What Naked & Alive Is About

Everyone needs a mission statement. Here is mine and what I intend to honor by publishing here. Thoughts from a homeless mind. My poetic embrace exposed. Places and people I've experienced. Join me.

I think everyone needs to sharpen who they are during their life. As you go through life, you find and define your mission statement. What you are doing here with the 2.5 billion heartbeats you’ve got?

I’ve started collecting my writing here in order to engage in what Le Guin is suggesting - providing an alternative vision. You may agree or disagree but I think we both grow as readers and writers through this process of engagement. Civil society needs this. So thank you for reading and I welcome more readers to my daily journeys with my homeless mind. This is what I’m doing here.

Years ago, maybe 30 years or more ago, a friend, Drew Harrison and I used to hang out at Romani (Gypsy) bars in the newly independent Czechoslovakia and soak up life. He, learning to play his guitar and find his voice. Me, learning to unlearn and play my pen and find my voice. One night, he leaned over to me and said, “You have something to say.” I thank him for recognizing that and I still do have so much to say. It’s what I value and hope readers will value. Too much dross in the world, let’s take out the cork and speak about things of value. Join me.

I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember - and a thinker. I find the two labels synonymous. Particularly attractive to me, was and is, the mental activity of metaphorizing - seeing how one thing relates to other and essentially “connecting the dots”. But also, writing for me implies a moral imperative. I want people to be ashamed and wake up to the injustices they live with, among and beyond. But at bottom, I want to be a change agent, to be a conduit through words and ideas for others to see the possibilities of a better world, more community, more friendship, more equality, more fairness …

“But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centred than journalists, though less interested in money.”
― George Orwell, his essay - Why I Write

Advice To The Young Writer

Write slow enough so people enjoy the telling.
Write fast enough so people can see it swelling.

Ars Poetica

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

Milosz, Czeslaw