Microstories

When Fifty Words is Enough

Dan Dana

Edition:  2026.01

Five Palms Press

Sarasota, Florida

© Dan Dana 2026

All text was authored by Dan Dana.  No text was generated by AI.  Photos and images not otherwise attributed were created by the author.  Certain images were generated by AI, designated “Image by AI (ImageFX)”

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About this Book

Although not initially intended to be such, this book is a de facto continuation of my multi-form memoir, taking its place alongside A Life Mostly Lived: True Stories in 85 Syllables, Diary of a Young Man, 1968-1969: Coming of Age at a Cultural Crossroads, and My Last Haiku and Other Haiku Quintets.

I hope the reader will forgive this autobiographical self-indulgence.  At age 80, and lacking career ambition as a commercial author, my intent is simply to leave a crumb-trail for anyone curious about this unique life I’ll finish living in due time.  That trail winds through both external (public) and internal (personal) experiences.  Here, I share both, even some you may wish I had kept to myself. 

The educator in me modestly hopes that these microstories and microsagas may evoke meaningful insights and reflections accruing to your own benefit.

Those of advancing age, or who suffer from some other terminal condition, may anticipate my forthcoming My Death Collection for the Thinking Mortal. You may even recognize yourself there.  It will share some verses with the present volume.

This collection leads with a dedication to my wife, remembrances of my mom and dad, and some poetic notes about minimalism.  Thereafter, these bits are not categorized, moving from recent to earlier compositions ranging from May 2025 to January 2026.  Their timeline traces the path of my mental and geographical wanderings over that period.  Thanks for joining me.

Browse

Let your mind wander

Follow it there

Repeat

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About Microstories

These precisely fifty-word prose poems (as measured by Microsoft’s word-count tool) are original, personal, and true, often metaphorical, yet incomplete. No backstory is provided for context. Some are dehydrated previously published haiku quintets; others are newborns. Each is the tip of an iceberg. Vast regions are left to your imagination—that dream-like fluid that rehydrates and extends the 50-word stems contained herein. Unlazy readers, without even trying, create the unseen subsurface portions, emerging Rorschach-like from your own rich mental underworld. How? Simply notice the image that appears to your mind's eye, the tug at your heart, the punch to your gut. They are your stories, too, esteemed coauthor.

A novel variant nested within this collection might better be termed “microsagas.” Loosely inspired by lengthy 13^th Century Icelandic sagas, this minimalist form adopts the perspective or persona of an actual or constructed character in a historical or foreign scenario depicted by the associated photo or image. As in standard microstories, figurative language, imagery, metaphor, symbolism, and other poetic elements are applied.

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Less is more.

—Robert Browning (1855)

after Diogenes (ca. 320 BCE)

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Dedication:

Angel on Earth

If angels on earth there be, I know one quite well.  Foreseeing others' wants with off-the-scale mindfulness. Nurturing by nature, fierce mama-bear style. Demanding voice-and-choice fairness for all. Caring nurse for all who suffer.  The kindest person I’ve ever known, she makes our house a home. I kiss her nightly.

Susan in 1953

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Remembrance:

My Mom

Christmas baby born of sturdy, hardscrabble farm folk, sole sister of five brothers in patriarchy’s silent reign.  Sacrificed past my knowing.  I sip kindness from her depth.  I claim no esteem—by her genes and her example she created me. Yes, the village raises the child.  But first, my mom.

1918 - 2009

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Remembrance:

My Dad at 150

We’re getting up there in years, you and I, Old Man. You are the man I’ve strived to be in fatherless dreams. Dwindling few of us recall your twinkling blue eyes as thoughts stirred your mind. When I reach your years who'll recall my twinkling blue eyes—some aging poet?

1874 - 1955

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Minimalism

The best part of this story is unwritten, unspoken, untold—the image in your mind’s eye, the tug at your heart, the punch to your gut. Plot emerges Rorschach-like from your rich underworld, beneath the surface of your mind.  Untold, that is, until you tell it, if only to yourself.

Image source unknown

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Stem Cell

These fifty words are a stem cell, waiting to blossom, to join a bountiful garden of possibilities.  You, dear reader, may tend your personal sprout, sprinkling your essence, creating a unique, distinctive floret, seen only by yourself.  In silent concert, we’ll grow an invisible bouquet.  Take it from here …  

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Small Sandbox

As a tyke, he liked playing alone with toy trucks in soft dirt under leafy bushes constructing roads to faraway places.  At work, he was a specialist, not a generalist.  In conversations, he likes to go deep, not shallow.  As a writer, fifty words is enough.  His sandbox is small.

