Poetry & Prose
Cantos I, II, III
Canto I Let’s say you woke up one morning to a world completely to your liking. You liked the news, yesterday’s, the week before, the year, centuries, and quite likely you will like tomorrow, aka the future, and the future’s future after that. To your horror you...
The Game
I am sitting at my desk writing checks to pay bills, as the kitten we foster plays with my feet, tugs at my pant cuffs, needles her way up my leg with hypodermic claws. I brush her away from the game she has made of my extremities. “My body is not a toy,” I say in an...
The Work
“Do your work," I said to the candle as I lit the wick. "Give warmth and light,” ‘I cannot,” replied the candle, “without losing myself in the flame.” “Do your work, candle,” I repeated as the candle melted away. “Do your work, man,” was the last thing I heard the...
Being Accomplished
Feeling barely felt. Thinking barely thought. Saying barely said. Doing barely done. My day is filled with partial accomplishments. Being remains, the only success. . In distilled moments I am grateful,...
Waiting, Not Thinking
My daughters assume I am thinking, when in the early morning they see me sitting in my garden chair doing nothing. I don’t blame them for thinking I am thinking. That’s what it looks like. If someone is awake doing nothing, they must be thinking. But appearances can...
Shakespeare Finale
Will Shakespeare ever be dead? And if so, how will it happen? When the last actor is bored with ancient Rome’s politics? When the last page of the Tempest is incinerated in a forest of fire? Or when the last reader of Hamlet is too weak to dust ash from his eyes?...
Finding The Book of Disquietude
I do not believe in miracles, not in interventions where some divinity suspends the laws of nature temporarily satisfy my want or need. Nor do I believe in fate? I do not believe some future-making mechanism is determining my life. Life is a complexity of...
Ride the Clean Storm Home
“You could timidly explore the coasts of Africa to the south, but going west there was nothing except fear, the unknown, not ‘our sea’ but the Sea of Mystery, Mare Ignotum.” Carlos Fuentes,The...
The Long Second
This is the story of a long second, not a minute, too long, or an hour, too much plot, too many characters, too much dialogue, between and within. What can happen in a second, you wonder. Not much. But if you pause going forward, if linger and wait, n o t i c e, you...
Hope
Hope is spiritual antigravity.