My brother, Joe Wildman, died on Sunday at age 65. We lost a husband, father, brother and brother-in-law; a poet, comedian, and filmmaker; a political strategist, movement activist, and union worker; too soon, too soon, too soon.
Here’s a small sample of his almost daily untitled musings, some quirky and some poignant; just like him.
He will be missed. By many.
~ Charles (Chick) Hoffman
3/18/21
He was uncomfortable in bright light because it revealed what he believed to be flaws in his own
skin, but he distrusted the dim light for hiding them. They were already found out and maybe
memorized by her anyway but the timing of highlighting his flaws was troubling.
Her adoration of him was not trustworthy either. He knew her to be impeccably honest and
unimpeachably sincere, but prone to manic delusions. “We are blessed by magic,” she would
say. He liked the sound of that, but it was the music of her voice that would grab him, not the
lyrics. They were neither blessed nor magical and her words were sometimes inaccessible to his
critical mind.
Was it her romantic fancy that plagued him or his own insecurity? He decided he would put off
this analysis for another day. What’s another day in two lifetimes of pursuing happiness.
He lit another two candles and moved the floral arrangement to one side to avoid either of their
faces being in shadow.
She would be home soon for their private celebration. He found himself hoping for the blessings
of a little magic. They had earned it.
3/17/21
When you were learning to type, I gave you a stack of my poems to practice with. You lost them
all. Later you apologized. I don’t think you believe me when I say, all I hope is that you read
them.
I confess, I never wanted to read them again. I only wanted you to read them once.
So many poems I wrote in the sand on the beach with a stick, or on napkins left on tables, or on
flash paper, or by pouring whiskey and beer and pissing in fresh snow, all gone as they should be.
Poetry is a beating heart, not a cardiogram.
Now I write on Facebook without a thought to how I will ever find them again.
Maybe when I’m dead, I’ll be reunited with all my poems and surrounded by everyone I’ve ever
loved. I won’t read them then either.
3/17/21
A simple window above the kitchen sink, with a bird bath and feeder just outside, would change the way we measure our days, from what remains to be accomplished, to how many redwings we’ve observed.
You would sing your songs again while you bake our bread. I could sing along, as loud as I liked above the “songs” of the raucous jays.
A simple window would open our hearts again. Maybe we could throw it open wide and catch a breeze sometimes.
3/13/21
When she said “my attraction to you isn’t primarily physical,” what my 21 year old brain noted at the time was ‘she just said she is physically attracted to me’ somewhere among other more primary attractions.
Would it be rude 45 years later to ask what was primary? Would she remember? Would she be mad I stopped listening? Do I get points for asking and for listening now?
3/11/21
Our good mornings depend on our goodnights. Our goodbyes depend on our goodwill.
As one day ended and became the next and we rolled each other forward to wherever it is we
now are, I dwelled on all our recent past “goodnights” which were rarely really ever even the best
parts to recall.
Good morning, good day, goodnight, repeat.
Good morning, good day, goodnight, repeat.
Good morning, good day, goodnight, repeat.
Good morning, good day, good bye, good luck.
3/5/21
In this spiritual sweepstakes,
you must be mindful to enter,
you must be present to win.
3/5/21
My third “love poem”
Love conquers writer’s block and reduces it to rubble like one who sculpts reduces a block of
marble to its prime subject, revealing the truth within.
I’m still too young to know if love conquers all, distance, death, or disparate desires.
But I concur with love and acknowledge it has conquered all for me, both my imaginary demons
and my affected angels.
3/5/21
There is the kind of love that makes the mundane charming.
There is the kind of love that heightens the senses and quickens the blood.
There is the kind of love that raises the dead and causes the blind to see.
What are you up for tonight my dear? I know you have stuff to do.
3/5/21
In badminton as in tennis, love is nothing.
But at least in badminton, there are birdies.
3/4/21
Being mindful of magic,
It occurs to me, I’d rather make this woman whole than cut her in half.
And why would I pull this rabbit out of my hat when it’s perfectly capable of getting out on its own terms, in its own good time.
The purpose of magic is not to diminish or claim agency over others. Such power as that is pure illusion. The magician lets the mysteries reveal themselves consensually.
