April 2023
Robert Wexelblatt
wexelblatt@verizon.net
wexelblatt@verizon.net
Bio Note: I live outside Boston and commute to Boston University.
Author's Note: The first poem describes a sleepless night. Like epic poems, hectic days, Brecht’s plays, and TV shows, such nights can come in episodes. The second poem’s pity and dread were prompted by a visit to a care facility.
Author's Note: The first poem describes a sleepless night. Like epic poems, hectic days, Brecht’s plays, and TV shows, such nights can come in episodes. The second poem’s pity and dread were prompted by a visit to a care facility.
One Night in Five Nocturnes
1. The problem keeping him awake is like a scratch on vinyl splitting much-loved harmonies with rude, irrevocable clicks. 2. Between midnight and three he thinks of one thing. The quiet house turns into lead around him, at last dissolves into gray thoughtlessness. 3. She sighs, she turns. In pale light from streetlamp he smoothes her blanket taking care not to trespass on some exclusive, covert dream. 4. A barrage of blackness pelts the window before dawn. Millions of souls assault in waves; he wards them off behind the crenelles of the blinds. 5. Moonlight silvers the windowsill. Scarcely disrupting the silence, he dances alone through the house, arms raised, embracing empty air.
An earlier version of this poem appeared in Line Zero
Days of Our Lives
Our geriatric semi-circle sits
around the purple spume of cathode rays,
some keen, others bored, some with misplaced wits
attending to the noise of dispatched days.
The meretricious phonies on the soaps
mean to amuse with passion, animus,
concupiscence, hands clutching at blind hopes
of love. Thus, we kill time while time kills us.
©2023 Robert Wexelblatt
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