ANOTHER PHIL X INTERMISSION:

Yes, Rupert Zwevoid has compiled some new material to post during my "hiatus." But why rush him? After all, I have a poem by veteran journalist David Tucker that I would like to share.

Eternal thanks to my lovely K. for introducing me to this unique voice, and for buying me his book of poetry, Late For Work. Yes, I do feel some sense of simpatico with the guy.

"Perspective"

The stories are forgotten before the paper starts to yellow.
Nobody remembers the name of the county executive
who swapped his city for a few thousand dollars and a three-piece suit.
Nobody cares whether the body in a trunk at the airport even had a name,
and the dead in a Kansas train wreck are remembered
by a few relatives in a town near a bridge that isn't there anymore.
But once it was news and drove some slouchy reporter
to deadline as she hammered the keyboard without thinking,
throwing in every fact she could scrounge-
the weather, the smell of the air around the event,
the color of the smoke, the names of the victims, the ages; calling
on loud, overheated words: unprecedented, shocking, blazing,
devastated, and that old standby, stunned; bearing down
with minutes left until the presses rolled, holding nothing back.