3/1/21
Once earth has reclaimed our bodies and we are beings of light that cast no shadows and you let
me know you completely forgive me and I let you know I still thoroughly desire you, by that
exchange we will covertly recognize one another.
2/27/21
The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao. But it is a valid Tao and that’s good enough for
me.
I once briefly glimpsed and grasped the true nature of reality. Just as quickly I realized there
wasn’t any money in it, so I didn’t even bother to write it down.
Instead I took a walk that brought me to here and to now.
2/27/21
Somehow I went from young bones with an old soul, to a young soul with old bones, and all in one lifetime.
My life is a small statistical sample, but past life regression analysis leads me to conclude, we were all once Nefertiti for a hot minute.
2/27/21
You aren’t smiling in the photograph.
Don’t let anyone tell you to smile who doesn’t give you something to smile about.
Yes, you have a lovely smile but it’s not just your flash of teeth or squinty eyes. It’s the gratitude, the recognition, and the reciprocity that’s compelling.
Your knowing glances and accompanying sly smiles slay me. But a smile on demand is cheesy, can you say cheesy, please?
2/27/21
In the warm sea water, weightless, years float away, and we are acrobats and dancers for as long as we dream.
2/25/21
I don’t need you to need me, but I want you to want me so badly you might feel that you do. It’s
ok either way.
I’ve never stopped loving you and I don’t plan to start stopping any time soon. Whatever lies in
store is probably just more of the same. It’s ok either way. I’m not complaining.
Life keeps changing and rearranging our plans. Your eyes know exactly what to say.
My hands know just what to do.
I plan to see this through. It’s ok either way. It’s always been ok with me as long as it’s still ok
with you.
2/22/21
This may not be written to a real person. We agree that person may not exist.
My memories of you are not the real you, but they are mine, and sometimes they are all I have.
I remember you from before we met.
I remember you from before you were momma,
from when you were undecided between becoming visible or being left alone.
I remember you from when you were torn between being desired and being safe, between
standing on your own, or lying beside me, between saying good night or saying goodbye.
I remember kissing you on the top of your head and smelling your hair. I remember putting you
on a pedestal so I could look you directly in the eye. I remember your resentfulness at being
elevated. I remember your eye contact. I remember the beauty of your soul.
I remember being sure I had seen the core of you. I remember you sure I was only painting pretty
pictures born of my desires.
I’m still that small giant and sacred clown. I still lift you up to see you. You still doubt my
vision of you.
For sure I was not imagining kissing you today. But for a while, I was also kissing my memories
of you. I was also kissing a person we both agree may not exist – this is written for her.
2/21/21
When words fail me, I eat.
When words fail me, I sleep.
When words fail me, I walk the dogs.
When words fail me, I share them on Facebook anyway.
2/20/21
If I died now, I’d die happy. I just have to keep this up indefinitely.
2/17/21
Conspicuous confusion presented.
Suspicious question asked.
Perspicacious answer given.
Auspicious exchange completed.
Extispicious examination averted.
2/15/21
Babies can be born full of beauty straight from the git-go. Appreciation of that fact took him
years to acquire. The older he became, the more beautiful babies and toddlers became.
Talia was beautiful to him as a teen, but how easy it is for a teenage boy to see that beauty. How
hard to look away.
As a curious young man he’d contemplate how Talia might look at 30, 50, 70. He looked at
Talia’s mother when he’d walk Talia home and wonder, will I look at Talia someday the way
Talia’s father looked at Talia’s mother?
It is a mystery what mechanism makes desire mature, the metamorphosis of beautiful to deeper
beauty and the training of the eye to see it.
It took Talia almost seven decades to evolve such detail of character and be as magnificent as she
had become. It took him decades to develop the discerning taste for Talia’s emerging splendor.
He had looked away from time to time but always returned to see what magnificent work time
had done.
Time had been kind.
Time can do so, so much.
2/12/21
Don’t look for giants in ancient text. You will find only rumors of giants.
If the immortals of antiquity are not now on-line, their advice is inaccessible. Are they that tech
averse they chose irrelevance after all this time?
