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Prism
The prism is a piece of cut crystal hung in my window. We bought it at the Jersey shore in the late 70s when I was a little boy. I asked my dad for it when I was going off to college but for some...
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Writers, spiders, and why silence wins
It’s hard to argue with silence. It’s what takes over in elevators and locker rooms when we have nothing to say. It’s where I go if I can’t find what I’m looking for, if nothing comes out when I turn...
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It happens in the eyes
Country roads back East, clouds threatening to meet. I can’t tell you how to get there, but I know each turn. Jim explains the meaning of objects in his garage: the cheap, red bow hung on the wall is...
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The artist as lion tamer
It’s a gift that can feel like a curse, to feel compelled to do art. It follows me around like a stray expecting to be fed, but won’t come when I call it. It’s the killer whale that drags its trainer...
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Killing Time, Making Time, Wasting Time
I don’t know what it’s “about.” That’s what people want to know when you say you’ve written something, that’s the first question. Is it published, what’s it about? I don’t make time for a pipeline, for...
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Feeling real, really feeling
Life happens with or without you. When I struggle to write because the ideas don’t come, it’s how I’m seeing life that needs to change. In 1985, I got a job at the Allentown Fair. I worked inside a...
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Your web is a trap
I’ve compared writers to spiders before: I like that the words rhyme and they have unusual things in common. Both generally hide in the corners waiting, watching. We build fantastic traps to catch our...
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The Meaning of Existence
It shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes to figure this out, but it has, and I haven’t still. I walk this same road every day, the same road, but always different. I keep thinking I’ll catch the tail of...
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The problem with white space
So I’ve been up now since 3:30 AM listening to the rain and the sounds of Elton John and Styx in my head, toggling between the two as I try flipping over to my left and my right, but still no luck with...
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The sound of the rain
I sit by an open window in the dark with the rain, waiting for a picture of a sound, a spark. But the rain is just a sheet of paper crumbling over and over again, not an ocean tide or a fire crackling...
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Leave this page
Enter Title Here. Confirm Navigation. My computer’s in my pocket, with me in the toilet, between my legs when I’m driving, on my lap now. It’s a pet that doesn’t need water or parasite treatments, a...
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Bad thoughts precede bad thoughts: flying, drinking, writing, landing
Flying, sipping brandy out of a cup, 5 in the morning. Leaning back in our blankets, in our seats, reclining. We raise our hands to the displays and tap the screens and look as dull and robotic as the...
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Backwater (Philly memoir reblog)
Peter Schmid – 1565 – source Wikimedia Commons I am surrounded by dots, to connect. One analogy is a sky full of stars with constellations and stories, how they got there. Another, drops of rain...
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Late morning early fall, the beginning of the end all over again
I go to nature to heal, I go every day. And though it always feels the same, it never is. I rummage through the past and present, I go looking for what others leave behind. I didn’t expect the moon to...
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Discreet Music |“Brutal Ardour,” Jan. 22, 2018
So on a typical Monday here in the suburbs: Lily (12) starts seeing a therapist and texts me, “My therapist said I shouldn’t worry about finishing my homework tonight.” Charlotte (10) is caught moping...
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The self-confining myth of inspiration by routine
Call it superstition, that ritual for good luck before you perform. I go to the same spot in our den, put on a record, light a stick of incense, hope that magic happens on the keyboard. After a time...
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Blurred passage to poem
How the poem appeared an object in the mist I paddled toward and circled round And though it was odd and lustrous, with living things nesting and squirming inside, it was too tall and slick for me to...
View ArticleThe sandtrap
There was not much new to the new year now, it seemed. Driving across the state, I ate a bag of wasabi-flavored smoked almonds in about 30 minutes, taking it by the handful, popping them one by one,...
View Article4:59, Friday
In my time of darkness I go back to the old haunts, to Raymond Carver: I closed the book and he looked back, and in the morning spoke to me on the toilet, in my bathrobe with my phone: He said, What...
View Article“Believe”
I grind my teeth at night, I clench my jaws what’s troubling me, beneath the surface? big, prehistoric fish swimming low? my fears, my desires, combined to one? you clench your jaws for all you want to...
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