Different Slants

My 68^th Halloween. Trick or Treat?

by Robert M. Katzman © October 31, 2018

Well, of course, Trick

What did you expect?

The Trick for me is, this far gone

Is to remember what the Treats were

As life gradually unfolded

(Read on …)

So, I’m this old new guy

In an old

Small Town

In a big new state

I joined a poet’s group

Nice woman there

Carefully looks me over

Figures out

That Hanukkah

Is possibly my holiday

Clever woman

Then she leans over to me

And whispers:

“There’s this tiny Jewish cemetery

In a mostly

Christian Town

Near here

And their red steel

Entrance sign

With its big Jewish star

Collapsed on the ground

In the mud

Makes me feel bad

It’s not right

Maybe you can fix it”

***

I backed up from her whisper

A righteous Christian

If ever there was one

Does she think I somehow

Have magic powers

Able to lift steel girders

With a wink and a prayer??

***

(Read on …)

Talia’s Song

by Robert M. Katzman © December 16, 2011

(In honor of her Bat Mitzvah, on 12/10/22)

In 1 AD

Teutonic Tribes were gathering

In Germania

Warring against

The Roman Legions

And battling the wild Britons

Across the Channel

A Celtic people

Who painted themselves

Blue

When making war on invaders

So many invaders

* (Read on …)

Thanksgiving, 2011

Allow me my foolish mortality

My assumption of being more

Than meets the eye

The illusion of my value

Enduring beyond a moment

The weight of an observation

A measured interpretation of

Another’s expression

Calculating the risks of

My children’s relationships

Who weighs the value of such judgments?

What makes one’s past words more than

Faint rustling of dead leaves?

Are my pronouncements a telegraph

Clicking only on my end of the line?

  (Read on …)

November 4, 2011

I have been many places

Traveling alone

Traveling together

Sometimes both

Together’s better

Alone you choose

You come

You go

You pause

You contemplate

You share nothing

You have

Freedom’s

Isolation

(Read on …)

This is an exception for me.

I really never write about politics, economics or the whole circus.

I guess I don’t feel smart enough, or think who gives a damn what I think and other self-deprecating emotions.  When Rick Munden asked me to write this blog with him, four years ago, I figured he had some political thoughts to express and I’d write poetry and non-fiction stories. 

 But now is now and I feel like there’s something to say from a guy on the edges, who watches the crowds.  I’m a Jew and Jews tend to get run over in the juggernaut of massive political change.

We are and have been the “Canaries in the Mine” of political & social change.  The Canaries never fare well.  So, yes, I’m beginning to feel the first sense of fear that the ground is shifting.

So, here is how I, one person from a very old and despised people who have traveled the world for millennia seeking refuge from chaos and murder…see what is happening all at once:   

This is an amazingly slow motion crashing together of continents.  Maybe nothing will come of it and cold weather will kill it. 

Or, just possibly, it is something big, very big, which will crush the ignorance and prejudice of  the Tea Party mentality in America  and squeeze out the nationwide selfishness that allow the truly wealthy to disregard the crushing misery of the poor.  No one ever really recognizes the triggers of social change until after they’ve been pulled.

When the rich begin to experience fear–especially in this country–and there is no safe harbor for them anywhere in the world, all they can do is throw money at the poor and plead with them to stay away. This isn’t a Hooverville in the Great Depression.  Too many smart people far too well-connected all over the world. 

Truly the whole world is watching.  I think what’s happening is unsurpressable.

(Read on …)