I went to an all boys Catholic high school. Boys from many different backgrounds. Rich and poor. In uniforms. Controlled by a series of rules on conduct and appearance. Our English teacher introduced us to many fine poems. And then there were lively discussions. Some points of view came from left field. Others were well beyond that. But it all came to a cacophony of voices. The conflicts of the school yard focused on a class discussion. A poem in itself.

What is the question? Why do we ask? If a tree falls in the middle of the forest. Where are the corners in the oval office? What does it mean to be a human being? Does the question matter? If left alone would the accountants take over?"We have answered the question. There is no reason to cross the road. Living is meaningless. Told by nobody. To no one. It is a joke. But no one is laughing."

"Leaving T.O. Train shivering between the rails. Wheels and rails grinding their teeth. IMPSTONE. A book of poems keeps tapping on my eyelids. Like rain on a tin roof. A commercial from Eden in Morse Code. Clattering of train. Percolates. Miles through my spine. The photo of Susan Musgrave on the cover of IMPSTONE is not. Flattering. I know this is madness. Crossing a continent to meet a woman I don't know. Hoping she'll introduce me. To the poet. Inside her."Across a continent. Wri...

Greg and Bower were such jerks. Twice they'd been questioned about break-ins at the school. Turning over desks, drawing obscene pictures on the blackboards, spilling the contents of the teacher's desks around the room. All kinds of moronic shit. But no one could ever prove anything. On the way to school they'd catch you and steal your lunch money. Never picked on little kids who might spill the beans to their parents. Only us older kids who were silenced by the code. Never rat out a kid to...

Charlie laughed. "I was institutionalized a few times.""Insane asylum.""A hospital. They say that I was wired wrong. They put me on different drugs trying to set me right. Sometimes they worked. For a while. Sometimes they didn't work at all."They were silent for some time."What's it like to be crazy?"Charlie glanced at the boy. "It's scary. One day you feel like Napoleon. Like you could conquer the world. Then you wake up. On the battlefield. After the a...

It's a good place to think. A BENCH. To mull over ideas. That's my madness. Everywhere I look I seepatterns. Patterns are someone's idea, someone's creation. Order is recklessly rearranging the furniturearound us. Old buildings being replaced by new buildings. Old people dropping dead at the feet ofchildren. Order giving birth in the ashes of death. Order is my God. Patterns are His skin. I need auniverse in which everything makes sense. What else is consciousne...

Lost souls. Orange hair. Everyone believes we are on the ledge. Of something. I turned 70 and my wife flipped some pancakes. Somewhere between joy and anxiety. I don't know how Trump survives himself. Why are some of us worried about the future and others want to trade hockey cards. These poems are snap shots. On the old Kodak. A black box with a shutter where we used to hide our memories. Now they are splashed all over the known universe. I feel like Soren Kierkegaard walking down the str...

Children have nightmares. They wake up in a sweat and cry out for their mothers. A village can have nightmares too. The villagers wake up and cry out for each other. These stories are about that nightmare.Mackenzie Phillips sat up in his bed. He needed to stay awake. All the news about the dead body in the valley had spooked Mackenzie. Maybe Mackenzie was the next on the list. Glancing out the window he watched the slow sway of the treetops. His eyes became heavy. He began to dream...

In 2016 I buried my mother. I buried a world that had been reduced to a whisper. Two world wars, the roaring twenties, the great depression, the fifties, elvis presley. All a whisper. And I heard my mother in her death throes, crying like a drowning woman, crying my name. Like her mother had cried. And her mother. And now I'm at the end of my world. The world I was raised in. The good times. The Beatles. Trudeau. The assassinations. Vietnam. The Bomb. And I am so angry. I don't want to whi...

A series of poems investigating the other and how we reach it. The self is a prison. Out there may be a phantasm. Outside the hive are nightmares. And darkness. We are the round stones on the shore who have eyes."pontius prophets playing plastic prayers as yndala zam exhumes a hole in her lap 'out damn's spot, out' for those of you whose profession it is to browse over this world tongue in cheek jotting your thoughts on parchment singing aquarius waiting for jesus to come out of the...

2017 was a year in the wrong century. The seventeenth century. My head was on a pike outside Newgate Castle. Or someone who looked like me. Laughing at the Prince. People are starting to fear what they say. Next year they will be afraid of what they think. This is a book of survival. Through a world become Dali. The jester is having his revenge on the king. We are standing on the walls, waiting for the enemy to arrive. Old age is another way of going mad.

A young painter finds passion, pain, love, and despair in gesso and canvas.