Spring Iris. Copyright 2004. All rights reserved. 

"The tragedy in life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach."
-Benjamin Mays

Hush

This is the story
you're not supposed to tell
the old twisted story
you're not supposed to know
dirty family secrets
not seen in scrapbooks

Blush over bruises
glasses cover blackeyes
Shame folded into her soul

No nightlight in dark room
hands tearing away his breath
and his little boy clothes

Finger down her throat
can't get it all out
can't be perfect

Always outside looking in
never more than the brunt
cold razor on wrists

Hospital bed that they whisper
he deserves for loving those
who should be shunned

Wrong skin color can't change
wrong accent can't hide
wrong life can't live

These are the stories
that don't get told
the old tired stories
that no one wants to hear
Don't look back
let your tongue be silent

Don't make waves
Don't rock the boat
Don't embarrass us

Get on with your life
Get over it
Get out

Forget what
you can't change
Don't remember
what's past
Bury the words
burning in your throat

These are the stories
that sometimes get told
and the world ends
and we all fall down
but we get up --

we get up
and fly into the sky

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to."
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Wishes come true, not free."
-From Into the Woods

"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?"
-Fanny Brice

"You are the music while the music lasts."
-T. S. Eliot

The Price

No one promised you anything
You chose to love
You chose to give yourself away
You chose to surrender all

This is the price
Nothing is ever free

We all pay in blood
Every tear is ours
Every guilt forged by our choice
Every muffled cry ours alone

This is the price
Nothing is ever free

We all go to sleep and wake
Each morning another chance
Each day another joy or sorrow
Each night falls into dreams

This is the price
This is the price
This is the price
of being alive

Nothing is ever free

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself."
-John Macnaughton

"God is infinite and without end, but the soul's desire is an abyss which cannot be filled except by a Good which is infinite; and the more ardently the soul longeth after God, the more she wills to long after him; for God is a Good without drawback, and a well of living water without bottom, and the soul is made in the image of God, and therefore it is created to know and love God."
-Johannes Tauler

"What is sacrifice? I believe it is nothing other than the boundless, no longer limitable resolve of a human being to reach his purest inner potential."
-Rainer Maria Rilke

"Each time anyone comes into contact with us, they must become different and better people because of having met us. We must radiate God’s love. We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved. Love does not measure ... it just gives."
-Mother Teresa

Query

In that black pout
where you live,
do you really think
someone will come
to pull you out?

And if rescuers should
by some miracle appear,
would you hear them
above your whining
reptile tears?

And if they extend
weary hands to help,
will you be wise
and take a chance
for life to rise?

In a world so wide,
why would you choose
to forever dwell
in your own
private hell?

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery."
-A.S.W. Rosenbach

This and That

I've been thinking of friends
and how they come and go
and how I enjoy knowing
you

I've been thinking of games
and how we all play them
and how no one ever
wins

I've been thinking of love
and how it's a bastard
and how it's what we live
for

I've been thinking of the future
and how it keeps coming
and how we try to hold it
off

I've been thinking of joy
and how it likes to surprise
and how all the old cliches are
true

But mostly I've been thinking
how life isn't perfect but good
and how I love it and love
you

