At first glance, I thought the sign said: "PLEASE WAKE YOUR MIND." Then, I got it. For I had just pulled into a coffeeshop parking lot across from Deep Creek Lake in Garrett County, Maryland. Boats peppered its surface with criss-cross wakes. It was a message of Buddhist boatfulness, instead.
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VIDEO: “WATER/CLOUD/WIND/LEAF: A Hoeft Marsh Melody”
Hoeft Marsh in Greenbottom WV is where I get off to when I want to get off the timeline of the world's news. "WATER/CLOUD/WIND/LEAF: A Hoeft Marsh Melody" is a short musical visit there. It's a little fishy, too.
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READINGS: “When ‘Frankenstein’ Came to Town”
“Listen to this!” say Tommy. He shifts the Les Paul to his lower back, neck down, pointing toward the carpet. He looks like a rock legend. Tommy positions a needle on a record inside the living room stereo. “Edgar Winter,” he says, almost reverently, as the record scratches to life. “Johnny’s brother. A song called ‘Frankenstein’ by The Edgar Winter Group...”
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POEM: So Special
'I think that I cannot be killed, / that my work is incomplete, / my dreams / not yet completely manifested … / Why do we think this way?'
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READINGS: “Stormtroopers & Grandmas”
The balls of his black pupils stare at me intently. They are oddly echoed by the round marble of what looks like a self-shaved head, its yellow stubble hinting at what must once have been luxuriant blonde hair. Moments later, I have second thoughts about my diplomacy as lyrics to the band’s “Speak English or Die” batter the room.
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VIDEO/NOTEBOOK: Byways, Highways & One Amazing Ceiling
Take a musical sojourn along along West Virginia's byways, highways and roads less traveled, during the months of May/June 2022. Plus. one to-die-for ceiling in the state's capital city.
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VIDEO/POEM: What happens to “All These Pages”
As a writer, purveyor, and publisher of creative works, I am constantly wrestling with my ego’s desire to see such work as of lasting significance, a hedge against my own mortality. Yet such works, too, will soon pass on by and melt away, swallowed by the river of time. Here’s a video-poem about that.
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VIDEO: “The Green, Green Hills of Earth” and who it’s for
When the azaleas burst into bloom around a Buddha given me by a dear, departed, harmonic soulmate, it was time to set her memorial song to imagery of the green, green hills of Earthh ...
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‘When you are struggling in your writing (art) …”
What does it mean when you are you struggling and wrestling with your writing or art? Nayyirah Waheed sums up.
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Killer on the Loose
My beard is trimmed close to the flesh, so the strong coffee barely touches my mustache, leaving a scent of dark chocolate and turned soil. / I have never learned to tell the truth, dressing instead in these words for a passeggiatta in the cool September sun.
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‘What Does the Past Look Like?’
A more Catholic grade school name you could / not conjure — Our Lady of the Rosary. Where, on a / bright Saturday afternoon, I'm surprised to find / an orange traffic cone propping open a first-floor / door. And so, as one will do when invited by the / cosmos to stroll the hallways where you once / walked a half-century gone, I walk in.
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QUEEN CITY CHRONICLE 1: Seeing Red Downtown
When the Opening Day parade for the Cincinnati Reds 2022 season snaked through downtown Cincinnati more was going on than it might at first seem.
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VIDEO/POEM: ‘The Difference Is’
There is a difference / between people who do things / and people who don't ...
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“RUN-ON SENTENCE: At 47”
I am 47, the day is Jan. 2, the year is 2005, / my beard is stained white in several places, / my son is 14, my girl 10, my (borrowed neighborhood) / cat is named Mister Puzzlesocks, / my favorite red wine of the moment is / Trinchero Cabernet, my car is a white ’93 …
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Dirt & Bourbon
My ink-stained hands hear the/ sound of the railroad, another train / passing through my town, here/ at the middle of nowhere &/ everything. I am ready to burst/ open like a cherry tomato/ between your teeth …
