Mister President!

Mister President,
How can you sleep
When bereaved families
For their young soldiers weep,
Killed in an unnecessary war
In some distant desert - afar.

Mister President,
How can you sleep
When galloping inflation
Is ruining our once great nation.

Mister President,
How can you sleep
When children's health insurance
Is vetoed by you and erased
While you billions
In some desert waste.

Mister President,
What is your game,
Have you no shame?

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Certifiable

"Don't mess with me,
I'm the President,
A certified
White House resident."

"Sir, you are certified - all right,
But I see your certification
In a different light."

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Man?

What is this thing
Called man,
A bit of flesh,
Some skin and bone,
A pitiful bundle of frailities,
The slightest blow of nature
Commits him to oblivion,
And yet, within this shell
- so delicate,
There lives a soul, an intellect
Whose rippled waves
One day will travel
To the farthest reaches
Of the universe
And merge with its
Guiding intelligence
Which did create all this.

If there be gods,
Man is shaped of such clay
As these divinities are made of.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Buzzards

Hark, you buzzards of destruction,
Pirates of the heathen skies,
Slyly perching on my shoulder,
Telling me eternal lies,
Incarnated by the devil
And a thousand human sighs,
Telling me that life 's a desert
And all things are false, untrue
And all goodness is illusion,
Each man struggling for his due,
Fighting, burning, killing, suffering,
To surrender in the end,
Cursing gods and loving devils
In the darkness which is hell,
All your reasoning can't convince me,
Matters not what you may tell,
Found in deserts the oasis
And I love this world too well,
Saw the morning sun arising
Promising a fine new day
And defied all hell quite boldly
For a smile which came my way,
No man ever is an island
To himself and to all men,
Part we all are of each other
And each soul which passes onward
Will diminish me and them,
Therein lies the truth eternal,
In it man may find his light,
Cast aside all things infernal,
Know the bad but love the right,
Understand all motivation,
Try to comprehend each soul,
And the buzzards then shall perish
With their miseries unnamed
And but goodness shall be cherished
Till the heavens stop achurning
On the final judgment date
And the Lord calls mankind forward
To be judged in godlike ways
And the galaxies stop burning
While humanity arrays...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Enigma

It's but the twist of nature's irony
Which casts men's molds
In vari-colored sizes,
In all the shapes and forms
And peculiarities
One surmises.

Me thinks, at times, I meet a man
Whose nature seems to me
So well defined,
But upon closer scrutiny,
His very being
Seems a different kind.

Men are like icebergs,
A fraction on the top
Is visible and clear,
But underneath the waterline
There is so much
Which to the naked eye
Does not appear.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

The Old Camp...

On the old farm
on top of the hill,
overgrown, neglected
and abandoned,
nature repossessing
what once was her own,
'midst the wildly growing flowers
where I once loved Edith,
both of us children
filled with passion and desire
on some hot, humid night
with the crickets chirping
and the world all ablaze
with beauty, light and ecstasy,
heavy breath and heart pounding
and dreams, God, what dreams,
the locket I gave her
jingling, jingling...
does she still have the locket,
my picture...
the whispering of the wind
and her voice - gently, gently...
- nothing ever like this,
nothing ever like this,
and my children:
'Dad, Dad you look lost,
what are you thinking about?'
'Oh - nothing, nothing,
just someone I knew
long, long ago.'

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Wandering Jew

I am the wandering Jew,
The son of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob,
Through the burning deserts
I have traveled,
With parched lips,
From Ur to Haran to Canaan,
I have waded through the blood
Of my brethren
In my temple in Jerusalem
And seen the Romans defile
My most holy of holies, my Torah,
I lived through the Spanish inquisition
And the pogroms of Russia,
I have smelled the burning
Flesh of my children
At the ovens of Buchenwald
And Auschwitz,
I have heard the old Chasid
In his Kaftan stained crimson
By German bayonets
Utter his death cry "Shema Isroel",
But I prayed to Jehovah
And dreamed of green
Pastures and quiet streams,
And God has heard my prayers
And led me to a land
Of milk and honey
Where a man walks erect
And keeps his head high.

As I sit in my garden
Under the weeping willows
Where the gentle evening breeze
Carries the intoxicating
Fragrance of sweet flowers
To my nostrils
And I listen to the innocent
Laughter of my children,
I thank my Lord
And yet in the innermost
Recesses of my soul,
Where one dares
Not to look too often,
I ask myself -
When shall I have to leave all this,
For I am the wandering Jew...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Sumerian King's Warning

Tread softly on my grave,
You men of Western Lands,
Do not defile my temples
With searching, unclean hands,
Do not disturb Sumerian nobles
And irk my goddess of the moon
Who buried lies beneath the ashes
Of my great land
Which met its end too soon.