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I Write

Without uttering a sound, I speak to those whose languages I don’t know, whom I will never meet, whose lands I will never see.  I reach out to my grandchildren’s grandchildren, to citizens of a far future whose worlds I cannot imagine.  I will speak from the grave.  I write.

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Tell Me Your Name

My multi-faceted friend, intricate object of my heartful desire, let me peer where your puzzling contours lie awaiting revelation or discovery.  You’re edgy, but delicate.  I must handle you with care.   I can only wonder what wonders you hold within your cloistering armor.  You are beautiful.  Tell me your name.

Origami by Anonymous

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Deeply Grokked

Launched from London’s Rebel Book Club, Ben’s missile found its target, an author’s heart five time zones westward, striking its beating core, slaking its thirst, causing deep grok, assuring his shy pen that there is actually someone out there who hears his feeble voice, inspiring the words before you now.

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The Purpose of Life

Since youth, his burning goal has been to learn the purpose of life.  Now an old man, he confidently concludes that life has no purpose.  Pleased with this grand teleological accomplishment, he wonders what shall be his next peak to climb—perhaps to love perfectly?  This won’t be so easy.

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Susan’s Hands

Making mud pies, baking birthday cakes, playing piano’s Middle C and violin’s D, holding some new lives’ first moments, casting foot-mold memories of others’ last, clutching son’s slipping hand his final hours, touching, soothing fears, reaching out, holding on, letting go, keeping it all together, building our world—Susan’s hands.

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The Fist Bump

Worlds apart in ways once thought relevant, cousins meet in the land of common ancestors.  Our mothers were sisters a mere fifty millennia ago.  We’ve traveled distant roads to the same place.  I see you seeing me.  We breathe the same air.  I feel our bond.  We salute our shared humanity.

      Susan and Saruni, Maasai Mara, 2018

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400 Forefathers

I’m a researcher of historical poetry.  Today, I stumbled upon the digitized works of an obscure, humanist, antinatalist haikuist in the ancient kingdom of America who warned of generations of needless suffering in humanity’s far future.  I carry his Y-DNA.  I wish one of my 400 ensuing forefathers had listened.

10,000 years from today

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A Smoker’s Worry

My little boy may not remember me, if Viceroys take me out.  The industry claims “no proof,” but I cough and spit.  Will he be fatherless soon?  Would no-life have been better for him?  I lie sleepless beside his young mother.  Will he ever wonder if I pondered these thoughts?

J. W. Dana, 1874-1955

Photo 1948

Death by lung cancer

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Christmas Truce 1914

In Flanders Field, George and Hans played football on No Man’s Land.  They exchanged souvenirs, shared bawdy jokes and rum.  In harmony, they sang carols known by both families.  They helped bury the others’ dead before returning to their trenches.  Both died when shooting resumed next day.  It hasn’t stopped.

Tyne Cot cemetery, Ypres, Belgium

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Humanist Winter Holiday

Recovering Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other freethinkers who have discarded ancient dogmas may yet enjoy traditional cultural celebrations.  Familial roots run deep, even as science-informed worldviews replace supernaturalism.  Thus, today’s humanists feast at the tables of our prolific pagan forebears as winter solstice heralds the rebirth of Dionysus.  Rejoice, infidels!

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Sunflower Power

If we all stand together—bravely shining back against the dark forces that would plow us under, trusting in the solidarity of our numbers, confident in our righteousness, unyielding to purveyors of hate, keeping faith in the Resistance—we may save our land.  Meanwhile, our hope makes us beautiful.

Near Millville, Missouri, August 15, 2022

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Zofia’s Chair

Here sat Zofia with grandchildren Krystyna and Andrzej, starving and afraid, among 10,000 Jews instructed by Gestapo to assemble, forced to wait hours or days for transport to Auschwitz.  Their brave father was shot yesterday.  Her chair, small comfort in December’s bitter chill, was left behind for the next shipment.

Zgody Square (1942),

Ghetto Heroes Square (2025),

Krakow, Poland

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How to Be Dad?

I should have been terrified by the uncertainties that lay ahead.  My parental mold had broken, patched by youthful hubris.  Fake-it-‘til-you-make-it seemed like a plan: pretend to be an adult until proven otherwise.  It seems to be working—so far, no one has noticed, though not too sure about her.

