Sunset in a Trailer Park - Attempt at a Daily Poem #1

posting a daily poem as an attempt to break me of the habit of sharing excerpts of my perfectly perfect novel which is going so well that everyone is falling over themselves with praise for whatever of it they read....

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 Montana, springdale, columbus, mint, catalina, winnebago, ultralite, carbon, flagstaff, cougar, apex

Did any of these people vote Hillary?

Fishers, teenage girls in sweatshirts with gymshorts, kids biking next to the water without helmets, all there to see the reflection of the setting sun on the bay.

Their own personal Battery Park. A slice of Red America living like Blue America, chasing the American sublime within their budget on Bethany Bay, near the summer home of a president they loathe.

Near them their bosses hold the beach mansions where you see the best views, watching Fox News along with the sunset while their employees fish between surfings of townhall.com

The road to the mansions has a Dead End sign.

The seagulls chirp and shit all through it like the assholes they are.

On the way out you see a beautiful forty-something walking her terrier and Maltese in biking gear; giant nerd glasses and a pixie cut.

If we can make it here, we'll make it anywhere.

Why I Went to Israel

 

Fall 2005 to so summer 2006:

One interpretation is that I was teetering on a nervous breakdown after college and had no idea what to do with my life so I went on the first artist's program I could find and checked out for a year to delay adulthood.

Issue solved.

The other reason is that I was looking for something very specific that I could not find anywhere but Israel.

It had very little to do with the propaganda I'd heard every day of my life about how Israel was our Jewish home. It had everything to do with the personal anecdotes I heard. the land where Yiddish speakers could go to the store without getting beaten up or mugged, where old Germans could still go to the opera without worrying they'd be banned from it, where young Israelis were free to innovate and travel to an extent no Americans do, where a dozen languages were spoken in the streets, where democracy was kept alive in a region where democracy was the exception, where existential issues were discussed in a place where existence can't be taken for granted.

I never fit in Baltimore: Jewish Baltimore or urban. In Pikesville, Baltimore's 90% Jewish neighborhood, everybody's crazy and thinks themselves sane. In urban Baltimore everybody's sane and thinks themselves crazy. Both places think themselves the acme of liberal tolerance in diametrically opposite ways, and nobody is truly free to be themselves unless themselves fits in a truly narrow rubric. I felt much more free to be eccentric lil' me in DC, a city where freedom comes at a price nobody can afford.

In Israel, I sought out a place where a Jew is free to be a Jew who can't stand being Jewish. Nobody has as much contempt for religious superstitions as secular Israelis, who head to the beach on Rosh Hashana and picnic on Yom Kippur. I sought out a place a cultured person is free to be as pretentious as he likes without worrying that the European smart set's tolerance for Jews and Americans is next to nil unless they top Europeans in badmouthing both the US and Israel--an impossible task because nobody hates either the US or Israel quite like rich European socialists whose entire lifestyle is based on the benefits they most derive from the US and Jews.

The stories I heard about Israel made it seem a place where an underachieving Jewish boy from Baltimore was more free to practice the best values of both the US and the EU than anywhere in the physical places. I pictured a life in a small, beautiful country where everything I valued was possible: a place that valued used books in multiple languages and local art exhibits, local pop musicians and American box office hits. A place where the bars stayed open till 5 when the afterhours started, good physical shape was built into the lifestyle and the best restaurants weren't too expensive (my how things change...). A place where history could always be studied and the present always makes new history. A place where ideas and actions were virtually the same thing. Every country has its ideals, but Israel seemed closest to mine.

And tragically, I found in Israel just about everything looked for, and what a fucking price you pay for it.

Israelis have so many options that they have no idea what to do with them, and they are the most miserable people on earth: rude, arrogant, constantly aware of their dangerous existences and international pariahdom, which gives them chips on their shoulders as big as Jacob's older sons against Joseph. It's a whole country existing on history's biggest faultline, and it simultaneously makes them free and enslaved. It is precisely the rudeness of Israelis which creates the endless dynamism of the society. It's a place where people hold nothing back, and as such, the aggression creates a greenhouse of innovation and progress that I've never seen in any other place except the similarly aggressive New York.

I went in with huge plans and went out heartbroken--not socially or romantically, heartbroken for the life I hoped was possible and would never have.

Israel is a country just like any other country, and yet it isn't. Israel is the proof that living your dreams isn't any better than not living them. Some ideal worlds are real, but they're always disappointing. Whether Israel lives or dies, Jews will always live with the gates up, and living the dream may not be worth the price.

Is the threat to Israeli democracy the natural byproduct of how Israel treats Palestinians? Is Israeli democracy threatened because liberal Jews have collaborated with conservative Jews in making Israel too free from accountability? Is Israel worth defending anymore? I have no idea, and to a certain extent it doesn't matter. It is what it is, and it experiences the same right-wing authoritarianism that threatens every first world democracy on the planet, only Israel's further along.

