We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make. A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound, But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound, Totems of love and hate, black sorcery-stones.

I am tired of loving a foreign muse.

I died in my boots like a pioneer With the whole wide sky above me.

A phrase may come to me as I am walking, and, once I write it down in my journal, the rest of the poem will unravel from that catalyst.

At first I was blogging everyday, but I don't do that anymore. It varies; sometimes I'll write these little essays and other times political commentaries. Other times it'll just be new work that I'm doing.

Since graveyards are often built over older burial grounds, I assume Dolores Park was probably an Indian, (an Ohlone) graveyard before that. I think the fact that it has so many layers underneath the contemporary one intrigues me.

Ironically the blog has re-opened the essay as a good form for me. I like to look and make commentary! If I sense my essays are good, I try to resubmit to another place in pulp and several of them have been variously published in newspapers and magazines.