Discrete Thoughts Collected Poems: New Enlarged Anthology

By Herbert Siegel

Discrete Thoughts, the fifth book of contemporary poems by Herbert Siegel, the pulse of whose verses are timed to his heartbeats from his signature poems The Core of the Universe to The Soul of Man. Discrete Thoughts is the first comprehensive and unabridged collection of his poetic achievements absent a variorum.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490732053

Herbert Siegel

Herbert Siegel, Ph.D., has consulted for a highly select clientele for 25 years, was a CEO for big-board and privately held companies, authored 5 books of contemporary poetry, published numerous essays and articles, hosted “Siegel’s Perch,” a macro-economic weekly radio show, and served as a Corporate Director for a host of banks and commercial entities. He is the recipient of many awards, the latest of which are The Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021, and Senior Poet Laureate of New York State, in 2009. Herb holds degrees in Business and International Law. He is a resident of Long Beach, NY for 60 years.

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© Copyright 2014 Herbert Siegel.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Copyright excludes

Harriet Slaughter’s Cover and Interior Art,

Kenny’s Nostalgia Poem, and Jonathan’s Ode to a Mother

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Cover and Interior Art: Harriet Slaughter

Cover and Interior Design: Susan Siegel Dorn

isbn: 978-1-4907-3204-6 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-3206-0 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-3205-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014905781

Trafford rev. 04/21/2014

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CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

THE SOUL OF MAN AND OTHER LATE-LIFE OFFERINGS

Life Cycle

Unseen Miracles

Anatomy Of A Poem

Lost Heroes

Confessions Of A Septuagenarian

Curves In The Right Places

Five Card Hold ‘Em

The Bible: Literature Or Dogma?

The Worker’s Ballet

Missing Persons

Elegance

Brain Or Universe:

Which Is Bigger?

Canvas Of Our Psyche

High Noon At Damascus

Mickey

Clouds Below

The Philosophy Of Psychiatry

Cosmic Sweepings

Health Foods

Words Waiting To Be Heard

Hubba, Hubba!

Venery

The No Shibboleth

Westerners, Tribalists,

And Muslims

Hurricane Legacy

On The Hook

Generational Skip

Mare Librium

Crepes And Grapes

Montesquieu

Kinetics

You Never Know?

Wandering

Knowledge Mirrors

The Soul Of Man

Part Ii

The Soul Of Man

WHERE DO PRAYERS GO? AND OTHER OBFUSCATIONS

Why Are Manhole Covers Round?

A Lonely Chair

It’s Not The Heat, It’s The Humility

Fractured Prisms

Fractured Prisms Continued

Greetings

All Alone

All About Money

Hope Is Not A Plan

Poetry Without Words

Listen To The Painting

Watch Your P’s And Q’s

Alibis

It’s All About Appearances

Ripley Clothes

Square Wheels Of Justice

Inspiration And Me

Hyphens & Dashes

Back To The Future

Serendipity

Haiku

Senryu

Tanka

One-Way Mirror

Pay Me No Mind

Where Do Prayers Go?

A PERSON WITHIN A PERSON AND OTHER ANALOGIES

Deep Freeze

Possessed

Allison Schmidt’s House

New Tribes

People Power

Fertile Minds

The Oracle

The Elderly Couple

Two Cousins

America’s Act Two

Tonsorial Splendor

Grandetita

A Veteran’s Prism

Kenny’s Nostalgia Poem

The Fisherman

Atavistic Connections

Staring At The Sun

Friends For All Seasons

Mr. Plumber’s Pillow

A Couple Of Kids

Creativi-Tea

Irony

A Personal Conundrum

One Day In May

Munificent Caretaker

Bread Givers

Soldier’s Lament

Want Ads

Cinquains

Happy Birthday Jeffrey Roy

Welcome Lori Robin

The Angel, Amy Hope

Heaven’s Gift: Jonathan Stuart

Grandson Kenny

Wedding Vows

First Mother’s Day

A Wife

Eulogy For A Mother

A Brother’s Lament

A Brother’s Lament Continued

A Person Within A Person

THE FABULIST AND OTHER HISTORIETTE

People Of The Book

Greek Mythology

And Hi-Technology

Greek Mythology

And Hi-Technology Continued

Changing Crimes

For Changing Times

Fritz

Schopenhauerisms

Schopenhauerisms Continued

The Triad Of Pindar*

The Triad Of Pindar* Continued

The Federalist Papers

(A Prelude To The Constitution)

Fictitious Values

Electoral Dysfunction

Left Bank

Göethe

Man At Lamancha

Bluebeard

A Whodunnit?

