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Sidney Beck Poem
I SHUDDER TO THINK
I shudder to think about the way
Some vegetables are abused every day -
With physical and psychological slights
In gross violation of their vegetable rights.
Handicapped vegetables have no chance to fight back
Like eyeless potatoes - poor blind mites,
And baby carrots , aaw! Or peas-in-a-pod,
Eaten before they’re even born and take a breath.
Imagine those frantic runnerbeans
Desperately trying to escape.
No surprise that peas are strained.
My over-tired mum used to say, “Oh, I’m shredded.”
So I understand how tired shredded-cabbage must feel.
What about the potatoes who diced with death and lost?
Jerusalem Artichokes - “chokes” is horrible!
Why not “Jerusalem Passes Aways” ?
And ”Squash” ! - Please speak more politely:
What a way to go - we should say “Press Lightly”.
No wonder some clean-living veg are angry :
Parsnip - an angry snip from parson or clergy;
Swede resembling a tall blond person, Stockholm based;
With horrid ethnic humour ( bad taste)
Like sauerkraut (also bad taste)
(So-called humour about a surly German).
Look at insults basd on vegetables for a human -
“The IQ of a cabbage.” What ethnicity insults !
I’m sorry for tomatoes - all this veg talk results
In them being called a vegetable dish
It’s like calling Scots people English.
Sheer vegetable racism is the worst. Mixed potato and carrot salad?
Not in apartheid South Africa – their salad had to be pallid.
Oh yes some veg are spoiled like children :
Coddled cauliflower warmed in milk ; then
Brazed egg-plants (please call snobby ones aubergines)
Suntanned slowly at their leisure;
And butter (not margarine) beans cooked with pleasure.
It’s too horrible entirely, the abuse is complete
I’ll stop being vegetarian, and start eating meat.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2010
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Sidney Beck Poem
EXERPTS FROM HITLER’S DIARY 1941
"I never travel without my diary, one should always have something sensational to read . .
. " Oscar Wilde, 1891
Tues May 9:
Just when I was busy with plans for Russia, Rudolf Hess dropped by with crazy notion of
flying to UK for peace. Said he bought some new boots yesterday for the trip -
dead shiny . I’d like a pair like that. I told him - forget the trip and tell
me where you got the boots.
Wed June 22:
Invaded Russia. Eggs for lunch - hard boiled again - I hate that. Must speak to Eva
about it.
Thurs June 23:
11:00 am - heard Chamberlain on radio again – that dreary voice! that paper-waving
droopy-moustached old gopher! My small black moustache is much neater.
12:30 pm - inspected new bunker in East Prussia with smoother concrete walls . Eva
wants to wallpaper them (nice little red flowers) and why not?
8:00pm - after dinner, practised arm-gestures for big Nuremburg speech on Saturday.
Rehearsed a few ad libs. . . . Eva liked them.
Fri June24:
Rained all day. Slow day (almost invaded Egypt) - stayed in and read. Eva dyed her
hair creamy-yellow. ( I’m gonna start calling her Blondy.) That new german
shepherd Bormann gave me - I took her out for walk. . . . she's called Blondi too
(Joke there - the guys will like it) . After dinner we all listened to Franz Lehar’s
“Merry Widow” again. I love it. Eva fell asleep; so did the dog.
Sat June 25:
Nuremburg speech went ok. Got all the ad libs in except one. Rommel was on the phone
talking about Africa and Libya, and some place called Tobruk. Must make a note – where is
Tobruk? P.S. Must find out where Libya is.
Sat Dec 6:
Just read the latest in the newspapers....almost four million Russian prisoners now.
Sun Dec 7:
Those crazy Japanese have gone and done it. . . . oh boy, they’re gonna be in trouble!
Thurs Dec 11:
Oh, what the hell. . . in for a dime in for a dollar : this Russian war is too easy, I
need a bit of a challenge. Think I’ll whiz down to the Reichstag tonight and tell ‘em
we’re declaring war on the USA. Might get a pair of those shiny boots there too.
……………………………………
Written by Sydney Peck
for Constance La France ( A Rambling Poet ) - Contest Name: The Diary
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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Sidney Beck Poem
LOST IN THE MIST
Grey fingers soft as a pickpocket’s,
Soundless and sightless, have taken the sun -
Poacher in the kingdom of the blind.
