I Am Not Ready to Die - new poem in Rusty Truck

 

I am grateful to Scot D Young and Rusty Truck for giving this recent piece of mine a home:

I Am Not Ready to Die.

Sunday 8/9 on Zoom: Awenites presents a reading by John Burroughs

"Doc Janning is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting."

Topic: Awenites featuring John Burroughs
Time: Aug 9, 2020 02:15 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82157517296?pwd=RUJqRTg4MnFMS3lkcjJzZnRiaTh1Zz09

Meeting ID: 821 5751 7296
Passcode: 64S42a729R

Questions? Contact the event host, Doc Janning, Poet Laureate of South Euclid, Ohio.

To be notified about their future events, follow Awenites on Facebook.

Video of NeuroNautic Institute Presents 7/23/2020

screen capture by Sandra Feen

Last night I had the honor and pleasure of reading for my friend Matthew Hupert's NeuroNautic Institute series via Zoom. The other three featured poets were Robert Gibbons, Karen Hildebrand & Jane Ormerod, and an open mic followed.

 

 

Watch it all here:

 

Follow the NeuroNautic Institute / NeuroNautic Press page on Facebook to stay in the loop for their always fabulous events.

7/23 NeuroNautic Institute Presents Burroughs, Gibbons, Hildebrand & Ormerod

July 23rd 2020 at 7 p.m. Eastern, NeuroNautic Institute, hosted by Matthew Hupert, will present featured readings by three excellent New York City poets—Robert Gibbons, Karen Hildebrand and Jane Ormerod—plus me, followed by an open mic. The reading will be broadcast live on Facebook at the NeuroNautic Institute / Neuronautic Press page. If you would like to participate in the open mic, please contact Matthew soon.

This will be my first featured poetry reading since March 8th in Toledo, and my only one this summer, so I very much hope you'll tune in.

Beat Poet Shoe

I ordered these shoes in August 2017 for 40 bucks and now they're ready for retirement.

June, July and August Events Cancelled

As the Covid-19 pandemic shows no sign of abating soon, all my previously scheduled poetry events for June, July and August are cancelled and/or postponed until further notice. I am seriously considering cancelling all my events for the rest of 2020 as well, but for now I remain in a wait-and-see holding pattern.

Video: Live at the National Beat Poetry Festival, 8/31/2019

Here I am on the second day of the National Beat Poetry Festival on Saturday 31 August 2019 in New Hartford, Connecticut. In this clip Debbie Tosun Kilday, the CEO of the National Beat Poetry Foundation, presents me with the Ohio Beat Poet Laureate Award for 2019-2021, and then I read two signature poems, "Bloodshot" and "Lens."

Video by U.S. Beat Poet Laureate Paul Richmond of Human Error Publishing.
Festival hosted by Shaw Israel Izikson & Debbie Tosun Kilday.

Video permalink: https://youtu.be/ovt465FqtPc.

photo by Tammi Truax

More videos are available and/or forthcoming on the National Beat Poetry Foundation's YouTube channel.

Rattle and Numb Live #4: "Bloodshot"

Episode #4 features the 4th poem from my Rattle and Numb: New and Selected Poems, 1992-2019.

You can order a copy from almost any place good books are sold, including your favorite independent bookstore and venetianspiderpress.com. And please subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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

Bloodshot

Indian summer sun squints,
bloodshot like the wide wounded eyes
of my cynical Seneca ancestors.
On and on and anon,
an endless queue of unrelenting conquistadors,
lusting for booty or bust,
defile our trust and defame the name of God
in the name of God.
Opportunity does not knock for trusting tribesmen,
be they from Arizona, Africa, the Amazon or Akron.
Riding roughshod over every allegedly endless empire
including America the beautifully dutiful,
The cursed hearse of history leads a parade
of pathetic and unsympathetic plotters,
plodders, priests and presidents, electable eels
who feel their forked tongues and dung
make them agents of distinction,
instead of extinction.
Sweetly sighing lullabies of liberty
and expediency,
these leaders open their bomb bays as they pray,
first for the unconditional surrender of their enemies
and last, if at all, for the bloodshot
souls of the soon to be charred
children of Hiroshima, Hanoi
Belfast, Belgrade, Baghdad, Bethlehem
New York City and coming soon
to a theatre of war near you.

Named Literary Artist of The Month by Heights Arts

Some good news in the midst of this pandemic: I am honored and grateful to have been selected as Heights Arts' Literary Artist of the Month for May 2020!

https://www.heightsarts.org/artist-of-month/artist-of-the-month-literary-7

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