City of Legends

My dear friend and queen of erotic poetry Mari Laureano has a blog. I would advise you take a look.

Belladonna Dream

I have previous read with Mari during the "Love Gods" tour (back in 2002!) and she has been gracious enough to blurb my books once or twice and to have me reciprocate.

Mari, I have added you to my blogroll (see at right).

Excellent piece in the May 17th edition of NewScientist magazine, excerpted from the works of neurophysiologist Susan Greenfield, about the reinvention of ourselves as we define ourselves to the goal and pleasure oriented stimuli of the web. To some of you it may be new terrain, but to someone who has been a part of the digital renaissance for as long as I have, it is just confirmation and legitimization of the reality: People shift who they are because the normal social cues are short-circuited in a world of instant gratification, murky identities and reboots. "Character is what you are in the dark" said Dwight Moody, and the buffer of the web allows us to transform ourselves in the eyes of others, and eventually that malforms us and our own, internal identities.

Professor Greenfield isn’t selling anything, no book or t-shirt or wall hanging, she is a serious researcher at Oxford, carefully analyzing a trend that has been with us for a while and is only likely to get worse. We lose our identities to build playground avatars and to seek goal-oriented stimulus: Don’t write the best article, join enough social networks to get more traffic. Profundity, indeed excellence, is roadkill on the information superhighway. The good Professor even creates a correlation between the rise of the use of certain psychiatric medications and the popularization of the web and video games.

I originally picked up the magazine because they had a piece on oxytocin and how it plays a role in "love", a favourite topic of mine. Not some dimestore guru in my study of the emotion, I can cite the neurophysiology cultural and subcultural subtexts to "love", but I still believe we have a transcendent calling to it. Great erotic poet Mari Laureano called me "the Einstein of the human heart". Maybe, but only if Einstein lived and did his best work in Hiroshima.

The sacrifices one must make in the name of science. "Even if I give my body to be burned, and have not love…" said Paul (St. Paul, not McCartney).

It is a lazy, sunny Sunday here in suburban D.C., and I have yardwork to do in a bit.

I completed the podcast this morning and will be posting it later today. I went with a confessional tone, just you and me. I told the story of how I got into poetry and how I feel about it, then capped with a reading of "Running the Cliffs". I hope you enjoy the show.

Ever since I started offering the free eBook of "The Compleat Panther Cycles" at archive.org there has been a marked uptick in visitors to my site, cityoflegends.com. This is pleasing to me, as most people who write that I have met prefer to be read. If you haven’t yet swung by the link at archive.org and picked up your free pdf copy of TCPC, as well as downloading the cover as a pdf (in case you really like the back cover blurb from famed erotic poet Mari Laureano or just the cover image of New York goth-model and musician Jillian Ann) what are you waiting for?

I got an email the other day from a student who had written a piece for English class debating whether I was better described as a "romantic" poet, a "goth" poet" or even an "emo" poet. Sheesh guys, let’s watch the hyphenates. It’s murder having to change suits everytime fads change. Aside from some evolving sophistication and darker themes (you go through some of the things I have had to go through and not have a crimson and ebon streak) I am still the same author I have been since before most of my readership was born.

Now that’s an interesting way to look at it.

I am now, without further huzzah or fanfare,

going to blow your mind.

I have just placed here for FREE DOWNLOAD, the entire contents and covers of
THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES in pdf format at archive.org.

If you buy the book in stores, Amazon.com, through the publisher or even through the City of Legends Bookstore, it will run you between twenty five and forty dollars, weigh in at over three pounds and make a hole in your bookshelf every time you pull it out to read again.

Here, it is free.

Happy National Poetry Month.

You owe me one, now.

Special thanks to Dan McTaggart, Barbara Holmes and Brigit for their forewords. To Mari Laureano for the stunning rear cover text. To Jillian Ann for being the woman whose beauty captured the essence of the mythology of the Panther that I spun from a real woman, filtered through my own longings.

It was one hell of a trip, writing, then revisiting to edit, assemble and annotate.

I had a call a few minutes ago from my old friend Anastacia, who mentioned that the other day, owing to her friendhip with me, that someone asked her if she was "the Panther"…

okay, for the record, let’s sort this all out…one more time…there will be a test.

The Panther (a/k/a the Black Panther) was the prime muse behind The Panther Cycles. A successful writer and artist in her own right, she now lives on the West Coast and I have not had any contact with her in probably six or seven years. She did the layout and cover art for my book "PanthEon" and was NOT involved with the creation of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES.

The Crimson Panther (a/k/a Brigit, the Goddess) was a major muse I had an affair with and have remained friends with. She took the handoff from the Black Panther, is considered one of the "3 panthers" from a dream I had even prior to her entry into my life and I have occasional contact with her, as we are collaborating on projects. And yes, the art looks remarkably like her.

The Golden Panther (a/k/a the Leopard) was my second wife and a major muse. I have not heard from her in some time. "Damascus" is my set of works most associated with her, as at the time we met she was dating only women…then she changed her mind for a few years. Last I heard she was back with women. She was the cover model for two of my books, FROM AN UNEXPECTED QUARTER and LOVE GODS OF A FORGOTTEN RELIGION. For nearly the entirety of the last eight years, she is the only woman I have been involved with, romantically.

La Pantera is Mari Laureano, the extraordinary erotic poet from New York. We are friends and she wrote the rear-jacket blurb for THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. She is married and we’ve never been involved. Her website is www.furiverse.com

A2Panther, Anastacia, is an old friend of mine who actually was about my only close friend who tried to talk me out of marrying Ann. We are close friends and she, from time to time, tries to fix me up with friends of hers (although the one I was really, really interested got away while I was married to the Leopard). We went on exactly one blind date, aeons ago, where we both realized from first glance that there was zero chemistry between us. She is nowadays happily married and lives in the DC suburbs.

Some have suggested that the Goldenheart was actually the Golden Panther…she could also be actually the Crimson Panther (she, like Brigit, was also a redhead)…but as that relationship never had a high-water mark to measure, I am disinclined to accept that analysis.

Finally, the model who appears on the cover and in the inside art for THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES is Jillian Ann, a young woman and accomplished alternative-scene model and techno-musician. We have never met face to face and I have never been involved with her. She is merely a representation, not an actual player in the tableau (however, that position is still open and I am taking applications).

Got it straight? don’t make me matrix this…