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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‘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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“The Green, Green Hills of Earth”
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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For when you are struggling in your 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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Seeing Red in Downtown Cincinnati
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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‘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 …
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‘In Need of Saying’
I am on a porch, captain/ of a green ocean. Wasps patrol / the boundary lands. In whispering winds, conversing / in high tulip poplars, I hear / poems from another tongue …
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Listen to an “Appalachian Round”
The song "Appalachian Round" is one of the prettiest, most evocative group songs in the English language. Here is a 2009 four-part harmony version a bunch of fellow travelers and I recorded down in Princeton, WV.
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‘TIME FOR A POEM, No. 1’
Do not deny the urge, do/ not let the chance for a poem/ pass you by. It’s OK, it’s wholesome / and nutritious, go ahead …
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‘Unfamous’
I decide to be famous / only to myself. It is / so much easier and my / tender, so lightly bruised / ego now thanks me for this / demilitarized zone …
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‘Something for Nothing’
I want to see / if it is possible / to be a nobody / from nowhere. / Creating something / out of nothing …
