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One man against the US Cavalry. And they couldn't catch or kill him. Wrong winner of the cowboys and Indians movie. Revolution starts with one man. One Zapata. One Villa. One Bolivar. One Daniel Ellsworth. One Einstein. Against the one man will always be arrayed the Nixons, the plumbers, the fascists, the Kissingers, the establishment. Attack! |
Dear Eds,
Thanks for putting my poems up on your site. I've enjoyed being a part of it. So much so, that I'm risking another couple of recent pieces. Let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
John Grey
HORSES IN A FIELD
I stop the car to look
at horses in a field,
to clear my head.
I have no stillness,
no peace of my own.
I must borrow it
from other living creatures.
They nuzzle grass.
Steeped in its green.
they're nothing but
quiet feeding and
their breath. No saddle,
bridle, makes more air
for dark brown nostrils
to exhale.
I stop to see the staunch
of bone in others,
the calm indifference
of their flesh.
One flicks its tail.
one nods its head,
the closest either comes
to thinking.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES
a nation hunch eagerly
around their televisions,
watch their favorite newsreader,
hope to see a hair out of place,
a thread dangling from
his tailored grey suit,
a razor cut on his chin,
a tie that doesn't agree
with its shirt,
anything to make them sense
that there's a place in the world
for their own kind of imperfection
but must content themselves again
with an earthquake somewhere in Asia
or a particularly gruesome murder
in Southern California
I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. I had a stressful and challenging youth, fraught with all manner of insecurities, sexual apprehension, and full out hostility. I loved baseball, rock n roll, and wet the bed until I was twelve. An ex-girfriend/psychologist, told me I was probably a better person for it. The baseball, that is. I attended some colleges and visited several countries for various and all but forgotten reasons. Amazing how 95% of our lives are vaporous images of someone who may have been us. Despite that particular horror, and being the eternal optimist (if not benign psychotic that I am), I went on to complete six novels, have short stories published, stage plays produced, and earned some money writing film scripts that never got made, for people Id only feel creatively involved with if I had strangled them to death in their sleep. Regardless of these and other indiscretions too numerous and painful to detail . . .
Pyloric Stenosis
When I was a baby I had an operation
because of something wrong in my stomach
and it left me with a scar that eventually
moved up to my chest, and . . .
over the years, while in bed with various women,
theyd ask me how it got there, and after telling
them, Id go on to say how I thought it probably
left some psychological scar as well, causing all
manner of behavioral problems and holding me
back from accomplishing great things, from
becoming more than just an ordinary guy in
bed with an ordinary woman who didnt mind
fucking an under-accomplished dreamer.
however . . .
I still have a resilience in me that says my scar
may have been a good thing, saving me from all
manner of psychological disorders, from killing
my parents or doing great harm onto myself,
rendering me a hopeless vegetable, staring aimlessly
and without purpose into a blank institutional wall
without any manner of woman to fuck me, until
my soul exits my body through that very scar which
never says a word, but suggests everything.
The Snake
Every summer, when I was a little boy
back in Chicago, wed go down to Kentucky
to visit my grandparents.
I enjoyed my time down there, as it was
so removed and different from my life
back in the city.
What I didnt enjoy was having to go to
the bathroom, because my grandparents
didnt have indoor plumbing, and
the outhouse was back in the weeds,
where it was hot and stinky, and Id have
to stand there with my little dick exposed
to buzzing green flies, angry black wasps,
and God knows what manner of crawling,
biting, stinging, sucking things, anxious to
get at my innocent young flesh, and . . .
One day, after hurrying my pee as usual,
and getting it all over my pants and shoe,
then quickly zipping up to rush back to
the safety of the house, I was alarmed to
find myself stuck in the weeds, my little
feet unable to move because a snake had
wrapped around them, holding me
against my will in the hot, stinky sun
with all those biting, stinging, sucking things
anxious to get at my tender young fear, to
send me and my little dick back to Chicago
as good as neutered to the threats of the world
that would consume me as thoroughly if not
more so than ordinary insects.
just as I was about to scream, the snake
let go, and I ran back to the house, free
of the annihilation he nearly brought me
forty-five years later, and all that has
changed is my tender young fear aging
into listless disregard, and I no longer hurry
my pee, knowing there is no safety to get
back to, with the snake hopelessly wrapped
around the best of my intentions, and . . .
hes not letting go.
Her
Got a call from that treacherous cunt, Marisa
sounding all raspy, succulent, and devious
as usual
she caught me in a good--no, a vulnerable mood
but it was nice talking to her again
she was smart, and funny, and seemed to have
a basic understanding of my work and me and
claimed to have changed her ways, and . . .
as usual, it was all a twisted, sadistic lie
she had no intention of actually seeing me again
of having a meaningful and thoroughly pleasurable
conversation in a world that was filled with
ignorance and idiots and sexless deviates abound
she just wanted to toy with me
for whatever her secret reasons that shall ever
remain locked up in her twisted and beautiful
brain gone bad like the deranged one in the
jar of alcohol that Igor stole for Dr. Frankenstein, but . . .
