Living With The Dying

An Interview With Frank Ostaseski

We try to curtail “helper’s disease” as best we can. It seems to be rampant in our society: there’s a problem out there, I must do something about it, I have to go help. We’re not necessarily motivated by the best intentions. Sometimes we act out of our fear or guilt instead of a real desire to serve.

Blue Shoes

We sat in the sun, me naked and soaking it up, Lorenne in long sleeves and with a straw hat keeping all ultra-violet rays from her sensitive face. She pointed at my bushy crotch and said, “You lose all the hair down there, you know. You look like a little girl again.”

Radical Steps

Both of them hit me so frequently that I still flinch at sudden movements. I learned in my bones that alcoholics don’t have relationships; they take hostages.

Wind

That damned wind! It did whatever it liked. It caressed your hair, your legs, your shoulders, your breasts. I hated it, Kristin! I wanted to kill it.

Living In Lotus

Ever since the therapist said, “Rebecca, if only you’d let go once in a while, relax, flow, you’d be a lot happier,” I’d been trying to write in the lotus position.

Caleb’s Journal

I live alone. Other men might be lonely. But who can notice what might be absent when other things are present?

Sheltr For Sad Ould Men

The old man had walked a long way, from afar, and he was not well. He wiped his forehead and raised his head. Around him were sand, thistles, and strangely — where did it come from? — a house.

Since You Left

I’ve been cleaning this house. / First sweeping you out of it, / dustballs behind old shoes in your closet, / stacks of last year’s catalogs, / the gray dirt that clings to clutter, / and then, unwittingly, / polishing, arranging, even decorating / you back in. How you were before / when I thought you happy.

Selected Poems

Montana

Selected Poems