He died at 4:48 p.m.  On a day like any other and the rains hadn’t come yet again But, the flower seller came to the door, buried in his thoughts on how to help the poor At noon the man had chills and so the girl went out to buy a new thermometer A different […]

I wonder if people carry an afternoon in their minds Where the window is open and the breeze floats one away The piano spelling silent music with its keys The tenor of the piece that can be And in the adjoining room a woman sits reading a Chekov play Seeing herself within … never saying […]

He was in Australia usually, Sydney to be exact, and sometimes he was in Paris or Bangkok and he’d write and remind me of the times we’d get high in the camps on opium, or how he got a Thai soldier down one night and had to take a knife from him.  I’d turned my […]

Telling you about my conflicting feelings, like the rest of the putrid cream pies, the ones that stay up for days playing poker and everything is shot with worms and lumps of stuff that go pretty good in an all-night diner I’ll have the special, everything is special for me The bend of your leg, […]

When I held your head in my hands and kissed your lips Cold storm clouds across the walls as the rain hit the glass panes The tiny tumor deep inside your brain Your eyes were too green for me The waves, the eternal sea grass … your eyes All the rolling color spilling across our […]

Dear Richard, I’ve just finished reading your heartfelt letter.  As you say, Peter was special and operated under his own power.  Anyone who could travel alone and overland using only local transport from Durban to Alexandria is in a world unto themselves.  I think that trip took him eight months. He survived along the same […]

Dear Richard, I thought of Pete as I watched White Mischief and the movie is all about the White Kenyans and Happy Valley before and during WWII.  If you don’t know, it’s the story of how the cuckolded Jock Broughton murdered Josh Erroll.  Erroll was somewhere in the succession line for the King of England. […]

In a room facing easterly sat a grand pianoweighed down by all twelve apostlesin ceramic form and several in wax all made andbought from the Carmelites. From a divan covered in afghans,Knit in zig-zag patterns ofTangerine, grape and lemonthe piano blocked the viewof the river and the hills beyond.Of the road and the cars passing […]

Romance, moment by moment … a sea, a peak above the clouds or Building artifice of love in a black shaft of diary and dream Hiding in a paper bag on a wet street Love Four walls with sidewalks and timeclocks, neighbors of unknown origin across the pitch, with loaded voices like the sound of […]

“I should mention, that there are two growing crises that will make all the other crises moot.  A pink sport coat and a black carnation.  No, not really. No, the two crises are the threat of nuclear war and the emerging climate change disaster.  Should any of these two crises go South into the Land […]