Her Couch of Silence

Poet Mitchell A. Kramer began writing his epic poem, Her Couch of Silence, as a younglawyer and completed it forty years later. It is the centerpiece of his new poetry collection by the same name.

The title poem explores the history of western civilization, experienced in one day. The woman of the couch spends a day in Philadelphia, envisioning life from tribal human sacrifice to the horrors of modern warfare, and from saints to monsters.

TV Newscasters

Besieged by pictures, words, faces

peddling the reconstructed old

or the vaguely new, we sit

immobile, ensconced in leather

watching a skewed or awful world

snippets of murder, robbery

tales of home invasion, tales

of killings fill quiet evenings

reality that is faked

contests where illiterates

demonstrate inadequate education.

We live solitary amid visions

amid would be leaders, needing

sound bites without substance

amid pundits spouting nonsense

amid calls to overmedicate.

How would it report the second coming

as a sporting event or as

a tale to be ignored?