Tag Archives: writing 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, Day Book, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, prose, the no-scape, winter

Daybook 2026 // Winter 1.27.26

I am trying to break the habit of allowing the algorithm to know what music I will want to listen to. This is challenging, not so much because I feel dependent on the tech, but because the algorithms do the work that FM program directors and DJs did when I was a kid. When I listen to the radio lately, I’m almost more intrigued by the songs I don’t expect and don’t especially like. It’s too easy to cater our realities. Now, and I am far less interested in a catered reality than in one that sometimes asks me to look up and see something organically new. This is a relative term, of course. The old sage sorrowed, “There is nothing new under the sun” but the old sage was also a bored monarch and hadn’t the advantage of centuries of scientific exploration. There is nothing new because everything carries the echo of something else, but over time the key signature, the tempo, and the tune changes. What is it to live in an echoless world? To be a baby. Knowledge is the acceptance of echoes, applied to every facet of living. But one must always leave a few beats open for the extraordinary improvisation. For craft and art.

it’s all a blues rift
all a deep howling
against the cold,
against the dark,
against the light,
against too little
against too much
against and for 
blues and banjo
man, blues and 
that mad jazz music
that made 
all the bigots worry 
where their wives 
got off to
while they were out
with the boys
hunting strange fruit
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