I cant help but remember how good her full,
warm nipples felt in my mouth that cold night
in her beat to shit honda civic, when, for just
a fleeting, horny moment, true romance seemed
possible . . .
before she put them away and rushed
back home to God knows what, returning my
forlorn dick to the jar of alcohol she kept so
conveniently in her broken glove box.
Jerry Erwin
Thank you for getting back to me so promptly. Here
are a few little pieces for your consideration.
Kelley Jean White MD
276 West Haines Street
Philadelphia, PA 19144
(215) 844-3774
KelleyWhiteMD@Yahoo.com
Damn
12:33. Dangerous city.
I am going out in the night
to buy Diet Pepsi. Or Diet Coke.
Doesn&Mac226;t matter. But I got to have it.
My mouth can almost feel the cold
burn. I&Mac226;ll go out in my nightgown
and a raincoat and slippers.
What in the world do
those nice young men
from Pakistan
think I am?
Mogen David & Moby Dick
went down to the sea
to sip, to slip;
David Mogen took Moby&Mac226;s hand,
said, Look at the sky, love,
isn&Mac226;t it grand?
Dick Moby touched Mogen&Mac226;s hip,
said, It&Mac226;s the waves I like, come
to dip, to drip.
MotherDaughter Literature
Why am I surprised that we&Mac226;re all female?
Always a guy gets in&Mac246;and runs the place
around with his special guy stuff&Mac246;I fully
expected some Dad, a son or two, a few baseball
capped guys who figured this class it&Mac226;d be easy,
a piece of pink cake. . .not that I don&Mac226;t like
males. . .some of my best friends are rather
definitely in that category, but never ever
have I been in an all woman class, an all
woman committee (well, once, Women in
Pediatrics,) an all woman house (well, almost,
almost. . . )
=====
Respectfully,
Kelley J. White,
Philadelphia
KelleyWhiteMD@yahoo.com
__________________________________
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Dear g. bassetti,
Here are a couple from my re-visioning of American history entitled The American Cantos.
Sincerely,
Michael Ceraolo, 27600 Chardon Road #253, Willoughby Hills, Ohio 44094
Canto XXXVII
Almost a whole century before
the court-condoned coup of 2000
there had been a corporate-conducted coup in Colorado
And Thomas Patterson,
a United States Senator and also
publisher of two newspapers,
took very vigorous exception
to such an unjust putsch
Stories chronicling the copious corruption
were run in one of his papers,
along
with a cartoon calling the chief justice
"Lord High Executioner"
and
opining that the court was a
"great judicial slaughter-house"
Patterson proclaimed in his paper:
"I consider the proceedings against me
as a direct assault upon the freedom of the press,
and
I shall defend
that ancient
and important
prerogative of a free people
with all my power"
Patterson was convicted of criminal contempt,
and
fined a thousand dollars,
although
the court spared Patterson jail time,
refusing
to make a sitting senator a martyr
Appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court:
violation of constitutional rights,
on several levels:
conceding the correctness
of contempt charge to control criticism of pending cases,
Patterson pointed out,
rightly,
that no case was actually pending,
that the court had found him in contempt
because the posing parties could ask for a re-hearing
at anytime,
hence
all cases were perpetually pending
and thus decisions could never be criticized;
the court had not allowed the truth as a defense,
despite
a clause in the Colorado constitution
"that every person shall be free
to speak or write and publish
whatever he will on any subject,
being responsible
for all abuse of that liberty;
and
that in all suits and prosecutions for libel
the truth thereof may be given in evidence"
Though all old men
the Court could still display
the acute agility required
to conform the law to its prejudices:
Oliver Wendell Homes,
The King of the Weak Analogy,
The Prime Purveyor of Precedent,
(definition of precedent
-idolatrous worship of past decisions,
no matter how stupefying,
just because they were made in the past)
(and there was no one he worshipped
more idolatrously than Blackstone,
a long-dead Englishman)
in the first of his many, many bad decisions
on the right of free speech,
was still
maintaining that the First Amendment
only prohibited prior restraint,
that the truth was no defense
(even the egregious Sedition Act
had allowed the truth as a defense),
that forty years after the Fourteenth Amendment
the Bill of Rights did still not apply,
local repression could take place
"without interference from the Constitution of the United States"
Inconvenient facts such as
the state constitutional provisions for free speech
and
the possibility of pending in perpetuity
were just ignored
The last word to Patterson:
"It is singular to me
that the gentlemen who live upon the sea coast
are never content
to leave the central portion
of this great continent
the few benefits that are occasionally granted to them"
Canto XLIII
And there was a marriage,
a marriage of mind body and spirit,
a marriage between radicals,
that
of Angela Tilton and Ezra Heywood
And
they were not single-issue specialists,
but
activists across the board of reform,
founders and/or members of, among others:
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society
New England Labor Reform League
New England Free Love League
National Defense Association
American Woman's Emancipation Society,
with
only the occasional head-scratcher thrown in
(New England Anti-Death Soceity,
a spiritualist group communicating beyond the grave)
They operated the Mountain Home Resort,
a sort of colony for free-thinkers,
failing
due to the double whammy
of the deep depression
of the 1870s
combined with foreclosure by Ezra's brother,
after promising otherwise,
when Ezra went to prison in the first of many free speech fights
They ran the Co-Operative Publishing Company,
putting out The Word,
and
a wide variety of other books and pamphlets
They were orators and organizers extraordinaire,
with pertinent pronouncements on many topics:
abolition:
"Today the air reeks wtih fulsome adulation of heroes dead,
on every virtue of whose lives the laws and religion
of this people are a scandalous libel . . .
