A flash play
Two old friends, Hank and Jim, sit on Hank’s porch, smoking cigars and shooting the breeze as the sun goes down
Hank: I have so much to do this weekend. I have to rake leaves and bring them to the compost, clean out the gutters, paint the back steps, gather all the old magazines and bring up them up to the attic, visit with Lauren and the gang of misfits. I wish I had more time.
Jim: Don’t we all.
Hank: But not too much time. Just the right amount.
Jim: What do you mean?
Hank: I mean you wouldn’t…
A Song
Chorus
You going to watch every word? Own me body and mind?
I’m my own master, even if I’m deaf, mute and blind
I’ll take it from here, you can relax
These prison walls are starting to show cracks
Let’s keep it going, I want you to leave me bewildered
Right now I’m being censored, right now I’m being filtered
Open up, set me free, open up, set me free, open up, set me free
All this hustle and bustle over the no name, over me?
Open up, open up, open up and you’ll see
1st Verse
I’m not in…
I’ve taken my race for granted. It’s time to take a look in the mirror.
My whiteness means I am a passive carrier of a pernicious disease of social privilege.
It means I am not ashamed to be white, but I am not proud of it either.
It means that even though my Irish ancestors suffered various atrocities, hardships and modes of oppression, all that is still different from what those of African descent have experienced for centuries up until the present hour. I will never conflate the two.
It means that as a mentally ill adult I have had many encounters with law enforcement and never once did I fear that I might be…
When it’s just you and the universe
I woke up this morning, threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed, working to summon the will to start my daily routine. It was Saturday, I could sleep in, right? But I knew from experience that sleeping in one day could throw off my entire sleep schedule. So I got up with a groan, gave my arms and legs a big stretch, yawned, and made my way into the bathroom. I started brushing my teeth when my reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet stuck its tongue out at me.
“What the hell?”
It…
My mind in lyrics (browse at your leisure)
I lie here, in the midst of an elaborate illusion/in a state between clarity and confusion/I have a thousand problems in need of one solution/if we proceed these chains will loosen, and I’ll have a chance to break free/if you want me to keep writing, I’m sorry, you’ll have to make me/cuz lately all I want to do is rest/because I’m depressed, and despite our best efforts, still demon possessed/take a look under the hood, this thing’s a mess, but I’ve already confessed/so you know that in equal parts I’ve been tormented and blessed/every line written under extreme duress, that…
A Poem
I’ve been torn, traumatized, terrorized and wounded by the world yet here I sit, living, breathing, creating and still posessed by a furious passion and a sense of dire purpose. Your wounds may seem like they will never heal but they will. They say time heals all wounds. It doesn’t. It’s the absence of time that heals. Welcome to eternity. Come for the sheer joy and ecstatic bliss of rising out of Source to play an indespensible role in creatiion and stay for the dogs.
They tell me I don’t take anything seriously. That even on the brink of death…
A Poem
I have fallen under scruntiny and the constant pressure to perform has sapped my strength and turned me bitter. I am not the person I project. I am the person hiding behind my eyes. It’s likely you’ll never meet him. On the off chance that you do please be kind, he has been through many horrible things.
Despair occurs when one cannot find God above or ground below and is ceaselessly twirling in an uncertain, twilight land without purpose and without end.
Empathy is the combination of compassion, curiosity and imagination and it is the trait that brings us most…
A Poem
You must have been surprised to see me after that bitter, bruising confrontation we had six years ago about whether or not to adopt that stray cat. I won, you lost. Then I lost you.
I remember holding Arthur aloft and making smoochie sounds at him and you telling me that I was a deeply unserious person. I’m still not sure exactly what you meant.
Are you trying to provoke me? That me has been consigned to the dustbin of history. Resurrecting someone’s trauma in an effort to win an argument is reckless at best, if not downright evil.
I’ll…
