Love from The Abyss…by Robert M. Katzman, February 14, 1988
Love from the Abyss
by Robert M. Katzman © February 14, 1988
Written for my love, my wife, in 1988, after ten years of marriage and after nearly three years of my unemployment, when deeply depressed I learned what happens to a guy who received twenty years of great publicity running a once famous Bob’s Newsstand, and then found out nobody would hire someone like me. They said, like a line of robots: “Well, you’ll leave as soon as you can to start over.”
One month later, I was hired to manage Europa Bookstore at 3229 N. Clark Street, in BoysTown, Chicago
Discovered among her papers last night, I wanted to give Joy a Valentine, and this is what I wrote for her thirty years ago, today. We were both 37. It rhymes, but so what? No other person has ever seen it. We, our love, and our marriage survived:
Our balances are red
Your mood sometimes blue
After ten years of marriage
My Valentine to you
Never mind Valentine was Catholic
And I a wandering Jew
Today’s meant to be a ‘Day of the Heart
To give praise, or sometimes to rue’
You cook and clean
And sew and spank
For such a life
You have me to thank
While your pretty blonde head
Wears no diamond crown
You know if ever you need me
I’ll always be around
Our love can’t be a balance sheet
Where one thing equals another
How do you measure my loyalty and love
Against checks I sometimes can’t cover?
Our kids have a Father and Mother
For the good times and the bad
To cheer them on when they do well
And hold them when they’re sad
Marriages isn’t all soft puppies
Sunlight streaming thru a window
Not all pot roast and holiday cheer
Not victory over each foe
More like anxious moments
Of pregnancies and pain
Struggling through a wilderness
Where nothing’s ever the same
Choices and decisions
More often wrong than right
Regret, regret and regret again
Lying silently awake at night
I’m grateful for our children
For their beauty and their health
Their intelligence and humor
Is our legacy and wealth
Though our home is not a castle
And our car is barely alive
Don’t measure our lives in metal and brick
Don’t stand in our doorway and sigh
Don’t pine for the things you haven’t
Don’t dwell on longing for jewels
Many a woman rich in silver and gold
Would gladly trade for my love for you
Hug me for no reason
Cause you’re luckier than you know
Hold my hand as we face what’s ahead
For we’ve so many years to go
***
Thanks for reading this buried love letter.
Hope you all find someone like Joy
Happy Valentine’s Day
Bob Katzman
Valentine To a Wounded Wife
Written February 12, 2016, twenty-eight years later, as she was gradually dying
My way of writting poetry to her, had evolved
Publishing News!
Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart and Vol. Two: Fighting Words
Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine. More history about one man’s life than a person may imagine.
Please visit my new website: http://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t want to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.
Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
I will get your books to you within ten days.
Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:
Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.
Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998
Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping
For: (1)$3.95; (2)$5.95; (3)$7.95; (4)$8.95 (5)$9.95;(6) $10.95
(7) $11.95; (8) $12.95; (9)$13.95 (10)$15.95 (15)$19.95
I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools should call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.
My Fighting Words Publishing Co. four original books, published between 2004 and 2007 are now out-of-print. I still have some left and will periodically offer them for sale on my new website.