The Atolls

The atolls spaced on the ocean
Beautifully caught by the eyes in the soft morning light
How wonderfully decorated they are!
Especially the ring-shaped reefs, my love
Hovering all over the earth I enter into my home to rest and make love
The coral reefs bound tight by the ocean
Calls you and me to sleep in touch all through the night
The heart always falls on
I know you never let the time to go in vain
Hanging in love 
As the atolls stand on ---- so strong 
We must sing all through life with the music of the waves in the moonlit ocean.  


Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
30/07//2022

A Matter of Scale

One side of the stage shows a MAN dressed in whatever clothing will connote poverty to the audience.  The other side of the stage has a conference table and plush chairs with FOUR or FIVE PEOPLE in the day's business attire.

A few minutes of pantomime:  the shabbily-dressed MAN is obviously begging; he is ignored or pushed aside by passersby, perhaps even arrested.  The FOUR or FIVE are conducting negotiations:  one will be handed a pen and sign an agreement, after which handshakes all around.

Voice (from dark center stage):

                                         As it was in the beginning,
                                         it is now, and shall ever be:

                                         Panhandle for a few bucks,
                                         you're a bum

                                         Panhandle for a few hundred million,
                                         you're a civic leader

(LIghts go down.)

                                   THE END



The Last Word

Upstage L, a casket with mourners crying.  Downstage R, a MAN preparing to speak of the deceased.

MAN:       He was a liar, a cheat, a bully,
               who made life difficult for those of us
               who worked under him;
               we were partially consoled by the thought
               that most of us would outlive him
               For those of us who did, he got us again,
               dying in December to deliberately
               thwart those of us who were
               planning to piss on his grave

(Lights go down.)

                                         THE END



For What It's Worth

A school anywhere in the United States, action to be demonstrated wordlessly as NARRATOR speaks.

NARRATOR (can be onstage or off):

                             There's something happening here
                             What it is is quite crystal clear
                             There's a kid with a gun over there
                             Who wants to do more than just scare

                             Once started he won't stop
                             Children, hear that sound
                             Everybody knows what's going down

                             The battle lines have been drawn
                             And the spree won't take very long

                             Bullets strike some very deep,
                             sending them to permanent sleep
                             Thoughts and prayers, I'm afraid,
                             won't make this sad day go away

                             Again and again that sound
                             Everybody knows what's going down
                             (Repeat last two lines at least twice)

(Lights go down.)

                                      THE END




The History Game Show (Episode 2)

Setting:  Two tables with four chairs each, one on each side of the stage, set at enough of an angle so that each chair is at least partially facing the audience.  These two tables will be lit from the start of the play; center stage will be dark.

Cast of Characters:

MAN, whose identity will not be revealed until the end of the play

And tonight's show is

                                  TO TELL THE TRUTH

MAN (speaking from dark center stage):

                                   "It is conducted
                                    for the benefit of the very few
                                    at the expense of the very many",
                                   "a racket . . . possibly the oldest,
                                    easily the most profitable,
                                    surely the most vicious"

                                   "I helped purify Nicaragua
                                    for the international banking house 
                                    of Brown Brothers
                                    in 1909-1912
                                    I brought light to the Dominican Republic
                                    for American sugar interests in 1916
                                    In China I helped to see to it
                                    that Standard Oil went its way unmolested"
                                    There are other instances I could give,
                                    but I think these three will suffice

                                   "Looking back on it, I feel
                                    I might have given Al Capone a few hints
                                    The best he could do was to
                                    operate his racket in three city districts
                                    We Marines operated on three CONTINENTS"

                                   "In short,
                                    I was a racketeer,
                                    a gangster for capitalism"

This is the point in the old show where the four panelists would try to guess which of the four contestants was the real person whose achievements had been cited.  If you are the one in a million who correctly guessed my identity, give yourself a prize.

(Lights go off the tables, come up on center stage, revealing the MAN

                                    I am Smedley Butler,
                                    once a Major General, USMC

(Lights go down.)

