The Show Must Go On

Baby, although I chose this lonely life
It seems it's strangling me now
All the wild men, big cigars, gigantic cars
They're all laughing at me now

When I was a teenager I saw this boy from England who dressed like a circus clown, he was a space age Pagliacci and his voice cracked when he sang about the circus. It was something you remembered for a long time.

New Years Eve 2025. All my favorite DJ's on Twitch wished everyone a Happy New Year, getting into the festive spirit which unfortunately escaped me. Donald Trump cheated his way to victory the month before, and any feelings of hope for a brilliant future were dead. The country was going to return to a malaise of hatred, idiocy and xenophobia. I lived in a country that always insisted on doing the wrong thing. The year to come held no promises, ominous threats but no promises.

New Years Day 2025. I celebrated the coming of the new year with a drive down Pacific Coast Highway. Driving by the scenic ocean side was deliciously breathtaking, sun kissing the blue sky and beaming, gleaming against the waves of the sea as I drove down the road. It looked heavenly.

Speeding past the movie star restaurants, post-war motels haunted by John Garfield's ghost, seafood shacks ("All the shrimp you can eat-Best clam chowder in town"), Pepperdine College, The Getty Villa (where I once worked), surf shops, and beautiful gated estates that ran for acres.

Then there were all the beaches of Malibu, Will Rogers State, Dan Blocker Memorial, Topanga Beach, dumpy Malibu Lagoon State Beach and Malibu Bluffs Park with its skateboard ramps and snakes slithering all around the trails. And leave the gophers alone. A little further down there was endless Zuma Beach, followed by rustic Lechuza Beach. As soon as I reached Sea Level Drive I'd turn around and head back to the big city.

Oh, I've been used, ooh-hoo
I've been taken for a fool, oh, what a fool
I broke all the rules, ooh, yeah
But I won't let the show go on

Monday, January 6th. My primary sent me to Cedars-Sinai Hematology-Oncology Center in Beverly Hills. He identified an alarming surplus of white blood cells in my system and set an appointment for me to go in for further testing.

Tuesday, January 7th. Los Angeles was stricken by Santa Ana winds blowing at 100 miles an hour. Whenever we get them brush fires are always inevitable. Winds were blowing at such a powerful speed you could feel the propulsion of the wind nearly blowing you down. When the Santa Anas blow this hard power cables collapse from their towers and ignite dry brush. It happens.

During my lunch break at the medical center where I worked I looked out the window to see big black plumes of smoke billowing out from the hills a few miles away. It looked perilously close, but we stayed inside. I went home and watched the destruction on television. Everything that I had just seen a few days ago, my private paradise, had been destroyed.

Baby, there's an enormous crowd of people
And they're all after my blood
I wish maybe they'd tear down the walls of this theater
And let me out, let me out

Wednesday, January 8th. The medical center I work at is in Brentwood, a few miles away from Pacific Palisades, so we've been advised to stay home that day. Staying home wasn't much safer, though, because parts of the Hollywood Hills were also on fire. Smoke from that fire wafted into my apartment, and I woke up coughing up tons of phlegm for an hour. I also had non-stop dysentery that lasted for 24 hours. Ashes fell all over my car like toxic snowflakes.

The phone rang and it was my doctor from Cedars-Sinai Hematology. My blood test results came back and they tested positive for CLL, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.

The news of having leukemia came as a surprise to me because I've only felt a few benign symptoms, just fatigue and shortness of breath. I didn't have any large lymph nodes on my body and my spleen wasn't swollen, which are the more serious symptoms. My doctor told me that CLL is a very slow-moving cancer, meaning that serious symptoms may take years to take effect, so at the present time treatment wasn't necessary.

"In fact, based on your previous blood tests you've had it for years but nobody tested you for it until now", he said.

American Cancer Society: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) can rarely be cured. Still, most people live with the disease for many years. Some people with CLL can live for years without treatment, but over time, most will need to be treated.

B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) develops from a type of white blood cell called B cells. It progresses slowly, usually affecting older adults.

CLL may not cause any symptoms for years. When symptoms do occur, they may include swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, and easy bruising.

Well...what can a poor boy do? My Altadena and Malibu friends have lost their homes in the fire, so I'll kick down some funds via GoFundMe, LA Regional Food Bank and other charities that'll help them. It'll be a good distraction from the fire inside me.

Oh, I've been so blind, yeah
I've wasted time, wasted, wasted oh, so much time
Walking on the wire, high wire, yeah
But I won't let the show go on

The Show Must Go On, written by Leo Sayer & David Courtney, copyright 1973 Silverbird Songs Ltd/Queen Music Ltd.

