Meal

The idiot boxes have grown smaller
And ubiquitous.
Unavoidable, static channels of small dimensions
But vast reach.
We had a conversation, you never looked up.
There is no point in conversation anymore.
We have nothing to exchange.
This is how evolution proceeds,
Old flesh becomes new,
The bone structure metallic.
I will prepare this meal,
And whether it brings any measure of joy is irrelevant.
Someone or something in the endless reach
Of cyberspace
Will have found a better way to make it
With colors so bright as to be unreal
And words more crisp and assured
Than mine could ever be.

Two Excerpts from the Crow Journal

Crow waits violently.
Who cut all the barbed wire
   tattoos off of thousands of arms?
Shards of flesh, little skin books.
That was then, this is hurt.
Crow waits.
Crow will sew the sky together.
Crow will shape the sky.
Crow will string barbed wire
   together, remove it from
   flesh, make it something else.
Crow will do this at
   the appropriate time.
Crow waits violently.

*

Crow there you go
throwing glass perfume
grenades,
dancing on tinderboxes,
choking a wailing saxophone.
Crow there you go
and here I site,
growing fat drinking water.
One of us will strip naked
and crawl into bed
One of us will refuse
to release final words.

Garbage Mouth

Garbage mouth. I thought you called me that because of how I swear. Too often, a pan dropped on the toe or a red light taking a long time to turn green. But it wasn't that, you said, I can't hear the what swears you say because when you open your mouth garbage comes out. The refuse of the world, regurgitated by your speech. Disgusting, rotten. Garbage mouth.

I can't cook too well either. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs--bullshit. Whatever I make is broken. Wholeness doesn't exist. What kind of ideal is that, perfection? There would be no point if perfection were attained. There may not be any point anyway, but at least when things are broken there are endless possibilities to keep a body occupied. I put barbed wire in my frying pan and it didn't scratch anything. You have to know how to handle these things, broken though they may be. I don't use gloves. It feels better when the skin is touching.

Sugar and methamphetamine. Impossible luxuries for a garbage mouth who can't cook. All the burners on, the oven is hot, and everything tumbles from my mouth. The acrid smell fills the kitchen as it heats up, burns. I will stay in this inferno until I am empty. After, I will gather the ashes and leave them on the steps of your cathedral.

Louder Than Love

As a writer, I deal in myth-making. What is more fundamental to story making than myth creation? One could go so far as to say every story is a myth. I have actively spent a large part of my life creating and participating in myths and myth-making. As someone in his mid-forties, I've long witnessed the cultural events (especially pop culture) of my younger years turn into myth. It's a cycle that's as natural as breathing, perhaps accelerated in this era of mass media culture, but a process that has been going on as long as there have been humans.


I honestly did not realize this as I began writing the above paragraph, but today marks one year since Chris Cornell passed away after a lifelong battle with depression. I guess I must have known subconsciously, because today I found myself reflecting on the myth of grunge, or more specifically, how grunge itself fell victim to very myths of self-destruction it initially railed against. Except that's not true, not really. Grunge was in part a reaction against the shallowness of mainstream rock music, but these bands were full of rock stars. They were just shaded differently. And then the shading went totally black. Grunge's cultural moment can be discussed from a distance now, safely in its myth, but for me personally it's still all too close to home. I don't believe I'll ever have that distance.


1992-93 were arguably the peak years of grunge (at least as far as its cultural impact--the actual scene in Seattle was well into its dying throes by then). In 1992 I graduated high school, in 1993 I lived and worked on my own, college not being a path I could pursue until the end of 1993--and which would only last one semester. I had numerous interrelated demons (depression, anxiety, substance abuse, relationship problems, etc.) Grunge music not only spoke to me--it saved my life. I'm not being dramatic, it truly did. It made me feel less alone, and the darkness inherit in it was a darkness that I well understood, a familiar friend. There were other bands that spoke to me in that time, but grunge (along with Metallica) prevented me from trying to take my own life on more than one occasion. It is one of the greatest gifts art can provide--bringing light and empathy into the darkest corners.


