Miami sunshine put Big Al’s garb to shame. It blazed yellow, much like Al, but, unlike Al, it was the source of life on the planet. Al was human, as he himself would have been the first to admit. “There’s many things I am,” he said, “but a seething ball of molten fucking gasses ain’t one of them!” Miami’s finest laughed. Al was known for the size of his heart, and often spoke about it. It sometimes made for confused but lively exchanges with those more fortunate than himself. In ‘matters of the heart’ there was, after all, Al’s deep love of opera and there was also that which lay in the middle of the chest cavity between two lungs. Monogrammed silk might be said to cover both in Al’s case. As was his wont, Al made much of the confusion, hoping thereby to lighten matters that might otherwise furrow the brows of the young. If nothing else, the yellow of Al’s Miami experience would be a crucial factor in forming much of what he later came to call his “disposition”. For whatever his foibles, this much is certain: Al sought to shine on all, whether they wanted shining on or not. He would be the man dressed as the sun: a vision in yellow serge, with matching hat, silk tie and shirt, just the kind of solar presence a windy city on earth might require. That was Al all over. It was the opera in him.
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Saragun Springs 
Geraint
Big Al will be because he says so. Everyone has the right, but a stunnjngly low percentage of people put in the effort.
When I see bigger than life and Miami I think Jackie Gleason. Big Al is a Great One.
Leila
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…That is a cool cat, Boo, Bandit and Colonel love the color scheme!!!…
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…great whiskers, eyebrows, and eyes, too!…
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Geraint
You possess uncanny powers of characterization. This latest figure from your gallery shines just as brightly as all your other people and, of course, in some ways, more so. You create complete, whole, multi-leveled, multi-layered figures who are creatures of ambiguity, sincerity, insincerity, and depth, just like we all are. The subtle humor in your work is almost beyond compare in the contemporary world. Each of your pieces is, at minimum, five or six times the length of its actual word count because the pieces need to be read at least that many times to even begin to catch all the nuances. And yet each story is intriguing and fascinating on the first reading, as well (your pieces “catch” the reader). And each time one of your pieces is perused again, it brings, and gives, more (it doesn’t dry up and blow away after the first reading). “More life!” is the cry of great literature in general, and your work is infused with life, and what life is. Big Al will dine at journey’s end with Chaplin, with James Douglas Morrison and with Charles Lutwidge Dodgson!
Dale
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A fun prose poem / character vignette. I’d like to meet Big Al.
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One of the oddest questions I was ever asked was “What have you got against gangsters?” This piece was one of the gentler takes on glamorised thugs like Big Al – who did in fact garb himself as described as well as seek to radiate his er ‘benevolence’.
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