During the 50's Mel Weisburd co-founded with Gene Frumkin Coastlines Literary Magazine and was published widely in literary magazines of those times. He has been anthologized in Walter Lowenfel’s New Poets of Today, Best Articles and Stories, Epos, Poetry Los Angeles, Leonard Wolf’s Voices from the Love Generation, Poets of the Non-Existent City: L.A. During the McCarthy Years,  Eating the Pure Light (Homage to Thomas McGrath), Backwater Press. He had a pioneering role in environmental law enforcement, health effects research and education. He was president of Pacific Environmental Services, Inc. and has authored technical books and articles in these fields. After retirement, he returned to writing and has since published in Blue Mesa Review, Café Solo, Country Mouse and Grasslimb. His work appears on number of webs sites, and he has read at Poet’s House, New York City and venues in New Mexico and Los Angeles.  He is the author of "A Life of Windows & Mirrors, Selected Poems," Conflux Press, 2005. A volume of new poetry about his wife, The Gloria Poems, A Short Memoir of a 50-year Marriage, in Poems, will be available this summer.

MALLARMÉ  DECODED

...       "if those girls whom you explain
be but an itching in your fabulous brain!
Faun, the illusion escapes from the blue eyes" ...
                                                                    – Afternoon of the Faun

Nijinsky, just born, yawns and stretches under the sun.
He can’t tell lower thoughts from higher,
animal states from human.  He could be seeing
through the eyes of a chimpanzee or a wasp.
So merciful are his limitations, 
he’s at home no matter what species he is.

Amid hormonal vapors of Agnucasta and myrtle,
girls in a grove nearby exude the odor of dresses
about to burn.  He dances Debussy’s larghetto to the
music of woodwinds and saxophone. But trapped
in the jungle of the fabulous brain of his author
he sees his delusions in  first-impression clarity,
and they break his tender heart.
                                                
From , "A Life of Windows & Mirrors" (Selected Poems 1948-2005)

TALK RADIO
 
I go to bed listening to my walkman.
I  can only muster amusement at the criminal
lies and illogic boring deep into my brain
as I’m rendered helpless with sleep.

 I dream I am discussing current events with a
dear friend who abruptly turns on me with words
from the radio while the President of the USA
inspects my books in the living room. 

My wife complains that all the words in our library
have lost their meanings while crowds outside
applaud the president in roaring approval. 
In the early morning a neighbor warns that the police

are looking for me. I try to yell in capital letters
to push my voice into the waking life, but can speak only
in whispers. The voices at my door rehearse what
I shall dream tonight, without my permission.
 
From, "A Life of Windows & Mirrors" (Selected Poems 1948-2005)


THE LAST WORD ON ADAM
 
When you consider that the first man
had no mother and was raised by an absent Father
who bawled him out for no good reason
and placed him in an Eden of nutrition
to test temptation in humans
and then had him endure the pain of giving
birth to woman by Caesarean, to rectify
a flaw in His creation -- loneliness --
and invented sex and constant nagging
to make sure they stay together
for which she blamed the snake
who, on the sly, connived reproduction
and that this experiment having got well out of hand
condemned her to birthing  mankind --
it is no wonder that man would be doomed
by Original Error.  Deprived of a biological
mother and burdened with monotheism,
he was created too early to partake the joys of
polygamy and foreshadowed Christ
to prepay penance for the sins and ills
of humankind.  What can be expected from
a founder with no experience?

© 2009 Mel Weisburd