*WHEREIN THE AUTHOR WORKS OUT HIS TRUE FEELINGS ON CHRISTMAS **WITH THANX TO THE OTHER JIM ***SET TO THE TUNE OF … OH, YOU KNOW On the First Day of Clinics My True Love Gave To Me Chronic Hepatitis C On the Second Day of Clinics My True Love Gave To Me Genital Warts And … Continue reading “The Twelve Days Of Clinics”

Though I hate Saturday night readings, I agreed, mostly because my friend T was also asked to appear and she would drive me there and back. She texted me that she was picking up one other guest who lived near me but she would come get me first. I packed several poems in a business … Continue reading “Mouth Of The City”

IN WHICH TEEN ENVY FROM THE MID 80’S SET MY SUMMER AFLAME SENDING ME ON A PATH OF SELF DESTRUCTION… HOW HAIR CAN KILL… HOW SOMETIMES THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE YOU IS A MUSIC VIDEO… HOW HAIRSTYLES CAN SEPARATE FAMILIES… HOW NEW NOMINEES FOR THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME CAN BE … Continue reading “The Saturday A Song Saved My So-Called Life or The Nappy Virgin”

My friend and I met as if on cue at the convergence of the taco trucks. He attends Fridays at the Oakland Museum regularly on his way home from work and agreed to meet when I told him about the poetry reading. We made a brief lap through the modest community of neighbors here at … Continue reading “Working With White Noise or What It Means As A Performer To Have Social Anxiety”

Seizure: being grabbed and tossed to the ground. In an instant, I became a bucking horse, forgiven everything except this moment. In exchange for a mouthful of blackened bacon sweating grease, here is a chaser of carpet and the hail of a table’s debris. It is unusual, to say the least, to awaken face down on a carpet, … Continue reading “Shaken”

Egon: Don’t cross the streams. Peter: Why? Egon: It would be bad. Peter: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean “bad”? Egon: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. *** During workshop week, I sat … Continue reading “Page Vs. Stage / Us vs. Them (or Don’t Cross Streams)”

Its been years since I last went to a writer’s retreat. Squaw Valley came at just the right time offering me a healing I’d been long in need of. There’s a unique community offered by artists gathered together all struggling to write the next thing and to keep working. That creative energy feeds me like … Continue reading “Workshop Week & Wild Mountain Dreams”

The nice folks at Two Hawks Quarterly have published my story Madagascar, my first attempt this year to send out something else besides Poetry. (Not That There’s Anything Wrong With Poetry). I sent it out on a lark just to gauge what would happen– what happened next was a huge surprise to me. It was … Continue reading “Creative Non-Fiction at Two Hawks Quarterly”

Last night I itched to write something and had nothing to say. I’d fallen behind, not writing much of anything last month, set aside usually for National Poetry Writing. What I did do though, was rescue and edit work I’d paused on. Word Camera is a webpage that converts photographs into text. I had three … Continue reading “The Motor of Voice”

On the train coming into Sacramento, I spent the time shuffling back and forth through my notebooks, trying to come up with something of value, something deep to say, to a room full of 200 strangers about writing. And not just writing, but the hardest of all: Humor Writing. I’ve been fortunate with much gratitude beyond all … Continue reading “The Notebook”

I feared I would be late to the lounge for the 7pm reading, but as usual I was compulsively early. I sat at the end of the bar, not recognizing the friendly couple next to me until they spoke, we all but arriving together, and me knowing them from a reading in my neighborhood a … Continue reading “Gorgeous Ceremonies”

Once every nine weeks or so, I share Sunday breakfast with my friend, Tureeda. Poet, teacher, storyteller, medicine woman as she’d describe herself. I forgot how our ritual started two years ago, but my heart has relaxed into them for their consistency and the warmth generated at our cell-phone free table and our eye to … Continue reading “Breakfast of Lions”

Months before it opened, I was asked to participate in a poetry reading as part of a museum exhibit. When I finally went to the gallery, Generation to Generation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, it was as reporter with a notebook slipped in my pocket. It wasn’t until walking through the gallery and being present … Continue reading “Museum Piece”

The Lyft driver pulled up and I jumped into the more inviting front seat for a change, asking first if he minded. He didn’t. A vibrant youngster in a backwards baseball cap, his car smelling like chocolate cookies vaped, not baked. He immediately asked where I was going– to a poetry reading at a bookstore … Continue reading “First Poetry Reading of The New Year”

The continuously awesome journal Eleven Eleven has published three familiar poems which are up and available for your critique. Its a consistently gorgeous journal and website I’ve admired for long time. Its an honor to get in with so many other strong artists. I went to an open mic last week, and an old friend … Continue reading “New Poems Up at Eleven-Eleven Journal”

HE awoke screaming again. His head steaming and raw. He coughed to near seizure while some slow moving slime thawed, dripping the length of his throat like mis-swallowed gum. His breath was reticent to move and once it did unobstructed he angrily pounded the bedding with his fist until flurries of sweat rose in swarms … Continue reading “A Stranger’s Dream (A Halloween Story)”

How many years ago was it when my friend told me: You know, poetry readings are like AA Meetings… Turns out he found as much value in one as the other. The two rooms were companions and shook hands in his mind. I am not a member of The Program, but I attended one with … Continue reading “My Name is James… I Am A Poet”

In two days time, there will be an office memorial for a coworker who died the weekend of my birthday. I came back from my personal 3 day weekend and a secretary passed my desk, stopped and told me how over the weekend Linda had died suddenly. I’d worked with her about seven years and … Continue reading “BBQ Ribs For the Dead (on Writing, Loneliness and Repurposing Poems)”

I was the first to arrive at the venue Saturday night for the reading. The venue is a nurturing writing space for women in East Oakland, where my friend A_____ volunteers. If you hadn’t been to the place before nor had the facebook invite, there’s no way even the next door neighbors would know anything … Continue reading “Mother Stands For Comfort”

The restaurant was quiet and church-like. The wait staff and cooks outnumbered the guests. I walked towards the back and found a banquet room where a half dozen people sat quietly eating. They sat at one of the two long banquet tables in a kind of solemn thanksgiving. The woman hosting who’d emailed me sometime … Continue reading “A Poetry Reading @ Poetry Express”