2017-05-21 07:41
Although my wife takes her walks
up the road to Prospect Hill Cemetery
I stay down on the straight and flat
gray sidewalk of Main Street. There’s
something about the steep hill that&r&helli…Read More
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leon russell
A blog about leaving the city and moving to small town America—to a place that feels not like another county but another country.
2017-05-18 07:18
On that Saturday night I accidentally took a double dose of my medications. I was sitting at my computer, ready to do some work, and as I usually do, I stopped to take my pills. This time… Read More
2017-05-05 22:29
Grade school was one
humiliation after another.
Shitting my pants in first grade
because asking permission
to go to the bathroom
was petrifying horror.
Kids calling me
“Chinese Checke… Read More
2017-04-20 05:47
When I pick my five-year-old
son up from school
then stop at the grocery store
to get milk instead
of going straight home
he says “I’ll just stay here
in the car
and listen to M… Read More
2017-04-10 04:56
No one ever remembers the times you put the toilet seat down
after using the bathroom, those days when the weatherman
predicted to the exact inch the amount of snow that was going
to fall i… Read More
2017-03-31 05:56
We were heading up Route 11 just north of Winchester—me, my wife and my kids—when we found ourselves crossing into West Virginia. Now, there are places where when you see the si… Read More
2017-03-20 06:41
Was it poetry that ate my desire to succeed
and through failure that I succeeded
in thinking only horrible things,
things so horrible poetry could never grasp,
much less control them,
and o… Read More
2017-03-18 08:16
Back in the familiar wilderness
of tattoo parlors and auto parts
stores, the cheap motels where
there’s always a vacancy, the streets
so dry and sunny you can almost feel
the dirt and… Read More
2017-03-11 07:56
I don’t like to wear hats, but sometimes,
when I lived in New York, and it was cold
enough, I’d wear a beret. It was black, of course,
because if it isn’t black it isn&rsq&helli…Read More
2017-03-01 08:01
The Biograph Theater in DC, where I first sawCasablanca on something other than a TV screen;
Joe Cocker and Leon Russell in Mad Dogs & Englishman,
a rock documentary I saw when I was st… Read More
2017-02-24 14:05
We called them ugly stickers.
Like baseball cards or football cards,
they came in packs of bubblegum
except for me they were
a lot more interesting—
no batting averages for
the last f… Read More
2017-02-17 15:42
Back in the summer
of 1975
the thought never
occurred to me
that one day
I’d be dropping off
my kids at camp
for the day
while listening
to The Ohio Players’
“Sweet Sticky… Read More
2017-02-15 08:16
Though we don’t turn them on at night,
the strings of Christmas lights are still up,
hanging in a line from the porch roof.
The red and white candy cane lights, pulled up from the gro… Read More
2017-02-11 06:46
When the weather woman says
there’s still wiggle room in this week’s
forecast for snow,
I think about it for a period of time
that’s longer than a moment
but considerably… Read More
2017-02-05 06:56
Driving to Winchester
the other day
Stravinsky’s Symphonies
of Wind Instruments
comes on the stereo
as we head west
into the sunset
on 66 ready
for the curve at the end
of the highway… Read More
2017-01-31 18:24
It was one of the last times the Runkle side of Heather’s family was able to have a winter reunion. With Mom-Mom Runkle’s health issues, travel, especially in the cold winter mo… Read More
2017-01-26 15:29
Behind the wheel listening to P-Funk in my new neighborhood
the blank stare of the shirtless Larry the Cable Guy lookalike sharpens
to crystal clarity as his lazy slouch straightens up into… Read More
2017-01-21 08:49
We were in Washington County, just a few miles west of the river that keeps Ohio separate from Wild Wonderful West Virginia to the east. It’s a county that’s even less diverse t… Read More
2017-01-18 07:46
For my birthday this year I will
walk twenty miles away from the sunset or
until I am too tired to chase the sunlight
any longer, whichever comes first.