As Mark Twain said: Jews are like everybody else, only moreso, so whatever happens to Israel first is what will happen elsewhere. If the most militarily trained society on earth has a civil war, expect that here next. If Israel is unable to preserve its borders and ill-intentioned native peoples come pouring into Israel sponsoring their violence with legitimate grievances, expect that here next. And however doubtful, if Israel again shows that liberals and conservatives can overcome unbridgeable gulfs to still live in peace, expect that here next.

Israel is the freest and the most chained place on earth. It's everything we are but to the nth degree. They are the guinea pigs for every historical trend that comes to you next. It has all the glories and agonies you have, it's simultaneously the most livable and unlivable place on earth. It's evidence that the impossible is always possible.

So maybe they'll pull it out and democracy can still thrive, even with its existence threatened as it always is. Any rational projection says that Israel is fucked right now in a hundred different ways; but in a hundred different ways, Israel is the impossible nation. It is a place where nobody sane would ever want to live, and yet life goes on.

I am endlessly fascinated by Israel, but I find it an endlessly frustrating place. I think that's precisely what it's supposed to be.

Why write a book nobody will read

I'm writing a book. Unless tastes change dramatically, everybody's going to hate it. The more I write, the more abstract it gets. Every idea I have makes it ever more off the wall, more difficult to market, more difficult to comprehend, more difficult to read. With every new idea, the reader has to do tons more work, while I, the writer, am just lucky to have ideas.

I have no idea how to write a book. I just think of whatever I can then throw word-darts at a board that may miss the bullseye by a factor of yards. The ideas are all in my brain, and yet the moment the ideas hit the page, they become fragmented. The nerve and confidence leaves the page, and all that's left is the kind of fragmented story that bores the shit out of everybody but academics.

My editor tells me 'be more considerate to the reader.' I have no idea how to do that. Everything that comes out in these essays with relative clarity becomes incredibly avant-garde when they come out as fiction. Nobody will want to read this. I write it to please me, if one can even call it pleasure. I have no audience and too little to do with my life. If I'm not creative, my mind will leave me.

And yet I have no idea if I truly have an audience for these essays either. Perhaps most people respond to them out of a sense of pity or well-meaningness, but the fact that I seem to have readers means I can imagine the sort of reader I want to read this and communicate to them. I want readers who are 'friends', not 'fans.' I hope, at least, that readers struggling with their lives or watching others struggle can read essays like mine and feel a little less lonely.

"The book", however, has only an editor and a few friends whom I irregularly ask to read, all of whom give me contradictory feedback. So this book has no ideal reader, just a flotsam of a thousand ideas conceived during a period when I was at my craziest, felt as though I was getting ideas from the ether, and imagined myself a kind of mystic who could inspire the world. But really, this novel is just following the basic record of what happened over 4000 years of (Jewish) history. What happened in history is sufficiently dramatic that if you do this right, you just need the barest framing devices and you can bring thousands of characters to life - or at least a better writer than me can....

I've worked on this giant book for well over ten years and started over at least six or seven times. Where are the ideas derived? They're derived from a clearly fucked up subconscious, a subconscious explosive enough that it's gone through periods of my life controlling my conscious mind. I have a terrible suspicion that the few who read it sometimes think I write from my personal life, but it's these essays where I put my personal thoughts - they are literally where I organize the conscious self in battle with a subconscious that takes parts of my brain over for years at a time. I once tried what's now called 'autofiction' (presumably "autobiographical fiction" takes too long to type). In two different versions of this book, it produced one good 90% autobiographical story about a family row over Pesach, and one time that I tried to write in a voice that was clearly my father's, but both times, the quality died a quick death and I put the auto into storage.

Fiction is a place of the subconscious. The mind can only take dictation, not be dictated to. The subconscious is ever appeased only temporarily before it demands more attention lest it explode with obsessive and sometimes delusional thoughts. Thoughts from my own life do not come intentionally from the personal, and any potential resemblance would serve no didactic purpose. They are random brainwaves from a brain that is particularly beset with the noise of random brainwaves.

Like the music I wrote that few people listen to, the fiction I write is the product of a subconscious. This subconscious may not be particularly interesting, but it is mine, all too close to my conscious mind, and ever blackmails me with threats unless I give it space for conscious release.

The last few weeks I've managed to calm down the unconscious thoughts imbuing my brain with terror much more than I have in... years?

Nobody likes to accept that they've been through trauma, particularly because when one explains what's traumatic to others they may well not agree that it was. But whether the many 'triggers' were trauma or not, living in this head is frequently traumatic, and all the moreso if you force yourself to consider that everything the head believes may be correct. Once you let yourself think of these thoughts as a very deep sort of mental abrasion, perhaps one can truly begin the process of clearing one's head of an enormous mental load that no one should have to bear.

Will greater peace calm the subconscious or free it to be more creative and outrageous? I don't know, but what I do know is that it's still here, and I'm doing everything I can to give it a proper place that lets it explode to the outside rather than letting it continue trying to implode this head.

