-
SNAKE EYES
They roll in, one after the next, after the next, gaps that appear in their rank are soon enough filled. By night you mark them by their red lights, lemmings with no cliff in sight, so they sit one alongside the next in the queue, disgorging their chattering, smiling contents into the vast building, and…
-
ARMAGEDDON
There are a group of them who stare at the sky knowing it is coming launched on its course at the beginning of time which has no beginning. Some say it will be soon others are less certain when but all accept without question its inevitability, and wonder what will remain in its aftermath, seas…
-
SOUL MUSIC
The first time I heard Mozart, I swore I was in a biblical garden and I was content to sit and listen for eternity. The serpent came along, as they do in such gardens, as I recall, with the face of Beethoven, though now I am convinced it was just Mahler trying to pass. I…
-
RULER, PLEASE
You search without end for a way to precisely measure life in all of its aspects. You will not be dissuaded by the fact that you can no more control its span than you could control your need to breathe. You say you picked the sperm and egg, that their union you carefully orchestrated. You…
-
FUNYO PUNISHES THE SKY 鐵笛倒吹 三十二
If there are no clouds, punish the sky with your stick. If there is no sun punish the clouds with your stick. As you walk the Way both road and sky know your stick with each step. If you doze will you strike yourself with your stick or grab it away? A reflection on Case…
-
HELL’S PRISONER
I am pressed into a seat that would conform only to the body of some alien creature, or so it seems, for hours into a flight that increasingly seems eternal, particularly for the baby two rows back, who, like me would much rather be anywhere else. The crew dims the cabin lights the universal indicator…
-
DO NOT FORWARD
I thought about sending you a postcard, one with the Riviera in the background or from Vieux Nice, with its teeming life, after all, we did have 30 years together. We never came here, I haven’t been back to the places we went together since they, like so much of what we shared, I left…
-
STEPPING IN IT
Over the next few weeks I shall step into more churches than is safe for a formerly Jewish Buddhist, but in Europe it seems no tour is complete without one or more churches, at least one of which will be the most beautiful cathedral in all of [choose any country you wish and inserted here.]…
-
ALTERNATIVES
I would much rather be home, listening to Joan Osborne on the CD player, lying on the couch with you sleeping across the sofa curled under the cotton throw coiled against the winter battering the windows ca tucked into your knees. Instead, I sit on the bed CNN droning in the background and stare out…
-
ENFOLDING
As a child I was quite adept folding sheets of newspaper into paper hats and paper boats. The boats immediately took on water, and sank like the sodden masses I made them to be, but I could wear the hats for hours, until my mother had to scrub my forehead to get off the printer’s…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
an old writer and his words 