Grief

Grief is the strangest of all human experience in my humble opinion. Time stands still when the precariousness of life hits home. One minute you think you are OK, the next...There are a million decisions to be made. This can be difficult when you continue to be in denial...when you continue to not accept life without your loved one. And from the line of cars following that black limo to the burial park...she was loved by many. Then time speeds up. Knocked into next week I realize I didn't talk to some folks who turned out as much as I would have liked. I did not take care of some things. But everyone took care of me. I am grateful. Thank you to the friend who filled our fridge while we were away. To the family who offered and delivered help with physical labor and solace with offers of spiritual guidance at a surreal time...sincere gratitude and unyielding fidelity.

I composed the following as I rode the subway home from seeing my mother last Mother's Day. My truck still in Florida I rented a car from Manhattan and on the way back from returning it I made these observations. My mother taught me about diversity. Not with words, but with deeds. She taught me tolerance and above all she taught me forgiveness.  I hope all of you can forgive me for my indulgence.

Mother's Day



He stands
at the platform
Edge
To feel a mass of subway
Wind
Sweep by so close
To his chin

Jamming his rap
Into space
Holding the doors in place
For late ones through the gate
No hate
His brand of street love
Rising above sewers and
Who-ers and doers of nasty deeds to others not their brothers
From behind blind thieves of the bright, bringers of night

That's the foe he fights
Right. That's the sight he
Cites. 
No fright but for those who mean harm.
Thems he wants to disarm sound the alarm send them back to the farm.

Subway tunnel loops around with sounds of
Underground city without
Pity

so gritty the white rat and the black rat are both gray in the endless track of night without day saying the say. Playing the play. Avenging the wronged and staying the stay. 450 years ago he was in chains. 450 years later his life has no chance but to perpetuate misery? Now misery has company and brand names and P Diddy. Maybe there is a way up from the steel dust of rails to nowhere laid down and spiked by his Grand Pare from back again to here and there. Down the pike up the junction no moment but for suction in totality of the diction compressed in reduction cannibalized and destabilized as force of history moves beyond mystery and into the realm

    of the unknowable.

   
Mark Ransom

Rose Mary Talerico Ransom Annibale 1929-2014

Dear friends and beloved family, after 85 amazing years my mom passed away peacefully in her sleep early this morning. Please find below details of the proceedings if you are interested. Thank you all in advance for your well wishes and love. In lieu of flowers, a donation to a Veteran's Association of your choice in her name would be welcome.

Loving sister, wife, mother and friend, Rose Mary Annibale nee Talerico late  of Wheaton Pointe, East Windsor, NJ,  originally of Dunmore, PA, passed peacefully June 7, 2014 . Preceding her were her husband the late Carl S. Annibale (2003) and brother the late Joseph Talerico. She is survived by her three daughters : Martha R. Metacarpa of Plymouth Meeting, PA, Patricia A. Ciulla and husband John Ciulla of Rockland County, NY, Susan Shaw and husband Joseph Shaw of Arlington, VA, her son Mark  David Ransom and wife Jen-Scott Mobley of Brooklyn, NY and step children Carlene Kelly, Susan Ramsaroop, Anthony Annibale, Teresa Balzarano, and Carl S. Annibale Jr., 10 grandchildren, 11 great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild. She is also survived by her brothers Paul Talerico, Carmen Gilotte, and Carlo Gilotte and her sisters Mary Butta and Caroline Rose as well as many, many  beloved nieces, nephews and cousins. She cherished her mother, Serafina, her friends, her children and above all...family.

Viewing will take place on Wednesday June 11th from 9am -12 noon with service immediately following at...

M. David DeMarco Funeral Home

205 Rhode Hall Road

Monroe Township, NJ 08831

Please forward to any family you know of.  Thank you so much.

"Now cracks the noble heart...may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest..."

Silence

Speaks louder than waves crashing
Than water. Falling
From a hundred miles
High
Than a fire spout
On a drought ravaged plain
A volcanic eruption
At the ocean floor

What's more
Silence pulls me deeper like a walking
Sleeper like a mountain
Steeper than sheer glass
Walls

Like silence is all
I can think of
All I can drink of
Drawing me in and down to the brink of

Dissolution reality intrusion insanity
cold-hearted
Fusion of our
anti-communion

Silence is brutal
As it is beautiful
Deep and eternal
Silence infernal

Silence between silence
Silence without sound
Eyes darting away
Let's me know I'm down
Way down
On your list of things
You need to get to
I've let you get to me
To let me regret you

Silence does to me
What nothing else does to me. 

It serves to prove to me 

there's a darker place than 

jealousy.

Silence reminds me
There's still a mass of pain in me 

that festers never to let me be
something I. Can. See. Taking over
Everything.

And now on the MARCH bouncing from bar to bar...

lines begin to blur...speech to slur...

