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My Commencement Speech

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To The Graduates Of The Class Of 2010: You are here today at a critical crossroads of your life. For most of your 22 years you’ve been taught to work hard, obey the rules, listen with respect to your elders and to trust that every effort you make wil

The Human Phenom Project

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I sat at the vast graveyard of broken hearts on the mending fence of wonderment unsealing the silence of the wounds I began to put the pieces together like a puzzle against forgetting

Sisyphus

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I build pedestals.It's hard workHeld together by sweat, love, and lofty thoughts - an unsound foundation.The tiniest bit of heartbreak,and it comes crashing down. Always, I blame the builder and not the vandal. The next one will be…

My Brother's House

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The last time my old lady threw me out, I decided to go and stay with my brother. I thought, "That's the last place I'll be welcome," and I knew that was true. The drive was calming, which was good, because Steven wouldn't have even let me in if I…

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 5

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Vladimir walked down the little path next to the creek with us. I stopped along the way and picked off a sliver of some of the bedrock that was sticking out alongside the narrow path, to take home with me as a souvenir of my family castle, just to be ab

Desire

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The young monk rose early to jog, his appetites trailing like cats in heat.

Excuse Me, I’m Writing a Poem Here?

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I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill, and … Excuse Me, I’m Writing a Poem here? Thank you. Sheesh! As I was saying, I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill. And I meet someone who names all his fish after people he doesn’t l

My Not Entirely Serious Predictions for Season Four of Sherlock

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The BBC's “Sherlock” is among the most popular shows on TV, and there has been much speculation among die-hard fans like myself about what the upcoming fourth season will hold. Having consulted my own crystal ball, here's what I see happening: Irene…

Gymnopedies

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Does sound shape silence/ or silence shape sound?

An Alphabet

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A daydreams about a woman whose name he’s forgotten next to B, who’s been drunk since afternoon.

Abortion Mill

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She arranged to have an abortion at a doctor Greene’s office, who practiced out of a converted house on Solano Avenue on the north side of Berkeley. I took her there the day of the procedure. You couldn’t go to a regular hospital to have this kind of thi

Another Dream

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“I fly in my dreams,” his mother said. “It's my privilege.”

Either Side of the Glass

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Why do you lie? the old woman repeats when her mouth is not busy filling the waste bin. We sit as far away from her wheedle and wretch as the small waiting room allows. A young woman glares at us through the mental health clinic's safety glass…

The Cusp of Leaving

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She waited on the hot, broken pavement, arm outstretched, her thumb a ticket to a distant, refracted horizon. Waves of heat danced like undulating snakes under the spell of a charmer. She pictured herself passing through them, abandoning the green of home for the…

we used to drop her off along the way

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We do it all the time...

A Bum and his Shopping Cart, Giving Up his Ways

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A bum leaves his shopping cart in the middle of the intersection at 7th Ave and Perry St and walks away leaving everything behind Shopping cart gets hit by an onslaught of yellow taxis whizzing by The contents flying out into the hum

My First Love Messages Me On Facebook

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He tells me that he thinks he reached out as he needed healing and I wonder if I should diagnose him on the spot, explain what years of therapy taught me about him. I don't. Instead I compliment a photograph of the pot plants he grows, organic,

it was after a revolution, or a war, or some disaster

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I had this dream. We were living together, and we were in bed asleep when strange, enormous cats began crowding around our windows and meowing. They made awful scratching and scraping noises at the windows, trying to come in. But I couldn’t wake you up.

Assiduity Eighteen

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A convoy of military vehicles is heading into the city as we are heading out.

A Shower of Rain

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You have at least an intermittent belief.

The Amazing Adventures of Macro-Microbe

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Macro-Microbe parked his car and proceeded on foot, which was a misnomer because he had no feet. Typical for Manhattan, no one gave him a second glance except for a homeless woman who tried to sell him hand-sanitizer. Macro-Microbe locomoted himself insid

The New Main Stream

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An hour later, we're no closer to the tunnel. In our rental car, we're just two in a school of a thousand fish skimming the edge of the island. Go with the flow, we keep saying to each other. We're just going with the flow. …

Diagnosis

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I am studying the way/ dust bunnies emerge, grow/ and apparently reproduce.

Tariff Happy

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Expose those for whom freedom is greed.

Arcade

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My father owned a penny arcade. I worked for him every summer all during my youth. My job was to hand green tickets to customers who achieved a certain score on Skee-Ball or shuffleboard. The coupons could be redeemed for merchandise which we had on display on…

The Forgotten Children...

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His cheeks were extremely pink but the pink was not the shade usually associated with good health, it was the pink of Death.

Kwaazy Wabbit

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destroy the day rip up the track jump in the water eat nothing but bugs

Tender Mercies

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After he was wounded in Iraq, Wilson Jenkins came home to Monroe. He had suffered two wounds. The first was a waxy-looking scar on his left leg. A twisting crevice of flesh, it started inches above the ankle and ended on his outer hip. In the field hosp

Fundamentals

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You can have two threes, or three twos. I hear the beat both ways. It goes back and forth in my head, like magic, transforming from one to the other and back again. And I am learning the basics of music theory, and painting geometric shapes with primary colors. I am…

4:09 and American Music

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If you knew everything, you would not be able to sit on tropical balconies at 4:09 A.M., discovering a book and then the world for the first time If you were part of the spiritual set, and could astral travel far and wide, but neglected to open the door…