click on the link below to buy the book
While I am not a prolific writer of fiction (I consider myself primarily a poet), a few months back, I decided to compile a few stories that I had written over the years in one book, The Blue Poet & Other Stories of Addiction & Recovery (70,000 words). I chose three works: THE BLUE POET, a screenplay, PETER PAN, UFOS & THE MARLBORO MAN, a short story, and FALLING AWAY, a novella. While all three works are different stylistically, they all share a common theme: addiction/alcoholism and ultimately recovery. Not surprisingly, this theme is one that has marked my own life. I began my own journey of recovery in Terrell, Texas in July of 1983. By a miracle of grace, I have been clean and sober since that time. I share similar stories here (stories that depict both that miracle of grace and the journey through hell that inevitably preceded that moment of clarity, that turning point).
THE BLUE POET--Haunted by the ghosts of the past, a young musician turns to drugs. Set in the mid seventies (except for flashbacks from the Kennedy era), and in the spirit of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and ORDINARY PEOPLE, THE BLUE POET looks into the heart of a young man haunted by both the Kennedy assassination and the death of his own father in a drunken car crash. JESSE SANDSTROM, 17, sings and plays bass for one of the most promising rock bands in the Twin Cities. But Jesse wants to leave the band behind and study art in Paris. Jesse's mother, MARY SANDSTROM, 37, tells Jesse they do not have the money to send Jesse to Paris. However Jesse's musician grandfather, GUS CHRISTIANS, 60s, encourages Jesse to apply. But just as Jesse sends in his application, his sister, ANNIE SANDSTROM, 14, is diagnosed with Non Hodgkin's Lymphoma. As Annie's illness progresses, so does Jesse's addiction to heroin. In the hospital near death Annie gives Jesse a rosary and asks him to pray with her. Jesse says nothing but cannot bring himself to pray. After Annie's funeral Jesse turns, once again, to drugs and overdoses on Annie's leftover morphine. He has visions of his dead father. As he lays unconscious on the floor, Jesse in a dream state converses with THE BLUE POET, a name he gave Robert Frost when as a boy he watched the Kennedy inaugural in a darkened basement and the flickering images on the TV screen turned the room blue…
FALLING AWAY--Strung out and desperate for drugs, Robert Rouan stabs a drug dealer in a scuffle in the North of Paris. He is then locked up in the Santé: a prison located in Paris, France. After rumors spread that Rouan is a spy, he is brutally beaten and falls into a deep coma. He dreams of a white horse and a bridal bouquet and the promise of a future life. Twenty years later, Rouan awakens to an altered and damaged world, marred by wars and the collapse of the U.S. Government. What is left of America is now under quarantine: where life is controlled by monolithic corporations. The United Nations is now headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Some advocate opening up trade and restrictions on travel for those living in the Q (the Quarantined area stretching across all of North America). Rouan can longer walk, his legs have grown too frail from disuse. His former lawyer, Jean-Marc Frenot, visits frequently. Frenot invites Rouan to the United Nations. Geneva glows with activity and prosperity, there is no sign of the horrors of war and plague that Rouan had heard about. Frenot introduces Rouan to Christophe Tousant (assistant secretary general of the U.N.). Tousant, a Zen Buddhist in his eighties, a hunchback since birth, wears an Indian sari and sandals and in his own way reminds one of Mahatma Gandhi. Tousant advocates opening up trade and restrictions on travel for those living in the Q. Many oppose Tousant, fearing another plague in the free world.
PETER PAN, UFOS & THE MARLBORO MAN—“The heroin was too much, much too much, Peter Wagner says somewhat despondently to himself. It was like floating into the beautiful, but disabling clouds of a coma—a fabulous flight but a debilitating descent. He thinks, if it wasn't for that they could have stayed together, but now he is being evicted—well, not evicted exactly, but forced to vacate because of non-payment of rent (same difference); while his girlfriend, Wendy, is incarcerated at the Hilltop unit, a branch of the Texas Department of Corrections… It is very dark and Wagner can hear the waves crashing by the shore. Lightning flashes and then shudders, echoing in the dark blue. And then, he remembers what it was his doctor had said in rehab. It wasn't about winning. No, he says to himself, it wasn't about winning at all.”
