The Advocate

Latest draft. Beware: it gets dark in my head. These are my digressions: the pseudo-pop psychobabble of 22 year-old hipster chicks persuading collar-popped bros to trade in those polos and yolos and lokos for PBR mustachioed fixie apropo cutoff jorts made DIY for $88.99 at the cookie-cutter knock-off conveniently located 'round the corner from their gentrified ghetto-fab $4,000 per month apartment, complete with homeless cranks passed-out beneath window-barred taquerias serving those highwasted fashionistas (and their exposed underbuttcheeks) because this is cultural appropriation faster than you can say "National Geographic" These are my digressions: the flowetry of Jared Washington who the prison warden calls Tyrone Farraconvict he missed a stop & frisk but not the DWB down International Blvd so now he's got a nickel that turned into a dime for possession of long since legalized Mary Jane while Mr. Corporate So&So's bleach blonde spawn pleads affluenza f

(Sophia, Mother Of The Angels Art by Gustav Dore) These two NDE's (near-death experience) happened during a single long weekend trip to Slab City, near Southern California's Salton Sea, a scant couple dozen miles from the international border. It's a place of meth-heads, landed hobos, migrant workers, and burning deserted wasteland flanked by military bombing sites and toxic waste dumps. The air always smells vaguely of rot, courtesy of the Sea's ever-growing decayed population of fish exposed regularly to 120 degree heat. My friend G-Money and I were going to conduct anthropological research on the squatter's village in the Slabs for a future project. G-Money was the designated photographer, while I did interviews and took a massive amount of notes. We expected an easy few days writing, talking, and photographing. What we got was a hellish, nearly suicidal not-quite-a-vacation. But before I jump into the happenstance of events that led to mine and m

So, my latest collection has FINALLY arrived for your reading pleasure! Available in Kindle, NOOK, Apple ibook, and other ebook formats, as well as traditional softcover from Amazon , Barnes & Noble , and Ingram. This collection has been a loooooong time in the making -- a lot of writing, editing, rewriting, reediting, scrapping, emotional upheavals, existential crises, and cash-strapped budgeting. But, after almost eight years of hard work, it's done. (Seriously, I could give GRRM a run for his money when it comes to the wait between books.) I certainly could never have done it without the support of my wife, my brother, and a lot of inspirational artists I know in real life as well as not in real life, including/especially Melanie Matranga who contributed the cartoon artwork for this collection. I also owe a big thanks to Amber, and all of the Dog Ear Publishing team who helped me turn this collection into the electronically as well as physically bound reality before y

Status update! Sad Bastard Poetry, my latest collection has completed it's proof pass phase and is approved for printing with Dog Ear Publishing!! I anticipate having a solid release date for ya'll soon. In the meantime, here's another sample of the original artwork I had commissioned for this collection, as well as the back-cover description to give you an idea of what you're in for: "Since the very first quasi-mythological scratchings of the written word, and probably long before it, people have been sharing stories of the tragicomic concept known as Love. Those heights, and depths, were plundered no more infamously than by a writer named Billy the Bard, also known as Willy the Shake and Old Bill (unless you count that incestuous paedophile E.A. Poe). His gratuitous impact sparked the name for this collection in which you will read about the grotesque, photographic, melancholic, eviscerating, and hilarious faces of Love in all its forms, from romantic and sweet,