Watching the sunset from the deck in my backyard, I pat my stomach after a meal and then I exhale the kind of breath that only comes after eating a big dinner.
As I write to you, I sit in my room and on the wall behind me is a certificate signed by the President of The United States of America. Continue reading
And on the morning of the seventh day, I rested with a cup of hazelnut coffee and a chocolate glazed donut. I looked out the front window of my home, and across the street at my friend The Old Tree, which now stands, half-dressed, with most Continue reading
I have this thing I keep.
It isn’t something you could see
or I could show you
It isn’t something you or I could touch
it’s just something I can feel.
I have this thing and I keep everything I own inside of it
I keep my memories and my love
I keep my tragedies and my downfalls
I keep my blessings as well as my benefits.
I keep everything here.
Right here….right inside
Continue reading
My Old Man used to tell me, “If you sleep with dogs, you’ll wake up with fleas.” Then he would talk about my friends and say, “Get ready to start scratching kid, because those friends of yours have a lot of fleas.”
The Old Man would tell me, “Show me who your friends are and I will show you who you are.”
When he thought I was slovenly dressed, or my room was too messy, The Old Man would say, “Show me the environment you keep yourself in and I will show you how you feel about yourself.”
He would say, “It’s easier to be brought down than it is to bring someone else up….so always be aware of your company.”
And The Old Man hated quitters because, “Quitting is contagious.”
He hated liars too because, “There’s nothing worse than a liar.”
“If a man doesn’t have his word, then he doesn’t have anything in my book.”
I used to work as an operating engineer in a commercial office building near Park Avenue and 34th street. There were two different machine room floors. One, which was designated for the heating and cooling for the lower half of the building, was on the 12th floor. The other, designated for the upper half, was at the top of the building on the 42nd floor.
Neither room was properly maintained. The lighting was Continue reading
Here it comes….
We are days away from the unofficial beginning of summertime.
Bodies will soon flood the beaches and the days will become longer as nights grow hot and shorter.
I am thinking of a time I had. It was the first time I broke through Jones Inlet and headed out to sea on my own vessel. The boat was 31 feet in length with a beam more than 11 foot wide. Beneath two separate hatches, diesel engines, each with 240 horses behind them, hummed in the deep sound of a slow-moving rumble. Continue reading
1)
I was told, “Stand up.”
Then I was escorted from the glossy wooden bench in the front of the courtroom and escorted towards my counsel.
After positioning me before the judge, my appointed attorney leaned close and whispered in my ear.
“The judge is going to read off the charges against you and then he is going to ask, ‘How do you plea,’ understand?”
I nodded yes.
“After he says that, you are going to respond, ‘Not guilty,’ and he will either set bail or release you on your own recognizance. Do you understand?”
“Well, which one is it,” I asked. “Is he going to release me, or is he going to set bail?”
“I’m kind of curious to find out myself,” said the attorney.
As the judge spoke, I Continue reading
Early Sunday morning and I walk down from my front doorstep, across the wet spring grass and beneath the sky with its rising sun.
I enter my car, start the engine, and back out as I make my way to this place I call work.
My body moved in autopilot as I drove through the Long Island parkways, onto the Grand Central, and then onto The Long Island Expressway, where in the distance, I could see Continue reading
Lying down, my little girl pulled the covers up and held her small stuffed bulldog beneath her chin. She moved over to the side, allowing a spot for me to lie down beside her.
Looking up at me as I tucked her in, my little girl removed her arm from beneath the comforter. She slapped the top of her mattress as if to ask me to stay, and with a bright smile she asked, “Daddy, will you tell me a story?”
This is our time together. In that moment, I am nothing else but a father and there is no one else but us. There is nothing more important than her dimly lit room with pink flowered nightlights, which she selected, and I hung Continue reading
I was raised in a modest house. My Father worked from sunup to sundown; my mother cared for the home and along with my older brother, we lived on a main street that ran north and south through our small suburban town.
Five houses north of Front Street, our two-story home rested across from the Continue reading
I met Hank inside the glass double-doors on the side of a brick building near 31st St. He was white-haired and heavy set. The top of his hands had matching tattoos; each with a tiny devil and both with the words, “The hell you say,” written beneath the cupid-like demon.
And like the blonde in Hank’s hair, the color in the tattoos had faded with age. The inked blurred Continue reading
The Written Addiction 