Dali thoughts of lingerie

Dry Dali clocks crumbled

Tinkled into ancient sandstone

Dead Sea controls art

It is of no use to look for photographs of legs, perfectly formed, and of most smoothly curved, feminine muscularity, girt in lacy leggings. It is also useless to attempt such an introduction wherein the trite image of Lolita is associated with her possible namesakes which are, on the contrary, purer in spirit and less demanding. Of equally pleasing proportions, the waistlines and hips also beguiled the dweller from the capital, heretofore jaded by anyone less graciously built than his artistically bread wife. My ever-girlish wife and the young wafting perfections sparkled against the backdrop of the Sun-tortured tabletop mountains looming on the western shores of Lake Asphaltitis, which is more commonly known as Dead Sea.

Shedding their crumbly sandstone and halite, they hulked over the fragile glitter of the modernity, of tinted windows, buffet feasts and freshwater pools. Vespasian, or Titus, or King Herod must have dined in the same style, somewhere around here, and, no doubt, they were entirely free to avail themselves of that young fruit, certainly unencumbered by the tightness of jeans, but, nonetheless of the same sweet fluid grace which the monogamous romantic had the privilege to compare to his wife the tango queen.

Instead of fleeting moments which could flit faster than a click of the most modern digital equipment, here are some haiku.

chirps among hot crags

birds drink from spilled water

alien salt planet

Desert Zen

There is no singular face to anything in the Holy Land, or to any object, natural or man-made, in the City Of Gold. The city itself has very little gold, and the thin gold foil sheeting the Dome of the Rock is so thin so much of it upwardly facing, and the edifice itself being extremely off limits to anyone who would just want to contemplate the ill-famed bloated onion dome, that even that much gold does not make Jerusalem into the City of Gold.

The gold is in the all-penetrating, cloudless sunshine-baked, Jerusalem sandstone beigeness.

Take a stroll on a late Friday afternoon, when the streets seem to have hidden every living soul that might have ventured for the last minute pre-Sabbath shopping.


The French Square is such a desert. Most of its inhabitants are too busy to look up and take note of the mocking statues on top of the Terra Sancta College. Some would say this is just another Vatican structure. Nay, I have been told by someone who attended art history classes at the Ratisbonne Academy that the Terra Sancta is a prime example of Austro-Hungarian style, unique to Israel.

Bathed in gusting warmth - which has known prophets and kings on the run - out of the Judean desert, on such Friday afternoon, when you might just get lost among thoughts of Deuteronomic repentance and the trickling of time down to the Days of Awe, the building will surely wake you up with that very blinding, born-in-beige glow of solar gold.

the immediate twitch of the tongue against the makes you think of water. You fly northward, way up above the Mamilla Pool, over the Shchem, or Nablus Road, over Shchem itself, and all the way to the Hula Valley, cute triangle of Israel, and defined by the Syrian and Lebanese borders, is the size of a handsome part on Cape Cod. To make the first installment of haiku, I would post a chain of these, a synergistic snapshot of a scene in the valley.

Birdwatching with the Japanese

Hula Valley sprawls

From Lebanon to Syria

Twixt rock and hard place

Nubian nightjar,

Mocking bird cloud ancient land

Europe’s birds relax

Storks and cranes wade

Swamp hollers with Euro sound

Grand Wetlands hotel

Bosho’s countrymen

Came all the way to Hula swamps

Crane watching Shinto

March 13, 2006

Having no foresight of my late arrival onto the blogospheric scene, I have published it on the above date to a writing forum, from whence I have migrated to others. Gourmets of Semitic haiku are yet to provide their feedback.