I will tell stories to the devil so… Read More
2017-01-15 09:29
It was a warm and sunny winter’s day that Sunday, driving back from Heather’s grandmother’s funeral in Belpre, Ohio. The last time we’d driven back from Ohio, two yea… Read More
2017-01-12 08:45
This is my autobiography
at mid-life, assuming that
at 51 years of age I will
live another 51 years and
die at 102. That’s not very
likely, but I wasn’t ready
to write this at 3… Read More
2017-01-09 03:50
This coming year I will try to take everything
personally and to cultivate lengthier states
of hysteria in the course of my day to day living.
I will do everything in my power to gain more… Read More
2017-01-04 15:24
What are poets for in destitute times? — Hölderlin . Every poem is a subversive act. In an age when our senses are benumbed by competing media screaming for our attention, the rad… Read More
2017-01-03 09:01
There’s nothing more frightening
than a man named Bob. Not a day
goes by when I don’t think, Bob is
coming to get me. Not a motion passes
before my tired eyes when I don’t… Read More
2016-12-24 08:04
Whenever I see the word Joy
stitched into the bright red
cloth of the Christmas towel
hanging in the bathroom
what I hear in my head
isn’t “Joy to the World,”
a song I lea… Read More
2016-12-20 21:04
It’s been a long time since the word Catholic, much less Christian, could be used to describe my approach toward spirituality. Yet, at this time of year, I do get this feeling that I… Read More
2016-12-16 07:26
You can’t be more avant garde than to tear down
the hierarchy of those who seek to limit you.
Playing “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”
full blast from my mini-van te… Read More
2016-12-11 08:52
I just realized that when you play
Reinbert de Leeuw’s performances
of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedies
numbers 2 and 3 at the same time
you get a fourth Gymnopedie
that sounds like the… Read More
2016-12-08 07:00
For everyone who has ever contemplated self-destruction,
self-immolation, or such anger
as to perpetuate century upon century
of war and strife,
consider the prospects that arrive
with the… Read More
2016-12-07 18:52
I’m thinking that someone else
has probably already written a poem
about building a wall
around Donald Trump’s penis
so I’m going to write about
the leaves this fall;
the… Read More
2016-12-06 08:33
This is a poem for all the nobodies
who got fucked over
by someone with a name
and became ghosts,
who once held blueberries and radishes
and tiny animals in their hands
and now find that th… Read More
2016-11-30 08:10
At the doctor’s office in Charlottesville, Virginia
to investigate the possible reasons
for my ten-month-old son’s large head,
the doctor measures my own
and informs me that my… Read More
2016-11-27 20:00
I must have been ten or eleven,
I’m not sure which,
and it must have been
the summer after the summer of love,
when I looked through a dresser drawer
in the basement stuffed
with some… Read More
2016-11-24 01:11
I. [Balloon]
I’m too long-winded to attempt a haiku that explains my feelings.
My song is called 99 ass balloons and is sung by Udo Kier.
Haikus should have clear imagery, otherwise t… Read More
2016-11-20 08:46
The last time I was charmed
simply by someone’s good looks
it was something like 1963.
I was in my mother’s sewing room,
playing on the floor next to
one woman or another
who wa… Read More
2016-11-15 05:48
Miles Davis was a skinny motherfucker, a bitter and often mean man.
I have always been a little on the stocky side and while often bitter,
I am rarely ever mean.
