Saturday, August 8, 2026

Another Growing Degree Day in Paradise

Gender expansive
Nothing less than
25% over asking.

Excitement at every kiosk 
Daring and vitally transformative
Rare and deeply transfixing.

I’m over here guys
I’m riding and skating
And clicking and swiping.

Here where it says
Some can’t get enough 
Cranberry crumble.

Here where the lucky die 
Where they fall like sections of fence
Serene with dilapidation.

Here but a few versts filled 
To bursting with custom fragrance away 
But you can’t get there without the app.

You needa diversify your device ecosystem
Before you pitch your smart tent
In the forest of transmitter trees.

My advice: stay hot
Heart the owie kisser
Upskill to an onboarding fervor.



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Friday, August 7, 2026

While There's Still Light in the Sky

Near enough closing
Coyotes for the third night yipping
Mary ran the last of ‘em out
With Shostakovich on blast
Send ‘em back where they came from  
The wildlife resource protection corridor
Where they belong.

From clips to a special
To the pumpkin vine by the guava tree
As long as the times are historic
There’s no need to fear forever poems from me
I’m in for the pop not the plot
And let’s have a crazy hand for
Straight up crossover.




 
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Thursday, August 6, 2026

Lanterns of Winter Squash

Enlightenment on the light rail
Tells and reveals of 
Anti-capitalist wannabes. 

That’s how I found calm
Before the storm is not serenity
People are just laying low.

Or gathered burly and fomented 
Or wagering on sleep quality scores
Or giggling and glued to their phones

To see if a beloved romcom genius
And two-time Emmy winner
Will earn an Oscar nod.

So this morning I
Which is funny
It’s on my FYP:

All these people outed
With sun-soaked savings 
At yet another gated entrance.


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Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Double Play

FOMO A' GO-GO

Kneading her phone
Like a cat scrolling a doormat
Mamaw called to ask
If we was 
Going to Wenzhou
Could we pick 
Her up something
From the Merchants of Muchness
Producers of viral marketing
It’s like halfway around the globe!
 

RAINBOW CHARD RECALLED

Trading red cedar for black walnut 
Saint Dominic for Saint Sebastian
Smart rings for Shark Week

The birds are agitated and noisy 
Is it the butchering apron?
The lung removal tool?


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Tuesday, August 4, 2026

It's the Little Things


URGENT CARE

Closed Monday.


I’M SWEATING

Are you sweating?


THREE FOUR FIVE

It’s the new
Six seven.


THE VOICE IN MY HEAD KEEPS TELLING ME

Upgrade your plan.


THEY JUST MOVED IN

They seem nice
I wonder what’s
Wrong with them.


SHILOH

Name like that
You know she a skater.


EARTH

(Spoiler alert: this includes you.)


AVAILABILTY

He Kant.
I Cannes.


DRONE FLYING OVERHEAD

Man found dead
On shiny slurry spread
By robots the night before.


I NEED A HUG BRO

Add to cart.





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Monday, August 3, 2026

Why It Matters

Related by blood, marriage
Living their large portions
Vascular and landmark
Junior harvested his own power
Papaw sculpted glass
And often spent evenings blowing
(with the broader glass community)
Meemaw mostly stayed home
Mamaw worked at 7-Eleven
Mom worked at the community kitchen
Dad worked for the county
Angel worked at Walmart, Amazon, 
And, before she went to Buffalo
Wild Wings, there was Ross, Boot Barn, 
Torrid, Best Buy, Powerade, that hot dog place
Hell, Angel worked everywhere
But she didn’t come home one night
And next morning her body was discovered in an arroyo
Her head crushed and face mutilated
By the bloody concrete block found at the scene
You fucking unfollowed me
He had yelled over and over and over and over.



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Sunday, August 2, 2026

Sunday Lit: A This and a That

Want to first give a memorial shout out to the artist Betye Saar who passed away last week. She received tributes from all major media. I have been lucky enough to see her work on display in various museums and galleries. Images of her art are widely available on the internet. I return to them frequently for inspo.  Her artistic expression was satire-laden assemblage, and I’m a big fan of that, and she was awfully good at it.

Betye Saar's 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, in the collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Meanwhile, my writing continues, as does reading, thinking, notetaking, and I’ve added a new habit: staring into space.

As W.S. Merwin wrote “the trouble with pleasure is the timing.”  Yesterday as I lay dying and reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, my laughter practically healing me, I got about why, and how i came to be, a writer.

I attended the University of Southern California (USC) for the same number of semesters (3) that William Faulkner attended the University of Mississippi (Old Miss).

Bedight with delight, John Keats went to the ocean for the same reason I do, to refresh “ears…dinn’d with uproar rude/or fed too much with cloying melody.”

Just a coincidence? Or are there a deeper connections. For example, I was born in Chicago as were Sandra Cisneros, John Dos Passos, Patricia Smith, Carl Sandburg, Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sherwood Anderson, Fenton Johnson, and Studs Turkle, among many others.

I'll give it some more thought.

And in closing, have I mentioned that my hometown library participates in a consortium of county, city, and university libraries in California where if one library doesn’t have the book being requested, there’s a good chance that one of the other libraries will. I’ve requested books from libraries all over state and they’re ready to pick up at my hometown library usually within seven days.

Works used for this post:
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, 1931
The Window Seat, by Aminatta Forna, 2021
The Shadow of Sirius, by W.S. Merwin, 2008
And various poems by John Keats, circa 1820
  

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