"The words won't do it anymore"
The words won't do it anymore,
they sit there, morose, in their
pajamas, smoking unfiltered cigarettes,
stoned out of their tiny letters, listless,
unable to rise, their meaning and point
lost to inertia, and I have almost given
up with them, idling in that blank space
like the whiteness of a Lennon Ono album
sleeve, and yet, when I see the crying face
of a child caught in the debris of the quake,
I want them to get up, to do something,
to give that moment of agony a voice,
and yet, by themselves, they do nothing,
they are only explosions and implosions
of air and they need me to provide love
and hope, to add these very human emotions,
and I feel so helpless as my words move
into the world, governed by such fragile
feelings, like small space craft whose
tiny batteries might any second fail.
"Eddie Cantor Remembered"
Ziggy used to lean over the
balcony and listen to Mr. Eddie
Cantor sing "Makin' whoopee"
and it was always like it was
for the very first time
and that's how it was for me,
it has a certain touch of levity,
and pathos, which never has
been captured again, the voice
is elusive, that sound of the emigrants
who used to sing in bars and restaurants,
when Izzy was accompanied by Jimmy,
the guy wid de big schnozzle,
and those guys had a magic, and every
time I hear the rhyme, tootles with struddle,
I can imagine myself in the front row
watching Ziggy leaning over the
balcony and listening to Mr. Eddie
Cantor singing "Makin' whoopee".
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