Go bag in hand, I headed out for the Ohio Valley at the beginning of July. I hadn’t taken a break from work in six years, at least not one of over a week’s duration. The destinations were less important than the fact and necessity of doing it.
A question unasked: what might prompt one to write such a foolish 'poem'? That question will remain unanswered. There's sufficient sub rosa cruelty around without my further amplifying it. So, rather than belabor a peculiar series events pertainting to repetitive family dynamics, better to share a
When I first put the gaze on him, I thought he was a poser. Well-built with expensive bicyle gear. I thought: a hipster slumming it, eh? Fancyish bike, riding around, wild eyed. Pulls up to the bar. I'd been there for a couple hours with an ex-
II Dateline. – Smithville, KY 7.16.2026 Quite a night in Paducah. More on that later. This is the last fragment which transitions to the straight reportage segment of the trip, having digested the rip. I haven't read Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner probably in 25-30 years,
a/b Am I being fair to city people? No. Do I have a chip on my shoulder? Yes. Do I want to go to a city again larger than San Francisco? No. Do I want to go to San Francisco again? No. Did San Francisco change for the better
Preamble In the movies, when faced with a Vampyr, as in the 1932 Danish knockoff, it comes down to a couple choices. If you want to be the hero, you drive a stake through it's heart. Or kill it in a grain elevator, was it? Just off the
It was a capital afternoon, like so many others before it. At least in recent times, that is. Scruffy Rudolf had been up to his characteristic reindeer games for a couple weeks now. Doing this and that; whatever it is. The silly lil puddin' was playing hide and seek
For four years my family and I lived in the idyllic southern Bavarian village of Irsee, a hamlet with its own brewery and cloister. Bell-bedecked cows marched by our house each morn and eve. A tiny lake at the outskirts featured somewhat hostile swans that battled summertime swimmers. We
i Preface 'Satan's jeweled crown, I've worn it so long' The Louvin Brothers The subhumanization of humanity first and foremost concerns technology's unassailable Mephisto-like domination over basic, that is to say intrinsic, human virtues and values. Like that mezmerizing spectre of
I've known someone I'll call 'S' for about as long as I've lived in this country. Shortly after my family moved to the United States from West Germany in the late-1970s, I began attending American kindergarten. That's where I
'They' say 'you can't go home again'. That is true, in a certain sense, as it pertains to 'outsiders'. That is untrue, in the sense of 'insiders'. But there are just a very few of the latter – the family, a
March 5, 20o5 The culture of Heartland U.S.A. seeped into my consciousness at a tender age. I grew up in a town once known as “Union Station,” owing to it’s status as a granary on the Lancaster - Reading Pennsylvania line, today largely defunct. My American home town