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ASHES
When I die, my friend Larry said one morning in the third inning of a double header of stoop ball, I want to be burned, not that I intend it to happen any time soon, but when it does. They burned my grandfather I think it was Dachau, but unlike him, I want to kick…
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SORT OF
She is sifting through photo albums deciding which pictures to keep, which to discard, questioning why she kept some in the first place, blurred, ill composed. She sets very high standards now wondering why some were taken, the sun she says, all wrong here, the background in that one just swallows the subjects. I left…
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WE INTERRUPT YOUR SCHEDULED POEM
to bring you a poem recently published. It’s worth a visit (shameless promotion) not only for my poem but so many others found in Wax Poetry & Art (Calgary, Canada). Find it here: http://waxpoetryart.com/eleventh/2019/faber.html and as a bonus, a haiku recently published in Haiku on Leaves, an electronic publication from the Czech Republic: LOTUS on…
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LIVING ALONE 鐵笛倒吹 九十四
Why do you climb the mountain and seek entry into the small cabin. Why do you give up your home in the valley. You should be turned away for if you seek a higher understanding you demonstrate to all there is no depth to your practice. A reflection on Case 94 of the Iron Flute…
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It was the other evening, the first of two this month, they say. This only happens once in a blue moon or a couple times every two or three years and often twice in the same year. So once in a blue moon isn’t that long but she said she could feel its pull, everything…
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BOTTOM LINE
They are dying but it really doesn’t matter since the bottom line doesn’t recognize their plight, and never mind that we paid for its invention, for that is the beauty of this age. God is no longer in charge of things, bought and sold, and now assigned to watching the corn grow in central Illinois,…
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MILES FROM NOWHERE
Three hundred fifty miles along today’s highway the giant green sign reads Harriet’s Bluff Road and you cannot help but wonder what stories Harriet’s true road is holding back from telling you.
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ALMOST PASSOVER
It is almost Pesach, early this year so I will get a birthday cake not the rubbery sponge cake of matzoh meal, eggs and ginger ale, covered in fruit. We are peeling the applies and chopping them for the charoset for the communal seder most to be thrown away along with the paper plates and…
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JIM AND JIMI
I made it past 27, which says I’m either an optimist or have almost no musical talent. When I made it through 54 I knew I’d never get burned buried in Paris, never be mourned as a great talent taken or taking myself too young. Now it’s five years until 72 and I know if…
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SOUTH OR SO IT SEEMS
It was tacky then, it’s epitome and six decades and unknown views later it hasn’t changed at all. You don’t expect tackiness to accrete, yet like a black hole this is irrefutable evidence it has. To say it is garish to insult the term, since it is so much more, beyond anything the term can…
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an old writer and his words 