Epiphany is a movie about energy and risk assessment. It was inspired by a simple, personal moment of clarity that I experienced in 1976 while still a student in college. My instant of awareness then served as both portend
Transitions of a Memory
“The day that any one of you can touch any one of my family is over. The next time you try to injure one of us, this what is has now changed. I have grown up, I am no longer
Last Night I Finally Told Him
So last night I told him. Last night I opened up. Last night I let him know the real deal between us. Finally. Last night I said it right to him: “There’s no real competition here.” Last night he indeed
Improvising Gettysburg: A Movie and A Song
Noted documentarian Ken Burn’s recently invited everyone to learn, recite and upload the Gettysburg address. My reaction was to improvise a song instead. And then I asked my niece, Amelia, if she was interested in making a film with me that
Prologue
At the end of the industrial age, I stood between a chair and my office window , gazing at the Christmas shoppers fourteen stories below. I had just been asked a fairly technical question by my boss and mentor and
“Remembering Frederick Douglass”: A Concert Review
Last night’s performance “Remembering Frederick Douglass” by the Rochester Chamber Orchestra conducted and programmed by Arild Remmereit was one of the most moving as well as motivating experiences that I have ever witnessed here in Rochester, New York.
List under Colorblind Opportunities
Wanted: White-Styled Privilege To Alleviate Effects of New Jim Crow. Please Forward to: Nearly Two Million, Currently Subjugated And Awaiting Justice And Civil Rights And Restitution Alongside Several Lost Generations. So Many Broken Lives Can No Longer Wait for the
Lament for the Lost Birds
To Every Thing There is a Season. Surely Carolina Parakeet, Yours was too short and too colorful. In wisdom were you made communal, The earth made full with your divinity: Separated in hats of divine extinction Forever. All Creatures Great
Marathons
Tragedy with Evil Growing Stronger, Will Good Rescue a World Once Defended? A person my age may live much longer, Beyond times for which they were intended.
Super Empowerable
My Essence Indomitable, My Inspirations Invaluable, My Motives Unassailable, My Potential Incalculable, My Growth Unstoppable, My Hopes Sustainable, My Achievements Certifiable, My Future Attainable, My Education Irreplaceable!
Walk with Dogs to Trillium Grove
The one-eye Collie and the Manic Bird Dog, too, too excited passing Pasture Gate. Still cluttered with last year’s milkweeds. Too, too many box elders are taking root. Broken Dormer on the old well in the weeds, threatening, as remembered, to take
A Game of Briscola
You are always in the game, wherever I’ve played it. Forty cards in the deck, With a nickel always at risk, And your special “Oomph!” And swish of the wrist, Sending the taking three or ace to the table…are always,
Oh Tears!
Tears Idle, tears… “Yes you DO know what they mean” said the teacher, and I was so self-impressed. “But I wonder to the degree … of dying eyes” said the blind man, my teacher, my guide. So I knew, I’d
While concocting a new poem each day
While concocting a new poem each day The poet knew he’d be battling ’til May: The urge to keep fighting ‘Gainst writing ‘Bout writing Til he weakened: giving one muse its say.
The Alpha Diamond of Corona
When I found you your star, Alphecca to the Arabs, but Gemma, always from then to you and me, The Alpha Diamond of Corona, shining in the Crown of the North on those summer evenings. The back patio. To smell
A Patch of Plastic in the Existential Sea
Back in the day, Before Mere Opinions Became Facts, Before Free Markets Enslaved Children, Before More Packaging Brought Less Product, Before a Slice of Cheese needed a Fossil Wrapper, Before Garbage, Became Exportable, Before Land Became Disposable, Before Extinctions Were
Still My hero
Not the final days, We’ll Talk About That Later, As I approach that age. But there was a time, yes, before mine, Where by your stories, You proved the world existed, long before I had my consciences. And it could
If you can just get out of your body (A hymn)
If you can just get out of your body, You’ll discover you know how to fly. Swoop past your personal biography, Find a way to where the Time Goes By. When stars do glow, let Novae light the way, To the
Cinquainicity
My thoughts get on the page quickly, needing freedom to get to their new home inside your mind
Syzygy at Midnight
My Army of Dreams: the Armada returns in failure. Every bend of fate in flames. All hopes and all the schemes of a lifetime, this lifetime, my lifetime, now crashing everywhere at once. Legs refuse to stand, on the field
When I hear your jazz
Your trombone wants to KILL the blues. Doesn’t it? I mean the Baby Boomer Blues. The All-I-wanna-hear-me is-funk’n-Blues. Forget what it ain’t, let’s explain what is. Total Sonic Immersion. But Christ, if writing it could say it, why would you use music?
Quotable in Black and Grey and White
Those are my boys, Humphrey & Sydney & Peter & Claude & Me. Quoters & Knowers & Watchers & Readers… …and Boozehounds. All of us Warner Brothers. With formative years: On Top of The World! Didn’t every guy used to be
Xanadu Lost
And as Jove’s Sceptre swept me from his throne. Most heard within – the rise of hubris moan. Yes, Did I fall through years. (The Dome! Kersplash!) Hear All! The Alph runs grey with Human Ash. Mortal. Alone. My Nimbus fades from