The Original Unsung Hometown Zero 


I daydreamed in the grooves of vinyl LPs scooped up for discounts in the rare expertise of Lovell’s Record Store on Greenleaf Avenue and hid in the claustrophobic stacks of the Little Old Book Shop,terrified during auditions for plays at the community theatre my

brother, Richard Nixon and I all performed in over the decades. BGirls I had crushes on saw me in my underwear behind that stage during quick-change pants-drops in between scenes onstage where they gave me my first kisses. I spent so much of my time up in my head that I forgot to experience Whittier much beyond my role as one of its fallen stars, a drunk in the pews of Saint Matthias Church listening to musicians eulogize the husband of my first AA sponsor the week after my great grandmother died and my father was sentenced to life in prison on the front page of the Whittier Daily News. I whisper Happy Mother’s Day to him as a reminder of his wife's death from inside those St. Matthias pews as I croon a Sympathy for the Devil feared by old John Greenleaf Whittier who came from Haverhill, Massachussetts where my college best friend grew up and where we wrote bad poetry that had nothing to do with two places where I never belonged, wasted

and in search of the eternal poet who writes verse that’s beyond all human comprehension, the one that saves me

in my newfound life as a rolling stone

on my way to finding myself,

whoever that is but he's not in Whittier

or Haverhill. His mind is his hometown.