Herbert Nehrlich Poems

An aging, cantankerous Jew
thought the blood in his body was blue.
Said his Aryan friend
'it's most likely a blend,
...

He drank the wine
behind the altar
in solitude, for God.
A roach had fallen in
...

Even Einstein couldn't handle the idea of
quantum mechanics, it was too radical,
after all, there was the comfort of that Newton,
a fine scholar who believed in predictability.
...

As he rolls out of bed,
cotton sheets tangled
the usual sense of urgency
like unwanted regurgitation
...

Accepting, if I did, from you
the thing you give, it's called abuse
would mean I am no longer true
to my own self, who needs to choose
...

She felt his hand,
the hand that had
the previous night
caressed that wife,
...

He slept the dream of ethanol
and when he woke, his battered soul
was in a mood too foul to bear
as vomit stuck in his gray hair.
...

He has grown, in the clinic, a beard
but the stubbles are rough and much feared
by the soft, peachy skin
of both cheeks and her chin,
...

Well, Max, you wouldn't understand,
a dog is not a human, after all.
I'm in my forties, says my gut
and the chronology, it matters not,
...

I once knew a ballerina
she had flown in from Argentina
she liked playing my flute
and was udderly cute
...