Netherworld [revised May 3] - May 1 2026

 

Netherworld

May 1 2026

I used to think I didn’t dream.

Why a man in his prime

would sleep seamlessly

should have made no sense.

Perhaps exhaustion explains it,

stumbling into bed

and falling into a deep narcotic sleep,

no inner life left,

no energy

for self-indulgent contemplation.

So why, now that I’m old

do I remember my dreams,

sometimes so vividly

I bolt up in a fever sweat?

Why, when we have settled lives

and have either realized our dreams

or resigned ourselves to disappointment

does the sleeping mind

so busy itself?

Is it shallow sleep, or a restless brain,

bored

by the bland everyday?

Why does my mind race

between bathroom breaks,

awakening groggily

in the ghostly light of the clock,

rising, often reluctantly, through that liminal state

where blurry consciousness

and that gonzo world

intersect;

where anything is possible

and nothing quite real.

Where we’re all making art,

flicking brushes and throwing paint

at the spattered canvas in our heads.

If only the holy grail

of restorative sleep

would somehow come to me. 

But my brain has its own agenda,

and anyway, my life asleep

often seems more interesting

than the mindless day-to-day.

And after all

I have a life

already mostly lived

on which to ruminate

in night’s unnerving netherworld.

In our 2nd childhoods, do we regress,

become babies again

even if more cynical and jaded?

Who don’t sleep like the cliché,

but toss and turn

as their minds race,

trying to make sense of a bewildering world,

resolve the flood of sensation

before it swamps an immature brain,

twitchy

with freshly minted newness.

As of yet, I return to the world with little to share,

no insights of consequence

no great revelation.

Just interrupted sleep

that leaves me jet-lagged and questioning.

Trying to knit together

the fragments of dreams;

find my way back

along an unmarked trail

of flashbacks and random thoughts

I struggle to make sense of.

I have started to better remember my dreams the older I get. But I suspect it’s more a result of practice than some change in my brain or stage of life. Although I can only speak for myself. Perhaps others have experienced something similar. (Or, better said, remember more.) Maybe older brains, in general, do dream more.

And perhaps there’s no point in trying to make sense of dreams: that they’re not intended to be meaningful; that they’re just epiphenomena as the brain does its necessary work of consolidating memory and learning, self-repair, and once a day flushing itself of impurities — the waste products of metabolism.

The psychologist Susan Pinker has described babies as the R & D department of life: they aren’t passive lumps we shove food into; they don’t “sleep like babies”. Rather, their brains — with everything to learn, including the fantastic complexity of language —  are constantly churning:  more active than at any other time. So this is one stage of life that, no matter who you are, does require an intense dream life.

All at Once - April 30 2026

 

All at Once

April 30 2026

Dusk comes slowly

then all at once.

Light lingers

after the sun has set,

spreading through the atmosphere

and around the curve of earth.

As if it could be captured by air

and kept indefinitely

so darkness never comes;

a perennial dusk

of phantasmagoric light.

Incorruptible photons

that have travelled millions of miles 

reflecting off molecules

like light from silvered glass.

As if you stood between two mirrors

and saw your image recede

until infinity swallowed you up.

How small can you get

how long can you last

until vanishing

into its two dimensional labyrinth?

But night does come,

lit by the stars

and softened by the city lights.

So it never gets truly dark

out in the real world.

Except here

in this windowless space 

between four walls.

Where even a glimpse of sky 

is impossible

and there is no dawn or dusk,

no sense

of the passage of time

or when the dark will end.

Where night comes all at once

then stays;

bearing down on you

like a heavy weight

you haven’t the strength to budge.

This poem took itself in an unexpected direction. As if it had a mind of its own. 

Which isn’t surprising, since my process is generally to begin with an image or thought, have no particular expectation or preconceived ending, and then just riff. It can feel like taking dictation: the sound suggests a word, an idea offers itself, I let a tangent deflect me, or a phrase appears. Here, I began with looking up and watching dusk descend through the picture window, after which Hemingway’s famous quote from The Sun Also Rises came to me:  “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” It doesn’t darken at a steady rate. You don’t notice dusk settling in, until you do.

