Let me tell you where it came from. The day was late on – in a tired, thin shoed, tired foot, tired sun kind of way. A tired thin sky straining to keep within it the ancient sun beating down on the ancient grounds. Nicaragua was old and it was new and hot and busy and cluttered like some kitchen drawer in an old beat flat. It was useful, and loved but messy...

Let me tell you what having nothing means to me. To artists, ideas are currency. Inspiration, quite literally, equals dollars. Honest art is bankable. Ideas are fuel for an artist’s idle mind. Artists run on ideas the same way nine-to-fivers run on food and watered-down coffee. Without ideas, artists don’t get out of bed. Without ideas, they meander about like...

  This is what I have learned: every man loses. He loses his baby teeth. He loses his toys. He may lose his first love, he will probably lose his virginity. He will surely lose his temper more times than one, his job, his wallet and his keys. He will lose control. He will lose sleep. He will make bets and will lose some of them. After a while, he may lose his...

  The glassy blue water blended itself into the powdery sky creating, as it were, no visible horizon. Instead, there was but one uniform sheet held up in front of us as we motored through choppy, tropical waters in a small fiberglass skiff. We were off the coast of the Azuero peninsula, in the Gulf of Panamá, trolling for yellow-fin tuna at break-neck speeds....

The blue of the night sky. The drip, drip, drip from an ancient eaves trough. The yellow glare of cracked lights upon the worn, greedy, jumbled stones. Walls of buildings slant and slope like drunken men stumbling through drunken streets a thousand years ago. I blend in more with the streets than I do with the men. I am more rock than blood. The whole place shines,...

As a writer I find myself eternally discussing my writing, and not so much the writing itself but the process of creating it. And this process, no doubt unlike any other known to civilized man, is one of myth, superstition, delusion and creativity, all of which I willingly accede to on a daily basis. There is just something about writing, and writers, that people...

Our man Johnny had been many a place, every city and every town, And held down almost every job a hustler can hold down. He’d gone through every state, north to south and east to west, But at this time he rode a train from Maine and certain arrest. I’m not gonna tell you what he did or exactly how he did it, Just believe you me when I tell ya a crime he did...