“You cannot call someone dead who fights for life”

In memory of Sally.
I knew a strong woman with an infectious laugh and a shining smile.   She was murdered.  When I picture her face, it is full of life, of fun.  When I think of her last moments, I see it filled with pain and terror.  This is obscene.
And we are left to cope, to [...]

one definition of success

There are big, momentous, earth-shattering things that have happened to me which I can point to and say, “See? That’s why I am who I am. What else could you expect, after that?” But mostly what makes a life and a whole person are these things, these tiny things which would be [...]

That Darn Cat

The first breath of air upon going outside forklifts acres of nostalgia straight into my senses.  I am alive with possibilities, alive with memory.  A swift, brisk current sends the first leaves from the trees as I reach to pull my sweater down around my whitened knuckles.   Autumn takes me back home.  A sense [...]

It’s 1am and I’m Running Away

The high-tension wires are making a dangly-jangly rhythm like the sound of a digeridoo.
And I’m thinking about the barking dogs in the distance.
I’m thinking about the fish dancing for fish reasons to fish rhythms.
I’m thinking about the frogs across the lake with their frog love songs.
I’m thinking about what you said
About wishing I didn’t think [...]

DNR (or, where I’ve been all week)

It is hard to watch someone die.
If your pulse drops below 20, your kidneys are producing nothing but blood clots, and you have a DNR order, you will probably die within a few days.  Unless, apparently, you have a chronic, debilitating neurological disorder, like my dad does.  My dad lays in a hospital bed, pale [...]

Paperboy

Cool now out in the yard at this time of morning. Yet he’s started working already. Why he is up so early shoveling, he can’t figure. Stubborn even against his own tendencies.
Position the spade.  Step.  Push the handle down.  Bend, lift and toss.  Repeat.  These simple efficient motions, so pleasing in their economy.  Repeated [...]

Anywhere

Ocean voyages in far away lands
without ever seeing the sea
and trees, leaves, fall and autumn
colors breaking bones
Breakdown brakeshoe breakbeat
a backbeat an off rhythm
Snare player from the Midwest
in a Salvation Army coat
sees a girl he thinks he
recognizes from a 1000 miles away
An old love, a burnt out flame
Fists in hand, a baseball bat hidden
behind the seat, [...]

releasing a ghost of a thing

I fell in love when I was sixteen and we were together until I was twenty-one. It was a very intense relationship. Neither of us having much in the way of role models, we formed our own school for the blind, stumbling hand in hand through the beautiful but harsh lessons of love [...]

So When I Say I Like You

I don’t need kind words,
Kind thoughts,
Good intentions.
I don’t need safe and sane,
Right job,
Right life.
I was raised short on inspiration.
I was raised where books on shelves,
Where there were books,
Were Condensed Books
Like Condensed soup
Down to nothing at all.
Art was Tuesday’s at one.
Music was radio.
Entertainment was TV.
I came from the dry side,
The sly slide of life
Into old age
The [...]

Heat Wave

It’s sunny. What am I going to do with that? It’s sunny. And hot. The rain is drying up in puddles in the warm morning air. Babies are high-stepping up the sidewalk. I resent the time spent at work, and then stand dazed and speechless before the bigness of [...]

what I thought when I heard that the world was supposed to end when they turned on the new proton accelerator yesterday

The world as I know it
ended yesterday
and the day before
and the day before.
I am a reconstituted,
reincarnated, re-oxygenated
lump of carbon and water,
and some kind of godlike cellular goo
with the power of recollection.
Every cell, or sub-atomic something,
blindly remembers yesterday
and the day before
and the day before
until I am fooled into thinking
that I am altogether
more solid and lasting
than a [...]

Old Friends

I was walking towards the coffee shop when I saw you over there, serving tables. Pain of recognition struck. I knew I should have moved on, but it felt stupid to sneak away. I’ve known you since we were almost children. Could I really just turn and run?
I crossed over to the restaurant and walked [...]

garage sale

She hated to see her things strewn out like that, on the oil stained concrete. She hated to bargain with people over her life. “That’s a dollar… okay, I’ll take fifty cents.” She had put those things together so nicely in her little apartment. I was always surprised when I returned from college to see [...]

Even the birds are crying

There is a fire burning in the mountains. The smoke covers the sun and the light looks like the end of the world. Even the birds are crying… the plaintive sound of wild turkeys the backdrop of our final farewell.
I walked through the forest alone and disoriented. As always, I could not [...]

Dear Alan Watts

Dear Alan Watts,
I wish I could have known you, been alive when you were alive, talked to you and maybe studied with you, heard your deep throated laugh in person and watched the skin wrinkle up around your eyes.
What does the time I live matter?  “Then” has past, is stagnant, unchangeable, it has happened.  But [...]

A Scene In Which Bay Reveals She Went to Morocco to Meet Paul Bowles

It was an area left to its own devices.  Rotting pilings, collapsing piers, concrete and fennel, warehouses left to the realms of rust and graffiti, the broken window, the gray heron.  On the bay side, sunny when the rest of the city was shrouded in fog, massive dry docks, power co-generation, an electrical substation for [...]

Sand and Stone and Receding Distance

I slept in my truck the other night.  With the drip drip drip of my leaking gas line, and the tick tick tick of my cooling engine after another five hundred miles, and the slow rrrrroar of passing semis on the highway, I slept in my truck.
And in the morning it was just too damned [...]