Psst

You know that’s a word, right?It’s one of those onomatopoeia types.Those that come from a sound.Like when you’re trying to … More

Real Good Poems

How hard should a reader have to work to get something out of a poem?Would digging a hole to China … More

Looking As If She Were Alive (for Robert Browning)

The last meaning what? This guy.I’ve read enough stories, seen enough movies and TV showsto know that there’s always the … More

Save As and All That Jazz

This morning I’m frustrated.  Again. It’s a dating problem.  Story of my life. Ignoring, forgetting, misremembering, a typo. Each day I save … More

Life’s Run

Milton stumbles shakily around Mānoa Valley amid traffic. Petrarch perambulates Punchbowl Cemetery perusing stark headstones of veterans. Shakespeare window-shops for … More

What the Cat Typed

I jolt awake in the dark.Well, it would be dark except my computer,as have I, has come out of sleep … More

All the Hours of the Day and Night

I don’t know which of the 12 hours I love more,the half that’s a.m., or the half that’s p.m.I’d always … More

Where There’s a Will

A pint can’t hurt.Why do I always think that?More likely a pint can’t help. This writing implement depresses me.They are … More

Spring, Madison, Wisconsin, 2022

It’s another spring coming that I won’t be back in Madison,go there to write, my personal writing workshop, a retreat,where … More

This is an ex-poem

This used to be a poem, but now it’s not. I tried to make it pretty, but it didn’t turn … More

Nantucket

There once was a bard from Hawai‘iWho penned little poems as a hobbyFrom the time he learned lettersHe got better … More

The Tellers of the Tales

They are the scalpels into the heart of the storyCatalogers of the tales of life, of death, and beyondSpeakers of … More

The Fabled Cliché

Never say a good or a bad egg.However, if there is an egg involveddo not ever assume it is an … More

Will

Will, more than ample to move your miraculous pen forward, versing out divine lines like lightning striking, always looking ahead … More

So-So Funny

Students writing their PhD dissertations, that gobstruck time, wandering like zombies, as though they’ve been whacked on the head with … More

On Writing and Reading

I’ve been worrying about something with increasing distress. Yesterday, after I wrote a poem about walking to lose Covid weight … More

Hunting for a Subject

I was sitting at the Tahitian Lānai piano barwith the actual Surgeon General of the United States,on vacation here in … More

Tell Me a Story About

So you’re sitting in a room with a blank piece of paper or a blank screen in front of you. … More

dot dot dot

pretend you knew where you were goingand now you’ve run into usso follow along the silent spaces we speak in … More

Poetic thought

The more I drinkthe higher the cigarette butts pile up in the ashtraythe more I think . . . That … More