She’s afraid of 80, that as an old lady she’ll lament
she never once got to the circus.

That she never lived for
blood jumping untamed
out in the crowd with the doves
her heart riding the rails
screaming Today, today, today, today
Today alone
with Tom Waits and the gang of lost corner boys

Odd little outfit,
lost white drone flying in the sky
skirting the blue, foreign to the eye
Who would we have been
If we never plugged in

Would she be outside someplace
trying to earn no more than a smile
a little more, maybe stay awhile…

She gets up from her seat, leaves behind unsipped tea. Her sadness she leaves with a crisp dollar tip till the waitress wipes it clean.

She whisks away the girl’s coat lint, her fingerprints, her lugubrious stares, her fresh time gone-and-spent. And another takes her place.

Every thought at that table never to be known, every idle idea of the people and the place never to be known, so out she walks to the mad-capped streets she & her blues alone.

She calls to say she quit her junkfood job, has nowhere good to spend the day, tells me she…

It is 2am when I come across Shoah. The 1985 documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann demands my attention, practically reaching out from the screen to give me a good shake. Maybe it’s the 9+ hour runtime, or the shadowy film poster featuring a train conductor with a nightmarish look in his eyes, or the many reviews calling it the one of the most (if not the most) important documentary ever made. Whatever the exact reason, I make my decision. …

There are plenty of concerning things happening in the world right now, and our mental health has taken a hit. Young people, minorities, essential workers and caregivers are especially at risk. Like so many others of my generation, I considered myself an anxious person long before the upheaval this year has brought. Yoga, meditation, essential oils and CBD gummies are great, but there are times when I need something more.

Nothing cures quite like music. As Harvard Health states, “More than simply expressing emotions, music can alter them.” It’s a fact. In their study of 40 surgical patients, the half…

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)

These days, there is a lot of debate about what an artist is and what an artist is not. It’s an odd thing; we don’t sit around arguing about whether an architect is really an architect, or if they deserve to be called one. If you are an architect, you design. You build. The action…

Freedom is a pleasant concept
like a sigh when you stretch
out on summer’s folding chair
and close your eyes

I can go there

to towns draped in tinsel, where strange
canyon dirt fills my shoes and spirits stare
down gauzy hallways, spreading curtains
to send in purple-blooded evenings

There: imagining makes it so, widens
its wooden block of a mouth, lets
the chestnut crack its bits to
aromatic stardust so fine

I can go there

Even after I walk back into sunless rooms
where they want my name on a tag
and my flesh on a line and I am thinking
There’s…

All the mouths in the world have vanished, with them go
the gap teeth the chapped lips pursed confusion polite sips
What strange sea of broken faces, muffled sound is this

and who left dreams of a kiss? You were the miraculous
micro plastic floating unseen in the sink, a sad drink. Yet
your clownish beam was what I missed.

I spun in the air of everything, thrown into a dream repeating
Fallen backwards into waters that reeked of dust, dirty mops.

There were no walks in the park to remember, you
weren’t for me then either. …