Poetry & Prose
Why I Am a White Racist
Because I have a skin. Because my skin is a particular color. Because the color is called white. Because white is privileged by custom. Because the custom is enforced by law. Because the law is on my side. Because I must do very little to be judged right. Because I...
Votive Candles
I didn’t believe then. I don’t believe now. Not in the efficacy of votive candles lifting prayers to heaven on small waves of heat. But in the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourviere on a hill high over Lyon, France, the praise of city traffic rumbling below, the Rhone...
The Trouble with Bodies
If we could lose the body, skip it out over the flow of eternity like a flung stone skimming a river, shrug it off like a chip on the shoulder, remove it like a sweater of hungry holes needing to be fed and fed. Without the body we would not need politics, we would...
The Monk
In an airport waiting for flight, surrounded by others also waiting for flight, none of us present in the vast glass and steel sprawl, all of us already on to elsewhere, I saw a young man who did not look the part, sitting stone settled and still in his suit and blue...
The House of the Soul
"If you would understand what I am, know this; all that I have said I have uttered playfully, and I was by no means ashamed, thereby. I danced." Jesus Christ The Acts of John The house of the soul is a mansion. There are no walls in the house of the soul, no halls, no...
Poetry Is Useless
Poetry is useless. It gets nothing done. builds no houses, makes no sales, raises no taxes, organizes no cities into grids of streets and avenues, cannot drive I-94 from Chicago to Detroit, clears no snow from a winter storm, fixes no faucets, removes no tumors,...
Undeserved Praise
The Effusive Donald Trump I am so impressed with the technological and political prowess of Joe Biden and the Democrats. The organizational skill it took to purloin 81,283,098 votes for a 51.3% majority across the states and numerous county Boards of Election, not...
2 Travel Haiku
written in Kennedy Airport waiting for a flight to Athens, Greece April 21, 1993 crowds coming, going a city waiting for flight arrive and depart whine of jet engines the language of flight birds fly silent wings
The Great Striptease
On June 16, 2015, the heavens opened and descending effortlessly on a crystal flight of stairs, gliding down among a handpicked adoring throng, the emperor, in a brand-new suit arrived to claim his throne. All decked out in his ego’s desperate need for praise, he took...
Boxes
the world is made of boxes the earth isn’t but the world is boxes we build containers boxes we are contained restrained order is maintained because we refrain from stepping out of our comfortable boxes sometimes we think we think outside the box only to...