I don't know what my future holds. Hopefully I'm in the second half of my worst physical health crisis for a long while, and when your body is dysfunctional, you can't afford to get too depressed or anxious. It can kill you, and I want to complete this book nobody will read. Whether anybody does, the record that I did something with my life, however tawdry, and will be there for anyone who wants the challenge. I hope, I pray, that one day I'll have readers to appreciate me for what I've done, what I've written, and the blood it took to make me write. But even if not, at least I know there is a record of what I've done, and even if I'm writing a stupid book, I will have tried my best to create something worth living a life for.

Amen

-------------------

Large TCP fragment published here so that it can be eventually put in correct order.

(Both texts written in 2022, to be inserted earlier in the text at the apposite place along with the other two texts yet to be written... ET)

(Levantine sources cite the presence of a collection of ritualistic tragedies in Greek festival style about Herod's wife Mariamne, her mistreatment, execution, and defilement, appearing in authenticated sources from a temple in Roman Hispania to medieval university source in Morocco to monastic source in Egypt, and even to a source in medieval Kyrgyzstan, brought to Italy in Marco Polo's travels translated from ancient Kazakh only centuries later. The play has only existed in the tiniest fragments: of the first play, a simple 'I know' was all that seemed to exist of it for 1500 years. However, Tales of Classical Perversion contains two separate plays that may in fact be the authentic first play of the Mariamneia. If the first is the play, then we have Mariamneia Play 1 in its entirety. If the second is the play, it is only a mere fragment. Yet the aesthetic quality of both is sufficiently low as to doubt either of these is authentic documentation of the Mariamneia, the source of so much ecstatic furore in the ancient world.

Indeed, there is even a 17th century Coptic manuscript reporting reporting rumors of the complete tragedies of Mariamne found on the site of a temple in Ephesus, but such a treasure has not been authenticated. Indeed, there was even a 12th century Syriac document found last year in a monastic library in northern Babylon claiming a complete Mariamneia amid the ruins of ancient Thessaloniki. Such a document would have a tripartate structure of three dramas the second of which tells the story of Mariamne's showtrial resulting in her execution. However, according to a 14th century Benedictine source from Austria, the third play, rather than a customary final tragedy, eliminates the third tragedy and proceeds rather to a final satyr play in which Herod, gone mad with his executive grief, has Mariamne's corpse preserved in honey so that he might sodomize at will. 

Until such time as the text is located, this remains a none-too-tantalizing fragment of a vulgar Byzantine imitation of Greek drama, and like much of the Tales of Classical Perversion, is almost solely of historiagraphical value rather than aesthetic. 

- Dr. Richard Westenbach - Free University of Berlin - 1952))  

HEROD:

Everyone has a mother-in-law, even Herod. All the time I was communicating to Anthony in Rome, she was communicating to Cleopatra in Egypt. Cleopatra summoned us both, all involved parties: me and Alexandra, to Anthony's base camp in Laodicia--Turkic soil where Cleopatra could adjudicate the rival claims to our throne, quietly wielding the authority of Rome, where true authority lay, without the trappings of Egyptian splendor to conceal her lack of power. 

One must give the witch credit. She is a loyal partisan who always rewards her friends. Not even Anthony could be a better friend to Cleopatra than Alexandra. Through half a dozen kings and civil wars, Alexandra worked her corrupted wonders so that Egypt would get a steady supply of Judean fruit and grain under nightfall's cover. Every year, the harvest's bottom line was subtracted by 14% because a seventh of our farmgrowth would disappear to Egypt. 

 I knew I would leave this meeting a king or a corpse. However good a friend to Anthony, Cleopatra needed me dead were Alexandra installed because I could simply halt the harvest shipments whose roads pass through my home province of ldumea. So I would not come out of this meeting alive unless I presented something immediate more valuable to Cleopatra than all of Judea's fruited grain. Not just the usual jewels and raiment, but something that would keep Egypt secure for all time. There was one thing in Israel Cleopatra coveted more than our crops, and it was the palm trees of Jericho. 

The second I saw Cleopatra in Laodocia, I presented her with a notarized deed to all Jericho's balsam, in perpetuity. We'd make no claim to all those flowers' essential oils, and employ a continual daily transit of balsam to the Egyptian capital, pre-pressed in vats. 

But just in case that plum humiliation wasn't enough, I had one other insurance premium. I put Alexandra's daughter, Mariamne, under the charge of my barbaric uncle Joseph - it's my right to do as her husband. Should word reach Joseph that Herod was executed, I told Joseph to murder Mariamne immediately. 

It would be a shame, I've grown to love the sweet girl. Perhaps I can console myself with the thought that she could be mine again in the great sheol to come.

ALEXANDRA:

I am the queen of Judea. Herod may call himself sovereign, he may subordinate Judea within his yoke and burden, but no Phillistine will ever rule the Jewish state in legitimate deed. For Herod's sake, I have buried both father, father-in-law, brother-in-law, husband and son, and vengeance will be mine - vengeance will be all Judea's, for the people know Judea is mine and whom among them wouldn't welcome me freely? 