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

From Red Hot Sinner Man

   Alex wasn't what she'd been looking for. Abby hadn't been looking for a guy at all. She had joined Gallant and Sons to build a resume. She needed to rise above the rank and file and she needed to do it yesterday.
   She hadn't been able to finish college. She applied for grants and loans and worked two part-time jobs, but the money wasn't enough to pay for school and to take care of her younger brother and sister. So she quit school and worked days at the local Taco King and weekends at Gilbert's Git-N-Going convenience store. In what time she had left, she tried to be mom and dad to her siblings. It wasn't enough, but after a rough two years, Davie was making better grades and Alissa had stopped crying over every disappointment as if her heart had broken.
   It would have been easier if her parents had siblings or any close relatives, but their only living relative was a cousin who moldered in a nursing home and another cousin who lived halfway across the country. At eighteen, Abby became the head of their little family. A couple welfare workers had scared her by talking of taking Davie or maybe little Alissa, but Abby's fierce protectiveness and the fact the workers had too many children they had to rescue from abusive homes to worry about two orphans who were clean and well-fed. Occasionally someone would drop in and check on them, but the kids knew the drill.
   Last year the insurance company finally settled the suit from her parents' accident. Enough money to allow her to quit the Get-N-Go and look around for a better job. One that might let her earn more money and be way to an even better job.
   Her official title was Customer satisfaction Representative. From 8:30 to 5:00, she took phone calls and answered questions from The Gallant's customers. Some of those calls she handled, others had to be bumped on up. It hadn't taken her long to realize that the number of calls dropped some each month as the Internet help system became more sophisticated. Soon management would look around to make cuts, and as the newest CSP, she had only job insecurity.
   So during her breaks, she had taken to wandering the halls, trying to find a place that she could move to. She smiled and said hi and networked, networked, networked. She made copies and ran errands for other departments. She had a ton of "If I hear of anything, I'll buzz you immediately" and lots of "I wish they had hired you to do that job instead of whoever."
   That's what she had been doing when Alex threw up on her shoes.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2004.

"Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth."
-Victor Borge

"Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable."
-Augustine Birrell

From Red Hot Sinner Man

   Richard had owned the world until now. Always been that way. In school, he made all the teams, made the good grades, got the hot girls, drove the best cars, attended the right parties, he was cool. College was the same. Oh, the parties were wilder, the classes harder, the girls more numerous, the cars more expensive, but the McConnell's little heir deserved the best and he got it. He couldn't remember it any other way.
   Now, the Gallant -- the company that had been in his family since the 1700's and that had paid for all that college, all those cars, all those girls -- was going down with him at the helm.
   His grandfather and his father had made mistakes. They bought high and sold low too many times. They waited too long to moderize and didn't wait long enough to see if changes would help. Oh, success hadn't passed by the Gallant completely; otherwise, it wouldn't have survived, but too much red ink stained its pages over the years. And even though the mistakes of his predecessors caused the decline, he would be the one who would be blamed. The Gallant would go down on his watch.
   The choices on his desk: Close the Gallant or sell it to Van de Meter and Horn. Either selection would make his father spin in his grave and his mother spit on his shoes.
   He was beginning to think he didn't drink enough.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

From Red Hot Sinner Man

   "So what is your problem?" Tony asked. "What did I do to you?"
   Andrea turned away.
   He hung up the phone. "I don't love you. I don't have to love you. It's my right to not love you."
   "That's not it!" she screamed.
   "Yes, it is," he said. "You've got your feelings hurt. You've got your friends saying that I should love you, that I'm a fool to not love you. But I'm not. I just don't love you! What is so damn hard about that?" He stood and threw his phone across the room.
   She jumped and took a step toward the door but stopped.
   "I don't love you," he said, breathing hard. "Does there have to be a villain? Is your world so limited that it can't have two people who care about each other, but aren't lovers?"
   "But ... but ... but I love ... you," she whispered.
   "Okay, you love me," he said sofly. "But that doesn't mean that I love you. I wish I could. I really wish I did. But I don't."
   "Why?" she asked, but she was already running out the office door.
   "Andrea ..." he said.
   She was gone.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"Poetry is the art of understanding what it is to be alive."
-Archibald MacLeish

"Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life."
-Henry Miller

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. ...Step by step, the wonder of unexpected supply keeps growing."
-Robert Frost

"The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always."
-Willa Cather

From Orc War

To the surprise of most people, orckind have honor. Admittedly a rough sort of one, but once an orc befriends you, he stays your friend to death and beyond. An "Orcfriend" is known in the orckind tongue as a "Nahgrumna." Orcfriends are rare, even among orcs and even more rare with other races. Ruan Ta'Hisvin, for instance, was the "Nahgrumna" of Tor, the one-time commander of the City Guard, and was the first Orcfriend for Tor's clan in over a century. There are even stories of an elf being an orcfriend, although most discount this as myth, considering the eons old war between the orcs and elves."
-Baron McFeddes, "Lecture on the Habits of Orckind"

