The door opens
Once
Every 19 years
The elevator operator
Asks
With whom
Would you like to learn
Today?

Choose Bar Yochai
Or the prophet Elijah
Who taught the holy Ari
Or the holy Ari
Who learned with
Abraham Isaac and Jacob

Or Luzzatto the Italian
Who memorized all the teachings
Of the Ari
When Luzzatto was 14

Or the Baal Shem Tov
Who was tutored in secret
By other Baal Shems
Until he was 36

Or Miss Mill
The 4th grade teacher
Who taught respect
And to create
Out of sadness

From the holy Ari
Learn to read out
Foreheads
And hands
To know faces
Especially when they
Change

From the Baal Shem Tov
How to make sense –
And prescribe remedies

From Bar Yochai
How to occupy yourself
With the needs of others
How to be a good student
For your teachers
A good teacher
For your
Students

From the prophet Elijah
Learn Readiness
Eagerness

From Abraham
Isaac and Jacob
Learn to pray at different
Times of Day

Ask
To spend a time
With Harry
Who will teach again
To be enchanted
By everything

jsg

If [Im] you follow my laws (Bechukotai)
Hkk the root
The kind of laws that are beyond nature so to speak
These are the laws of God
The consequences for not walking by them?
That’s the verb — walking — [Leviticus 26:3]
The consequences for not walking by them
Are worldly catastrophic
The rains will not fall in their seasons
The earth will crack
It will get hot everywhere
The poles will melt
And we may not be saved –

Because we violated the
Secret Hidden Contract
Between human being-li-ness
And God-li-ness
The world broke apart
And we had been warned.

But if we do
If [Im]
If we honor and walk and keep and protect
Then nature will respond with order
We will be grateful for keeping this mysterious law of God
Familiar to everyone on the planet
Though none of us can say just What
That law is.

We all know the world is Cracked
But we don’t know
Why.

Bechukotai
Maqam Saba or Nawa
Saba: D E half-flat F G flat

Nawa: C D E flat F sharp G

jsg, usa

Thank you for the opportunity to address the graduating class of 2012. It is a privilege to be the guest speaker after having spent so many years sitting in the audiences of my own children’s graduations. Every parent is proud of the accomplishments of their children, but every parent is also a citizen with an eye to the future entrusted to the next generation, hopeful for good citizens, good leadership.

I have listened to dozens of these addresses over the years, not only my own children’s graduations but the graduations of friends and family, all eager to witness their seedlings grow into the sprouted and rooted plantings we dream of when preparing them for the future.

Generally the message at these events is basic in a variety of forms and styles: begin with an anecdote, a joke, the best a personal remembrance, follow with the charge which is either change the world or be good human beings in consonance with other human beings, world peace, etc. I am most partial to the change the world scripts.

Graduates of 2012, you probably won’t change the world much. Forget that Margaret Mead quote, it’s prosaic and will one day be disheartening. My generation thought we would change the world too. Save yourselves. Do something honest, gather up a nest egg of money and don’t let the news depress you. All the expressly powerful and most of the famous are nincompoops. Do not pay any attention to them, don’t pay any attention to them at all.

If you must distinguish yourself, become a good criminal. An old school criminal. The criminals nowadays are generally faceless, nameless, and now untraceable.

Our elections are in the pockets of the secret donors who have planned their future security around the takeover of our beloved political process through privately financed groups, mystery backers — generally the corporations motivated by power and profits and idiot self preservationist fringe philosophies — protected by tax-code provisions that do not require disclosure of donors. Now that our Supreme Court has opened the door to the unabashed manipulation of the democracy through anonymous — that is, secret – funding, our crooks are mostly hidden. That is where we have arrived in our noble country: welcome to your future.

Class of 2012, save yourselves. I want to make a case for a return to honest crime. The kind of crime I grew up with. Now those guys were criminals. They smoked cigars and they insulated themselves with payoffs and graft and they barely bothered to hide it. They enjoyed their work.

Smuggle goods over borders, intimidate business persons to buy your protection, surround yourself with strong, secure, ruthless people. Protect your community from a storefront that serves great espresso, do favors for people for favors in return. Create a parallel world where your word rules. Never forget a good turn or don’t miss the opportunities for revenge. Be a good criminal. Let people know what you stand for. Do it publicly and without guile. Smoke a cigar now and again.

