“Goddamnit’s hot!” reverberated through the alleyway. It was hot, over 90 degrees – if the thermometer he toted around in his old Woodman’s Market shopping cart could be trusted. He trusted so little these days. The red brick buildings stood around him, silent and sturdy. Unlike most of the city, they would last for decades…
Some (Really Old) Drawings
I found a cache of old drawings, actually prints of old drawings, that I uploaded here to share. I can see how my style has evolved over the years, but my love of architecture hasn’t diminished. …
Frozen Waltz
Those long marching columns of Slavic men, moving feet to rhythms immoral, unpluralistic uniforms flashy enameled buttons and badges shinning well-timed clouds of breath issuing on each exhale in Red Square. The television, garish color and static of NTSC, those tanks roll and those feet go solid and secure they sing: Sing to…
Evening Walk
Under that stifling proto-summer heat the evergreens sag and the past-dusk sky holds burning red Mars air clear and turbulence low he’s reflecting the missing sun. Two men stand under a street lamp smoking a joint they pass back and forth conversing in Spanglish and I am hearing in memory Beethoven’s Romance for Violin and…
Are We?
The long desert road ran straight, the reddening horizon seemingly endless. Drowsing in the backseat of the family rambler was my grandmother. Her father was a chemical specialist, working with the Air Force and NACA (National Advisory Council for Aeronautics) during the early 1950s. Why were they driving through the American Southwest in the late…
26 April 1986
I don’t know what I am doing but that’s just how it goes from this control room I can see a march of lights bright red and gold like May Day in Moscow missles rolling away on diesel trucks the crowds in awe at apparatchiks in uniform vibrations underfoot like the stamping feet of endless…
Tuesday on San Juan Island
My wife and I recently visited beautiful San Juan Island. We have visited Friday Harbor several times, so this time we decided to take our car so we could explore the entire island. We were stunned by the beauty and diversity of landscapes on the island. From driftwood covered beaches to solid rock outcroppings covered…
Alpha Centauri
I will be in my sixties when the first signals from probes to Alpha Centauri cross the emptiness and those once hidden there become known family. Three stars three sisters of Sol would be near enough to our machines to be distinct added to the photo album of one time visitations. Before they…
The Third Expedition
Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles‘ is one of my favorite books. Composed by taking several of his short stories and interweaving them together to create a long-view version of humanity’s contact with and subsequent colonization of Mars. Of the various stories, one of my favorites is the chapter titled ‘The Third Expedition,’ which was originally…
New Book, ‘Flightless Birds’ Out Now
My new collection is available now from Amazon.com Its a poetry cycle devoted to my memories of 9/11 as an 18 year old in Southern California. Flightless Birds
Under the Stairs
Stale perfume hangs in the air. An unseen individual traveling on her own path had sent it in overlapping currents, commingling with the nitrogen and oxygen I inhale. Its aerosolized molecules becoming time machine components, building real-time olfactory portraits of the past in my brain. I was sitting in my office cubical, now instantaneously, I…
“What is Truth?”
His hands dipped into the cold water one washing the other – how fine these fingers used to be – the slightly yellowed edges of his woolen wrap dampened, the purple stripe vivid even under the sunshade “where does that purple come from,” he thinks someone told him once about a snail in the ocean…