I confer with a bottle of Jack 

and Mac and Johnnie Black...

sneak attack.

Did you say something?

Are you?

Are you talking?

Are you talking to ME?

Or is silence
stalking me
taunting me
wanting me

To set you free
That silence of yours

That...Silence  

The Low Moan of a Wounded Dog

Back when I was a boy
and we lived in that  House

With my sisters, and my mom, and
My Father

From time to time
I remember--there was a sound
emanating from somewhere
seeming far off

And it struck so deep
the way a particular
moment of music will

Some call it the soul
Others the Heart --
I say
Fissure of
Umbilical connection

To that place
from whence we came
to which
we inevitably shall
Return

This Howl
haunts me now
even as then

When the moon is full
and city falls silent
just before the precipice
of another
Earthly day

A Tale of Two Springs...

This is the set of No Exit produced by the Pearl back in March. It seemed for a while there would be no exit from Winter. This first poem deals with that.

4/7/14

Opening day

Yankees

The calendar indicates

Vernal dis-equinox

has passed--

but Spring is still south

as tresses of willow trees

have yet to tumble

Daffodils are lonely

and confused by cold

and cloud

This Winter, like an

unwanted guest

has failed to recognize

the significance

of a pineapple on

the bed.

Now that the weather seems to have finally turned mild,our separation is more keenly felt. 

Beyond Bitter

Well there's poetry in the air

of bars and cafes

in Brooklyn

I sit there and Sample

the fare

by simply breathing it in

When bitterness blends

with tender ends of sweetness

then twilight mingles

with blue sky

and I think of my love and

the thousand miles

between us

wondering

what she's feeling 

right now

Stage Kiss...Antony and Cleopatra

Between these two productions there was so much kissing going on...I  was so sorry I had a cold and could not kiss my wife...she caught my cold anyway. She went back to Florida today and in the next few weeks our future may be decided. So in honor of that...and in honor of my past... I post this photo. The loves of my life...one passed and one my reason for living.

I am truly blessed. Happy Spring everyone. It has been a long winter.

"More sinned against than sinning"...King Lear @ BAM

Back in college I had to do a comparative research paper on the subject of Shakespeare's King Lear and the chapter of the King James Bible known as the Book of Job. Saturday afternoon I kept that paper in mind as I sat and completely enjoyed Frank Langella's interpretation of the medieval king who in an act of  hubris and  ultimate power decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, so he can retire with his hundred or so knights and followers and free himself from a world cares.

Not so fast. In his act of fancy, which everyone can see is folly, everyone except Lear until it is too late and his "thankless" children turn on him, this once powerful King, who could beckon, summon, and dispatch with a wave of the hand, falls from his high perch of royalty and sinks into the mud of his land where the realization of his wantonness drives him mad. Unlike the Bible story of Job, Lear brings these sorrows upon himself. In so doing we, as the audience, get to witness a most extroverted and public introspective interrogation of what it means to be human.

Rising fumes of smoke and falling mists of vapor all combine to create a magical atmosphere where the play unfolds under the sure and steady direction of Angus Jackson. Truly a fine set and costume design scheme full of earth tones and odd geometric shapes indicative of a country still emerging from the rough hewn dark ages where pagan gods are worshiped and astrology is the most advanced science.

Robert Innes Hopkins' thrust of a set seemed an extension of the deconstructed BAM Harvey itself.  A wooden slat platform in-lay centered midst a multilevel mash-up of stone and brick masonry served double duty as the playing stage for the first scenes and as the divided map of England. Once the platforms are pulled up after Lear is banished to the heath by a callous and sadistic Reagan in cahoots with the cold and calculating Goneril, this map becomes metaphor and allows the copious deluge that follows to be contained.

The performances from lead characters to silent servants are all nuanced and relished by each actor. It was a joy to see a player with a line or two make the most out of each breath. I think I could write an entire paper entitled "The Cordelia Problem" where I would join the debate and express my own ideas about this character. The actress, Isabella Laughland, ably portrays her as valiant, honest and wronged as I have seen her mostly played in the past. Which leads to the shock of Lear's incredulous rebuke. I often wonder how it would look if Cordelia, young in spirit and most like her father, is haughty, defiant and openly scorns her sycophant sisters by refusing to act anything like them. Principled and disdainful of hypocrisy, as Lear himself probably is, Cordelia's own wanton act would mirror that of her father and thus no move to appease him is made. After all, she is her favorite. An act so miscalculated as this would be all too recognizable to a modern audience where well mannered people understand the danger of expressing one's unfiltered thoughts in a court of kings. So, one tragedy begets another, and another. From Edmund's duplicitous deceptions, to Gloucester losing his eyes and so on to the sad conclusion.

I don't know why I love Lear so much. This production made me love it more and  is truly worth the ticket price.