• ZOOM ZEN

    In the middle of a rouund of zazenI hear the bells of a nearby church,although I am nearby no church. Zen teaches you to be presentin each moment, to be immersedin and not witnessing life around you. The bells break my struggleto not think, they introduce timeagain where there should be none. Just as soon,…


  • PANDEMIC

    How many today? Fewerthat is a good signbut don’t get overly excited,we’ve been down this roadbefore and we got losteach time we did. And while you are out there,don’t be sure that youcan see where you are going,for vision is iffy, and likeside view mirrors, thingsappear closer than they are. Don’t be despondent, youare better…


  • HOLDING ON

    There comes that one moment for each who liveswhen he steps out onto the silent stage,speaks such of the lines as he recalls, givesa half-intended bow, and in his rage curses his lost youth like over-aged wine,that is now a shadow of its promiseand he knows that somehow this is a signnot of what he…


  • HISTORY

    We only see the present as history,by day history is a matter of minutes,by night of seconds, years or centuries. There is no future to be seen, onlyimagined, the mind writing a storythat can never be read, never told. It is only when we close the eyesthat the present truly exists,independent of the past, free…


  • FOR SALE

    For a reasonable sum,I can have a star named after me,and get a certificate suitablefor framing declaring it so. I’d like to buy a group of starsin relatively close proximityeach to the others, and ratherthan naming each after me, I’d name the lot with one name,my personal constellation,perhaps Buddhist, the sky coulduse a Bodhisattva of…


  • NO BACKS

    As you age, your vision changes,and not merely that of your eyes,for you necessarily becomenear sighted about many things. Of course you dread the fact that youcould be myopic if circumstancesconspire against you, barely ableto be IN and remember the moment. Even those healthy take to mythology,and astronomy, wishing they wereTitan, living life in retrograde,…


  • STATISTIC

    Today, now many,yesterday, tomorrow, how many? We have grown tired of countingthe mind cannot deal with numbersof that magnitude, Stalin was correct,it is all statistics now, and bodies,always more bodies, never enough,always too many, by violencein the street, in the economy,in the courthouse, in the COVID ward,there are too many places now,where the dead gather,…


  • FOSSIL FUEL

    It should give you pauseto consider that, in the midstof boundless greed, enmeshedin the near cult of self, rushingalways to go nowhere quickly,certain the problems of the world,can be solved tomorrow, usingresources that may never bereplenished or substituted for, when we are dead and buried,we will be the fossil fuelsthat future generationsrightfully shun in horror.


  • RECALL

    As you sit in your suburban homes,by the pools at your country clubs,in your vacation resort villas, tryfor the sake of the patriarchsand matriarchs of our faith, to rememberthat we were the poor, we werethe huddled masses, we yearnedto breathe free, we the tempest tossed. Remember the tenementsof the Lower East Side,the sweat shops, the…


  • HUP TWO, MY ASS

    WARNING: A SHORT STORY, SO A LONGER READ THAN USUAL. BUT WORTH IT HOPEFULLY He wondered why he allowed himself to be in this position. Heknew that he didn’t actually allow it, he courted it. But you couldclaim allowance when you chose the lesser, by far, of two evils.As a child, his mother always told…