Monthly Archives: December 2019
On New Year’s Eve, 2019
On New Year’s Eve
I always get weird.
I think about my failures,
for there’ve been more of those
than successes.
I think about my wife,
her gentle, enduring beauty,
and about my life
and how it’s going to unfold
in the next 20 or 30 years.
If I have that long.
I’m closer to death now
than I ever have been before.
So are you.
You know that, right?
Every little day
closer to the big sleep.
And when mine comes
I hope you’ll be at the party,
a big party,
for I will have raged against dying.
Raged hard, obstinate, and fiercely.
Hell, I’m fighting death now.
I mean, aren’t we all?
I’m fighting it all the time.
Because it’s going to be 2020 in about 12 hours,
and, you know, I have shit to do.
(Brisbane, California, November and December, 2019. See my other work here and here.)
“Tokyo Panic Stories” is free, and so am I
I’ve just completed my first photography book, a major (meaning ‘large’) work called “Tokyo Panic Stories” which presents Tokyo street life in pictures and words. And I want you to have a copy.
For free.
Seriously.
I’ve been working on this book for almost eight years, though prolonged bouts of writer’s block, chronic depression, alcoholism, self-doubt, massive anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (from a heart attack on New Year’s Eve, 2003), low self esteem, poor fashion sense, and general malaise. And now that it’s finally done, I want to share it with as many people as possible.
I’ve tried finding a publisher, but nobody’s interested. I don’t have the money to publish proper hardcopies of it myself, and I don’t want to wait until I do. So I’m just going to give it away. For now, at least.
- So download “Tokyo Panic Stories” here (52MB).
- And donate (if you’re so inclined) to my “getting ‘Tokyo Panic Stories’ printed” fund here.
I’d love to hear your comments or criticisms. You can unload on me about “Tokyo Panic Stories” by leaving a comment on this post, or by contacting me via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.
Thanks for having a look, and I hope you enjoy my book.
Christmas Eve, 2019
The blade runner time
didn’t start this year,
no flying cars,
but we have more artificial people than ever.
Many of them are running our supposed country,
for example.
So I’m sitting here, smoking,
waiting for the demons and imps,
the ones I usually hold at bay,
to come beating down
the walls of my mind
and demand their Christmas presents.
The bastards, they think
because they have a place in my head
they’ve earned a place in my head.
They think
it’s all about me,
but it’s all about them,
and how I’m going to try again
this year
to evict them by drowning them in eggnog.
(Brisbane, California, November and December, 2019. See my other work here and here.)