First Thought, Best Thought
Richard Modiano
The expression “first thought, best thought” is usually attributed to Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg indeed popularized the phrase but it was actually coined by his Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Further, there is ...
Episode 20 – Marc Olmsted
Bernard Meisler
Marc Olmsted in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Marc Olmsted with an original Brion Gysin dream machine
Marc Olmsted is a poet whose work has appeared in a million different places, he's a teacher, of both writing...
Michael Herr Once Asked Me…
Peter Marti
Michael Herr Once Asked Me...
“How do you write about Buddhism?” and looked around
where we stood, eating our ritual potluck rice and stew after
evening puja—our Teacher sat huddled with the other
Tibetans la...
Now light, now shadow
Naum Korzhavin
Naum Korzhavin was born in the Ukraine in 1925 and as a child witnessed the horrors of collectivization: “I remember the Kiev of 1933. People died right in the streets. . . We survived not only hunger. We got used to think...
Episode 18 – Rob Roberge
Bernard Meisler
Rob Roberge in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Rob Roberge
Rob Roberge, novelist (The Cost of Living, More Than They Could Chew, etc.), memoirist (Liar) and guitarist (The Urinals) and I spoke about everything from ...
20 Feet from Enlightenment: A Coming of Sage Story
J. Macon King
Never cease from exploring the other side of that ridge... even though you may get lost, or step on a rattlesnake. Here in California I sometimes feel a bit guilty for not being spiritually woo woo enough. I’m just a regul...
Episode 17 – Andrew Hubner
Bernard Meisler
Andrew (Drew) Hubner in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Andrew (Drew) Hubner, is the author of East of Bowery, We Pierce and American By Blood, and an educator at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. We spoke abo...
Blood and Soil, Trump and Incest
James Reich
Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933/1943) poses a question familiar to many Americans bewildered by the presidency of Donald Trump and the igneous qualities of his base. That the question was answered so l...
Episode 16 – Agneta Falk
Bernard Meisler
Agneta Falk in conversation with Bernard Meisler
Agneta Falk at Live Worms Gallery in North Beach, San Francisco.
I met poet and painter Agneta (Aggie) Falk at the Live Worms Gallery in San Francisco's North Beach neig...
Eye-Moon Crescent in Morocco
Valery Oisteanu
The eyelid of the moon just opened
The wind is never quiet in the desert
Dunes of no return, caravans not ever stopping
Where rain falls invisible leaving no trace
Shape shifting humps reveal a sphinx
At the edge of a...
Episode 15 – Steve Cannon
Bernard Meisler
Steve Cannon in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Professor Steve Cannon is the founder and publisher of Gathering of the Tribes magazine, and author of the filthiest book of all time, Groove, Bang and Jive Around - ...
Invisible Sharks
Mike Roberts
I spent a fair amount of time in the Gulf of Oman back in 1988. My shipmates and I were escorting Saddam Hussein’s oil tankers through the Straights of Hormuz, where the Iranians liked to take shots at them with their Silk...
from “A STRETCH IN PARADISE”
Yuko Otomo
Repeatedly tracing the footsteps of the past, I shed my lingering desire for its pastiche. I am almost there to be “here now.” As I keep opening & closing the window, I slowly step into “Paradise.” Now I have no reas...
Episode 14 – Ron Kolm
Bernard Meisler
Ron Kolm in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Ron Kolm is a poet (The Plastic Factory, Welcome to the Barbecue, and most recently,"A Change In the Weather," from Sensitive Skin Press), an editor of many books, includ...
THE GARDEN
Rebecca Weiner Tompkins
Once I pushed the tiller round
and round, breaking circles
concentric in the dry, knotty
ground. What we'd planted
before had gone to seasons
so long past, the weeds' hold
had returned, rooted
in clumps of gray rock
...