I was a great King once,
My name was Ur-Nammu,
Before my word
The ancients trembled,
My friends I raised,
My enemies I slew.

Sumerian lands lie buried
Beneath the sands of time,
Like all civilizations
Must in this world decline.

Tread softly on my grave
You men of Western Lands,
For some day
Other men from other places
Will dig
Where your civilization stands.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Felice

I met her first
When she was just a child,
And I, myself, had touched
This world but lightly,
And we just looked and knew
That nothing else in life
Could ever, ever do,
And smoldering fires burned
While we just smiled politely,
But then the force of passion
Made its way,
And just like butterflies
We played our little game
And all the world
Was bright and gay.
Rich did the years thus pass
While our love did grow,
And deep within myself I know
That when I'm old and gray
We'll still hold hands
In evening's glow
And tell old tales
Till darkness touches us,
Oh God - I love her so...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

To a Soldier - Israel 1948

The desert was hot,
The heat was intense
And as far as the eye could see,
There was no beginning,
There was no end,
There was just the desert and me,
My life was slowly ebbing
And torture was in my soul
And many dead were around me,
But the enemy was gone,
And gone was all the life
And all there ever was
In our home in the Negev,
The village of Samarach,
But suddenly there were voices
I've never heard before,
So wondrous, melodious and soft,
It must be a holy score,
They are the angels who sing
Of the glory of our land,
And a voice above them thundered:
"Shem ah Israel to the end,
Keep fighting, hoping, winning,
Your land shall soon be free,
I am thy Lord, thy Keeper,
I'll guide you to victory."
And eternally shone the heavens,
And peace came to my soul
As I left the earth behind me
To enter my heavenly goal.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Auschwitz 2007

So cold and gloomy lies the camp,
The steel of its ovens,
The cement of its death chambers
Tell us so many bitter-sad stories,
Nearby, there are the fields
And my eyes wander
Over the bright flowers
And life goes on
As if nothing had happened,
But one cannot forget.

The wind rustles in the trees
With a thousand voices,
Voices which call us
From the quiet present
Into a horrible past,
They say: "Please remember us,
Hear our lament,
Do not forget us,
Women, men, children,
The dead from Auschwitz."

The sun, so warmly it shines,
So fragrantly bloom the flowers,
But the wind, the wind
Touches my very soul
Like an icy hand.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Middle Classes

We're now in a country
Of the very rich and the poor,
The middle classes
Are gone - for sure,
They've lost their sinecure,
Their jobs exported
With goods imported,
Their incomes axed
By being overtaxed,
The American public
Is starting to live
In a banana republic.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Missed out

There is nothing in life
So terribly sad
Than to miss out
On the one great love
You could have had
And then deeply regret
To lose the gal
You could have wed...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Common Folk

A bit of carnality,
A dash of banality
With a lack of quality,
Senseless verbosity
Coupled with redundancy,
Not much curiosity,
Limited intellectuality,
And there you have the yoke
Keeping down
The common folk.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

The Dollar

Our money goes to Afghanistan,
Poured into Iraq's civil war
And to a dictator in Pakistan,
Wasted in the Middle East
To enforce an impossible peace,
We're spending money everywhere
But of our US folks we take no care,
The funds in our Social Security
Are borrowed, leaving papers,
Worthless, with no security,
We're printing dollars on and on
Till all our resources are gone,
And thus, we're ruining our nation
With galloping inflation.
Let's all rise up and shout:
"Throw those wastrels out!"

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Tree

Once, I was a young sapling
With lots of energy,
But now, I'm worn timber,
A gnarled old tree,
With wood worms gnawing me,
Any rough storm
Can make me cease to be,
Still, I stretch my branches
High up in the sky
To search the heavens
And watch the clouds go by,
Wondering about trees and things,
The where, the how, the why
And what tomorrow brings.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

War for Oil

Don't hide behind
The Bush - my friends
From a hopeless war
Which never ends,
Neither Iraq nor
Its people defends,
Not fought for
Liberty, flag or soil
But only for the
Corporate profits on the oil,
A war, where our kids
Die every day,
For which our overtaxed
People toil away,
A war, not a
Misjudgement fact
But more in line
With a criminal act.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Akademisches Gymnasium - Vienna 1938

