Month: July 2020

Aafra calls from Hong Kong
She sounds upbeat
But in the following two hours of our video call
I know she is gloomy as the downcast sky
It is afternoon
But the weather masquerades as late evening
You can’t trust anything these days can you?
She asks
I wish I could lie
I wish I was naive enough to shoo away her fears
Instead I rile up some anger in her
It works
Or at least she plays along
We glide through our shared past
Brief yet momentous glories
What we were once
We take comfort in each others insignificance
Lending shoulders from million miles away
The video keeps breaking
Lousy broadband
Aafra cooes at my dog
I wonder at her first world apartment
Half of our lives are gone
We are still waiting to live

Featured Artist: VICTOR RODRIGUEZ (acrylic on canvas)

Every love story is a ghost story
Something always haunts somebody
The dead haunt the living
The living haunt the lovers
The lovers haunt the dead
Bodies lay on ice
Beds tremble, pillows weep
Red stilettos tiptoe in the kitchen
Still new… only dusty
Stale cookies, dry coffee stains
Little balls of ache inside throats
Gray pictures, grim smiles
Words shatter like glass
Sour kisses…stinging…choking
Hallways bellow
Shadows take shapes
Ghosts mourn the living…
Love stories are ghost stories
Somebody always dies in them

Featured Artwork: STRANGE LOVE by Massimiliano Ligabue

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Trivia: The phrase ‘every love story is a ghost story’ is not mine. It was mentioned by David Foster Wallace in his writings and letters, but he maintained that the phrase was not his. He attributed the phrase to Virginia Woolf, that it was introduced to him by the writer Richard Elman in a lecture. But the phrase does…

The rain came hesitant like an unsure youth
A gush that settled into a shy drizzle
Shallow dark pools mothered little sidewalk rivers
Wet cigarettes sailed the choppy waters to the underworld
For those who were unloved and wasted

A stray dog left in the rain sat upright
Drenched, eyes closed, nose in the air
Inhaling the petrichor deep in his soul
Did the moist wind carry his dead owner’s smell
Who drowned in a flooded manhole last monsoon?

Featured Artwork: LEFT IN THE RAIN by Gayle Berry

I purchased the new Bob Dylan album Friday. It is terrific! The first song on the disc is, ‘I Contain Multitudes.’ Some of the lyrics are: ‘ I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones And them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones I go right to the edge, I go right to the end […]

via Something Good Is Going To Happen! — The Jazz Man

I purchased the new Bob Dylan album Friday. It is terrific! The first song on the disc is, ‘I Contain Multitudes.’ Some of the lyrics are: ‘ I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones And them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones I go right to the edge, I go right to the end […]

via Something Good Is Going To Happen! — The Jazz Man

I began at SIUC 42 years ago.  Prior to my beginning I was intrigued with the notion of a major university in Southern Illinois.  Although I was born in Chicago my mother and father were Southern Illinois natives.  They had migrated to Chicago for employment.  They had decided to return to Eldorado, Illinois, where my mom’s family resided, in order to start anew after marital discord and soon after the move… divorce.  I vividly recall SIU theatre students coming to Hillcrest school to perform a play.  My imagination was captivated!  I dreamt  of someday being a part of such a magical place as Southern Illinois University!  

I did not begin my relationship with my school as a student…I began as an employee for the Physical Plant Building Services department.  My job title was Building Service Worker I…and I was extremely proud of it!  I knew that I had obtained a secure job with the university that I had loved…