Monday, March 30, 2020



—SOMETIMES DOING THE RIGHT THING FEELS LIKE COMMITTING A CRIME

…I wrote some things and had some things published:
  



  
…Some struck a nerve for readers, and that makes me glad:

-We all need a little more of Evolette in our soul.

-Len, this is partly why you are so loved. Beautiful piece and I thank you for it, my friend.

-“Even if he wasn’t my son, I’d want to give a guy like that a hug. Even if he wasn’t my son, I’d wish he was.” OMG, this. So much this, all of it. Friends, if you only read 1 thing today, read this!!!

-Heart nourishment here from Len Kuntz.

-I needed to read this today. I appreciate and love you, Len Kuntz.

-Just when I think you've topped out in your brilliance, you up your game and blow me away again.

-Thank you so much for capturing what we all are feeling.

-I absolutely loved this.

-Remarkable.

-Gnawing. The sadness numbing. Your writing is brilliant.

-I’m continuously in awe with your work.

-I find the language incredible, flabbergasting, exquisite, dizzying, completely incomprehensible and at the same time so perfectly evocative

-Len, I’ve spent hours with this work of yours; it’s such a gorgeous “web of intricacies,” a collage of imagery.

-Len, your writing is so smooth and beguiling, I can’t believe it – in a good way.

-I am amazed at how much is held within the so few words of your writing.

-You are an incredible writer.

-Len Kuntz is one of the reasons I keep writing. And reading.

-It’s like you crawled inside my head and wrote it out on paper. THAT was good!

-Beautifully written.

-Wow, I loved this. Beautifully written and just what we all need now.

-Love this piece. So peaceful, thank you. Always, I stop and read your words, and I'm always grateful for you

-I am so thankful for you, Len! I love this and love you! 

-The best of the best. Love you.

Friday, March 27, 2020


—AIN’T IT FUNNY HOW SOME PEOPLE POP INTO YOUR HEAD SO EASILY?


                                                  root cellar

come look at this the dumb shit trying to clean his teeth with a string mom says to dad when i’m on first break from college it’s called floss i say it’s called stupid mom says our trailer smells like a cremation urn even in early morning cigarette smoke clings to the spackled ceiling like the robes of ghosts trying to escape what did you say mom asks ghosts i say he’s being a smart ass again you should set him straight dad looks like a tired moose jowly his face dragging itself a few gray days from death but he says come on and i follow outside up the slope where he opens the root cellar door that creaks like bones about to snap and as i step inside the heavy smell of earth and rotting potatoes washes my face why can’t you keep your mouth shut for once dad asks closing the door behind me locking it the day at once turned to night       

Wednesday, March 25, 2020


—I HOPE YOU GET THERE BEFORE I DO


                                          Re-furnished

In the after, plucked and featherless for once, we admire each other’s bald scars, the mundane folds of flesh, each speckled pupil and mourning dove. There’s time for everything, the slow sway of grass, a wave of wind, the quiet crush of a leaf. Let’s leave the dolphins in the canals, cellos playing on the balconies. Let’s promise to remember then, holding tighter this time, listening to every sound, tasting whatever flavor that happens to land, like a moth or butterfly, upon our tongue.

Monday, March 23, 2020


—PLANET EARTH IS BLUE AND THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO


                            Plastic Roses for a Buck

It’s a snuff film, where the streets play Russian Roulette with palsied trigger fingers. Or maybe it’s bald slaughter. Look around. Butterflies are giving half-priced hand jobs for their termite pimps. Swing your rope. The globe’s run out of catheter and that polygraph needle is stuck in my arm or throat. It’s hard for the mountains to resuscitate when everything is turgid and feeding on cordite. See if my tongue isn’t in foreclosure. My eyes on hiatus. My keratin on sabbatical. The ransom note reads like a riddle or poem meant to ridicule anyone who rolls away seasick. Lean in instead. There’s a speck of hope I can’t jigger free from the wad of gum stuck between these cellblocks. But before I leave, I want you to know I loved you more than space or time or mauve or tomorrow morning. I cared so much my bones abandoned me at a bus station where drivers self-combust. See me. I’m the one hanging on a nail, just below the flayed greyhound, both of us desiccated, our pores about to rust eternal.

