Category Archives: prose

2026, Day Book, poetry, prose

Daybook 2026 // Winter 1.19.26 [Martin Luther King, Jr. Day]

“The Dancing Martyrs,” doodle by Mick Parsons.

I had this book when I was a kid. It was one of those children’s books, the kind that sometimes pass for actual history because it washes over the blood and broken bone of human history. It was a book about Gandhi and Martin Luther King,Jr. I want to say it was about John F. Kennedy, too, but that might be a different book. The book talked about how these men wanted better for their fellow men, wanted freedom and self-determination. It was one of those books that ignored Jim Crow and only referred to the British Colonial power as having eventually turned cruel, not that it was cruel from the beginning. It was one of those books that referred to the death of martyrs in passive voice; not that someone murdered them,but for their good works they were killed, worded in a way to rob it of violence, because there was some notion floating around that still is floating around that it doesn’t matter what words you use as long as you “get the point across.” Facts without teeth. Erase the colonialism. Erase the racism. At the end of the book there was a drawing in black and white of King and Gandhi holding hands with Caucasian Jesus, standing atop a hill with a rainbow overhand. They were holding hands and singing

“Free at Last, Free at Last.”

I thought of this book the first time I watched Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.

from The Seventh Seal, Dir. by Igmar Bergman (1957)
the
tooth
less
af
fair
his
story
with
out
bl
bl
bl
oo
d: wh
ite
noi
se
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2026, Day Book, everyday words, poetry, prose

Daybook 2026 // Winter 1.16.26

the
se
day
s with
out
pe
er
re
view
get
high
Nielsen 
Rat
ings
any
how.

A bite of the apple is the start of a sending off-gathering. Like original sin I go tumbling forth into infinite space. These are not days to mingle on the streets. The rabid pack steals all the coffee and blood for later consumption. My dead friend’s city is under siege and my only gratitude is that the cancer killed him before a bullet did. 

A biting of the apple is another baptism into sin and memory. I waking awash in remembering that no amount of saying the words will make anyone behave differently. I must be forever saying the words. They must be forever not-listening. This is the Nietzschian Feedback Loop.

My goal today, as every day is to be breaking free of it. This too may be part of the looping.

lo
op
lo
op
lo
op
lo
op
crisp
bi
te
n’
cof
fee
n’
a
pray
er
ing
a
sing
ing
from
un
der

[Now Listening: “All My Loving” cover by The Smithereens. Beatles kitsching or three chord mocking?]

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2026, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, prose, the no-scape, winter

Daybook 2026 // Winter 1.15.26

doodle by Mick Parsons

January is a tease and I am tired of the feedback loop. Last week it felt like spring. This morning, the temperature kills indiscriminate, the jackboots of the season. The Belle of Louisville is being pushed home down a cold river, returning to dream and remember in spite of everyone’s desire to wake and make her forget.  There is no cold quite like the one that creeps up through the soles of the boots and wool socks from cold metal deck plating. It grows up into the bones, a mycelial network that builds cold tendrils up into the medulla oblongata. The dream and memory infection lasts as long as the floating world and the water lasts. These legs are too accustomed to dry land and the cement is reaching up, too. In dreams just on this side of my eyelids I am rooted in place, arms stretched out and over, a preacher a prayer a poem, feet bound to the shore of my final baptism, denied.

But someday, the mycelium-like ties will cast me forth,  set me free. 

tie
d tie
d tie
d these
arms
stretch
stretch
stretch
ed & 
tie
what
sacri
fice
what
is
burn
ed
what
is
tie
d
will
find
current
again
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