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime."
-Dale Carnegie

"To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it -- this is a hard lesson."
-Bruce Catton

"We have to look at our own inertia, insecurities, self-hate, fear that, in truth, we have nothing valuable to say. When your writing blooms out of the back of this garbage compost, it is very stable. You are not running from anything. You can have a sense of artistic security. If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you."
-Natalie Goldberg

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on."
-Robert Frost

"Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
-Gandhi

"The value of compassion cannot be over-emphasized. Anyone can criticize. It takes a true believer to be compassionate. No greater burden can be borne by an individual than to know no one cares or understands."
-Arthur H. Stainback

"You've got to sing like you don't need the money. You've got to love like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance like there's nobody watching. You've got to come from the heart, if you want it to work."
-Susanna Clark

"A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others."
-Leo Rosten

Tryst

And in these places
we meet, breath
and sweat joined

frantic mouths
hungry for touch
that burns us

no words enough
no sounds but
soft thrilling cries

gather our clothes
turn out lights
leave slowly

it's better if
it stays dark
in these places

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved

If I meet
You suddenly; I can't
speak -- my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,
hearing only my ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body
and I turn paler than
dry grass.
-Sappho from Fragment 2 of her surviving translated works

Today

I thought of you &
smiled
a surprise
that
time worked its way
with all the
pain
all the tragic
waste
the pure dreams
lost
the kisses never
tasted
the passion never
spent
but time doesn't
care
so
today
I thought of you &
smiled.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead."
-Clarence Day

"Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, -- where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!"
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape."
-Arthur Christopher Benson

"Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life."
-Mortimer J. Adler

"A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it."
-William Styron

"For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives."
-Amy Lowell

"There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?"
-Marina Tsvetaeva

"After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else."
-D. H. Lawrence

"A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators."
-Malcolm Bradbury

"To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry."
-Gaston Bachelard

"When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be."
-Patanjali

24 The Lord bless thee and keep thee:
25 The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:
26 The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
-Numbers 6:24-26

"And sometimes there will be nothing but pain. But pain is good. If you're writhing, you're still alive. As long as you're alive, you've got a chance. It may be more remote than the fartherest star, but it's there. If you can do nothing else now, believe that. And hold on. We need you. Please hold on. The world needs you even if it doesn't know that it does. Hold on. Help is on the way."
-Manjarous

"What will be required to increase the quality of life and health is a coming together of technology and values, based on a scientific guiding principle that people can agree on. Securing a healthy global future requires this guiding principle to preserve freedom of spirit yet be as provable as the laws of physics. A guiding principle that addresses the meaning of life and is compelling enough to generate social cohesion and behaviors that serve the greater whole. After thirty years of investigation and research, it has become clear to me that the answer lies within the human heart."
-Doc Childre

"It is true that we shall not be able to reach perfection, but in our struggle toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties with which we have been gifted to the best possible account."
-Confucius

"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."
-Barbara Kingsolver

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
-Louisa May Alcott

"When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing."
-John Steinbeck

"Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death -- fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant."
-Edna Ferber

From Dragons Gather

   "What difference does it make what I believe?" I asked. "My belief or lack thereof won't put soup in the pot."
   "It makes a difference to her," Manjarous said. "Sometimes, Stefan, I think you're older than me. You walk along the edge of despair and act like it's the only path."
   "I'm Dammed!" I said harshly. "You can't understand --"
   He barked a laugh. "I'm old, and death is learning my name. Jacobi is scarred. Shellia is nightmare ridden and godstouched. Feathen has been lonely for so long that he can't live any other way. Maladora is a runaway slave. Kassler's only happy when his senses are dulled by drink. Nina and Opel can't replace their brother or heal the wounds that his passing gave them, and we're all lost in a wilderness while a wizard seeks us for gods only know what." He looked at me for a long time. "No one is free of pain, Stefan. Everyone has their failures. You're wasting your life in bitter regret. One day you will wake up as old as me and wonder where your life went."
   I didn't reply. He didn't understand about magick. How I hungered for it. How I needed it. He imagined it was something that I could put aside. I could no more make him understand than I could explain sight to someone who had been born without eyes.
   He placed a hand on my shoulder. "I'm only telling you this because I care about you, boy. Maladora is a chance for happiness. You need to allow for the possibility of change. She may have fallen for who you are now, but she's going to expect you to grow along with her. If you won't, you'll lose her as sure as dragons fly."
   He waited, but I didn't have anything to say.
   "Well, it's your life," he muttered and then went back into the wagon.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper."
-Isaac Bashevis Singer