If this is patriotism, if this Christianity,
welcome treason, welcome infidelity!";
anti-war:
"It is a graver crime to kill a man than to enslave hime"
"A resort to war to put down slavery
is a resort to lying to put down falsehood,
a resort to stealing to put down theft"
"a feeling, hidden, silent, yet inextinguishable . . .-
a feeling that
war, all war, is wrong, unreasonable, unchristian, and barbarous";
censorship:
"Shall we submit to the loathsome impertinence
which makes Anthony Comstock
inspector and supervisor
of American women's wombs?";
conscription:
"The right to draft men
is as purely imaginary
as the right ot enslave them";
contraception:
"This womb-syringe question is to the North
what the Negro question was to the South;
as Mr. Heywood stood beside the slave demanding his liberation,
so he now voices the emancipation of women from sensual thralldom";
education:
"If there is any right sacred,
it is the right to acquire knowledge";
experts:
"never to defer to doctors, lawyers, clergymen
but meet them simply as persons;
never to bow down or curtsy quicker
to 'educated' than to uneducated people";
free love:
the "human heart can find its home
only in social concord which does not invade
the sanctity of Individual Liberty"
(and they found it, profoundly, in each other);
government:
"the government reveals its own despotic felonious character,
and makes plain to all eyes the kind of 'law and order'
which good citizens are called upon to support"
the "existing financial, commercial, and political power
of the strong to plunder the weak";
labor:
"labor is enslaved and defrauded by devices
which capital creates and administers
Through the morally indefensible claim to profits;
through the control of land, water-courses, steam,
railways, currencies, and governments-
capital,
by sheer compulsive power,
is the master of the situation;
can bide its time,
and starve labor into submission";
law:
"If laws were not made, and enforced in the interests of theft,
if the State were not one great embodiment of speculative piracy,
Astor, Vanderbil, and Stewart, would have to run for their lives,
or cease to steal";
prison:
"something to choice of your own hell"
"social, financial, and physical death"
(and his was hastened by his last prison term);
suffrage:
"To rule adult citizens against their will is tyranny;
women are adult citizens,
hence
those who deny them the ballot are tyrants"
"women are not bound to obey existing laws,
for they have no voice in making them;
these laws are only the registered opinions of men";
women's rights:
"Girls' lives are not matters of choice,
but of persuasion and compulsion"
in the future the would be the
"glad spectacle of men and women working together,
impelled by love, not compulsion"
and woman would
"take her rightful place in religion, literature, art, and philosophy"
Ezra died in 1893,
broken by the last of his many prison terms
for fighting the mockery of Comstockery
Angela died many years later,
unjustly unknown
If they were right about spiritualism,
they'll have much to say about today
and make it known soon
-Michael Ceraolo
Thank you for your consideration.
-This is interesting and educational. g.b.
Dear Editor:
Thank you in advance for your kind consideration.
Michael D. Brown
Complaint
how transient for the sun
to stay shorter than a lover
not even until dawn-
to make me feel whorish
for basking in raw light-
scandalous
Michael D. Brown
208 Grant Blvd.
Syracuse,NY 13206
Email:wordtoome@aol.com
Two goals
I want to be the best poet produced in this century. Second goal, defy the neurotic critic, rouse their columns into a slumber, a veiled submission. I was born during the Macarthy Era, some of the best poetry was birthed under bipartisan political fear. My pen is not afraid of war mongers, of child slayers, of deal makers and lies that deceive the lier. I can crumble paper the same way leaders are deposed, land them in a round metal waste basket with bars like a prison...like an exilic looking for real estate.
Michael D. Brown
208 Grant Blvd.
Syracuse, NY 13206
Email:wordtoome@aol.com
i want to take you...
like a break during work,
take you like a vacation
to some hot exotic spot,
take you, like i say," i do"and you say," i do too,"
take you everywhere i go and whenever i go you are there.
Take you like Grant took Richmond
in a flame of glory and passion. Take you the way
a real man loves to take a real woman.
Michael D. Brown
208 Grant Blvd.
Syracuse, NY 13206
Email:wordtoome@aol.com
Dear g. bassetti,
I am a fortysomething civil servant/poet trying to overcome a middle class upbringing. The following are from a sequence entitled Twenty-First Century Editions, a re-writing of various literary works for today.
Sincerely,
Michael Ceraolo, 27600 Chardon Road #253, Willoughby Hills, Ohio 44092
"Talking to the Sun": Twenty-First Century Edition
I think it's STOOPID that you cross the equator in late September
when everybody knows that summer ends on Labor Day
Why can't you get in sync with the man-made calendar
The Leviathan: Twenty-First Century Edition
The mass of men
lead lives
that are
nasty,
brutish,
and,
thanks to progress,
exceedingly long
Faust: Twenty-First Century Edition
The protagonist is no longer an individual,
but an individual nation,
or many such nations
And they no longer sell their souls for immortality,
but sell their futures for a few scraps today
And the buyer is not Mephistopheles,
but the International Monetary Fund
-Michael Ceraolo
Thank you for your consideration.