A Whodunnit? Continued

A Whodunnit? Continued

The Fifth Dimension

(A Futuristic Poem)

Music Of A Painting

Sub-Prime Baggage

(The 2008 Mortgage Fiasco)

Gps Gone Wild

Gps Gone Wild Continued

No Future In The Past

The Deal

Mixing Metaphors

Gas At Last

(@ $4.50 Per Gallon)

Military Secrets

(The Nsa)

Fool’s Gold

(The Worst Book I Ever Read!)

Iamb Hegemony

(A Poet’s Struggle)

Poetic Mythology

Between Fantasy And Reality

(The Real You)

The Fabulist

ALIAS PASTA AND OTHER GASTRONOMY

THE LEGEND OF MONDELBRÖT

THE BALLAD OF THE PALATE

ELIXIR VITAE

THANKSGIVING IN KANSAS CITY

BERRIED TREASURES

CAPTAIN BEN’S

SCRAMBLED EGGS

ALIAS PASTA

AGING AND OTHER LIFE PHENOMENA

MEMORIES vs. EXPECTATIONS

HOROLOGICALLY CHALLENGED

MASQUERADE

YOUNG LOVE

FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE

WHO IS HAVING THIS BABY?

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY

FIRST VALENTINE

MOTHER-TO-BE

BUYOLOGY

DREAMS

FIRE IN THE BELLY

SANGUINITY

ECSTASY

DIETS

SMITTEN

TAKE A CHANCE

QUITTING

WILLS AND TESTAMENTS

MORTAL MALADIES

HAZE ON THE HORIZON

DYING TO LIVE

(A Prose Poem)

DO THE MATH

PATIENT PENDING

IMAGINATION OR HALLUCINATION?

DYING

AGING

TALE OF THREE CITIES AND OTHER LOCUS

The Great Wall Of Mexico

Wilmington

Pondering Darfur

A Trip To Nowhere

Outer Space, Inner Waste

Waiting For A Traffic Light

Monuments

House Of Pain

Defrost At Home

Born To Be A Beachcomber

Nuclear Tasteland

Syllabic Tongues

(An Indian-Yiddish Poem For Peace)

Eastern Culture Western Law

Stay-Cations

New Beginnings

New Beginnings Continued

Tale Of Three Cities

Tale Of Three Cities Continued

LIFE THROUGH MY GLASSES AND OTHER

NATURAL WONDERS

The Science Of A Ceaseless Dance

Thunderstorms

(A Voyage Of A Fair Weather Cloud)

Lightening Strike

Welcoming The Summer Sun

Castles Made Of Sand

Winter Sun

Internal, External, Eternal

(The Horology Of Time)

Music Of Poetry

The Biology Of Laughter

(It’s No Joke)

The Biology Of Laughter Continued

(It’s No Joke)

Did You See The Albatross? Continued

Luck

Small Talk, Long Tales,

Big Ideas…About Sex

Fear

Broken Glass

Sand In My Shoes

Good Advice

Debris

Reflections

Acronyms Of Life

Emoting

One Of Those Days

Erotic Dreams

Mirage

The Last Day, The Very Last

Jonathan’s Ode To A Mother

Life Through My Glasses

Life Through My Glasses Continued

Here By Accident

Original Paintings, Drawings And Photos

By Harriet Slaughter

PROLOGUE

It is fitting on this first day of spring, in the first month of my eightieth year, that I finalize the poems I used to chronicle events, sensations, and observations since I was fifteen years of age. It is time to move on to other forms of expression.

Despite numerous public performances, peer awards, and publications, I never thought myself a poet. Rather for me, the process is a recreational interlude for someone who writes poetry contemporaneous with witnessing life. Many of my early poems reflect events as they unfolded. The more thoughtful ones evolved over time, as my opinions crystallized. Always I felt obligated to inject tasteful, sardonic humor that reflected the irony of each experience, and my personal satisfaction in recognizing it.