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is
   nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just
   able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, from "The First Elegy" from Duino Elegies
translated by Stephen Mitchell

He Is Risen
Alleluia
Alleluia
Alleluia
He Is Risen

"The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice."
-Henry Knox Sherrill

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."
-Ray Bradbury

"It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible. Do not then be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause. "
-Henry Ward Beecher

"Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks."
-Dottie Walters

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
-Edith Wharton

28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
-Isaiah 40:28-31

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are,
    we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Ulysses

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."
-Ernest Hemingway

Linger

I dreamed of you last night.
We laughed as we walked through
a park. Our children played
near, calling for us to
watch them slide or swing high.

I dreamed of you last night.
Your hazel eyes followed
me. A smile touched your lips.
I could not resist them.
You tasted like honey wine.

I dreamed of you last night.
Our breaths mingled as our
bodies joined. You cried my
name and shuddered as did
I. Then you turned away.

I dreamed of you last night.
I wandered through a house
empty of your presence,
footsteps echoing, air
quiet and still. No one home.

I dreamed of you last night.
I pray I don't again.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"If it is any use to you, I always try to write on the principle of the iceberg. There is seven-eighths of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story."
-Ernest Hemingway

"Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment."
-Carl Sandburg

From Red Hot Sinner Man

Darrell hated them. He wanted them dead. He knew they laughed at him behind his back. He was the geek. The one with all the pens. The one with stains on his shirt. The one who could fall over his own feet. The one who dropped papers at meetings. The one that had actually passed gas at a company get-together. The one that the bosses would clap on the back at office parties and say good job even as they looked for someone -- anyone -- else for them to foist him off on. When he tried to talk to them, when he tried to explain how the flow of the R327 network was both compartmentalized and yet open and that it kept the freebooters out but allowed interactivity as well as intra-activity, the same lame comments started. "Speak English, man." "Watch a lot of Star Trek, don't you?" "Over my head."

He hated them all, but he particularly hated Rachel because her cubicle was next to his. Had been for five years, but she still didn't say hi to him. She would barely nod when he passed, and if he spoke to her, her eyes would glaze immediately.

He had often thought of reporting her to the HR department for violating IT email policies. She used her computer as if she owned it and it was her personal entertainment box. She emailed her mom, her brother, twenty or so girlfriends, a few boyfriends, people she chatted with online and would never be in the same room together, school and college friends and possibly the whole population of her hometown and several small European countries. She sent them jokes and prayer and recipes. She sent them web site links and quotes and pictures. She sent them advice and gossip and opinions. Rachel was a mass media. And her online activity was in direct violation of the restricted personal use policy clearly outlined on page 46 of the Gallant and Sons Company Employee Handbook.

Darrell didn't know why she hadn't got caught. What was IT doing? Did they notice the bandwidth being used whenever Rachel was at her computer? Were they blind? Or simply too stupid?

Darrell would turn her in, but then he'd be asked how he knew what she did. He'd be fired as soon as they realized he was exploiting holes in their security ice to ghost her computer. He wasn't a good liar and couldn't think of any story that explain his knowledge.

So he sat in his cubicle and hated them all, but mostly Rachel. Sometimes it was hard for him to focus as he sat there, listening to the faint sound of her voice on the phone to her mom, smelling the damned perfume she drenched herself in. The last year had been worse. He nearly quit every day, but he wasn't good at job searching. Actually he was good at job searching; he wasn't good at job getting. It had taken him nearly two and a half years to find this one, and he didn't want to go back to living with his mom again.

