My father was a son-of-a-bitch.  I tried to tell him so several times.  I’d hoped to cut him deeply with those words.  My goal was pay back.  Not for myself but for my younger brother, Ronnie.  I finally gave up the idea.  Not because he was getting old, but/… Read full post »

I began writing this piece almost twenty years ago, after I located a friend's name on the moving wall.  It has become a story within a story.  I had planned to use his real name and details and offer the piece as a tribute. A few years ago I offered the original story to/… Read full post »

Leap

 If I were truly spirited,

I’d undo the past and leave this place.

I’d trade these dry, empty, proper walls

for fields of bubbling conversation,

absurd with generalities,

grammatically haphazard,but alive.

A noisy place filled with

a cacophony of pioneering spiri… Read full post »

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 2012 Costs of Alzheimer's = $200 Billion

Alzheimer’s Kills the Individual : 

Alzheimer’s disease is NOT a normal part of aging.

It is a fatal brain disease that cannot be prevented, cured, or even slowed.

Alzheimer’s disease is the 6^th leading cause/… Read full post »

Many of us have wondered where the Occupy Movement was going to go next.  On Bill Moyers tonight, George Goehl (National People's Action), Ai-Jen Poo (National Domestic Workers Alliance), and Sarita Gupta (Jobs With Justice) share their activist goals and ways the 99% ca… Read full post »

Here are three of my brothers.  I have two more.  Tom, the one in the chair used to be a paratrooper, a millwright, a father, a husband, a big brother to eight siblings, and my surrogate father--although he's only a decade older.  Now Tom cannot walk or use the toilet… Read full post »

The bee room was uninhabitable in warm weather, but in winter when the swarm hibernated, it served as our playroom.  A giant honeycomb, the only insulation the walls held, filled the south wall of the rundown rental that housed our family of seven.  The hum of their activity was a constant/… Read full post »

You Touched Me

I guess I should be grateful
I didn’t lose you like Jarrell’s war widow
Nor did I watch a younger woman grin slyly over her shoulder
Familiarity did not kill passion
Nor did fights over children
Enculturation smothered us
D.H.’s death in life Read full post »

The most difficult thing about having children is not birthing them or their teenage rebellions.  It isn’t that time they told you they wished the woman next door was their mother because you were too mean.  The most difficult time is when you see them in pain and you cannot absorb/… Read full post »

Childhood memories sometimes return in the same manner a pond turns over.  A scene of peaceful beauty suddenly vomits forth unwanted material in order to cleanse itself of hidden debris.

When I was seven years old I had a favorite dress the color of buttery marigolds.  Chocolate-b… Read full post »

I used to hold a radical—or, at the very least, cavalier thought. I argued that woman’s breasts should eventually diminish to the state of prepubescence as she ages.  Mammary glands are useful at certain stages of life, but when there is no child left to nurse and no man left to/… Read full post »

Swearing is one of life’s great gifts.  I practice it daily and with vigor.  What I lack in form, I try to make up for in volume.  VP Biden’s open mic faux pas in 2010 was liberating. "This is a big fucking deal!" Before his slip the only notable/… Read full post »

“Quiet,” Grandpa said, holding a thermos above his head like a trophy.  “Don’t wake the others.  Wanna catch a fish?”  Swimming quickly out of the tangle of blankets, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and eased myself onto the cold wood floor.  We/… Read full post »

Whenever any of my eight siblings get together, the topic of their mother’s saintliness emerges in every family dialogue.  I say their mother because, although we share the same parentage, my mother differed significantly from theirs.  My memories continue to be m/… Read full post »

Something is missing in the current political lexicon.  In spite of the fact that, in academic settings, I can preface my name with Dr. with my state university PhD, I still think of myself as a working class person.  I am proud of that fact.  I didn’t inherit any/… Read full post »

   Losing My Religion

          I was the poster child for sainthood until my parents’ contrasting religious views clashed within me.  From my mother, I learned to love the drama and pomp of her Roman Catholic faith.  From my lap/… Read full post »

Vivendi les resistance!

            When I began teaching in the late 1970s, I was conflicted.  Was my purpose to fix the system from within or blow the whole thing up and start over?  I tried the former path, but after/… Read full post »