mostly nonfiction and bakersfield news | September 11th, 2009
A MEDITATION ON 9/11
By Raindog
Excerpts from ROADKILL, an epic poem about a 2600 mile trip taken in September of 2001 during which the horrors of 9/11 took place. It begins with a drive through the known, up Highway 101 towards the San Francisco Bay area. (A note to the reader, this poem has no breaks/brakes, it rolls along [...]
Lucky And Joe
By Raindog
With all the news focusing on the poor lately (The Public Option, bans on people sleeping in their cars, homeless “camps” being cleaned out and so on), I thought I would tell you all about Lucky and Joe. So gather ’round kiddies and listen to this tale…
Joe was a homeless man about my age [...]
ANTS
You know it’s officially summer when the ants come for a visit and end up staying for a month or six. They invade your domicile and remind you on an hourly basis of what a lousy house keeper you are. They turn your kitchen into a playground; they flaunt your safeguards with their defiant picket [...]
Standin’ at the Crossroads
This week I shot my mouth off, but if I’d have had any sense I would have aimed a little better.
I’ve Been Down So Long
By RD Armstrong, AKA Raindog
I’ve been running a very small poetry press for over fourteen years. During that time I have, among other things, published a small monthly digest (eleven years), published a series of small poetry books (the Little Red Books – ten years and 59 titles and still counting), and also become a [...]
The Sisters Of Mercy
In the hospital, the bulk of the work gets done by the nurses and at Rancho there seemed to be an army of nurses and nurse’s aids scurrying about delivering trays of food (at least that’s what they called it), checking vitals, taking blood cultures, checking blood sugar, administering Insulin and changing IVs. That’s the [...]
A Short Rant
I’ve made many bad decisions in my time…I want to get that out of the way right from the get-go. As I look back, it’s been a long, sometimes desperate, sometimes lonely two lane, dotted with questionable choices. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there have been some hard fought wonderful moments and the occasional miracle [...]
Pavarotti On The Ward
As a first-timer, the surrealiality of life in the hospital was not lost on me. I had managed to go 57 years without a single overnight stay (with the exception of my debut back in Lafayette, Indiana in the winter of 1951). Now here I was flat on my back in a ward with three [...]
