My precious 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 …
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 …
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 …
journalling practice since... Since 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 …
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 …
"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) https://thedirtyrat.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/altered-found-rose.jpg I've attempted to post this …
https://thedirtyrat.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/img_1187-1.jpg 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 …
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 …
For the first time, I went to New York to read for Cave Canem at their poetry series at The New School. The date I was given—2/20/20—felt auspicious and unavoidable. I was briefly concerned about being able to get time off work, but realized, broke and foolish or not, I’d quit my job over that …
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 …
The Dirty Rat 
