The substance between you and me
is like wind beneath the gulls
as they hover over the ocean
….I like that
I like that I can sit back with you and be myself
I like that I’m thankful for random things
like the morning paper,
or a plain cup of coffee. Continue reading
I once stood at the north shore on one of the islands in Hawaii and watched teams of surfers try their skill on some of the greatest waves in the world. This was like nothing I had ever seen before. There were others watching with me; there were others staring out with the hints of sunset coloring our faces.
The incoming waves slowly built into tall curling walls of water. Then they crested, and then they folded into the shore.
One of the spectators mentioned, “People come Continue reading
THE OCEAN
Slow tide moved in after the rain this morning…
Waves hushed onto the sand of an empty beach
and through the clouds
the sky broke above the ocean in shafts if sunlight. Continue reading
They called it a, “Suspended sentence,” conditional upon my behavior. This came from a judge in a courtroom, along with a two year order of protection, and a warning that should I attempt to approach, contact, or interfere with the lives of the youths that tried to impose against me and my home, I would be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
I was once a longhaired kid with loose shoelaces and a wise ass mouth. I hung around the corners of my neighborhood and found trouble the way sunlight finds the ground. I laughed too loud and screamed too often. I was wild, but yet, I was aware of when to lean in and when to hold back.
I knew when to speak out and when to quiet down because I understood the possibility of violent consequences.
Today’s youth has a similar Continue reading
I watched a show about a man that bought a milk truck.
He changed the truck into a mobile kitchen,
and now he makes different types of grilled cheese sandwiches,
and he sells them throughout the streets of Boston.
According to the show, he does pretty well.
He seems happy too.
Before his truck, the man worked in an office.
He had a boss that complained and deadlines to meet.
He punched keys on a keyboard,
and all day long,
his eyes were fixed to a computer screen as he calculated data
that was pertinent to the lives of others. Continue reading
My earliest memory of fireworks is from a friend’s house in Brentwood, Long Island. More like family, I stayed with a friend that I saw as a brother. I saw his sisters like my own, and I saw their mother and father as I would an aunt and uncle.
It rained in the morning but the afternoon cleared, and by nightfall, the sky was lit with Continue reading
It was near sunset. I had walked across from my hotel room on Seville Street and sat on the short wall that separated the sidewalk from the beach on North Atlantic Boulevard.
An older man from the south noticed me. He smiled and asked, “You must be from New York?”
Smiling, I agreed with him.
The older man had tanned skin, salt and pepper hair with a matching colored goatee, and his face was slightly wrinkled.
He wore a blue baseball hat with an American eagle’s head surrounded by a series of golden stars. He wore a khaki pair of shorts and a crème-colored, buttoned down shirt, with short sleeves, and palm trees on the front. Continue reading
In the fun-time madness of youth and drugs, I decided to swallow two tabs instead of one. The weather was warming up and the classrooms were thinning out. At that point, many of the students I was friendly with were removed from my small school. As it was, the school was an alternative to the regular classroom experience.
The schoolhouse itself was once the upper levels of a barn. There were horse stables below the classrooms and a pasture to the south side. To the north was the wooded area where longhaired students ran off to kill their brain cells and make their eyes bloodshot and half-closed.
We were surrounded Continue reading
I don’t know why things happen the way they do. I don’t know why good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good.
I don’t know why we get sick or pass away. I don’t know why it rains on days when we need the sun most, and I’m not sure why our plans fall through. Continue reading
I left my house this morning at 4:45AM.
The sun was about to rise and the birds were chirping. I walked to my car and thought, “I used to come home at this time,” but that was a long time ago and I was a different person then.
There was a cool wind coming from the north and the moon was still out. I drove away from my house and headed in to fill another overtime shift on a Sunday morning.
Behind me, the sun began its rise and its reflection changed the colors of the glass buildings on Hempstead Turnpike.
And as I drove, my daughter is somewhere upstate. I suppose she Continue reading
The Written Addiction 