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 …
My First Book Now Available In Audiobook
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 …
Wellness Check
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 …
Notes From The Pandemic
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 …
Twilight
"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 …
A Prayer
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 …
Quarantine Journal (Deleted Scenes)
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 …
Dispatch From NYC: After Words
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 …
The Trip
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 …
Closure
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 …
The Dirty Rat 
