What's this book about? Not into judgment. Anyway, not sure what anything is or is supposed to be. The book, a string of words that seek to instruct, to lead, to influence and reveal the galaxy of illusions. The moral of the story, the need to define leads us only to confine. ....What do I care about appearances? At my age, it doesn't matter. It's all passing. You die. I die. Appearances die. Simple. ....Defining self. Long winded. Oblivious. Unaware of the outside world of adults. Me, aware of sensation only, relating only to what I can touch and feel; biological all. ....Love the concept of...

The collection begins in high school, but ends somewhere in life. We begin with this: "Experiences as a Substitute Teacher. Public high school of higher education but never higher than God. Sitting there, the pedagogue without authority real. Never seeking the real authority. Taking attendance. Giving assignments. Sitting there. Looking up at the ceiling, Sitting there. Students sit. Ignore. Time goes. Sitting there, students. Past and present. Sitting there. Writing the poems of the displaced, poems of: The tired, The bored, The alienated, The dysfunctional. Alienated." Another excerpt:...

Born. Live. Die. That simple? No. You're born, an infant dependent for sustenance on others. Grow old, you are fed and clothed and cleaned and put to sleep. But not for all. Some die young. Others live long in decent health until the end. Not everyone grows feeble. Most do. Old age, hospitals, nurses, doctors, psychologists, social workers, rehab specialists, health aides, nursing homes, a panorama. Experts everywhere and a myriad of medical foot soldiers following. Bills everywhere for thousands spewed out. Confusion. The family. What to do? Who to trust? How to afford? Action Determination...

Our protagonist is Artie Shamash. The story explores his conflicted persona. How did that persona, his role identity develop? What is the mechanism involved that shapes each of us? The novel seeks to understand by through Artie Shamash's life. On its face, the book's a study of a man born into a world of secular Judaism and its assimilationist trend in America; we see the stress this creates. On another level, the theme is more universal, how each of our identities, our roles such as Christian, Jew, Muslim, American, Russian, German, etc., are nurtured. The novel spins counter-clockwise. It...

Mustapha Kemal Ataturk ('Father of the Turk'), is the myth that was a man that was claimed as a visionary who became a warrior, leader and statesmen. The West knew him first as the commanding Ottoman officer in World War I's Battle of Gallipoli - a defeat for the Allies, and the Ottoman's greatest victory. We meet him next in 1919 as the Commander thwarting the victorious Allies' plan to partition the Turkish portion of the Ottoman Empire. He defeated them, removed the last Sultan, secured the territory of the Turkish national state, and became its first president in 1923. During his...

This poetry collection originates from a tour taken to the Central American country of Costa Rica. Instead of doing the usual tourist thing and snapping pictures, I carried a spiral notebook and ball point pen and jotted down impressions in poetic form as I went. The poems that resulted encompass people, places and things, though not intended as a detailed travelogue. What you will get is another perspective on the philosophy and business of travel, the types of tourists that participate in it, and the people that lead it.

Poems of all sorts begun over forty years ago in another century, in another country but on the same continent. Poems, word associations that are supposed to associate the physical and mental with the act of living in a world that is in a solar system that is part of a universe that we can never imagine. Poems, what types? Love poems with creamy insides, poems of longing with caramel outsiders; poems of regret basted in citric acid; poems of guilt punctured by rusted, metal daggers, poems of all sorts, yes. Here is just onme of them: Wind In Life, Pushing, Shoving & Breaking Bread In the air,...

Interesting collection for me. Autobiographical in nature, arising from the time I made the decision to switch careers from writer to full-time teacher. I was burned out and tired of the politics and resulting aggravation from a career that seemed to only bring criticism and lack of great financial rewards. I had a license to teach Social Studies earned years before. Why not switch careers But, making the switch was another story. The change made my head spin. Couldn't get hired as a regular teacher; when I applied, schools looked at me, a middle aged writer and wouldn't accept me in any...

A poetry collection about juvenile diabetes? Is that possible? Yes. The poems are about a family of sufferers, a mom, dad, and son who are dealing with the onslaught of a disease that takes no prisoners. It is an honest look at diabetes taken from the personal vantage point of a family so afflicted. Read the inner thoughts of a husband battling the disease since he was twenty-three and a son stricken at three and a half, and a wife having to deal with the consequences. The collection consists of sixty poems divided into three chapters: Chapter 1 deals with the disease from the husband's...

This is a collection of stories that span a great portion of my life, and in fact, show the changes in the way I think. What changes? I have gone from an stiff academic, literary type, devoted to high-mind ideals that provided my fiction with a bit of the bizarre and uncomfortable to today's writer who looks at the fundamentals and hypocrisy of life lived around me and comments on them in short story form. What has not changed, however, is the philosophy behind the fiction, the essential pursuit of the individual and the individual's right to exist outside the scope of the collective...