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Jack, for Heaven’s Sake
The truly pious will never get to heaven for they don’t know how to sing or dance. Kerouac roams freely like a rogue elephant unable to get a good buzz on but not for want of trying. He thought it would be Edenic, a garden somewhere between Babylon hanging and the lobby of the Royal…
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HAVING WRITTEN
I suppose I ought to be glad that no playwright has ever written about me, for that is a fame that always seems to end badly, unless it is a comedy, and that, too, is dangerous ground, for such plays tread heavily for a laugh. Consider Shakespeare, and ask yourself if yo would want to…
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LOOKING BACK FORWARD
Between now and eventually lies all of history. We are unable to see it though it lies in our field of vision. That’s the problem, we only know how to look backward. We are barely able to see where we are. It isn’t that we don’t want to be here, merely that here is difficult…
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AS I RECALL
Like most you believe that if it is worth remembering you will, that memory is keyed to some measure of value and if you forget that value had diminished without your noticing. You accept this as a sort of gospel truth for you cannot recall that you once rejected this argument out of hand, for…
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BASHO, REDUX
This poem was recently published in the first issue of a new journal, Punt Volat. You can find it here: https://puntvolatlit.com/issues/winter-2019 If Basho were here today, in this America, at this time, stop briefly and consider what he might write, how he would describe the faces of parents mourning children gunned down in random urban…
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YEATS IF ONLY
Cheever was having a bad day, that much was immediately obvious. Perhaps it was the two martini’s in town before lunch, but he says it only made him giddy. We all know better and by late afternoon his mood has soured completely, his emotions have slipped back into turmoil. He says a few cocktails will…
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NATURALIA NON SUNT TURPIA
When did we stop being of the soil and begin to fear it, to tell our children not to touch the ground, it is dirty where once it was only dirt, and we put in our mouths, from time to time if only to drive our mothers crazy. She says if you are going to…
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HILLEL AT THE GOLDEN DRAGON
I am honored that this poem was just published in the Fall/Winter Issue of the Atlanta Review, I had dinner the other night with Rav Hillel in a small Chinese place just off Mott Street. I asked him what it was like in the afterlife, after all the years. It gets a bit boring, he…
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HIGH WIRE
It is a precarious balance, really, more an exercise in tottering and hearing than in standing still. Some prefer stasis, others, I included, find that leads inevitably to a loss of energy, to an entropy from which it is difficult to escape. I don’t walk along the edge of the precipice, but I do. peer…
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MORNING READING
You read the obituaries every day not only for the affirmation that you are not listed among them The key five words there are not only for the affirmation, particularly upon hearing the gentle man you liked, that you valued as a friend and craftsman is gone, but you didn’t say goodbye, that you thought…
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an old writer and his words 