NBA Predictions, Poem, New Review

The last NBA playoff team to advance has been determined: The Atlanta Hawks. Cleveland should beat them four games to one.

The second round begins today with Dallas vs. Denver. This is a hard one to call, but based on superior inside strength I think Denver should be favored to move on and meet the Lakers, who should beat Houston in six.

In the East, contrary to most expectations, I think Boston will handle Orlando in six or seven and go on to be beaten by Cleveland in a tough series. Despite the loss of Kevin Garnett, they are still the champions, and under pressure they play like it.

It's a gray day here on the Mendocino coast, post-rain. It's great that we got our garden in during a sunny spell and that now it is getting a thorough watering from nature. I can't wait for our flowers to mature; many have started blooming. It gives me joy to stare out to the oceean over the colors of our garden.

I actually beat my wife and editor tonight at Scrabble. That was a feat I can get fat on. Oh, and she called me "fat" today. Like I didn't know it. I immediately comforted myself with extreme nachos. Actually I ate a salad.

Salads aren't bad if you put enough croutons and nuts on them to get some real calories up the pipe.

Yes, I need a diet.

No, I'm not smoking.

But do I have a poem?

Poems divide my readership to a certain extent; the literary folks read them while the mood-disordered folks sort of gloss over them, with the natural exception of mood-disordered literary types.

Oh, there's a new review out on my book at The Pedestal, a fine venue with an insightful reviewer who really gets the dark side of "Unexpected Light."

Here's a recent poem;


The Stranger

This morning I wept for no reason.
I've been pushing back the terror
like a stage curtain, one arm
holding back the darkness,
all that muffled noise of sets being moved,
sets for my future
when I don't want the present changed.
I wonder if my understudy
will look like me, act like me, suffer like me.
Of course not, he has his own life.
But isn't it my life, too?

Computers have a trash bin
for every stump of a poem we tried to save
although our grafts would never take.
But just to keep on writing, holding
the curtain at arm's length, is this not a life
terrorized? Shouldn't I welcome the stranger,
who comes robed in the future,
equally prepared for sadness or joy?

Perhaps at every moment of awakening
we generate a ghost, a dark companion
to drag the hero down to where
the dragon sits, whom we must overcome
by being still; to fight
would only seed another monster.
The one in the mirror is quite enough.


All for tonight.


At 1 Kilobunny,

CE