Sylvia Gonzalez
to whom it may concern,
thank you for taking the time to review my work
-jason wilkinson
jason a wilkinson
608 lenox ave
e patchogue,ny 11772
jasonawilkinson@yahoo.com
631-764-7649
1
the sun was here
but now
tennis courts are dying
softly beneath our feet/
eyes
trees
will soon be smashed up
in dreams; willowy
flesh disappearing in
a sheet of forgotten light
/glass/teenage
girls
among the brick+piss
giving head
behind tinted windows
alas
what we dream by day-
phantoms become
pictures when we sleep
become meritless when we rise
yawn yawn yawn
ring ring ring
smokestacks and nail
polish hug the sunlit street.
2
she wore a
brick lamp nightgown
spectacles
blue limo an
eyelash flapping
clumsy pleasures
the sitting habit: wooden playmate
bicycle mornings
purloin obstinate quietude hills
blacken warm
slippers
toes curl up after
the lights fall.
3
Mouthful Of Glass
pissing rat
music
trickle-down fingers
beneath which nothing
is heard and no one
speaks but i can
still hear the
birds outside
wings flap
inconsonant laughter
4
khaki lips
descend
nails to wood
petals fade/blu-
rring gamma skin
behind polyester
and emerald panes
small feet
laughter in the rug
first floor
huge ringlets
timeworn
sapphire eyes
;trace
window girls
in the autumn
fog cotton lashes
a glass pussy
knee socks
outside the
day is warm
hedges
toes curl up
now she's in a fast car
rouge
asphalt
carousel music.
5
The Statue Of Liberty Is A Moldy Tennis Court
i saw the birds
pink with flight
field of choreography
shoe polish field
i saw you naked
smile in the melting asphalt
the melting of ice cream
without legs.
6
There's A Place For You And Me
and although i often wonder
where i might find it
and what it would look like
(if it looked like anything familiar)
when at last id fallen
upon its celibate walls i
mean
would there be trees or
fast cars/insects rusting
behind disheveled houses
;rats chasing money?
would there be phone lines,
hookers,vicadin/war
troglodytes in high places
sipping our blood photographs
of murdered children
dilapidated sweatshops
vampires lost in the fabric of
cum-drenched T.V. lips/a
golden cage big enough to fold
us all in upon our lavish dreams
animals tormented for
human delectation
government propaganda
dark,crowded subway platforms
vomiting flesh out onto
melting streets/brick sanded limbs
touch/unlit stars/
would the known laws of physics
apply to such a place?
would the poor be herded
into boxes along stale/patterned tracks
out of sight out of mind
while the rich snorted coke,
fucked and dodged jail sentences?
would god seem an obscure,
monomaniacal phantom
the way he/she/it does here/now?
well anyhow like i was saying
there's a place for you and me
and although i often wonder
where i might find it
ive given up looking
mainly because it hurts
to think
how much better i could love you
if we were there.
?
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Editor -
Here are a three. Take your best shot.
Regards,
Doug Draime
cddraime@charter.net
Advice To An Unsung Hero
Say goodbye to literary styles,
confines of moronic social pettiness,
masturbations of ego.
The truth can be
written from
any slant, mate.
Piss on language
and all forms
there of.
Your rage seething with pure vengeance,
rage against the machine,
and the continual conspiracy
to kill the light.
Be not a poet/writer functionary,
a Wunderkind kiss-ass kneeling
to authority
and egotists trends.
Visionary! Revolutionary! Experimentalist!
Dissident! Renegade!
Always cultivating the soul
with individualistic experience and
wonderment of the unseen,
unknown;
burning like a storm of a million fires,
being the inferno of flame
and light.
Daddyo
I would like to go up the side
of the heads of all the
preventers of unbridled
concepts, and moral outrage,
about the dying of the light.
Daddyo wields the blade
of monetary worship, drawing
financial conclusions
based on the body count,
and the seemingly
endless string of sellouts,
who parade
like baboons smoking cigars
with their pitiful beat red asses
into the gelling gene pool
of warmongering Daddyo.
Production lines of spiritually
deformed humanity selecting
and sorting the newest in
brain implants. We send spaceships
out, and build more; train the
explorers to be conquering politicians
and butchers, who are down on their knees
with their sucking mouths to Daddyo.
19 Straight Whiskeys
If I would have been
there at the Chelsea Hotel,
drinking
with Dylan Thomas
the night
they drove him away
in an ambulance.
I would have told him all
the fame and booze
was mutilating
his soul.
The hangers on, writers, editors,
other drunks, leeches, and the women
spreading their
nylon legs.
All of them killing him,
or watching him die
and doing nothing to stop it.
They say he said on that night
Ive had 18 straight whiskeys. I think
thats the record.
I would have told him all that shit was killing him.
I would have cut him off at 9 whiskeys.
But then again, maybe I mightve
kept my nose out
of his business, and matched him
drink for drink.
Going on and beating his record
with 19, and
leaving with one of the
women before
the ambulance arrived.
Dear Editors:
I am submitting this poem to the Geronimo Review. I am aware that it
will be graded.
