MARCELLUS NEALY

A few years ago I went to Honolulu to take a vacation and participate in an international poetry competition. There were people performing from all over the United states and a few countries. Each participant would give a poetry performance and judges would score them. I don't know what criteria they were using. Those who received a certain amount of points went on to the next round. The winner of the second round would receive a cash prize. A very dear friend of mine was th

Yesterday I wrote that the happiest day of my life was when my son could come home from the hospital after spending two months in the neonatal intensive care unit. Today’s story is also a happy coming home story. My friends, Hase and Sancar, had a beautiful cocker spaniel named Munchan. She had a pristine white coat with caramel colored spots. They loved that dog very much. One day, they decided that Munchan should experience the pleasure of making love to a sexy cocker spa

One of the happiest days of my life was when the doctors told me I could take my son home. He had been in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for almost two months. He was born premature, which I thought was ironic because I was in my 20s and not quite mature enough to be a father. Devon couldn’t wait to see the world. He was so excited about being born that he arrived a full two months earlier than he should have. On the day he was born, the midwife handed him to me

When I'm riding the train, the clack clack rhythm of the rail beneath the wheels always sends me off thinking. Last night, I ran into a friend of mine who is a photographer (pictured on the left). We talked for a good 20 or 30 minutes about the business of photography. Listening to her speak blew my mind because I had never quite thought of it as a business. Up until now, I had simply taken photos of things that I found interesting. After talking to Tia, I realized that I nee

Yesterday was my birthday. Don't ask me how old I am because I won't tell you. I'd rather I remain however old I am in your mind. I like the ambiguity of it. My friend Aimee almost guessed but she was off by one year. That’s as close as anyone comes to guessing. It's not that I'm afraid of admitting how old I am. Age becomes a testament to survival. The bigger the number is the more impressive it becomes that person is still around. The reason why I don't tell anyone is becau

The day Edgar died I was on my way to The Pink Cow in Shibuya. The news hit me hard. I felt guilty and ashamed that I couldn’t say good bye. The last time he spoke to me he wanted me to help work on his book but I didn’t have the emotional or physical energy to help him. I was drowning in my own struggle to survive in an all Japanese company. There was no way I would be able to dedicate the time he needed. “This is my book! It will be the greatest book of poetry to be

Edgar Henry was a wild, wild man. He was born shortly after the beat generation. His idols were Ginsburg, Burroughs, and Baraki. Just before he came to Japan, in the 1980’s, he worked as a banker in San Francisco, until he got fired for going into the office high on acid. Soon after, he took Walt Whitman’s advice to heart and sounded his barbaric yawp over the rooftops of Tokyo. Wine, words, laughter, and conflict were the pillars of his religion. He was loved and hated

In total, I must have spent about 15 or 16 years working with the Japanese pop band Dreams Come True. Of those, I performed as a member of their tour band for seven or eight years. Eventually, I'll tell you how that all came about, but it's farther down the timeline. To understand how I got to that point, I think it's important to start at the beginning. As I tried to explain a few days ago, I met a man named Patrick Brady. He was a guitar player from Los Angeles living in T

In my last entry I wanted to tell you about how I began my life as a performer but I was too drunk to really write the story clearly. In fact, I passed out before I could even finish and woke up the next morning fully clothed on top of the bed with a raging hangover. If we look at drinking through a puritanical lens then maybe I should feel some shame. I don’t. I am a measured hedonist. I don’t see anything wrong with the pursuit of pleasure or intoxication as long as it do

This is the fifth try. I don’t have my computer with me and the software I am using to post these blogs is acting weird. I can’t edit, so this is the rawest You will probably read. Soon after I was able to secure my first official job in Japan, I met a musician named Patrick. He was a very cool guy who could play the guitar like speaking. He told me about a club in Roppongi that was looking for someone to do events. Although I had never done such a thing before I was willing