Poetry for a Lost Opera: (And Other Matters)

By Glenn Greenstein

**The information about the book is not available as of this time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781796096538

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by Glenn Greenstein.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/27/2021

Xlibris

844-714-8691

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Contents

Preface

‘I Swear’

0 True

Accorded for

Accretion and Oil

Add

Aisles

Align

All Graves Seem Shallow

All in All

ALMS

Anthony Bourdain and Us

Anthropomorphic Cork

‘Anti Friends’

Architecture

Ask

Assign

Assist of Trumpets

Aught the Difference

Aum – 0

Balleteers

‘Beers and Rattlers’

Before Holy Men

Bespeak

Binaries, and Turtles

Blues and Golds Accorded For

Booths and Credulity

Bosses with Canes

Breakin’ Odd

Brings

Brought

‘By the Way’

Calling Bronze

Calling Marble

Candid

Cardigan Sweater

Careen

Cares and Wears

Children’s Secrets

Choice Lozenge

Choose

Class Struggle

Coax, Treat and Clappers

Condiments

Constellation Pleiades

Continuality

Cool

Coughed

Count On

Cracking Nuts

Cravers

Credulity

Crowded Molasses

Crumpet

Curved Spaces

Darker by Light

Deal

Decorum

Denials

Don’t Know

Don’t they

Dvorak’s Rusalka

Dyslexia Dichotomous

Edible

Efforts and Suggestions

Employ

Eve

Excuse It

Extravagant moons

‘Fail-safe Tours’

Famished Crowds

Far from June

Farina Tunes

Farther World

Fiefs and Minions

Fine Color of Slate

Flax Forwards

Fleece Sweatshirt

For What It’s Worth

Forsaken Names

Frange Palms

Fred Astaire

Funnels, Mystic Guitar Cords

Further Color

Fuse Availability

Genes and Wings

Gin and Lipstick

Goin’

‘Goo’

Had a Memory

Hands and Forests

Healthy Kind

Healthy Spoons

Heckled

Herman Hess Smoke

Hey Babe

Hi Hdu Plains

Hinges

Hinges 2

Hokey

Holler Street

Holographic Tundra

Horticulture, Nutraceuticals

Human Locations

Humility for Zombies

Humph and Hovers

If I Was Last Man

IMPS

Intermission

Ivory

Jots

Jug-Bots

Jumble

Lands Accorded

Late Renaissance and Euphrates - or Deuteronomy

Late Walking to The Opera

Lead

Lengthy Causes

Letter to A Letter

Linen

Location and Digression

Loom Grace

Luster of Stones

Madness and Stone Faces

Mangos You Can Ask

Mariana Sketch

Marilyn Monroe

Mavens, Caves and Balloons

Mediations

Mere Duck

Metals and Force

Method

Mining/ and / Somebody

Mixed Roots

Mocks and Grins

Modifiers, Formulators

Moniker Tiered

Mortal Contenders and Pirates

Mother Teresa’s a Saint

Muffled Gravity

Names, Specificities

Names Taunts Caution

Nether World

No’ Wonder

Not Friend’

‘Noticed Post Notes’

Novelists and Pretzels

Of Claude Debussy Selection

Of Daisies and Children

(Of Fiefs)

Oldster Movies

Opera Donations

Opposite Walks

Origami Bird

Pacify Us

Parenthetical Purple Dots

Parks, Pelts, Larks

Pear Tree Contrivance

Penguin Songs

Perch

(Hindu) / Phenomenation

Picture Sourced

Platter Coins

‘Poor Note’

Preacher Man and Coke

Quantum, Scars, Early

Qubits Jazz

Quirky Spoons, Deserving Pigeons

Radish

‘Recounts-Ad libs’

Redux Curated

Reeds

Requisites

Resolve

Retail and Rebates

Retainers

Right Lauren

Right Sized

Room with A View

Runny nose and Commas

Sample Angle Sun

Sample

Sandals, Sandy Beaches

Sausage from a Pear

Say Ward

Self and Ambiguity

September Sights

Share of the Corpses

She the Classical Guitarist

Shekels

Shoots and Brutes

Sleuth

Solve my Knowing

Sound from the Perch

Sourced

Spackle

Spits and Laughs

SPOKE and ADDED

‘Stanzas/Dedications/Intros’

