James Stone Goodman — Poems
I’ve been writing poetry for the last nine or ten years, deepened myself in it enough to hunger for instruction, and in 2008 I completed a Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry. I am looking for the poetry – music heartline, I am riding the wild borderline between when I play with my hands and the imaginings of what I call my mind. I include a few recent pieces, I am writing all the time.
The alef is silent and diminished/I am listening with
everything I have/the right word/the true story.
The alef is silent and small/Let the pure come and occupy themselves
with the pure.
Moshe – the greatest of all prophets, the humblest of all persons.
Va-yikar Alef also signifies and The One called. Alef is 1, G*d one and unique. Alef first in the Hebrew alef-bet, and all the other letters turn their faces away in awe.
Va-yikar Alef = the Alef called, the One called, the Aluf is concealed within each soul, the Alef/Aluf calls out to us to return,
The voice that we carry within, the inner voice, calls.When You call me
speak louder than you did with Moses
I may not hear the diminished alef
the sound of affection
You used with him.
I am listening with everything I have
I am listening for the right word
the true story.
Let the pure come and occupy themselves
with the pure
so said the wondrous Rav Assi [Lev.R.7:3]
3rd – 4th century
student of Rav Shmuel in Nehardea (Babylonia)
companion of Rav Ammi
what they talked about --
everything.
And G*d called to Moses
And G*d spoke to him
From the tent of meeting
R. Ya’akov ben Asher [Ba’al Ha-Turim]: Vayikra used to indicate God specifically chose Moshe.
The intimacy between the two, G*d called to him. . .
But Moshe was too humble to write it.
Moshe Rabbeinu is like the alef – small, humble –
So he wrote Vayikar [happened by] – they just ran into each other.
The alef is small to depict the humility in Moshe Rabbeinu in this sacred relationship.
Something else:
The Alef is the vav and two yuds/human-being-li-ness
and G*d-li-ness/both/
the Alef/suspended between/the foundational lower world/and the reach
to the upper world/connected by the sitting/And.
Strawberries
I often told a story illustrating the notion of acceptance, or so I thought.
One day
I am telling this story
and someone in the group interrupts --
what the heck does that mean!?
I couldn't answer.
After having told the story dozens of times,
I could not articulate
what it meant to me.
The story was powerful
for me. I knew it the first time I heard it. The story moved deep inside
me, and there it lurked for years without definition.
Now I wanted it out – what does it mean?
I thought about it for weeks, I waited, and it came.
A man chased by a tiger off
The edge of a cliff.
He hangs by his fingertips --
Above him the tiger
Below him the rocks and the sea.
What does he do? the master asks.
The students offer the standard answers:
He takes his chances with the tiger,
He climbs down the cliff,
Jumps into the sea
Distracts the tiger --
The master shakes his head –
No.
He is hanging on a ledge by his fingertips,
the master says.
He sees next to him
a bush growing out of the rock.
On the vine a fleshy hypanthium.
He picks the fleshy hypanthium
and he eats it.
jsg, usa
How difficult it is to be moved away from answers and given over to responses,
how hard to be stripped of solutions and given to strategies,
to be led away from arrivals and onto journies,
from supposed to be to what is,
from linear to lateral
from being there to getting there,
from goals to process,
from answers to darn good responses.
We are not likely to answer the master’s question: we are thinking
about the tiger, the cliff, the sea, but not about vines growing out
the side of the cliff, not about strawberries.
The letters are backward and sometimes upside down, nun m’tzuneret [the
isolated nun] and the nun hafukh [upside down nun]. The two
letters set off a small text, “And it came to pass, when the ark was
traveling. . .and when it rested. . .” [Numbers 10:35-36]. I return whenever
I open the doors and carry my wisdom around the room.
Fifty Gates of Wisdom
The alef is an And
And two hands
Explode the alef
Into a vuv
And a yud above
A yud below
Lay your hunger
Down in a chair
You’re all coulo
You are all coulo
And all And.
The hand above
The hand blow
We find our comfort
On our coulos
We are in the shape
Of our prayers
All our beloved hunger
Intact.Set off from the text
The letters are backwards
Isolated
The text they set off
Isolated too --
The verses will be restored
One day
To their natural order.
Fifty
The fifty gates of understanding
The water wisdom
Swimming in wisdom now
At fifty.
We will all be restored
But for now we are swimming
Swimming in our wisdom
As natural to us
As the sea to the fish --
Between the Backward letters
We are alive
We live in the isolated text
With its mystery
Insoluble
And one day
We will all be restored
To our natural
Take the alef
And pull it apart
In the middle
The vuv
The holy And
Above a yud
Below a yud
Yud is hand
An arm
The hand above
The hand below
Drawn above
Protected below
In the middle
Pull up a chair
Find your comfort
Your beloved S
Anchored below
Drawn above
A stretch
And a planting.
Where do you Live? Asked Blue.
I live between the nuns, in all that uncertainty
Mystery
I live in the I don’t know.
A wonderful place to be, said Blue.