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?