Two months ago, though, he had found something that made it better. Something that helped when he felt his hatred of them choke away his thoughts, when he wanted to scream in frustration and rage, when he wanted to run down the halls like a madman. He would reach into his briefcase and touch it. He would hold it, and he could feel cool and calm again.

Two months ago, Darrell started bringing a gun to work.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

From Red Hot Sinner Man

Alex met Abby by one of the grossest ways possible: he threw up on her shoesr. He had just started on Gleeco, one of the latest, greatest cancer buster drugs. Since his tumor was wrapped around his spine, they couldn't operate without leaving him a cripple at worse or needing Depends at best. Perhaps he would be forced into that later, but for now, Dr. Jeremath wanted to try Gleeco.

Most people who were dosed with Gleeco experienced "intermediate episodes of nausea," a medical way of saying that the patient would spew vast amounts of stomach contents in truly Olympic fashion. Gleeco patients easily qualified in distance for the U.S. Puke Team. Alex had already endured a three-day bout following his last dose. This time he was smarter. He scheduled his chemo on a Thursday afternoon so that he would only miss a day and a half of work. Then he stopped eating on Wednesday. He figured nothing in, nothing out. Lying on his bathroom floor, he discovered that dry heaves were worse as he tried to throw up his stomach. He couldn't even keep down the anti-nausea pills. But the worse passed by Sunday night, and he crawled gratefully into his bed and slept deeply.

The next morning, Alex wore with a strange feeling of well-being. It took him a few minutes to realize that he was simply feeling the absence of being sick. He stretched and realized he was hungry and could even think about food without his head swimming. Still cautious, he made do with a bowl of cream of wheat, dry toast and black coffee. Not exactly the approved cancer diet, but it was food he could face without his stomach wailing.

He showered and went to work. He thought about staying home, but paranoia honed fine by years of surviving the corporate environment urged him on. If you were gone too much -- even for legitimate reasons -- people started to get used to you being gone. Projects got reassigned, files got moved. More than one woman had returned from maternity leave to find herself a glorified secretary. Men ended up as assistants or found themselves on under-funded projects that wouldn't survive the next budget. Alex already had a cubicle at the end of a hall. His next move would be outside the building.

His inbox was full, both on his desk and in his email. While picking up a folder, he caught a wisp of perfume. Probably from Rachel. She bathed herself and her cubicle liberally in her favorite scent of the month to the dismay of those close to her. Glenda said Rachel could be tracked through a sewer plant. Alex started to grin, and then it happened. A hot flood rose within him. He whirled in his chair, trying to make it to the restroom down the hall.

He made two steps into the hall, and then the wave hit him so hard that he fell to his knees. He lost his breakfast. More than lost, he expelled his breakfast, shot his breakfast, hurled his breakfast, exploded his breakfast into the far wall. He caught a brief glance of a pair of legs before he was too occupied to see anything but a blur.

After a few eon-long minutes, the spell passed. He slumped against his cubicle doorway, exhausted and horrified by what he had done. Was this going to be his life now? Alex thought he'd rather be dead.

Someone knelt beside him. "Here. Put this on your throat." A wet paper towel was pressed against his skin.

A woman with blue eyes looked steadily at him.

"You're in a bad way, guy," she said after a moment. "Well, let's just see what we can about that."

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

Favorite Recipe

Melon Fruit Dip

1 package of softened cream cheese
3 tablespoons of orange juice
bite-size chunks of watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew or other melon

Mix cream cheese and orange juice until creamy. Mix melon chunks together in large bowl. Drizzle dip over melon or serve in side dish with ladle.