Herod offers Cleopatra all the balsam of Jericho, but he cannot offer legitimacy. It is only a matter of time before the Jewish people rise up against their Palestinian occupiers, and at such a moment the friends of Herod will be Judea's enemies. Like any sovereign, Cleopatra rules at Rome's mercy, and Rome will tire of Egypt the moment after Anthony tires of her. Cleopatra needs firm allies, and her firmest ally is Judea and her one true queen: Alexandra Maccabee. 

It is with solemn vengeance and exquisite pleasure that I plan with Cleopatra to poison Herod at the adjudication. Herod has so many enemies that Anthony could never be certain who poisoned his friend, and even if I am the prime benefactress, the poisoner could just as easily be Octavian in Rome who'd wish to restore Judea to the Macabee line who so benefited that dear Uncle Julius. 

Of course Herod had his insurance plan, but still, he was Herod: murderer, tyrant, organized criminal. What guarantee can Herod now make that anyone would believe? 

Surely Cleopatra did not believe it, but as a formality, she delayed us for an hour to consult her oracle. And as I stood there with Herod, the tyrant showed me what tyranny really is. The godfather of vice left my naive Mariamne under the auspices of that hideous uncle Joseph. Herod's fingers point to the man, and with Joseph's hands the man becomes a cadaver. My sweet little daughter, so much younger than her heinous spouse, will never outlive him. She's a dead woman, walking this palatial monstrosity as prisoner when she should be Judea's next imperatress. 

I could do nothing but rescind my claim. 

SALOME: 

I didn't know what she was doing at Joseph's house, though I knew it could be nothing benevolent. Mariamne is the queen, but we are vipers, and it is not for me, the King's sister, to deny my hungers to fit a wife whose time in this world can only end with Herod ordering her death. 

 Joseph was at great pains to change. He always liked her, perhaps he loved her, but if he loved her, his strength could have easily taken her, and after years of Herod, what would she have done to fight him off?

Joseph is a murderer, but she will learn that I'm a far greater beast of burden. All my life, people told me I am everything of which Jewish women are accused: spoiled, manipulative, shrewish. Mariamne is a woman of valour: upholding the values of the Matriarchs, I am the cast off woman of evil: Lilith, Hagar, Potiphar's wife, the one in thirty-seven women who gives Jews a bad name.

We women hate Mariamne because she is better at being a woman than us in every conceivable way: more beautiful, kinder, more virtuous, more forgiving. She has been ravished by the worst man in the world every day for ten years yet still she seems virginal. She must suffer like none in the world yet she gives every appearance of joy. She is everything we all should be, and we all hate her for it. 

JOSEPH:

The blood on my hands is so legion. The sorrow in my heart can never equal the extremity of my deeds. Wine is for drinking but all the water in my villa exists to wash my hands of blood that never comes out. I am Herod's murderer, his lackey, his enforcer, his executioner, his general, haunted by the eyes of the murdered so Herod may sleep without conscience. I will not recount my foul acts, nor will history, fortunately, for they are so numerous and awful that none may catalogue them. I sleep the sleep of nightmares, only to awaken so I may do dreadful things upon a new day. I will not kill Herod, for there will only be more blood in his wake, and I will not kill myself, for there is none who deserves a release of suffering less than I. 

And now that Herod may die he charges me with the potential murder of she I most covet. I have no YHWH, only Mariamne, the poetry my hands lack: refinement where all of us are raw, sculpture where all of us are stone. To befoul her is to befoul holiness itself. I am dust. She is divinity. 

And now, she was in my care, sipping tea on my balcony, and I wondered all I could say to her, tonguetied for moments at a time when I finally broke into tears for the first time since as a boy, beaten with the side of Antipater's sword. She released the floodgates of suffering decades like a broken aqueduct, and at the feet of my lady I confessed everything I could remember, not just the instruction to let her not outlive Herod, but of all Herod's foul deeds.  

MARIAMNE: 

I know. 

JOSEPH: 

(pause) 

"I know." 

(pause)

My atrocious hands have put so many horrors to action, yet nothing ever disturbed me like a simple I know. 

She has that effect on people. In my lady's presence, all but Herod yearn to be cleaner, better, kinder; to repent their crimes and seek the purity of absolution. It is a power beyond even eros, beyond beauty, beyond love. It is holiness, and it cannot possibly exist too long of this world. 

MARIAMNE:

Go into hiding with me. 

JOSEPH:

(to Mariamne) 

I don't deserve your clemency. 

(to audience) 

And she placed my hand upon her heart. I closed my eyes for seven seconds and breathed a deep sigh as though my heart's weight were lifted and my many sins forgiven.  I have known so many women, and yet the import of this moment was too significant for sex. This moment was grace and absolution. 

(to Mariamne) 

There are no words for how deeply that wish goes to my heart, but I do not dare cross Herod, even in death.

(to audience)

And I told Mariamne all of my sins. The murders, the rapes, the abuses, the thefts, the enslavements, and oh the many many lies. She listened with tears in her eyes, and she forgave me. She told me it is not too late to change. She promised me that Yahweh forgives me so long as I promise to Yahweh that I would forever be different, that I kill no more, that I bring peace to everywhere I brought war. 

