint flickering
A minor music
An insubstantial voice
That is pretending to go round and round and round again and again and again
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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18 Definitions Of Poetry
1) Poetry is what is Beautiful in words –
2) Poetry is the deepest feeling words can tell
3) Poetry is the soul of each one of us
4) Poetry is the morning light after the longest night
5) Poetry is a dream of dreams in a world that needs dreams to be
beautiful
6) Poetry is the Search for God and the Love of God in all holy writing
7) Poetry is Reality itself when it is doing what it should
8) Poetry is you and me and all of us when we are kind to each other
9) Poetry is more than we can say or know- deeper than the deepest
silence and quieter also
10) Poetry is the place we go to in ourselves when we need to cry out loud
11) Poetry is Love words of love and the first spring of the young lovers first
song
12) Poetry is all we are when our minds are right and strong
13) Poetry is what saves us from all the other words
14) Poetry is what ceases to exist when Cruelty comes
15) Poetry is Love and Blessing and Kindness again
16) Poetry cuts through the icy sea within and sends chills down the spine
17) Poetry is what is recollected in tranquility but also tried and tossed in
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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Is There A Poem Of The Afternoon?
IS THERE A POEM OF THE AFTERNOON?
Is there a poem of the afternoon?
Sadness at so little having been done in the morning
I have spent a life escaping
And today too I escaped
Learning studying reading
Other worlds other people other minds
Far from practical problems.
The sun is strong today and the summer come early
And the days will be long now with the clock changed
I have tried to focus on Poetry this year
But I have not really gone back to re-read the Poems of my life
War threatens for a change
It may be that our city will be on fire and our neighborhood burn as never before
We pray somehow for a miracle of survival without war and destruction
They hate us and they hate us and they hate us
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Am Far Away From Where I Am
I AM FAR AWAY FROM WHERE I AM
I am far away from where I am-
I often am-
It is not that there are two sides of me
Or three or four
It is not that I know anything about who
My real self is-
I suppose ‘I am' all the time I am conscious
And what that means I also don't know-
There are so many questions and so many questions -
I am here now
I am writing this
Soon I will be on my way to Minchah
I have done the shopping today
And walked from ‘Rami Levi' in the rain
My wife and I have talked and talked
About many things
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Story Of A Search For A Poem
A man went in search of a Poem
He searched everywhere he walked
He searched inside himself
He searched inside the poems of others
He searched and searched -
And what came to him were fragments of many poems
And he thought perhaps that they themselves were the poem
But they refused to be satisfied with themselves-
So he searched for a way to put them together-
But in searching came upon more fragments
With each new fragment totally re-ordering those that had gone before-
So he thought ‘I went looking for one poem but found many
Perhaps there are only many poems’
And he began to write them down
And felt at times that he had found many poems
But always too he knew he had not found the one-
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poem by Shalom Freedman
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