Infiltrate honestly. Be a citizen and make the expressed and unexpressed powers answer to you. Don’t let the politicians become so important. They’re the phoniest of all, cowards too fragile to value truth over re-election. Don’t respect their secrecy.

Most of your co-students will become corporate cogs. They will eat well and be completely co-opted by a system everyone knows is driven by self sustenance and self aggrandizement. Let the corporations know you are not afraid of them. Speak truth to power, as we used to say. Be bold. Reclaim optimism through crime. It will be a great gift.

If you can’t be a crook, be a writer. There’s so much inspiration these days as our culture has slid into irrelevance, consumerism, greed, and cyncisim. Everyone is so ridiculous you won’t have to make up a thing.

Thank you, and congratulations to the class of 2012.

james stone goodman, united states of america

The metaphor is regressible
into more general and more general principles
from application to principle
induction to deduction
myth to tenor,

referent of the referent,
Ani HaShem [I am the Name]
Concealed of the Concealed [Zohar]
Ayin (Nothing) –-

referent of the referent
regressing,
the most we can say about Something –-
is Nothing.

jsg, usa

Small alef; poetry Behar
Maqam Saba or Nawa
Saba: D E half-flat F G flat
Nawa: C D E flat F sharp G

Rabbi Akiva told Bar Yochai, the paradigm, his student –
this, from the Jerusalem Talmud:

it is enough that myself, your mother, and
God
know your excellence.

First, it’s enough, his teacher says,
I know, your mother knows, God of course.

In a different version, from the Babylonian Talmud:
it is enough that myself, another person
and God know your excellence.

It is uncertain who the other person is –
it could be your sweetheart, your friend,
maybe your father even
– since he is not working the Exile in those times
and spends most of his days tending a garden
studying the holy texts in the sunshine
learning to play an oud-like instrument popular in Babylonia
– yearning to return home to the Land,

but in the Jerusalem Talmud
it is your mother
she is speaking Hebrew
she is totally devoted to your physical and spiritual nature
she knows what you need
you need two — she tells you — but only two
two who know you
other than God
and the two are Akiva
great teacher, brave antagonist, nice to his children

and me
– your Mom.

james stone goodman

Through the losses
One after another

What we love
Is taken from us

Sitting here on the shores of the great sea
Watching

Our inexorable Search
For what we have Loved

Brachiating over the waters
From the distance – Memory

I enclose a picture of your two
Children

I am the one
Holding on

jsg, usa

Two brothers, Moses and Aaron
Here comes Aaron with his robes
The billowing sleeves
Good words
I want.

But those afternoons with Moses –
Hunched over a cup of coffee at the diner
I need.

Small alef; poetry Emor 2
Maqam Sigah
E half-flat F G
Every portion has a maqam
musical figure from the Arabic
cognate in Hebrew
Maqom – Place

O holy Kohanim
Priest-men of the old Temple
For he is holy to God [Lev.21:7]
Father to son
Ki kadosh hu
Because he is holy to his G*d.

Next verse
You shall make him holy [21:8]
Who is you?

Priest-man is holy because he serves –
He has earned his holiness cred
By serving you.

Small alef; poetry Emor 1
Maqam Sigah
E half-flat F G

Every portion has a maqam
musical figure
from the Arabic
cognate in Hebrew
Maqom – Place

Rabbi Akiva told me
this is a major rule in the Torah –

love your friend as [you love]
yourself [Lev.19:18]

Look to the context –
the verse before:
you shall not hate your brother in your heart
you shall surely rebuke your neighbor
and not carry sin because of him [Lev.19:17].

Unusual progression
you shall not hate your brother to
you shall surely rebuke your neighbor
not carry sin because of your neighbor
to: love.

Only love has that kind of power
to heal.

We don’t lead with love
but we come to love,

we have moved through
don’t hate
surely rebuke
don’t carry someone else’s sin
don’t take vengeance
don’t bear a grudge
only

love –

I am Hashem
the way of love
the true healing.

jsg, usa

Small alef; poetry Kedoshim 3
Maqam Saba

D E half-flat F G flat

Rabbi Akiva told me
this is a major rule in the Torah –

love your friend as [you love]
yourself [Lev.19:18]

Re’acha – your friend –
it’s a close relation.

And there’s an extra lamed attached to re’acha
le-re’acha
we expected et the common call to the accusative

Ramban told me it was exaggerated language [haflaga]
impossible to love someone else as you love

yourself –

be real.

jsg, usa
Small alef; poetry Kedoshim 2