I have been published in For Poets Only, Hidden Oak, Pegasus, The
Long Islander, Long Island Quarterly, The Journal, and have poems coming out in
Red Owl Magazine and an anthology.
Please let me know about the submission as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Linda Benninghoff
Dear Editors:
I am submitting this poem to the Geronimo Review. I am aware that it
will be graded.
I have been published in For Poets Only, Hidden Oak, Pegasus, The
Long Islander, Long Island Quarterly, The Journal, and have poems coming out in
Red Owl Magazine and an anthology.
Please let me know about the submission as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Linda Benninghoff
Vacation
The summer house
leans, as if terrified
by us, a little to
one side. My father
stoops through
the airy wooden doorway,
wanders slowly, quietly,
and eyes me as if he
meant to be honest,
but could not.
I am standing,
eating a vanilla ice cream cone.
Mosquitoes swarm.
There is a thought
in my mind,
like a lump in my
throat, a bump
on a log,
that my hand goes over
and over again.
My father ventures
out into the afternoon
which is heartless
as the beginning
of the world.
Geese honk
with a sound thin as paper,
then melt toward the horizon.
There is a space
my father leaves
behind him, wide
as the needle
the camel couldn't walk through
or the rich man.
In the ephemeral light
of the July afternoon
we sit over supper.
We hesitate,
speak our shining thoughts.
Not all bad, though somewhat inarticulate. "a bump on a log" jars. The "needle"
(the small gate beside the large gate to the city) is, by definition, narrow, not wide.
The bibilical reference is inaccurate. (From memory: It is as difficult for the rich
man to enter into heaven as it is for the camel to pass through the eye...)
"Shining thoughts" does not seem a piece with the poem.
72 Fruit Hill Ave
Providence
R.I.
02909
Dear Editors,
Im enclosing a selection of poetry to "Geronimo" My work has appeared recently in South Carolina Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Laurel Review and Lullwater Review and is upcoming in Confrontation and Birmingham Poetry Review.
Sincerely,
John Grey
ASSESSING THE POLITICAL T.V. SPOTS
It's a Biblical game.
Which one is Judas Iscariot?
Which one has thirty pieces
of silver already working for him or her
in stock futures,
the bond market,
the mercantile exchange?
Who's already sold their Jesus out
before the rest of us
are even aware there is a Jesus?
They say, "Vote for me,"
like a king enlisting more centurions,
like he's thanking us
for ratting on the guy.
We're out in our numbers,
unknowing witness to the great invisible,
bleeding, tortured,
bearing its heavy cross.
It's called election day,
this unseen crucifixion.
RIDING THE CAMEL
It wasn't romantic
like being in the saddle
of a horse.
Even at a good clip,
the miles didn't fly backward
like I was speeding up
the turning of the world.
Seems like we bounced up and down
as much as we loped forward.
Still, more than
any trip aboard an equine.
it was like life's journey.
It was an ugly brute,
the perfect likeness.
And it spat prodigiously,
like advice
or how I took it.
FOR ANGELA
It's the way people who would rather not have been born
play. Footballs slip through jelly fingers. Hula hoops
scuff about their ankles. On monopoly boards, they slink
into jails, and don't come out, free or otherwise. It's
the way they kiss. Bodies leaning out over other bodies
like they're about to dive onto cement. Eyes like battle
photos. Lips surprised to find other surprised lips.
Dear Editor:
I do not want these three poems posted--Sisters, In Camsett Park, etc.
They graded C. They were published elsewhere.
I am submitting another poem. Please let me know its grade.
Sincerely,
Linda Benninghoff
Stationery
She sent me stationery
with a picture of the White House
on it. Her front doorstep
was covered by American flags.
When I talked to her about the war,
she admitted it was wrong
but could not explain her patriotism,
although she didn't vote for this leader.
We swam together,
while in another country
a falling rocket
killed a child.
We sat beside her cat,
following the tabby as she sauntered
into the yard, playing, stretching her paws.
In the innocent shine of the noonday sun
nothing looked wrong.
Osvaldo Papaleo
Dock 7
Alicia Moreau de Justo 1080
Piso 2 Albatros
Buenos Aires 1107
Argentina
Tel: 011-541-14-343-6365
e-mail: osvaldoepapaleo@hotmail.com
http://www.geocities.com/lidiaepapaleo/gorrionpress.html
Subj: Cover Letter
Dear Mark C Perry:
I am in possession of the Quarked photos of S.M. Page&Mac226;s remarkable book,
The Timbre of Sand . I have the disk because I am the co-founder and
assistant CEO of Gorrión Press, the first bookpress to publish S. M. Page.
Page is a remarkable poet. His bardliness is limitless. He needs only to
have his poetry reach the right audience to become listed among the who to
watch out for and the upcoming.
Since Page&Mac226;s book did so well for us, I have been wanting for a year now to
print a second edition. However, considering the economic devils that have
burned Argentina, Gorrión Press is now on hiatus, and may be for sometime.
Since I feel it an aberration not to have more people exposed to this book,
I am asking that you to consider printing it.
When I told Page that I was trying to reprint his book but could not afford
to, he was sad, but understanding. Then when I told him that I would
voluntarily lobby elsewhere for him, he humbly accepted though he could not
believe that I, an entrepreneur, a successful movie and theater producer,
would spend my free time on a project that would not generate me profit.
