“On Friday morning, the author Salman Rushdie was stabbed in the neck as he stood onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, in western New York, where he was scheduled to give a lecture. The motivations of his attacker were not immediately clear, but Rushdie—one of the most celebrated contemporary writers—had lived under the threat of violence…

Next a moment is a poet’s cliché of a singular blur tentative as an airborne bubble hard as hammer-blow to thumb moment: the smallest thing able to contain an unimaginable universe …………… a universe able to imagine the smallest thing as instantaneous as the passage of dust motes and Himalayas as ephemeral and solid as…

“Many life forms are so hard to categorize that (scientists) call these organisms the ‘Problematica.’”—from: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, by Annalee Newit Problematica Here we are, never still, casting lines upstream like fly fishers toward sources teeming with what came first hooking what we can, reeling it in…

Umwelt what I can perceive is the outer limit of what I am there is a universe of unknown dimensions it whirls about me but is not about me I am constrained I ride its hub Jim Culleny 6/22/22

“This guided Theseus thro’ the Maze; And sent Him home with Life . . . “ ………………… —Matthew Prior Love is a Cord, a Chord, Accord a boy at his labyrinth’s door grasped the end of the string of a spool proffered in the hands of a woman who knew that once within, if without tether,…

Book-banning is just one more tool used by demagogs to murder truth and hollow out God’s gift of intellect. ………………………. —St. Lingo Politics/Religion my brain’s a pouch in which I stash my loot if I keep its purse strings loose I might add to its load when new coin comes to town but if I tighten down the…

“This is my life.” “This is my only life.” …. —Stuart  Murdoch, in the chorus of Unnecessary Drama This is the One this is my only life it comes down to this I may have thought I had others but life is not mosaic in any sense that matters there are no pieces no re-dos…

“Gas stations at night can sometimes be weird places.” …………………………………………………. —Ruchira Paul, 5/7/22 Gas Stations Can Sometimes Be Weird at Night: Circa 1958 While in HS I pumped gas at a station in town owned by an amiable, but besotted old Italian guy who sat in his desk-chair next to the register, feet crossed upon…

. “I read the news today, oh boy!” .. The Protocols of Cause Grotesques are at the door we cook in our own juices thinking we’re immune from fire and ice thinking we still have time to burn we can’t imagine we’ll be stewed in our own vices because we have excuses But the protocols…

War & Weekends I’m writing from a list of prompts in an exercise for loosening the tight grip of uncertainty of mind in an effort to knock the chocks from under its big wheels to let the thing roll yesterday’s was war, which I skipped, never having been there but in books and other vicarious…

Ménage à Trois isn’t it a miracle that three atoms have combined in chemical love to become the slippery substance of that which both bears and wrecks ships, of bays that breed and shelter life —sustain it, of that essential stuff of bodies, of billows of mist that rain and surge through taps, of glaciers that…

I . Me .We so much depends upon the tale we tell ourselves, words have the force of love or death, they can raise or raze. In fact, the typhoon of a single letter, incessantly said, can ruin nations the simplest vertical stroke “I” or its Russian solo “Я” not to mention the tiny bleating…

—on scanning the news feed this morning: Stasis—a collateral effect of nuclear power We face the conundrum of dealing with Tony Soprano. Tony, you know, will stop at nothing while you, being disinclined to fire a nuclear warhead (when Tony has some too) are left with the fist of cutting off his credit. This is…

“I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.” —Daniel 7:9 William Blake’s Mandala in Blake’s split mandala Being asymmetrically stoops…

“Parrots, songbirds and hummingbirds all learn new vocalizations. The calls and songs of some species in these groups appear to have even more in common with human language, such as conveying information intentionally and using simple forms of some of the elements of human language such as phonology, semantics and syntax. And the similarities run…

That Came, Not Chosen 7 a.m. sungold flings photons from mountaintop across the river yesterday’s snow clings to a hedge of arbor vitae’s shadowgreen just as Mom’s flour dusted the tools of her art upon the table sifter, spatula, cups and spoons as if a painting of an arctic fable her baked art emerges from…

Lush Misunderstanding —of an interview with Jane Goodall _____________________________________ life from dying comes —life after life: a ballet of treed chimps, a great defining roar, a thin thread lost where are you, father? (a name I never called you, I called you, Dad) yet there it is: father half-ground of my issue, half-ground of my being,…

“I don’t think I ever was a child.”                     –Coleman Hawkins, top sax jazzman Jazzman Said I don’t think I ever was a child Was I a child? I don’t think— If I ever was a child I’d know.  …..I don’t. I don’t even know, jazzman said,…

Autistic —for Danny, 1949-1976 When you caught that bird in flight, that was a wild moment, the reflex of it, as if you’d had the mind and eyes of a hawk, as if in your world, mysterious to us all, mother father sisters brothers— as if in that world you flew above less bewildered than…