Finally, I enjoy the precision, cadence, and meter of rhyming despite considering it out of vogue since the late 20th century. It just seems to me if a poem requires explanation, it should never be written.

March 20, 2014

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Harmonize your words with the heart

—Code of Jewish Law

THE SOUL OF MAN AND OTHER LATE-LIFE OFFERINGS

LIFE CYCLE

I value my life,

but don’t remember my birth,

and won’t remember my death,

yet both are crucial,

extant and extinct.

Life filled with days

each a lasting effect,

some good, some bad,

I own them all,

see my calendar as proof.

Most I remember, some I choose to forget

—others will remember them for me.

None can compare with my birthday,

a special day, indeed!

From not being to living,

a first breath, bath, and name,

the genesis of my belly button,

seeing, crying, eating for the first time.

What an important day

not to remember.

I won’t remember dying either

however it may come,

my life erased in a micro-second,

no time to change or take another chance.

I won’t remember becoming extinct.

Who cares?

UNSEEN MIRACLES

Miracles span generations;

my mother performed miracles after she died,

some were scholarly, a few pedantic,

others general but in a particular way,

all defied laws of physics.

They pierced stone, steel, and glass

from a world without light or darkness.

They see through my eyes, hear with my ears,

touch everything with love.

No hi-tech, psycho software,

no middlemen

except Bach and Mozart to cohere.

Only God is condemned to work alone,

for us there is the omniscience

of things unseen, otherwise

there is no point to make.

Miracles are not monolithic

anchors of our minds, or home grown.

Nothing is as hair raising as an unexpected miracle

That freezes all thoughts into ice like organ pipes,

until the vision materializes.

People don’t make people better,

mother’s miracles do!

ANATOMY OF A POEM

Inner sounds culled from life’s silent essence

awake non-obvious events,

mimic art’s imagination,

faux prompts, biases, laments.

Explore vagary, reality,

aware of metaphors

that solve nothing, cure less,

cast a net trapping insightful ethos.

Music needs sound, paintings color,

ideas crave reality,

language follows deafening silence,

all avoid calamity.

Words provoke inspiration,

the human condition of

unconscious composition,

proof of creation.

Privileges of our world

without which we are not home.

Silence the sounds yet unheard,

when ready they are a poem.

LOST HEROES

As trains leave stations,

ships sail, planes fly,

they pass a stationary motion

of transient sensations.

Today’s idols putch past heroes,

soon supplanted by successors.

It’s hard for heroes to survive aging dialects

of thesis. antithesis, and synthesis.

Wide gulfs separate yesterday’s heroes from today,

As seen through makeshift glasses not scientific lens.

Once ravishing now ravished, captivating now captive,

they can’t understand decay.

To bring them back dispels clarity between sleep and waking,

they never said goodbyes,

how many memories can air hold

beyond a trace of wet eyes?

Come back, you are here and now, I said,

Spartans unburdened by old bones,

not knowing they are dead,

but for this poem’s metaphoric zones,

TO WIT:

       Hello, Gen. Washington, you won a war

       against the only army you ever saw.

       Today you’d face terrorists galore,

       religious fanatics who thrive on gore.

       Goodbye General, your horse, sword,

       and 18th century corps.

       Strut your stuff on the runway of time, Cleopatra,

       a Greek, who came to Egypt’s reign,

       married her brothers, Caesar, and Antony in line,

       the goddess Isis her claim to fame.

       Lost the battle to Octavia’s hasp,

       was killed bitten by her own Asp.

       The feminist of her day,

       occupying Wall St. is not her forte’

       So long Cleo, return to your crypt,

       no place for you here or Egypt.

       A supreme commander Ike was,

       fought and won battles better than anybody does.

       Brought back to point the way,

       bewildered by wars of today,

       no armies, al Qaeda and terrorists sneak,

       strike and hide

       from drones, missiles, and profiteering

       of our side, patriots, allies, hard to find,

       ten years here, ten years there, we try to unwind.

       No victories, confusion reigns,

       our soldiers leave broken and broke for their pains.

       Heroine, Saint, then burned at the stake,

       Joan of Arc ends the hundred year war for France.

       Struck by visions from God,

       she partied hard after a nine-day victory dance.

       The martyr visits the 21st century,

       views church/state politics of today,

       prays for guidance from her deity,

       has visions of joining the Tea Party,

       or take another