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.

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.

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.”

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.

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?

Selected Poems

Montana

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