Friday, March 20, 2020


—THANKFUL IS THE WORD LONELINESS NEEDS THE MOST


                                                        Estuary

         I hold your fear in between my molars, jaw unclenched, fever piping on a sill somewhere.  
         Outside a ghost V spreads through the ether like black smears from a flock. The sun breathes shallow, looks the other way while each anorexic street ponders protection. This is how we know our bones are undecided, that choice is translucent.
        You say, We could just strip down and swim the lake, or take turns bending truths.
        You say, We could paint the mountains pristine green, or re-route an estuary.
        Better yet, I say, We could stay still and pretend we’re all we have.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020


—IT’S PRETTY HARD NOT TO TOUCH YOUR FACE



                                        Proof That I Exist


I reside inside your bourbon stupor, a cloak of bone-dry rain between us, my severed eight-year-old head trundling over cobble stones where no road will bend. It’s impossible to trust advice or instincts when the ground has acid reflux and there’s a nail gun monogramming an aria on my thighs. So now I walk with a curdled gait, my small hands speaking Russian or Arabic. Tomorrow I’ll be nine and it won’t matter if the moon acknowledges me. You can throw a party for some other son. I’ll laminate what’s left of me on a torn-off shingle, skitter through the sewer grate, sink or swim, alone again.

Monday, March 16, 2020


—I THINK I MAY HAVE BEEN THE MOON IN A PAST LIFE


                                 THE THING ABOUT FEAR

It’s embarrassing to admit this, but when I was a child, more things frightened me than didn’t frighten me.

Some scared me a little. But others rattled me in a way that made my bones quake.

For instance, I flinched involuntarily if a limb was raised even remotely close to my direction. I’d literally jerk spasmodically.

For instance, I thought the big-eyed owl clock on my wall, with its pendulum swinging second-hand, was staring at me through the night, devising various methods of torture.

For instance, I thought adults were only created to torment young people, especially those with whom they shared DNA.

Scaredy-cat. Yep. That was me. You could have even called me cowardly.

I’m older now, but I sometimes still flinch if my son or daughter reaches over my shoulder to retrieve an item. (They’ll always ask why I do it, but I try to leave my dark past out of their hopeful present.)

I’ve read all kinds of articles about fear, and the genesis of it almost always emanates from two things—a lack of trust, or the unknown.

Is that person going to hurt me?
Can I trust this person/situation?
What in the hell is that thing squirming in the grass?
I’ve seen this movie before, and everyone gets slaughtered by the end.
I haven’t seen this movie before, but it looks frightening and there’s no way in hell I’m seeing it.

This isn’t to say that all fear is bad. On the contrary, sometimes its innate protectionism keeps us safe—you’re walking down a dark alley late at night, hear footsteps, and you run instead of loitering.  Fear, like stress, has its positives. Eustress, for example, is stress that compels a person to perform when they otherwise might not. Its literal translation is “good stress.”

While the current spread of coronavirus prompted me to ponder the subject of fear, none of what I’m writing is specifically related to the crisis, nor am I suggesting anyone should feel differently than they do about it.

And no one, no one, should tell you how to feel—not a friend or a lover. Not a therapist or a pastor. They can maybe help you make some sense of your fear, but they can’t tell you not to feel fear, because it doesn’t work that way. They’re not you.

The one thing I will say about the present pandemic is that the media seem to be reveling in every bit of bad news they can get, fear-mongering and creating a casserole of hysteria that has reached an intensity I’ve never experienced in my lifetime. In a sense the paranoia is similar to the day of 9/11 and the days that followed it, especially for people getting back on an airplane for the first time since the attacks.

Fear, when magnified by outside, consenting voices, can give license to a paralyzing anxiety, reminiscent of what I sometimes experience when depression shackles my ankles and handcuffs my wrists. Where there’s a crippling dread of doing anything other than breathing. Where one is so stupefied that living life as it was meant to be lived—out in the open, with nature, with people—becomes the very last option.

In a way, this type of fear is similar to gossip. Tearing people down. Belittling them. Making others appear ugly and awful when they’re just human fucking beings.

There was a lot of fear in our world, even before the virus outbreak. And there will always be things that shake us in some form or another.

I just wonder what would happen if we kept our fears to ourselves. If we tried to solve our fears or find the root causes of them, because, after all, they’re our fears and our fears alone.

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” That Winston Churchill quote has almost become trite, but it was a good message for people during the second world war, and it’s good advice now.

There are a lot of things I’m still afraid of, mainly heights. I don’t think I’m ever going to get over that one, and maybe I’m not meant to. But I woke up this morning. I’m still alive. The sun is shining on the dappled lake surface. There are moments yet to be experienced and so much to be grateful for.  Fear can go screw itself.

