1-2-2015 Grandpa, today from the Hill of the Cross the view of the volcano and Antigua is clear. An hour ago I learned that yesterday that you had gone. Images of you at every stage I’ve known you have been streaming through my recall. Since a half century ago you were given six months to…
Like Hemingway’s Paris, The Goodbye Blue Monday is now going to have to be something crazy that we carry within us—a light burning like the tip of a hand-rolled America Spirit. In this café in the Mission of San Francisco, I should be working on the article that is due at midnight. But upon…
Diana Stevan is a writer, actor, screenplay writer and author who has just self- published a romance-fueled adventure novel, A CRY FROM THE DEEP. Diana and I have been in touch since she did a review of my self-published 2012 book “How We Are Human” For anyone considering going the route of self-publishing a book, Diana…
One take-away from the Buddhist Geek’s 2014 Convention in Boulder, Colorado was how contrary to mindfulness applications like Facebook can be. The merits of Facebook are plenty, but when allowed to dominate our attention, Facebook can diminish the present. While I’ve written before praising Facebook, I go overboard with it sometimes and I know you do…
I first heard about NoNoWriMo in 2004. At the time, I was a freshman in college and “was already working on a novel, so why would I take on another one?” So, maybe I had a point that year. I think I was still working on the same novel that next year, so that was…
Last march I was joined by HEK, an Icelandic Singer/Songwriter and poet whom I had met in the previous year. He wrote the poem “Nowhere” right before he came to the US, and in Brooklyn taverns and late night jam sessions would recite it to whatevcer haphazard groups we’d managed to assemble. It has a…
Don’t Retreat Into Your Phone When the pondering barista slices fruit for smoothies When filling a frustrated space In line in a foreign New York neighborhood When the parks call your name and The sun has declared himself sultan of the Conquered grass, Yesterday called, wishing he had had more time During…
“Lay off the gin!” screamed the scotch, Moments after the tequila grabbed a bottle of it and Began humping it like a street dog. If I’ve learned one thing from street dogs, it’s do not bite children, for parents enact specific revenge In questions of their kin. But here, amid the peanut shell alluvium, Stands…
From How We Are Human Defecating in the Woods The world is open The sky is grey. Things are sparse. I am bare. There is no toilet paper but no one cares. We use pinecones, And recently deceased squirrels. This is not a metaphor. We use these things to wipe ourselves.…
I had never heard my grandpa sob before. His shaking hands grasped for the first time a book of my grandmother’s selected poetry, Her Life On Paper: Poems of Survival. Most people will remember Super Bowl XLVIII as the day the Seahawks trounced a dismantled Bronco’s team. My grandpa will remember it as the day…
