Welcome!

Born South Carolina, 1952, and and grew up there. I have thought of myself as a man of the left since I first began thinking of such things while in my teens, influenced by the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and my friend Phil who listened to Radio Havana and Radio Peking English-language broadcasts on his shortwave radio.

These days I often feel like a faction of one writing in an honorable tradition of pamphleteers and gadflies unleashed on Europe with the introduction of printing with movable type and the perfection of cheap paper in the 15th century. Some may think me little better than a damn centrist or filthy moderate. To my mind, still from the left, though often skewed contrarian.

The Greek poet Alexandros Panagoulis said that politics is a duty, poetry is a need. Much of my life has been about keeping faith with that dream of being a poet I had when I was nineteen (a way of putting it borrowed from Jim Harrison). The poems have found an audience through magazine publication and poetry readings. Links to a sample of publications can be found on the home page of my website Portable Bohemia.

The name Portable Bohemia comes from Doug Spangle, who once introduced me at a poetry reading as David Matthews with his portable bohemia.

My intention is to post something at least once a week. I hope you will find my little essays insightful, thought provoking, and perhaps even entertaining.

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