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charlotte woke up crying. her father sits at the end of the couch.
his voice is soft, his breath is sweet. the party is quieting down, but there are still adults talking downstairs.
charlotte is seven. she dreamt that the house was on fire. More »
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cheever street, late afternoon. a muffled roar pulses from a garage near the end of the block. from outside the clamor is hard to recognize, but the roar demands attention. more than one neighbor watches their clock for the agreed upon curfew of six pm to arrive, when they can call to complain. why they ever agreed to tolerate the racket is a mystery to each. he used to be such a nice boy.
step inside and the volume increases but remains indistinct without earplugs, but when you see the source, it is instantly recognizable as an up tempo punk rock song. More »
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james lives on fenton street down the block from the empty lot that once held the 7-11. a firehouse is going up slowly.
he’s a teenager, but you’d only know it from the library books in his backpack: salinger, the autobiography of malcolm x, arthur c clarke. his looks would place him in elementary school, his placement test would see him in high school. but he’s trapped in the middle world, the boiling limbo of junior high. More »
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darkness attracts light.
the contrast can be thrilling.
but it’s always and forever darkness.
and over time, the light gets tired of doing all the work. More »
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a couple sits on opposite sides of a dinner table, food mostly gone. muted explosions and a pumping sountrack come up through the floor. no one speaks.
they’ve been together for many years, each shaped by lifelong contact with the other, a complex jigsaw of additions and subtractions. there are crack in hidden places, but neither wants to lift their eyes to see. More »
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twilight, late summer.
an almost sixth grader living in a small house out past dearborn.
he’s put his fidgets to bed, now he opens his mind. More »
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a beginning.
the spark before the flame. the inhale before the exhale. a moment’s peace, balanced on the edge of the unknown, and then tumbling forward, falling, plummeting down, eyes tight closed but catching glimpses all the same, flashes of recognition, but they’re gone too fast, like a torch thrown down a well, lighting everything but showing nothing. More »
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this is the first straight love song i have written in a long while. i usually steer clear, but i just finished a wonderful book called “brooklyn” by the irish novelist colm toibin, and it left me with a romantic longing that i needed to work out through music.
the song fills in a point of view that was not fleshed out in the book, the boyfriend who was left behind, stricken with worry that his love would never return. thus the song. More »
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couldn’t get an original done as i was cranking out this year’s holiday song. since i have nothing original to offer, figured i’d share the results of my work - a cover of a cover, featuring my son and daughter on vocals. we’ve been doing this for the past six or seven years, and they never disappoint.
just as a side note, this song marks the intersection of two of my favorites: david bowie’s “hunky dory,” the album this version apes, and paul williams, who wrote the lyric. More »
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