When you're a writer, you no longer see things with the freshness of the normal person. There are always two figures that work inside you, and if you are at all intelligent, you realize that you have lost something. But I think there has always been this dichotomy in a real writer. He wants to be terribly human, and he responds emotionally, but at the same time, there's this cold observer who cannot cry.
-Brian Moore

From Red Hot Sinner Man

The first thing Alex learned about cancer was that it scared other people. Oh, they put on a brave face, they plied him with sympathy, they shook their heads regretfully and spouted things like, “We’ll be thinking about you” or “Keep a positive attitude” or “You’ll be in our prayers.” Then they would delicately ask if he smoked or if cancer ran in his family or did he eat too much red meat or had he worked somewhere where he could have been exposed to some sort of terrible chemical that caused the tumor wrapped around his spine. They wanted to know why he had cancer so that they could avoid it or be relieved that they didn’t smoke or eat red meat or do whatever it was that made him sick. They were afraid of this death that worked in the cubicle next to them. After those few words of concern, those muted conversations, they began to avoid him. Nothing overt. Just conversation fading away when he walked up or sat down at the table in the break room. Dead silences that went on so long that he could hear every rustle of paper, every click of a pen, every cough as loud as the Methodist church bell at noon.

When he realized this, he withdrew. He went silent. He retreated into his cubicle and wished for a door. He felt ashamed, almost as if cancer was some sort of STD, like he was sick because he wasn’t a good person, unclean, a leper among the washed. He was a sick person among the healthy, and he didn’t blame them for being squeamish about him. Who wants to be reminded of their own morality? Who wants to hear the ticking of the clock? Who wants to know they won’t live forever? That a disease can strike them down despite all the raw vegetables consumed and all the miles sweated? He had felt the way they felt before Mr. C entered his life. So he understood. He would be quiet. He would die politely. He would make it easy on them since he couldn’t make it easy on himself.

At least that was what he thought he would do at first. Then he met Abby and everything changed.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."
-Ezra Pound

"We like that a sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end."
-Henry David Thoreau

"It's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint it. There is the art of lines and colours, but the art of words exists too, and will never be less important."
-Vincent van Gogh

"Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him."
-Mel Brooks

"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoids all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every work tell."
-William Strunk

"If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate."
-John Ciardi

"The process of writing a book is infinitely more important than the book that is completed as a result of the writing, let alone the success or failure that book may have after it is written ... the book is merely a symbol of the writing. In writing the book, I am living. I am growing. I am tapping myself. I am changing. The process is the product."
-Theodore Isaac Rubin

"Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat."
-Robert Frost

"If you don't like my book, write your own. If you don't think you can write a novel, that ought to tell you something. If you think you can, do. No excuses. If you still don't like my novels, find a book you do like. Life is too short to be miserable."
-Rita Mae Brown

"The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon."
-Robert Cormier

From Red Hot Sinner Man

Regina knew he wanted her. She could tell. The way he looked at her. The way his eyes not only undressed her but threw her on the red leather couch in his neo-Spartan office and made her scream glories until she was hoarse. How his hand would rest on her shoulder, just a brotherly pat, a touch of friendship, but his long, slender fingers would linger as if they longed to press themselves deep into her flesh until they left dark violet marks of his passion.

She sat at her desk and watched him over her filing. Once she sliced her finger on a piece of paper and pressed the welling cut to her mouth. She looked up and caught his eyes focusing on her lips before he turned away. She knew he wanted her. Now if only his inconvenient wife would just die.

Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

"Here's the secret to the universe: Everything has structure. From snowflakes to fire, everything has form and function. And this applies to the craft of writing."
-Jay Bonansinga

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."
-William Strunk, Jr.

"Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all."
-Voltaire

"A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."
-Robert Frost

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved ... the ones who never yawn and say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
-Jack Kerouac

"There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle."
-Robert Alden

Still round the corner there may wait,
A new road, or a secret gate.
-J.R.R. Tolkien

Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.
-Job 12:8

Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heaven we have below.
-Joseph Addison

"Quality--in its classic Greek sense--how to live with grace and intelligence, with bravery and mercy."
-Theodore H. White

"Discipline does not mean suppression and control, nor is it adjustment to a pattern or ideology. It means a mind that sees 'what is' and learns from 'what was.'"
-Jiddu Krishnamurti

"We only part to meet again."
-John Gay

"Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares."
-Doris Lessing