1973

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The Shooting Wall

So, this is how it ends, my road from boyhood in Szentendre. I cursed Lászaló, a “friend” from Budapest’s ghetto, now a Sonderkommando, overheard by a Szwab.  Stripped, hands tied, pushed to my knees facing the wall.  My suffering will soon be over.  I hear commands.  I wait for relief.

The Shooting Wall, Block 11, Auschwitz,

6 May 2025

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First Thanksgiving

Massasoit stares inscrutably at these strange invaders from an unknown land.  Decades of cruelty by their kin stir vengeance.  Richard* wonders, could this be a trap?  It was a hard crossing—return to England is impossible.  We are outnumbered 90 to 52 by these wily savages.  We could all die today.

* Richard Warren was my

10^th great-grandfather (1578-1628).

Image:  Library of Congress

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What If?

Only 19, Gefreiter Heinrich Schneider was selected for this elite post for his loyalty.  His father, an Oberleutnant in Strausberg, is proud of him.  Promotion seems certain.  But he has heard rumors.  His Unteroffizier, only 24, is distracted sometimes.  He can’t get the idea out of his mind … what if?

Checkpoint Charlie, East Berlin

October 1989 (April 2025)

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Email

Holding his door open expectantly, Watson hasn’t eaten since last Tuesday when he was stuffed by a lumpy package from Florida.  Should he switch to email, like most of his neighbors?  He hears the mail truck approaching.  Salivating slightly, he opens wider.  Just a measly postcard would help.  I’m dying!

Clay County, Missouri, 4 November 2025

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Will Work for Food

SHE: Honey, will you debug my email glitch, help me move the couch, get car gas while you’re out, clean off your desk, load the dishwasher, take that box of decorations down from the top shelf, go to the grocery for the eggs I forgot?

HE: Honey, what’s for dinner?

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Command Module

If you find me surprisingly well-dressed and neatly groomed—clothing color-matched and wrinkle-free, nose hairs weed-whacked, clean tee-shirt right-side-out and tucked in, sparse head-hair barbered and brushed, eyebrows de-bushed, ear hairs snipped, beard shaped, neck shaved, eye-glasses dust- and smudge-free—you will know the Command Module has recently issued instructions.

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Atlantic Crossing

Undreamt by travel-hungry boy whose horizon reached Topeka, Lincoln, and Des Moines, journeys hosted by equally travel-hungry mom, stranded by wifely obligations until unleashed by widowhood.  Neither could have imagined this horizon-busting Atlantic crossing seven decades later.  Those day-trip seedlings sprouted a globe-full of adventures, culminating in this.  Thanks, Mom.

March 11 – April 1, 2026

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Granddaddy’s Pig Barn

We boy-cousins played pitch and catch here, where Grandmother‘s house once stood. Granddaddy‘s pungent pig barn sat prudently downhill and sometimes downwind.  Grace said, festive Sundays’ after-church dinners nourished our bodies and believers’ souls. We were poor, but rich. We were all together, here, a full lifetime ago. 

Town center Knoxville, Missouri, 2025

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Bothsidesism

Hitler and Lincoln are running for president, each claiming to have the interests of America at heart.  Journalists, in their idealistic zeal for neutrality, give each candidate equal coverage of their views.  Hitler spews unchallenged lies and unfounded blame of “others.”  Lincoln is measured, presenting fact-based policy positions.  Who wins?

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Glad I’m Not Young

At final decade’s doorstep, beneficiary of America’s demographic privileges in human history’s luckiest generation.  Facing dimming twilight with calm curiosity.  Passed life’s tests: stumbled into gratifying career, eventually finding the right wife.  Survived lethal blunders.  Narrowly escaping democracy’s collapse.  Worried for grandchildren’s grandchildren—mine and yours.  Glad I’m not young.

Age 23 (1968)

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Reason’s Choice

If instinct charts my final mile, 600 million years successfully evading hungry predators will have prepared my genes to preserve the flicker to its natural end.  If reason takes command, I may rationally assess future’s pleasure-pain quotient, freely choosing my time and place to exit.  I patiently await reason’s choice.

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Wordless

Finding words to encode thoughts and feelings into symbols that readers can decode to reconstruct their own semblance of those thoughts and feelings is my craft.  Overwhelmed here at Auschwitz’ gate, where a million people just like you and me were tortured to death by indescribable cruelty, leaves me wordless.

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I Shall Persist

A lifelong educator—classroom teacher, author of books, conjurer of poems—I have stubbornly persisted in the delusion that others wish to learn what I am prepared to teach.  At 80, I am belatedly learning the difference between fantasy and reality, as shared in this divulgence.  But persist I shall.

