Barry Graham's Blog, page 62

A Specter at the Feast of St. Harvey

A Specter at the Feast of St. Harvey:

Harvey Milk, who was born on this day 84 years ago, has just been commemorated with a postage stamp. Here’s something I wrote on this day a couple years ago.

eye-protein:Powell’s discovery. That escalated quickly.

eye-protein:

Powell’s discovery. That escalated quickly.

A joke, or maybe not

An author and a publisher are wandering in a desert, dying of thirst. Then they find a flask full of water.

"Great!" the author says. "We have water to drink."

"Yes," the publisher says. "But can I piss in it first?"

Sensei, I read Kill Your Self and would like to ask you questions about Zen practice. May I email you?

Yes. My email address for practice questions is included in the author bio in the book.

Scary Decorations: The Comfort of Bad Things - Barry Graham

Scary Decorations: The Comfort of Bad Things - Barry Graham:

Poem for Mother's Day

(fromTraffic and Murder)

I think I was three years old
when my mother punched me in the face
so hard I rolled across the floor
and under a chair, and knocked
the chair over.

I don’t know
if that was the first time
she did it, or only
the first time
my memory held on to it.

She hated me, always.
She told me with her words,
her fists and her feet.

She was fat,
had a mouth full of brown teeth
and she smelled of piss,
sweat and cigarettes.

She has been dead for years,
turned to ashes
and given to the wind.

A wind blo...

If I sell alcohol in this lifetime, do I create bad karma?

I’m fond of beer, wine and Scotch myself, and have never questioned the karma of a bartender who sold it to me. Karma is volitional action, and its consequence is called vipaka. So I think it would only be bad karma if you sold alcohol to someone you had reason to believe would be harmed by it.

But your wording “in this lifetime” suggests to me that you may be thinking of bad karma as a form of sin that will cause you to be punished in future lifetimes. I don’t believe in reincarnation, and I...

May issue of The Big Click: column by me, story by Gary Phillips

May issue of The Big Click: column by me, story by Gary Phillips:

Our fiction this month is chock full ofromance and bromance. Plus punching and murder, as is our wont. First, Heather L. Nelson’s story, “Gorge,” will delight you with sleeping pill-laced beers and mom-approved revenge plots. Then, Gary Philips will thrill youwith “Tobin and Gagarin,” a rampaging tale of rampage and two guys who just can’t get enough of one another. Also, Barry Graham weighs in with “Scary Decorations,” about f...

criminalwisdom:Banksy

criminalwisdom:

Banksy

Bart Lessard - the best contemporary writer you've never heard of

Novelist Bart Lessard writes like a monster built by Dr. Frankenstein from parts of Cormac McCarthy, Robert Louis Stevenson and Rafael Sabatini. His two novels,The Danse Joyeuse at Murderer’s Corner and Rakehell, which have been available on Kindle for a while, are now also in paperback. They are outrageously good,

Full disclosure: Lessard and I are close friends, but I was enraptured by his first novel when I hardly knew him. At the time I wrote: “This historical novel is wonderfu...