Strokes on canvas come to life. Entangled particles of love explore. Earth orbits a dying sun— mere reflection and mortal strife. A villa with a view not easily ignored.   “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” Soil of Vine rich with trust. Proverb and parable collide— good deeds like talents buried turn…

“All the world’s a stage” where we play different roles and parts, “men and women merely players” (Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene VII, Lines 1-2). The stages of life (infancy, childhood, lover, soldier, judge, old age, and return to childhood “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,” line 28) are indeed…

It is well known that the Sandinistas were funded and trained in Cuba under Che Guevara and Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution as well as being indirectly funded by the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. This training commenced in the ’60s and the war officially ended on July 19, 1979, when Somoza’s army surrendered. The Sandinistas—led…

This poem was inspired by a poem written by my dear friend, Jerome Gastaldi, whom you may know as Bob Abbott. The last stanza starts . . . Some do not want to know. For the pain of knowing  Is the death Of their illusion. —Jerome Gastaldi Riding the train. A pane of glass is…

The first masked man provokes the captive: “Any last words before I separate your skull from your body?”

Nathanael grabs the spear. He shuts his left eye to place his prey in his cross-hairs, then releases the javelin with Odyssean accuracy. But the creature parries. The spear gets stuck in the heart of a warrior in a painting that the king had commissioned 15 years prior.

A woman coughs up blood in the ICU at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles where her husband stands next to her bed, rubbing her back, helping her expel pink phlegm into his handkerchief. At a table for two, at nearby diner, a deep voice punctuates the greasy air that smells of Saturday Night’s Special:…

We’ve wandered into the maze of the Minotaur— a chemical chimera that pursues synthetically manufactured routes   deep inside labyrinth folds in our skulls with no way out   where pleasure is the highest good.   “Made” we’re told “to conquer mountains that wait to be subdued.”   Our Maker— the Succor— sovereignly sneezes, washing…

Gentle Jesus. Born a King.   You laid in a foul feeding trough, appearing to many as humbly.   O Precious Prince,   you were hunted down and brutally beaten like a lamb led to the slaughter.   O Beautiful Savior,   you were so brave to die for me.   Prior to your divine…

Not your Precious Moments figurines

but sleep-deprived warriors

with holsters for concealer and coffee.

Quick on the draw to conceal lines on their face

and savor the passing whiff of a fresh pot percolate.