Meditation on a Second Act

In a lifetime's gathering dusk, liberating the inner poet.

Aug 05, 2026

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Incredibly, none of this is invented. Believe us, we checked.]

My friends, how do you know me?

That is, of course, a rhetorical question. You know me as the author of Bedfellows, the comic mob thriller that was fairly well received, but might have benefited from being funnier and more thrilling.

You know me as the heroic NPR investigative journalist who uncovered one of the 20th century’s biggest lies by proving that Rice-a-Roni, the supposed “San Francisco treat,” is actually made outside of Chicago.

You know me as the performer of the stage show Ruggedly Jewish, which toured New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Salt Lake City(!) before succumbing to the COVID pandemic — but not before making almost 600 theatergoers think more than they bargained for about gefilte fish and, whaddya call it, Nazis. To you, maybe I’m just that guy, or maybe that co-author of “Tag, You’re It,” a country song performed by Willie Nelson for 6 million listeners. (Long story, all right?) Or maybe the host of that nationally televised awards ceremony in the capital city Ljubljana, attended by the president of Slovenia. Who cares? Trifles all, much as were my 25 years as an internationally feared critic of TV commercials.

I think there was also some radio stuff on “the media,” but the memories are hazy.

Well, that’s not me. The fact is, what I am — what I have always been — is a poet. My first exploits as a writer were in verse, a calling tragically cut short by the powers that be, the reactionary old guard threatened by my crackling energy and implicit repudiation of their hidebound aesthetic. That is why they stifled me — nay, all but obliterated me. That is why my entire oeuvre consists of but two poems, both from the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a career snuffed out by the craven forces of literary reaction. The world is lesser for it.

The first poem, penned at the tender age of 7, was titled “Why I Like Fog.”

I don’t really like fog
But sometimes it is good.
When bad men come to steal your jewels
It keeps them off your goods.

I have recently unearthed the original manuscript in a file folder, from the vital records of my late mother, of my elementary-school papers and artwork. The memory, preserved in #2 pencil on yellow construction paper, rocked me.

Oh, there was also pride at the depth of the imagery, shrouded in mist concealing a paradox. There was the simultaneous influence of good and evil: fog as irritant; fog as guardian. Then the whimsical use of homonyms, not only to toy with the meanings of “good” (one qualitative, one economic) but also the dazzling act of poetic courage — as my brother and literary executor put it — “to rhyme a word with itself.” And yet, rejection.

I don’t know exactly how Stravinsky felt when Rite of Spring was booed at its Paris premiere. Or Van Gogh, in his atelier stacked with unsold canvasses. But I shall never forget the shock, pain and crushing disappointment when The Cynwyd Chronicle — our mimeographed school newspaper — passed on “Why I like Fog.” The editors’ rationale for ostracizing a rising talent is lost to history. Not lost is the theft of jewels, from me and humanity. I sobbed and sobbed.

But the trauma did not end there, for there was a second opus, an untitled limerick. I think perhaps in fourth grade.

There once was a boy quite in love
But not with a girl, with a dove.
So it’s all up to you.
What is your point of view?
’Cause I’ve gone and married a glove.

Also unpublished. But not without reaction. I was examined by a school psychologist and my parents were interrogated about “any problems at home.” If memory serves, most of the questioning concerned the glove.

In any case, that did it for me. The trauma extinguished my poetic flame for the next 63 years.

But wait. I live still. My retirement project, three years in the making, has been a 110,000-word exercise in amateur cultural anthropology about (obviously) Serbia. I have just completed it and now but await the cascade of offers from publishers for Alwaysland. Can the public’s thirst for this subject ever be fully quenched? We shall see.

Meantime, shall I then be idle? Never! On the contrary, in my dotage the time at last has come to display the Godgiven gift that first awakened my literary self. In my twilight years, poetry shall be my mistress and I shall reclaim my destiny.

Baby steps. I begin with the tyranny of form, which — as Montaigne observed — does not imprison but rather liberates like air forced through a trumpet’s pipe to yield a fetching tone. I will re-commence, lo these decades later, with haiku. May I share a work in progress?