It was at this moment that I spotted Alexandra's caravan riding in the distance. I shouted to Mariamne: Your mother is here! Herod is dead.  . They know of Herod's order and they will be coming to make sure I carried it out, but run to the Egyptian embassy and you might be free in moments. Your only chance is to run away now. RUN!

(Mariamne runs offstage) 

SALOME: 

She was supposed to be dead! What plot is this? Herod is dead and he means to keep her alive so he can kill me and take Mariamne as a better wife! 

HEROD: 

It was Alexandra's sigil but I was riding back to Jerusalem in her caravan to show my complete confidence that my mother-in-law has become my ally. 

JOSEPH: 

I thought I had much longer formulate an explanation of my 'loss' of Mariamne, and was fully prepared to explain what happened to Alexandra, who usually greets me with spit in my face. She would not believe me, but she'd go to the Egyptian embassy herself and find her daughter and all might be well that ends well. 

But out from Alexandra's carpentum, out stepped Alexandra.

(Alexandra walks onto stage) 

And then out stepped Herod. 

SALOME: 

I was the only person ready for this and shouted out "Mariam has run away after being unfaithful to you with my husband!" 

HEROD: (slaps Salome) 

Silence Mechasheyfeh!

SALOME: (to Herod)

Search our palace! Seeing only Alexandra's sigil we thought you dead! Mariamne is not here, and I heard my husband command her to flee at once.

HEROD: 

Joseph I honestly should make you the high priest. You did the greatest of all possible services by taking as your wife the Whore of Babylon. 

SALOME: 

He commanded her to go to the Egyptian embassy. 

HEROD: 

Egypt is Rome and Rome is me. So long as I am alive, no one in Judea avoids the justice of Herod. 

SALOME: 

But they thought you were dead!

HEROD: 

There's no way they thought me dead! Joseph, I never thought you'd actually have to kill her. How can anyone possibly doubt my powers of pursuasion on Anthony and Cleopatra whom I've pursuaded so many times in situations precisely like this?

ALEXANDRA: 

You literally instructed them that in case of your dea...

HEROD: 

...I was never going to die. 

SALOME: 

How were we supposed to know that?

HEROD: 

Sister do you doubt your brother and king is so unloved by his friends that they would stoop to kill them?

(Salome is finally silent) 

Fine... Joseph, send one of your valets to the embassy and retrieve Mariamne... IF she's even there...

(to audience) 

There could in no way be any chance that Mariamne was there. 

(Mariamne returns to the stage) 

And yet she was. 

(Herod immediately decapitates Joseph) 

Mariamne, Alexandra and Salome: AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

(all three of them are reduced to tears) 

HEROD: 

"SLAVES!" 

(six of Joseph's slaves come onto the stage) 

Clean up the blood of your master and dump his body into the Valley of Gahennim. 

SOLDIERS!

(six Roman soldiers come onto the stage) 

Three of you escort Mariamne back to the Royal Palace, and three of you escort Alexandra to Praetorium Prison where she is to be lodged for the forseeable future! 

(to audience) 

Much like her daughter and my sister, Alexandra was far too in shock to protest. 

(to Salome who quietly weeps through what follows) 

Listen whore, I don't know if what you say is true. What I do know is that if Joseph told Mariamne of my plan, if he even told you, if he even told someone who told you, he's capable of everything you say. If I ever find out what you're capable of, you will join your ex-husband in Gahennim more swiftly than I meted out justice to Joseph. Word will go out tomorrow that Joseph was executed for trying to rape Mariamne, and a million people around the world will celebrate his death. 

And here's the irony: you will be named 'protectress of Jerusalem' in his place. You, who can't even run a palace, will have to learn to defend Jerusalem. Much good may it do you. May you be as strong and brave as you always claim you are. 

(exit Herod. Salome still weeps)

Text 2:

 Chorus: 

I: I wish we'd ability to rhyme and form couplets

II. I wish that our audience would eat more pork cutlets

I: I wish this play were something pithy and elegant

II: We're lucky to feast on posterity's excrement

I: I wish that the muse would begift me with fire

II: Your muse is a whore and a Jew and a liar

I: I wish her to sing the injustice of Mariamne

II: To rhyme a word like that you'd wear out your bad knee

I: You see now the level this poet is working at

II: To even attempt a play like this he's jerking it

I: But this is the most crucial of parts for the epic

II: We must get it right or it outrages sceptics

I: Oh god this just sucks now already it's terrible

II: Oh get on with it jerk this is just fucking parable

I: Oh sing to us muse the injustice of women

II: Who lie in their beds with their blood stain-ed linen

I: Oh sing to us muse of the rage of old Herod

II: Of those debauched trysts and those lusts that are torrid

I: Oh sing to us muse of the jealous one, Salome

II: The whore and the slut she deserved a lobotomee

I: Oh sing to us muse of the tragic Jersualem

II: A city been with us since before Methusalem

I: Oh sing to us muse of Judea and Isra-el

II: Whose conquest crowns every empire impera-el 

I: Oh sing to us muse of the days of Hasmonea

II: And of feats, acts, beliefs, deeds, lives fit for Draconia

I: Oh sing to us muse the beliefs of the Maccabees

II: Who brought Israel back from sound reason to quackeries

I: Oh sing to us muse of Mariamne's great tragedy

II: And all of the great faults that may catalogue history

(The invocation of the muses stops here, but judging by the gap in the scroll the original may have gone on for another five-hundred lines. - Richard Westenbach: Free University, Berlin 1952)

I: The fanatic from Mod'in stripped Israel from Greece,

II: For Jews they're all known to give reason the fleece.

