Finally he is the happiest man he knows his beloved came to him and took him in and let him stand and be adored and all he could do was let her love and attention wash over him in tidal waves of sweetness and warmth She did not bring him happiness but she did bring him love and he never wanted for happiness again and he wasn’t Mr. Right but he was a good and her love made him Mr. Right and he tried to do the same for her the best that we can ever be ...

The same songs come around every season and something about them is hopeful, comforting, exciting this is always the season I think of with love and tenderness and I had so many seasons when I was trying so hard to find someone to share my heart and dreams and I let myself be sold so cheaply which is why Christmas now feels so right. Her love is strong and true as a forest of Christmas trees and she can make everything pretty and sparkly without benefit of sn...

"you can’t unring a bell" that’s what I thought when I woke up March 10, 1986 I was scheduled to have a vasectomy that afternoon at 2 I was keeping my part of the unspoken agreement I had made with the crazy blonde woman with whom I had an abortion on the day before Valentine’s Day the abortion was by mutual consent but the vasectomy was a unilateral decision I decided that to ensure I would never impregnate another woman again I would get snipped. ...

Same thing happens every year: after Thanksgiving the whole world seemed to be dressed in red and green and snow white with colored lights with everyone was playing the same music and then on December 26 it all stops all the laughter all the music all the togetherness and everything just gets dark and cold and dull every January I go into my post-Christmas funk I know it's all an illusion of togetherness this worldwide party to celebrate the birth...

I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t need to walk through every beckoning doorway most doorways really do not offer anything new anyways should I leave the comforts of my room just to dance in some fiery meadow merely because it is new and looks exciting? Going from room to room I’ll never know more than newness and while newness is its own intoxicant it has also a built-in obsolescence but staying put and never venturing out into the throng of sticky and swe...

Here I go again pulling down my pants in public and hoping that I get some kind of reaction from the crowd someday I will feel better about myself and I'll no longer feel a need to lay myself bare and write about things I should've drunk from my memory long ago but they don't care these others I try to amuse they look and sniff at my writing and if it doesn't prick them or assault them they go on to the next thing this is a world gone cold and dull a...

at a Mexican fast food place after I ordered my lunch I took my tray into the dining room it was the kind of place that had bench and tables in the dining room and pockets of dirt and grime in every corner and I noticed that the benches and the tables needed a good scrubbing and I tried not to look too carefully lest I jeopardize my appetite and forfeit what I paid for this quesadilla I tried not to make eye contact with the other miserable patrons each one sweatier ...

I am always dumbstruck by her beauty especially when doing the simplest of things like comforting a child she is soft yet strong and always willing to do the right thing even if she doesn't know what it is she heroically puts everyone and everything before herself and I admire that since that's who I want to be and I watch her face elegant and focused as her eyes dart back and forth solving a Sudoku or beating her own record at solitaire and at the end of the ...

My wife has hundreds of pictures of the kids in box after box after box some indistinguishable from others and my brother has a stack of over 500 DVDs that he ripped and burned after renting them from NetFlix that he'll someday get around to watching and I found this shareware that'll give me 20,000 fonts for every occasion in case I ever need 20,000 fonts and my son wants an IPod (the one with a little TV screen on it) that'll hold 40 gigabytes of music but he only...

They're a different breed those who can sleep through the alarm clock and stumble through the door drunk and forgetting to bring dinner they drive their cars and don't pay the registration and they stuff parking tickets in their glove boxes they don't stress over jobs if they have them and they let their dogs run free forgetting about bills due and demanding what they want merrily bouncing through life like a pinball their lives unpredictable and random and I ...

Our days are packed with children and jobs and chores and details and when everything gets quiet after 10pm she and I limp into bed there is quiet ecstasy laying my body down on cool soft sheets my back muscles releasing exhaling long and slow and it is a silent wonder to feel her soft warm body at my side and in unrehearsed unison we both turn on our left sides and she wraps herself around me and she presses herself into my back her curvy body heat surgin...

sugar is my kryptonite anger is my pilot light booze is my funhouse mirror music is my fruit time is my mockingbird sex is my glue writing is my revenge Groucho is my long lost uncle silence is my prayer desire is my serpent jealousy is my jailer gluttony is my downfall television is my comfort hope is my tomorrow fear is my bully memory is my curse Lenny is my prophet forgiveness is my love scars are my receipts life is my material you are my audience

came in the mail today and it was thinner than I hoped it would be this was all I wrote in a year? Seems like I had a year more full than this slight volume would indicate it's a "publish on demand" book so it may not count as a real book but I have sold three copies beside the two I bought so perhaps it counts I look at the contents- my verbal naked snapshots - and silently thank God that I used my nom de plume still I am quietly pleased that I have ...

“you can’t unring a bell” that’s what I thought when I woke up March 10, 1986 I was scheduled to have a vasectomy that afternoon at 2 I was keeping my part of the unspoken agreement I had made with the crazy blonde woman with whom I had an abortion on the day before Valentine’s Day the abortion was by mutual consent but the vasectomy was a unilateral decision I decided that to ensure I would never i...

Walking from my car to the store through the parking lot I wear my game face it’s the one with the dark fixed gaze the implicit scowl my eyebrows forming a ridge intended to intimidate this is the “don’t ask me for money” and “no I’m not signing your petition” face it’s the “try it and risk the wrath of my righteous indignation” face let there to be no mistake: it’s the “if you fuck with me I will bite your neck in two” face when I use this face I just want to...