At some point, a theme hardens and the path ahead narrows. Here, I was playing around with darkness and light, with the night sky and the elusiveness of total darkness. So I figured human light pollution (another environmentally themed poem!) would be the direction it took. I can’t explain in any autobiographical way how the poem instead became a metaphor for depression, or at least for despair.

I suspect this came less from personal experience and more from process: the image of vanishing into a mirror, which led to the less literal thought of feeling so small you disappear. Which is as good a metaphor for depression as any.  But that wasn’t intentional; it came from simply wanting an example of molecules reflecting light. After all, isn’t the cardinal rule of poetry to show, not tell?

Not that there aren’t many reasons to despair in this time of dizzying geopolitical change, inequality, runaway climate change, and execrable leadership. (Not to mention the equally execrable followership that permits it to happen.)

Found Beauty - April 28 2026

 

Found Beauty

April 28 2026

The old chain link fence

offends my sense of order.

Adds to the air of neglect

of the bungalow

it presumes to protect.

Which is decrepit enough

with its peeling paint,

uncut grass, overrun with weeds,

and knock-off children’s toys

scattered messily

on the M.C Esher-ish deck.

I prefer plumb-line posts

standing as straight

as soldiers at attention,

galvanized metal

gleaming like a child’s teeth

proudly leaving the dentist’s.

Not the rusting chain link

and dented uprights

that lean like drunken sailors,

the saggy gate

that squeaks stiffly shut

if it closes at all.

Yet despite my first impression

there’s something about this fence

that draws my eye.

Perhaps how it has settled into the land;

conforming to its ups and downs,

gently subsiding

on the poorly drained soil,

and wearing its age

without apology.

Or how it makes the passage of time

seem material,

crystallized

in oxidized metal and dented posts.

Or how, in a neighbourhood

crowded out by gentrification 

this house stands firm,

despite its a cracked foundation

and fun-house tilt;

stubbornly shabby,

poor, but defiant,

refusing to conform.

The fence won’t keep anyone out

  — it’s not so much practical 

as an act of conceptual art.

In which I can't help but see

the found beauty

of imperfection and decay.

Of ageing gracefully

and stoic acceptance. 

And of bending, not breaking,

despite years of bad weather

and the settling of the land.

I walk past it each day,

and instead of looking unsightly 

and out of place,

it’s beginning to look more and more

as if it’s just where it belongs. 

Breaking Glass - April 27 2026

 

Breaking Glass

April 27 2026

A person from my distant past

has unexpectedly re-entered

my well-settled life.

Is this how it feels

to find a message in a bottle 

washed up onshore?

It floats on ocean currents

circling the globe

for untold years,

accreting barnacles

dodging gyres

and slipping past rocky outcrops 

until your paths somehow cross,

ineluctably drawn

to this exact spot

as if by fate or kismet.

As if life was circular.

As if beginnings always reached

a satisfying end

instead of dying of neglect,

or were‘t ill-conceived to begin with.

And as if coincidence

wasn’t just an accident,

no matter how much we skeptics

scorn the credulous 

who believe there’s some kind of plan.

Trouble is

water may have leaked

and turned the paper to pulp,

or the top has welded shut

and the bottle must be broken

  — sealed in a bag,

then shattered

with a hammer

at its fattest part.

Only to find the ink has faded,

and is as inscrutable

as the person you misjudged

when you were young

and far too trusting. 

Not all reunions end well.

Sometimes, it’s better to leave the past

buried in the sand,

no matter how tempted you are

to dig it up. 

The oceans are vast

its currents unpredictable.

  . . . Most bottles go missing.

If only the one you found

was what you went looking for.

And how, disillusioned or not

against all odds

you can’t stop yourself

from looking for more.

I was reading a New Yorker piece about a dedicated beachcomber who is obsessed with finding messages in bottles. There is a worldwide community of such people. Understandable, since even non-enthusiasts can appreciate the romance and mystery, as well as the thrill of the chase. There are so many tempting possibilities to this idea of a message in a bottle, I immediately wanted to write a poem.

