A miscellany of my works, including lots of Jazz writing and reviews.

I'm lost in a parking lot on the left coast

w/an Afghan Kush and Grey Goose buzz

when Screamin' Jay Hawkins

jumps the Sierra's screaming:

"What can I do w/eighty-six kids

'n each momma wantin' my jam?!"

"Get in motherfucker!" I salvo,

kicking the gas like a mule bucks gravity.

I ping pong between machines

for what? To calibrate my steps

towards the dirt nap? To tend my cell,

my contusions? To email the news

of a fellow cognate's imminent promotion

from this warring plain?

a child of highway and wine

still doing what I did

decades ago. Jazz and the sad momento

following me through town and hamlet

city and scape. Monk's mood and Trane

blowin' by the riverside – finding the notes

coursing the curves. The sun in the East, then West

rising, falling like love itself

bridges, streams – the four way stop.

I never did get back to Topeka.

What was the point? There were pipe bombs

in every direction. Just like here.

Up n down. Forward, back.

Horizon to horizon. Moon to moon

n Grandma's down eight fingers n falling

into her chili n chips as Pop Pop swears at Quick Draw

I don't mean for this to sound overly dismissive or wise-ass, but as much as I love to write -

about history, music, politics - I love editing more. Thus my natural migration towards poetry and, obsessively of late, haiku. The fewer words for me the better. Maybe I stay out of trouble that way.

Or maybe it's sheer laziness. To the chagrin of many friends who egg me on to finish either of the two novels I've started, the first a sullen tale of a copy cat headline making serial killer, Tuesday's Assassin, and my rock n roll murder mystery The Blonde with Blue Shoes (Jack Maverick is the down and out gumshoe hero) lie side by side on a shelf somewhere, famished and unfinished.