by Robert M. Katzman © January 18, 2013
***
6 am
Cold wet black nose
Resting on my cheek
I don’t need an alarm
Not when you sleep with Lassie
Or in my case, Betsy
***
She wants out
No discussion
I stagger up
Wrap a blanket ’round
My chilly bare skin
Find the door
Then the kitchen door
And she’s gone
***
I slip on my jeans
Open the fridge
Grab the eggs
A clear glass bowl
Break all the eggs
Toss out the shells
The three yellow eyes
Staring up at me
© December 29, 2012
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Being 62, to me a toggle switch or a cell phone represent the length and breadth of my technological expertise. Younger people who make fun of that limitation would also probably ridicule a dog because it couldn’t fly. Must the dog defend itself? How?
On the other hand, what I lack in contemporary understanding of I-Phones, texting or chat rooms, I make up for with dogged persistence. There’s that dog again.
My beautiful wife Joyce and I respond to perplexing quandaries differently. She views an evidently unsolvable situation as a specific punishment from God aimed at her, and therefore she must accept that ruling.
I, however, even though being one of the Chosen People, don’t actually have a hotline to Heaven, and I see big problems as resolvable with a combination of steady patience and reducing the tangled mass of the problem into little digestible pieces. Here is a vivid example of such an incident.
Chanukah came in November this year, 2012, and though chronically short of funds, I was able to scrape together enough dollars to buy a 42†flat screen TV on sale at a very cheap price after months of hunting for just that.  It was made by a very obscure electronics company, probably imported from Mongolia.  My theory was that since I could only afford one gift, why not buy something that was the right size and color for all three of us? The third person is my delightful daughter Sarah, now sixteen. She would have rather had a car…any car…but that wasn’t in the cards for her this year.
So, our little electronic assembly now consisted of a strange-looking, vertical, silver colored device we received from AT&T’s U-Verse division in order to make our TV work and an ancient DVD/video player because we have 100 cassettes of all the Disney classics, they work just fine and our grandchildren are transfixed by those movies, plus that big, wide, skinny new TV. So, fine.
Joyce, being far better able than I am at following complicated instructions—she can use a sewing machine and program the TV clicker—read the little booklet provided so she could correctly attach the two cables provided to both the TV and the old movie player. The cables were the standard gold-tipped type with a long copper wire sheathed in black rubber and both ends had a single pin that connected most devices made long ago and still today. Everything worked. I knew they all would because Joy can even program our microwave, so what the hell, right? No surprises there.
Except for one.
Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355
(Reprinted from the original publishing of this story, December 8, 2008, just before Christmas Eve 2012. I hope it warms your hearts like warm brandy, just like it did mine when this frankly incredible story actually happened, four years ago.
Yes, there are good people out there, and you never know when you will meet them, even on the darkest of days. If anyone wants to post a comment, there ‘s a space to do that after the end of my tale.  I hope you do want to say something. Maybe you will tell someone else about it if they too need cheering up. Right now, I believe a lot of people need cheering up.
So, Merry Christmas. Here’s my little story, set during a fierce blizzard in Chicago, four years ago. Every word you read happened, as in all my stories.)
Charlie Newman, a Jersey guy, will get all this immediately. For him, I know I don’t have to spell it out.
But for all you other guys, well, it went down like this…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once a week, I go to this little place, a small cafe on the northwest side of Chicago–not the glamorous part–and join a rotating group of guys, and girls, to read my poetry and short stories at an “open mike†kind of place. This venue, cleverly named: The Cafe, is so intimate that there actually isn’t any microphone.
People are quiet and respectful of the spoken word, and so no amplification is necessary. It is a civilized two hours in our assorted lives, and the outside world doesn’t intrude in out efforts to communicate whatever is in our hearts or loins or whatever. By around ten o’ clock, when we are done and go on our separate ways, there are hundreds of words scattered around the floor of the tiny stage, and Baki, the silent owner, sweeps them up.
Every week, one person is the “Feature†of the evening. This means, instead of someone reading a few short pieces in seven minutes or so, one person has about twenty-five minutes to read a longer more complete work. Some people have their poetry published by different small presses and they sell a few copies.
There are usually about a dozen people who show up to take part in this moment of culture, gradually, by the 8:30 PM starting time, sometimes a half a dozen more. The place is so dimly lit, that if after a couple of beers, an affectionate couple decided to neck in a corner, near the bar, no one would notice. Or if they did, well…that’s a kind of poetry, too.
Week after week, this gathering of diverse individuals occurs and the number of participants is always about the same, even though I believe I’ve seen perhaps fifty or sixty different faces that drop by on a particular night, over the time I’ve been coming to The Cafe. It’s kind of mysterious that the number stays the same, but things don’t have to make sense every single time you get involved with something.
Charlie Newman is the Master of Festivities and also reads his own stuff, but at a speed so fast, no one can be sure exactly what it was he was expressing. Maybe he’s suggesting how fast life flies by and we better not miss it, but I’m just guessing that part. Charlie does his bit, and then introduces the first poet, and after that, by some Byzantine method only known to him, decides who follows that person on stage.
By Robert M. Katzman © October 21, 2012
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I hold coats for women
Open doors
Walk on the curb side
And push in their chairs
As they sit
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Because they are
“Fragile Flowers?â€
No
Moments of civility
In a
Savage world
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I write letters
On paper
In ink
Using all of the
Alphabet
(originally written in 1995, it has since been published in my second book, Escaping and Embracing the Cops of Chicago, in 2004)
When all of our children are married and gone
Our old home will be ours alone
No more towels and coats and books on the floor
We regain possession of the phone
No more lizards, newts, turtles and snakes
No more dogs, parrots and cats
Our private zoo will have slithered away
Of sure, we’ll miss all of that
© August 15, 2012
I’d tell him not to go to Whiting
Whiting, Indiana
The Furniture store where
Big Louie
My Great Uncle Louie
Gave him a job
Where he learned some English
Not much
*
I’d say:
Nathan from Minsk
Celia’s coming to Whiting
Coming from Poland
Louie’s little sister
A beautiful dark-eyed woman
Curvaceous and knowing
She will beguile you
Marry you
And the poison within her
Will flow
*
When she was thirteen
Her Grandfather Moses
Was killed in a 1914
Anti-Jewish Pogrom
And the terror came to live
Deep within her