Browse Topics

The Depression Years: Costly Memories

Being of the “old school,” the subject of money affects me in a different way: memories of depression years, five cent apples sold on the corners, bread lines, cold winters without coal, hot summers without a fan, sweat shops and no money for trolley fare to go to the beach and cool off.

The Good Times

Here I am, at the end of another long-term relationship. This time seems easier than the last, but I can’t really tell — time blurs my memory out of focus.

Sy’s New York Diary: Amazing Flesh

I read, in the newspaper, about a man who is dragged from his car, knifed repeatedly for the few dollars in his wallet, and left bleeding in the gutter. My mother says her friends don’t go out at night. It’s an old story, old as the city’s tired and dour expression, old as the dry and wrinkled hands of a man trying to remember better days and remembering nothing but bone.

The Nothing Poems

Learning To Love

Living with and loving kids who never got an even break. I put aside the idea of climbing the mountain together. I read case histories and wonder if I could make even a small impression. Could they learn to love me as I love them? Could they begin to love our brothers and sisters as well? Is it even possible that they could learn to love parents; foster-parents; judges; probation officers; and policemen, who, in their own weakness, do the children so much wrong?

Spring

Nearly Singing

Untitled

Whether life or its meaning comes first becomes irrelevant

Whether life or its meaning comes first becomes irrelevant. Love is meaning. Life without love is meaningless.

[Love seeks to encompass]

Selected Poems