(What Happens When Someone Throws a Message in a Bottle Into the Sea?https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/signed-sealed-delivered)

Shortly after, I glanced at my inbox and was reminded of an email from a childhood friend with whom I’ve recently gotten back in touch. Not so easy for me, since I’m not only not on social media, but generally rather hermetic in my “well-settled life”:  in other words, not one to go looking.

In reality, there are no regrets or bad memories associated with this childhood friend. While the poem takes a diametrically different path. Because I think this is something a reader might relate to: dredging up a long ago acquaintance, friend, or lover from the distant past, only to end up wishing you’d left him or her buried. Going back in time, hoping things might change   . . . or simply forgetting   . . . or wanting to make amends.

The Quantum of Suffering - April 25 2026

 

The Quantum of Suffering 

April 25 2026

We can measure the distance to the sun,

the grains of sand

in the lines we draw,

the blink of time it takes

a loving touch

to travel to the brain.

Even how many grams it weighs.

So the universe can be quantified;

a fixed sum

of matter and energy

waved into being when time began.

But how to account for the ineffable?

The universe of sensation 

confined

within the fortress of our skulls,

and contained

in the 3 lbs of squishy stuff

that makes us who we are?

You needn’t be a heretic

screaming in pain

as he’s burned alive.

Because we all hurt, grieve, endure;

the quantum of suffering

each of us bears

we keep to ourselves,

nursing 

our private agonies

as we pass blithely through the world;

but multiplied

by 8 billion souls.

Just imagine the cacophony 

if it was turned into noise.

Or the one great love

that courses through the brain

like a morphine drip

cut with speed,

when even the most daily mundane

seems lit by a thousand watts.

Like when you fall in love

for the first and only time

  . . . because isn’t it always for life?

When the universe contracts

until just the two of you are left,

and the air in between

fills with a kind of heat

no physics can measure

or even name.

When the brain stills weighs the same

and the planets orbit like clockwork

but everything’s changed.

It’s as if energy

could be created and destroyed,

as if matter

wasn’t the point.

As if a parallel universe

exists in our heads

where only magic numbers count,

and infinity

divided by zero

makes perfect sense.

The idea of the “quantified life” has gained a certain following:  fastidiously counting calories, steps, and hours of sleep. Even nocturnal erections! And even for a rational materialist like me — who is hardly that obsessive — it still seems self-evident that everything is measurable.

Yet how to quantify all the pain, ecstasy, and everything in between roiling within each of us? Even accounting for the small amount of energy it takes to fuel our brains (at rest, the equivalent of a 20 watt bulb!), a great deal seems to be missing. Newton’s 2nd law (from which the principle of the conservation of energy is derived) never accounted for this. 

Now imagine 8 billion souls, all of whom contain multitudes within them. All this turmoil, agony, and ecstasy that seems beyond the reach of physics. An entire virtual universe within each of us, yet walking down a crowded street and looking around, you’d never know.

The tone of the title is at adds with how the poem ends. But I kept it in order to honour the idea that inspired this. Perhaps it says something about me that it wasn’t the ineffable power of love, but the horrible suffering we inflict on each other that first came to mind. Suffering that often dehumanizes the other, occurs at a distance, and leaves the perpetrators largely untouched. 

Freeze and Thaw - April 23 2026

 

Freeze and Thaw

April 23 2026

The ground is still frozen.

Patches of dirty snow

persist in the shadows.

Things freeze overnight

then thaw in the sun

once it gets high enough. 

This freeze and thaw spares little;

metal fatigues

soil loosens

and concrete splits,

expanding and contracting

from day to night and back.

I, too, feel torn in spring;

out of sorts,

uneasy with the headlong change.

I miss the dark constancy of winter;

the even blanket of snow

that piles higher

but never really changes,

the dormant earth

resting beneath it,

and the cold air

that sits heavily over the world

and seems to settle me as well.

Rain has flushed out the worms

and I see robins at work

on the soggy winter lawn,

gorging on plump stranded bodies

the colour of clotted blood.

They skip over the limp brown grass

on naked stick legs

that look too brittle to hold,

then flit between spots

in quick staccato jumps,

half hopping

and half in flight.

The air is cold and damp

and packs a bone-deep chill.

