One Poet One Poem featuring Paul Corman-Roberts

ONE POET ONE POEM–Episode 1 featuring RICK CHRISTIANSEN

Joseph Farley

 

A Quiet Night

It is a quiet night without gunfire
Or unlicensed dirt bikes without head lights
Doing wheelies and other tricks
On Frankford Avenue.

In the parking lot of the abandoned
Furniture store across the street,
There are no cars doing doughnuts
Or drifting in front of crowds
Of like minded adrenaline junkies.

It is a good night for sleep and I need it.
There are so many worries from the last few days
That I need to dream away.
Tomorrow will be better.  I feel it.
Feel it right down to my numb feet.

Noise is for a younger man.
I have become a patron of silence.
As I prepare to slip under blankets
I wonder about you who always craved to be
Where life was happening.
You passed that trait on to our son
Who surpassed you in parties and drunkenness.

You are old now.  Living quiet so I hear.
We would be more suited for each other now
If we were not with other people
And had less memories of the past.
What we needed then we could not get from each other.
What we need now may be more similar,
But it is not the same,
Except for the shared desire that our son
Becomes more sober and drives less
On unlit roads when he has a load on.

__________

 

Waiting

I am waiting
For the world to end.
The message on TV
Told me it would end
Long before this.
There are laws
Against false advertising.
Someone should sue
The station
And the prophet
They quoted.
End it all now
Or I will go after you
For all you’ve got.

Short Interview and three poems from They Said I Wasn’t College material by Scot Young

Bart Edelman

 

Voice

Self-taught, or so I thought—
Until I wasn’t any more,
My cry a quivering hiss,
After a stab at formal education
Cut me to the quick,
Sickening what remained,
Leaving this paltry mess behind.
Oh, I could still speak,
Sometimes for hours on end,
But the sound repulsed me,
Took me on a wild ride,
Gambled my last dollar away—
One poker chip after another,
Caught in the back of my throat.
Yes, I made it a career,
Sucking on tenure, year after year,
Like the teat it had become.
Only in current retirement,
Do I allow myself to scream,
Break a vow of academic silence,
Return to learning abandoned,
When I lost what voice was mine.

________

 

Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023, forthcoming from Meadowlark Press.  He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles.  His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.

Ken Gierke

 

Riding in Comfort to Kingston

That RV hanging off the back of a wrecker
is weaving back and forth on the highway
to Kingston with the back wall blown right off.

I’m riding with John Dorsey, and we both know
there’s got to be one helluva story behind it.
Looking inside, it’s almost all gone.

There’s not even a kitchen sink in there,
but stretched across the back of the trailer
is a plush leather couch that looks

a lot more comfortable than the seats
we’re sitting in. Is it burgundy?
Hell, I don’t know, but I can almost see

Les Claypool putting his feet up
swilling down a can of pork soda
and thinking this’ll never fit in the garage.

Meanwhile, John’s wishing they would
head to Barb’s Books. A couch like that
would be perfect for poetry readings.

Howie Good

Sleepwalker

 

After I lay him

back in bed,

I can still feel

his little arms

round my neck

and the weight

of his drowsy

golden head

upon my chest

just about where

the heart is.

__________

Howie Good’s newest poetry collection, Frowny Face, a mix of his prose poems and collages, is now available from Redhawk Publications He co-edits the online journal UnLost, dedicated to found poetry.

Short Interview about the book They Said I Wasn’t College Material

This will air on social media Jan.11 around 2:30 and will be available after. 

You may purchase on all the online bookstores like Amazon or here at magicaljeep.com

for a signed copy contact the author at

scotdyoung@gmail.com

 

“Scot Young has mastered the great poetic art of saying big things with a few, humble words. His latest collection, They Said I Wasn’t College Material, is a straight forward, globe crossing, collage of spot on observations from a clear-eyed outlaw cowboy poet that found his own overgrown Ozark path from pen to paper. From the rowdy rodeo booze poems of a young bronc buster trying to keep himself together, to busted blue collar hopes, heartbreaking poems of lost sheep students, the tender apologies of a callous handed and feather-hearted father, and love poems so pretty you’ll want to put them in a jar of water and leave them sitting on your kitchen counter so you can enjoy them for days. There’s prose poems and short story snippets, and words all over the book, written in styles that can’t be taught in classrooms, or replicated in workshops, they must be experienced and felt. Like all good literature, this book will hover in the weather patterns of our hearts for days.”

-Dan Denton, blue collar writer. author of The Dead and the Desperate.

A CHRISTMAS DAY POEM FOR D.R. WAGNER RIP. by A.D. WINANS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

like a crow caws in the night
like an owl with questioning eyes
like a hawk circles the sky
like a farmer plants seeds
you walked the streets
a Samurai with words your sword.

city bred with a country boy heart
your words soft as feathers
rode the end of the line
with metaphors that serenaded the mind.

your poems dance with the wind
become one with the stars
a new place a new terrain.

in the Buddha temple of life
all things must die
but only the flesh expires
the spirit lives on in the hearts
of those you touched.

you a firefly in gentle flight
to mate with the stars
join fellow poet friends
dance become one with the universe
a butterfly spreading its wings
cosmic matter waiting to be reborn.

