Blog categorized as General

You & Them

You can almost hear the snickering

Behind their quizzical stares,

And feel their question behind

The long, awkward silence that asks

What is art

Compared to wealth?


You might wonder 

If they care about the past,

Shrugging before yet another cemetery,

Another memorial, 

Questioning the origin story o...


Dark Days

Dark days descend 

When black humors ink the void,

Like a giant squid groping

In the cold, silent depths.


You feel the pressure everywhere

Like an entire city block on your back,

Can’t see an inch in front of your face

Without feeling your eyeballs squeezed down like olives.


Can’t think except for the ...



 The Artist- I

You don’t need art

In the middle of a dream,

Waking up cheek to cheek

With your sleeping daughter

Who climbed into bed, frightened

With dreams of her own.


You need art

For the month after your father dies

When everything before you is

Like driving in a snowstorm at night.

You don’t need art

In the middle of ma...


My Toes

Like a thug Irish street gang,

Beat up, mangy, and gnarled.

Crowded together as if for a mug shot,

The large one, the muscle, crusted over,

Put through the wringer,

Next to him was the big guy’s best friend,

Mastermind of the whole outfit,

Long, skinny, and balding 

Hairs ingrown,

Then there was Roast-B...

The Neighbor

Walking around,

You can’t help learning about longing

For an ordered world, gleaming from a manicured lawn.


How care comes from Chrysthaneumums

Planted tenderly in rings

Around a mailbox.


How the mezuzah on the doorframe

And the quiet outside 2B on a Friday evening,

Is a holy quiet.


How a wild, untamed front...




The Angel Muse

Cheek to cheek in loving clique,

Warm blanket of security,

The perfect sleep with dreams down deep

And fears faded into obscurity.


Loving girl, skin of pearl

Whose beauty and kindness are one,

The hair in curls, the skirt that twirls

And a mind shining like the sun.


Hair in the wind, legs that are thin

Like ...



The Human Core

Buried, buried deep
In the Human Core,
Grievances wash up
Along resentment’s shore.
As we hold onto grudges 
Like seashells we adore.

Buried, buried deep
In the Human Core,
Language’s lattice bears fruit
In the mind’s pergola’s sweet-scented store.
As we pick the ripe analogies,
And bite into the juicy me...











Tomatoes

Round and red and full of dread,

Fearful fruit ripe to be bled,

They say beauty hides goodness within

But I simply do not believe them.


Sunlight glistens red orbs on the vine,

Some pop cherries in their mouth and call it divine.

I shudder at the thought and admire them from afar,

The idea of eating one who...


The Teacher- I

Her father poo-pooed the idea
Of her going to Law School
And becoming an attorney, like him,
Because that’s not what girls did,
Even though she could take apart his arguments
With her eyes closed.

After battling her father at the dinner table,
She learned what it’s like to deal with difficult people.
Up in ...