I see them yet,
The brightest and the best,
Those chosen for
The finest secondary school,
Young boys just starting out
In life - so full of zest,
Assured their hopes and dreams
Will meet their quest,
But time and fate had brought them
Killing time and war,
Their world was lost
And fell under an evil star,
Many burned in the camps
And wound up as smoke
High up in the sky,
They died and never could
Understand the reason why,
Many fell in the frozen fields
Near Stalingrad
Or in the hot burning
Deserts of North Africa,
Some lucky ones just fled
Looking for liberty,
They went to Shanghai, New York,
Tel Aviv - just to be free,
They scattered far and wide
And told their story
Of misery and death of family
And friends - brutal and gory.
This generation must never,
Ever be forgotten,
Reminding us that man
Can be quite savage, rotten.
Why were those poor, unlucky
Boys dismissed from life,
Victims of man's evil nature,
Prejudice and strife.
If there be gods who watched
This taking place,
They would in shame
Withdraw and hide their face.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

God-sent

The Supreme Court
Elected a president
Who turned out
To be incompetent,
In foreign affairs - negligent,
In pursuit of
Hopeless wars - diligent
But in his own mind - god-sent.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Here and now

Those who live in the past
Or build future castles in the air
Will in the present world not last
If they not in the here and now
Their fortunes cast...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Hope

May the flame of hope
Burn bright
In the darkness
Of the night
Though reality may be
Just a flickering light...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Brave New World

Families are breaking up
When divorces and single parents
Bring marriages to a stop,
Petri dishes and sperm banks
Are the new way,
The old nuclear family
Had its day,
The Brave New World won't wait,
Children will be produced in labs
And raised by the State.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Like it...

You like it hot
When you are young,
You like it fast
When you are strong,
But when you're old,
You are less bold
And life grows cold...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

To my Kids

If politicos ask you
To fight for flag, country and god,
Just say - you'd rather not,
For you surely know,
They and their kids won't go,
If a hotshot preacher asks you
To donate and pray,
You tell this grafter - no way,
A shrew you should never marry,
Neither the gals who sleep
With Tom, Dick and Harry,
And if I get old and can't be alone,
Don't send me to a nursing home,
Just put me into your doggie hut
And throw me a bone,
And if I leave no estate when I die,
Don't be disappointed,
I spent it all - that's why.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Frankly...

For Iraq's freedom and democracy
And to bring to their land liberty,
We sacrifice our blood and our sweat
And many of our wounded and our dead,
But frankly, we don't really give a damn
About Iraq's people, fate or soil,
We're only fighting there
Because we want their oil
While the Bushies and their Saudi pals
For profits toil...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Enjoy the Present

Live fully, live fast,
Grab the moment,
It maybe your last,
The future is uncertain,
And forget the past.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Rosemarie

Yours is my heart alone,
Without you, I cannot be,
You are the world to me,
My life, my love,
My Rosemarie.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

America 2007

You are my haven of liberty
Where men keep their heads high,
Live happy, safe and free,
Where the Lady with the Torch
Warmly welcomes me,
My America - beloved land,
The only place I want to be.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Towers - 9/11

Don't cry alone in vain
For I feel your pain
And if it helps
My heartfelt sympathy you gain,
We both lost loved ones
The very same way
And soothe our sorrows
By sharing our grief today...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Lilies of the Field

Consider the lilies of the field,
They toil and serve not,
Neither do they any benefits yield
Except to please the eye
Before they wilt and die...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Global Village

The world is a global village today
With Internet, media and jets
Shrinking the planet away
Through closer and closer
Inter-relation
Till all of us will be
Just one great nation.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

All we have...

This is an uncaring universe,
With nothing below
And nothing above,
Where all we have
Is each other and love...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Supreme Court

For our present problems,
Who's to blame?
On the Supreme Court
Rests the shame
When they played
A dishonest election game
And crooked judges
Defamed the Court's name.

Let some future Congress elect
To impeach those judges
In retrospect.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Professor Oppenheim

A stern Latin scholar,
Friend of Sigmund Freud,
My Latin teacher
At the Akademischen Gymnasium,
The elite school for the gifted
In my old hometown - Vienna,
Murdered by the Nazis
In Theresienstadt in 1943,
But now, at my old school
They celebrate his name,
The very same people
Who killed him,
What hypocrites,
Have they no shame?

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Success?