Why do angels, the memitim, seem so timid now that they don’t smite the evil armies even as
they are now advancing?
I don’t look for Eros or Psyche on Mount Olympus. They are in our DNA, or they are nowhere
that matters to me.
2/12/21
Sometimes I miss the simple carbohydrates of my youth –
caramel and alcohol –
and the biochemical flush from deep within my soul through my hypothalamus–released by your
kiss–guiding me like a heat seeking missile–past guilt–directly to salvation.
Now I’m old.
I enjoy the warmth of your touch.
I find comfort in the feeling of control, even as fleeting as it is this morning.
2/8/21
Love is the constant.
Time, the speed of light, my weight, and my net worth are variables.
2/7/21
The people I love feel both loved and annoyed.
I am loving and annoying.
That is my legacy.
2/7/21
Fiction and poetry just need an end point. They will be revised constantly until done, at least
done long enough to walk away, until you believe it works for you.
The same is true for history.
2/7/21
Knee-jerk reactions and gullibility and overstated overreactions have always been an integral part
of public discourse. Embrace it. It’s how we roll.
All social media has done is automate us and made our rants instantaneous, more visual and
visceral, and less cerebral.
This is true for our allies and adversaries alike.
I don’t miss making ditto masters about the Cambodian invasion. We need to keep matching the
times by keeping up with the times.
Rather than censor, let’s be powerful and effective with our words. If you aren’t good with your
words, wear a t-shirt that speaks for you.
2/5/21
And, no, I will not teach you. By example or otherwise.
I could be your servant, your protector, your advocate, your promoter, your foil, your masseur, and your muse, but I could not teach you.
I would feed you, bathe you, entertain you, elevate you, titillate you, tickle you, follow you, and listen to you, but I can not even start to teach you. You’ve got to keep figuring it all out for yourself. I’m no help here.
In exchange for all I can do for you, will you teach me? Will you explain why I feel this way and start from the beginning of our beginning. Slowly, explain it to me, like you are talking to an emotional 5 year old.
2/2/21
I am not your perfect man who arrives with your morning coffee and disappears at the end of
your morning walk
I am not your perfect man who fulfills all your needs but whom you really don’t need at all
I am not your perfect man who disappears when you doze off leaving only a trace of aftershave
and musk on the pillow case
I am not your perfect man who tastes like hot cocoa and moans like a distant train whistle
I am not your perfect man, but a man who will hold your heart until you are ready to hold it
yourself, or forever, or just until morning.
2/1/21
A story I learned as a boy.
In Leviticus 19:27, Jews are prohibited from “destroying” the corners of the beard. The Talmud
(Makkos 20a) explains this to mean the use of a single-bladed razor (as opposed to any
scissors-like device which requires two blades to cut).
When Col. Jacob Schick patented the first electric razor in 1930, my father’s father’s father, a
Talmudic scholar, had to determine for the Chicago Rabbinical Council if that action of the
electric razor was a blade or a scissors. I don’t know the outcome of the deliberation, but that
inquiry apparently ended orthodoxy of any kind in my family to this day.
1/31/21
Even the Tree of Life has seasons, and all of them beautiful.
We were born young but we were not born to stay young.
We were born to grow and age and bloom and drop our foliage and to become earth.
You are more beautiful than I ever remember.
Partially because your beauty has enhanced with age and partially because memory fades with time, but in this moment, all is right and bright.
1/30/21
The skirt looks better in the old photo you’ve kept than it looks on me. The vibrant colors of the
photo have faded some, but not as much as the fabric has in three dozen years. It was always too
big on me, so now it fits just fine. Now it fits me better than does my skin after three dozen
years.
Why do you want to see me in it? Is it because of what it hides or because of what it reveals?
Are you just sentimental or are you planning something new?
Don’t answer.
I suspect I’ve kept this skirt all these years for the same reason you’ve kept the photo. At least I
hope that’s why we’ve hung on so long.
1/26/21
Having matched all my socks that had mates in the sock drawer and having put all the lonely
socks in the dust rag drawer, I decided to tackle the kitchen drawer. You know the one. The one
we all have.
I was delighted to find a lost mitten and reunite it with its mate languishing lonely in the dust rag
drawer.
