Most read stories

My Ten Chapter Memoir

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I am always impressed with your intelligence. I love watches. I'm not interested in time. I am well read so talking to myself can be fun.

Ode to a Shopping Mall

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In 1609 Ben Jonson was hired to write a work in celebration of the opening of a new shopping mall.

The Demon Rum

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the Coke made his butt leak blood

Cottontail Morning

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A murder of bunnies nibble the St. Augustine,

"No lights shine out tonight high hung in heaven"

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(From Postcards fom a Railway Station (final poem)) No lights shine out tonight high hung in heaven: And the constellations like a dead man fall. No sight of polar eyes, whose sons are seven, And I stand unthinking and beyond it all I own it all a…

US Navy Honors Coltrane With Birthday Concert

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As unlikely as it may seem, John Coltrane was in fact a member of the U.S. Navy Band in 1947 in Honolulu.

Feast

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His long black lashes stir, flutter a wink. His eyes catch yours through the dark reflection of your face, illuminated from beneath by wavering candlelight. Reflection obscures his features; they become yours.

The Merry Go Round

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I felt that love could not be paid for or else could never be paid for enough.

A Cloud of Words for Winter

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What I would say

Proceed here to read some of my work

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http://jrleyvas.net

putting our bones together

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I can still see us sitting, somewhere (was it in a café?) imagining what it would be like if our mutual faces blended into the future (the waiters posing as in a Manet painting.) Putting our bones together, our broad features, Bohemia and Sweden. Yo

Target practice

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...it didn’t take much to just toss it aside and muster up some fresh bravado.

truth be known

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It could be there is a little me, somewhere, truth be known. One time in Laguna Beach I slept with a girl I met at this café, the Jolly Roger, I think, when we went back to my apartment and had unprotected sex. She said she was on the pill, but you neve

The Gift

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There is no need to worry about art. Art in its ideal forms stays safe. Real art resists being the object of attention. It directs your gaze, and it swings in you forever.

Bob the Builder

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The concrete guy’s truck is parked in front of your house. There’s nothing for him to be doing there except your wife.

Bukowski in Hollywood and the Collating Party at his Apartment

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They called him Hank. We piled in a car and drove up from Irvine to his little bungalow apartment on DeLongpre near Hollywood Blvd. for a collating party for this Mag he started with Neely called “Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns.” No shit, that wa

I am the Ship

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I'm the vessel that'll sniff out the wharf's of old,they call me bold for bounding seas,they whispers rumors of my unstable ease,what's a life without vanishing into the falling pink fold,Ululating tides spray brisk bounties of water on board,squabs with new wings…

POTATOES

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The hospital was a welcome relief. A short ambulance ride, a nice man holding your arm in a make-shift tourniquet, the red sirens flashing and screeching. Then you were…

Testament Part 4 of 6

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We once saw giants in the clouds and in/ connected points of stars, and named/ them, gods. We placed them in their high-halled villas,/ on the mountaintop, to game and frolic

The End of History

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Well, I walked in on you, then you walked out on me And that was when it happened – the end of history And that should have been sufficient But I think you know it wasn’t I remember it was you who told me Dreams are only efficient when illusio

Mister and Miss Marital Bliss

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The canvas bag lay crumpled and moaning in the middle of the room as Mister and Miss Marital Bliss contemplated what to do to it next. Spots of deep crimson blossomed like spring flowers all over the white sack and a large pool had gathered underneath. Rivulets of blood…

There’s No Peace In The World

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Then there was the time I splurged, hoping a higher-priced phone might keep me from slamming it against the wall.

How the Other Half Lives

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Most of life, it turns out, is pathetic. Very little is funny. We have to generate our own laughter. Canned laughter may have to do. Even if we have to carry the can around our neck like a Saint Bernard or strapped to our hip

Like Exiles in a Testicle Museum

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Balls excite our interest because we live on a ball. We travel through space on a ball.

At the Bend in the Road

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I was at the bend in the road thinking of Robert Frost but there was no fork, there was no yellow wood, there wasn’t even a horse to ask me why or what if There was no decision to be made just a thousand tourists from Prague

The 27 Club

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Jimi, Jim, and Janis Kurt and Amy too They died and gone to heaven And fit inside a shoe Room 114’s where they lie Their eyes wide open

The Affair

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Mine lasted 90 days. But don't they all? After we made love the first time, it was early November, I remember, some internal part of me shot upward with a laughter that would not stop. Something…

002

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there are nights when you're all alonein the darkwhere the only lightis the glow of the computer screenand words can't seem the scratchthe surface of your skulland bit by bitthe sentences, phrases, and lettersattached to your synapsesdrownin your subconscious

the plight continues

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but at least I wasn't drinking as much anymore.

Loretta McKinley

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After Loretta McKinley had sat for just such a time on a rock near the tribe, hallucinating and coming as close to death and God as she ever had, she walked into the camp and asked to speak with the elders.