As kids every couple of weeks
we’d take our allowances,
go down to the variety store
and buy the latest DC comic.
Larry and I would spend
that afternoon imagining
we were whatever superhero
was featured in our new,
and now most prized book.
Jimmy was with us
all the way, but admitted
he wanted to be Lex Luthor or
or the Joker, or better still
Solomon Grundy.
So we probably should not
have been surprised that
while I became a lawyer
and Larry a classics professor,
Jimmy became a politician.
If Aristophanes were suddenly
to arrive here, he would no doubt
pause, but with the eye he had,
would soon discover such a treasure
trove of material, he could produce
comedies to last several lifetimes.
The problem would be in finding
the right audience, for here we have
little taste and patience for the sort
of comedy at which he was so adept,
and wit in language has long been
forgotten in our blunt, in your face
world of entertainment, and his
natural audience in ancient Greece
would never imagine a world
so badly screwed up that even
Kubrick would be hard pressed
to bring Dr. Strangelove into the present.
They can have sharp edges
that wound on contact, some cuts
so deep they leave lasting scars.
They can get stuck in the throat
until you feel you can no longer
breathe, no longer cry out for help.
They can lie there, an
aggregate always acreting
and yet rejecting any meaning.
Or they can, carefully chosen
present great beauty, offer
hope, promise freedom.
They are the currency of poets
and writers, and they chronicle
our history and our lives.
If I was in Russia I
would have no problem
finding a title for this poem
for it would be The Last.
I would write that I mourn
the children, men, and women
sacrificed to assuage his
warped need for domination.
I would write that I detest
his disregard of truth,
supplanting it with his lies
to justify his megalomania.
I would write that I stand
with the people of Ukraine
and for that I would pay with
my words, and perhaps my life.
I stood on the ramparts
that cold, wet morning
looking out over the waiting
Irish Sea, this day offering
only rain and a November chill.
Write haiku, she said to us
and I thought of Basho
and Issu who never stood
on a 13th Century Welsh
fortress and never imagined
writing about Llywelyn
great or not nearly so.
In the rain and chill
I scribbled furiously,
retreated to the outer ward
where I was joined
by a fellow poet who
suggested that a tea
in the village would
please even old Basho.
I tell him I am thinking of becoming
a rabbi, someone just like him,
a man who saw so many through
all manner of crises, joyous events.
He sits back in his unsteady chair,
one he refuses to replace, this one
finally broken in, he says with that
gentle smile that melts anger, anxiety.
You would do well at it, I know, he says,
and I will gladly write you a recommendation
but think about this carefully, it is
not the life you might imagine it to be.
But before you decide, he adds,
reaching among a stack of books,
read these, handing me two volumes
that I did not imagine would change my life.
And somewhere, I have my own copies
of Alan Watt’s “Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen”
and “The Book:On the Taboo Against
Knowing Who You Are?”, and I then knew.
Someone declared it Star Wars Day, but that is not fair to the progenitors of that series of films and countless spinoffs. Imaging Captain Kirk engaged with a Klingon in a lightsaber battle, Mr. Spock standing by and commenting “illogical.”. And for that matter, why not imagine Gort looking down at Klaatu and saying, “No, I am your father.” On forty-second thought, let’s leave things as they are.
I have taken to
folding my poems
into little paper boats
and dropping gently
into the river
where they sail
downstream.
Many may drown
but some may
reach the lake
or be plucked out
and read
or discarded.
The river is,
in the end,
my harshest
critic.
I wanted to write like Heaney
but of course he got there first
and could do it in two languages,
so that was out of the question.
I tried to write like other
of the greats only to find that
what set them apart from so many
set them rather far apart from me.
So I an left to write as myself,
which I find a bit boring for I
know myself all too well, and anything
I say or write I’ve heard before.
But I suppose you have not
heard it before so unless you are
the one who sneaks into my dreams
before I can capture them,
in which case would you return
the best of them, for in them
I know lies whatever better poems
I have yet to cast to paper.
On more than one occasion
someone has come up to me
after an open mic reading
to tell me that they love my work.
I am honored and tell them so
but curious as well, since I
only read two poems, which
hardly counts as my work.
I offer to sell them my book
at a substantial discount,
but they inevitably tell me
“Thanks, but I don’t read poetry.”
an old writer and his words 