I: Matthias was pure and it's said he was holy

II: If virtue is this the Heeb spirit is lowly.

I: And like all those Godfools he made many babies

II: And like all those Godfools their rage spreads like rabies.

I: Since Yahweh throws tantrums without full compliance

II: But all we Greeks wanted was give Jews some science.

I: There's no prize for science so why would Jews bother?

II: And have they some brains left for something but slaughter?

I: They kill everything from their kings to their penis,

II: If everything's dead why're they haunted by cleanness.

I: They say Jews have books but their book is just laws,

II: Yet customs and code are ignored without cause.

I: So the world of the Jews is so empty and bland

II: It's the silence they need or they get out of hand.

Marc Anthony:

(enter Marc Anthony, interrupts)

HOOOOORRROOOOOOOORRR!

I have seen horror from Brutus to Germans

Yet no Roman knife chills the blood like this vermin.

 And Rome has seen slimefilth from Crassus to Cassius

Yet no feces stays in the nostrils like ashes.

Jerusalem burns as no city of fame,

Yet light never dies for a tribe without shame.

In every last alley scenes worthy of Medea

Yet no Grecian poet could render Judea.

No place in the world with affairs quite so lurid

As this abattoir lead by their butcher King Herod.

Chorus: 

I. Yet you wanted King Herod as ally and friend

II. And a hemorrhaging pain in Augustus rear end. 

I. 'Cuz you wanted a monster confusion and peril

II. And so you inherited people who're feral.

Anthony: I just wanted some money to go with my trouble

Chorus II: And hot Jewish girls while you shrink them to rubble.

Anthony: I just want to make Rome a place nicer than Greece.

Chorus I: It already is you laid waste to the East.

Anthony: When I first met Herod he seemed just like me.

Chorus I: I'm nothing like you -

Chorus II:                                   says the fly to the flea.

(Enter Herod) 

Anthony: He'd drink and he'd screw and he'd smoke and he'd cuss.

All: Who'd think a barbarian is made just like us?

Anthony: I'm leaving poor Israel for Egypt right now.

Chorus I: You've left Rome and Israel your problems and how.

Anthony: Anthony's gone 'cuz no payment's worth this!

Chorus II: So all this just because you showed up to a bris?...

Herod: (enter Herod, interrupting) WHOOOOOOOOOOOOORES!

(exit Anthony)

Whores everywhere! Whores to my east and whores to my west!

Whores among priests for treyf meat to get blessed!

Whores among soldiers, whores among spies,

Whores among whores who're rabbis disguised!

Whores that I kill or I marry like Mariamne

I shouldn't kill her just abandon like Ariadne.

Whores like her mother Alexandra the korvah

Whored daughter to me then she whored Cleopatra.

And whores that rule nations like glorified cats

While the Jews and the Arabs are left for the rats.

Chorus: 

I. You stick up for Jews and the Arabs like Moses

II.  Yes Yahweh won't find in your virtue some poses.

Herod: 

I guess if he does or he doesn't's no matter

The Jews and the Arabs are mad as a hatter.

Chorus: 

I. And now Herod's brain has a clean bill of health

II. And I'm sure that his bloodlust is just for the wealth.

Herod: 

If I'm just so bad when it's time to kill kin

How do you explain all the kings that have been?

Cleopatra has killed all her husbands and brothers

And then she colludes with Mariamne's drek mother

So I dropped everything and I dashed to her summons.

I knew that I might not survive when I come in

So I had to think of a hole to put thumb in

Chorus:

I: Ye gods that was three rhymes where there should be two!

II: An incompetent poet so what else is new?

I: The first line was not proper rhyme with the rest

II: So you haven't yet noticed these rhymes are a pest?

Herod: 

Therefore they had to know that by murdering me

They would kill someone loved like my Mariamne.

 I told Uncle Joseph to kill her if they'e-liminate me.

But how's he to know what to do if she irritates me?

It's a shame for that price to deliver your hide

But they expected Mariamne I knew they'd abide.

But I had to offer some great bit of holdings

Not gold and/or rainment and surely not mouldings.

Chorus:

I: This poetry's terrible, dreadful, horrific!

II: Then you try conveying a style that's mythic!

Herod:

The balsam of Jericho's what I presented

She acted as though she just meant to renounce it

But I knew she wanted the deed to forever

She thinks she can hold it and that she's so clever.

Alexandra reminded Cleopatra her oath:

Aristobulus's murder, revenge for us both.

Cleopatra did call for a recess to pondra

But then I did speak to deranged Alexandra

I said not to kill me her daughter's a captive

You see when it comes to my life I'm adaptive.

