Sirens of Regret
By Robert M. Katzman © June 26, 2014
I can hear it far away
Weaving in and out
Sirens
Firetruck?
Better get outa the way
Wasn’t I painting something?
Mrs. Phillips, your boy has talent
You can tell that at seven?
Atonement: Judaism Distilledby Robert M. Katzman © October 1, 2012
This brief speculation, below, about meaning in poetic form was derived from a much more detailed and complicated original true story about my now deceased wife Joyce, grand-daughter Emjay and myself in Ottawa, Illinois ending up involving the Ottowa Police department. I somehow realized there was a poem within it, and decided to separate it.
Atonement Among The Christians
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Choosing to be in a small town in Central Illinois, over praying for forgiveness for my sins in a Chicago Synagogue on Yom Kippur–the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, is no simple decision
God, may be watching. Possibly, not approving. The risk could be fatal. But then, who knows?
When a person belongs to a group of people whose tiny numbers–less than 2/10ths of 1% of Earth’s entire population of seven billion or so, why worry about God noticing you no matter what you do?
1964: A Runaway’s Renaissance
by Robert M. Katzman © September 9, 2018
Fifty-four years ago on June 8th, 1964 I ran away from a dangerous violently abusive home. I was fourteen and two weeks away from graduating Caldwell grammar school on the South Side, about a dozen miles south of State and Madison, Chicago’s Downtown.
My story is filled with Ghosts, but it is worth writing down, if only to soothe the Ghosts’ anxiety.
After all, aren’t I part of a world-wide Tribe so often called: The People of The Book?
Who am I to resist that Celestial Design?
It is now long past “What will become of this wild child?”
Now near seventy, I must write, “This is what really happened.”
When I was very young on the South Side of Chicago, my Mother, a daughter of immigrants from the Jewish Pale area of Eastern Europe where Jews were forced to live by the Czar, was addicted to this drink called a “chocolate phosphate”.
She ordered this delicacy in Jewish restaurants which was essentially ice cubes, chocolate syrup and carbonated seltzer water. The basic point, she explained to me, was to make her “greptz” or belch after a heavy meal.
Decades later when I began going to New York City in 1980 for book conventions, I naturally assumed this common Chicago beverage would be available anywhere in a city with the largest Jewish population in America. But no one heard of it, didn’t know what I was asking for and quickly conveyed the impatience and rudeness that NYC was also famous for. (Read on …)
Letter to my (new) cousin, married to my blood cousin, who is justifably distraught over where our country is torn now, and how his own family suffered so much pain long ago because of their skin color. Funny, never met him, but I feel like I know him, and what is eating at him. I really care:
Bernie, whatever you call yourself, you’re good enough for me. And there are milions and millions and millions of “me” who aren’t ignorant, or hateful or under the illusion that one kind of person is somehow magically more valuable than another kind of person. What you wrote on Facebook is passionate and well-written–not that you need my opinion–I hope you get enough positive reinforcement to dilute the pain I read in your words.
America, Please, Don’t Do this!
By Robert M. Katzman © July I, 2018 (Canada Day)
Eyes flicker open in the darkness. I hear the battery wall clock ticking, so I must still be living. Pale morning light is peeking past the loose drawn shades covering some of this small house’s dozen large windows. If this were a fort, no way to defend it. But on a sunny morning, cool wind outside, shades up and windows open a bit on four sides, I don’t need electricity to clear the stale air or illuminate my house.
Wearing my usual long black T-shirt with the screaming American Eagle on it, the one that stops near my knees so I always appear modestly dressed to a morning visitor, expected or not, except for the fact that its only about five ounces of opaque cotton, I decide to do my morning routine, parts of which I’m recording here for future anthropologists. Present day people may be less entranced.
(Read on …)