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.
I have decided it is now time
and I am establishing a new
field of study that blends
mathematics and political science,
which I have named idiometry.
Simply put, idiometry allows one
to measure just how close one can
take the statements or promises
if any politician and square
them with the actual facts.
Then you repeat this for all
of the statements of that politician
and you inevitably find the square
unattainable, there simply are
no perfect squares yet achieved
in idiometry, for no politician
ever seen on a public stage
hews perfectly to facts, always
veering off into self interest
or blatant ideology, so perhaps
idiometry isn’t worth it, telling us
what we already knew full well.
If your teacher asks
you to bring him all
of the Dharma you have learned
what will you bring him?
If you begin to recite
what you know
of the sutras
he will turn away
and cover his ears.
If you sit
next to him in silence
he will smile.
A reflection on Case 25 of the Book of Equanimity, 従容錄, Shōyōroku
That there is another shooting
comes as no surprise,
it is commonplace now, expected
and there are only questions:
how many this time, what
kind of weapon was used, what
motivated the shooter to do it.
What does it say when we define
mass killing as requiring three
or more dead bodies in one place.
The body of the single victim
is no less dead than the mass killed
but death by gun is so commonplace,
we roll right by it unless we know
the victim or the location holds
special significance to us.
So we have ceded our humanity
to the Almighty Weapon, all
we have are prayers, for we
are now too tired to be angry, and
mass anger is our only hope.
Technology has afforded those of us
with impairments the ability
to more fully participate
in the world around us.
However we can never lose sight,
a painful use of the phrase
in my case, of its imperfections.
Perhaps it is merely anticipating
the future of our species, as when
the phones captioning decided
a somewhat elided Marsha and Barry
was in fact Martian berries.
As crazy as that seems at first,
looking around at how we
have laid waste to this planet
exobiology and exobotany
may be the last and only
hope for our species, but
I do wonder how they will taste.
He was nondescript, innocuous. He named his dog Dog. His cat was called Cat. He grew daring with his parakeet and named it Wings. He wore beige from head to toe. Even his Sunday best, his “weddings and funerals suit” he called it, was beige. People wondered if his underwear was beige. He swore that it was, but with just enough of a smirk people couldn’t be certain. His house was painted beige as were his roof shingles. His car was beige inside and out. All his furniture was pine or a light oak. When he died, they found a note with instructions on the funeral, the burial, every detail, on beige paper, of course. And they found the beige suit bag in the closet with the rainbow colored suit that he was to be buried in.
There are mornings
when I wish
I could be the cat,
sit in the corner,
close my eyes and
watch the world
suddenly disappear.
The cat breaks
my reverie, purring
there is room for one
and this role
is all mine.
First appeared in The Flying Dodo, Issue 4, January 2023
https://fantasyfantasywave.wixsite.com/my-site/louis-faber-certain-mornings
I reached the point in life
where I know the Byrds were right,
I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now, and
for good measure Jethro Tull knew
I was too old to rock ‘n’ roll
but far too young to die.
And yet I am still inchoate,
a product of the Big Bang, stellar
dust accreted temporarily.
And the Webb Space Telescope
has given me the next best thing
to immortality, for when the time comes
and I hope it isn’t all that soon,
when my body is cremated, that
momentary heat signature will
be seen in some planet in a galaxy
at the edge of the universe
some 13 billion years later,
long after my ashes will have
returned to the cosmos,
from where I came.
Perhaps we spend too much
time wondering if there are
aliens of the ET sort among us.
Let’a face it, if they are
advanced enough to get here,
they ought to be able to fit in
without standing out, so
sorry Hollywood, it may make
for an exciting movie but
it just isn’t all that likely.
And before you remind me
of UFO sightings, just because
you see a bus stop in the dark
of night, you can’t be certain
anyone got off or on, can you?
When you look
in the mirror
what do you really see?
If you say yourself
you are blind.
If you say nothing
you have grasped
the heart of the Dharma.
If you shatter the mirror
you have found Nirvana.
A reflection on Case 24 of the Book of Equanimity 従容錄, Shōyōroku
an old writer and his words 