Miles Davis was a master tr… Read More
2016-11-12 07:41
If I were the war on drugs
would I look upon you with great suspicion
when you step on the subway train
on your way to work in the morning;
would I eye you sideways
when you sit in the coff… Read More
2016-11-06 08:59
Lately I’ve been thinking about Orange. What would it
have been like living in a place called Orange? Could I
have ever said, “Hi, my name is Randolph Scott, and I’m
an ac… Read More
2016-11-02 16:11
What if the purpose of evolution
isn’t to move us
in a straight line
but in a circle,
so that we get better
and better until we reach
the far end of the parking lot,
after which we st… Read More
2016-10-27 15:11
In the photo on the back of an edition
of his selected poems published in England,
Charles Simic looks a lot
like someone I used to see at the
downtown strip joints in the early 80s,
a guy… Read More
2016-10-24 13:22
Sometimes when I think of Petula Clark
I think the planets have stopped spinning
around the sun. That all of space is still
as the universe takes a moment to catch
its breath and pay homage… Read More
2016-10-23 06:49
The stray cat appeared in our yard making
the most mournful sounds. Last year’s
dead leaves were caked on its black fur;
dirt covered its paws. I thought it was dying,
but my daughter… Read More
2016-10-22 08:00
Remember all ye tedious millionaires the bent
honeysuckle whose white flowers bloom in the
late spring. Remember the burden of the books
you burn, the smoke that stains the glass you
look t… Read More
2016-10-15 08:07
Our premiere anatomist draws themes
as sharp as razors, has managed to stay
perfectly balanced, in full possession of
her craft. Each one is a gift, a rich visual
palette over sharp portrai… Read More
2016-10-14 05:46
If I could write pretty words about trees
I would note how green is a color with
a subtle glow best admired in the vanishing
hour before dusk. As you watch it, it looks back,
looks through… Read More
2016-10-11 06:05
I am writing this because my world is
being made uninhabitable by assholes.
I am standing still on a manhole cover
that’s about to explode upward as the
shoreline moves closer to my f… Read More
2016-10-09 18:56
My favorite thing to say in German
is “meine Rundfunkapparat ist kaput”
while in English my favorite phrase
is “I love you” which I say all the time to
my wife and k… Read More
2016-10-07 07:25
This is my portrait of America in plastic surgery procedures:
a new nose for George Washington.
America, behold his new nose!
The Grand Canyon, too deep—
who can understand its great… Read More
2016-10-05 06:24
I can’t imagine how boring I’d be now
if I’d always been the best person
I could be instead of operating
at fifty percent of my capacity
or sometimes even less.
I can&rsqu&helli…Read More
2016-09-29 20:09
I have in my possession volume 2, no. 6,
of the Kurdistan Quarterly, a journal thrown at me
by Giles Warner, vice president of the Kurdistan Freedom
Foundation, when, during a job interview… Read More
2016-09-23 07:27
My favorite bartender in New York
wasn’t much for giving out free rounds
and if you drank all night and ended up
getting a single free drink thrown your
way you were having a pretty g… Read More
2016-09-20 05:43
Does Van Morrison drive and if he does
I wonder if he drives a mini-van?
I started driving a mini-van in 2005
when we thought we were going to have
another baby, but we didn’t have th… Read More
2016-09-16 06:18
Tonight the check-out clerk
at the Martin’s food market
who looks like Jimmie Dale Gilmore
at around the time
of the Spinning Around the Sun album
replied to my “Good, how are y… Read More
2016-09-07 04:04
I always knew this was
where the instructions
were written;
it always felt
like a fever
when an illness was finally
lifting;
it’s just that
I was never sure
what the exact words were… Read More
2016-09-03 07:17
Whenever I think about fatherhood
I can’t help thinking that
each time I’ve become father to a child
I’ve managed to dodge that really hard
part at the beginning. If
I wer… Read More
2016-08-29 07:34
It was the summer of 1996. I’d just gotten the money from my discrimination settlement, so Heather and I celebrated by meeting in the great city of Chicago when her two week residency… Read More
2016-08-27 07:11
When I was a child
considering the hierarchy
of superheroes
I wondered why
when they got to Superman
all the other creators
of superheroes
didn’t just quit.
After all,
except for the… Read More
2016-08-17 18:11
More than twenty years later I still have
the slight trace of a brown burn mark
on my left forearm from when I was
at the stove in my lower east side apartment
holding with a fork in my rig… Read More
2016-08-09 05:23
One night at the Nuyorican I opened the bathroom
door to see a poet whose work I didn’t like
standing bare-assed, ass side facing me, while her left hand
was moving downward mid-wipe… Read More
2016-08-05 06:37
Walking out for lunch
with my family
in my old city neighborhood
the woman coming our way
using a black umbrella
as a parasol on this warm sunny day
is the mother of Henry,
the kid who grew… Read More
2016-08-01 16:20
Unlike a lot of other men who are now parents, I don’t consider the first time I changed a diaper to be the point at which I stopped being cool. And no, it wasn’t when there wer… Read More
2016-07-31 04:16
I always loved the way my mother
said the word ‘macapuno,’ which
is a kind of coconut that’s sweeter
and fleshier than the regular kind.