Pets With Leaves

One day I was on Instagram looking at one of those beautiful apartment accounts, thinking how my apartment fell short of all those glamorous digs I was looking at. These homes didn’t look expensive at all; that wasn’t their edge. They just had comfortable details my place lacked. Let’s forget the ever-present candles; I never trusted that whole candles in the bedroom gimmick. It’s dangerous as hell. I’ve heard enough horror stories to stay out of that nonsense.

The string lights I already had going on, fine, but what I noticed was an abundance of cushy rugs and lush green plants. Eureka, I needed more of both, in spades. I purchased a few awesome rugs from Rugs.com, which made my place look a thousand times better. I was getting sick of that hardwood floor look, anyway. I didn’t want my flat to look like a Richard Hell movie from the Seventies anymore. But what about plants?

Buying flowers was one thing; change the water every two days and fingers crossed they won’t die on you in less than a week. You’ll eventually throw them in the bin, and that’s that. But plants are a whole different story.

Owning plants is not unlike having pets. No, they don’t lick your feet or claw up the couch, but they’re living, breathing creatures who just as passionately demand your attention. Every species of flora has its own personality, needs, and yes, moods that require just as much attention as your squalling pooch. In their own way, plants are just as reactive to their environment as any living animal. They just express it differently.

Here’s the leafy pets I’ve acquired so far:

UMBRELLA PLANT

The Schefflera plant is sometimes referred to as The Umbrella Plant for its fanned-out leaves. I was instantly attracted to its lemon-lime markings. This plant only needs watering every 10 days (!). If you overdo it the leaves go brown and fall off. The Schefflera is toxic to pets and even slightly toxic to people, too.

RATTESNAKE PRAYING PLANT

The Calathea Lancifolia is a striped tropical plant originally from Brazil and doesn’t like a lot if sun, so it actually prefers sitting in a dark corner. I have it sitting around my dark alcove, and it’s flourishing. It’s called a Praying Plant because the leaves fan out in the daytime, but at night close up like hands in a praying position. By 4 AM they open up again, so my guy must be living by Eastern Standard Time.

SWISS CHEESE PLANT

I like the Swiss Cheese Plants’ real name, the Monsterra. This is one of those plants that grow long, clinging vines that wind all over the place. It’s called the Swiss Cheese Plant because the leaves have cool holes in them, giving it a very mod look. This is another plant that likes indirect light, so don’t stick it in front of a window, where the sun will scorch its leaves. Didn’t know plants had such severe cases of sunburn, but it’s the emes.

POLKA DOT PLANT

The Hypoestes plant is also known as the Polka Dot Plant or the Measles Plant. This plant is generally considered to be the ultimate drama queen of all houseplants. When it wants to be watered it literally plays dead in front of you, stems and leaves all wilted and drooping down. Give it some water and within an hour it snaps back to life! The price we pay for a little home décor glamour. Needless to say I’ve named her Audrey Junior, the obnoxiously demanding plant from Little Shop Of Horrors.

THE CROTON PETRA PLANT

A stunner, a beauty, really, with its green leaves accented by yellow, orange, and red streaks, like Todd Rundgren circa 1974. This is a very low-maintenance plant (so refreshing after the drama of Miss Polka Dot Plant), and the only liability are spotting on the leaves. Like the other plants in this lot it comes from the Tropics and is highly toxic to your animal friends. Make no mistake, this critter can be moody, too, as one website advised, “Croton Petras can be sensitive to changes in their environment, like moving or repotting, and may react by dropping leaves”.

Garden gear I currently use:
1. Garden Gro Black Gold All-Purpose Potting Mix
2. Schultz 10-15-10 Plant Food
3. Prime Life Distilled Water (1 gallon) – tap water is harmful to houseplants, so give them distilled water
4. Garden Trowel
5. Spray bottle for misting leaves. I also use it for watering them rather than drowning them with a pitcher

So, there you have it, my five pets with leaves. To be continued, I’ve got my eye on even more tropical foliage. Have I even mentioned that I’ve been breathing a lot easier since these guys came over? My congestion’s almost completely gone, and these bad kids tie everything in the place together, to boot. Happy Earth Day!

Scorpio Rising poetry album OUT NOW

Spring is here, and a young man’s fancy turns to poetry, whether it be in the form of a chapbook or a full-blown poetry album, like my new release Scorpio Rising. Named after the Kenneth Anger film (as well as dedicated to his memory), Scorpio Rising is my third poetry release and is out now for your listening pleasure.

