Long after my parents were gone, my sister and I were sitting at her kitchen table poring through a shoe box of old family photographs. Most were faded four-by-fives, some with scalloped edges and creased corners, and others had faded beyond recognition. I brushed some aside, removed tw… Read full post »

The full moon and the high tide, the wind and  rain that struck the earth like stones, conspirators all. So much of my city was dark and afloat. We ignored the curfews, and we drove around the yellow ribbons to escape.

The Garden State will never be the same. “Going… Read full post »

The road was no wider than a driveway, hemmed in by tall trees that formed a canopy above. By day it was brooding and damp, and at night the only illumination came from the headlights of an  occasional car.   

            We w… Read full post »

I just read the account of the tragic 'murder' in Hell's Kitchen which has cited epilepsy medications as a factor. I am 63 yrs old and have had epilepsy for the last 30 years. I take--or took--both of the medications that the young man takes: Keppra and Lamictal. I still take… Read full post »

I held myself in my arms and was stricken by joy and perfect love. I touched my soft hair and clutched the child to my breast, and with absolute faith I set myself down to play.

I showed my self a river and a waterfall, and for a moment I looked away,… Read full post »

I am going for another Lupron injection on February second, which will last me through another ninety days. So I’m looking at my twentieth injection. It’s inevitable that the side effects following the injections  are powerful and set me back a few days, but it's ironic that they ret… Read full post »

So I still have this fucking cancer and no one will ever tell me I don’t have cancer anymore, because even with all these bullshit medications that have taken every hair on my body below my chin, even with the hot flashes and the nausea, there’s going to be that one… Read full post »

Now that my battle with Prostate Cancer is all but finished, I found this unpublished post while cleaning my files. I' like to share it...  

I’m going to sit at the desk and let my fingers wander where they will. I have not been able to organize my thoughts for days,… Read full post »

1. True Love, 1993

Katie and I first moved to Hoboken back in the summer of sixty-two. I had just gotten a job as a reporter for the hometown rag. Hoboken was a swell place to live in sixty-two. I liked it, and I was certain that Katie did… Read full post »

 Self Portrait 2/10/11

Without my make-up on. I was checking the manual settings on my SLR at 4AM and took this in a mirror. It certainly isn't pretty, but in it I saw every line of pain, every failure and success. It gave me the shivers, so I threw… Read full post »

My love of film noir began when I first watched the silent classic, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”,which is not a true film noir, but an example of “German Expressionism,” the avant garde movement which produced films such as "The Golem," "Nosferatu" and "M."  /… Read full post »

 Part One

November, 1967

 I was hitching from Alabama to New Orleans with Jimmy MacElroy. We were on a dark stretch of road between Slidell and Lake Pontchartrain when a driver pulled to the side of road and opened the front door. I got in front while MacElroy opened the… Read full post »

Back in May I began to chronicle my experience with mid-range prostate cancer. There is more than one reason. One is to have a personal journal, something I may read in the future, or may never open again. It is the act of journaling that allows us to give word… Read full post »

  I watched a few episodes of a series called “The Big C,” a phrase that makes me terribly uncomfortable. The story line follows a woman who will not tell her family that she has cancer; but it goes deeper than that, exploring her motivations and her desire to “take her li… Read full post »

Went to radiadiont oncologist for CT  last week and he said I'm right where I should be. Waiting for van to take me to urologist any moment. I hope to hear the same thing there. In any even, I will receive 90 day Lupron injection and prescription foe Casodex.

Still… Read full post »

Horseshoe Lake

Chapter1.

Mute as a Stone

It was a humpback whale of a thing. At one time it might have been black or dark blue, but over the years it had acquired a purple patina and looked like an eggplant on wheels. Its radio picked up… Read full post »

Conor is lonely and confused, and he’s forgotten his hat. His hair is wet, and the water coursing on his cheek reassures him that Belfast is the most miserable place in all of the world, and now with the rain makes it worse. Ten Major cigarettes and a box of… Read full post »

My bedroom was in the rear of the house. It would eventually become everyone’s bedroom, because we shuffled our accommodations several times to make room for  new additions to the family.

There was a Japanese cherry blossom tree outside the window that was so close to the ho… Read full post »

Crystals pelt the window next to my bed
unending diamonds of ice. 
Raw wind whips the glass
punishing, rattling.
Seeking out cracks in the frame.
The bone-chilling hiss seeps into my room,
awakens the side of my face.

Outside the shovels relentlessly scrape,
their rusted blades sharpened by w… Read full post »

These buildings had survived two World Wars and the Great Depression. Many times they had been passed from fathers to sons. Slumlords had partitioned each floor into several stifling cubicles, with one common bathroom for all three or four floors. When the newly-established Board of Health condemned… Read full post »

I met with a new oncologist yesterday, and again today with the radiation oncologist and...finally agreed on a cancer cure plan: hormonal therapy, which I am already on; and seed implants! It is SUCH a load off my back and my mind to have gone through 3 1/2 months of work… Read full post »

I feel wonderfully non-creative today. I’ve been “re-working” a story about how I felt standing in a parking lot and watching the WTC fall. I was going nuts 6 hours a day with it this essay.

Thing is, I wrote the original piece about just hours after I’d seen the… Read full post »