A.D. Winans
12-25-2023

Sara Moves On by Pris Campbell

Unexpected  Changes

Norman’s interest in birds increases.
Birds of all kinds.
He’s flown to Alaska, Hawaii,
two western states, the Amazon.
His catalog of birds grows with each trip.
Says he has the semester off from teaching
to explain his free time.

Sara paints while he’s gone.
Still sells well…they have plenty of money.
After the last trip away
she stops painting wings on women.
He pays more attention to the birds
than he does to her.
She’s not able to travel
and going out is still hard.
She’s lonely.
This isn’t how she thought it would be.
They make love whenever he’s home
but it’s different. He creeps out of bed
in the middle of the night to flip
through bird catalogs.

She tells him she feels taken for granted, but
his eyes are too full of birds to see tears.
On this current, longer trip, she finds herself
searching the internet for houses. Small ones.
Much like the one she had before.
Room for a bedroom and her studio.
A place to go to be on her own,
where thoughts of Norman don’t follow her all day.

Maybe it’s time to go look.

_______

Home

Sara has become friends
with the neighbor next door.
He has a sister with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Similar in many ways to the long term covid
that holds Sara’s body prisoner

so understands the exhaustion, frustration
and people staring like you’re an alien
when riding in a power chair
or pushed in a transport one.
He brings her home cooked meals,
sees to it that the sprinklers out back
are working properly.

She finds a cozy place to rent near take outs
and deliveries for when she’s too weak to cook.
The neighbor moves her important things.
Clothes and art tools are all she needs.
He promises to still bring her occasional meals.
Never asks why Norman is gone.
Gives her privacy in that arena.

Norman calls her cell from the airport,
then, she guesses, from their house.
She doesn’t pick up.
He leaves no message.
If he wants to see her she’s easy enough
to find. The neighbor. Her art friends.
She needs for him to make the first move,
put in the effort to jigsaw their pieces
together once more, but

silence hangs like fog after the calls.
No pounding on the door. Taking her in his arms.
Both tearing off clothes for him to enter her
again and again throughout the night,
give her hope he had miraculously returned
to being the Norman he found inside himself
when he came back after their years
of his first abandonment.
A changed man, it seemed.

She wouldn’t trust an addict
and she’s learned this time he’s addicted to running.
_______

 
 Moving Forward 

It’s been four more days now.
Still no word from Norman.
Stress isn’t good for her long term covid,
her doctor reminds her, and she does feel weaker.

Her paint brushes weigh more than ever.
She’s napping more, dreaming about
how certain she was of their life together.
Also thinking about how dumb she was
to believe it could happen despite his trying
his hardest .

_______

The Letter

A note arrives a week late in Sara’s mailbox.
She recognizes Norman’s handwriting.
He’s been offered a job teaching in the Carolinas.
He confesses why he’s been missing,
how embarrassed he was to tell her he lost his job,
that this wasn’t just a semester off.
The house is hers and always will be, he writes.
He’ll leave his key under the big potted plant
out back. He loves her but couldn’t
be the man he hoped to be like he thought,
can’t uproot her to go off with the ‘failed’ Norman,
the one with fists clenched around his heart.

Sara sets the note in her lap.
He had already told her by his trips away
that he was leaving her emotionally,
but she had hoped he would learn how
to work out problems without running again
like he did when their boy was just five,
returning after the boy was grown,
with a child of his own, after Sara got sick.
She thought this time they had learned,
that he was back for good.
He told her he would never leave again.
She loves him but can’t risk her heart a third time.
Now she knows that if bad feelings are triggered
he would just run again.
He’s still too damaged.
Beaten by multiple fathers, locked out
of the house nights a ‘father’ was drunk. Not fed.
He ran then and found that was his way to cope.
_______

Acceptance

She waits a week, checks with the neighbor.
Yes, Norman has packed his car and gone.
She cancels her rental

and, with help, moves back into the house,
emptied only of his clothes and books.
Nothing else taken but the painting she did
of Norman and his son, her gift to him.
A colorful feather attached to a gold chain
rests on her pillow.
She tosses it into her jewelry box.
One day she may wear it…not now.

The house reminds her of vows they shared
that she hoped would last but didn’t.
It reminds her she can survive anything
_______

 

Closer

A year has passed.
Norman stays in touch with their son,
she’s glad to hear, but no more word to her.
He’s finished, gone,
no rev in his motor to try again.
No reply to her two emails wishing him well.
Sara has become close to her neighbor,
a former astronaut
now running a small tech company
out of his home.
Tom, his name.
She calls him Major Tom.
Loves to tease him.
They now spend part of every day together,
after her painting and his work.
Tonight is her birthday.
Tom brings her flowers.
Sparks cross the room.
He kisses her with passion for the first time
and soon they’re in bed.
Deep in want after no sex this whole year,
she expects their time to be pleasant
but not like with Norman.
When he comes inside her, a fire lights.
She wants him inside her again and again
until exhaustion overtakes.
As they wrap around each other to sleep,
she reminds herself that passion can reignite.
Even when you think it’s forever gone.
Maybe love, too.