Category: articles
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Mother May I
She stands at the edge of the universe of herself, royalty on permanent loan from the city of Frederick. She adjusts the church spires in her crown and we side-saddle along the sidewalk in front of the art gallery where she hangs. Mother, daughter, queen, where have you been all my lives, but here? An…
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Blue Eye Sky
Fragments of sand sift through calloused toes raw with wrinkled scraps of yellowed memory. Cerulean sun on cue spinning surrealism like some Tanguy canvas stretched across eternity like your eyes white with splinters of big bang residue collected in caverns of expanding light.
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Under the Circumstances
The doorbell rang. I got up from my overstuffed chair, put King Lear down on the coffee table and peeked out the window. It was the mailman. “Well,” I thought, “service at last.” I opened the door. It was quite cool and raining slightly. To keep the chill out, I immediately invited the…
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Finding Yourself Through Music
The Human Experience is a collective of idiosyncrasies that make each of us who we are. Music with its rhythm, melody, and harmony blend each of us individually and together. Singing, therefore, is the factor that makes our subconscious feel good and promotes a greater feeling of contentment outwardly. Gary (Papa G) Alexander (November 2018)…
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While Reading EA Abbott’s “Book on Solipsism”
I was born at a point in history when there was little left to say about the rain. The geometrical roots of my condition are detailed in that recombinant text that got me through so many awful nights, although in at least a few chapters the very idea of night is occluded by the blear…
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That which is binding.
In these times we need something other than a stick, something that reaches beyond the range of mere weapons. The president paused and placed his hand upon a globe, fingers running across the continents. Such things need to be crafted to present the finest point of control without the blunt certainty of destruction…
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(Hillsborough River, Tampa, Florida, a quarter-mile upstream from the Save A Lot overpass.)
I. To the Santerían Woman on the Dock Across from Mine a. The Goat The first time I saw a goat up close was when you draped its headless body atop the current. Its hooves grazed the buoy of my crab trap before catching on the line. Ankle deep in blood-steeped brackish, you looked at…
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The Sound of Bells
On the street rests crumbled relics, hardened with time, crushed and oxidized. They cannot be seen from the sagging porch facing the street but their existence is made known by the stressing sound of each individual granule as it scrapes beneath the drifting wheels of the night cruisers. Looking for a quiet place to park,…
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These Straits
I say I want, and wonder what I mean. As if to speak my longing could summon what I seek. Foolish man; over-fond; much too frank. As if to say I love you were money in the bank. Presumption’s my secret sin; I say I want you and wonder where you’ve been. As if you wade, like me…
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Parable of the Absent Mother
“There was a man who had two sons . . “ Luke 15:11 Her not being there was in everything. It was in their dinners together and in their sitting alone. It was in each of their bed times and in their getting up again. The younger boy was rudderless; the older one angry, always…
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The Edge of Causal Imagination
In the much-hyped muddle about data science and omniscient algorithms, causality has emerged as the latest beacon of a buzzword. The question of what causes what drives modern scientific enquiry with a relentlessness matched only by unscrupulous journalists looking for a sensational headline. (A point the webcomic XKCD drives with the incendiary headline about carcinogenic…