Friday, March 13, 2020


—I’LL BE YOUR HALL PASS IF YOU NEED ONE

                                             The Spirit Board

My wife floats into the bedroom, thin, wan and gray, looking like human smoke, or a human with another human no longer inside her.
She sheds all her clothes as if they’re petals stuck to her skin, lays on the opposite end of the bed, legs spread, knees bent as if preparing to give birth.
“What do you see?” she asks in a voice so hollow and hushed that it sounds like it belongs to the wind.
I’m dumbstruck by what’s between her thighs, wondering if I’m hallucinating.
“What?” she asks. “Be honest.”
“I think, well, I can’t believe it, but I think I that’s a, a, a Ouija Board.”
“Yes,” she says.  
“How did it get there? I mean, what the--”
My wife holds a forefinger to her lips to silence me. “This is not about you,” she says. “Take the planchette in your hand while holding it to the board.”
“Planchette?”
“The heart-shaped piece of wood.”
“Are you serious?”
“Shhhh.”
When I do what she’s asked, the planchette moves by itself, even though my fingers are holding it.
“Read what it says aloud.”
“They’re just letters.”
“Letters stringing together words.”
“T H I—”
“I need the words.”
           I read the sentence to myself—This man will never give you a child, and say, “Try again. Third time’s the charm.”

Wednesday, March 11, 2020


—DID SOME GARDENING TO TAKE MY MIND FROM WHERE IT SHOULD BE


                                     We’re Not Your Band

They’re famous now, frauds, all voice box and guitar string, snare and cymbal, though no one notices they’re imposters.
The audience is an amoeba of limbs and allusions, duped by each crescendo.
The band and crowd sing the last lyrics as one, in a slow weave of sweaty heat. It’s transcendent trickery.
On the way out, fans shake heads, have a smoke.
On their way out, the band readjusts their faceless faces before getting on the bus. 

Monday, March 9, 2020














—TURNS OUT EVERYWHERE YOU GO, YOU TAKE YOURSELF

…I woke to an email entitled “AGING IS NOW OPTIONAL.” It sure doesn’t feel like that.

…Yesterday I woke at 4:30am for a very early flight only to arrive at the airport and discover I had a seven-hour delay. Yikes. But the good thing about being a reader is you always have something to do if you’re packing along books with yourself.

…AWP was certainly a different event this year, what with all the virus hysteria. One of the main directors of the conference resigned over the decision to go ahead with things. A ton of my friends cancelled. Some, who are not necessarily close friends, were a bit strident about those of us who did decide to participate. But that’s okay. We’re all entitled to our own views.

…Consequently, there were about half as many attendees as usual i.e., 7,000 instead of 15,000 or so. It actually made for a more intimate experience where conversations broke through the small-talk sheen. We were told in advance that handshakes and hugging were prohibited, yet with the exception of two friends I ran into, there was hugging a-plenty as you can see from above.

In past years I’ve written about tribes and how much I cherish belonging to my writing community. That’s still the case, and maybe even more so. I feel so lucky to know and have the friendship of all these incredible writers that make me feel safe, happy and vibrant. I adore them all. Truly.

Friday, March 6, 2020


—THE DAYS HAVE NO NUMBERS  
               

                                  Shredding the Birds

The songs can be ballads or anthems, but to her they’re always starlings crashing into a bedroom window, her mother oblivious in a slow swivel saying, “What was that that?” while never bothering to look.
Her dad taught her guitar, wrap-around arms/melody and hairy disharmony. This was always alone.
“You did good,” he’d say when he finished.
Tonight, she flings her pick into the crowd, shreds a chord and belts her lyrics to all the birds about to die in the rafters.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020





—IT’S TOUGH TRYING TO SPIN SILENCE INTO GOLD


i’m not that
  good
at breathing
   in


fuck the
french
exit
the irish
goodbye
crush my
fickle skin
again
tell me when
i’m resin
your rusty needle
is such a sweet
pluck
of glory
and unfair
goodness
i’ll take it
any day
any way
doggie or
dutch treat
yeah
i’m handing
the keys
over
buttfuck me
but fuck
me
with a
chainsaw
or jagged
switchblade
i’ll never tell
why
would i
i’ve got a
dead
marsupial
for a voice
box
and my
toes are
turning cross-eyed
staring at
the collapsed
ceiling
spiders parachuting
from cracks
eating their
own deviled
eggs
these walls
are hypochondriacs
whining for weeks
but I’m
not breathing
there’s too much
back to back
black on black
it gives me
the creeps
how easy
it is to
console
the wrong
consoles  
amending nothing
but you are
most always
incorrect
synchronized
and calcified
your corset
couldn’t be
farther away
though
i can
feel the
blush of
herniated air
sluice through
me
when you cinch
your gold
molecules
as if it’s
the best
orgasm
ever
i hope you
hear my hollow
bones pop
and snap
all the way
over there
because
i can’t 
inhale or
exhale right
now
it’s as if
i’m dead
and always
have been
the road
signs
in my eyes
flashing
warning
   trip hazard
warning
   beware of dog
warning
   danger:
 watch for
 falling objects