Most read stories

The Fool on the Hill

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It is wonderful to talk to Mick Jagger in his hotel room. He is absolutely charming, and the women filling the room seem as natural as the sound of rain or the play of sunlight.

Things being said

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Things are still being said in a world that sounds like rough bows and straight slicing arrows communicating with (smashing like fists) a poor pool of tired animals. There must also come a time to surprise these same cruel machines…

The Boss

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When I was eighteenI worked at a convenient storeAnd the owner was from PakistanAnd he dressed well and Smelled of cologneAnd owned two storesAnd was always going back and forthBetween the two of themHe had to make sure we were doingOur jobsAnd whenever some kid…

It is I, Hamlet, King of the Crabs

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Ronnie comes home carrying two sacks of groceries, one including a four-pack of Virgil's root beer. This is heavy stuff. It amazes me she is able to carry these items up our steep hill, nearly a mile in distance. I watch the news on our French cable station while she…

The Busy World is Perfectly Happy

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to continue to crumble its way through another grinding cycle of slowly walking to the edge of the universe ancient treelike beings, like gentle ghost buffalo, and our own thundering buildings by the hundreds of thousands, …

Philip Guston and the Ultimate Mudball

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The huge mudball has rolled downhill, catching up one of them. Part of a leg sticking up from the surface with its shoe still on, but we can assume the rest of the human, or humanity if you will, is lost somewhere deep inside it.

The Band Name Is The Concert

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We now bring to the stage ....

Cakewalk

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She could estimate herself around 30, though this was debatable since she had stopped counting years ago. She looked like a person who would be very pretty if she wore make-up, but she didn’t and therefore wasn’t.

Writing Prompts

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If you want to be a writer, just write stuff.

Mesmerized

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Those eyes – they held a lost blue sadness that enveloped her and stopped her mid-movement.

The Babies

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We jam into the green tent as it begins to rain. His casket is covered with flowers and there is the picture you took of him, the day you climbed the fire tower from where you could see forever, past his smiling face the bars and a million changing leaves.His pregnant girl…

Payments

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What it was for, didn’t matter. When Susan walked into Fred’s house every few weeks and start talking, he’d just nod and say, “Sure, I know how tough it is out there, baby.” Then they’d drink some wine and put on some music, and he’d give her a little mon

Bougainvilla Drive

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blue plexiglass skateboard is holding the light of a turmeric sun. jacob turns it this way and that and lets it sit on its side atop parking curbs. denim legs canvas feet. looking down sign ridden streets and squinting. sometimes sun showers leak out. cotton…

Get Thee to a Nunnery

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I was in a nunnery wondering how I wound up in the midst of so many nuns as it wasn't my nature to hang out with nuns. I find them tedious and redundant, though I do have to say I appreciate their economy with words. You never really saw a…

If the Shoe Fits

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I didn’t say to eat your keys and parrots. It was peas and carrots. Idiot!

Jill Walks Across the Snow Covered Gas Station Parking Lot, Sits Next to Jack on the Curb and Gives Him a Cigarette

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Maybe adulthood isn't the destination I always thought it was?

for want of water

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you shimmered me with attention

Hearing the Usual Reports

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In its own defense against what is too concrete the mind allows a magical thought--

Tabula Rasa

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accidental ground/ for index-fingered figures

The Knife Edge

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Max understood this perfectly and could easily picture the slow-motion buckling of the spars and the accordion collapse of the fuselage as the propeller blades’ churned up the ground.

77 Words About Nothing (4.05.2012)

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I sold my ego to pay a parking ticket. And then I wrote 77 words about mental health.

Our Enormous Fat Man

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Pity would have been appropriate. Yet, townsfolk whispered behind his back. Shouldn't he do something about it. So lazy. A gluttonous swine. Hadn't his mother kept him too long at tit, breastfeeding ‘til four? Look. Look at him now. A fat man. Our enormou

just because the maker of the tracks and the tracks themselves are invisible doesn't mean there's nothing there

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breathe out somewhere a tree falls

just plain Jerry

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I remember one afternoon when Terry and I did it in broad daylight in a nearby park in Lombard, or Glen Ellen. This was after we had broken up already and I was seeing Jolene, I think, before leaving to go out to my writing program at U.C. Irvine. It wa

The Bedlam of Essence

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When the house was sold the new owners walked in on what they believed was a former life stopped cold. There on the table remained a half-filled teacup and a well-read magazine lying open from years gone by. A Royal Doulton dish set lay half packed on the

Edward Ogle the Second

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doomsday kittens

Snakes

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“Gaudy talking, ordination, high finance and politicking won’t save you. Moshaka zumbrala!” screamed Pastor Cleon Wrunk.

Stableford

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Mike Summer's moustache was perfect. Hard bristle and so symmetrical it looked cut to the angles of a military imperative. He was pretty proud of it, thought the team of beaters, who watched him as he sat on the boot ledge of his sage green Mercedes 123 T, combing…

Bendable

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“You're bendable,” he said, and then there was this silence as we looked into the space in front of us. I understood what he meant right off and thought it a gift to speak to someone that did not get the words exactly right, but in not doing so, got…

Pot or Marijuana

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Every six weeks or so, he and I would argue. I would argue. He would listen. He raised me twenty-five cents each time. I suppose that is a bad habit for me to have gotten into—to get pissed about rates and to fight to get a raise.