I think of the lightly feathered birds

seeking refuge overnight,

and their fierce pursuit of food

as life or death.

Pick up my pace,

then reach up a hand

and snug the collar ‘round my neck.

Wailing Wall - April 21 2026

 

Wailing Wall

April 21 2026

I noticed the weeds

in the narrow cracks

poking through the the Wall.

Is there a plan

to leave its care to God?

Should I be picturing a bearded man

in black suit and hat

give a fatalistic shrug

then return to his davening?

Could it be politics;

that no one’s willing to touch it

as Arab and Jew

defend their rightful turf?

Or is it theological;

that to lay a hand on this wall

for anything other than offerings

of faith and prayer

and meek supplication

would desecrate its sanctity.

Personally, I welcome the weeds

garnishing its cracks.

Instead of neglect

they help convey the wall’s antiquity;

express the indifference

of an indestructible thing

to our fleeting presence in the world

and belief we’re in control.

So as the wall humbles us

the weeds do as well.

Because this patchwork of sandy blocks 

is nothing like the sleek towers of modernity

glittering with mirrored glass

we so proudly admire,

its dusty weeds

so different from their windswept plazas

sanitized of life; 

yet this eternal wall

will outlast our glossy skylines 

by countless millennia.

I’m wary of religion.

I don’t believe in God

or gods.

And even though by birth

I’m nominally a Jew,

I’m resolutely unobservant.

But still, I can see the power of the wall.

Of the seditious beauty

of the opportunistic weeds

that are also part of creation

 —  whether by God or nature

whichever you believe.

That just as a Buddhist reveres life

no matter how rudimentary

we respect the inherent right

of unsightly weeds,

eking out a living

in the arid cracks

between the massive stones.

I agree, leave them alone.

After all, these are sidewalk weeds

strong enough to crack concrete,

yet it’s been more than 2000 years

and daunting as ever

the wall still stands.

While the prayers

stuffed into its cracks

are sometimes even answered. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/define-jewish-state-israel/686853/?gift=7KKUTeeJruMo0n11oQFrLjBR0ySUIDixbaXksNbQJ9I

The link will lead you to an Atlantic article that contends with the problematic term “Jewish State”. IE was quite struck by the picture of the Wailing Wall that accompanies it. Especially the weeds: instead of making a statement of neglect, there seemed something deeper and more symbolic in their continued existence here. After all, wouldn’t one expect this singular object of reverence — a sacred site as well as a touristy one — to be scrupulously maintained? 

On seeing it, a poem immediately started coming to me. This is how it turned out.

The contrast I imply between ancient stone and modern concrete is intentional. The ethos of modernity is quick gratification and obsolescence, while our forbears built to last. There are the Roman roads and aqueducts; still here. But even Roman concrete was much better. It was made differently.  It’s significantly more durable than the current stuff. After all, the Coliseum is still standing, while our roads and bridges are crumbling already. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete

Time and Space - April 20 2026

 

Time and Space

April 20 2026

You'd think only physicists

could play ball.

Could manage the complexity 

of mass, gravity, trajectory,

account for resistance and wind

to hit a moving target

without breaking stride.

You’d think just getting it from second to first

would take a graduate degree

and several tries.

But we don’t give throwing a thought. 

The eye needs no intervention,

the arm can be safely left

to muscle memory.

Even kids do it;

self-taught

before they’ve even heard of Newton’s laws.

Yet I never tossed a ball with my dad.

Was it because he saw badly?

Because in those thick owlish glasses

he might lose it in the sun?

Or because he was a serious man

who couldn’t be bothered with child’s play?

And anyway, he worked late

and came home exhausted most days.

While I was good at arithmetic

but perhaps too self-conscious

about being awkward at sports.

So it takes more to throwing a ball

than calibrating force, angle, release point.

I wonder if Einstein ever played catch,

at least as a child

in his Munich backyard.

Maybe not;

after all, I’m told he wasn’t good at math,

and who knows about Hermann

his proper German dad.

But at least he understood 

that time goes in one direction

and there’s no going back.

That trains pass in the night,

and just how fast

the space between them grows.

