Poetry & Prose
Living Dangerously in an Unsafe World
All the locks and keys, deadbolts, combinations, security cameras, codes, and motion detectors, and yet somehow he broke into his own life without setting off alarms and robbed himself blind. ____________________________________________ Everyone knows this person...
Aphorism #314
What can be said for silence? Not much.
The Existential Moment
Somewhere out there, (you know who you are), we almost hit. To be clear, you almost hit me from behind. You were changing lanes to get a head start at the light, I was slowing toward full stop. One of those 'not quite' existential moments which tightens the grip of...
Another Earthly Pleasure
In a certain year, a late year, this year, I have suddenly become allergic to cherries. I have enjoyed cherries all of my life. Now they are in season, cheap in the grocery store, and I have been wolfing cherries down. There is a process to eating a cherry. Six...
Winner Takes All
There comes a time, inevitably, when decay overpowers repair, systems muddle, some, many, most, rafters lose hold of the roof, foundations are pounded to powder, windows no longer disguise transparency, smoke rises, not through the chimney but from the house on fire....
Check-out Time Is 11:00 a.m.
No charge for the air you breathe. Sunlight through the window comes with the pane. The softness of the mattress is free, the mattress is not. The tile in the bathroom is built into the overall price, so are the faucets at the sink and the running water. The tv remote...
For John Berryman (1914-1972)
I wanted to write you a letter, John, thanking for Love and Fame. You were there. Much. I liked you, your friend Henry, your seriously playful syntax, your modest excesses, your extroverted introspection, full face forward, inside out. Now I read that you are dead,...
My Hat
My favorite hat is not even my hat. I found it orphaned on a bench in park. It first sat on another history; someone who preferred blue, someone who fished, someone who tied his own flies. If you saw me wearing it you might well think I was that one. I neither fish...
Language
A man and a bear wake up in the morning the same. But what comes out of the mouth, a grunt or a word? A word makes us human.
The Literary Ant
I was wrong about what I thought was interesting to ants. It turns out they like classical literature. Some do. One ant, a friend of mine, has, in the last three days, walked through the first 13 chapters of Homer's Odyssey and still wants more. I wonder what he...