I also found that piece of my soul that has long longed for you. I am amazed to see that my heart
has grown large enough over the years that it now fits.
Next I’ll tackle the box under my bed of old photos and forgotten dreams.
1/25/21
She was not a young filly and it was cold and wet and she did not want to carry whatshisname all
the way around the track and across the finish line. He was heavier than anyone who had ever
ridden her and he had never made a name for himself.
She’d do her job and get it over with.
But on the far turn as the drizzle fell she saw daylight between the front runners. She heard in
her head her breeders voice saying “she’s a mudder like her mudder and her mudder before her.”
On the inside, around the final turn, suddenly, uncontrollably, she threw herself, nose first, down
the home stretch.
She crossed the line first and alone.
Now she had made a name for herself, and for whatshisname.\
1/22/21
I’m a man of my word and my word is “sorry.” Often.
I don’t intend to mislead or disappoint. I just forget there are those who trust me, those who
believe me, those who read prose into my poetry.
When I say “I love you,” you can take that to the bank. (That idiom means it’s true – absolutely
true.) While at the bank, ask a loan officer the negotiable value of my true love for you. Show
them my valentines and offer them as collateral.
If you are embarrassed as they laugh you out the door, remember, I am a man of my word and my
word is “sorry.”
1/22/21
Shuffling forward toward galloping death,
I think back, eyes tightly closed,
more strategy than sentiment.
1/19/21
There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no
place like home. There’s no place like home.
Damn it’s windy
1/18/21
My life is so perfect right now I have a fear the writers are in a hurry to wrap up the loose ends just before it ends.
1/18/21
The long black night no longer reminds me of hastening death. It is now a harbinger of our
dawn, when we will awaken together.
I open my eyes and pull the blinds to see the sun glint over your mountain.
I close my eyes and see you in my mind as the sun shows over the curve of your waist, where my
hand once rested.
…
Do I open my eyes and face the day?
Do I shut my eyes and bask in the warm glow of your energetics, your light made mass?
…
Yes, I shut my eyes for the long wait until you move me.
My body at rest, will remain at rest, until acted upon.
1/16/21
Now that I know we can touch, I want us to feel.
It’s true that I never knew who you were, so how could I know who you are?
It was not for lack of trying if I’ve never touched your core.
It’s that you used to flutter by so fast I couldn’t feel you with my hands.
Now that you’ve come to rest briefly on my palm, are you layered too thick in a lifetime of
growth to feel my touch?
If I had been present to observe, how you wove your new cocoon, perhaps I’d know how to
release you. Maybe then I could touch your heart.
What if upon release, you flutter on. You are most beautiful when free in flight.
But then, will you never feel my touch at your core, your soul, your heart.
1/14/21
I don’t have much time so I’ll make this brief.
I invest in you, you blue chip stock because you are a hedge against betting on myself.
I’ve seen you in your battle clothes, your soft brown inquiring eyes concealing your brass ovaries.
I back you up so I can share in your success. I want to take credit for discovering you, you grown
ass woman.
You will impress me long after I’m forgotten. I will be forgotten. Unless I can be remembered
for discovering you.
1/12/21
I spent 13 years as an innocent kid, 13 years as the angry young revolutionary, 13 years as the
ambitious organizer, 13 years as the skilled organizer, soon I’ll be finishing up 13 years as the
established comfortable organizer.
Not sure if next I’ll just be a has been organizer or like the guys I knew 45 years ago from the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade igniting the fire in the next generation.
Just thinking about it makes me tired.
1/12/21
I already miss you, but the truth is, I miss me more.
The tension we built together will not be released. It’s my keepsake locked in my chest and
points beneath.
So now you know who I am when you take me for a walk. A crazy old man. A me no one else
will ever know. A me I finally met late in life and fell in love with.
Nothing was held back, except release, and all else is for you to keep. Only the tension remains
with me.
Kindly think of me kindly, so that I live on where it matters.
You asked, without final release, how I will know when I’m done?
I will know when you tell me.
1/2/21
I just want to live long enough for my daughter to see me grow up
1/1/21
My new year’s resolution is to age one year in 2021. Wish me luck.