And maybe he&Mac226;s right, for I have successfully produced such movies as Un
Lugar el el Mundo(A Place in the World), and Flop, and the theatrical
runaway Tango x 2. All three were big money makers, and of course more
viable than poetry, but, I deem Page&Mac226;s poetry so that I would petition
simply for it&Mac226;s sake.
I am not an agent, nor will I generate any profit from the book if you do
choose to print it. That is between you and Page. I am simply the
mediator. And I know Page is an easy person to get along with, and realistic
in his vision of his place in the poet&Mac226;s world, so you would have no problem
discussing a simple contract.
I am earnest that you could make the book marketable, and profitable, with
the right cover and the right exposure. If anything else, you will break
even on this printing, and be able to say that your press published S.M.
Page when he is futurely well known.
I have included at the end of this letter sights where you can read
critic&Mac226;s comments, where the book is or was listed, and lastly, samples of
The Timbre of Sand. If you enjoy them, and see in them promise, contact me
by the letterhead e-mail, and I could send you a hard-copy of the book, or
the disk.
Cordially,
Osvaldo Papaleo
CEO Cinematografica Madero
ACEO Gorrión Press
PS To read the critic&Mac226;s comments on the book, see here:
http://www.expage.com/timbreofsand.
And Page&Mac226;s bio:
http://www.geocities.com/stephenthegrete/stephenthegrete.html.
Where the book is listed: http://barnesandnoble.com
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.mysimon.com
http://half.ebay.com
http://dogbert.abebooks.com
http://www.bookfinder.com/
http://www.allbookstores.com
http://www.tomfolio.com
http://www.powells.com
http://www.oclc.org/home/
http://www.montanaartistsrefuge.org
http://www.vermontstudiocenter.org/
writing@columbia.edu
poetrycenter@csuohio.edu
PSS As postage and such is ungodly expensive here now, I find it necessary
to correspond electronically. Please understand.
The Timbre of Sand
Samples from the book by S. M. Page (published by Gorrión Press: Dec, 1998)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
You are a lioness crossing a verdant veldt,
Hungry for flesh, sinewy muscles rippling
Rhythmically beneath a fine yellow pelt,
A bouncing black-tipped tail trailing.
In aftermeal, you lounge upon night&Mac226;s sheets,
Your breath scented with blood-red wine,
Your hair crackling with star-lit cinders,
Your hips and thighs curved as lean cut steak.
I dream of evening strolls in Samburu,
Smell the grasses, hear our ravenous growls
For nocturnal meals lying upon rough
Linen scratched by your fine-nailed hands.
I hunt in sleep for your carnivorous lips,
And listen for your padding around my den.
---------
Your figure sculpted by Apollo&Mac226;s hands,
Guided by Sol and Helios, imagined by Him;
Some say without her, structure was not;
Others: She was One before They.
Marching wearing leather-geared armor,
Into Greece I flew and gave you garments,
And after April we rescinded into light:
Genesis said to reoccur in May.
We loop along the lateral symbol eight;
We have heard that burgeoning galaxy before:
The square root of negative one is i.
I lie upon your horizontal line,
And set my vertical one perpendicular,
Obliquely planed filling cosmos&Mac226; form.
---------
For millennia I hunted the New World&Mac226;s dark forests
Thick with fowl and wild running rodents;
With my red hair and white beard,
I prowled freely weaving among the trees.
Upon my favorite trail I found your scent,
And then you, a red-and-white sun
Brightening the canopy shadows; we fed, leaping
Feet first upon our bloody sustenance.
One morning I woke far from your fervid
Side, with much of the wood cut and cleared,
Where there sprung fields of sun-lit crops.
Daily I search for your eclipsed figure,
Edging the land cultivated by your hands,
Surviving upon the wild berries there.
---------
From the halls of fallen timber I lumbered
Screaming, torch eyed, dry skinned,
Blue sleeved, axe carrying, bled,
Schlepping strait in patent leather boots.
From beneath peeling bark you slid
Nude, luteous, slippery wet, fibrous;
Your leafy eyes sucked the wind and breezed
Over me, your palpating palms etched by insects.
These hot, empty days I am calcified,
And hike to clear my air-conditioned lungs;
Under our porch I eyed a three-plant pot
That had sat sixty days untended;
When upon our patio I poured it water,
A dusky beetle rose fluttering from the dirt.
--------
You are unseen mingling among the others,
Sitting all of unequal status at your table,
Dashing fleetly footed around the sun,
Arriving veiled in blue opposite my bed.
My spinning sanguine eye stares steadily at you,
I throw magnetic flux to draw you in,
And in those sudden moments when I seize you
My crown auroras in brilliant drapes of light.
Hub mirrors me and my massive kingdom,
And though its slow eye lies within your state,
It tells truth when you are briefly near me.
You are unstructured shadow circling me,
You are perpetual gravity, the expanse of a star,
You are the origin of all that matters here.
---------
We trotted singing over orange sands,
Silent footprints set sung before us,
Plants chanting names as we passed,
Lizards dancing on hissing hind legs.