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Impermanence

My cherished travel-stained cap, left in a Berlin taxi.  My career’s product, meant to benefit mankind, discarded in new executive’s reorganization plan.  Democracy, America’s brilliant experiment, crushed by militant autocracy.  My labored poetry, abandoned unread in deleted digital files.  My life’s chalk mark, rinsed away by time’s rain.  Accept impermanence.

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Tracks

Poland-bound German boy, entranced by his journey.  These very same tracks carried countless Auschwitz-bound boys in 1942, not knowing their certain end.  Much like me in 1953—still in 2025—entranced by the trip, blind to my destination.  Same track, different journeys, carrying us to our certain ends, likewise unknown.

Aboard intercity train, Berlin to Krakow

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Mission Impossible

You say: Hitler was a great leader whose ideas were ahead of their time, Trump is the fuhrer America needs to be great again.  

I say: we’re bi-polar, sharing no equatorial region.  We inhabit planets orbiting different suns.  We have no common ground for compromise: a master mediator’s mission impossible.

Reich office for extermination, Auschwitz

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Moral Cul-de-Sac

Homo sapiens’ evolution led us into moral cul-de-sac, posing inexorable choice:

(1) Pacifism—license aggressors, glorify militarists, terrorize populace pawns, enable Hitler-style solutions. (2) War (failing diplomacy)—condemn boy soldiers to battlefield hell, sacrifice innocents, industrialize weapons for next war.

Consider (3) Ethical antinatalism—preclude suffering of myriad future generations.

Entrance to Birkenau.  No exit.

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Good Reasons

Enjoying a latte at a sidewalk café this sunny Rotterdam afternoon.  Snapped photo of a friendly, waving baby of a Middle Eastern family at adjacent table. His dad politely requests that I delete it.  I wonder why but of course comply without question.  Some people have good reasons for caution.

The photo, anonymized

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Wall Decorations

Dad to one, Papi to two, uncle to dozens, friend to plenty, husband to one mutually significant other, lying beside me now.  Those others are merely fading facades decorating my darkening wall.  Shall I survive her, if her turn’s first, to occupy a lonely, amply decorated home?  That’s a choice.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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North Star

Recalling the Jacarandas Declaration of 2015: My life has no higher purpose than to contribute to the quality of your life—my clarifying North Star in this directionless, purposeless, meaningless, infinite cosmos we cohabit.  My map to life’s horizon comforts me: I know where I’m going and what to do.

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The Recurring Dream

None since 1994, until last night.  I glimpsed him across crowded room of professional men.  I gathered courage to approach.  He knew of my career, books, poetry.  Seemed proud of me.  I thirsted for his every precious word.  We parted, again too soon.  I’m eighty.  Can’t wait another thirty years.

J. W. Dana (1874-1955)

Photo circa 1910

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The Emigrant

My homeland is no longer my heartland.  I loved, trusted, believed in her basic goodness.  I was born of her.  I absorbed her values—not all, but enough.  Since invasion by hate, guns, and toxic machismo, my heart no longer feels at home here.  In my heart, I have emigrated.

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Cuba

A tropical paradise blighted by colonial greed these five centuries.  People’s natural yet alienable right to voice and choice overpowered by morally corrupt force.  Revolutions’ dreams snuffed by soul-crushing weight of arms wielded by men of patriarchy.  Where are the women, unleashed from society’s dogmas, free to lead with love?

Coffee shop, Pinar del Rio

28 March 2025

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Our Warm Sea

Like a fish in water, I don’t notice, enough, the warm sea we share, an ocean away from suffering and its rumors, sedated in languid stupor, stirred awake only by the occasional ripple and nudging wave.  I’ll swim in your gentle wake, my love, until we reach the water’s edge.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Courage

I bravely tilt toward the corrupt windmill, imagining my poetic pinprick may strike the fatal blow, bringing down this brutal regime where senators and law firms and universities wilt under threat of the odious king’s tweets.  Shielded by obscurity, my witty word-weapons rain down upon him in righteous assault.  Courage!

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Enough

A thunderous clap silently shook me from this morning’s stupor, exploding my persistent delusion: that my existence matters beyond this fragile shell holding all things me: my poems, my people, my life, my future.  I’m left with my Now, my Here, nothing more.  That’s enough, if I let it be. 

