Torching My Past on Easter Sunday…by Robert M. Katzman
Copyright April 12, 2020 by Robert M. Katzman
***
During this Time of Virus
In solitary
Watching the sky
Hearing the silence
Clouds float by
Time floats by
I realize, at nearly seventy
There will never be a
Museum of my Life and Times
Like everybody else
I will evaporate
***
In my garage
In my basement
In closets and corners
Stacked in the shadows
Are boxes and boxes and boxes
Of records of stores
Once Wonderful and Unique
Now closed for years and forgotten
The University of the Universe
Will not be calling
***
Paper bank statements from banks long gone
Paper records of every day’s sales
Medical records, pages and pages
Of so many of the
Astounding number
(even to me) of
My forty-one surgeries
By Doctors long dead
In hospitals now closed or sold
The boxes of paper
Will not fascinate my four children
“Why didn’t he dump all this stuff, damnit!”
Like I said about my own Mother’s
Mountain of the records of her life
***
I have boxes of publicity
My younger picture on the covers
Colorful stories on the inside
Of now bankrupt newspapers
Paper newspapers themselves
As extinct as anything
I ever did and was written about
Maybe seventy newspapers and magazines
Who cared then?
Who cares now?
***
I think about the millions of newspapers
I sold in horrible Chicago weather
But also on beautiful days
Over twenty years
When every other corner had
A shaggy old guy
Probably a crippled veteran
From World War Two
Selling newspapers from a shack
***
Me?
I was the shaggy young guy selling newspapers
Also from a shack
All of them are dead
Yet, somehow I linger
A walking/talking survivor
Of a Time Gone By
When the World’s news
Was printed on paper
***
I accept my pending extinction
As, well, ultimately undistinguished
And so I opened my garage
Opened all the closets
Hauled out the many heavy boxes
Stacked them all up near
My massive red brick fireplace
Big enough to burn a wooden pallet
Tossed the box covers onto a still swing
Briefly examined a life that used to be
My tortured handwriting on everything
When (think of this!) writing with
Metal and plastic sticks filled with ink
Was the only way to communicate
***
Becoming emotionally frozen
Remembering glass and brick stores
Gone by
Remembering a long loving marriage
To a solid partner
Who built things with me
Who closed things down with me
Who nursed me through endless surgeries
Now ashes herself in Israel and Iceland
My dear Joyce Esther
I assembled all the dry paper and twigs
Branches and logs at the ready
An inferno at my disposal
Knowing exactly what I was doing
But it was a robot who lit the match
***
Burning?
Burning is mere ignition
Light the match and walk away
But Torching?
Torching is an act of passion
Heart-ripping passion
Where a man stands
Facing his life in flames
Intense searing heat
Melting the frozen parts of him
The rivers of tears
Evaporating as they fall
***
As the small fire grew
As small fires grow
Crackling and white smoke wavering
I expertly added more dry fuel
Preparing for my paper funeral
I was moving as woodenly
As the wood I fed into the flames
My life unspooled like a shaky
Black and White movie
Flickering images of sixty years of
Shuttered entrepreneurship
Watching the flames grow
Dancing bright yellow, red and orange
Like a party was about to begin
And then I began dumping my life
Into the hungry young fire
The present engulfing my past
***
The thousand pieces of paper
Took a long time to burn
Most of a day
The heavy logs I kept adding
Grew higher and higher
Creating a fiery open maw of a mouth
Gulping down:
The envelopes
The letters
The records
The forgotten fame
And eventually
The boxes themselves
Creating a miniature Alps of Ash
***
It wasn’t a Viking funeral
No crowds of warriors and women
Watching mournfully from the shore
As the floating flaming fire
Gradually drifted away from them
It was just me
Transfixed by this anonymous process of
My disappearing
Before my own tired eyes
***
The massive logs disintegrated
An illusion of solidity
The fire itself white as if it, too
Had grown old
Covered with all the white ash
When suddenly the wind picked up
The ash swirling out of the fireplace
Like the white rain of a life
Ascending and disappearing
When the wind then stopped
And all the ashes
Rained down upon me
Like burying the living
In a thick shawl of anonymity
Fragile Fragments of what
Used to be words
A writer appreciates irony
Especially a sad writer
And I stood there
Frozen in the ashes of my life
***
As I suddenly realized
I will be dispersed
In the ashes of my death
*********
Publishing News!
(Currently seeking representation as a speaker/poet for hire)
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 and 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 (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM
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 can call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.
My two latest books are available in the Racine Wis Public Library. Both books are labeled: 921 KAT. ROB on their spines, in autobiography Dept.
Signed Books are also for sale at:
Studio Moonfall Bookstore, 5031 7th St. Kenosha, Wis, email: hello@studiomoonfall