Long Yiddish Poems

The Spaniel

A Spaniel that uses its head 
Can tell when its owner’s unfed 
So instead of a duck
That is down on its luck 
Will deliver a pizza instead
 
The Afghan Hound

The Afghan’s a dog groomer’s...

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Raid versus woe

Black flag(s) show up
on social media platforms
when potential homicidal maniac(s)
communicate(s) intent to strike
with ambush and ready
read - able, eager, and willing
to embark upon murderous rampage.

Prospective killer armed to the teeth
usually a young bucking...

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Doomsday Clock minute hand...

hovers over 100 seconds to midnight 
as of January 2022, 
which apocalyptic prognostication
established by the Bulletin 
of Atomic Scientists
maintained since 1947, 
the clock quantifies a metaphor 
for threats to humanity 
from unchecked...

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Adept Anglophone pines to learn Yiddish as a second language

When alive colorful turns of phrases
uttered courtesy my father or mother
whose ability to describe a situation
perfectly verbalized and couched by
a dialect of High German including
some Hebrew...

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Once again, yours truly takes poetic license.

Whenever the missus irks me or complains...
I tell her don't "Hock me in chinik" nor kvetch
before long tête-à-tête escalates in2 Kanipshin
whereby the Army National Guard gets called
World War III...

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When I was young, my father wrote poems, lovely poems, in Yiddish.
In one poem, he called me, his only son, his 'kadish'l, the one who would recite the Kaddish, the Prayer for the Deceased, for...

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This December 17th, 2024...

alternately titled: a literary retrospective when holiday times living hand to mouth in Penn Valley fraught with slim pickings and yours truly felt utterly miserable that nary a delivery from Santa Claus...

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I live in a world of brutal ice and cold

Despite the temperature being five below...
these fingered handy limbs
awash with profuse sweat
dripping palms analogous
to a bloody busted gushing water main.

Mein kampf analogous
to a self made prisoner
who...

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This December 17th, 2021...

Totally tubular fiction yup,
nevertheless I reflect 
the year (arbitrarily plucked from misty past)
Santa Claus did not show up
courtesy imagination license
cruel as crippled poet pan handler 
rattling his empty cup.

Though blink of time...

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after dark April 26th, 2022

Prometheus bound out the heavens
to strike fear in the hearts of men and women
reminding us mortals how like oxen yoked
(together via a wooden beam forced
to undergo strenuous labor)
unlike most elderly residents...

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Translations of Holocaust poems by Ber Horvitz aka Ber Horowitz

Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
 
These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray ...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes.
 
The birds have...

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Feliz cumpleaños la señora Dunning

Fifty seven orbitz didst elapse
circling with thee around the sun
and nary sign ye will collapse
anytime soon, I hoop fully reckon
untold massages nervously
await to cross proper synapse.

Foolhardy of me
(doubting Thomas) in previous
years...

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Mine mortal flesh can finally escape...

Though mentally, physically,
and spiritually healthy... meth
hood dolled logy 
hoop fully, ideally, joyfully...
unannounced twill be mine death
without forewarning thine

grand finale allocated breath
best surprise visit me
(without reason nor rhyme)
ye grim reaper, when...

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I just want to take you back to that small frail girl,
The girl who sat in the shadows, in the corner of her room,
The girl who’d,
Never dare to cry,
Always wondered why,
Often wished to die.
The girl...

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Firearms magazine offer manifold big bang for their buck, 
many ear rational per son or daughter loves advocate, the late chuck 
heston (now a shooting star occasionally visiting Earth from celestial vault) 
  ...

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Gun owners indiscriminately brandish
loaded firearms toward innocent victims,
and concomitantly excite
purported in accordance
with first amendment, relish
yet proliferation allowing
free ranging banshee dervish
sans weapons of mass destruction
(mainly innocent lives)
inures citizens to appear off fish
U.S., and self-important
becoming comfortably numb
at...

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Doomsday Clock January 2022...

the most recent tabulation
signaled one hundred seconds to midnight

A couple years ago
similarly titled poem I did write,
yet looms as harbinger unless
Homo sapiens can unite
one non Yiddish speaking
Ongematert wishing ye
fare thee well tonight
before...

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Telling "White Lies"

My mother got born November
thirteenth, nineteen hundred thirty five
within poverty stricken household
of Canarsie, Brooklyn, the youngest
(most mollycoddled) of four siblings,
experienced grinding poverty, no
matter maternal grandfather (Moishe
Kuritsky), a tailor he lacked drive
(and felt neutral...

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Automobile prohibitive maintenance costs
pitches me pitifully begging for alms
lamenting dog forsaken
melon collie unpleasant circumstances
pleading with outstretched palms
disgraced to beg, perhaps donate
major organ and/or entire body

to ease vehicular qualms
aha... methinks the missus could pose
as ventriloquist after...

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,
                       A black cloud descends….        ...

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Good news came my way today February 21, 2021 courtesy late father

Papa - purportedly named
after paternal grandmother
Sadie, her mom's Yiddish name
Basia Brana (or Brandla),
she took two B letters and
found American boys' names
that kind of echoed
her...

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The Doberman Pinscher

A Doberman’s known to be picky
With friends so to greet one is tricky
To kiss is a bummer
Undoubtedly dumber
Is to sneak up and give one a hickey

The English Setter

The reason we call them a...

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Bastogne 1944
It was cold, so cold because they hadn’t given
 us warm clothes for the  winter, or to die in:
Germans and SS surrounded us and
 the aroma of their hot food and Heil Hitler!
warm...

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Handy dandy blues clues plain
all purpose favorite refrain
i.e. "impossible mission"
courtesy complimentary doppelganger
G.I. ("Government Issue", "General Issue",

or "Ground Infantry") Jane
in tandem with Alyson Chain
comes to the rescue attempting
to describe entrenched nonproductive
crippling psychological mindset ascertain

most any reader...

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I established a rapport 
with the Sacred Cow
and it stepped all over my toes
the oil of anointment in my crankcase
I was limping worthy of an asterisk
an army of monks couldn't keep me pure
laughing all the...

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