The Voice Problem

A fly went to see a psychiatrist for a troubling mental complaint. Every time he spoke, it sounded to him as though a fly were speaking. This was whether he was speaking aloud or thinking to himself, inside his own head. "It comes out as sort of fly-like buzzing!" he lamented to the psychiatrist, who was himself just then perched upside down on the ceiling of the consultation room, vibrating his wings. "Very interesting," the shrink thrummed and rubbed his fore-legs together to savor the conundrum even better. The fly psychiatrist was actually fantasizing about horse excrement, how sensuous and inviting it was. Even more than a fly femme fatale on her best day. "It's like a long didgeridoo sound that never ends," the poor fly told the doc. "Well, are you hearing it  even now?" the doctor probed. The fly paused a moment to listen to his thoughts."Yes, even now," he confirmed. "And my voice, the voice of a doctor with many success stories, do you hear it as only the drone of a fly, a small hairy bag of being with a striking proboscis, the sonic output of eight limited chromosomes?" "Yes, I believe we are both buzzing," the patient sadly admitted. "How worthless patients are," the fly doctor thought. "Patient is a terrible misnomer. If patients were patient, most of their problems would be solved by time or death." But they had to show up and bother him. "I'm going to write you a prescription for absolute solitude," the doctor concluded. "If you follow my treatment regimen faithfully, I will never see you again. Also, never feed again from anything that even vaguely resembles a proboscis. And your identity problem should swiftly resolve. Please stop at the payment window before taking to the sky."  The fly did as he was told and was soon starving to death. But the doctor was correct. His voice began to change. The buzz disappeared. There was only a thin sound that issued from his body now. It was translucent like the voices of clouds. On his last day, the fly realized the wings had been his problem all along. How had the doctor missed that? What a quack!  He castrated himself of his wings and his voice by flying at a razor-sharp piece of broken glass in the window of an abandoned house. He fell to the dank wooden floor of an empty house and listened to his own blessed silence. There was nothing even remotely fly-like about him. When a child exploring the vacant house stepped on him moments later, his final cry of anguish, he noted with pride, had not one iota of buzz left in it. It sounded like the scream of the paragon of animals. The pride inside him separated itself off from its animal. He stared at it a millisecond as a proud parent does with its newborn. And then he was something like a niggling doubt that he forgot.

(but read)

The Woman in the Snowstorm

I just noticed this post on Reddit about my theory that serial killer Steven Brian Pennell might have been responsible for the horrific murder of Sheree Magaro.

Sheree lived in my area, only about a thirty minute drive from my home at the time. I never knew her or any of her relations, although I did go to school with someone sharing her surname. It’s probably a fairly common name. I had missed the story of her disappearance in the news cycles at the time it occurred. I learned of it only recently and accidentally while researching another unexplained local disappearance.
She must have been a brave woman (she clearly fought her attacker) and I'm sure she is still missed by many.

Unsolved gruesome murders like that nightmarish one really stay with one. One hopes for answers and justice, even when one knows the likelihood of that is diminishing year by year.

Frameless Sky

I'm happy to have had some writing accepted for Frameless Sky, "a Japanese short-form poetry video journal."

Many thanks to editor Christine L. Villa.

I love her "Trust me. I'm a haiku poet." shirt.

(spring though)

Dark Veined

Dark little pond
sky rains into you
the night is
sneaking into you
manmade pond
between the interstates
you twinkle
with parking lot lights
of dusted motels
one side
of the highway talks
after a stroke
each room
with a faulty light
twinkles
each television
and each gust
between the sliding glass
the body’s
interstate stares
into you

A Muted Parade

I went walking in the fog of morning before morning. A voice told me to look for living things or — finding no living things — look for pieces of living things, parts of their bodies and body loves. Of course, the trees were all alive. The children below the trees, ferns and weeds, they are alive. Green spurning things. I saw a dragonfly wing. Glinting on the asphalt. A desperate iridescence signaling. Everything was wet with dew as the inside of  a very old man’s wrist watch. One tall cold one. A black umbrella going  to a black car funeral somehow like an umbrella. The first birds called, then, to the space before time. It was black and weirdly swaying, dappled, blotched with holes like an old Super-8 film-leader. We were all on it.


A breeze through trees whispered it was only passing through and inhuman. The BLOCK PARENTS had died, but the yellow blocky sign was still in the window of their empty house. The photograph of this is of everything, that spirit of guardianship in photos taken for unknown reason. It floats like  a summer dirigible’s shadow on the nape. Time says things behind a photo’s back. That feel of father, wet beer kiss of yesteryear on a naked knee. Oh, it’s just the breeze again. You carry your father’s camera and inside the body the fog. The sense that hands are superfluous only leaves the body slowly, slowly as the morning, many hours and loops later.

Tancho Press / Autumn Moon Haiku Journal

I was very pleased to learn I had poetry accepted into Autumn Moon Haiku Journal.

Poet Bruce Ross edits this online journal (and much else besides).

I would highly recommend picking up a copy of his Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku.  I keep that book within arm's reach of my reading bathtub. It opens the portals for me when I want to be creative in any form (not just haiku). Maybe it will have the same effect on you.

And while I haven't yet read How to Haiku, I am sure it's an incredibly useful book for any writer interested in learning how to write in this form. I say this based on the writing on haiku by Ross that I've read, and his own haiku that I've read.

Bardolater Birdolater

I was trying to think of a good historical epithet for Eugene Schieffelin (January 29, 1827 — August 15, 1906).

In referencing his project of naturalizing Shakespearean birds in America, "Bardolater Birdolater" seems to do the man justice.

The title would look nice on a round commemorative medal, "Bardolater"in an arc across the top, "Birdolater" in a reverse arc around the bottom. Of course, Eugene (what does he look like? does anyone know?) would be in the center.

America: Shakespeare's Aviary

Eugene Schieffelin (January 29, 1827 — August 15, 1906):

In 1890, he released 60 starlings into New York City’s Central Park. He did the same with another 40 birds in 1891. Schieffelin wanted to introduce all the birds mentioned in the plays of William Shakespeare to North America. He may have also been trying to control the same pests that had been annoying him thirty years earlier, when he sponsored the introduction of the house sparrow to North America.

European starlings were not native to North America. Schieffelin imported the starlings from England. Scientists estimate that descendants from those two original released flocks now number at more than 200 million residing in the United States.

The starlings' wildly successful spread has come at the expense of many native birds that compete with the starling for nest holes in trees. The starlings have also had negative impact on the US economy and ecosystem 

His attempts to introduce bullfinches, chaffinches, nightingales, and skylarks were not successful.

                                                            *

Often, when watching starlings feeding in my backyard, or starlings coming onto the porch to get cat food for the strays, I think of him. How greatly seemingly "small acts" can change the future landscape! It's a shame the nightingales and skylarks didn't prosper. Now kids reading Keats and Shelley have to go to Google to see what they're talking about in the poems and hear the songs on YouTube. I did the same thing to hear the great songs of the Japanese bush warbler, the uguisu, whose notes haunt so many haiku of centuries past.



It's rather hard to find an actual photograph of E.S. I think I found one of his father, but Eugene proved more elusive. Here is his tomb in Newport, Rhode Island. He had more siblings than cats generally do. One sister became a Remington, but I'm not sure if it was one of the more notable Remington families (weaponry, art). I imagine he was a bit of an eccentric.