Tag Archives: Poems

A new poem for when it’s cold and rainy

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It’s cold and rainy up in Cape Cod and I’m sticking close to home, working on a long-haul project. Feels good to be near the Atlantic, with a hot water bottle at my feet and a pile of thick blankets. I want to meet a few writing goals today, then treat myself to a slab of fresh salmon from Cape Fish & Lobster— the best of the best.

It’s always a good idea to treat yourself to a nice slab of salmon, no matter what’s going on in your life. I hope things are going well, and that the things that might not be going so well turn around again soon. I believe in you.

It was great fun to receive a writer’s package in the mail from Mumbai, India the other day– the latest from Poet’s Choice (dig that postage!) It’s always nice to be included in things, if it’s an anthology or a birthday party or whatever. People want to be included, not excluded, from that which is soul-affirming in this world. Even I know that, and I was recently informed that I “lack all people skills” by someone who has “exceptional people skills” so I’m excited to confirm this hard-fought wedgeling of insight. Take it with a grain of salt. Chase with tequila.

Below is my latest poem, out now from Poet’s Choice: “Free Range” (2023).

Proof of life!

Why Can’t I be a Bureaucrat?

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imagesI love a lot of things: coffee, croissants and a real newspaper in the morning; slipping between the closing doors of a departing subway train; Annie Hall. But few things top the feeling of publishing a new poem. Especially when that poem centers on bureaucracy and the work of the beloved and functionally essential automaton.

This piece seeks to capture the central question: Are you a bureaucrat? If so, how’s it going? Is the stereotype of torpor in the workplace accurate, or a wild misreading? Please update in any comments. I’ll send a suitably work-appropriate yet impossibly witty commemorative garment to any who feel open to weighing in. I need to know– you are a bureaucrat. What, then, does that mean and how does the work (I ask this in all seriousness) help you to realize the still-untrammeled dreams you continue to pursue in the liminal wake of life as it passes. Time unfolds, we are faced with the reality of diminishing returns.

So tell me. Tell me everything. For you are a bureaucrat, yes, but you are also– centrally and most importantly– you, a wildly creative and a vital voice rising up from the fertile ground of your own creative vanguard. You know what I mean. You know.

Sing to me.