Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The Moon and Sixpence

"I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to wchich he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest."
W. Somerset Maugham

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Suzanne



She once lived
at 1418 Hamilton Avenue
in Hamilton, New Jersey.
It was on the first floor
where rain fell
the time I was there.

And I watched,
from a bed with no sheets,
the curtains dancing
in the window
as her begging morphed
into a regretful whisper.

She wrote the letter
a year later,
from the steps
outside her door,
not to tell me
she was engaged,
or to tell me
she was moving away forever,

but to tell me
she loved me
just so
on that rainy night.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

San Diego ComicCon 2011

Since I was in the 4th grade, I was swallowed up by the imaginary world of super heroes and science fiction. I would continuously nag my mother to take me to the local comic book shop to purchase the latest Wolverine and Amazing Spiderman comics. My father would let me skip school so he could take me to the premiere of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, where I discovered him. Boba Fett. The most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy.

Now, at the age of 35, that little boy shines out in my soul when I see him, stalking, always silent, through the crowd. I ask him if I can take a picture with him, still no words, he nods and I get my new Facebook profile picture.

Thank you ComicCon for making this 35 year old man feel like a kid, again.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Recently Published on Dark Chaos: Polyster Purgatory

Blogging is the new form of publishing your work and getting it out in the public eye, so I'm proud to write that I had another piece of work published on one.  Dark Chaos is literary blog for writers and artists who only come out at night.

My work can be read at http://wiredwriter.wordpress.com/.

Enjoy!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Standing Still

Once in a while, on random days, when my mind catches up with me, I think of you. In soft silk fabrics, white with a fresh clean scent, you twirl in a breeze that shows darker skin underneath. I remember your lips, how gentle you kissed for the first time.

I smile, racing to keep pace with the thought. I run, sprinting, neck and neck with it for just a moment longer, until it catches the wind and leaves me behind, waiting for it to come back around again.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Death Along the Jersey Rails

by Robert Salley


Nobody falls in love near train tracks
It's dark... it's where animals go to die
and teenagers go to fuck awkwardly
in the middle of the night.

Trees decompose more rapidly
surrounded by gaunt bushes and
naked to eyes on billboards
selling real estate and promoting radio stations.

They're doused in cigarette butts and used condoms
like old discarded snake skin
dry and coarse after the bite
immortally tortured by broken glass bottles.

Tattered with wayfarers walking along these rails
footprints planted long before the rust settled in
and faded images of a childhood
or mother's arms that could hide a shameful memory.

Filthy windows show an infomercial
of defeated towns racing by
with chain-link fences and taverns
to keep the locals from escaping.


Their heads angled with regrets
of wasted time they let slip away
and the wasted encounters with saviors
somewhere between New York and Trenton.
“Only when you come to the end and leap out into the darkness will you discover that you have wings to fly”