13 Line Experiment (2009)
In the developing neuro-network, gaia, quantum determinism
unfolds into refracted realities, glimmering sparks, momentum
of free will…
Winter window—a poem with art
Winter window Outside the opportune window one pink head survives above geranium leaves blowing in the winter wind, covered with cold rain dropped from dimmed desire. The basil released its hope in the face of the war— forces of December and January— mere stalks rising above the window box, darkly silhouetted, […]
Three (a poem)
Three One lies restless in the small hours, the dead of night— three in the morning and worried about medical motorcycles whizzing past a wife on her way home from work this evening— distressed about tear gas and bullets fired into Gazans at the border fence West Bank rioters— hounded […]
The Woman with a Beard Again
She’s slept for a couple of years, nearly, but the woman with a beard has asked to return, and I have obliged her and the toad whose garden she sometimes tends. They can be most insistent. If you have not read some of her history, you can search […]
Landscape (poem)
I wrote the first draft of this poem twenty years ago, give or take a few months. Although I have sent it out many times, it never seems to have caught an editor’s attention. So, time to let it fly on its own here. Perhaps you will see […]
Poem: Fun-house mirror universe
Fun-house mirror universe i Today they accidentally warped space, bent it faster than light-speed— our future joy-ride mirrors the past in a reflecting universe from the omega-alpha. Mirror-time runs from the future. We scurry from the past, dance in some now to big-bang tunes. ii Big-bang music plays, […]
Two Ekphratic Poems
Two poems to go with paintings of Greenland. Art by Judith Appleton, poems by Michael Dickel.
Flash Surrealism
Programming cultural DNA The troglodyte tree emerged from its cave exactly when three lights lit the evening sky on the New Moon that fell before the birth-month of mother owl. Just a hatchling of course, in her first month, and a growth to maturity away from motherhood—but she […]
Flash Fiction— Late for Dinner
Why she was late for dinner… A bag falls to the sidewalk, glass shatters, wine spills—a ghost woke and walked by her, a forgotten moment now scented by shiraz evaporating on hot cement. These days she simply shrugs off such occurrences—hidden minutes pour out along her path wherever […]
Poem: It wasn’t the sharks
It wasn’t the sharks I lost myself, drowning in waves of sunshine and fear. During stormy weather and when it was clear, I dove underwater to stay out of sight—that is, until sharks came that one lonely night. They struck at my legs and I knew […]
Flash Fiction: Moshe’s House in Space
The following flash fiction responds to a prompt (the photo above) from the Short Story and Flash Fiction Society, for their second flash fiction contest; the story is 392 words, not counting the title (or this blog-post introduction). Moshe is our son’s name, he is three (almost four), and […]
Klezmer evenings…a poem from Tzfat
In Tzfat this Evening The Klezmer festival music plays on and the fireworks blast into the sky exactly on time at ten, brilliant and loud. But the ceasefire broke apart before then, hours before—and Code Red sirens blasted in the South, in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, shortly after […]
A Poem from Jerusalem
As the War Continues i That war in the little southwest strip, its violence drowns out all sounds— words drain of meaning and become white spaces against blood-red paper. The numbers rise up, a large pile of bodies reaching toward the sun to ignite and burn, a pyre […]
Escaping Rooster
A bit over a week ago we visited the Jerusalem Zoo. In the children’s area, goats and roosters run loose. Other animals stay in pens nearby, and both the goats and roosters can escape into the pens. It’s all made of wood with a very distinct ranch feeling. […]
May you have a joyous year
Weekly Photo Challenge: Sea
The complex sea, this week’s photo challenge, cannot be captured in one image or a dozen, nor 12,000 words if a picture is worth a thousand words. Here, I present nine images, all but one from along the Mediterranean coast of Israel. The first photo is from Croatia, […]
Up against the wall,
Up against the wall, …sits odd statuary, sullen sadness created by hand from nothing more or less than general failures that anyone might turn away from on some given day: A house taken by bankers who would not settle for anything less from two buyers, work taken by […]
Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreshadow
Foreshadow: There is a Crack in Everything I’m trying the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge for the first time. The theme for this week is foreshadow. As the guidelines provide a broad definition, I’ve played with the theme in different ways for the photos I’m posting here. As I […]
Meta/ Phor(e) /Play 