Sarasota, 7:44 am, 23 March 2025

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Tripod

Lady Justice’s once-firm grip on the handles of power slips, greased by Strongman’s heartless treachery.  She joins Duma’s eunuchs, the other withering branch of our faltering tripodal tree.  We’re left the Kingman’s impaling executive shaft—no protection from fascistic whims, no sheltering bulwark for huddled masses on America’s desolate plain.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Uncertainties

Throughout these eighty years, I’ve known, abstractly, my term will end.  When, where, and how have remained distant uncertainties.  With age and reason, barring fatal surprise, uncertainty ebbs: when pain crosses pleasure’s Rubicon, at home, peacefully, by chosen means.  Meanwhile, uncertainties abated, I shall carry on living this good life.

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Danny’s Decision

Daniel Kahneman, thinking fast and slow, made a supremely rational decision, exchanging his final decrepit years for timeless, painless oblivion, choosing the Swiss option, waving off irrational gods and laws—a model for averting millennia of needless human suffering.  Choice.  Our world seems not there yet—I am, in time.

Receiving Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2013

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A Writer’s Final Plea

Doctor: let nature run its course—no surgery, no chemo, no radiation, no comforting lies—only palliation—and above all, unvarnished truth.  Friends, heirs, readers: no grief, only celebration and remembrance.  May my afterlife long dwell in values conveyed by my words on timeless digital bookshelves.  That’s all I ask.

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The Coup

Is this a coup?  Or, a shrewd four-dimensional strategist thinking waaaay outside the box?  Or, a fearless fighter against Woke’s dark forces?  Or, a brilliant economist boldly disproving outdated ivory-tower theories?  Or, a political genius outsmarting elitist libs?  Or, a visionary global leader making America great again?  It’s a coup.

Image: iStock

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A Bid for Remembrance

I draw poems from Psyche’s deep well, not yet assayed by Helios’ probing glare.  Pending appraisal, I wonder, “Is this it?”  The sheen of newness blinds me to its blemishes. The hubris of creation clouds its banality.  Tossed into purgatory with her older siblings, this one, too, awaits Mnemosyne’s judgement.

Photo: iStock

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A Tale of Two Towns

Before January 20, 2025, versus thereafter: familiar streets, but transmuted to some foreboding alien land.  A divisive stench pollutes the pleasant air we once breathed.  We trusted strangers.  Now, even old friends and brothers are regarded warily—pro or anti?  Airwaves stream tinnitus of hate.  I miss my old town.

Sarasota

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The Custodian

Our cherished childhood home is being dismantled, board by board.  The custodian we hired is instead razing her, Jenga-style.  We watch, horrified, as he hacks her foundation, risking collapse.  The promise we could replace him in four years is in peril: immune to law, he won’t leave.  The rape proceeds.

Photo source: unknown

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Over There

Over here, citizens cower, obeying in advance.  Duma rubberstamps Strongman’s dicta, neutered judges kneel, sycophants scramble for crumbs of power, oligarchs siphon profits, farcical elections mock voters, state media spews fake news, children learn (approved) history, religion flourishes, science dies.  Within secure borders, police keep order.  How’s life over there?

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A Life Story

A Boomer baby, he found farmers’ boots too coarse for his tender feet.  Misfit, too, were dorm life and camouflage fatigues.  Once discharged, he searched for his people, yonder.  On Oaxaca’s beach and Yasgur’s farm, he discovered his generation, now called Woodstock.  In Socrates’ steps he finally found his footing.

1969 to present

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Fig Leaf

In the shadows of these words hides a truth.  I want you to know it but dare not tell it too plainly.  If you are my friend, you will see it.  If you love me, I need not worry.  Peek beneath my metaphor—do I need a bigger fig leaf?

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Never Mind Me

Dear Leader, never mind me.  I’m just a harmless, doddering old man, slipping into senility.  I defer to your great wisdom and very stable genius.  No one heeds these silly, woke, microstories dribbling from my leaky pen, which pose no threat to your third term and beyond.  Heil, kind sir.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Cosmological Fundamentalism

Is spacetime emergent?  Do quarks and their sister point-bits derive from some deeper physics?  How does quantum gravity work?  Is there an actual irreducible “a-tom”?  What is truly fundamental?  The still more awesome question is how our lifeform’s science became capable of exploring this question empirically, without resorting to metaphysics.

Image: CERN particle accelerator, source: Physics World — some familiarity with popular cosmology will be helpful here.

