Hallway to Nowhere

  • Taking Temporary Refuge in Sextus Empiricus (Poem)

    Wearied by these discussions of things I cannot affect

    Storms darken the skies over mountains coasts plains deserts

    Bombs fall upon the helpless here and here and here

    Parties await the change of the year in metropolei cities towns villages

    Babies get born die people get sick die some recover all eventually die

    All sometimes just too much and I want to say stop of course nothing stops

    My primeval self-concept urges flight back to measured tranquility

    Suspension of belief wants immersion again in Skeptical therapeutics

    Indeed this provides a temporary respite but only that

    Now a different path engages me

    With this world other worlds the endless arguments that give them form.

  • The Chance To Sit Down (Poem)

    Because I’ve known hunger

    Been among those who go to eat among strangers

    Taking whatever food was offered and the chance to sit down

    Because I’ve known hunger

    Been among those who walk the streets in thrift-store coats

    Wishing desperately for a cup of hot coffee and the chance to sit down

    Because I’ve known hunger

    Been among those who get blamed for this and all our other lacks

    Wanting to tell our stories and the chance to sit down

    An empty belly gnaws at your hope in the future.

    The hard trudge through wintry streets lacerates your ability to breathe here and now.

    The dirty shame impoverishes your cling to self-worth.

    What price do you pay, and it’s harder than ever.

    I’d put benches everywhere. For a start.

  • The Lladro Bar Mitzvah Boy (Poem)

    For years I had a Lladro Bar Mitzvah Boy porcelain,

    Elongated, in gorgeous muted blue and cream.

    With each move I would wrap it carefully in newspaper and cloth

    And place it gently in its own separate box.

    Aside from its beauty that soothed my heart,

    It represented something might have been,

    Were I born to an earlier generation and a boy.

    Perhaps I would have worn a somber threadbare suit and yarmulke,

    A thin yeshiva bochur, always with my nose in a book.

    After one difficult transition I opened the box

    To find that it had finally cracked into several pieces,

    Too delicate to bear so many travels.

    Sometimes on a rainy winter’s day, I remember my Lladro

    And can almost hear the murmured thrum within the beit midrash

    As I study with others in the fading December light.

  • How To Sit In A Whirlwind (Poem)

    Because there is no beginning no ending

    Not even an ouroboros but more a writhe of serpentine time

    I revisit the past reexamine my roots reword my existential stories

    Who I am today changes who I was but who I was influenced who I became

    A twisted entanglement that cannot be teased into separate threads

    All or one or some lead to who I will become but really

    All eventualities are present in each moment of my becoming

    And voidness too is there in the pause before

    This happens just so this happens regardless therefore no need

    To try any harder than I do no need to make my eyes see the back of my head

    It is there or not a hand clap a finger snap and I know

    Just breathe

  • Family Fishing Trips (Poem)

    One summer family fishing trips began, with my father, my mother, me.

    I liked the walks involved, often down some overgrown dirt road

    That ended with a view of the river and a dock.

    My parents had the usual gear of poles, wiggling things for bait,

    Bad snacks, and beer, all things I would not touch.

    I carried my own, being a couple of books, pen and paper, sunflower seeds,

    And a thermos of hot tea.

    They’d settle down to nosh, drink, and the usual trash talk, all given requirements for catching a fish,

    While I’d find an appropriate tree, climb it, open a book and read.

    Sometimes I’d ponder my own hypocrisy and wonder at its nature

    Which was that I refused to kill worms to catch the fish,

    Often protested the act of fishing itself on the spot ( to the point of monotony I was told),

    But once home and presented with dinner would still eat the catch.

    The time I tried to follow the logical end of my principles,

    I found myself given an empty plate at every meal, for my mother had her own set of rules.

    Stubbornness, even that of a small mulish child determined to be right, eventually succumbs to hunger.

  • A Case For Better Pre-K (Poem)

    I knew what I would find,

    yet I returned again and again.

    It wasn’t that I thought

    that your cold eyes would thaw

    that your stony visage would soften,

    rather, my misguided belief that I could learn

    to warm myself before your frozen disdain

    to make a home within your rocky disregard.

    my fault, my grievous fault,

    but I had not yet read the tragedians

    to understand how deadly a mother can be.

    I found comfort in the Oresteia.

  • The Gun Shot (Poem)

    He sat on my stoop, slightly drunk as usual, with his head against my door.

    He swayed a bit as I helped him inside and asked me for a drink.

    I gave him water, fed him a meal, and listened like I always did.

    He told me the stories he could not escape,

    The stories that drove him to walk the night,

    The stories that put him there with his gun.

    The war, some covert machination for unknown gain,

    Where he killed for reasons he was never told,

    Continued to claim him as a casualty.

    He did not kill himself that night,

    Though he fired one shot in his liquored haze.

    Perhaps he knew it did not matter,

    Because he had not returned alive at all.

    No war is just, for any cause, if this is what results.

    I hold the brass casing in my hand and mourn.

  • Evening, 1969 (Poem)

    It was almost dark, and I was alone.

    The moon waited to rise, sunken in the swampy waters just beyond.

    It would be bigger than the sun, orange-red,

    But send no fiery heat to blister the tarmac.

    I wanted to stop on the edge of the gravel road,

    To watch this happen, but had no time.

    My skin throbbed as I walked, and I wondered

    What would happen if I raised my head in supplication.

    Would the night heal what the day had wounded?

    I wanted to stop but had no time.

    I still remember the crunch and slide of the gravel underneath my feet,

    The whirr and click of crickets, and the weight of the damp dusk

    As it fell, far too heavy and far too fast, upon my hurrying back.

    Eight years old, alone.

    I wanted to stop but had no time.

  • First Snowfall (Poem)

    cold dropped my wandering mind

    immediately into the heat of body’s center,

    wind slammed my absent attention

    into the here and now of walking,

    clouds forecast my changed trajectory into a quieter day.

    I cannot call you as before,

    to register this dramatic landscape.

    frozen tears are no different than ice;

    sorrow chills the heart in mid-beat.

    another death, and snow is falling.

    another day, and you are gone beyond.

  • The Encounter (Poem)

    It was more the fact of me than my work,

    I think, that caught their attention.

    They came expecting art, not to find the artist.

    I appeared at first an acceptable guide, until I started talking:

    Explaining the premise of the show,

    The collaborations between intelligence human and non,

    And offering a few baffling metaphysical concepts.

    I asked startling questions, though it appeared

    That to these young people any questions were so,

    As I sensed they came from a school

    That encouraged smiling silence, not vocal curiosity.

    The young women looked interested; the young men appalled,

    Both understandably so.

    For the first, I could be a glimpse of an alternative future;

    The latter might find me a definite threat,

    As I proudly stalked unafraid through the halls.