The themes on the album run the gamut from inner city ghetto stories (Killed For His Clothes, Skyscraper Soul, Sidewalk Camp) to the occult (Bottle Tree Garden, Smudge, Sun In Scorpio) to my favorite standby, noir (Drugs And The Woman, High Speed Chase, Cocktails Cigarettes Birth Control). Yes, the femmes fatales get their due…and then some.

My noir poems continue the thread started from my previously published noir novels, these tracks can even be heard as tiny noir plot outlines.

The occult poetry is influenced by my long-lived fascination with Hollywood jazz age gothic dalliances in cults, rituals, and fetish items. Many remaining art deco homes in Pasadena and the Hollywood Hills still court the legend of being haunted by spirits. Even The Angelus Temple, a Christian showplace for Aimee Semple McPherson is known for harboring its share of ghosts.

What distinguishes this release from the others is the introduction of the Irish bouzouki on several tracks, it being a folk instrument normally used as backup accompaniment to guitars, but here used as a lead instrument.

It’s an instrument with four sets of double strings like a mandolin and tuned to a G-D-A-D, not the accustomed G-D-A-E setting. Because of this tuning one gets a droney, exotic Eastern sound. I call the tuning Gee, Dad…hoho.

I also went for a bit of drum and bass/jungle music rhythm on Cockfight and to a lesser degree on High Speed Chase, charging up the BPMs (Beats Per Minute) into the 275-300 setting, giving both tracks a manic, frantic pace to match my prose.

Here is the track listing:
1. Dogs Keep Barking
2. Killed For His Clothes
3. Skyscraper Soul
4. Cockfight
5. Drugs And The Woman
6. Cocktails Cigarettes Birth Control
7. Smudge
8. The Butcher’s Beautiful Daughter
9. Sidewalk Camp
10. Bottle Tree Garden
11. Angel Feathers
12. Sun In Scorpio
13. High Speed Chase

As usual there’s the dichotomy between electronic and folk music tracks, and in neofolk style they even converge more than a few times. If you like Current 93 or Death In June then this will strike a familiar vibe.

I’m very proud of my new collection of sonnets – sonic sonnets, if you will. Scorpio Rising is highly accessible in CD, download or streaming formats. If you want the CD it can be bought at CD Baby, Discogs, Amazon, or you can DM me for a personal copy.

Downloads can be bought at Apple Music or Amazon Music, where they can also be streamed. If you’d rather hear streams you can check it out at You Tube, Spotify, Pandora, or Deezer, where you can also stream my previous albums, Minstrels Anonymous and Sea Level Drive.

Going Global

I have, for all intents and purposes, gone global. What does this mean? Well, I made a distribution deal where my poetry albums Minstrels Anonymous and Sea Level Drive can now be streamed all over the world on every streaming service imaginable: roll call, Spotify, Pandora, You Tube, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and even the dreaded Tik Tok, home of the anime nymphets. Don’t see them shaking it to Halloween Birthday, but I’ve been wrong before.

In addition, both hard media CDs are now issued on my imprint Jinx Records in lavish glossy Digipak editions, which can be bought either on Amazon, CD Baby or on eBay. Copies can also be purchased at a reduced price if you DM me and pay via Paypal or Venmo funds. What this means is that neither record will be streamed on SoundCloud or available for purchase via Bandcamp.

In other news I’m hard at work on the next album, tentatively scheduled for November release. I’ve also pondered the possibility of doing a few spoken word shows. Needless to say, records will be available there. And sooner or later, probably later, I will finally complete my new novel. Dammit.

High Speed Chase

High Speed Chase

YOU CAN’T CATCH ME
YOU CAN’T CATCH ME

Concrete canyoned freeway
flickering lights atop chiaroscuro blur
down the highway

SIRENS! CRYING! WAILING! LIKE BIRDS OF FIRE!

Pistons pumping petrol
the master cylinder moves & grooves & slips & slides
all aboard for crime time

YOU CAN’T CATCH ME
YOU CAN’T CATCH ME

Run baby run
GTA in the Chevrolet 10-80 in the Ferrari
high octane zebras running after the little GTO metal rodeo

THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW IS BROKEN-UNSPOKEN

Dashcam dashcam battering rams
bodycam bucking backfire a rebop
throttling down with wheels of fire

YOU CAN’T CATCH ME
YOU CAN’T CATCH ME

“We’ve had enough of this shit”
“Come on guys lay out the freeway nail strip”
and then it all crashed
crashed and smashed, the inevitable end