is the tingle of ice cream the breathlessness of standing face to face with the expanse of Lake Tahoe the descending strings that catch in my throat and pull at my heart in any recording of the Delfonics the tip of my tongue on chocolate raindrops alighting upon my face rising to the aroma of coffee and something baking downstairs. She is the fourth ace drawn and my fingers falling in unexpectedly pleasant ways at the piano my heart beating strong and fast afte...

it's ok I saw you on December 9th when I took you to the emergency room when you had bronchitis and I spent time with you on October 22nd when you needed help with your algebra homework and we were together on June 2nd in that broiling garage when we were trying to fix your bike and I remember our dinner on November 29th when we went all out to Jose's for Mexican food and we were together when I took you to the orthodontist on July 8th and I remember tak...

Usually I'm the first one ready on Sunday morning to go to church it's Discovery Christian Church and I take my Christian wife and my Christian kids and we sit down front the Jewish infiltrator with his goyishe posse are in the shul in my brief tenure as the ostensible Christian I have been asked to lead a Bible study and to give my testimony on how Jesus has helped me maintain my sobriety and it's always a little awkward when I have to decline: "well, ...

"I HATE YOU!" "YOU'RE BEING A BIG FAT JERK!" "I HATE YOU AS MUCH AS A WATERFALL!" normally I'd tell the person to fuck off but when it's my nine year old Little Blonde Talking Monkey weighing all of 54 pounds screaming it at me through a face crammed with braces and wearing smudged glasses it's all I can do to just walk away and defuse the situation she's not afraid of me and I don't want her to be because she's afraid of her biological dad and I'm sure o...

It sits on my nightstand silently mocking me "Postmodern American Poetry" with its picture of George Washington given an Andy Warhol treatment on the cover I search for a short poem that won't overwhelm me but every writing here appears needlessly long I turn page after page after page just trying to find the starting point of the next poem I find a quiet place and I begin to read the first poem slowly making sure not to continue until the current idea is understood...

I heard that song today and I pictured you in your floral print muu-muu in your overstuffed chair in that stuffy duplex in San Fernando Valley Has your limp healed yet? Are you finally at peace and not worried about your wayward children? I can still hear your voice comforting and cautious "Chicken today, feathers tomorrow" your gently acrid humor would sure come in handy now there was so much I could've learned from you but you died too early and I became a paren...

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 ...

Dear young ones, for years I've seen them come over our borders like dirty water over a dam and they even don't try to fit in they have their strange language and their godawful food and they don't seem afraid of our laws one of them even made improper sexual advances on my wife they come over here and use our resources the ones your father and my father and my father's father built and they squander them but they don't care they just want a better life...

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 impregnate another woman again I would get snipped. ...