Rattle and Numb Live #3: "Karma Souptra"

While quarantined at home, I started a new video series, "Rattle & Numb Live." Here's episode #3, featuring the 3rd poem in my recently published Selected and New Poems, "Karma Souptra" (from 2009).

For more about the book, Rattle and Numb: New and Selected Poems, 1992-2019, visit https://venetianspiderpress.com. And please subscribe to my YouTube channel as well.

Video permalink: https://youtu.be/PI7yGsPltQU.

Karma Souptra

Tin can karma
In a cemetery green sedan
Drives into the past
Through the future
Running round and round
And over and over
The illusory track of time
Like a bomb
That never goes off
Like a song that rings
In Campbell's soup cans
Round and round the rims
Not going out or in
Just sticking to the circuit
Like a one ring soup can
Gerbil wheel circus
Till the tin finally erodes
The illusion of time caves in
And full circle
Cemetery green
Karma darts to the next can
In the aisle of now
  

Fair thee well, Vertigo Xi'an Xavier

Stunned and heartbroken. I just learned that my friend Vertigo Xi'an Xavier passed away unexpectedly. Vertigo (real name Chris Draime) was one of the first people I met in the NE Ohio poetry scene. As head of The Poet's Haven, he gave me my first featured reading. He published two of my chapbooks. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. Vertigo was one of the hardest working people in poetry, always generous with his time and talents. I want to say more, but I'm still in shock. Sending love and my deepest sympathies to his family and all who know and care about him.

https://www.paquelet.com/obituaries/Christopher-D-Draime?obId=5599517

Geri Lynne Burroughs, Vertigo, me and Marlana-Patrice Pugh Hamer in May 2009
at the Barking Spider Tavern in Cleveland [photo by Ken Kitt]