Substantiation

Sufi Comportments

Supplant

Supposition

Surpass and Rebates

Suspect Demeanor

Swarm

Tags

Taken

Tampered With/Swank Beauties

Tap

Teal

Temperature, Reels, and Arabesques

Tenders

Tertiary

The Art of Filling

The Laughing Coiffured

The Name of Kiara

There After

Those Silly Notes

Thought Landscapes

Tipping

To Tend To

Tools for Zombies

Toys in the Attic

‘Treats for A Treat’

Trumpian Dystopia

Turkey Tongs

Types

‘Unch’

Unprocessed Processes

Untangled and Carrots

Untitled

Upmost Pizza

‘Venice In Italia’

Virus Kindly Flags

Visions/ and Seas

Voice-Over

Waivers

Walking Man at Early

Walking to The Opera

Warm Rice

Way Before

Wells and Music Fails

While

Wield

Wiffle Ball

Wiz

Wrangling

Writ Days

You Had a Memory

‘You’

Preface

A LITTLE SOMETHING ABOUT MYSELF: I HAD A PRIOR JOB

IN A MEDICAL RELATED FIELD. – A DECADE AGO. I LIKED THE JOB BUT I DISLIKED SOME

OF MY BOSSES, ESPECIALLY THE ONE RIGHT ABOVE ME,

‘HE‘.. WALKED WITH A CANES, TOO FAT, 4 WIVES, OR MORE, 9 KIDS APPROX.

AND HE NEEDED A PROMOTION.

YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! MORE WORK, WHAT A BITCH!

I LEFT EARLY BUT I SHOULD HAVE STAYED… Mistake Armageddon.

_______________

I’VE ALWAYS LIKED OPERA, BUT IT GOT TOO EXPENSIVE, PLUS

I DEVELOPED A FEAR OF HEIGHTS AFTER MY SISTER DIED, SO CAN’T SIT

IN THE HIGH ’CHEAP’ SEATS, EVEN IF I WANTED TO.

IT IS PITIFUL PRICES HAVE TO BE SO EXPENSIVE, -FOR WHAT?

(FOR RICH SINGERS, OPERA-HEADS I GUESS?)

GUESS THE IT’S THE SAME WITH SPORT TICKETS, INFLATION OF PRICES

HURTS EVERYONE BUT THE WEALTHY -

THAT’S CAPITALISM IN THE YEAR 2021 ETC.

_______________

LIFE IS NOT FAIR THEY SAY, OF COURSE DEPENDING ON WHO YOU TALK TO

AND ABOUT WHAT. (SORRY ABOUT THAT CLICHÉ.)

OPERA IS SOMETHING ONE REALLY HAS TO GO TO, NOT JUST HEAR -

ANY WAY I HAD A DREAM AT AGE 22 OR SO, AFTER I READ THE NOVEL ULYSSYES,

THAT AN OPERA OF POEMS WOULD BE A CHALLNGE, EVEN BEFORE

I KNEW WHAT AN OPERA REALLY WAS… SO I USED SIMILAR TITLE HERE.

_______________

I WRITE SOME ABOUT RELIGION, RELIGION IN SPECIFITY COMES WITH BAGGAGE/

A NUMBER OF POSSIBLE LIMITATIONS. – DOGMA, POWER POLITICS, DIVISIVENESS ETC.

BUT IT HAS SOME POSITIVES, AS A SOCIAL ENDEAVOR TO MEET FRIENDS, ‘APPLYING’

ONESELF TO A DIFFERENT PATH IF ‘WARRANTED.’

___ I’D LIKE TO THINK EACH OF US HAS A SOUL,

THAT WE CAN TURN TO, ‘HEAR’, - IF YOU CALL THAT HEARING.

I AM OLDER THAN 50 YEARS,

THAT’S ALL I’LL SAY ABOUT THAT, MY AGE NOW HAS LITTLE BEARING ON THIS

BOOK I WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE -

I THOUGHT THAT AT SOME JUNCTURE I MIGHT TRY TO WRITE SOME TYPE

OF POEM MANUSCRIPT, IF I COULD DO IT ‘SOMEHOW’ IN THE VAGUE

MEANING OF THAT TERM. SOME OF THE POEMS IN THE BOOK ARE

RELATED TO OPERA, MANY ARE NOT DIRECTLY.

I HOPE SOME HAVE A SIMILAR SOUNDING.

MY ’BEST’ FRIEND DIED 8 MONTHS AGO ABOUT, NOW I ‘M REALLY ALONE,

YOU NEVER GET USED TO THAT AT ANY POINT.

I DID THE BEST I COULD WITH THIS ‘BOOK’.

