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."
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.
