Letter to my dad, but not my father figure.
To my friend, who happens to be my son.
Dear Son,
Dear Dad,
There’s a moment in your childhood that I still have both the photograph and the photographic memory of. You were standing beside a chain link fence near Tehachapi looking at me, humoring [...]
You have been tagged in this note. Now you are obligated by the law of chain letters to respond. I was going to tell you about this guy in Peoria who didn’t pass this on, but I won’t tell you about his tragic misfortune.
Here are the Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to [...]
One winter morning, I had crab in Bandon, Oregon.
I went up the coast and went out one morning and bought crab in Bandon, Oregon.
I drove up along the rugged coast of Oregon and went out one morning and got crab in Bandon, Oregon.
I rode up the coast on my motorcycle just as my marriage was [...]
Some summer afternoons we would go out to dinner in a neighboring town. We’d take the backroads and meander through dust and meadows and pepper trees. On these drives, talk would turn lazy and philosophical. They were our best moments by far.
Now, I’m just tired. When I regain balance, she knocks me off my [...]
Had unusual dreams last night under a foot of blankets. Elaine told me she’s never had an orgasm. I said, “Never?” And she said, “Never,” in that way she has that is sardonically accepting of every situation. And I wake up thinking of Sophie. Just that thought in my head. That’s all.
I’m chafing in my [...]
I rode a shuttle bus last night up on campus and after everyone boarded and the driver turned off the bright overhead lights leaving a series of moody pools of warm reading light, I was flooded with longing.
Cross-country bus trips of my youth. Stopping for minutes at a time in little towns whose name I [...]
Sitting in the twilight in the old truck at the railyard. The last of the Saturday light fading from the sky. An unseasonably warm November evening, maybe the last warm night of the year. Car wheels crunching on gravel in the distance.
Someone asked if this was part of a larger story. Trite, but yes. Part [...]
A freight train out of town. Cold hands. Head stuffed up with sleep and lack of sleep and why am I up so early with the morning fog along the tracks. Skip James tune in my head, just a few lines obsessively repeating in my head. There’s a girl that I left behind and we’re [...]
I’m not going to sleep until you sleep with me. Not. Won’t. Can’t make me. It’s a sleep strike.
I’ll negotiate. I can be reasoned with. I’ll cut a deal. I’ll give in, but only if you’re willing to bargain. I’m not asking for much, only for your love and passion. All you need to do [...]
I was walking St. Louis alone late one night. All the bars had closed and even the last hearty hopefuls had found their way to the door. There was no one on the street, but there were lights in many windows. The blue flicker of television leaked out from behind a few [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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.
