In Conversation

What the Hell Did I Just Live Though? 2025, A Year I’m Not Comfortable Reviewing With 2025 a corpse shot in the head and dumped in a ditch, and 2026 racing out of the gate like a retarded child piloting a missile-laden Chinook, it is tempting to piss this column away just reviewing bullshit that …

Dinner Will Be Ready Soon Thomas climbed out of his car and headed for the front door of his house. It had been a long day at work. “Hey, honey,” he said to his wife. No response. She must be busy. He went into the kitchen and found her preparing dinner in the dark. In …

old men and young boys baseball game companions silently hoping for seventh inning home team rally while fathers lost in rat race dreams dead # # # # alone at kitchen table three in the morning bergman films running through graying artist’s mind rediscovering reality of love and death in god’s silence # # # …

Mourning Michael Landon When I was in high school, my friend’s mother was obsessed with the actor Michael Landon. From the Little House on the Prairie to the Highway to Heaven she couldn’t get enough of Michael Landon or stop praising the easy perfection of Michael Landon’s hair. On Wednesday nights, my friend went to …

If It Ain’t Broke another late afternoon sun another early start to another long night of drinking and you would think by now after so many years of me doing this same thing over and over again that somehow I would have managed to have come up with something new but as I once heard …

The Scary Parts by Allan MacDonell (Punk Hostage Press) The Scary Parts is a compact, sharp-edged book about fear—not the cinematic kind, but the quiet, professional, social, and existential varieties that accrue as life narrows its options. Allan MacDonell approaches fear the way a seasoned essayist and fiction writer would: circling it, baiting it with …

raw gritty lustful we met at a bar / i know, so cliché / our first night together awakened my libido / every hole was stuffed and licked / we were raw, gritty, lustful / sex had never felt this powerful / so animalistic / so alive then our lowest of lows were met with …

  Learning at the Feet of Self-Taught Idiots   “Son, life can be good if you just let it treat you right.” My son reacted to this bit of news with a skeptical eyebrow arched across his fore like the world’s most dubious caterpillar. Maybe the last few months have been horrible. This monkey pile …

PRAYER I saw a man Kneeling & praying On the corner of Purgatory Street & Salvation Ave wearing An American flag like A shawl to protect him From evil I saw a man in Utah pouring out Hate to a crowd of young Students pretending To be a good Christian Man Interrupted I’ve seen wars …

A public fountain to wash my Christmas stockings, same socks as last year. Public Square lit with so many bulbs. Where is the money for food? So many Christmas trees, so many lights. Will Christ remember His poor? What green zen can warm my burdened soul? What sweet smoke can fill my belly? 6000 stars …