Poet

I was going for an artistic, contemplative look.

I only post a few of my own poems here, simply because many of them are being sent hither and yon in hopes that some editor will have a weak moment and accept one for publication.  Word on the street is that poems that can be found in Google searches are often considered “previously published.” But I’ll give you a few links.  Sometimes I will post one that I am working on if I am looking for some feedback or wanting to gage and audience’s reaction. But I will take them down shortly after and hope that Google deletes them from their cache before they end up on a publisher’s desk for consideration.

I will however share a couple with you that were published in college journals some time back, like the one below which won the Savage Poetry Prize from Bloomsburg University and the Academy of American Poets, and was published in Bloom’s faculty journal, Carver. You can read the old moon poem to which it refers by clicking here. Another was recently posted during National Poetry Month here. And I also read one of my own during my 30 Days, 30 Readings here.

Overvision

I wrote a poem once 
about my neighbors and the moon.
Each brief line dropped 
into place as I let them break
at their will. The syntax
arranged itself just comfortably
so.            Years later

I came back with more 
education and a better sense
of rhythm.         I thought
I could improve
it; make the lines
more powerful,

the innuendos more profound.
            But the new ink
was too dark for the old page,
and my good intentions discolored
the moon.  I’d awakened
      a befuddled old man
and his angry, fuzzy-
slippered wife (I’d forgotten
that my old neighbors had moved
away          long ago).

They wanted to know
what the hell was going
on—who was I?  And 
what had I done to the sky?
Too late almost to save
it, I took whiteout
to the street (the last
bottle on the shelf
at the all-night mini 
mart on that same block),
 
dimmed     the stars
and ushered back to bed
the little man and his grumbling
wife.          That globe of blood
               
             still had a pulse—
thank heaven, and I let it return
to where it had been;
on page one
of a college literary 
magazine              simple
and perfect,
hanging low there
in that early night sky.