Maybe I’m a god or at least living at the pleasure of the gods like a bunch of dangling grapes When I think about the gods, I always see a black and white wood print of Jewish temples, Zeus frowning, Jesus bleeding, Thor hammering, Voodoo chickens, dying kids prevented from getting medicine…the football team kneeling […]

Where are all the doomed children of literature? The ones who’d just as soon kill themselves as eat breakfast They can hardly put on their shirt and shoes without a relapse   I once lived near a guy who wanted to be the Poet Laureate of America He was a rumor and kept to himself […]

Fires are people too They have faces, names, stories Bill, Carol, Mike, Pete, Terry, Mary, Timmy, Sabine, Dave, Stanley, Marivel…they can contradict your feelings They can give you malaria in the jungle or leave you naked on a cold mountain where thousands are struggling at the top, there is a sheet of rain, a black veil […]

The little boy about seven-years-old knocks on my door, in the trees all the birds are waking, chirping about cats and water I need help, he says, so we walk hand-in-hand to an empty house a few streets over, I get the rusty latch open and he goes in with a smile A few hours […]

The man without legs leans against a building holding an empty cup, smiling, begging He’s looking at the photo of a pachuco in a Zoot suit and he wonders if the tailor down the street can make him one with short pants and the hope of a Zoot suit turns his smile into a laugh […]

The fire burns in reverse when Genevieve looks and the flames walk back across a breathing bridge This is one of her gifts to me, along with flax and organic greens, and then she says, please give up opium and cards Well, maybe I cut off my head and watch it fall What good is […]