Guests and ghosts of the realm steal in and out,
Cozened into thinking that
Feet pressed to the ground -
Ensure the lost land will be restored,
The theft of the sun will be recouped.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Written 21st August 2014 by Sydney Peck
For contest THROUGH THE MIST
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2014
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Sidney Beck Poem
THE JOURNEY
What a joy it could be to sit
in a far going train with you,
- to look into the window
for some time keeping silent
and in the glass darkling
- to discern your soul passing
among the moving crowds
and fields and hills and clouds,
not part of the firmament -
just seeming, since the true
you sits facing me too
in this small compartment,
- to hear your silent voice
hearing my own heart’s joys.
It is the journey endless,
the pilgrimage which binds us,
for there is no last hour.
The train far going is our
unspoken commitment bound
to a future not yet found.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2010
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Sidney Beck Poem
IN THE DENTIST’S CHAIR
Lean back and just relax
Put on these protective glasses please
Injection - this will not hurt at all
He says in fluent dentist-speak
Man with goggles and mask like an alien
Probing me like an insect aboard a UFO
God I‘m starving - no breakfast
Oh , from the x-ray looks like
We need a couple of fillings
And It was cornflakes and fried eggs and bacon
I’m afraid it will cause some discomfort
But just relax
I look at the legs of his pretty assistant for comfort
I was afraid to come here at all
Delayed coming
Coward for pain in dentist’s chair
Put off and put off six months, till now -
April is the cruellest month*
Month of early cherries from Spain
And lettuce from the greenhouse
And a cucumber salad upon a table in the garden
Like a patient etherized upon a table*
As the alien probes my molars
And asks me about football on tv last night
Oh for a melon big as a football right now
Sold by the shop on the corner where the woman
Is so full-figured....watch her as she gives
Cucumber to another customer
Yes a bit of voyeurism sometimes is fun
Dental assistant’s legs show nice muscles
As she reaches up tip-toed for a tall
Pile of green plastic rinse-cups
Rather similar to a cucumber
I try to answer the football alien
With a mouth full of metal
I stutter and garble out a reply and the alien uh-huh s
Disinterested interest as they say
She looks into my face, concerned, and I am flattered
But she only sees my horrible decayed tooth
Unconcerned concern
Now spit, and again, rinse, spit
I am helpless like a beetle on its back
Wearing plastic goggles
Use this tissue
She’s so helpful, like mother
Don’t eat for six hours even if you have a good appetite
Oh those melons….appetite
I am a man of appetites
No ! I am not Leopold Bloom nor was meant to be*
My appetites are mostly for learning, for humor, for sorrow,
But maybe a melon tomorrow.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NOTE
*These lines are quotes from T S ELIOT and J JOYCE, both masters
of the stream of consciousness technique.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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Sidney Beck Poem
CAFE TERRACE AT NIGHT (Van Gogh)
Orbital focus of assured kindness and hospitality
From the waitress in long white apron
Where time stands still for a moment,
Where the golden interior glow of the shelter
Gravitates under the canvas roof and
Permits a little topaz flavor to anoint the cobbled street,
Its dark forbidding geometry of the night,
Its silhouetted shapes of blackened houses
Whose dead windows suggest only a half life,
Whose clock tower suggests the running sands of time,
While dizzying stars, circular orbs of cold white,
Stare unblinking at the colors uncertain
In a neighbourhood of crumbling age,
On the pavement of uncertain difficult cobbles.
The café is not crowded but it is the sun
For the people orbiting its warmth.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2013
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Sidney Beck Poem
TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN
We watched horrified, awe-struck for hours while the sun died
Slowly, shorn of long golden locks, suffocated by the oncoming moon-rock.
Samson, blinded. His eyes bitten out - nothing left -
Devoured, destroyed : then completely consumed as he died in silence,
In his Stygian cave, as he gave up the ghost, as he left us alone.
Shadow of moon like a hunter’s pitch cloak encroached with vulture speed .
Birds, even the skylark, silenced, harking in their stark branches
For the inky wings of the angel of death, coming - not to Ramases - to us.
Bleak mark in the east dark: coming fast - it was upon us even as we asked
What is it? Grey through miles of mist, then raven-darker, as it closed on us,
Swooped us into its black veil, sunless, lightless, lifeless - where no bird sings,
And our breath stopped, held, unnoticed: and we, bereft, waited in mourning.
