Live at Gallery West Espresso

Latest release from Zenith Beast Records is this reading during my 2004 book tour for Identity Theft for Dummies.

Identity Theft for Dummies Facebook page & Goodreads pages

Please 'like' and/or suggest the new Identity Theft for Dummies Facebook page.

Also peruse other book from the Zenith Beast back catalog recently added to Goodreads, starting with the above title; also Workers' Comp.; Libby Brahms' First Washing Machine; Eyes, Ears, Nose & Throat; Barking up the Wrong Tree; QWERTYUIOP; Flint; and Rate of Exchange. Add your reviews, recommend, or otherwise share these books at will, with thanks in advance for doing so!

And if you're interested in purchasing any of these titles, let me know since many are not available via Amazon or through other outlets.

Pith & Vinegar: "Bridging the Gap," "4th of July"

In honor of the holiday, aside from walking around with lit sparklers in my back pockets, I first present one pertinent poem, which originally appeared in Nobody Quarterly and was included in my QWERTYUIOP chapbook, as well as a second poem from Identity Theft for Dummies (published in an anthology called Summer Peaces in 2004) not earmarked for inclusion in Pith & Vinegar yet directly on theme.

Bridging the Gap

I think of you, father,
thinking of your son
as you watched him grow.

Was I much different
from what you had originally imagined,
when mother’s stomach swelled

with the likes of me?
Or just as you’d hoped?

◊ ◊ ◊

Now I watch my friends—
kids at their feet
learning to walk and talk—
their tired, happy faces,

thinking back perhaps
to their own parents as well—

to fathers and mothers working
day after day
in the crazy machinery

of American life—the drinks
in their hands
and cigarettes
mashed between their lips.

4th of July

All through the night,
firecrackers boomed

and shook
the foundations of homes
like bombs
in some uncivil war

no one could win
but everyone would be sure
they had a blast losing.

◊ ◊ ◊

Car
alarms gasped in the dark
in their death throes, dying

only to be
reborn following
a new barrage of explosions
bloodying the black clouds.

◊ ◊ ◊

There is no fear in cars,
just simple stupidity;
no patriotism, no opposition.
Fireworks lit up the sky

and there was some faint relief
with each idiotic flash
at just being alive, almost.

Pith & Vinegar: "Lunch at the D.O.C."

I used to work for a non-profit organization in Chicago's loop that was a block away from the Cook County jail. Today's poem, originally published in my 2003 chapbook, Identity Theft for Dummies was inspired by many lunchtime excursions and observations that took me past the Dept. of Corrections.

(Ironic side note: I was contacted by a reporter from The Flint Journal shortly after the publication of Identity Theft for Dummies. Turns out I had been sought out because I was a Flint native who, the reporter erroneously assumed, had written a book on identity theft prevention. No interview took place, I'm sad to say...)

Lunch at the D.O.C.

It’s pretty there,
in the courtyard,
where in the fall trees
jettison leaves
like marked money.

Babies in buggies
with kind, cooing moms,
hair freshly done, resting
in the shade
smoking cigarettes.

Visiting hours over
guests assemble outside,
trading greetings,
weirdly friendly,
and pause

checking likenesses
in the bulletproof glass.