Alexandra dejected in horror rescinded

And then we go back to our home all is mended.

Chorus: 

I. You think all is mended you dumb little Jew?

Herod: 

Of course I don't think all is mended you fool!

(Enter Mariamne) 

I'm a king and my life is perpetually threatened

So one small mistake my life's bodily deadened

You try surviving this pit of sheer terror!

I assure you you'd play a game riddled with error!

Mariamne: (interrupting) WEEEEEEEEEAAAAAK!!

(exit Herod) 

Weak little men in the shadows at court

Who hit us and maim us and rape us for sport.

Who pray and feign good to all powerful Yahweh

Then bribe little men robbing poor on the highway.

There's only just one fit at court to be king,

It's sweet Uncle Joseph who'd let freedom ring.

Chorus: 

I: But Joseph was sworn to assassinate you!

Mariamne: 

If you think he was capable that's just untrue.

His history speaks to all manner of gore

But he loved me, yes, and I loved him more!

My love for him reaches from rivers to seas

And not like for Herod who thought me a tease.

We all know that I hated that murdering wretch

But then he made it worse cuz he smelled and he'd kvetch

With Herod men pisched their pants holy with terror

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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(from here on it may be deleted

But woman thought Herod too feeble to scare her

He's more scared of women than women of him

And if they thought he'd power their opinion'd grow dim

He'd ply them with presents and raiment and jewels

And then he would stutter his words like his fools

Then he'd fall off his chair and he'd trip on his feet

The most powerful king would turn white as a sheet

But he dare not turn girls out or rape them for fear

That they'd hate him or make him a subject for jeer

Chorus: 

I: Is it possible Herod just wanted a love

II: From a woman who'd see through some murder thereof?

Mariamne: 

Herod's whole life's at court which he played like a master

But Israel's court couldn't drive women out faster

And Herod was built to feel hate, not to love

It's the most natural thing for him, crushing a dove

But women for this scum was object to worship

For Yahweh's king had use for no nuanced courtship

Coitus for Herod was something for breeding

And finding her spots he'd a map of misreading

He'd go out and seduce from some book bought in Rome

And our God only knows what disease he brought home

His sores were like pox and it made him insane

He'd accuse me of lovers with holes in his brain

And disease was the only gift he gave to me

After winning me with rubies large as the sea

Chorus: 

I. I thought he carried you off with Marc Anthony

Mariamne: 

All was a show, he in private played gallantry.

Chorus: 

II: We'd heard that he forced you to marry with sword

Mariamne: 

He did then said it's because he adored...

Chorus: 

I. We've all heard stories like this but did you believe him?

Mariamne: 

Of course not but he's King, I had to receive him!

He said that he'd wait and in time I would love

And he tempered his fury, not even a shove.

Chorus: 

I. This rhyme scheme is Greek but it really is corny.

II. Did you think this couplet would end without 'horny?'

Mariamne: 

With women this giant was tonguetied as Echo

His conversation interesting only to a gekko

(here breaks off the play again and its resumption deposits us straight into a speech from Salome about Mariamne. It is possible that a redactor wanted to eliminate statements from both female characters considered too subversive in their indictments of either Rome, Herod, kings, or perhaps even men, and in all probability, that is probably the reason the play comes to us so incomplete. In fact, the change in form at times of structure from simple couplets to freer form tells us that this section may have a different writer. Or perhaps the writer simply exhausted of strict rhyming schemes. - RW)

Salome: 

Mariamne was mankind's revenge upon women.

Proof that men listen, abide without fuss, 

To a beauty who makes no demands as a plus

And do not care whether she allows herself him in

They get their needs elsewhere matters not where the semen

Chorus: 

I: Do we really keep on with this level of rhyme?

II: Got better ideas? Till then we waste time!

Salome: 

How could we not hate her when she would defeat us?

Traitor to women and loved by who hate us

And part of us loved her even as she beat us

A woman whose absence makes all men await her

We did not want to hate her, she merits belovment

  Every man loved her and that's why we hated her. 

But when Queen is queenly and really deserves it

God knows she's not beautiful as this hated Salome

She has just her heart which is pretty as lonely 

Pretty enough, but she's no Cleopatra

But all is forgiven when her heart is so sacra. 

Chorus: 

I. So sayeth Salome,                that whore

II:                              that slut, 

I: Who canneth believe her when she is so nasty?

II. One more Jewish princess who got rhinoplasty!

Salome: 

When Salome came here inside Joseph's house

Joe immediately changed from a wolf to a mouse.

Before she came here with his entourage of spies

He exiled all of his stupider guys 

Cuz they might tell tales of his disloyal musings

His offers to Caesar and Caesar's refusings.

And he made us act like we're sensible spouses,

And banished his harlots with low cutting blouses.

I just didn't know he had in him this lie

But cunning comes forth when the proxy's to die.

