Spiritual and I were walking singlefile up a narrow footpath from a lowslung biome of weed trees and yew bushes to an airy plateau of stately oaks and maples hundreds of years old, towering wrought and stark over piles of brown leaves shorn and flecked over the seasons. Our shoes made hushed slush sounds in the leaves as we walked.

( Read more... )

 
On July First 2008

This is 7 years since Koko B. Ware

In Detroit

Detroit

Spiritual

Spiritual

In Detroit

Wandering

Amblessly

In Detroit

Koko B. Ware

Waking up at dawn across

Sunburst knowings - the hirsute dawn

Rayed

And Koko

Oh, you know Koko

At dawn in Detroit.

Across from Windsor.

Dawnburst ( Read more... )

Former Local Man Has Moved On

NEW YORK

Spiritual will most likely never move back to the Clifton neighborhood of Cincinnati, he claimed Sunday.

“I’ve moved on,” Spiritual said over the phone. “I’ve got a wife and a new daughter, quit calling me,” he said.

Spiritual, 32, moved out of Clifton in the spring of 2003, ( Read more... )

 
Spiritual Haiku

“You guys went through a lot together.” I said.

“Yeah.”

He said: “Lemme tell you a haiku.”

The way he said it was like he said “lemme tell you a joke,” but it wasn’t. He was going to ‘tell’ me a haiku about Spiritual.

He said: Spiritual, man

He said: ( Read more... )

 
The Cause and Effect of Spiritual

“Tell me about Spiritual,” I said. Spiritual was a recurring character more or less based, as many of his characters, on a real person. A careening, angular man, fueled by anger and cheap Folgers coffee. Comparetto spoke of Spiritual in venerated terms. First introduced back in the summer of 2004, Spiritual burst ( Read more... )

Comparetto the Religious?

“Did you know I am an ordained man of the cloth?” Comparetto said to me.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know that.”

He proceeded to tell me he was the founding member of a church; a dire schismic offshoot of Catholicism he referred to as a “The Church of Holy Nostalgia.”

“We’re not in ( Read more... )

A Cinquian About a Message From Spiritual

Note from

Spiritual:

Said I need to quit the

Other stuff and finish the

Lake Me.

William Comparetto

© 2007

            In his basement, Spiritual put a machete in his workbench vice. He cranked the jaws shut, and with an oil can, he smeared a foul bead of used motor oil on the edge of the blade. He turned on the radio, to a classical station. A poster of Henry Rollins frowned over a rack of wood chisels and socket wrenches.

A cat purred ( Read more... )

            Pete Limpelli click clicked on his Ambassadeur Big Game reel. Pete had put a slice of prosciutto on a giant saltwater drumfish hook. The line was a 500 pound test deep sea marlin catcher, and the lead sinkers Pete used were also used to make blackjacks in Venezuela.

“Minchia,” Pete said. Pete was bored. His legs were still ( Read more... )

            Henge didn’t wake up that morning, per se. It was more like one in the afternoon, and he listened to some NPR, and did a few yoga positions he had read about sometime.

“The downward dog, bubba,” he said, “and the cobra.”

Henge always believed that the secret to a productive and happy life was a limber spine.

( Read more... )