by Duane Poncy
Why, in the face of looming disaster, do scientists equivocate their language to the point that it becomes a falsehood by omission? Case in point: in an otherwise very informative article on Common Dreams, Brenda Ekwurzel, PhD., a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists concludes as follows:
A warmer planet means more [...]

American Cafe song number 13

American Cafe song number 12

American Cafe song number 11

American Cafe song number 10

American Cafe song number 9

American Cafe song number 8

American Cafe song number 7.

American Cafe song number 6

American Cafe song number 5

American Cafe song number 4

American Cafe song number 3

American Cafe song number 2

Here are some songs I originally recorded between 1990 and 1995. I added instrumentation from 2000 to 2005. Not very polished, but I think there are some good songs here. The American Cafe album contains 13 songs.
Here is the first song. This one is about the cafe open-mic scene.
American Cafe 6.8m
These songs [...]

a sweet little song I wrote back in 1989

Yesterday, I decided to take the afternoon off and go to a matinee. After some internal debate, I settled on Mirrormask. Even though this film had poor critical reviews, I had heard that the visuals were stunning and the people who have actually seen the movie liked it much better than the critics.
I wasn’t disappointed [...]

we rode into baghdad everything was calm
sarge said it looks like the enemies gone
gonna be a cakewalk, now what can go wrong?
        must have been a roadside bomb
        must have been a roadside bomb
karl, dick and george with smug satisfaction
came into town with their roadside attraction
doing their dog & pony, doing their dance & song
        I think it [...]

outside my window
spider dances
on her invisible thread
as I search
for the strings
        of information
which make sense of this world
but unlike the spider
I intrude
these strings are not mine
though I know what lies
        at their end
I enter the letters of the string
and each letter itself
is a string of ones
        [...]

she leans against a post
waiting for the downtown train
puffs her cigarette
in short nervous bursts
pushes a web of blonde hair
from her once-pretty
addiction-pocked face
pale blue eyes darting
furtively seek some escape
brush mine
for the briefest encounter
I feel her wet tears
against my cheekbone
taste their salt on my tongue
I want to say to her
we are all drowning, my dear
as if this [...]

our words matter
I know
you may think
this goes without saying
but you would be wrong
it must be said
again and again
        our words matter
                they are testament
to this collateral damage
        that is us
not to our neglected schools
or the hovels of the poor
or the bombed out [...]