Franz woke up one morning to discover he had transformed into a gay man.

There was nothing different about his appearance or the way he walked or the way he talked, just an innate certainty that he was no longer sexually and emotionally attracted to women, but to men.…

I’ll gladly pop the zits you can’t reach on your back.

If you wanna miss a family function I’ll always take the flak.

Don’t mind if you pee with the door open or clip your nails in bed.

You still hold the moon if you gain a few pounds or grays sprout on your head.

Perhaps you don’t think you’re God’s gift but your his gift to me.

Don’t care if you fart when you laugh I’ll always love you, ‘till those…

Shortly after Mom and Dad married, Mom found a picture of herself that she couldn’t remember where it was taken. “Oh, that’s not you, that’s my high school girlfriend.”



Dad lived  the years of his affair with her from 1967 to 1970; he left his first family during the fall of 1970 and married her in 1971. Dad traveled with an observatory group he joined (she was also a member) to witness the…

Bald and skinny, 80 years old,  there was an energy about him men half his age lacked; he was trying to get from this place to that, and I was trying to get the store clerk to give him clearer directions, and between us we managed to draw four very different maps,  all of  which the old man cheerfully tucked under his arm.

"I'm gonna get on my Harley and RIDE, baby"-- we all smiled.

He leered at me and winked, "--wanna come? we could have fun, your old man wouldn't know the…

It started to fall apart when I got the call that my sister Harriet wasn’t well. The old man told me last month the devil got a hold of her and has been ravaging her body and mind ever since; he wants me to come down, see what I can do, perhaps offer some help in getting her back on track physically and mentally; “work your magic,” as he put it. Shit, I had to laugh because I’ve forgotten what that means, being so…

That damn virus killed almost all of America, at least everyone I ever knew and loved, took our dreams and most of our wants. It left some alive… like those healthy slabs of red meat I see lurking behind the glass at the old butcher shop. I’ve seen what their guns can do; they’re heavily loaded but it doesn’t really matter because there are more of us than the bullets they are running out of. Oh Lord I hunger for the days…

So now to show up at the page, the brand new page, the empty, blank, unmarred, pristine page, with only words to dribble, poor words, in one language, monochromatic ink pooling and spooling--just chicken scratches on the white field.

Until you come along, and you want to know-- you want to see, make sense and story and even sound of the simple efforts on the now spoiled page.

Your kind eyes give meaning to the chains that lie now down, no longer twisting through me, but…

His level 45 shaman felt the harsh tartarian grasp of death take him on the stone floor of C'thun, so for the first time in a very long time, he looked up from the monitor and blinked a couple times before taking the headphones off. His eyes adjusted to the claustrophobic darkness, the leaning tower of hundreds of white foam plates and bowls had collapsed into a mound, beans curdled into mud. He tried to remember a time before raiding and leveling, and he thought he remembered one shining…

He is laid back and physically unassuming and completely not what I expected in a Beverly Hills cardiologist.

When he sees on my chart what I do for a living, he engages me in a conversation about Hollywood, jazz, politics, film and the state of cultural arts in Los Angeles because although he is a cardiologist by day, he is a jazz pianist by night.

What has brought me to his office on a rare grey Elizabeth Kubler Ross L.A. day is the constant pain in my chest; it is ceaseless…

His legs did the electric dance. They jumped involuntarily at the knees, an invisible marionette’s hand plucking hot-wired strings and the bed bounced with several thuds. His foot quivered and quaked in a humming two-step; the fat toe pulsed and poked as if fucking a wall outlet, the rest of the foot tingling in the afterglow. There was another thud – a whap really – his wife swatting the blankets. “Sorry,” he said, his…

John tells me to do it before it’s too late but I already know. I’m such a chicken-shit when it comes to these things; maybe it’s because I’m such a lousy dancer, stepping all over everyone and myself. I can’t fast dance; I hate jiggling around like good dancers do so I try to imagine something fun like being mowed down by a machine gun, riddled full of bullets all jerky like, but the last girl I danced with two-fisted my…

The 440 is my race and I could own it outright if I were going up against the snails in my weight bracket like Donnie Tilsbury or Sid ‘Legs’ Wenton or even Sal Swann who runs like a fast four year old girl but fucking Coach Walters decided to put Dave McDonald in the race and the only other event I’m in and it’s going to be iffy. I’m running as a Junior but McDonald’s an Intermediate – shit, he’s a Senior as far as I’m…

Sometimes, right in the middle of class, a light will go on and I’ll come up with a perfect name for my band. Like during Science yesterday while old Pickell was flying all over the chalkboard like a maniac drawing up charts with colored chalk, this popped into my head: Orange Appeel. I love names like that, like the Beatles Rubber Soul or Strawberry Alarm Clock, Electric Prunes, Iron Butterfly, Moby Grape. Ha, we’ll wear…

Sometimes when it’s real rainy, the stairs get slippery and my books slide around like madmen so I hold tighter going to my locker just in case that asshole Soldersen is waiting by a classroom, gnawing about nothing with some dick friends, ever-ready to knock my books flying all down the hall with that quick sucker punch from behind. He’ll have some witty quip he’s probably worked on all night like, hey goof… which twin…