Poetry & Prose
The Buddhist’s Dilemma
To want nothing more than to want nothing more.
At the Museum
At the railroad crossing we stop for a train. Box cars, hoppers, tankers, flat cars fly by. The train is no nonsense, practical as a hen. In a railyard, a vandal with an eye for color, the need for surfaces and cans of spray paint has transformed them into graffiti ...
My Father’s Boxes
Time in five boxes, my father’s life, photos, flags, postcards from far places letters to and from home, some I wrote to him, some he wrote to me, moments, not mementos, memories timed out now retimed.
Now and Then
I am looking at a family photo album , pictures of me as a child among the dead. My parents are dead, my grandparents are dead, my aunt and uncle are dead, my boyhood dog Frisky is dead. They were alive when the pictures were taken. I am alive but older now than they...
Military Weapons
Automatic rifles were not invented for accuracy. Ask the Russian Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov. Ask the American Eugene Morrison Stoner. Automatic weapons were invented for efficiency. Military efficiency. Mass killing on the battlefield. In civilian hands, they...
Gun Violence
Gun violence is a tautology Violence is the purpose of gun. Gun violence is equivalent to food nutrition. Nutrition is the chief purpose of food. Violence is the chief purpose of guns. A gun incapable of violence is a toy gun. The rationale for guns is killing....
Unfolding
We met as folded strangers letters addressed to each other’s names tightly enveloped eased open creased paper smoothed flat stories read then written on our unfolding lives
The Seagull
The seagull was dying. The bird knew it. I knew it. I wondered if there was something I could do, some intervention I could place between the gull and death. The seagull was not considering repair. With open eyes, smooth feathers, tucked feet the bird watched what had...
Gravid Cezanne
Celebrating Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) Cezanne, out with his easel near Aix-en-Provence, painted gravity with a light brush, coaxing round density out of apples, the angular geometry of men playing cards, mountain massiveness pitted against civilized sight. Sensation is...
Heraclitus’ Mirror
panta rhei In a day’s time, certainly in a week’s, neither I nor the mirror will remain the same. The mirror will not recognize me. No residual impression, no lasting elaborate smudge, no fascial echo, no reflexive wake. What was once Heraclitus is somewhat...