His temper goes off in ways not of his choosing

But when fights would break out I'd see him diffusing

Why Sondheim is Our Best Artist

 Watch Pacific Overtures: THIS is a musical???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ546PASgHI

I've written about Sondheim so many times that I'm loathe to write about him again, but like Shakespeare and Mozart, he insists on himself, and the work is genuinely so great that he invites comparison. If such a comparison seems grandiose, it is.

What artist in American history can compare to the most titanic giants of the arts? Is there a single novelist who can? Is there a single novelist who gives us the full gamut of the American character in all its hundreds of manifestations? Just one? You can't just do it in one book, it can only be done over an entire career. Our greatest novelists, the Faulkners, the Henry James's, the Cathers and Bellows and McCarthys and Morrisons, they all return time after time to the same few themes and character types. Perhaps only Mark Twain can be said to reach that kind of diversity, and while I don't have reading that wide, I don't think anyone is making claims that grandiose for any novel of his but Huck Finn. As for film directors, we have more greats than any other country. But who has Sondheim's diversity? Whether from personal or business limitations, is there any golden age studio great who was allowed to stretch to that kind of infinite diversity of utterance which one would think a great American artist should particularly reach in this melting pot of a country? Certainly no studio director I can think of could do it. The three real candidates? Spielberg, Scorsese, and Altman. Spielberg is so much better than his critics condescend to rate him as, but no, he's not an artist of infinite reach any more than Verdi or Victor Hugo. He has such a diverse output full of completely different sorts of characters and situations, but it's true, he nonetheless does go all too often for the easy sentiments, the simplistic message, the escapist thrills. Scorsese alike is far more diverse than his New York machismo reputation, but he has a few modes and obsessions to which he always returns: New York machismo, sexual inadequacy in the face of beauty, Catholic suffering and God's silence. I want to see a parallel universe Scorsese where made as many historical pictures as Spielberg - but where Spielberg made so many movies about 20th century history, Scorsese's are about the longer history of religion: Scorsese on the crusades, Scorsese on the Protestant-Catholic wars, Scorsese about early Christians trying to convert pagans and Jews. Those were the movies from him we needed most. Altman, frankly the truest artist of the three, was a commendably risky artist, infinite in his aspirations, baroque in his complexity, who risked everything on every movie and could be as risible as he was great. His greatest movie: Nashville, might be the greatest movie ever made in this country. Others like Short Cuts and McCabe & Mrs. Miller, MASH, Thieves Like Us, California Split, might add up to the truest exploration this country ever got in fiction. But I think everybody agrees that Altman could also be as bad as he was good. Such are the risks you take when you're a real artist feeling your way against a system that routes for your failure.

Sondheim was not that. He was an artist who got every major break and was taught how to create great musical theater by the father of adolescent best friend from the earliest age: Oscar Hammerstein himself. He knew just about everything there was to know about making theater by the time he was in his early thirties, and simply had to put pen to paper thereafter.

So I went last Sunday to see a very good - nevertheless inadequate - production of Sweeney Todd - Stephen Sondheim's most overrated musical.

Even Sondheim at his most overrated is still just that extraordinary. Even Sweeney Todd is, ultimately, a better work of theater than it can ever be performed. You need a Sweeney who can inspire the terror of an uncaged lion and simultaneously be vulnerable enough to inspire our pity. It is a literally impossible part. The actor was in no danger of capturing any facet of Sweeney's character to the point of obscuring other facets, that is perhaps a strength.

Just as it might be better to read Shakespeare among friends to avoid the disappointment of an inadequate staging, perhaps it's best to hear Sondheim's musicals in concert or played through a score at home, where you can think of his musicals as cantatas, or 'passion' plays. So unreachable are the heights of Assassins or Pacific Overtures that perhaps they're simply impossible to mount on stage.

Two of the greatest productions I ever saw of Sondheim didn't even try. When a director named John Doyle mounted Sweeney Todd (which I saw live) and Company (which I saw on youtube), the concept was as small as possible. No real staging, no orchestra, just the actors singing, and when they weren't singing, they simply played the instruments to accompany the other actors. Only in Shakespeare and Mozart have I ever seen theater so raw and intense and moving. Not even the Greeks got here, and yet these productions felt profoundly Greek - more a sacred rite than a theater production, and yet they too were utterly contemporary - funny, street wise, erudite and warmly friendly.

As I said, I've written about Sondheim far too much in relation to so many other deserving creators. But Sondheim is one of the very few artists who cannot possibly be overrated. Even in his non-American musicals, every single American type can be found within its pages from the highest to the lowest, the smartest and most sublime to the stupidest. Like Shakespeare with England, or Verdi with Italy, even when the setting isn't America, he's talking about America. Sweeney Todd was really about New York, and Sweeney was created and produced in the wake of the Summer of Sam.

He is the one creator in America who truly bridges that divide between the classical and the popular - never throwing out the lessons of old Europe even as he sees the incontrovertible need to move on to a new world, a demotic world, in which the concerns of the low matter just as much as the high.

Movies may be the American artform, but if Sondheim is not our answer to Shakespeare, then movies are still waiting for the American Shakespeare. No American has ever presented America the way Sondheim has, and no creator has ever, perhaps can ever, presented to us the United States of America as it truly is.