As a lifelong collector of quotes in the wild, this past year I launched the series QUOTE/WORKS, illustrating favorite quotes by authors, poets, spiritual teachers and other roustabouts, instigators, and agent provocateurs. Here are some. Feel free to nab any that work for you and pass them forward into the Omniverse.
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Venice is sinking, Venice is faded. The sea is rising and Venice may be dying. But, as Lord Byron sings in 'Child Harold's Pilgrimage,' even in her dotage she remains a glorious wonder.
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What do you do when Baby Jesus is Missing in Action — but you have a decades-long Christmas family tradition to enact, with children awaiting? You go with what you've got, even if what you've got is a bit ridiculous.
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The boys were missing somewhere in the wilds of clubland in Rome. Perhaps dead. Or just dead drunk. I wrote one of my favorite songs that night, while worrying about their whereabouts as the Italian night deepened ...
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'Hey, here you go. What's your name? Where'd you serve?' He nods in thanks. Stuffs the bag into a pocket. Tom. That's his name. He takes off his black knit cap. Syria. Iraq. 'A shell took off part of the top of my head.' I wince. He points to a jagged line. 'The Med Evac was the best. Saved my…
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Here is some iPhone portraiture from recent travels around and about Huntington and Charleston WV, people and scenes that struck the eye of one or the other of my Muses, a cantankerous posse who sometimes pay attention and sometimes are gone for months, if not years, at a time.
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I've spent years collecting footage of trains rumbling through West Virginia's hills, dales & valleys. I also scribble poems that play on Buddhist allusions. And there's this electronic music maestro I know named Lucas the Flow, who composes ethereal tunes. Mix them together and this is what you get ...
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Heading to the local mall used to be one of the social highlights of the week even ten years ago, much less 20. A recent visit to the Town Center Mall in West Virginia's capital city reveals how much the idea of the mall has faded.
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As she approached her 77th birthday in the year 2018, Frances Buzzard has never once in her life had a big birthday party. That was all about to change for the Belle Elementary School custodian one afternoon in Belle WV.
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Do auspicious omens from a deer encounter extend to the semi-suburbs? I have zilch expertise in gauging their racks, but this 2-, 3- or 4-point young buck showed up recently in my backyard, which butts up against a narrow spit of woods. I got a closer look at him last night upon returning home from an outing ...
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It is lovely here, this place you call the past, / but which is my present. We meet in the middle, / upon this bridge of words ...
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What to keep an eye upon come what may on the political scene and in our lives: beauty. A one-minute harmonically converged reminder ...
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We prance across the floor & close / the space. Until I see your back to me, those hips, an intoxicating / whiff of shampoo, the outline of your lips, an accidental touch, / matched rhythms, yes, our bodies talking on a wavelength our / minds cannot access ...
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When a father steps into and then down from the pulpit as his son brings the light and then snuffs it out at the end of a church service, watch for the moment of grace between father and son ..
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Sometimes, you gotta go short, instead of long. A sampling of short poems and epigrams in advance of an autumnal reading amid the West Virginia trees.
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