February 25, 2023

THEATER OF THE ABSURD

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.

January 13, 2023

DECLARATION

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.

March 3, 2022

FRUITED PLAINS

As I was cutting up our breakfast
fruit this morning, the name Lynette
“Squeaky” Fromme came to mind.

I would have thought it would be
Cesar Chavez, given half the fruit
was from California, and I had no thought
of Gerald Ford or any Republican President,
never before at least one full cup of coffee
and generally not even then, but there she was.

There was no reason for it, nothing squeaked,
I hadn’t seen the new movie loosely
about Charles Manson, and I couldn’t
picture her face, which is just as well,
but there her name was and I have spent
the better part of the day musing on why,
in what is already an upside-down world,
a world where we have as much to fear
from our leaders as our enemies, and
it is ever harder to tell which is who,
yet she came to mind, and I have to conclude,
before the whole day is wasted in the effort,
that it had something to do with mangoes.

First Published in Barzakh, A Literary Magazine, Winter 2022
https://www.barzakhmag.net/winter-2022