Words & Music

by Mike Power

latest

  • The Lost Art of Letter Writing – The Letter Home

        According to the postmark, this letter was sent on December 2, 1945. Three months earlier, and five days before my dad’s 20th birthday, the Japanese formally surrendered. The war was over but soldiers, sailors, and airmen were  spending another Christmas away from home. Still, it must have been a joy to experience the… Read more

  • The Only Thing That Makes Sense

    I can’t read right now. The words keep tripping me up, obscuring the meaning of the thoughts they are meant to convey with their clumsy syllables and pronunciations. The trees do a better job of making meaning plain. They create oxygen to boot. I can’t hear the music. It’s too loud. Obnoxious fingers attack strings and… Read more

  • Jersey Shore Sketchbook – Dunes & Tunes

    Here’s another photo-and-sketch collage, put together from a trip to Lavallete, NJ last weekend. Nothing goes with dunes like tunes and no tunes go with the beach like the Beach Boys.  This is the first song Brian Wilson ever wrote. In his own words: “Back in 1961, I’d never written a song in my life.… Read more

  • Catskills Sketchbook #3

    There’s a lot of magic left in this world. There’s magic in love of course, and in religion if that’s your kind of thing. There is magic in the first words and steps of an infant, and in an old man’s dying breath. There are magic people (I’m looking at you), magic words, and magic… Read more

  • Creative Writing OutLoud Podcast

    If your eyes are too tired for reading, let your ears do the work with these readings of poetry and fiction written by me and Julisa Wilson, read by Alexander Smith on this Creative Writing Outloud podcast. Read more

  • Violent Love

      I wish I could tell you the things I’m thinkingBut then I’d have to make violent love to youOr pretend I hadn’t spokenOr pretend that I was jokingOr pretend I was talking to somebody elseAnd I’d still have to make violent love to you Read more