Nottiteln #20
The window
onto their tenth year
is barely a peep
Their jobs provide
more surds than sense
Gridlock is a given
The war reminds them
It won't let them forget
Dinner and the usual minutiae
for a weeknight
Tired from chasing after
the kids
they sink into bed
Hugs and caresses
obligatory or real
Words can only
fall short
She reminds him to set
the alarm
Did he check the doors
Her earplugs will only
half-muffle the sounds
He tosses and turns
until he finds his way
to dream
In the Tatry
a jackdaw alights
a snow-weighted bough
collapses
It has come to that
Try to separate
the wheat from the chaff
Nottiteln #21
I.
His jogging shoes
press waffles
into the soggy turf
of the exploding park
II.
Father hovering behind
she draws with her Barbie bike
a network of wobbly lines
on the flat grassy square
III.
The iron neatly sheathes
in wax paper
the perfect august leaf
IV.
The wall holds aloft
the offending pages
while their eyes lash
at the dates
Nottiteln #22
I.
The model's flesh is
a mottled brown
The light uncertain
The fly a blur
II.
Standing upright
juxtaposed to nothing
the objet is stranded for hours
on an otherwise desolate
table
III.
Tired of surface commerce
wanting to get beneath the skin
another Brueghel
has disrobed a Rome Beauty
down to its core
Nottiteln #23
I.
Milling tourists
as rustling cassock—
His cursory inspection
comes away empty-handed
re: evidence of the '97
quake
He stands in the cloistered light
of Basilica Superiore
wondering if Cimabue
intended this blue
II.
Except through translation
he will never enter
Dante's paradise
of terza rima
III.
In the lobby of the Great Hall
he fiddles with the pale estimates
of transcendental numbers
queries the metasubjects
of the absent Lord
Nottiteln #24
Sisyphus is pushing
against gravity
Samson turns
the millstone of
the inevitable
Nothing is exempt
Everything is grist
A foreign language film
in which nothing is happening
A celluloid approximation
to the end of the world
***
I try never to think of myself as one person. I'm not static. For this reason, and also because I like the "mask of literature" (i.e., what part of this work is him? what part total fiction?), I'm not altogether comfortable with or keen on bios.
Yet all of my work is extremely autobiographical.
Two extremes are embodied in me: the desire to be known and the need for anonymity.
Go figure.
Vitals stats: Born: Jackson, Michigan; DOB: Sept. 24, 1959; Education: variable and ongoing: Engineering (Univ. of Michigan), Theology (Grace Theological Seminary), Near Eastern Languages/Culture, and Education (UCLA).
Rilke's semi-proof of an afterlife. I paraphrase: the lifelong sense of "I'm still learning and therefore any sense of completion must come postmortem."
My beautiful family represents my feminine side: my wife: Ania; and my two girls: Katia (7 yrs) and Nadja (4 yrs).
My current residence: Long Beach, California.
My passions: reading, writing, and travel.
My current mission: teaching math to inner-city Los Angelenos (Thomas Jefferson High School, Los Angeles, CA.).
Influences: mostly dead guys: Samuel Beckett, Max Frisch, Thomas Mann, Tolstoy, Nabokov, Rilke, Celan, Zbigniew Herbert, et al.
A few recent credits include: Arbutus, Poet's Canvas, OffCourse, Niederngasse, Pierian Springs, The Richmond Review and Snow Monkey.
A recurrent dream: being elsewhere.
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