We found a baby wailing among spinifex,
And paced it hush humming lost tunes.
After imputing it dreaming songs of birds,
We released it swaddled in eucalyptus shade.
As invaders pounded by we rasped through marsh reeds,
And marched the mountains when culture spoke not;
Progressing not naming new weeds grown.
Drawing fresh sand circles we roamed between,
Silent save the sibilance of our soles,
Our ears wandering the timbre of our bodies.
You are welcomed to publish any of my enclosed
original poems in your next publication.
Previously I have been published in CATAMOUNT,LINKWAY
and POETIC REALM, and SMILE.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Peter Vetrano
DEDICATED TO SIR ISAAC NEWTON
Natural law dent
experiment supplement
reinvent.
..........
THEOREM 3
Linear transformation:motivation.
.......................
OXYGEN
Your deductive reason
held in the air...
by motion
the heavy stone
uniform at rest
alone.
............
COMMEMORATION
Nestled into the side of the hill,
busts of five men abolished
demolished.
__________________________________
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May 27, 2004
RE: Poetry Submission
Dear Poetry Editor:
Let me introduce myself to you. My name is Jeffrey Williams and I am a writer from right here in New York City. I have been writing for just about five years now on various subjects. I have written articles and essays on politics, popular culture, entertainment and business, just to name a few.
On a personal, more biographical note, unlike many writers, I have not been writing for years and years. In fact, it wasn't until I was in my late teens that I decided that I wanted to be a writer. For many people that would be considered late in life to decide what they wanted to do with their lives but for me, it wasn't. I didn't begin to think about writing until one hot summer night I sat in my bedroom channel surfing. In my endless search for some form of entertainment, I came across an episode of the Golden Girls. This particular episode has Blanche find her "calling" to be a great southern writer. From that day forward, I felt like a lightening bolt had hit me. I began writing everyday since.
Enclosed with this letter is a copy of some of my poetry for your review. I hope you find these submissions may be useful to your publication. I feel that it is a topic that should be discussed. If you would like to reach me regarding this article, I can be reached immediately on my cell phone at (917)-873-4903 or by email at jlwilliams22@aol.com.
Thanking you in advance for your time and kind consideration.
Cordially,
Jeffrey Williams
The Plight of Man
By: Jeffrey Lee Williams, Jr.
1.
A man can take a stand, but
He is often battered and condemned;
A victim of his own hand
How often you hear a story, a tale
Of a man that was brutalized;
But the punishment was unto him,
To the gods that was no surprise
2.
The manmade cell built of concrete and steal;
Could not withhold the pain;
Of the man who could not heal
The trials of yesteryear were burned throughout history
The transcripts of the past has been a mockery
Politics and pain, fear and resentment
Fall into a place of anger and judgment
3.
There are bodies of the bruised;
And there are the bodies of the wicked
There are the tales of the troubles;
And repulsive stories that have already been written
Far too many lives have been lost here;
Far too many days have been lived in fear
But to walk a day in those shoes
Itll be my fate to forever sing the blues
4.
To walk alone and think of ones destiny
Youll find what a mess that life can be
The gold that glitters;
Doesnt beckon for you
For there is no statement that is more true
As long as we lay in this abyss
Our dreaded existence, no one will miss
5.
So we let time takes its course
We live in fear and famine;
We only dine on tears and remorse
My bones are brittle and cold;
The side effects of rotting concrete
Ill wait until I expire
My duty is now complete
The Habit of Being Gay
By: Jeffrey Lee Williams, Jr.
Imagine this, that after all these years of obeisance
At the aisle of homosexuality and a bare week's abstinence
I looked into your face, still silky with eyes so blue
Comfortable feeling of years and, seeing you anew,
I spied a stranger
To my newly opened eye, a danger
Wanting to drag me back to the abyss
From which I'd stalled myself. Would this--
Prove at last the strengthening point?
Where should I take my stand?
For her, or my loving man?
No, even with my life at stake
You are the habit that I will not break.
Chimera of Angels (Plea)
By: Jeffrey Lee Williams, Jr.
What I wouldnt give to hear the angels sing,
The enchanting songs of paradise
Or to glimpse at their feathered wings.
Through their soulful eyes
For such illusions, if I could perceive,
The beautiful spirits it would bring
Would give me faith, so I could believe
In the will and strength of everything
That theres something outside of me
Clawing gently beneath the surface
Directing my life with divinity
Fulfilling me with a purpose
For luck is naught but happenstance,
A fact I learned so true
And life only a matter of circumstance
The completion of me and you
Situations out of our control
Makes battles more complicated
Leave us feeling less than whole,
The empty feeling never vindicated
And when left to our own devices,
We seem to not be
All too often, were found in crisis
Far too often and suddenly
Still theres a chance were not alone,
My beliefs has taught me such
As each of us, May, an angel own,
Each of us will feel the tender touch
And though we want that they be seen,
How we beg to see them frequently
So that there presence could be known,
And can be forgiven repeatedly
We cling to things we hope are true
The cause of pain and strife
To give us strength to make it through
Its the fact of human life
Enclosed please find my original poems available
for publication.My poems have previously been
published in numerous publications across the United
States, Canada and England including
CATAMOUNT,LINKWAY,OFFERINGS,NORTHERN STARS.