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Descending

Descending into darkening depths, we slipped beneath the surface just weeks ago.  The electoral escape hatch slammed shut, sealing our sorry fate.  We gasp for the regulated air that once kept us free.  Who knows what lies below?  Historians recall precedents—Rome, Weimar Germany, Russia—who sank and never resurfaced.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Fate’s Calculus

Flukey roll of genetic dice, then tribe’s molding hand—thus co-created, I am not the sole owner of my wealth, nor of my crime.  By birthright, or by justice, do I deserve either?  ‘Tis not mine to know fate’s calculus, but to ponder from these confines of my gilded cell.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Return to Oblivion

He was found face-up, ankles crossed, fingers laced, relaxed, a neck-tied kitchen bag loosely draped.  On his chest waited a thank-you note to no one, yet to all: “I’ve returned to my eternal pre-birth oblivion, grateful to all who made my unique moment magnificent.  Apologies to you who find me.”

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Our Beloved Structure

We watch, transfixed, as our beloved structure teeters.  We smelled smoke long before that fateful Tuesday.  The tripod of branches is collapsing, unchecked.  In disbelief, we witness the imperfect design of our Founders crumbling into fascistic rubble.  The evil arsonist is succeeding.  So, is this how our architects’ dream ends?

Photo:  Le Monde

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Thin Veneer

Earth’s onionskin bubble wrap shields life from lethal cosmic radiation and constant meteoroid bombardment.  Democracy, too, is a thin veneer, constantly defending civilization from our own feral instincts, barely kept in check by laws, rules, and norms.  Both will be punctured, in due time.  Is that glint an approaching dart?

Sunset from orbit (NASA Photo)

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Until This Morning

Ron, the Acting Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of the Department of Redundancy Department, wonders what those DOGE tech-bro brownshirts snooping around his closet might be looking for—all traces of past disloyalty have been whitewashed.   As a racially pure red-blooded patriot with Jan6 street cred, he felt safe—until this morning.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Quicksand

It began with an unwary step onto quivering ground one November Tuesday.  Quickly, we were ankle-deep, unable to step back.  At first, we didn’t recognize the depth of our peril.  At knee-deep, two years on, we knew we were trapped.  Waist-deep … chest-deep … neck-deep … hopeless, we stopped struggling.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Retribution

Sweet revenge, that fleeting taste, that healing balm on yesterday’s wound, inflicted by you, you evil bastard, deserving of equal (if not greater) pain to rebalance the unfairness you wrought.  Only then can true justice be served, honor be fully restored, virility be proven.  We’re even now, my mirrored foe.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Toxic Relationship

Imagine you’re in a toxic relationship.  Should you stay or leave?—they never end well.  Hope is not a strategy—malignant narcissists don’t change.  What’s the cost of leaving—in dollars, dislocation, loss of familiar supports?  What’s the cost of staying—in mental health, lost opportunities?  Zen counsels detachment.  Imagine.

Cropped photo:  CNN

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This Reality Show

A preening, pompous man barks orders at his servile underlings.  Alluring, well-dressed women pose nearby, barely concealing their contempt.  Apprentices grovel, dreaming of stardom.  Sanewashed as The News, this show is not entertaining.  I try to change the channel, but my remote doesn’t work.  So, I pull the damn plug.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Down Here

Up there, on the battlefield between Us and Them, war wages.  Up there, people are dying, suffering hellish miseries, fearing the worst.  Down here, AWOL from my civic duty, I’m safe, disguised as a harmless WASP-like creature, protecting my nest egg from collateral damage, trying to quiet my screaming conscience.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Socrates

First, know nothing.  Question received wisdom.  Celebrate skepticism.  Embrace ignorance.  Think, feel, think again, again.  Learn from students.  Never graduate.  Practice dialog’s craft.  Take the other side—your opponent is your teacher.  Hubris poisons learning.  Live once.  Consider hemlock.  He is the father of Western education.  I am his son.

470 - 399 BCE — convicted by Athenian authorities of ungodliness and corrupting the youth. Quote:  The unexamined life is not worth living.

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                       Imbalance

Hey, Empath!  Worldwide, suffering far outweighs life’s lottery-winners’ pleasure.  Consider: far-future descendants we’ve caused to exist, the meat industry we patronize, wild carnivores who must eat.  Was Creation Loving God’s original sin?  To live justly in this unjust world: create no new life, be kind to fellow fauna, be aware.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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The Turtle

Sensing danger, he pauses at the edge of the roadway.  Ominous sights and sounds whiz and roar nearby.  His turtle-nature urges him to proceed boldly, protected by his sturdy shell.  But this time feels different.  Unsure, he decides to withdraw into his safe place for a short while.  Maybe forever.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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Paddling Upstream

Paddling upstream, heedlessly.  Regress outpaces progress.  That’s life, I’ve known without knowing.  Hmmm … the shoreline is gaining on me, inch by inch, year by year.  I hear the cataract behind me now, in the distance but growing louder.   Shall I race the accelerating current?  I turn to look.  No.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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The Call

Mental debris swept aside for a path forward.  Ambivalence resolved, mostly.  Spine stiffened for the coming fray.  I was braced for impact.  Then came the call.  Yes, the broader view makes sense, idealism must yield to pragmatism, better safe than sorry.  I’ll defect the Resistance.  Dispirited, only flaccid poetry remains.

