The Commuter Poems

Long ago I wrote a series of poems in a little black book while taking buses and trains to and from work at Amazon.co.uk in Slough, Berkshire England. I wrote a title on the front cover in shiny silver pen, "The Commuter Poems". A few years after that, I went to a workshop on micro-publishing with my son Noé at the Bumbershoot arts festival in Seattle, Washington. When we left the workshop, we each knew we had projects that we could produce that same weekend.

That night I stayed up nearly all night going through the poetry in that notebook, picking out my favorites and then organizing them into this very short chapbook. I printed out a few tens of them -- the exact number is lost to murky memory -- and I brought a few with me to Bumbershoot the next day. I gave one to the organizer of the festival. Most of the others ended up as gifts to friends and family.

Here is a PDF of that long-ago project for your e-reading pleasure. There is another PDF that was set up for printing in "bookshape" on my father's double sided laser printer, but this is the best version for on screen reading.

Nothing has been edited or changed in this PDF. This is before I changed my first name from English to Hebrew. Even my old URL is on the back cover. Alas, I am so glad that I do not sell real estate to pay the bills today. It's also nice to see that Bush is no longer president. Clearly some of my hopes are eventually fulfilled in this life.

Enjoy!