Courage 3: Bung-hole Breathing

My submerged state isn't like a genius in his technologically advanced vessel as much as a reptile breathing through its asshole.

CPJ-Saga 1 – Names and Resets

CPJ-1, where I ramble about names I've assumed and then reveal that I think I've been a poet all along. TBC

“If You Can Do Anything Else”

I started writing yet another reflective essay about how I'm not writing the way I wish I were writing. I decided a free verse poem would be more compact -- thus, this column of thought.

It’s Like Warm Caramel

I cried unexpectedly when I read Kamasi Washington’s liner-notes for “Harmony of Difference”. I found the suite while browsing for “Heaven & Earth” on Amazon.com and ordered both sent to my father’s house in Holland, MI. Absconding to a chair in a blind corner, I quieted too fast and my father came looking for me,…

Write to Live: Musician’s Intuition

I want to unpack this notion of "writing to live", presently. It cannot be a hollow, "just do it", reductionist-species of motivational phrase. This fresh axiom also needs separated from another, superficially-similar suggestion to "write like your life depends upon it." These two sentences come from different poetics. To write as if my entire life…

The Great Fortune Cookie Spiral

"The Szechuan Pepper Daddies" were the improvising-troupe who threw fortune cookies at random as they entered, inviting an audience member to open one as a prompt for their show. I saw the 'Pepper Daddies' in the second-round of the Fighting-Improv-Smackdown-Tournament (b.k.a. "FIST") that Washington Improv Theater hosts every year. They lost to "The Prosecution" in…

A River to Wash the Pain

I feel like I need to get this off of my chest: I lacked courage all along. Just now I asked myself "why don't I feel like writing even though I know I want to be an author?" yet another instance in scores of times. This time I answered myself honestly: "because I don't want…