Does love leave footprints like Sorels in the snow?

Where the weight of words and the wait of permission

Show a way where single track dreams converge.

The necessary surface, the snowy sands of feeling,

Frozen cloudbursts or buffeted shards from boulders.

And even so, one size fits all? Flats or… Read full post »

Today, bless her butter loving finger-lickin' heart, I heard her turn bread into a two-syllable word: Breaaaaaa-yedddddd.

And the more and more closely I listened I heard her turn every one- syllable standup word into a two-syllable with three-southern-side-dish fragments.

I will not suffer you to w… Read full post »

She had a voice that could drive a nail.

But many other things about her were soft and subtle, like her name.

Iris.

It was so World War II, so Brownie camera, so yesterday it made me wonder if reincarnation had delivered her back to earth.… Read full post »

It just came to me as dawn stabbed my eyes this day and the morning radio show that is supposed to awaken me on weekdays invaded my NO-REM-AGAIN weekend repose.

What OS needs is a Fight Club wing where the really bitchy writers and the acid-keyboard critics and editors could enter… Read full post »

Emma, me lady, you the bomb.
Though I once had an affair with Laura Petrie --
I was just a silly boy -- it is you for whom I lusted
With unknowing, uncontrollable longings.
When my fascination for Orange Crush
Turned to the quintessence of female pulchritude,
I took a Polaroid of my black and white/… Read full post »

I'd had a tip I would find him hiding out in one of those Western Wisconsin brewery towns where you can smell the grain long before you see the stack and the steam.

Father Cloud they called him back before he rained on the altar boys in a thunderstorm of… Read full post »

To the best of my recollection, we were all holed up in that old farmhouse at the corner of Brady and Eighty.

That'd be Brady Street, otherwise known as U.S. 61, which meanders north and south from Minnesota clear down to Louuuu-sana. Eighty was Interstate 80, truck stop heaven,… Read full post »

In a former life, I wrote a lot of newspaper stories. Many of them were about the dead, the nearly dead and the better off dead.

Such stories win contests and readers. I know it for a fact. 

These real-life tales trade on our purient and base instintcs. But… Read full post »

You can't know unless you have one, stroke one and make music.

This guitar.

And it takes all of you: arms and shoulders to hug and hold: hands and fingers to dance, apply pressure and pleasure on the surface and then serenade the soundhole with rhythmic advances and instinctive moves.… Read full post »

Whenever my father opened his garage door, the world mistook it for a garage sale.

It was strung and strewn with all manner of merchandise from the collectible to the collapsible: old farm tools that came with stories; camping equipment that just needed a wick and some white gas before… Read full post »

For far too long now I have bounced around this country like a pinball: Iowa to Virginia to Minnesota to Iowa to Colorado to California.

My favorite Zip Code was 23456 in Virginia Beach, VA.  We lived in a Planned Unit Development which, from the sky, looked like a circle.… Read full post »