Holiday Time

 

REST IN PEACE IRA

Ira, sadly fame eluded you. You were a funny guy and loved comedy. 

During your entire life you wanted the promise of immortality and you spent decades on plans and schemes designed to preserve your body after death so when death is solved, you would benefit in a plan to live forever. You called your website Include Everyone. You wanted to be frozen in a scientific form of cryogenics. 

Well, Ira, you passed in October 2024 and when they could not locate a next of kin, you were cremated and your ashes were scattered at sea.

I hope your next life gives you a strong measure of peace. Have a funny time! 

NOT LOST IN TIME

 from 1939?

A FORMER STUDENT MESSAGES ME

 

CENTRAL PARK

1923 and THE THEME THAT DEVASTATES

Perhaps one has to have the "soul of a poet" to understand this theme. But it is certainly a theme that has inspired within me poetry. A visit to any cemetery can make one wonder about all the lives of those buried there; all the layered stories that were lived and then "washed away." 

At every grave, for every headstone... there is a name that lived 1000 stories: 1000 adventures filled with happiness and sadness. And with the passing of time, as memories fade and the stories stop being told, nothing remains.  

I adored the series 1923. I will not review the epic ride within the episodes, but I will say that the ending is devastating. It left me filled with grief... for characters that were not even real. Heartbreak comes in many forms. The feeling of despair because of this form of despondency is a heartsickness that is a nasty beast. 

LIMERENCE

Why am I feeling all this great emotion?

Perhaps I am thinking of poor Mary,

Moving away after so long living

In a quietly familiar and convenient place.

Mary, audibly rocking and rocking in the

Same chair above me as she aged into invisibility…

And soon I too will leave this same place.

For how long did I live with illusions,

Locking away all transitory possibilities

And realities and choosing instead to

Dwell inside mercurial fantasies and

Interior delusions and then grounding a still life?

Now the fading obstacles hardly matter.

The grey heavy details carved and set in stones

Have been kicked away by newer shades

Of sharp pastels that do not even belong

To me in my particular smallness.

Fog is moving in from the Hudson River,

Passing over yesterday and all the

Layered stories and everything

That came… before.

© 2024 Marjorie J. Levine in 

BECOMING UNTIL

BECOMING UNTIL is Marjorie J. Levine’s latest collection of poetry and is a bookend to her critically acclaimed debut poetry book, ROAD TRIPS. The bends in the road as life advances become mercurial passages and the moment comes when a life lived as one young with limitless possibilities becomes, just like that, an existence that settles into an almost tapered old age with many decades that recede into a personal past. In this collection of poems, the author creates a vision of her autumn years as defined by a time when she has been left behind but is slowly evolving and becoming until the time she joins again all the many in her journey who have fallen away. The anthology is structured into three distinct sections: HAIKUS, STREET POEMS, and MAGICAL THINKING, and culminates with her concluding piece, THE BEND IN THE HIGHWAY.

THE CHANGED VIEW

In 2014, the view at 2 plac Grzybowski, at the corner of Prozna Street in Warsaw Poland, was heartbreaking. The very very old buildings had windows and walls covered in photos of those who lived there and who were sent to concentration camps. 

I returned recently to see those buildings with those stunning and sad portraits were no longer there... and as is often the case, they were replaced with buildings of a more modern architecture. 

Old photos certainly do light a particular present and preserve a personal history. 

MY BLOCK IS AGAIN TODAY A MOVIE SET

ANOTHER THEN AND NOW

This is the east side corner of 7th Avenue and 19th Street, and the subway entrance that was there so long ago is still there and visible in both pictures. 

THE ANCESTORS FROM MINSK

 I celebrate my family tree... and look forward to the next family reunion. This photo was taken in about 1916... my father is the child sitting on the step between his two brothers and he is looking back at his aunt. 

A THEN AND NOW

This is a composed "then and now..." with WALKER TOWER in the distance, which at one time was New York Telephone: