Sunday, May 31, 2020

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.


Sunday, May 17, 2020

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.

Friday, May 8, 2020