                                     THE END


The History Game Show (Episode 5)

And tonight's show is

                                 WHAT'S MY LINE?

(GUEST walks to the chalkboard, signs the name THOMAS MIDGLEY, and then sits next to the HOST.)

HOST:              Are you ready, panel?  (murmurs of yes from the panelists.)

PANELIST #1:  Are you well-known to the general public?

MIDGLEY:        No

PANELIST #2:  Were you involved in the arts in any capacity?

MIDGLEY:        No

PANELIST #3:  Were you involved in what is today called STEM?

MIDGLEY:        Yes

PANELIST #3:   Were you involved in the Science part of that?

MIDGLEY (after quick consultation with the HOST):  No

PANELIST #4:   Were you involved with the Math part?

MIDGLEY looks at the HOST, who then answers for him.

                         Math was involved but not as the primary part,
                         so the answer has to be No.

PANELIST #1:   Well, now I've got a fifty-fifty chance (chuckles from audience)

PANELIST #4:   I'm betting he gets it wrong
                        No takers on that bet?
                        See the confidence people have in you

PANELIST#1:    Were you involved in the Technology part?

MIDGLEY:         No

PANELIST #4:   I'm betting the next panelist gets it right
                        Again no takers

PANELIST #2:   Were you involved in the Engineering part?

MIDGLEY:         Yes

PANELIST #2:   Were you involved in the building of bridges or roads?

MIDGLEY:         No

PANELIST #3:   Were you involved in the building of buildings?

MIDGLEY:         No

PANELIST #4:   Did you hold any patents?

MIDGLEY:         Yes

PANELIST #4:   I believe Mr. Midgley
                        is known as an inventor

HOST:              That is correct
                        Mr. Midgley was known as an inventor

(Lights go down on everyone but the HOST, who continues speaking.)

                        That was his claim to fame during his lifetime,
                        and he was much honored by his peers
                        But during the decades after his death
                        his two most famous inventions,
                        leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons,
                        continued to inflict untold damage
                        upon planet and people
                        He has been called
                        "a one-man environmental disaster"
                        but even that understates his impact
                        He can legitimately be called
                        the most destructive individual
                        of the twentieth century

(Lights dim.)

                                        THE END

Michael Ceraolo is a 64-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length poetry books published (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press), and has two more full-length books in the publication pipeline.

Where the wilderness is now, a house once was

Look there— where the branches are twisted
Together like arms of a contortionist
You’d think it was the shade of
Two trees instead of one
Until you look closer and follow the roots
Right there— at the towering branches 
Was a window and a boy looked out of it.
His life passes now. Time washes over youth.
And it has cut a canyon through his heart
Which deepens year after year.
Soon the water will disappear into the ground
And time will wash his youth away.
Over there— across the prairie you can also count
One, two, perhaps, three trees he used to climb 
Walk there—
And you can ask each leaf and blade of grass
On the way home 
To tell you his name.  




A Love Poem

After John Ashbery

And they were right to have said it.
We just need a little love, and when the little 
Things fall as soft, salt, sobs on your lips 
Does it taste, how it does, at the start 
Of a kiss? (Maybe not the first, but surely the last) 
They say, you think each time it happens 

Again and again, how it thrills the twist 
And turn of your thoughts, how it reflects 
In long hmms and self- neurosis. Considering this 
And that, slowly probing the what ifs and nots.
There is no escape for me, from it. I think 
I mean, the thought of you—
 
With me is so quite a new dream, is 
Itself the night and the body and the 
Body in the night, the dreaming of you;
Intimate as a touch which I feel 
As it feels me, this is how it works 
Just like this, very see-saw like. 




Note for the previous tenant 

Thank you for the things disowned: 
The roll of toilet paper, the bar of soap
The straw-broom and the floor mop. 

I tried to scrub the floor clean as a face!
Found it to be undoable,
And realised you had tried, too. 

