A couple of months ago, I published a book on Amazon entitled “The Permanent Collection.” It’s a kitchen-sink of poems, short stories, photographs, paintings, notebook entries and recipes that I’ve created over the last six or seven years. I put it together mainly so I’d have a lot of those things all in one place. You know how stuff gets scattered around the house? Well, the same thing happens with bits and pieces that are residing on CDs, DVDs, hard disks, and the cloud. I figure at some point, my six-year-old Macbook is going to die and I’ll have to go through the agony of trying to recover the files that may or may not be recoverable, so having an honest-to-goodness physical copy might be useful.

As I said, in case you missed it, here’s a shot of the front and back covers. It’s on Amazon, but because it’s printed in full color, the price is outrageous. If you decide you want one, let me know and I might be able to get it for you at a discount.

To whet your appetite, here’s a poem, included in the book, that I published on this blog quite some time ago. It seems to have contemporary relevance (and, I might add, before a certain person became a presidential candidate).

Art appreciation 101

is it possible that Donald Trump
and Rod Blagojevich are really
the same person?

could there be
another toupee
at large as bad as that one
ready to pounce
on unsuspecting children?
or can there be
two personalities roaming around the universe
so abrasive or outrageous?

but I’m stating the obvious
like: people who prefer buffets
tend to buy a Thomas Kinkade more often
than a Picasso

October, 2009