How to Live Forever Diet is a good place to begin Then exercise, of course, And as much love As you are capable of, spread In as many directions as possible Sex, too, is a good thing, Especially when accompanied by tenderness And generosity And don’t forget the weather– All kinds, inclement and […]
Missing You It’s not just your body that I miss, though I miss it dearly. I miss your face– all of it, the pretty, ravenous nose, the perfect mouth I miss your ears too especially when I am licking them and other parts of you that need not be mentioned here Oh baby, […]
Abundance There are too many words in the world too many poems too many I love yous whispered into thin air There are too many speeches given by too many politicians too many public officials too many critical issues too many proposals on the table, too many weather reports too much weather even […]
Morning Song The sun shines on your face in the garden chair the tufted titmouse sings in the bowing acacia the moles commence excavating their tunnels you inhale deeply the scent of your morning coffee one breath follows another light slowly swallows the shadows on the grass. You are. The world is. This […]
Fallen, Risen You have fallen down stairs many times, risen and dusted yourself off and you have fallen on ski slopes, toboggan runs, off skateboards of many kinds, a broken bone here or there but never a tragedy. And you have fallen in love, of course, as we all have and lived to […]
Postcard for Winston Fuller There is no absence of self in such poems. The whatness of the moment is always someone’s awed account of having been there. It is always a postcard from one soul to another. The curtains float from summer windows as in a Wyeth painting All the little mountains dug up […]
Just Life The man whose son’s brain has been virtually eviscerated by shrapnel in Iraq and who’s been reduced to a caregiver 24/7 says it’s just life that it’s happened this way he says, without a trace of self-pity, it’s just life, as does the woman whose schizoid son has just been admitted to an institution, the […]
All the News That’s Fit to Print The news has spread among the blackcaps, greater tits and nuthatches in my backyard that there are fresh sunflower seeds in the feeder and a brisk wind blowing from the south not a word about Donald Trump has been uttered not a syllable about the markets even […]
Stone-Hearted “Hide your God, for as He is your strength, in that He is your greatest secret, He is your weakness as soon as others know him.” Paul Valery, The Art of Poetry I like working at a university where there’s a building called Mineral Industries and another called Pharmaceutical Studies. It […]
Freedom Budapest July, 2015 I must confess I have taken a second croissant from the table marked one coffee one croissant at the old socialist Erzsebet Hotel here on Kiraly Mihaly utca in Budapest and that the second one tasted even better than the first; all this after watching the Communist-era […]
Ambition I lie on the bed in my bathrobe with the cat. Outside, a misty rain. So many things to be done in this world, so many injustices rectified. Somewhere, in a lab filled with crescendos of test tubes, frenzied scientists sit on the cusp of curing misery. I wish I were among them. […]
Transcendence I have spent enough time with my legs crossed in lotus position focusing on my breath to know now that it is not the road to transcendence for me and I have also spent sufficient rapturous moments with my nose between your legs to know for sure that for each of us there […]
Theatre Piece I play a part and you play a part The part I play is in a piece of theatre written for you The part you play was written for me All the other actors in this theatre piece have minor roles, trying to crowd us off the stage. But we are […]
Love Does not need to be difficult: two hearts, two mouths whispering their particular truths to one another in a language only one speaks and only the other understands
Poem I fell in love with you not by choice not from need not out of loneliness or even lust but only because my heart had been crying out in the wilderness for so long and someone finally answered Aber nur weil Mein herz in der Wildnis so lange geschrien hatte Und endlich […]
Socks I told my lover today I had finally put the socks she gave me on in the right order: the one marked “L” on the left foot, the one marked “R” on the right. She laughed, all the way from Hungary. It is so good to have things to laugh about in […]
The Difference Between Being and Doing Do you think, I ask my friend Winston over bourbon in the backyard, we have a duty to others– I mean, strangers? Winston and I meet every Monday to discuss something important to one of us. My wife, as she often does, has been making me feel bad about who […]
At The Politically Correct Feminist Seder The Jewish Labor Federation Haggadah I had long ago made peace with a female God and, not without a certain pleasure, the possibility of the woman on top, nor did it bother me to hear about oppression of the workers, sexism, ethnic cleansing, corporate greed and […]