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Life Goes On

I lunched with old friends today.  Life goes on as fascism descends like fallout, hardly recognized.  Insurrectionists were pardoned.  Senators caved to raw politics.  Nazi salute dismissed as trivial.  Leftovers for dinner.  Immigrant roundup continues.  Reporters fear to ask. The coup continues.  I wrote this silent microstory.  Tomorrow’s another day.  

Image source:  Jess Piper’s substack

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American Expat

I’ll pay taxes, obey laws, vote, practice kindness. I won’t swear loyalty to the king.  I’m buffered by my privileged demographic.  I’ll stay informed of the Resistance.  I’m a witness to the murder of democracy and will testify.  I’m too old to flee.  I’m an American expat living in Sarasota.

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Duty to Live

I’m alive!—a self-aware body of star-stuff on the gossamer skin of this rare habitable planet in one of trillions of billion-sun galaxies.  Mine is a lottery-winning, cosmically purposeless—yet unique—life.  What duty, owed to whom, requires me to live it fully?  My people?  Legacy?  Or none but myself?

Photo:  NASA

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Sarasota Snow Day

Morning walks, taken before the day’s duties overwhelm good intentions, promise to forestall the decrepitude of dotage.  At dawn today, cowering in my cozy bed, that dubious rule begged amendment: If under 60 or if raining, I declare a snow day.  With conscience cleared, I arose to write this microstory.

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My Attention

Take it.  Please.  Rescue me from this intolerable boredom.  I’ll pay you, buying subscriptions, apps, music, videos—myriad addictive distractions from dreaded quiet.  Lacking options, I’m forced to observe the relentless stream of consciousness flowing by.  Eventually I relent, discovering myself. Hello, me!  Nice to meet you.  Let’s get acquainted.

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Be Like Jimmy

Carter’s Camp David device*: blend dueling proposals into a single text, step by smart step—peacemaker’s power tool, mediator’s magic method, compromise’s secret sauce, agreement’s active ingredient, accord’s potent partner, sticky wicket’s escape hatch, conflict’s skeleton key. Life hack at national borders, corporate boardrooms, workplaces, family tables. Be like Jimmy.

* Single-text negotiation (Google it)

Camp David, 17 September 1978

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Lincoln

Eight score and three years ago the Great Emancipator spoke truth to this nation, conceived in liberty, dedicated to equality of all (with exceptions for race and gender), now engaged in a new civil war, testing whether this hallowed democratic experiment can long endure, or shall perish from the earth.

Gettysburg Train Station

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A Human Race

Which Sapiens ancestor first observed sunset’s leftward march, wondering why it predictably reversed direction at the far baobab tree every twelve moons? With scant evidence to explain solstices, the Pleistocene’s first astronomer and first priest debated truth.  Thus began humanity’s intellectual contest between religion and reason—a uniquely human race.

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Happy New Year?

Another lap around our star begins with the customary celebratory bang.  History marches relentlessly into the perilous void, dodging asteroids and despotic presidential decrees. Will that ominous light ahead prove to be an oncoming train, like the previous lap, or an escape tunnel from this illiberal catastrophe? Happy new year? 

2025:01:01:01

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Beware Informants

You have many online friends. You are popular, important, perhaps viral. You share, trustingly, your anti-regime opinions. You post, people read. Your voice is heard. Feels good. A lurking “friend” receives goodies—tickets, privileges, money—to report friends like you. You are hacked. Welcome to the USSR.  Welcome to tomorrow.

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The Fire Brigade

The regime’s fire brigade is at the gate, flamethrowers held high. Our home is but kindling. I hunker, shackled by age, in the White closet, awaiting the conflagration. I may expire, if lucky, before it reaches my hideout. Others, young and darkly pigmented, will suffer most. Meanwhile, I’ll watch Fox.

Photo:  CNN

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Fading to Black

In my late autumn, like puffs of smoke on a breezy day, like sugar lumps in hot tea, like morning’s fog yielding to sunshine, like memories of the long-departed, like pleasure vanquished by pain, like hope for fairness in this world, like justice in MAGAmerica, my patriotism fades to black.

