Writer, Musician, Poet, Academic
03 Apr 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: books, COVID-19, grocery store, music, poetry, quiet, take-out, Traffic, TV
The city is quiet
There are hardly any sirens
Traffic is lighter
When we go for walks
In the deserted park
Drivers wave as they pass
On the nearby roads
I dodge sparse people
In the grocery store
We decided to order take-out
From our favorite restaurant
At home, I write music, play and learn, record,
Read, and there are other projects, chores
But mostly I watch TV
Where I learn the latest about COVID-19
31 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Aristotle, childhood, church, crucible, Paul, poetry, upbringing, virtue
The philosopher for Aristotle is not in conflict
He does what he wants and consistently wants what is virtuous
I am more like Paul, who does not what he wants
And does what he does not want
I do not want the legacy of my childhood
Nor the tyrant my father was, nor the misery that was my home
Church was my refuge
A morning’s refuge once a week,
For me, the salve of love
Communion, human and Divine beloved community
A morning’s refuge once a week
Ferment in the crucible of what my life became
Diffusing as tendrils through my passions
Refining the dross that was my upbringing
Veins of gold shining through adamant,
Heavy adamant from my upbringing I carry
In the pilgrimage that is a life’s progress
Toward being whole, gold, unitary
In what I want and in the manifesting power
That spirit has to make, remake, make new
Make conflict cease, bring release, grant peace
28 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: apathy, bipolar disorder, fear, free verse, music, onstage, perform, poem, poetry, psychotic episode
Mike noticed me shaking
Playing at an open stage
The way we had in clubs years ago
The legacy of my psychotic episode years ago,
The effects persisting in my involuntary shakes, fear, and incompetence
Brett noticed me shaking
Almost convulsing onstage at the keyboard
It never used to be like that
The ease, the drive I had to perform
Then the caving fear onstage
The lingering apathy that stole
My passion to play hour upon hour at home
Getting better hour upon hour enthralled
Or onstage before crowds
Eager, excited, up
Darryl tried to jam with me last spring
Remembering my former ability
Thinking me as capable as it used to be
It was sad, the attempt, his generosity
One player quenched by bipolar disorder
Likely doesn’t mean much
But it does to me
26 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: capacity, Confucius, COVID-19, exhausted, Harvard, hospitals, isolation, Mozart, poetics, poetry, trends
Subjects wrap themselves in poetry
Today, practically every consideration pales
In comparison with
Tens of thousands infected, thousands dead
Hospitals past capacity, protective gear spent, exhausted
Medical professionals sick, exposed
Failed containment
Considerations pale in comparison with COVID-19
You used to be IT if you had
A Cabbage Patch Doll
And liked Ben and Jerry’s ice cream
Or were hip in the bar
There was even a word for it—
“Trendy,” and yet people were
I wasn’t anybody until I went to Harvard
Yet, things in this world matter
Mean something even in COVID-19
It’s hard to play Mozart piano sonatas, now
But they matter, and my new book of Confucius’ Odes
(Ordered online, in social isolation)
The wind blows a lot of chaff away
In these days
As it carries the virus
Through the entire world
And wraps words around itself
25 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: beauty, exfoliator, fashion, free verse, innocence, makeup, poem, poetry, spiritual
Skin and hair and fingernails and toenails
And eyebrows and eyelashes and eyeshadow
And lips and lipstick and Botox
Lashes and polish and foundation
Makeup and moisturizer and exfoliator
Glamor and allure and sophistication
Good nature and simplicity, even innocence
And sincerity and faithfulness and trust
And honesty and emotional honesty and spontaneity
And genuine and caring and kind
And real and unaffected and straightforward
And loving and spiritual and beautiful
21 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: friends, memory, poem, poetry, time
An old movie
Brought to mind
College friends
We talked about the movie
Back then
When we were friends
That memory
Plays like an old movie clip
20 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: COVID-19, free verse, isolation, loneliness, love, meaning, poem, poetry, unemployment
My distance and loneliness
In a poisoned world
My amusements and study
Grow vapid and I wonder
What to do in all this
In my state of shock, my enervated will
I can’t bring myself to do anything
Struggle with the clock that doesn’t seem to move time
Distancing, social isolation, and loneliness
How strange commercials from the old days seem
Tight social groups at cafes, parties, mobs at pop concerts
And New York city streets like a ghost-town
I try to wrap my mind around it all
What it all means, what it will mean
The economy, unemployment, isolation
How long? What it all means
Shops shut down, restaurants, businesses
And all those workers unemployed now
The number of incidents rises, the death toll
They say weeks, probably months of this
Then we will emerge—but to what?
The scar COVID-19 will leave on the world we used to know
For now, the greatest love means isolation
02 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: bitterness, Catholic, daffodils, graduate student, Hemingway, labor, loitering, poem, poetry, poverty, Whitman, Wordsworth
I left my idealism somewhere
Back in early manhood, apprenticeship
For getting by only.
My knees hurt
Not like they did before, to pay the bills
Walking behind a power-mower
All day
Isn’t it ironic that Wordsworth will sing of
Quarry workers singing as he
Wanders in his daffodils
Whitman praises the common laborer
As he loiters in the grass
The privations, the deprivations
The catalog of things to do without
Logged into my bitterness–
Formerly an occupation–I try not to be bitter.
I read Hemingway to buoy my spirits–
His Catholic poverty in Paris,
His un-Christian feeling of superiority
To the vague wealthy. I guess I feel superior
Or try to feel superior to buoy my spirits.
The indignities,
The fear as I lie to a bill-collector,
Slough subordination,
Try to feel above it all.
While the town keeps me down.
To dignify the working class—
Which I am now and a grad student
And the town keeps me down—
Your sore knees
Must speak more than their pain—
The bills that demand their “dignity”
The landed idle
Still demand my money
As they loiter
24 Feb 2020 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: Africans, Boston, Chinese, customs, Edmonton, friends, Indigenous, Lebanese, never, outsider, poem, poetry, Virginia
My friends from Boston are in their early 20’s
In my memory
They will always be in their early 20’s
As I will never see them again
Good times
My friends from Virginia will always be in their late 30’s
But for one I remain in contact with
I will never see them again
Impoverished and bitter, then, ambition
Florida was (only) thirteen years ago
And I’ve been back several times
So one would say their friendship continues
My musician friends in Edmonton know how it was here, is now
Club owners, evolution of clubs, live venues that closed
Band members from so many years ago—still in town—
Occasionally regrouping to play for a night or two
In with the locals
Me, an outsider
With all those ways and customs I assimilated,
Left, learned again
Tore away from
My last stand, here
This city home to one million
Chinese, Lebanese, Africans, Indigenous
Those who grew up here
Those like me
Here, tired of new ways, places, my last stand
David Fekete 