Different Slants

by Robert M. Katzman © August 23, 2022

This story has its roots in 1955 and deals with the never-expected consequences of child abuse through the decades of one man’s life. Most people go from day to day, live their lives and hope for the best. But not everyone. Children who have been severely beaten when helpless often grow up to follow the same pattern with their husbands/wives or children and continue the chaos for another generation or two. Other people seek comfort in drugs and the company of people who live violent lives as a way of coping, (or not coping) with what happened to them long ago. Difficult to put a band-aid on the horrors of one’s past – pat it on its head and say,

”There, there, child… everything will be all right.”

No, everything won’t be alright.

(Read on …)

by Robert M. Katzman © August 16, 2022

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Enormous, lumpy and immovable

Seven feet of pain

A monolith in my basement

The damned Black Couch

Where my dying wife lay

For months watching TV

Pumping morphine

Every ten minutes

*

(Read on …)

by Robert M. Katzman © December 28, 2021

(This story – about a very odd moment in time – was originally published in 2008 in my book, Fighting Words Vol 4, as a response to an email from Richard Boyajian’s daughter Holly, about a story I wrote on improving the relationship between Turkey and Armenia. She answered what I wrote online without knowing me or that I was a student of her father, Richard, when I was in high school at the University of Chicago Laboratory School in 1964-8. 

(Read on …)