Till the sun -Samson- with re-grown bright hair poured out behind the moon,
Miraculously rose from the dead, pushed the black cave-stone into oblivion
And pierced a hole in the veil, burning that hole infinitely, gloriously,
And we were restored to life in the smile of heaven.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Note:
A total solar eclipse is an unforgettable sight. This poem is about such an
eclipse which I saw in Weyburn, Saskatchewan i n 1977. One cannot help
being struck by the loss of the sun in the daytime. Birds and animals also react
strangely. I recommend anyone to try to see a total solar eclipse if it is
possible. A partial solar eclipse, or a lunar eclipse, are not remotely as
spectacular as a total solar eclipse.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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Sidney Beck Poem
Always cold in the morning, this kitchen is warmed now
With a roaring fire and my wife working beside me making just desserts
We stand here two hours this afternoon doing one of our projects
Cooking soup and fish for this evening’s xmas party of friends.
The ghetto, the Projects, contained me with the music of
The school’s leather belt and cane. And then
Parents lost in a fire.
That was a tough xmas, alcohol boozy flavored in an
Empty-bottle kitchen, crowded and smoky.
It was a tough meat just cut today red blooded, now pale in the friends’
Xmas gift, the tureen shiny clean. The soup’s
Alcohol flavored in effort to disguise taste of the firm onion, now soft slop. Next, must
Empty bottle of sauce in …add spice…Oh, now chop more veg: and the
Kitchen knife peels and reveals their secret inner fleshes,
Crowded and jostling with juicy tomatoes, now reduced to wrinkled skins; and
Smoky, tall, erect celery now chopped into mini-sets of false teeth
Innocence lost in the poisonous smog of Dublin’s
Orphanage hymns and anthems: God and the state will help
Uniformed religious staff and teachers to tell me
I do not belong - I must reveal no secrets about being
Woken, shaken out of bed, taken (with no word spoken) from the
Cold dormitory, scaly hand on my knee:
Drown in this grasp - fish out of water
Cold. A small shivering fish caught in net, taken now from its fridge
Dormitory for this sacrifice: staring, unfeeling, cold-blooded creature, its
Scaly skin shining on my cutting plate.
Hand on knee, I sit down to gut it, gills first - which made him
Drown as he struggled in the tightened net; and
In this grasp I cut the fish open - an old
Fish which was still feeling
Out of water. It seems a silly, scaled creature now, lifeless, staring at nothing.
I lost my loneliness from that hostile world:
She gave me peace and serenity -
Warm feelings of belonging ; and it’s
Christmas every day.
She is sweet, inviting, colorful, and around her
Melt-in-the-mouth music plays.
She is the essence of sugar,
Sweet free-running chocolate,
Inviting me to dissolve all of her creamy meringue shells
Colorful and delightful, which will swirl
Around her taste and
Melt like love on a summer’s day.
In the mouth of my hell, she has uttered
Music, and forever now, it
Plays sweetly.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Written for and entered in Debbie Guzzi’s Contest GET SERIOUS
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2012
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Sidney Beck Poem
LIFE PRECEPTS AND GOD
I want to mold no one, for what I believe is suitable for me alone;
Each must find a belief-path which suits perfectly, but suits no one apart.
Let me offer my beliefs only to show how a path may be found -
And advise you to believe nothing unless it is deep in your heart.
If my job as father was correctly done, on their path through life
My children will treat others as they themselves wish to be,
And will look upon each person as a potential brother in need of help,
And seeing another’s misfortune, they will say - it could easily be me.
They will look after each other and others who may be in need,
And seek no thanks or praise, but do the job secretly with no bother.
Love is shown only by actions, and in the doing is the praying.
Their actions will be motivated by what is necessary for these others.
This is a difficult path to take and it is the right path:
But path or no path, I love my children - they are mine. And I believe this:
If I love my children as dearly as a father can, then
How much more does God our father love us. We are his.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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Sidney Beck Poem
I HAD A LITTLE NUT TREE
I had a little-nut tree
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg
And a golden pear.
The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to list me:
She'd heard about my little-nuts
And simply wanted to see.
Her list was entitled “little-nuts guys”
And there were guys she’d missed.
Asked her if it was a crazy-guy survey
Or an anatomical-query list.
She said, my young man
I’ve never seen such a little-nuts display for free:
I’ll put you at the top of the crop,
You and your little-nut tree.
Well, I love to win contests
And be in a top position;
Nothing gives me more pleasure,
Far beyond the competition.
But I’d rather be on her crazy-list and be kissed
Just like Jack Nicholson,
Than on her anatomical-list
And studied by a freak-physician.
………………………………………………………….
NOTE
My apologies to all lovers of the original, traditional nursery rhyme.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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