A.M. Klein Was Quite A Guy - A Poem by Dave Jaffe

    A.M. Klein Was Quite A Guy.



A.M. Klein .
Alas, he was no friend of mine.
His high school was Baron Byng.
Soon he learned to sing,
'The Internationale'
And 'The Maple Leaf Forever'.


Before he turned old
He took Bronfman gold.
Yet he wrote as his life unscrolled
For the first time
Many fine poems.


In Montreal he practiced law.
And then he heard or saw
Six million Jews
Who died with their shoes
Sometimes put in neat deadly piles,
By S.S. guards who sometimes smiled,
And then gassed all the Jews
In Hitler's death camps.


Klein wrote a book on Hitler.
He compared mythologies with Leonard Cohen
Jew to Jew.
 And he knew Irving Layton,
And maybe Irving's daughter.


He gave no apprenticeship to Mordecai Richler
Who put him in a novel,
That made him no model
For any young artist.

He was another cursed poet.
"Un maudit poet," as the French say.
He descended into madness
Starting in 1952 or maybe 56.
 In any case there was no fix
Coming from doctors for him.



He emerged from a Jewish womb
And was buried in the tomb
Of poetry anthologies.
So many English language poets
Who were born or lived
In Montreal
Are forgotten there.
Alongside many others who weren't.


Now they all may be forgotten
As an avalanche of French language laws
Could sweep them away once more
Into fading memory.

Yet even now
I say with a sigh
"A.M. Klein, Abraham Moses Klein,
Was quite a guy."








   

Poetry by Dave Jaffe. Poem called "Take A Pill and Head South'.

Take A Pill And Head South



Come.
 Let's sneak away to the sunny south
 Far away from the grey skies.

 You won't have to sit
  In squashed airline seats.
  Or wait for hours
  In long impatient lines
  Of passengers.

  It's really simple.
  At three in the morning
  Swallow half a tylenol and codeine pill.
  Close your eyes
  And you're off.
  Away from winter grey
  That swirls outside
  And inside your head.

  Go away from the rains
  That drip endlessly in your mind.
  Then suddenly
   You're floating
   In tropical skies
   That move past you in homage to your arrival.

   Now you watch
   Afro-Cubans dance
   Churning the air with their energy.
   They dance
   In faded dance halls
   Rimmed with dust
   Or cash filled casino floors in Havana.

   You see
   Parakeets in red and yellow
   Plunge into cobalt blue waters.
   Or they let their feathered wings
   Gently brush the cannabis-dazed beards
   Of grounded Jamaican rastas.

   Palm trees sprout on the borders of beaches.
   Or they bow to you in the wind
   As you walk past them.
    Hotel windows open or move in random creakiness
   Blown back and forth by the blue air.

   Sometimes
   Clouds scurry across the warm sky.
   Or a three course meal
   Churns your stomach.
    But mostly
   You lie on a gentle beach
   And live in warmth and love.

    Your spirits soar
    Like a faraway parrot
    That climbs in its blazing colours
    Into the blue dish of the sky.
    Far far away from pain
    And rain
    And rain.

   


  

Poem by Dave Jaffe 'An Old Man Looks At Love'

        An Old Man Looks At Love


    It cannot be
   That one and one makes three,
   That two and two don't make four.
   Or add up to something more.
   Numbers are mysteries to me,
   Like your brown eyes.


   Your eyes meet mine
   And like moons they shine.
   I look away burned by love.
   But can't give it an endless shove
   Into a future
   I won't control or be in.


   In this food court mall
   I fear moving or a fall.
   Here where I've broken an arm before,
   Crashing on a well tiled floor.
   Now I'm an old man,
   One of many torn

 
   Then stuck in static memories
   Of pain, of loss   and
   Of love.


  
    
  
  

Dear Justin - A Poem by Dave Jaffe

                  Dear Justin

     Dear Mr. Prime Minister
     Be Justin the Just
      Not Justin the Arrogant.
       Remember
     That Quebec is not the only province in Canada
     And that other provinces sometimes get angy too.
     (But they don't threaten to secede).
   
     Don't forget
     The 325 promises you made
     During tense election days.
     Don't break most of them
     At once or immediately.

     Listen to the old wise men of the Liberal Party.
     Whose heads are wreathed
      With cynicism arrogance and power.
     But remember
     The young people who voted for you
     Their hands full of hope
     As they cast their ballots.
     Think of the homeless and the poorest
     Laying their creased faces down on sidewalks
     Or in crowded shelters
     Day after day
     Night after night.
   
      And don't forget
     The 149 Indian reserves
     That have to boil their water.
      Didn't your mother
      Once campaign
      For clean water around the world?
      Shouldn't you do the same for our First Nations?
     
      And don't end your time at 24 Sussex Drive
      In an orgy of patronage
      As your father did.

    Be wise, be compassionate.
    be Justin the Just.

      

My Knees A Poem by Dave Jaffe

                                 My Knees

            My knees
            Are battered broken
             And wrenched all out of shape.


            My knees
            are ugly twisted and
            misshapen.


            My knees
            Are painful hurting bruised and
            Filled with pain
            Especially when it rains.   


            Yet my knees
             Keep me moving
             Push me out of doors
             Into mornings of welcoming sun rays and blue skies.
             They glide through
             The water when I swim
             They sit me down in restaurants
              Raise me up from drowsy armchairs
             Walk me through
             Upscale malls and scrappy ones too.
             They bend me down to sleep.


             It's amazing
             That my knees still work
             Sometimes.
             
            

Montreal Spring Days by Dave Jaffe

     Montreal Spring Days


     I loved those days.
     The snow the snow
      Piled up by months of winter
      Was melting under the mild yellow sun.
      At night time I slip but don't fall
      On the freezing sidewalk
      As water hardened into ice.
      Today I would shrink from the night's dangers.
       But back then
       Young and frisky
        I crunched the ice with my supple feet.


       Soon, too soon
       Summer's heat would descend on the city
       And crush me in its humid grasp.
       Yet now it was spring in Montreal
       And the clear night sky
       Curved like a dark joyful bowl above me,
       While ice froze below.


       I loved those days and nights
       They were lovely
        In the spring time of my life.
      
      
       
       
      

Beyond The Present by Dave Jaffe

                    Beyond The Present by Dave Jaffe




      Time can't be gathered in your hands
       It moves like the crow's flight
       A falling black shriek
        In a grey autumn sky
       Or it floats in a calm blue sea
        Of waving memories.


        In city streets
        Giant bulldozers noisily
        Crush memories into dust.
        While giant blue grey condos
        Slowly rise from the underground
        And throw shadows
        On the human dots below.



        Old people like me
        Are wafted into the past by poetry or music
        Or look at old landscapes.
        There I dwell in lands
         Empty of backfiring cars
         The electric whine of the carpenter's saw
          And the brute noise of the jackhammer.
         My world is
         Small and beautiful,
          Like the aspens standing in white quiet coloumns,
          In a photo I took long ago
          Outside of a town whose name I have forgotten.