The landlord says you lived here
For years. But nobody had seen your face. 
You were like a stranger’s name read from 

An envelope. Like those birthdates of people 
Carved on park benches and trees, who I know 
So little about as do I of my own past. 

So, the black hair in the sink
Gives a clue to… what? Were you 
A man or woman? The question persists… what?

This handprint on the knob. Whose is it?
Did someone sit outside the door, 
Waiting for you to return from work.

Made the bed. Then dreamt next to you.
Only to wake in the night and say—
“But dear, I’m not sleepy at all” 

How often did you dance on the floor?
The place was done and broomed. Your life
As it were, a sudden wind that had swept away. 



September

The day we discovered love was the
The day it had also been there all along,
Waiting to be noticed in the background we
Recede into so heedlessly. In Delhi, everything 
And everyone is moving in the same direction. 
Notice, how the streets are overfull with people;
But their eyes are empty like tea cups.

In bookstores, like nascent flowers on wet days
Pages open with the thrill of new beginnings 
But in the gardens, we’ve got the butterflies 
Going at it; dancing in courtship before 

Our eyes like kissing teenagers 
In teeming metros, unembarrassed by PDA.
It must be autumn then, when what woos our 
Keatsian heart is in the air which consumes us with… what? 
What was it again… beauty? To rebreathe life 
Into what once was touched and identified here  

Before it went to cold sleep under a rock.
Too much with lovers and too little with love—
The world gives us just as much as one does to a beggar.
Here, take it. Now, go away. How much time until 
We find our other half is hard to say but, instant as 
The camera’s shutter when it imprisons reality 
Is how instant we’re going to have to capture the present.

As the canopy of overhanging trees reddens into the eye
Of a setting sun. A new season writes itself in the rain
Reminding us -life is ever wheeling, faster and faster 
With the air which stirs our world like memory. 
Like the future. Like history.

Seeking the enlightened One

His garment is a reservoir of healing,
His Name is a strong tower,
His shrilled voice of glorious melody is calling,
All heavy laden and burdened and cumbersome,
Come to the fountain he provides.

In him is light and there's no darkness nor blemish,
Seek him all along and stay on the road that leads to his holy city,
No book or wisdom surpasses his,
In him is peace eternal.

Seeking the Enlightened one is as digging below the earth for jewels,
It is finding what the soul craves,
Finding him means humility and love,
Find him, because only he gives grace.

He is the bright morning star,
He sees your tears and hears your cries,
He has no beginning and no ending,
Like an oceans no one knows his beginning and his ending.

Out of his love he formed you before you existed,
Saved you even though it was death he tasted,
He is the mirror of your thoughts,
To reflect what is ugly and wrought.

Guiding your steps to the hilltop of life,
The gracious Lord leads you to glory,
Follow him and will change your story,
I dont see any cause for you to worry!

Seeking the Enlightened one requires your life,
All the waves and strikes,
They will come to accompany you to his presence,
Just as his blood broke the house of death and set you free.

Love and Belonging in John Crowley’s Brooklyn
By Jaylan Salah

Home is where the heart lies.
Does this saying have any truth to it?

“You’re homesick, that’s all. Everybody gets it. But it passes. In some, it passes more quickly than in others. There’s nothing harder than it. And the rule is to have someone to talk to and to keep busy.”
-	Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín (novel)

“Homesickness is like most sicknesses; it’ll make you feel wretched and then move on to somebody else”.
-	Brooklyn, Nick Hornby (script)

Isn’t cinema just powerful? I watched “Brooklyn” directed by John Crowley before reading the novel written by Colm Tóibín. The novel fleshed out what it feels like to be Eilis, an immigrant Irish girl in 1950s America, but the film masterfully captured how it feels to be Eilis without giving it all away.

Proof? Compare the two quotations above. They belong to the same character, Father Flood, as he speaks to Eilis when homesickness is gnawing at her fragile frame, haunting her days and leaving her a tearful mess. 

