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NAM
He said, “I survived the war, was up to my armpits in water wading through the night through the rice plants that would never bear grain once we called in the orange. I walk through minefields, the noise a deafening silence since the only sound that mattered was the click that shouted death You think…
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LOWERING
When they lowered my grandmother’s casket into the sodden earth, there wan’t a dry eye, shoulder or leg, around. She would’ve laughed aloud, her children always too busy for a visit now soaked to the skin in a cold, windy downpour, all but me, the one she chose to conduct the service, the funeral director…
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IN A ROOM OF HORSE MANURE
My sister only wanted a horse an my parents thought they could solve that dilemma with a pony at her fifth birthday party where she would get all the extra rides, her friends and playmates be damned. Like most great parental plans, this one was doomed to failure, and failure marched front and center as…
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IN TRANSIT
We have decided to skip the viewing to say our farewells in thought without needing to see her face frozen in the morticians best attempt at placidity, erasing the anger, the fear, the frustration, the pain that made leaving easier for her than remaining. We will say the prayers, most of them, she with fervent…
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HERE LIES
Ambrose Bierce walked into Mexico one day, and was never seen again. That was surprising enough, but more so, he left no epitaph, the least you would expect from a writer. In retrospect, perhaps he was the smarter one, for I know othersl who have spent countless hours trying to devise the perfect epitaph, knowing…
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SLIP SLIDING AWAY
Merriam-Webster declared me an orphan yesterday morning, when my father slipped away from his morphine dreams. Some would argue I cannot be an orphan at my age, that is a sanctuary reserved for children, but I am long past admitting my age, and my behavior gives no lie to my claim of childhood. I will…
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UNTO EACH GENERATION
Years later on, having walked calmly away from my former faith, I am left still pondering where you find the words to describe, to teach the unspeakable, and how you use them to reach children who have no right to know the unspeakable, but who must, lest they later speak it. It was a generation…
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IN TRANSIT
Mom died, the text message read, similar words we’ve been hearing too frequently but always leaving us with the same hopelessness. The words my brother, estranged now, estranged then, come to think of it, said two years ago in a quickly left phone message. I thought of confronting him, but when he never answered, I…
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CHANGE
They lie in the field uprooted slowly desicating in the harsh sun, the fruit they might have borne trapped in the dying flower, the seed of another generation denied. It was not supposed to be like this, the sun should have fed them, the soil nourished their souls, their stalks growing thicker, drawing ever more…
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SUSIE
What do you say on the loss of a child? We sat in the lounge drinking a vile potion from a hollowed pineapple giggling insanely for no reason. We wandered the tunnels faces painted, clowns in bedlam. We lay together on a mattress on the floor and listened to Aqualung my arms around you both,…
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an old writer and his words 