Scrambled brains with ketchup; moiling thoughts and that queasy/anxious/enervated-yet-energized feeling that I cannot seem to shake lately. Restless. It’s like a pale ghost of the old dark slit-my-wrists despair that I used to know so well. But yet not the same, not at all. I feel like if I could open the top of my head, my brain would be there, but not a brain. A gray, greasy cauldron of all that I am and am not but wish I was, bubbling now, the good and the bad roiling around, bobbing...

RUN! (copyright 2005 by Corydalus) So that Sunday night, after supper when it was a bit cooler, I went over to the playground on Croft Street, to see if maybe Roman could shoot some hoops, test out my new basketball, the official NBA Spalding. Roman lived right across the street from the playground. The schoolyard over at PS 4 was closer, but Reno and his thugs liked to hang out there; for safety’s sake, I had been avoiding Reno since school let out. I dribbled my way down Orient Street, lovi...

Rain: We need it to rain. Not the flash and bellow of thunderstorms, But just a drizzle, A soft mist, for a day and a night And a day. A comforter Of mottled gray-black clouds To hide beneath. Tiny silver droplets To run in thin, gleaming sheets And wash the dust from the faces Of great, sad buildings, Like a mother washes her child's tear-stained face. Rain, To wet the grass, And drip from the eaves of a million homes, Murmuring gently in the gutters and downspouts, Soothing us when we awake...