Tuesday, September 30, 2014

A Song of Gratitude

To listen to an audio recital of the poem, click here




Thank you, good friends, thank you
I’m honoured to be here
Offering my thank yous
as a boost to my career

I’d like to start by thanking
my agent and my wife
but alas my agent sacked me
and my wife – I mean my ex-wife…

I’d like to thank my lucky stars
(I’m not the sort for whining)
That my silver cloud is silver-lined
(Though there’s damage to the lining)

I’d like to thank my mum and dad
For the way that I’ve been risen
My mother for her English skills
(my dad is still in prison)

I’d like to thank my countrymen
for making me a patriot
and teaching me that love is always
relative to hatred

I’d like to thank my affluence
for arriving uninvited
but could I ask one favour more –
my lust’s still unrequited

I’d like to thank the gods for promising
the harmony of nations
and peace for all mankind and specially
endowing us with patience

I’d like to thank the management
the caterers and technicians
for making things seem squeaky-clean
like perfect politicians

I’d like to thank Columbus
for discovering the Bahamas
and Mahler for his symphonies
and Shakespeare for his dramas

I’d like to thank each one of you
for making a donation
Please write “D Prashker” on the cheque -
then “Charitable Foundation”

I’d like to thank the lady
in the third row, seat 4C
for generously offering
to come home tonight with me

I’d like to thank the hand of fate
for the portion I’ve been given
May all its fingers be cut off
its guilty soul be shriven

I’d like to thank the Royal Family
and work hard to preserve it
I’d like to thank them – honestly –
but the buggers don’t deserve it

I’d like to thank each one of you
for coming to this poem
I’d raise a glass or two with you
but I quaffed the jeroboam

And finally thank you to those folk
who invented thank you speeches
May your spirits live eternally
deep in the nether reaches

Thank you and good night

In Defence Of Günter Grass

To listen to an audio recital of the poem, click here




Who is the greater German:
Grass or Hermann Hesse?
Hermann joined the pacifists
Grass the Waffen SS

They want to take his Nobel Prize
and shove it up his arse
Politics trumps literature
in the case of Günter Grass

They want to take his Nobel Prize
and stuff it down his throat
You fools - this misses the whole point
Honour what he wrote

How should dishonoured Germany
face up to its guilt?
It seems this was his motive
in every word he spilt

Yes, spilt - the blood of Germany
bleeds through his every line
If he was a fool at seventeen
These books have paid his fine

And what about the Peace prizes
To Kissinger and Arafat?
I say you should revoke those too
but there’s no chance of that

This outrage against Günter
resounds like a hollow hum
drowned out by majestic beating
from an unrustable tin drum 



"In Defence of Gunther Grass" is published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013", The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.









Copyright © 2014 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press


Heresies

 To listen to an audio recital of the poem, click here




My thanks to the Brigit Saint Brigit theater in Omaha for the poster

The list of poems banned as heresies, whether religious, political, moral or social, is too long for this page. Noteworthy among them is Ovid’s “Ars Amatoria”, which upset the Roman Emperor Augustus so much that he both banned the work and banished the poet; the poem survived, until the monk Savonarola included it in his “Bonfire of the Vanities” in 1497. Christopher Marlowe translated it into English in 1599, only to find his version banned and himself imprisoned; and U.S. customs added it to their list in 1930. The 1881 edition of Walt Whitman’s endlessly rewritten and reprinted canonical “Leaves of Grass” was banned in Boston, though that city now requires study of it as part of its Literature programme in secondary schools; required reading and banning are of course both forms of coercion and control. The French government suppressed six of the poems in Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal” and charged him with corrupting public morals; the work was republished the following year and has never been out-of-print since. The complete works of Osip Mandelstam disappeared on Stalin’s orders, with the poet banished to death-by-exile. Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl” fell victim to an obscenity trial in 1957. “Education for Leisure” by the current English Poet Laureate Carol Anne Duffy was banned in 2008 by the school’s examinations board AQA…plus ça change…



1642

at Arcetri
near Florence
under house arrest
working only under close policing
completely blind
censured by the ecclesiastical authorities
sentenced to death by Pope Urban VIII
(commuted at the personal behest of the Duke of Tuscany)
on the 65th birthday of the Danish astronomer Johannes Fabricius
(the man who actually discovered sunspots)
on the anniversary of the death of Marco Polo
at the age of 77
Galileo Galilei
       died
broken on the rack of disappointment

Of his achievements we can list:

the inference
    from the oscillations of a lamp
        suspended in the cathedral at Pisa
            of the usefulness of a pendulum
                in measuring time exactly

the invention of a hydrostatic balance
a treatise on the law of specific gravity
the theory of falling bodies
the invention of the thermometer
    and the proportional compass
the development of the refracting telescope
    and its use in determining
        the nature of the lunar landscape
the discernment of the structure of the Milky Way
the discovery of four satellites of Jupiter
the proof of solar rotation
    based on the evidence of sunspots
the law of uniformly accelerated motion
the law of the parabolic path of projectiles
the law of virtual velocities
the law of inevitable weightedness

All these
              science
                         or heresy
depending on your point of view



"Heresies" is published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013", The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.








Copyright © 2014 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press

Homage to William Shakespeare

 To listen to an audio recital of the poem, click here






The wisest fool in Christendom was old
and tired of such hypocrisy, the lies
that drove poor Timon out into the cold,
that led Macbeth his own life to despise.
No more the shadows of the candle’s flame,
the fawning children and the relative
obscurity, just thirty-seven plays
and sonnets to a form superlative,
plus handbills from all his old productions,
tributes sent from Marston, Lyle and Jonson,
that battered box of grease-paints (slightly damp)
inherited by will of William Kemp.
Yet all of these no joy to him could bring –
not least the commendation from the King.

Such were the reliques of a life now used,
a mind which out of chaos order weaved,
a heart whole dedicated to the Muse
(the fame he had aspired to, and achieved).
There, on the desk before him, his life’s work,
the last botched masterpiece, the folio
and quarto manuscripts (dead letterwork!
wisdom from the mouth of some Malvolio!).
All of this fugue and toil, this lucid heart,
this slow progress of thought and soul and Art,
this scorn, this vision that dissolved in rain,
this scroll on which he’d proudly scratched his name.
This to a man’s whole Life and Will attested –
yet did not even know that he existed.




"Homage to William Shakespeare" is published in "Welcome To My World, Selected Poems 1973-2013", The Argaman Press. Click here to purchase the book.







Copyright © 2014 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press