A brown-skinned artist dressed in dusty and muted colors and wearing a copper bracelet stood at the edge of the promenade near the beach facing west. His tripod easel sat atop a low cement wall that separates the walkway from the beach, and on his easel, a thin block of wood the size of a…
The Dumbest Timeline Ever
Maxxerism? Dumbmaxxing? Shallowmaxxing? Yesterday, for no reason other than seeing an article about him on a newsfeed, I read the Wikipedia page for the online influencer Clavicular. A few days earlier, I did a shallow dive (another Wikipedia page) into “looksmaxxing.” I feel a few IQ points lower for having subjected myself to this information….
After the Reading
I’m awash and spinning in feelings of gratitude and wonder, complexity and joy. I’m in the midst of one of those moments or days or half-days (half-daze) when the words seem inadequate or too abundant or too slow to keep up with the pace of thinking in order for me to wrangle them into any…
Anxiety’s Hangover
Today, I’m trying to re-discover my usefulness. Or maybe it’s my attention. And maybe the word I’m looking for is recover, not re-discover. Yesterday, I was useless and inattentive. I get this way when there is drama, when the world seems topsy-turvy – is topsy-turvy. I was useless on 9-11. I was useless after a…
Scooby-Doo Where Are You?
I have no platform. I have no audience. I have no real outlet or clout. Yet, I, along with many Americans, feel the urge to tell the world that I am not ok with what is going on in this country. We are not ok with it. We do not want to obliterate a civilization….
National Poetry Month 2026
I showed up at the bar carrying a book I had purchased earlier in the evening while attending a poetry reading. Most of my bar friends don’t know about my flirtations with poetry – that I read it, try to write it, try to find community in it. The book garnered interest and questions from…
Morning: March 24, 2026
The morning is bright, the contemplations deep if not scattered. I’m thinking seeds and breezes. I read some poems. I read a short piece from David Whyte on unrequited love: “Men and women have always had difficulty with the way a love returned hardly ever resembles a love given… The great discipline seems to be…
Meditation on the Value of Memory
Two poems set my mind adrift. One, “Blowing on the Wheel” by Ada Limón recollects the speaker’s car rides with friends: “from Brooklyn to the Cape,” taxis in New York City, or driving on highways. The other poem, “Photocopying Memories” by Sean Thomas Dougherty, tells of how the speaker is charged with photocopying oral reports…
Something about this Place
On the bus on a sunny and warm day in the middle of the week, a little girl (maybe 2 years old) with platinum blond hair smiled and waved to everyone who got on or off the bus as well as every pedestrian that the bus passed. Many people waved back. They couldn’t help but…
Stalled Out on the Same Things
I’m having another morning in which I’m stalled out and convinced that I don’t know how to write or what to write about. I tried to work on a poem about breaking a plate and the connection to feeling sorry for my elderly neighbor below. Earlier, while putting things away, I had dropped a plate…
It’s Late and I Should Have Been Taking Notes
This morning, I gave up. Sure, there was the darkened sky and the rain streaked windows. I wrote about those things, but I had nowhere to go with them. They didn’t remind me of a childhood memory. They didn’t call about some magical imagery. Dark clouds, rain streaks, both pitter and patter. “Attention without feeling…
The People in My Neighborhood
Storm clouds move swiftly across the sky – north and east. At 7:07 AM a man can be heard shouting from the street. The distance and the buildings between us make his words unrecognizable. If I had to guess, he’s under the overhang at the library across the street. Two crows shout back and I…