We Are The Good Guys

-orginally published in Crooked Lullabies, 3/24/13.-to my son, Uri. We are the merrymakers dancing among the fires of the apocalypse. We are the rabble-rousers screeching from the bell tower above the smoke plumes. We are the carousers laughing while the pharaoh chokes. I’d spent nine months imagining my reaction the moment you counted as a …

The Sculptor

-originally published in Crooked Lullabies, 8/7/16. -to my wife, Kait. She is young. She is an artist. She has boundless dreams and steady hands. The clay is fresh. The clay is moist. The clay is shapeless. She places the clay on the wheel and presses the pedal that makes it spin. The clay is squishy …

Pink Gloyd And The Endless River…Of Scarves, Marbles And Fake Backstage Passes.

-originally published on Crooked Lullabies, 10/12/14. am a Pink Floyd completest. If the band officially releases any licensed product—music product, I mean—I feel compelled to hastily purchase said product. Frankly, this compulsion is a curse. Why? Besides spending nearly every dime earned as a teenage stock clerk at Kmart on imported bootlegged concerts and rare …

The Proud Highway…To Jersey Shore, PA?

originally published in Crooked Lullabies, 3/5/13. “And it is a good morning indeed: for I have a job… I take over as the sports editor of the Jersey Shore Herald-a morning paper serving Jersey Shore, Lock Haven, and Williamsport. I shall leave for Williamsport next weekend.”  -Hunter S. Thompson, in a letter to Lt. Col. Frank Campbell …

Something In The River

I found a dead body in the river.  I didn’t realize that the half-submerged orange-ish clump near the opposite riverbank was a dead body. Not at first. Whatever it was hadn’t been there when I walked the Tenth Street Bridge to downtown Pittsburgh the morning before. Is that a tree trunk? Nah. Too rounded. I …