Gary Beck

Sterile Memories, Tourist Class and Therapy

by Gary Beck

Sterile Memories

I visited the houses
where I used to live
for many years
in New York City.
I did not know
there were so many.

I stood before each building
found no sign,
no memento
that I was there.
Nostalgia didn’t possess me
but I wondered
how I lived somewhere
and not a trace remained
to mark my passing.

Where I once loved, mourned,
paced confining walls,
burned with the passions
of a young, obsessed man,,
all is evaporated
as if it never was.

Strangers reside
where once I dreamed
of a wondrous life.
I hope they dream.

Now I fear
we may be trapped
in the consuming cycle
of the ravenous city
that tolerates some
for a while,
devours many ruthlessly.

The crush of motion
is inexorable,
shattering unexpectedly
fragile existence,
a quick subtraction
of illusions of safety.

Tourist Class

As America declines,
roots of empire
slowly retracting
from a hostile world,
tourists flock
to the staggering land,
burdened with Euros
they must dispense
to welcoming shopkeepers
eager to serve
the new money,
making some of us wonder
if tourists flocked
to declining Rome,
lusting to acquire
diminishing products
of civilization.

Therapy

Distortions of reality,
commonplace
since the invention
of psychology
that explains more confusingly
then witch doctors of old,
where patients expected
simple answers,
affordable fees,
since there was generally
one practitioner
with a monopoly
of services
and the dissatisfied
couldn’t take their business
elsewhere,
or risk future denial
of necessary treatment.

Bio:
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 7 published chapbooks and 2 others accepted for publication. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions and Displays will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.