Poet and friend Maw Shein Win asked me to compose a process note for her students regarding writing poems for my book, MARTIAN: The Saint of Loneliness. That essay published this morning. Despite a few false starts, I thought it came out nicely. Read it here. And since I’m doing a quick check in today, … Continue reading “New Process Note and a Toast To Black History”

Halloween (1978), Dir. John Carpenter I have been watching reaction videos of young movie fans. Watching something I know almost verbatim over the shoulder of a millennial is awkward and wonderful and weird all the same. Its also a surprise that many of the films I grew up on 30, 40 years ago still work, … Continue reading “Halloween Top Ten”

Am thrilled to announce my second book, MARTIAN The Saint of Loneliness is on sale now. If my first book acts as an introduction into who I am, this book represents what I do as a poet. The book has won the 2021 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. One of the … Continue reading “MARTIAN Sightings”

Its now been just over three years since I’ve entered a movie theater. I never would have predicted such a thing. Never in my life would I have predicted or assumed theaters could go out of business or be replaced by screens carried in one’s pocket. Never in my life would I have considered there … Continue reading “Movie Theater Memories”

Those Poems You Liked Are Coming Back Into Style I’ve waited HELLA LONG to announce the birth of my new forthcoming collection, MARTIAN: The Saint of Loneliness which drops September 27. And here is the cover reveal, provided by artist Wangechi Mutu! Pre-orders for the book are going on right now. It has won the … Continue reading “PRE-ORDER MARTIAN: THE SAINT OF LONELINESS”

Saturday morning—and by morning I mean two am– My apartment shuddered from what sounded like the roar of a fleet of helicopters landing. My bed idled and vibrated. A full line of cars trafficked up the street, loud guttural ululations from Mustang after Mustang, some with volcanic radios, some from passenger voices rapping in chorus. … Continue reading “Night Parade”

I’m bored. I wrote a poem the other day! but dislike posting brand new poems since I’m supposed to submit them to journals and stuff… If I can ever get it together and follow through. So instead, here is a older poem that I have long loved, but will never read again publicly or publish … Continue reading “The Blonde & The Bad Luck Monkey (A Poem As Time Machine)”

“The painter, Cezanne, would leave blank spaces on his canvas when he couldn’t account for the brush strokes, or the color”— “How much of your life can you account for? My life is a collage of unaccounted for brush strokes; I am all random”.” ― John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation Is there really ever … Continue reading “Something For Nothing”

Despite not writing here since November, I’ve been writing. I began arriving to work extra early exclusively to sit at my desk in a deeply quiet office and journal. The first person to usually arrive is our main attorney, who will be 80 this year and lives across the street. I write until I hear … Continue reading “[THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK]”

One morning while commuting to work, I met one woman as we exited the bus, and on the escalator down she began chatting with me. Where do you work? She asked. What do you do? She asked. She was older, shorter than I, and made me think of my old high school English teacher. A … Continue reading “Return to Abnormal or The Slow Boiling Frog or My Precious”

I rarely celebrate my birthday, so instead I get quiet. On the actual date in 2019, my dearest friend took me to see Eric Clapton with neither of us thinking that might be the last live concert for either of us. Over the years, I’ve made it a Zen exercise to not mention it. I’m … Continue reading “A Lost Sound”

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”