In the film, the power of his single sentence stems from the lack of resolution or relief. Unlike in the novel, he doesn’t give sound advice. He just tells her she is in bad shape, yet it will pass. He doesn’t give her any clue as to how or when.

Contrary to common belief, “Brooklyn” is no sweet, sappy romance. It is not an ode to the power of love and how it conquers in the end. “Brooklyn” is one scary film, a meditation on the idea of home, love, death, and moving on.

It would be relatively easy to throw Eilis’ final choice on the beautiful reminiscence that love wins. But it’s not. “Brooklyn” is a film that paves to the power of individuality. Like most viewers, I got into it waiting for something bittersweet to fondle my nerves and leave me a puddle of goo by the end credits. I never thought that I would cry for reasons very foreign to what I previously had in mind.

Dare I say “Brooklyn” is an existential movie? In my book, it is. Before anybody attacks, let me explain why.

According to American director and actor Cameron McHarg, this existential movie deals with man’s search for meaning in an absurd world. It highlights a personal struggle in a meaningless world that doesn’t provide answers or even steps to follow. The viewer is on their own, literally and metaphorically, but expected to reach some sort of explanation by the end. 

All of the films that I’ve come across labeled as “existential” starred existentialist male leads. Not a single one had a woman in the center. Enter Brooklyn, where it’s all about the female protagonist Eilis and her sense of identity, struggles, and attempts to find the self in two seemingly different worlds. Eilis leaves her hometown in search of a better opportunity. She gets it, not in the form of a job as an accountant but in the form of a young, handsome Italian chap who sweeps her off her feet and presents a sense of the very elusive thing she has been searching for: home. 

In a film that plays on themes of home and love, Brooklyn deconstructs them as it builds up to them. One moment Eilis falls in love with Tony and believes she has found her home. Viewers think that Brooklyn is where her heart lies. A family tragedy forces her to go back to Enniscorthy, Ireland, and puts viewers in the shoes of the doubtful Eilis as she is lured back into her old life but with a different scheme. This time she is treated like a conqueror back from America, not the modest, simple girl constantly abandoned on the dance floor. Whereas Tony’s love for Eilis seems solid, her love for him is uncertain, driven by her insecurity and loneliness.

In the end, viewers ponder that had things taken a different direction, would Eilis have gone back to Brooklyn? Which does she consider home? Is there such a thing as home in the first place? What about love? The position of women in a time when they didn’t have a lot; either happily married, depressed, or unmarried didn’t leave much for the imagination. How would that woman find love in her own free will when singlehood would mean sharing a toilet with another miserable divorcée who dreamed of a husband to have a toilet of her own?

The film asks questions yet never gives us answers. What is home? Is it an actual place where a person belongs? Would we consider a place a “home” because of the people who live there, or is it just that it carries certain sacredness beyond our earthly perception? 

The power of Brooklyn is in its ability to deconstruct every principle that it slowly builds for in the first half of the film. It reflects on free will and how far we as humans would go to seek shelter in the most ordinary of places, among ordinary people. Eilis’ transition was palpable and honest, yet it was also confusing and shaky. That’s what made her a great character. The strength in “Brooklyn” comes from the uncertainty and the absurdity by which Nick Hornby’s script, John Crowley’s directing, Yves Bélanger’s cinematography, and Saoirse Ronan’s acting handled the material.

This young woman’s existential crisis resolves but doesn’t leave viewers with a sweet ending. It gets them to think, “Really? Did she do that because she loved him?” and also, “Is this really what she considers home?” “Is that where her heart lies?”

My Parents’ Promises for Me This Christmas 

It's seven days to Christmas
I’m so excited about it!
I will be on holiday;
free from school activities and other disturbing tasks in class
I will have the opportunity to remind my parents their promises for me;

the amusement park, the holiday resorts around and outside town
and lots more!
I will play with my friends
I will put on my favorite Cloth of Many Colors dress
I will help mom and dad decorate our house,
provided they give me what they promised, seven days before.