A Poem, a Song and the Story Behind It
That Voice Inside Our Heads
“If by the time I’m forty, I haven’t found it, I give up,” Carlos said with a sigh as he tightened the belt around his left bicep.
“‘It?’” I asked. “What…fortune and fame?” We had been talking about getting our respective lives in order, at the time a favorite topic for both, if only in theory rather than practice.
“Nah, fuck that,” he said, as he found a vein on his forearm and slid the needle in, gently pushing in the brown liquid. “You know…inner peace. You know that voice inside our heads, the one you said you also have?”
…
Dawn of a Day’s Thoughts
For those of you who enjoy listening to articles, I decided to create a non-AI, warm, organic audio version. The voice is mine, and so is the music. Enjoy!
Some years back, I was going through life with about the same enthusiasm of a tired, latter-day Elvis in Vegas, minus the stellar career and the riches. The idea of rising early, at five in the morning — to write, of all things — would have been unthinkable. …
A Poem & Song
When I got together with my four friends in the studio, all I had was this poem. Without any idea or plan, what you are about to hear is the result of complete improvisation and this is what came out. You can hear us fumbling into the song, and how it builds from nothing. Sometimes in life, the first takes are the best takes. Click link below to hear the results, and if it tickles your fancy, let me know in the claps or comment section below
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Flash Fiction: A Rock & Roll Tale
NOTE: I tried a new experiment here on Medium, a “mini narrative rock opera.” The link below is my narration of the story, where the last five minutes consist of a simulated live performance as if it were the band in the story; written, performed and recorded by me. Had a lot of fun creating this! Let me know what you thought in the comments!
Ralph, who is reclining on a worn paisley couch, is warming up on the bass, and the ceaseless click of strings is making Andy’s skin crawl to a point where he wants to shout…
Man-Made “Ingenuity” Helicopter Slices Mars’ Atmosphere for the First Time
Yesterday morning, on an expanse of red, barren soil, a small metallic creature with an invisible, intangible brain spun its blades for the very first time: NASA celebrated its first powered, controlled flight of an autonomous device on another planet: Mars.
The Ingenuity helicopter, a separate, modular component of the Perseverance Rover, passed its first test-flight with hovering colors, rising a valiant and elegant 9’8ft into the Martian air, hovered, and came back down this fine morning on earth. That’s right, folks: this fine morning on earth.
When What You Don’t See Is What You Get
NB: The link above is a rather comical song about how I once got more than I bargained for with a guy I met on Tinder. My improv jam band, The Sneaky Cameos, got together and played over my lyric about it, just following each other and figuring out the song as we played along. The above recording is our very first take. Lyrics at the end of the story.
The world of online dating is rather like a masterclass in B-movie…
Thoughts Between the Sheets, Late at Night
Here I am, sitting in bed, and was just seized by the following ruminations, while trying to get to bed far too late. All my attempts at doing so seem to be completely sabotaged and bollocksed by my own inability to turn off my brain.
Through my writing, my attempt at understanding myself have become better and better this last year, especially in the last three weeks writing every day on Medium.
I cannot adequately describe the joy I have been feeling in watching my — as of yet small — dedicated community of fellow writers and readers unfolding piecemeal…
Prose poem/creative non-fiction
Strongly west of fun was fine by me then. I would trudge up the steps to my attic room every morning, weighty from work and sapped of soul.
At the top of the stairs, from where the sun would soak my bed, I was seized by an unyielding luminescent rush of recognizable form — a foot led to calf, thigh, magnificent resting cock, and from the epicenter of my desire, the rest of you, nestled in sleep, and my gaze, nestled equally in the commas of your hips — you had stayed.
You were a young man carved from invented…
Fanart from a patron: ode for musician-in-exile Amanda Palmer
Once a street-performer, youth in white veil,
every stranger’s smile a succor,
school for your nascent heart, simmering stock
of blood-heart-word broth
which, steeped in time,
would come to drip
from your lavish lip to world —
hot, soft & sweet as connective honey.
Gig upon gigaton of strangers no more,
our feathered weighty words you
download — morass of mass mind!
All atoms in you collude to condemn
stricture of corseted selfdom.
From nebulae nurseries:
Mother Creatrix,
you Bigged the Bang of our Collective Chord.
What woman if not you would disturb patriarchal specters of desire; through silky sedition…
How the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Siamese Dream” Disarmed Me with a Smile
Anyone who has survived their adolescence knows how hormones rattle one’s bones into the full-blown existential groan of growing strains; where what friends we conjure help brave the unknown less alone, and how certain albums engrave our cultural affiliations in stone. This is one such tale of how three boys and one girl from Chicago, whom I never actually met, changed a part of my life.
In the summer of 1992, I had just turned 17 and gone through a reinvention of sorts which, though intentional, was as surprising as it was relieving. Up until the age of fifteen, like…
