Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© December 2009

Don’t make my kisses

Comma In your sentences

(Read on …)

© October 30, 2013

Not born

Spit from the earth

More like something unwanted

Which he was

And he knew it

Not raised, forged

Beaten and terrorized

He grew an exterior of slate

Insolent and imperfect

When something went wrong with his body

The rude husk of this impatient man

When offered a choice of surgery or waiting

He’d say:

“Just cut it, fix it and be done with it”

Pain expected and pain delivered

What else was there? (Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story

© January 29, 2013 (dates updated 1/27/2020)

Something romantic
Please
For a moment

53 years ago,
January 27, 1967
Chicago
Had its greatest snowstorm
Ever

I was trapped in my mother’s house
(where I didn’t live)
With a bunch of my sister’s
College friends
There for a party, also trapped

I was 16
Not a cool 16

Over the next three days
I managed to
Fall in love with this

Tall
Willowy
Strawberry Blonde
An older woman of 18

Who invited me to neck
With her
The first night of that party
As if I knew
What to do

It became a
Passionate
Three days

Then, she was gone
It killed me
I was a junior in high school
She was a freshman at University of Illinois in Carbondale

No chance
No chance for me
(Read on …)

By Robert M. Katzman © Mother’s Day 2012 (37 years later)

Oh Dear God, it became her eulogy exactly five years later

on Mother’s Day, 2017-

Please let her find peace, somewhere

If Jacob the Carpenter

Hadn’t left

Mogilev, Byelorussia in 1901

Traveling from

New York to Kentucky To Chicago

and there met

Rose from Lithuania

We never would have met

If the Polish Border Guards

Hadn’t just missed Jacob

When they thrust their

Killing bayonets

Into the haywagon

He hid under and escaped in

We never would have met

(Read on …)

by Robert M. Katzman © 4/17/12

*

Spring 1966

Sixteen

Need a job

Wandering hot streets

I spy

Baskin-Robins!

A sign:

Help Wanted

Mandarin Chocolate Sherbet

Mint Chocolate Chip

Dark Chocolate

Jesus!!!

Panting

I chance it

Walk in

And see her

An older woman

Twenty-two

Short

Big brown eyes

Built

Name tag: Miriam

Ok

They don’t have to pay me

(Read on …)

 by Robert M. Katzman © August 27, 2011

(1) Blow: To form one’s lips into a circle and expel air at varying velocities, in order to possibly remove something unwanted from a surface

(2) Blowing a Kiss: Same as above except also holding one’s hand, palm up, under one’s chin and, after making a gentle kissing sound, (which is exceptionally difficult to define) aiming the imaginary act of affection toward its intended recipient, expedited by air expelled somewhat more urgently while also eliciting a receptive response

(3) Blow Up!: Besides destroying one another’s advanced civilizations with incendiary bombs and rockets dropped from airplanes, also means a sudden argument gone out of control with supervisor, fellow workers, one’s spouse, customer, or, on particularly bad days, all of them

(4) A Harsh Blow: To strike another’s body or intellectual concepts without mercy.  Can also mean to undercut one’s self esteem and likely to stifle one’s advancement in an organization unless the perpetrator of the act is decapitated in reality and not just in one’s imagination

(5) Blow, as per Presidential candidate Barak Obama: Cocaine, which surprisingly, is an elective at major universities throughout the world

(Read on …)