And then the leading lights started dying. And there was nothing glamorous about it. If the famous "27 club" deaths (Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin) had been pitched as almost romantic to those of my generation--live fast, die young--then the violent, bleak deaths of Cobain, Staley, Wood et. al. felt anything but. These deaths would have a long tail. Cornell's death last year shocked me in a way that none of the others did, because I'd bought in to the second, related myth: that of the survivor. That if you somehow made it through the 90s and got the professional help you needed, you had the tools and everything would be, if not fine, at least survivable. I projected my own narrative on it, as we so often do with artists we admire, and that narrative helped me in my own life.


But it's myth. All of it. Surviving is a day-by-day process, and sometimes, tragically, people don't make it. The hurt and darkness that drives so much great art and makes it relatable doesn't vanish. It might recede, but it will always be there. And that's why we need each other. It's why we need love and support, but it's also why we need tools to deal with it. Those tools are out there. You are never alone.


My children have grown up on grunge music and they love it, but it was already a thing of myth when they were born. They know how much it means to me personally, and I've done my best to be open and honest and puncture any lingering rock star myths around it. These deaths are not glamorous and never were. There is nothing romantic about it. The music is beautiful and will continue to resonate. The one advantage my children have is distance--for them, it is about the art and nothing more. As I mentioned above, I don't think I'll ever get that distance, at least not entirely. The sadness at losing so many powerful artistic voices feels personal in a way that's hard to explain. It's not nostalgic--when things are purely nostalgia, they are safely locked up. This music has never been far away and is still a part of my daily life. It is one of my tools for surviving. I so wish it could have helped those who created it for longer than it did.


I'm grateful for the voices from this music that are still here, and I mourn those that didn't make it through. And I can't say it enough: there are people out there who can help. You are not alone. You are never alone. Reach out, as difficult as it might be, and get help if you need it. There are more shoulders to lean on than you realize.

Publication: Truffle Oil in Trembling With Fear

My exactly 100 word short story Truffle Oil has been published in the 03/25/18 edition of Trembling With Fear. Trembling With Fear is an offshoot of The Horror Tree, an invaluable resource for horror and weird fiction writers. I'm extremely excited to have my "drabble" published in TWF and to see it next to the other awesome stories in the 3/25 issue.

In the coming weeks I hope to build an actual author website; it's mostly a function of finding the time and making sure I don't lose the content of this blog. While this publication is my first since I appeared in several print issues of Splatter about a decade ago, I hope it won't be my last. I only started submitting again two years ago, and I haven't submitted very many stories. I'm aiming to turn that around this year.

Thank you to all who have supported me. It is humbling and deeply appreciated.

Wave Propagation

Here is what I will not say to you: let's go down to the sea. Here is something I will never ask you: do you remember? I might ask you if you can feel the contours, but don't worry if you can't; they are wobbly, like radio waves plucked by unseen hands. You were the one who threw the rock in the sawmill pond to teach me about wave propagation. It was not the first time I didn't understand what you were explaining, nor would it be the last. But I understand now.

Here is what I will not say to you: let's go down to the sea, where darker mysteries await me. Throwing a rock in the sea does not create a wave. The wave is already there and it will eat the rock, along with anything else stupid enough to penetrate its surface. Here is something I will never ask you: what did it feel like? You can tell me if you like, but I will not ask. I will offer you shelter with me in this dreary oceanside room but I don't expect you to join me.

Here is what I will say to you: hands can push with the force of rocks penetrating water. I don't need to say this to you, but I will.

When It Becomes Clear

My wife cannot hurt me.
My friends cannot hurt me.
My parents cannot hurt me.
My in-laws cannot hurt me.
My co-workers cannot hurt me.
My financial advisor cannot hurt me.
My boss cannot hurt me.

The cats, the turtle, and the fish--none can hurt me.
The barista in the cafeteria--she cannot hurt me.
The guy delivering Amazon packages to my door yesterday--he cannot hurt me.
The elderly lady in lavender who bumped into my shopping cart and then
  apologized profusely--in no way can she hurt me.

Only my children can hurt me.
They wield a power all the more dangerous because
  they do not know they possess it
  and if they ever deployed it
  it would be by pure accident
  by pure unawareness
and this makes it more devastating
than any planned attack
could ever be.

I could, if needed, walk away from most anything or anyone.
But before such power
I am unguarded, helpless
  as a newborn who has yet to take their first breath.