One time after she’d had her… Read More
2016-07-21 05:43
I’m sitting at a table in a nightclub during
the disco 70s with my friend Paul and his
older friend who’s also named Paul who’s about
five feet tall and is out with a woma… Read More
2016-07-20 07:45
On our last night on Ocracoke Island we were all pretty tired, but my daughter wanted to watch a movie. My wife recalled that there was some Juliette Binoche film that was good and might be… Read More
2016-07-09 05:55
I could be mistaken but
something tells me
that the good ole boy,
sitting up high in
his pickup truck
and smiling smugly
as he watches
a cop hold a young
black man’s face
to the aspha… Read More
2016-07-07 13:31
Back then sausage, eggs, hash browns, and toast cost
under three dollars for breakfast any time of day
at Lesko’s on Avenue A. Cigarettes cost me about two
dollars a pack. A six pack… Read More
2016-06-30 05:53
On a slightly rainy
Tuesday evening
in the valley
I drive with the windows
rolled down
and the stereo
turned up loud
to Ella Fitzgerald
singing “Blue Skies”
as I look up
toward… Read More
2016-06-23 13:00
These past two weeks
whenever I walk by the magazine rack
at the supermarket
down the street
I’ve noticed that
there’s always a magazine
that’s been flipped over
so the ad… Read More
2016-06-22 07:08
The Burger King down the block
is open during renovations
and the man who
got shot several times
at his house a few streets away
on Saturday night
survived
and is in stable
condition at a h… Read More
2016-06-17 05:37
It takes great effort
on my part,
walking the colorful,
tree-lined streets
on these fresh
and beautiful
new spring days,
not to turn to
the next person
coming my way,
or crossing my path
wi… Read More
2016-06-14 16:43
When the time is right—which means after
the leaves have begun to sprout into dark budding leaves
and the ocean currents flow more warmly northward
like perfect storms from southern i… Read More
2016-06-10 07:45
When they were savages
they had minds
full of rivers and mountains
that could plant bold ideas
like seeds and speech.
We, in the meantime,
hunted for heads down by the river,
wearing our en… Read More
2016-06-06 04:27
When my five year old son
painting with water colors
on the scratched-up table
in the kitchen of our
hundred year old house
suddenly takes his
brush over to the stove
and explains that
he&r&helli…Read More
2016-05-30 15:39
If we were walking over the Brooklyn Bridge,
the voice I’d be hearing might be Lena Horne’s,
but we’re walking over the Key Bridge
from Virginia into DC so the voice is pr… Read More
2016-05-24 16:20
I can’t remember the last time I went to the movies alone. This, I suppose, is a sign of how normal my life is now. Indeed, if you were to see a man my age at the movies by himself, y… Read More
2016-05-20 07:49
Earlier that evening, the overture to Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie came on the car stereo as I took Maggie to her theater class. Over the years, The Thieving Magpie has brought diffe… Read More
2016-05-18 07:48
I imagine the gardens overgrown with mosses
and the once brightly colored butterflies now
drab as the dirty air and drone of traffic idling
on massive highways and never moving
and never ma… Read More
2016-05-14 06:13
I was getting tired and was annoyed with all the traffic after hitting the outskirts of Richmond right around rush hour. I also had to keep reminding myself this was Wednesday not Saturday… Read More
2016-05-12 05:11
When I walked with my friend Oscar
to get his best dress shirt dry-cleaned
for our friend’s wedding
it was only the third time I’d ever been
to New York City.
