Work, eat and sleep. Those are the three ingredients that make up my life at present.

It’s not a complaint but a statement of fact. I’m up by 4 a.m. and out of the house thirty minutes later, heading for the radio station.

Two stops an hour to present, first the traffic report and then the weather report is not a hard job.

My wife and I have been carpooling out of necessity since my truck remains in the shop. It isn’t anyone’s fault, just an unfortunate run of “bad luck.”

I don’t believe in luck, so you know it’s grim when I resort to using it to describe that situation.

The truck is nearly a quarter of a century old. It has become hard to find parts when it needs repairing.

By 8 a.m., I finished, and not a minute later, I am out the door and heading home as I have two newspapers that need written articles. That entails about 4,000 words per edition.

Tuesdays are my deadline for the papers.

Thursdays and Fridays, I drive 45 miles to print the newspapers I write for and then deliver them, driving around 160 miles, in addition to my morning air shift. They are my long days.

By 7 p.m., my bedtime, I am as worn out as a Marine recruits toothbrush after being used to clean the head.

Something tells me that I might best return to writing fiction stories rather than churning out little diatribes about daily life. Not even poetry, or what supposedly passes for poetry in my mind, seems to be attractive to you.

It is a case of being caught between a rock and a hard place. I thought it would be easier to write as if I were doing a newspaper column, but my creativity has run into a mud-flat, where it has become bogged down and hard to move forward.

If you have ever ridden a bicycle along a riverbank or a lagoon or lake that is dependent on an outside source to keep it full, you know what I mean.

Until I figure out what next to do, I’ll keep pedaling like hell.

Overcast morning
listen to the croaking frog
under thorny bush

Whose arm is that? I think I know.
Its owner is quite sad, though.
It is a tale of woe,
They watch him frown. She cries hello.
He gives his arm a shake,
And sobs until the tears make.
The only other sound’s the break,
Distant cars and birds awake.
The arm is broken, swollen, and deep,
But he has promises to keep,
Until then, he shall not sleep.
He lies in bed with ducts that weep.
He rises from his bitter bed,
With thoughts of sadness in his head,
He rejoices at not being dead.
Facing the day with very little said.

There once was a lass who liked cake.
She said, “See the lovely bake!”
It was unusually flat,
Round but not very fat,
And ate it for goodness sake.

Pay attention to the Ukrainian fighters,
The Ukrainian leadership is the most cunning non-revolutionary master of all.
“Silence.” said the Ukrainian government,
And “silence” then “silence” again.

The empty passenger cars
joined by the rotting diner.
It too is empty, bare
and abandoned, desiccating
In hot summer sun.
It is of that one greater generation gone,
How I mourned the awful sight.
Down, down, down into the darkness of memory’s tunnel,
Quickly it goes by, obscured, forgotten, a shadow.
Pay attention to these rolling ruins,
They shall never come ’round again.
How soon we forget the one-time living.

a tiny roof, however hard it tries,
will always be overhead.
are you upset by how noisy it is?
does it tear you apart to see the tiny roof so warped?

many people walk
antiquated wood boardwalks
because of the slope

past the midday heat
the tiny black crickets cry
under old tin roof