I appreciate your time.
Peter Vetrano
.............
"zEN 30"
Tulipsdaffodils on the message board
restored.
.............
MAGNIFICATION
The lens of the aperture
raised a millimeter
or so...
control
.................
CLOUDS
Preventing the deployment
your enjoyment
............
ORBITING BODY
Detailed derivation
sun's gravitation
machination.
...........
RETROGRADE
Mean density
inclination
eccentricity.
Dear g. bassetti,
I am submitting for your consideration a few sample poems along with my bio.
Sincerely,
Claudia Moscovici
Your voice
The sound of your voice
Tickles temptingly, rolls smoothly
Inside of me, gliding instantly everywhere.
No echoes, no reverberations:
Just a simple hello.
A sound as clear as a bell,
As sharp as a whistle
And, as you know so well,
Im instantly yours.
For it is as clear as day
That simple greetings
Unleash more complex emotions
Ravaging the folds of intimate memories;
Calling to mind Pavlovs dog.
Whats up? you ask,
Almost matter-of-factly
And the fact is, my love,
That I need to catch my breath
If only to reply, nothing new,
Followed by the nonsequitor:
If you knew how much I miss you
Whispered with relief in the breath I exhale
What else is new
you ask ironically
While still carresing me with your tone
And with that indulgent, protective emotion
You withdraw; you advance; you cling to me
Then, overflowing, you fill me with your world.
The sweetness of your words
Give me the sweetness of your words
With the tip of your tongue
Let them glide into my mouth
Smoothly, wetly, generously
Let me savor the flavor of your thought
In the tingles that run through my being
In the feelings that condense into tears
Unarticulated, overwhelming, dense
Molecules of emotion too large
To flow through the pores of my skin
Pent up inside, but ready to burst
At your most delicate touch
At a barely whispered word
Into an unbearable surge of desire
Into the secret poetry that only
Our two bodies strained with the effort
Of an almost forgotten, soothing motion
That suckles the honey, the milk, and the spirit
From the sweetness of your words
In your absence
In your absence, I break into fragments
More fragile than a porcelain figurine
I shatter from the impact of emotions
And so become a hand you held
The shirt I wore when you last touched me
The lips you kissed, the mouth you probed
Breathing life into me with your warmth
In your absence, I dissipate into the air
Lighter than any cloud, my thoughts
Float freely, detached from any anchor
They seek to reach you somewhere
Anywhere I may behold you again
In our past, in the present you travel
Without me, in the distant future
That I cannot fathom in your absence
Conversation
Your voice trickles like a stream
Drop by drop, word by word
Our intimate whispers condense
Into disoriented tear drops
Tracing zigzag patterns
Upon the velvet of our skins
Warm limbs cling together
Interlocked in clashing emotions
Pushed and pulled by waves of desire
Then soothed by those phrases
Which roll off our tongues
To moisten quivering lips
Provoking a delirium of pleasure
For what are lovers vows
If not incantations filled with ecstasy
Roots and air
The morning dew
Sparkles upon my finger
A treasure of emotion
I only need from you
The richness of desire
Warms up cooler evenings
And nights that tremble softly
In the briskness of the air
Sometimes when youre asleep
I extend my body upwards
Drawn by the luminous magic
Of stars that silently tempt me
With their majestic height
I bend, turn, stretch, move
With the smooth suppleness
Of a vine faithfully winding
Around her loyal trunk
You plant yourself in me
In you I find my shelter
From lifes harshest storms
In the disarming intimacy
Of our communication
We find each others roots
While breathing the fresh air
Falling leaves
Leaves glittering in the sun
Fall upon me lightly, gently
A fire without warmth;
A life that is already dead.
They wink; they sparkle
Deceptively, as a palette of colors
Cheerfully sprinkles the earth
Only to be trampled upon;
To lose color and wholeness
Leaving no trace except
For the soft, inaudible, whisper
Of leaves decomposing in the night.
Bio:
Claudia Moscovici was born in Bucharest, Romania and immigrated with her family to the United States when she was twelve years old. Her doctorate is in Comparative Literature from Brown University. She is the author of five scholarly books on democracy and ethics and teaches philosophy and arts and ideas at the University of Michigan. She is collaborating with Mexican sculptor Leonardo Pereznieto on founding a movement in art and literature called postromanticism, to which the website postromanticism.com is devoted.
Her publications include Erotisms (1996) and Perusals into Postmodern Thought (2000), both of which blend essays and fiction. She has completed a nonfiction book called Romanticism and Postromanticism and is currently working on a coffee table book entitled New Romanticism: The Art of Passion that introduces to a more general audience the art of contemporary painters, sculptors and photographers that continuesand transforms for our timesthe romantic tradition.
Her first novel, entitled The Cubic Planet, is a love story staged in the midst of a world war between a corrupt democracy and an authoritarian regime. Her novel-in-progress, Artworld, traces the struggles of postromantic artists in an artistic milieu dominated by conceptual art. Her work is represented by Ron and Mary Lee Laitsch of Authentic Creations Literary Agency (ron@authenticcreations.com and marylee@authenticcreations.com).
To More Reader Poetry: Amateur Poets, Souls and Hair on Fire
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