Where I'm from, and What It Means

I come from the Northern San Joaquin Valley—about 90 miles east of San Francisco. But I was born long before people moved there because they couldn’t afford to live in the Bay Area. When it was still “Oklahoma with grapes.” It in fact reminded people of Oklahoma, and many of its denizens came from that part of the country, though we had no distinctive accent or regional identity. Rose Maddox and her brothers came from my hometown, Modesto, and had their first successes there. Wrestling was very popular. (My own forebears came from Iowa and Missouri; the Iowa people originally came from the Palatinate in what’s now Germany, the Missouri folks were from Ireland).

Recent Poetry, October 2019

The Holy Fools


Basil the Blessed sat naked,
On the Church porch,
Eating sausages during Great Lent.

Xenia lived in a graveyard.
And insisted in being called,
By her late husband’s name.

There were many others.

Their main message is to
Tell us that the Church is the ultimate
Finger-pointing-at-the-moon.

Their main danger is
Exactly the same.

Recent poetry, May 2019

Cross: Resurrection

We cover it today with flowers,
Prostrate before it at all hours,
But its secrets won't explain,
Listen: Go against the grain,
It says, and all self-interest spurn,
Reject the world, what makes it turn,
Resurrection lives there, sleazy,
To cover it with flowers is easy.

Stroke Recovery Support Group

I remember when I spoke of the tube that went in my belly, and that I had to fill every night, and how filling it by myself was a big step in my recovery. And I remember them all rolling their eyes in acknowledgment. They knew.

Recent Poetry

Stroke

Sometimes I overhear a conversation
I would have passionately
been a part of,

The Bodhisattvas of In-Between

Recent Poetry

The Saints of Discontent

There comes a person now and then

Whose malice fairly cries to heaven,

Whose animosity’s a ten

Upon a scale of one to seven.