‘A Hoeft Marsh Melody’
Hoeft Marsh in Greenbottom WV is where I get off to when I want to get off the timeline of the world's news. Here's a short musical visit there. It's a little fishy, too.
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“When ‘Frankenstein’ Came to Town”
“Listen to this!” say Tommy. He shifts the Les Paul to his lower back, rock star-like. “Edgar Winter,” he says, almost reverently. “Johnny’s brother ..."
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CRAZY DAYS: “Stormtroopers & Grandmas”
The balls of his black pupils stare at me intently, oddly echoed by the round marble of a self-shaved head. Moments later, I have second thoughts about my diplomacy as “Speak English or Die” batters the room.
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‘All These Pages’
As a writer, purveyor, and publisher of creative works, I am constantly wrestling with my ego’s desire to see such work as of lasting significance, a hedge against my own mortality. Yet such works, too, will soon pass on by and melt away, swallowed by the river of time. Here’s a video-poem about that.
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Essays
“The Green, Green Hills of Earth”
When the azaleas burst into bloom around a Buddha given me by a dear, departed, harmonic soulmate, it was time to set her memorial song to imagery of the green, green hills of Earthh ...
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Seeing Red in Downtown Cincinnati
When the Opening Day parade for the Cincinnati Reds 2022 season snaked through downtown Cincinnati more was going on than it might at first seem.
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‘The Difference Is’
There is a difference / between people who do things / and people who don't ...
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‘RUN-ON SENTENCE: At 47’
I am 47, the day is Jan. 2, the year is 2005, / my beard is stained white in several places, / my son is 14, my girl 10, my (borrowed neighborhood) / cat is named Mister Puzzlesocks, / my favorite red wine of the moment is / Trinchero Cabernet, my car is a white ’93 …
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‘In Need of Saying’
I am on a porch, captain/ of a green ocean. Wasps patrol / the boundary lands. In whispering winds, conversing / in high tulip poplars, I hear / poems from another tongue …
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Listen to an “Appalachian Round”
The song "Appalachian Round" is one of the prettiest, most evocative group songs in the English language. Here is a 2009 four-part harmony version a bunch of fellow travelers and I recorded down in Princeton, WV.
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Essays
‘The Cow Bell’
A great grief saddles me,/ rides down the pampas of / Virginia Dare Avenue, / until I am too tired / and we return home / together ...
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Essays
‘When Hay Bales Speak to You’
Let’s talk hay bales. I have, perhaps like you, been spying hay bales most all my life. Yet, in all that time haven’t met a hay bale. Up close. The other day, I had my chance.
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Essays
How a West Virginia Artist Captured 100 Badass Women
Overwhelmed by the headlines, by Donald Trump, by a pandemic and with winter coming, West Virginia artist Sassa Wilkes couldn't get herself to her easel. Then, RBG died and Sassa found she wanted to get to know the legal legend by painting her portrait. Then, she kept on going with 99 more portraits of badass women.
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Three Not-the-News, Under-a-Minute Videos
When you are suffering from an overdose of dire news, may we suggest spending a minute with a happy dog tooling down the road, a koto-fueled Japanese fire, and bird upon a Buddha's head?
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