The Grand Jew at the Piano
I find myself in Jerusalem and now I try to find myself in Jerusalem. Here are some poems that have been inspired by the last two weeks here in Jerusalem and also by the small show I saw today put on my friend Ariel Elisha, who played Grand Piano, Aaron Catz, whom I know from Tucson and whom played his guitar and sang, and from Yehuda Shuleman, I think his name was, whom played saxophone.
The Creation of the Holy One, Blessed be He
Is like an apple
For the skin He created Beauty
Beauty is thin
Outside the skin is found nothing – Beauty is the most external pathway to further truths
Those who stand outside of Beauty have nothing
And Beauty is nothing compared to Purity
How many a peoples’ hearts have been swayed and stolen by persuasive Beauty?
Claiming their sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, thoughts, emotions, connection?
Fathom that for fathoms beneath the Beauty is the pulp of the apple
And the pulp is Purity
Purity is better than Beauty
Inside the core of the apple are the seeds
And the seeds are Holiness
Purity separates Holiness from Beauty
And Holiness is better than Purity
The Holy One, Blessed is He, will pour out honey on the apple
And we can all celebrate the New Year
Then He will turn the honey into wine
Then He will eliminate spiritual drunkenness when He turns
The wine into water, reversing all evil
Of water into wine
And He will thrust the apple against the wall with violence
And the apple will explode into pieces that will fall to the ground
And the water on the apple will fertilize the seeds
Which will grow into trees
I gravitate and polarize around the Source in the middle
Like a holy mesquito I fly around the Place
Just yearning to poke my straw into the center
Like a pendulum I swing back and forth around Hashem
My body pushes my soul away, my body resists my soul’s yearning to cleave
Like a planet I revolve around the sun, I cannot get closer
How can I penetrate this gravitational force
That at once keeps me near but keeps me away?
G-d, show me the way and bring me closer
Drops of light fall from the sky
Drops of light form into puddles on the sidewalks of Jerusalem
Puddles of light form into seas than flow down the streets of Jerusalem
A sea of light flows through the Land, dimming the sun above
People swim and float joyously on the ocean of light
So bright that the sun’s reflection is invisible inside it
Like a match to a fire
Let me absorb water of Torah like a grass and let me grow strong and tall
Not honey and not wine, but water
Has no color for the colored ones
The humans whose skin is like skittles
They try to taste the rainbow but close their mouth to the water
But the water gives life and honey and wine taste fine
But water gives life
In the end it is the water that will be confirmed sweet
Seeping into the hearts of men
In the end it is the water that will arouse the senses
Making joyous the hearts of men
In the end it is not water, but honey and wine that will drown the evil
It is possible to find the right place the wrong way
In a world of streets, sidewalks, foreign buildings, and signs
One can find the right destination by following the wrong signs
But he must walk back and forth like aimlessly
Passing locations several times over
Asking for directions until he finds the right place
Shame will cover his face and fear will fill his heart when
He realizes that he is lost among them
They will all look ugly; the streets, sidewalks, foreign buildings, and signs
And the people too, they will look the ugliest
And he will feel the ugliness inside him swelling and consuming, numbing
Until he arrives at his destination
What signs can a man follow?
What signs can he be sure will arrive him at his destination?
He must go for the signs that have always been there.
But how does he know which of the signs posted in the streets are those signs?
He must ask his fathers and mothers
For far back enough some of them have witnessed the posting
My eyes have become super-sensitized to the beauty of holy women
A beautiful woman is one whose body is invisible and whose heart is not shared
With everyone, her emotions are rarities for those who deserve them
And whose soul belongs to G-d
A beautiful woman rejects the stallions of conformity and emptiness;
Whom toil in their muscles, remove all hair from their body, apply sweet smells,
And train their words like grotesque dogs
She seeks fine grain and yearns to mill it, and she will have it
The Chazan stands at the front of the Synagogue singing out
He is covered in His Talit
I look to the ground, I cannot see Him, but
I can hear His voice filling the Synagogue
He sings to us and we respond to Him and
We sing with Him
My ears respond but my eyes cannot
Although He opens my eyes and I yearn to look at Him
Please G-d, Whom I cannot see and cannot see and live
Please enable these eyes to hold in more of You
Many times I find myself getting nearer to You
I begin to see the fibers of this world wave away and become stripped away, torn
I become afraid that if I leave this world too much and enter into Yours
That I will have to abandon the systems of conformity of this world completely
Having seen You and unable to reject Your Truth, with what would I be left
Other than pursuing with a full heart the urgencies of Your Words?
This fills me with fear and I choose to cover myself in small amounts of Klippah
Just enough to stay connected but not forced to sprint after You as if nothing else
Existed, but nothing else exists and nothing else matters, so please G-d let me be
Strong to run after You, for the dictates of my body and soul, alone, will not withstand
Nearing You is more preferable than the death of the wwways of the wwworld, for how can death be better than
Life?