Please don’t take this as strictly autobiographical. My father and I weren’t alienated, antagonistic, or distant. Just not particularly close. He was a typical 50s dad: the breadwinner, who left the home-front to his wife; the symbol of ultimate authority (“wait till your father gets home!”j; and more interested in his own circle of friends than being a good buddy to his kids. Dads back then weren’t trying to be buddies, weren’t seeking the approval of their children. Looking back, I might wish he’d had a more engaged and fun-loving father. But he was a man of his time.

I recall the strong impression a particular science fiction story made on me as a kid. Some kind of Tom Swift character was raised in space (on the airless moon?) and when he came to Earth was amazed — considering the complexity of the variables — that people here could so effortlessly and accurately toss a ball. In air and wind, no less! Reading this was one of those singular things that make you suddenly realize there are realities that exist outside your familiar box of assumptions: the hidden dimensions; the different perspectives; the taken for granted that shouldn’t be. Even the limits of consciousness:  all the work one’s brain does below the level of awareness; the mysteries of one’s own mind. Almost every time I watch baseball I think back to this. And since I watch a lot of baseball, it seemed it might make a good start to a poem.

Here’s something I took for granted, but apparently had fallen to a common myth. (I checked only after writing the poem. But left the error in anyway, claiming the get-out-of-jail-free-card of poetic licence!)

From my Perplexity app:

“The idea that Einstein failed math is a persistent myth—he actually excelled early on, mastering algebra, geometry, and calculus by age 12-15, far ahead of peers.Einstein earned top marks (1s and 2s, where 1 is best) in math at Luitpold Gymnasium and Zurich Polytechnic. He received his teaching diploma in 1900 and PhD in 1905, though he skipped classes to self-study advanced topics.

One other thing he was good at was visualizing. It was by imagining  passing trains that he came up with the concept of the relativity of time and space. I mention this to give some context to the final stanza.

Herman Einstein (born 1846)

Here’s a dad who not only doesn’t look very fun-loving, but also very ill-suited to any athletic endeavour! A very Victorian gentleman indeed.

Lightning in Winter- April 18 2026

 

Lightning in Winter

April 18 2026

Lightning in winter,

and I fear that next will be a wild-fire

racing over the snow,

a plague of biting bugs

unfazed by the cold.

Because these days

it feels as if the gods are toying with us,

the earth is out of kilter,

and an unpredictable world

is becoming more dangerous.

I’ve never felt the ground shift under my feet

when a fault line slipped

continents collided.

Never felt the eerie calm

in the eye of a hurricane,

steeling myself

for the fury bearing down.

And never felt the ominous chill

when the sun went dark

in the middle of the day,

heard the birdsong stop

so suddenly

the silence seemed loud.

But I once had lightning strike so close

I saw light so white and pure

it could have scorched my retinae

and left me blind,

branded the incandescence

into my brain.

Will never forget that a second before

a static buzz coursed through my skin,

as if I’d strayed too close

to high tension wires

carrying a-half-million volts.

Nor the sizzling sound

of ionized air,

and the thunderclap

so loud

it hit me like the blast wave

of bombs going off.

With a near miss like that

a hard-to-shake fear

is surely understandable.

So now, no season is worry-free

and even winter feels fraught.

And down here

at the bottom of a vast atmospheric sea

roiling overhead,

I’m starting to feel as powerless

as a drowning man

who can’t swim fast enough 

to catch his breath.

It’s technically spring, but you wouldn’t know that here, with below freezing temperatures and literally feet of snow still on the ground. So when I saw in the forecast that tell-tale graphic of a lightning bolt piercing a grey cloud, I did a double-take. Lightning in winter? 

It’s happened before, but it still feels off. And with climate change already making the seasons feel out of kilter and life not only more unpredictable, but more perilous, it’s another unwelcome shock. Especially since after that near miss (it missed me — and anyway, I was protected inside the car — but fried the electrical in the house), when my cautious respect for lightning turned closer to fearful anxiety. 

Lightning can range from 100 million to 1 billion(!) volts. So high tension wires (at most 800,00j — as dangerous as they can be — actually represent a very modest analogy, despite how hyperbolic the comparison might sound.