We walked into the… Read More
2016-05-10 06:44
Back then my big splurge was to get the combination special
egg foo young, egg roll, and pork fried rice
not at the carryout a few doors down from me on Avenue B
for $2.35
but at the one on… Read More
2016-05-08 06:06
When I was a child I’d pull the white hairs
from my mother’s head. It was a chore
like any other—like making my bed
in the morning, folding my clothes at night.
I was neat… Read More
2016-05-05 15:35
Looking for shirts at the Good Will store
I paused and examined a photograph
of Al Pacino from the movie Scarface
that was printed on an XXL tall sized tee shirt,
and just as I’m hold… Read More
2016-04-30 06:30
Right after we picked up Maggie up from school at 5:30 that afternoon on her return from a school trip, we drove out to the soccerplex for her last regular season game. We told her that if… Read More
2016-04-28 17:01
The last time I went to Coney Island
I was still a child in so many ways,
melting slowly like glaciers, moving swiftly
like frames of film past the arc lamp.
Both my parents alive, no child… Read More
2016-04-22 15:03
Driving this winding
country road I
half expect
that when I get past
the next curve
in the woods and
enter a clearing
I’ll see Godzilla,
towering over the horizon,
his eyes blazing,
f… Read More
2016-04-20 07:06
On the same day in August 1967
when American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell
was killed, my younger
brother was born:
one bad guy down, one good guy up and running.
Four days late… Read More
2016-04-13 06:50
I first saw this stretch of road a little over eight years ago when we began thinking about moving out here to the valley. On that day, we had first driven out to Martinsburg, West Virginia… Read More
2016-04-09 05:57
This afternoon right before
my daughter stands up to play
at her piano recital,
I turn to her and say,
“If you’re nervous just pretend
that everyone in the audience has
six fing… Read More
2016-04-05 06:47
Walking the creaky wooden
floorboards on the second
floor of the museum
at the old jail downtown,
we’re taken back in time
to the early 1800s.
I think how the sky must
have looked big… Read More
2016-04-03 05:49
Driving home with
my wife, my daughter, my son
on a Sunday
from the house in
the big city where I grew
up to the house
in the small
town where we live;
thankful to my
mother and father for… Read More
2016-04-02 06:13
I’m not sure who took this picture of my mother, though it was probably my father. He was, for a time, interested in photography, especially when he first arrived here in the states… Read More
2016-04-01 07:00
Forty years ago during Easter Sunday dinner
when our family friend advises us during
a discussion of the state of things, “Never
trust the police,” I look at his white skin,
his… Read More
2016-03-30 07:43
Among the things I never
could have imagined
back in the day
at a Lower East Side
bar while hearing
some song called
“Heart-Shaped Box”
pulsing out of
the speakers
was that over… Read More
2016-03-26 01:15
These warm sunny afternoons
I remember how my father would sit
on the front porch for minutes, maybe hours,
saying it was a good day to have a sunbath.
It was never about going out to sunba… Read More
2016-03-24 05:59
When my daughter says she has a presentation to do
for her junior high school science class on how the
chicken may be a direct descendent of the dinosaur
I tell her I have just the thing fo… Read More
2016-03-21 06:29
At a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, in February, 2016, fascist/racist presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated the apocryphal story that in the Philippines, more than a centu… Read More
2016-03-19 16:14
It was one of those evenings when
the social worker didn’t show up
and I had a waiting room full of
poor and homeless people needing
food or food stamps or money or
sometimes just cig… Read More
2016-03-16 07:13
At the IHOP in Winchester one night, we were paying for our dinner when the young woman behind the cash register noticed that my young son was looking at something behind her.
“Oh, ar… Read More
2016-03-14 15:51
Because everyone in this house is
asleep and I am awake, I am the misfit,
chained to consciousness like a smoker
chained to tobacco, lifting cigarette to mouth
to drag the smoke in, letting… Read More
2016-03-12 07:26
Yesterday on the parking lot of the Martin’s grocery store here in Front Royal a woman nearly ran me over after I dropped off my shopping cart in the corral. I can’t say for sur… Read More
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