- I’M NOT SURE POETRY IS READ MUCH ANYMORE, AND I DOUBT

WHAT I TRIED TO WRITE WILL BE… BUT

IT IS STRANGE HOW WE ‘ACCUMULATE’ CERTAIN THINGS OVER TIME.

I DO INDOOR SWIMMING NEAR ME, AND JOGGING OUTSIDE

MOST ALL YEAR AROUND. BUT SADLY THE INDOOR POOL I GO TO IS

NOT OPEN NOW

WITH THIS ‘VIRUS HANGING’ AROUND -

MAKES THE ‘GOING’ AND THE DOING MUCH HARDER.

_______________

I APPRECIATE IF YOU’D TRY THE BOOK,

YOU NEVER KNOW IF THERE’S A POEM YOU MIGHT ENJOY -

LIFE WON’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE I GUESS.

THERE ARE THINGS NO ONE CAN TAKE AWAY INSIDE OURSELVES

BUT FEW PEOPLE WILL REALLY CARE IN THIS WORLD I’VE LEARNED,

- I’M WAS A SLOW LEARNER. - THANKS,

BE THE BEST

YOU CAN BE!

(YES, I’VE SAID TOO MUCH, AS THE SONG GOES!)

(- IF YOUR INTERESTED IN TALKING TO ME, ABOUT MY BOOK

OR ANYTHING REALLY, YOU COULD GET CONTACT INFO

FROM XLIBRIS PUBLISHING I WOULD GUESS… OR BELOW.)

THANKS,

GLENN I. GREENSTEIN

[e-mail]

5164421492

I DEDICATE THIS MANUSCRIPT TO MY SISTER,

WHO PASSED,

SHARON GREENSTEIN

‘I Swear’

I swear some women on waking up

Have hair atop the head resembling claustrophobic jell

Or strange forest Druids.

Prophetic ‘creatures’ mediating between the trees

And Celtic Gods of Gaul.

Future assimilates land wherever

The next second accrues.

Not nearly the least art

To decorate a Druid woman.

Lengthy dresses and mystic coalition.

Not the worst to have friends, and enemies.

At least to know you did something right

Or wrong! – And even the wrong enemies likely right.

Rembrandt’s portraits of flaky

Old men with creaky toes, beggars practiced

With their lot, emotionless gold-trimmed noblemen.

But ‘enemies’ usually never acknowledge

Their teeth puss and

Nasty fluids.

0 True

In a pure heart I’d

Make you come to this time, without proving!

I‘ll caress your wonder mouth to find

- Yes, arrive pout care unerring

And loudly shout presence. - I’ll revive a poet’s hands

Or recompense those Lords - O love

Sustenance of all phenomena strivings will you

Wear dress float maul of colors?

And coalesce of spring added.

True heart lurks inbound

Tells the mind what it must do!

Rather than could or should.

Coalesce O true heart, the mind waits for

Your sign of abundant tales to rival. O love

Sustenance of all nature’s thriving -

Give me an approximation of this stretch

Of vast maturations.

And rote start of spring

O love, 0 heart given away –

There is nothing more to survive, to let

Blind the eyes. Do not spare me

Indolent crime of heart reservation, if weakness

Overtakes striving, if blocks of time initiate mortal

Closure -

I’ve already rummaged through that and

Marked the spaces of

Utter frankness.

Accorded for

I had the strangest thought

    That I was someone else, that I as me

Could put pen to paper

    To words,

That might make sense in a roundabout way.

    That when the journey ends, and all light

Falls away, fiery fire succumbs and torments

    Can’t sigh, places misshapen those that

Appear to stay as they are, whiskey bourbon and

    Injustice away from excuses ordinary

life would inject!) – and whose prey

    Don’t deny they are prey at surmise, or earlier sunrises,

Or cauldron.

Will Say love was true and bested all commanders,

Almost as lips and mouth are blended, and if bridge

    To nowhere could buy us time, and I

Could close out the rest … mm I had

The strangest Feeling, I as me was not I.

Accretion and Oil

Wicks of oil –

Humans we have the rituals, ancestral bonfire

Of memories. Maximalist sequesters of prayer, holiest

Of holy severest religions taunt the chicken-coup

Flesh.

Self-flagellations

Praise be all-told the summoning attritions, vanquished

Fornication, Islamist Jihad to the Western noisy

Guttural pleasure troves.

Then the godly Islam worshipers trample each other,

Some type of noise– Sudden bang noise

Thought they heard shot guns -

Panic shoving bodies underneath the narrow bridge

Ahead awaits the comely gold Imam worship shrine -

Kill for the killing alms, lamentations to their Saint, rejoice the

Future heavenly Virgins prize the mad rush to trample

It’s the holy month salvage all-for-non panic.

