Tag Archives: life

2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, prose, winter

Daybook 2026 // Winter 2.23.26

A cold turn of weather and an opening road.

Though it’s incorrect to call the road opening. The road has always been there. Whittled down as I am by the world, whittled down to taking the offensive, when all I wanted was to be left alone. But I am grateful I have not been abandoned. I have, in fact, been embraced by the wild wind, and so my course is set and blind.

And it’s all for her. For them. And, yes. Also for me.

The days can be
a good crisp winter apple
small and sweet
full of flavor
and the slightest hint
of spring.

Take each deliberate bite.

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2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, poetry, prose, the no-scape

Daybook 2026 // Winter 2.16-2.19.26

2.16.26

We’re in the wet season, what is probably a fool’s spring, and the snow and ice have melted. The skunks have started mating and the peeps, I am told, are peeping in the Olmstead Parks.

I can’t prove it, but I think I am saved by love and by eating an apple a day and by a spiritual subroutine that operates in the deep programming of my mind. It’s been decades, but I have been, since I became aware, been working at making subtle changes to the key operating system, digging out errata programming and faulty subroutines. An apple a day and a perpetual search for poetry, neither of which disappoints me, will be what saves this machine. As the body wears out I replace parts with titanium and with words and someday all that will remain is a beating heart that bleeds language and whatever spare metal parts there are. And then someday, the words will erode away, get carried on the wind and they will find new hearts. And then the reconfiguration will be complete.


2.17.26

The year of the Fire Horse comes ‘round once every 60 years, or so says the internet, which has gone from a depository of all information to a badly organized big box store where the search agents are underpaid and unhelpful and the expiration dates are … flexible. The fireworks at midnight disturbed a neither deep nor restful sleep. I wish I could blame current events but I find that the world intrudes on my interior geography the way water soaks into river rocks: immersed long enough, some water does seep in through the pores. But I learned a long time ago that I do not carry the entire weight of the world. My share is only what seeps in, and what I allow to remain.

I’m too busy looking forward to look down. I only wish that this slight fever had accompanying dreams.


2.18.26

A fresh pot of coffee on the stove,
an apple, a pipe, and a shower
and the world moves on

2.19.26

Blinded By the Light // this life informed by a Manfred Mann song / a guitar and keyboard riff that beats like a heart that never stops // I do not stop / I do not stop // until someday it will all stop

the songs are right // this is just one big space ship and we / and we / are float// ing

—

my 20’s were the death cult years

I’ve gone a little crazy a few times,
to the great disappointment of people
surprised they never saw it coming

and it was in my 20’s I learned
most people are fine sharing their sorrows
but it doesn’t leave any room in them
to share someone else’s

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2026, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, poetry, prose, the no-scape, winter

Daybook 2026 // Winter 1.23.26

Baby Gabriel Garcia Marquez is Watching You. Photo by Mick Parsons

I got distracted in my own library this morning. I wasn’t even looking for anything in particular; I just had one of those gadfly memory moments, in which I was somewhere between putting on deodorant and trying to remember the trail of a dream.

Being back on a more or less regular sleeping schedule, I’ve fallen back into the casual habit of directed dreaming. Sometimes I visit the same places over and over in my dreams, and when there is a place where it feels unfinished, I try to go back. Actual directed dreaming — actively taking control within a dream — takes a lot of practice. Mostly I just try to get back and wander. The trail of the dream doesn’t matter so much as the attempt. I do it for the same reason I’ve casually started working on simple Sudoku puzzles. That reminds me of my grandmother, my mother’s mother. I remember her sitting at the kitchen table, working the word puzzles in the paper. They are both mind-focusing distractions. 

Sometimes all that remains are galley copies and memories. Sometimes less than that. Photo by Mick Parsons.
dream, 
like Borges
of an endless 
library

I moved some books around yesterday. I do this sometimes. And while I was looking again to verify that I was still satisfied with what I’d done, I noticed a few items I hadn’t looked at in a while. I still have two single copies of the first and second issues of a literary journal I spearheaded, Sticky Kitchen. That was back when I tried the small press route, a journey called One-Legged Cow Press. This was more than 20 years ago. Another life. I flipped through, looking at the names. Some of them I still know. A few I haven’t thought about in decades. I remember trying to convince Melissa, my wife then, of the higher cause of the project: the small press, the journal. She was never quite convinced. In the end, she didn’t find me all that convincing. 

the most basic
demonstration
of humanity

Before walking into the kitchen and filling my coffee thermos to come downstairs to the desk (at the merled dog’s insistence), I went back and applied more deodorant. 

Just in case.

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