Rants: Getting Real Over the Otto Warmbler Affair

I cannot believe that so many Americans seem ready to nuke North Korea over the tragic death of an American student at the hands of Korean prison authorities.

We read daily--if we are paying attention--about the brutal atrocities and resulting deaths of prisoners in AMERICAN prisons. Never mind the public executions by law enforcement of often unarmed citizens taking place with disgusting frequency and lack of consequences on our nation's streets.

What happened to Otto Warmbler is tragic and unjust. But I wish we would not be so self-righteous as to threaten war over it when there is plenty of injustice and brutality to correct right here at home.

Reflections: Happiness Considered

The history of art and literature, as well as the study of history itself, shows us that interpersonal relationships rarely generate happiness in perpetuity. When and where they do, it is because those lives have been conjoined in an agreed-upon simplicity, based upon a recognition of the sufficiency of what simply is, here and now, and a satisfied contentment with that.

Reflections: Some Valid Talking Points

Trump is a nightmare.

The Neo-Liberal Democratic "opposition" is just another set of shopworn corporate tools.

Bernie's "movement" has now fallen into line behind provoking war with Russia.

Identity Politics generates Cognitive Dissonance.

You are alone.

If you are sane, you are on your own.

Rodak's Writings: Flash Fiction

A DONE DEAL

When I got a text that he had hit his wife, my daughter, and that she had not brought charges, I packed a few things and drove ten hours to the City.

I parked my car on the street where I could watch the entrance of their building, a brownstone townhouse a block west of Central Park, in the upper 80s. They had an apartment on the second floor.

I sat and waited for three hours, listening to cool jazz and watching hundreds of passers-by, pursuing their urbane lives frenetically as the squirrels in the park foraged for seeds and crumbs.

Finally I saw them coming down the block. At the top of the stairs, he held the door open for her. She entered without speaking, without looking at him.

I got out of my car, climbed the eight stairs to the top of the stoop and pushed the button for 2F on the intercom. She said, “Who’s there?” I answered, “It’s me.” The door was buzzed open.

I stood before them now in the front room of their cramped little flat. I looked into his eyes and without saying a word pulled the 9 mm from the pocket of my jacket.

She screamed, “Daddy! No!” But it was a done deal.

 I shot him once in the gut.

He now sat on the floor, several feet behind where he had been standing. He groaned, “Don’t shoot me again, please! It won’t happen a second time!” He struggled to his knees, his hands outstretched.

“You don’t get it,” I replied. “This is for the first time.”

The contents of his head made a hot mess of the wall behind him.

Rodak's Writings: Two Songs of Resignation

Two Songs of Resignation

1.  Profile Deleted

I am sick

of my face, sick

of my tastes,

eroded by existence

on the abrasive surface

of this inconsequential

pebble, the banal

opacity of which

mirrors the clotted

vision of my fading

sight, the dying lamp

of my solitary soul.

2.  Gone

The warmth,

sometimes heat,

of your skin,

the soft hairs

twisting up

from its smooth

sparsely birth-marked

surface,

the muscles beneath

that contracted

or stretched in response

to my explorative touch,

the faithful bones within

Your hot skin

with its apertures,

their fragrances

and salt tides,

the non-gender specific

meeting of our mouths,

our twin tongues,

hungry, thrusting

the blank silence

of this room

the whispered resignation

of graphite on empty page