No time

To pick up the lifeless already succumbed and

Left for dead. Plenty of bridge shovels after dusk.

To all pretenders to their faith, contenders to their God.

Potent ‘revelation- killings’, a disciple’s martyr reward,

One deceit of flesh

And blood for another… O Allah We robed in sumptuous fabric

Pray hear us we avenge the savage (Looter), kefir

Infidel. O whipping fury sublime!

The longitude and latitude

Depend solely on us facing East or West.

The plucky western atheists dye their hair, foster wigs,

No barber needed.

Repeat and adhere

To those who will listen reassured, grovel

Boundless Intellect itineraries secure to plumb

The locus of our brain. We’re on candid camera

The stooge and scholars dig in history is ours

To keep fantasize history lost.

No need to ache country music, that’s

Easy to bounce, fumigate and dislike, harder

Fake curry

And dancing

Shrimp.

Add

Am writing a poem,

Not finished but it is too long!

    The poem is hopeless, imperfect -

    Awkward with no cornerstone to touch -

    Cannot appeal to words nor halfway abuse any silence compelled-

One hallway lasts providential, couple of doors are stolen or sealed.

    Not this one, not shredded

In the till, but still got to finish one broad stroke

Of some paltry Intelligence served …

    Rather have a Poem not titled than

    Handed approved picture on Chiseled money - keep

    It away from being

    Shredded in the till!

I guess it worked out, there

Must be some sense in the senseless.)

    To understand this is another poem –

    Shorter, transposed, here to embellished reader?

    Tried not to anticipate myself from mural past,

    Irregular masculine pirouette encounter-

    Spirits of history are sturdy, they confront learning

    Wisdom

    They share the appropriate work, do not care

    If it works out!

At least not gambling … not a closed position.

Got to indoor swim now, the pool’s going to illuminate

Flat waters flattering – if nobody but me disturbs.

Grab the towel quick, lock the locker -

Coffee, and buttered roll the best

Elixir for the hopeless, and empty corridor respite

    For the tense - - already a cleanse for the

    Mind, but why brag about the senseless.

Aisles

The child wakes at night.

He is lonely to return

To the stars

Whence he came.

The child’s mirth is deep,

But how the sadness leaps

Just behind the wonder

From junctures unknown

To him, nor nature.

Crevice in his mind jagged-

The words accumulate the senses

Seep like trickle of rainwaters

In and out of time,

To wear away comfort of knowledge.

To become the child

The poet stays in the child that is-

He looks up with a child’s face

And counts the stars that blink, and thinks

They are what he might die to.

He looks up in a child’s place

Licks the salt on his lips, and dreams

The sea to sleep.

He selects the night’s fragrance when

Love counts the child’s pain

That the summer clouds trace

And disappear to.

Align

Hoops for the gadfly, the consternated Opinion

Amuser. All the best deceivers mock the deceiver.

But your ashes are my ashes, your

Lifting pain, my lifted pain! -Form exacts form,

Fine facial bones insist the stealthy- grueling

Despot mangle. – Body-donned pleasantries to conquer,

Mind writes ahead, then heeds nothing but rest.

One can always be over-dressed, under-dressed

If ‘culture’ has some bearing.

A beggar’s heart juggled by the moon, seared

By the sun. What can offend the crafty dancer?

Love me, love my eyes, the lion

Braids its chrome to roar. Death a charismatic corpse

For the slavers! - - blood, nothing exhausted by

Rival trays. Without horns, we give them a pass.

Why the menstrual flaking earth pretends!

Kiss the kiss that never ends, the charismatic seas intrude,

Break over us. - sloppy lovers are undemanding.

-    Kind breasts for heaving the good fevers, boast.

-    The deserted castle bays. Irking, the piano down the hall

                Resumes to falter!

Same absorbed hour, different day, same days

                Up and down the exploitive keys- stop!

-    This piano idiopathic, choking in a lazy noose.

-    Reluctant abuse extended discipline her fingers!

-    Debussy’s coffin aborted by those awkward, coherent sufferings

                Of music absorbed. Requisite interruptions down the hall!

                Torpor comes in all shapes and sizes.

                Betrayers nonchalant never concede.

All Graves Seem Shallow

All graves seem shallow

Easy to touch and bruise.

Beneath the window shade all can occur.

The next mist will hold the drops of

Skies and bays. Like the people I knew

Now gone or far afield as fields can be,

Alas incomplete spirits too early to dangle -

What haplessly regress back to complete regression.

