Have I ever been alive before in the spring when the redbud trees are blooming, and the wind piles magenta  petals up against the curb?

Then wine-red leaves appear, perfect hearts positing the notion of enduring-- for a season at least-- while the clusters of blooms drop and dissolve.

And, if I sailed to Europe, squeaked between Spain and Africa at Gibraltar, then followed the Mediterranean coast, eventually I would arrive at Aleppo in Syria, and it would be…

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…

The first thing I was taught on that first terrifying night was how to make a homemade shank by melting a razor blade onto the end of a toothbrush all I ended up cutting was myself as I forgot to cover the blade when I concealed it in my uniform. Luckily I never had the need for it as I was in with the right crowd which was even more valuable in here than in the outside world, I also learnt that Cigarettes really were used as currency and desperate People will pay pound ten pounds for a can…

He dismissed giving her a Cartier watch or South Seas pearls.

Likewise furs or overhyped wines with 'old souls.'

She was too precious and rare for the nonsense that any man

could give to any woman on any day.

He searched for something deserving of the word “bestowed,”

something so rare as to horrify the…

He picks her up on Route 283, heading North toward Eastman Road. As she hustles to the car, her Western cowgirl boots kick up traveling dust, her Southern drawl revving up a rebel yell, ‘HOWDY!… WHERE YA’LL HEADED?’ Her eyebrows shoot North…

No, it’s true, this is not fiction, though I tell a porky or two about my age for be it young or old such knowledge tends to colour judgement so, technically, a part of this narrative falls into the realm of romance, for I am in emphatic denial concerning the number of years I have been on this earth.

The French overlook the Seven Stages of Man and try to tell us there are only three; of which the Third Age begins at forty-five but really, I gave up running and, come to think of it,…

I felt you leave me today.

You were there one moment, hanging on to one of my heartstrings for dear life, and the next moment, when I had said what I really wanted to say, admitted to myself how I really felt, stopped blowing smoke up my own ass, you were gone.

So now my stomach doesn't twist up when I see your name, my heart doesn't pound any faster when I see something on your Facebook, and no green monster of decayed jealousy rises up on my back when I see her posting about…

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…

The rustic woman’s feet were bleeding profusely, with broken pieces of glass having pierced her sandals. She sucked in her breath as the dry wind blew over her sweating body. Everything was for him, even the blood, but he wanted only the purse. For a few seconds she remained half sitting, half reclining, with her vision riveted upon him in the semi-darkness of the lonesome street. Defeated by the severity of the situation she fell back, coiling, under his patronizing gaze. She felt only her…

Doctor Logan Treadwell scrubbed his hands clean of stinging bile in a small wooden bowl he kept in the bedroom. Muddy excrement from the dying man’s bowels had caked beneath the doctor’s fingernails like clay. And the smell of open wounds in the living room turned the doctor’s stomach, despite his familiarity with the injuries of war. The man was named Gary Johnson and he had six lead balls buried in his intestines, bleeding terribly. Treadwell listened to the man’s wife weep over the…

Hickory roots drank gluttonously as the snow melted along the banks of Wake Creek. The water rushed fiercely, stampeding whitely from the mountain. Sheets of ice drifted crystalline, pelted by yellow spores of thawed fungi, loosened suddenly from their moldy grave by Laura’s clumsy and naked feet. She held tightly to the swaddled baby in her arms and chewed her cheek as she waded hip-deep into the freezing water. The stain on her dress would not wash out. But the red cloud between her legs…

Every man is a temple razed and every man is his own mason. Amidst crackling wagons, awash with blood and powder black, a filthy mason strides atop the bones of unfortunate dead. The rifle bobs at his hip, the jostling ring of spurs clatter over the awakening flat. The dried sign of horses speckle the road, steaming wet in the dawn. On wicked men he ponders, on lost trails and the unsown tapestry of creation, and how there live those that despise it as if the very offering of fellowship were…

The need to belong overpowered her. She never felt good enough to be a part of any group. This poor girl did everything to make herself seem worthy to the rest of them, but none of them noticed her and worse none of them cared. Her heart broke the day she realized she was destined to be alone forever. Before she could stop herself, she picked up the object that…