Photo:  BBC

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Want My Mother

I achieved higher education.  I’ve written books. My students learned. I’ll leave the world a better place. I’ve built my own family.  I’m a good man. She did me well. She was proud of me.  She loved me.  She’s been gone decades.  I’m eighty. I’m scared.  I want my mother.

Explainer for the psychologically curious:  
Object Relations Theory (ORT) is a useful way of thinking about the relationship between self and the external world outside ourselves, especially in times of stress. It’s a healthy comfort to love and be loved by your mother (your first external object), living, dead, or imagined—at any age. 

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I Can’t Look Away

I’m a mere passenger on this careening bus. Its entitled, aggrieved driver rages in wild revenge.  Through blood-splattered windows, I foresee further carnage on the road ahead.  Many will die.  Shielded by demographic privilege, I may survive.  Seeking distraction, I concoct these trifling microstories, but fail—I can’t look away.

Image by AI (ImageFX)

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The Morning After

Boats lie peacefully at anchor in Sarasota Bay, arousing younger men’s fantasies of adventurous life aboard, lulled asleep on sunny decks, exploring lush tropical islands, snorkeling above brilliant parrotfish plying crystal water. A beached sloop, flotsam of Hurricane Milton, gently reminds why I’m glad other men’s treasures are not mine.

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How to Be an Expat at Home?

Dear Dmitry and Svetlana in Sochi: You despise Putinism yet seem to live happily in your pleasant seaside city, skillfully practicing personal realpolitik.  Tell us your survival tips.  Help us adjust to our electoral catastrophe.  How can we adapt to our new reality?  Your friends, Dmitry and Svetlana in Sarasota.

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No Refills

Being not preparing. Flowing not rushing. Accepting not expecting. Watching not performing.  Doing not competing. Liking not judging. Holding not grasping. Listening not telling. Strolling not racing. Allowing not requiring. Enjoying not regretting. Pausing not quitting. Improving not perfecting.  Living not dying. Maturing, getting better at getting old.  No refills.

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Surrogates

Turkey, stuffing, all the fixin’s, ready to serve. Pumpkin pie waits on the counter. Scrumptious aromas fill our home. Table is set. Seating plan is made. Our moms and dads are decades gone. No family within a thousand miles. Bittersweet childhood memories simmer. Holidays in Sarasota.  Surrogates arrive at six. 

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Grandfather’s Lament

Their journeys are launched. I once sailed their boats. They’re the captains now. Yearning to know them, aching to be known by them—but they hold no debt. I’m a busker along the road to their futures. Few coins grace my hat.  My duty is mostly done. Bon voyage, kids!

Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 2007

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Carpe Diem

Just seventeen. A window in time briefly opened to discover each other anew, to expand worldviews, to form shared values, to cement our bond. We brought home riches beyond memories, stories, and album photos. Life, school, job, spouse, kids soon followed. This precious window has closed. Borders, too. Carpe diem.

Ukraine, June 1990

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Life Is Good Enough

Sometimes I’m a bit brain-fogged, forgetful of friends’ names and yesterday’s plans.  Enjoying slower mornings and longer naps.  Eighty is good.  Thinking slowly, I can still write for selfish pleasure, for uncritical pals, and for AI datasets accessible to lazy poets surrendering creativity.  Aspirations in check, life is good enough.

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Author:

About Me

A migrant of the mind asking, “What’s life’s big picture?”  An avid collector of worldly experiences.  A witness to this moment in human history.  A student of those who have gone before.  An educator striving to leave the world a smarter place.  An old man at peace.  More bio:  www.dandana.us

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Other Books

View at Amazon

Post-retirement

· My Last Haiku: And Other Haiku Quintets

· A Life Mostly Lived: True Stories in 85 Syllables

· Diary of a Young Man: Coming of Age at a Cultural Crossroads

· Love, Death, Humanism: Practical Philosophy in Verse

· My Death Collection: Haiku Quintets for Thinking Mortals

· Haiku Quintets

· The Reason Revolution: Atheism, Secular Humanism, and the Collapse of Religion

· Life Is Not Good: Ethical Antinatalism in Haiku

· Science and Secularism: Haiku Quintets

· Songs of the Pandemic: Haiku Quintets

Pre-retirement

· Managing Differences: How to Build Better Relationships at Work and Home

· Conflict Resolution: Mediation Tools for Everyday Worklife

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Acknowledgements:

Scribes, a Sarasota writer’s community.  You know who you are. 

Susan, my window into the Other.