A poor student in school,
Grew up to be a stubborn fool,
Turned into a right wing
Holy rollers' tool,
Became a White House resident
As fraudulently elected President,
And now, China owns our country
And we pay the rent.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Only Love

This is an uncaring universe
And events seem perverse,
With nothing below
And nothing above,
And all we have
Is each other and love...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Love is...

Love is the heartbeat
Of the universe,
Life's rhythmic beat
In rhyme and verse,
If reciprocated, it's great,
If rejected, it's a curse.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

My America

From sea to shining sea,
May God be with you,
Beloved land of liberty.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

To my dog Madi

Come to me, little Madi,
I'll give you a bone,
You warm my heart
And guard my home,
You lick my hand
And I don't feel alone...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Pray

"Pray to your god,
Be honest and work hard,
Suffer on earth
And heaven will be your reward",
Is the predator's song
And all those fools
Just play along...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

On the Cross

"The earth will be
Inherited by the meek",
And he continued,
"Turn the other cheek".
So, preached the boss
And he wound up
On the cross.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Asylum

Where reality ends
And fantasy starts,
Where men in white coats
Assure me
That I am King of France
But won't be beheaded...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Pavarotti

A great tenor is gone
But his voice will linger on
As one of the best
We've ever known...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

The Creative Mind

Treasure those rare minds
Where creativity one finds,
They give mankind the chances
For formidable advances,
They are the gods of creation,
The treasures of each nation.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Edith

I lie in my bed
And dream of Edith yet,
My first love in life,
Yet, never my wife,
Only a treasured memory
Of what was not to be ...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Come to me...

Come to me
My little bird.
Are you tired?
Are you hurt?
You won't sing in vain;
I'll ease your pain...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Refugee

I lived through the Holocaust,
Seen death and misery,
Escaped as a refugee,
Poor refuse from across the sea,
To the land of the brave and the free
Where I found equality,
A good life and liberty.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

On Poetry

I purge my soul
Through poetry
In flights of fancy
To bare myself
For all to see
In confessions
Which set me free...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Optimist

We come out of the night,
Born into a world of light,
To spend our days with joy
And experience life
As a wonderful toy
With pleasures filled,
So, lets live it up to the hilt,
Never worry about tomorrow,
Just use it all and borrow,
And when we have to go,
To our creditors
We'll leave the sorrow...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Rabbit

She makes love like a rabbit,
A really delightful habit,
Never, ever did I find
A lady with so much sex
On her mind,
We never walk
Or have conversations,
She only has interests
In sexual relations,
She is hot, she is fast,
I hope I can last,
But one thing
I surely do know,
If I should expire,
What a great way to go...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Try to be younger

As you age
You try to be younger
And from gray
You turn to blonder
And of sex
You grow less fonder
And you worry
What lies yonder
And your mortality
Makes you wonder...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Man's Will is his Heaven

With a singularity of will
Man creates his heaven,
Fills his destiny's bill,
Accomplishes what he sets out to do
And conquers territories - new,
For man's will can his heaven be
In directing his fate to victory.

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

The Entropy of Humanity

Humanity is drifting into entropy,
A slow disorganization
Into the 'not to be',
Genetic stock deterioration
With technical complexity acceleration,
Waste poisoning the atmosphere
Till survival seems risky everywhere,
Then, wars and general pollution
Will lead to man's final dissolution...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Masons

We, masons, built
The Temple in Jerusalem
And ever since we've kept
Alight God's holy flame,
We worship at our shrine
The all-seeing eye of the divine,
From Mozart to Washington
Till this very day
As brothers we've gone on
In our traditional way
And if a brother in distress is found
To help him we are honor-bound,
We are a world-wide secret society
Pledged to honor, decency,
Fraternity, propriety...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

Auschwitz - Nightmares

In my dreams I see them yet,
Auschwitz, the ovens,
All the dead,
And in my nightmares
The old fears come back
And I wake in a cold sweat,
Still feeling the same dread
Which haunts me on and on
And I can't forget,
Just can't forget...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

It had to be you?

It did not have to be you,
Someone else would certainly do
But in a pinch I took you
Till I could find somebody new
But then you got pregnant
And I had to marry you
For what else could I do,
I simply got stuck with you...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz

If there be Gods...

If there be gods,
I know them not,
If there be angels,
They seem a strange lot,
If there be devils,
Those we've got,
If there be heaven and hell,
I've seen them not,
The only certainty:
We die and rot...

Alfred Charasz
Copyright 2007 Alfred Charasz