Without glasses my eyes are a puzzle,

Similar to being cross-eyed or being bilingual.

I forgot my Spanish, French more ear-native, less

Exotic less tiers to follow.

French language speeded-up compares a quick stutter,

Spanish always seems lovesick- or asking for a pardon.

All French food prepared (they) thick with butter -

Is that another

Lazy deranged rumor? O’ Marseilles.

Either way myopic needs a rudder, a

Near harbor I can bicycle along to jump from.

But I never

Jumped, so far- but did from welcoming canal twice,

A short dive into pleasance, bubbles upholstery.

    Wish I

Could have time alone, without time.

I know it’s there when love ones yield

Invisible presence

Passing through- still known to My known.

Sea comparisons get bogged down with epiphanies.

                    ____________

Lots of seas in poems to tread. What

The hell a duck floating away like that, barely

Skimming the water like that-

Maybe he’ll make eye-contact if I wait long enough?

Well-satisfied proud head, must have had a decent meal

God-bless those gobs of feathers. Doesn’t bother

With granite custom finery

Replenished to breath in, to live in. Doesn’t

Need jelly-roll appetites to accent the bread.

We never ever garner thieves

To ourselves …

Then we exercise them dutifully

Which one will

Hide from yourself?

Sheikh with harems deploy

Nature’s call to basic appetites.

(An ox with horns makes less of a ruckus).

Pedophiles know no master, nor gender of entrails.

Lusting priests, political hacks tow of sculpture norms

Hacked far afield

Lavish the juicy steak with juices …

They outnumber any petri dish particulars.

Many dignitaries have all been spoken for

Camel hoofs and chariots turn dust into glory.

All graves seem shallow.

All in All

The Higgs boson giving mass to atomic particles

In vacuum fields, a wave function basis of creation.

Wave Vibration leads mass to vibration.

    DNA in saliva not uniform primitivity nor conscious selectivity

    No autopsy instrument needed. The primitive tusked-

Mammoth had its place.

Tyrant-Despots grab more than their share

Of ethnicity and race.

    Red and grey the romantic rudiments.

Allie you look Spanish, perhaps I can hold your hand.

Your hand looks bigger than mine. - It’s okay

Could still be a lock-and-fit. I have branches

        Breaking from my spine, they stay for now.

Best have life’s experience before

Poetry can write your name.)

Fear at the markers posture,

Dogs lift their paws in affection, don’t require pacts

Nor treaties. Scottish Border Collies run trails

Generally faster. All of ilk and kind try to match.

        The first sentence should be fearless and sanguine,

                A poem’s work is fine when appended upon the limbs.

What say insanity, devised with a cherry on top.

Insanity has perfection, the earth can be torched.

Free-will awards fate its prizes! Balanced on fulcrum.

Sophistry a mode of useless masturbation repeated.

______________

Culture striving

For quotes of the living

Or copies of copies and asterisk prompted.

Darwinism whiplash the deserved evolution’s master

Function anticipates function, except when it does not!

Dinosaurs did not dissolve at evolution’s roster-

Each intellectual boaster of self-worth-

Evolution survived as physical minutia-

Imprinted fossil species engorged to a foreign impulse

Chimps from holler monkeys to bonobos

To man whatever you want from

Whoever you want – the great shake-down!)

Isotropic delectable collectables, tubes down

The throat won’t go away on a bad day.

Antiques close-down the heart, curiosities dominate

The price,

The parenthesis implemented.

The long-bearded fellow constantly admires

In the mirror without any scissors.

I guess I Was serious. The opera interlude can begin

Now

With the fabled dancers dancing. The Divine

Sculptor never fails to emerge. Montesquieu

Had his barbs, Hindu in-turn ideals of the

Thousand deities approached for. Flame and shadow

Flickering, history already conforming contours.

______________

The hundred thousand

Million theories to differently appraise history’s

Shifts

Possible to inaccurately plagiarize

Kindness when kind, institutions walked into

Or out of, corrupted to corrupt on original terms.

We can only suspect all is well when it isn’t

For the many or few.

The bicycle tires screech,

The fatter ones motor, louder.

The chakras’ energy dissipates if halted quickly

There is no such thing as an educated spine.

I know who I dislike, not

Immune, that’s not the worst after-all.

I’ll walk away, away to the distance.

Love has a vain vernacular, a promising stash

Bundled In the distance. The face droops,

The body sags, the next moment is lost.

The small and great perverted.

History conforms.

Art formalizes the informal.