On the other hand, there is happy news to report.

My 15-year-old nephew Mike won second place in a photo essay contest with a brilliant entry that wound up in our local newspaper today.  I had scanned the article for inclusion here because I am very proud - but I have been advised by an adult family member not to post it because it features his last name and school portrait in addition to his winning photo and essay.  So I will say "Well done" and leave it at that for now.

And so since I don't yet feel free to discuss the most important matters of today, but still feel an irrepressible urge to blog, I will share with you important matters of yesterday.

Here is a rough poem I wrote on 11 October 1993, exactly one week before my trial began and eight days before I was taken to prison for 11 years.  I had been free on bond for over a year and my attorney had assured me that my trial would not be delayed again.  According to my journal, I had risen at 6 a.m. on 11 October.  The ground outside had frosted.  I worked an eight-hour shift at a plastics factory (a job I had taken after my attorney recommended I quit managing a local gay bar because my occupation might prejudice a jury against me).  After work, I took my girlfriend to her class at the local community college, sat in the library there reading for an hour, and then took her to my mom's house to visit.  After I went home, I read a little more of Henry Miller's novel Sexus, played a bit of the Dragon Warrior Nintendo game, ate chicken dijon (with rice, green beans and peaches), and went to bed around 11:30 p.m.

I was stone cold sober then, and intensely aware that my life might "disappear" in about a week.  I wrote this poem between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. while working at Kross Plastics, writing a line or three at a time as permitted by the rhythm of the machine I operated.  It was the last poem I would write as a "free" man in the 20th century.  Not much of a legacy, perhaps... but it is what it is.

[Geri and me, Xmas 2006]

11 October 1993
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

A lengthy lament in watercolor and pastels,
A laborious reprieve from our perceived hells
And often wavering heaven:
Even Lady Luck does not always roll seven.

I postmark this communiqué "The Present,
Game-hunt, Ohio," from Sir Pheasant —
A landmark, a benchmark, Paradise stark,
Free flyer, jailbird, oblivious lark.

Greetings, sweet stranger, how spent we these years?
Capsized in oceans of beautiful tears,
By happiness saddened, with sorrow aglee,
Confined by the limits of sanity?

You ask how I am, unsure it is me...
Recall our Alaska of eighty-three;
I swore you eternal devotion and more,
Then replaced your Highness with a nickel-dime whore.

The irreparable dawn has finally broken;
Listen to the wind of a breeze-blown token:

The die is cast
My roll is last
In a shoe I dance
By a seven to Chance
While rambling misfortune and pessimist talk
Fate has condemned me to Hotel Boardwalk
I hate to admit it, but such is my shame
I mortgaged my soul just to stay in the game

Six thousand torches within me ignite;
I find it too hard to let out the light;
Yours are the only ears I can discern
For ecstatic ravings from party and urn.

First, a fiesta, warm and fluorescent,
Chivas and soda, mellow, effervescent,
Dos Equis icy, acid and crack,
Santa Claus stuck in my chimney stack.

Member-filled rump of the powers-that-be,
Congressional cockroach inanity,
Holy wars holey to those under fire...
Bonfire of ignorance, injustice for hire.

Joy ripped apart by a mindless fanatic,
The rational animal is often erratic;
Despite our great reason we cannibals dine,
Ask God for a blessing and plant a land mine.

Why did man create the urn?
He would rather die than learn.

Why this urge hit me I do not know —
Forget the world's torment and learn to glow,
Have a bright sunrise,
Bathe in the rays,
See these deep brown eyes,
Look through the haze,
Forsake what melancholy asks
And pursue more glamorous tasks.

Currently reading : Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I By Henry Miller Release date: 12 January, 1994