The second edition of my first collection, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press) is now available as an audiobook. With thanks to the publisher, Wow! That happened. Folks have been at me for years to record an audiobook or get recordings of my readings. In September, the second edition of … Continue reading “My First Book Now Available In Audiobook”

PANDEMIC DREAM NOTES * DISAPPOINTED BY DREAM DICTIONARY * WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN vs WHAT IS * A MODEST READING LIST * A MODEST MOVIE LIST * THOUGHTS ON THE STREAMING MOVIE EXPERIENCE * SHOWING UP Several weeks into the pandemic, I’d wake up exhausted with mild headaches. I’d been grinding my teeth. After getting … Continue reading “Wellness Check”

I’ve begun buying farmer’s market flowers again; a month of sunflowers and lilies. Sweeping the air with sugar. Speaking: the aloe plant growing in my living room turns out to be Agave Americana Marginata that, indeed, thrives in neglect. This being the first plant in my lifetime that dares grow and produce pups after being … Continue reading “Notes From The Pandemic”

“Just as some people work because they’re bored, I sometimes write because I have nothing to say. …I am able to dream in prose. And I extract a great deal of sincere feeling and much legitimate emotion out of not feeling.” Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet 170 (293) I’ve attempted to post this blog … Continue reading “Twilight”

It is often necessary for me to write a prayer. I’ve done it a few times over the years while I was drowning in life. This one was composed after visiting a website with hundreds of positive affirmations. I scanned over them and assembled one. Its never occurred to share any nor have I ever … Continue reading “A Prayer”

Mother’s Day, I shaved my head. I don’t remember growing a beard this long– twenty years ago maybe, but even then I trimmed it. A few years ago, I tried a goatee but it never agreed with my face and I could never shape properly. Social media had been whining about haircuts. Standing at the … Continue reading “Quarantine Journal (Deleted Scenes)”

I was also a bit intimidated. Often, one’s mind jumps forward into imagining an experience as a way of preparing oneself for it. All fantasies and projected insecurity. All vanity. For example, I was invited to a reading last month that was local for me yet also weirdly isolating. It felt like I’d wandered into … Continue reading “Dispatch From NYC: After Words”

Aaron*, (Not his real name) whom I’d known since college, a man who knew my parents at least distantly, is now one of the few elders in my life and therefore one of the few I would trust in the way we trust elders and family. We talk and are honest with one another but … Continue reading “The Trip”

1. Featuring: NYC Reading My first ever reading and visit to New York happens February 20th at the New School. I always wondered how or why I’d first visit NYC—apparently I have to be invited. I’m the Dracula of Poetry; you invite me in, I may never leave. Actually, I haven’t broached taking time off from work … Continue reading “Closure”

We haven’t spoke in forever. I think of you often, wanting to push words, sweet as flowers, towards you in offering. But truth told my heart aches. My words gets stuck, behind my sternum, wanting to emerge. But they flap noisily in vain. I’m alright. I’m fine. I want to say something. But what? … Continue reading “I Am Trying To Say A Few Things”

My book, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour Of Chaos Theory, has been awarded the 2019 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. I’m honored to stand along with fellow poet, Vernon Keeve, in the ceremony on December 7. Info on the event can be found here. You’re owed a longer story, check-in, but all I got … Continue reading “PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award”

Hear it yourself on Archive The vinyl noise floor of a 78 sound of an enflamed red curtain opening to an audience of ghosts filling the black air A piano primes the ether in an imagined drawing room All these years this song was launched in bass throat cannons To hear it aloft, living through … Continue reading “Listening To Marian Anderson Sing Go Down Moses For The First Time on Vinyl”

I was scheduled to read at a backyard poetry event in West Oakland on a Saturday. Days after agreeing, I was coincidentally asked to read again in San Francisco that same night. I hate having to read on weekends. Can’t say why, I’m just stingy with them. So even the thought of this made me … Continue reading “The Introverted Stand-Up”

Uncombable Hair Syndrome (UHS) is a rare structural anomaly of the hair shaft and usually appears in childhood It is characterized by dry, frizzy, silvery-blond or straw colored hair that’s disorderly It stands out from the scalp and cannot be combed flat, according to the National Institutes of Health. the stiffness of Uncombable Hair has … Continue reading “Found Poetry: Uncombable Hair Syndrome”

The awful virus of it; the expectations of genius Arising out of nothing mere attention to the banal I’ve gotten old enough to just watch and wait. Here’s a old haiku just for writers block: Disobedient poems! They never come When you call. Heel, u sombitch. Heel. But even if I sat in the grass … Continue reading “Writers Block”

The day of this interview, I took lunch and sat in the café downstairs from work. The café is awful; the items pretty and sweet and pointless. It rained noisily. I sat facing a boiling puddle and listened as close I could to the reporter on the phone. His voice warm and friendly, his questions … Continue reading “Strangers”

The title occurred to me years ago and for a long time I could do nothing with it. Its not the title of a poem, its a poem itself. The title sounds like something mis-remembered, a verbal mistake. It’s a mix / mash of things as I am a combination of multiple families, identities, routes. … Continue reading “What’s In A Name? Journey Of The Title”

Sometime around 2000 while between jobs, I joined a performance series named Four Brothers. It was the luckiest of gigs for me. The original Fourth brother couldn’t do that weekend of performances, and I had rent due. The show would cover it. I auditioned and got in. Our Friday show in Berkeley was quite successful. … Continue reading “Are Poets Ever Booed?”

David Roderick and the good folks at SF Chronicle very nicely published a poem from my new book. Bakersfield, was my first attempt at paying tribute to the family road trips we used to take every summer in the late 70’s, early 80’s. Those memories, what’s left of them, are of a pre-strip-malled, pre-Star*ucked America. … Continue reading “Poem Up At State Lines”

The only scent a rose may come to envy is a pineapple on the vine in the east facing window of a 3rd floor apartment. Confident and exotic, the plant announces itself before being seen, owns its space, and was the first plant I ever purchased a weapon to defend myself, my skin, the corner … Continue reading “My Pineapple Roommate”