A moment of silence

There are sounds we cannot speak
only listen to silently,
clinging to despair like an old friend
and imagining away the distance.
The lonesome call of a train whistle sounds through
the valley like an old friend.
The solitude I sought was always waiting for me,
here, right in front of my eyes so blurred with tears
I could not see it.
You said [...]

Shoebox Hornet

There was something in the pantomime of your eyes. A quick flick down and to the right when you said you loved me. We were never the same again. Loosing you was just the beginning.
I remember distinctly sliding down the walls of doubt, a painful spiral, and my fingers slipping down the greasy [...]

From Where I Stand

The last time we see someone.  The last time I saw you.  You never know it at the time, of course.  And we look back and say, Hmm, was that the last time I saw him?  The last time I touched him?
Was the last time on my road trip?  Almost certainly.  But that doesn’t count [...]

By way of an introduction: Picture Me

I feel like you see me as though you are looking at a photograph taken of me taken on a drizzly November evening under the light of a streetlamp, one twenty-fourth of a second, captured in a neat four-by-six frame, slightly blurry. You keep staring at this picture and you like what you [...]

Detour

I’m walking, reading, already a bit dislocated, disassociated, disoriented. Reading and walking. A thing that brings stares and remarks, though since childhood and still utterly unremarkable to me. Up the stairs, along the temporary walkway behind the library, fans blowing HEPA filtered air out past construction debris and jackhammer tremors as they [...]

for all my big talk

For all my talk about not judging people by their exteriors, I should be labeled a big fat hypocrite. I should be hung out to dry. I honestly don’t see people’s exterior stuff for the most part. It doesn’t play into my heart-felt impressions of a person ninety-nine point nine percent of [...]

Siamese Twins

slipping through and endless sky
inordinate and just flying by
my musical lover sends a gift
and every cloud appears to lift
like a child i can see again
returning to hills where we ran
together, an inseperable team
two twins joined without seam
my lover holds no stitches to me
siamese kittens, we’ll never be
as close as you an i, my friend
this i [...]

West Oakland to Roseville

I waited in a gondola in the Desert Yard, blissed out with a cigar in the late afternoon sun. Golden sun, mellow cigar smoke, warm east bay afternoon.

Spoon Genesis

We wanted Spoon to be a safe place for stories, wild or tame, popular or controversial. We hoped it would stir the blood, warm the heart, and provide emotional sustenance.

The Healing Power of Rusted Metal

Clarity.  So fleeting.  I feel like clarity can be a squirrely elusive target.
I’m sitting right now in one of my favorite secret places — the little disused rail car at the local trainyard.
off on a siding.  A motorized car for workers that rides on the rail.  Quietly rusting at the end of the yard, where [...]

screech owl

A bird of few words is my friend Screech Owl, who visits most nights, sometime between two and four a.m. I’m always awake, the only one in my home awake, the only one who has ever heard him, and so ours is a confidential conversation. He trills for five [...]

Clouds

Clouds drift by. You can see them move ever so slowly…unrushed…at their pace, not ours.
Layer upon layer of clouds. They hide behind each other. Some have a distinctive shape. Others have a shape that dissipates. They still have form, but the edges are less defined.
Dark ones mingle with light ones. They coexist in a strangely [...]

Warm Tide, Ocean Shore

As I lay upon the tidal ocean shore
Your body lapping up onto mine
Warm as milk, wet as summer rain
I am lost in your thousand-mile horizon
Warmth within me, under, your sea
I am taken into your undertow
As I rise up, blessed things are forgotten
Satisfied and lost no more
A thousand hands wait to pull us into
This lonely, forgotten [...]

Meteor

She walks down the beach, hips swaying in the push of the soft sand. A willowy fireball. Which I just looked up, a brilliant meteor that may trail bright sparks.

Two pair of dreams

Two nights of unusual, thematic dreams. Each night, a different theme.
Night before last, I dreamt two police interactions. In the first which I don’t remember well, I had a confrontation with a rent-a-cop who was trying to control me. I wouldn’t be controlled. In the second which I remember well, a traffic stop [...]

a shimmering sheet of blue

A crazy roadtrip across two states to see a friend. The traveler, the dreamer, the exotic circus lady. Talk about her need for rootedness and my need to uproot some of mine. Coming from opposite directions, maybe we can meet in the middle.
Beyond, a defile between the mountains descended rapidly about two [...]

I like limbless Men

I feel like if they only have one legg, or one arm they are forced to develop an inner spirituality. Really I want to stand next to someone who is not afraid to practice prayer and then take off with only a backpack and a pack of smokes. With no destination in mind. So I [...]

sweat and laugh

A Sikh guru I sometimes listen to says one must laugh and sweat every day. I can manage that, every day. There is always humor, and there is always the dripping sweat of a workout that I have convinced myself I need to survive, or fuck it, just walk outside in Indiana in [...]

A Moving Target

You understood that the people at the other end of the wires were a finite and knowable group of humans who’s stories you knew to a degree.