Venerated Objects

About the Book

In my twenties, I started to write poetry in the late 1970's and I found it to be a healing force and an expressive outlet, more than my daily occupation as an artist and designer. My poems have been published in Provincetown Magazine, selected by my friend and poet, Dennis Rhodes. My erotic short stories were published monthly in the Lambda Classic Car publication, The Turnpike Cruiser. Both venues were completed in the years I lived there from 1997 to 2003. My mother, Theresa, was also influential in my interest in prose, as her poems were beautifully written and heartfelt. The collection of poems reflects on an isolated childhood growing up gay in New York City during a conservative era of the 1950's and early 1960's. Others deal with personal losses, and directly about the people who have made an important difference in my life. I've included in addition to the poems, fictional stories of an erotic nature concerning men and their long term, and also fleeting, relationships. Some are poignant tales, some mystical and ironic. All tie in with their love affair with vintage cars that are set in a time span from the 1950's to the Millenium.

About the Author

I was born in 1951, in the Belmont section of the Bronx, New York. It was a tight knit working class Italian neighborhood, a few blocks from the natural world of the Bronx Zoo and Botanical Gardens. I was the hybrid of Greek-Italian American parents. My father was hard working, practical and resolute. My mother and sister, free thinking and artistic. My childhood memories reside there until our move in 1965 to the brave new world of Flushing, Queens. The move from the Bronx, from familiar friends and surroundings, prompted my venture into writing poetry, many of which were published years later. I attended Queens College in 1969, majoring in Art History, then years later, moving to Forest Hills, New York. A few years later I started a clothing business partnership and also met my then life partner, James. It was an 18 year relationship until his untimely death from bone cancer in 1995. He was 41 years old. My poem, "Walking With You" deals with that devastating loss and was written shortly after his death. I gave N.Y.C. and myself a year to decide whether to live in the shadow of what was, or to begin a new life. That new beginning would be Provincetown, Massachusetts, a small but vital, art community resort. Provincetown juts out precariously into the Atlantic, at the very last tip of Cape Cod. There, in winter isolation, I made peace with myself and after six years, again ventured forth. I now reside in New Hope, Pennsylvania with my partner, David. Again, I find myself near a body of water: the Delaware River. Occasionally, I will hear what sounds like the cry of a seagull, and I pretend that the scent of salt air fills my nostrils, and the taste of salt is upon my lips.