ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA by Christopher Ethan Burton, reviewed by Hex'm J'ai

Mr. Burton has been writing and creating for years.  As well, Christopher has recently been honing his craft on the spoken word stage giving definitive life, flavor and vibrance to his poetic works.  In the last year, with public readings cancelled due to covid-19, Mr. Burton took the opportunity to continue his live spoken word performances via Face Book and You Tube.  That said, Christopher Ethan Burton has finally taken his spoken word darlings and crystalized them, fixed them in his first published collection.  Though his first publication, Mr. Burton has painstakingly edited and re-edited his original manuscript to render the finished product as professional as a larger press, though this text is self-published and available to readers for essentially cost.  

Watch a performance by Christopher on YouTube.

Telling.  Autobiographical.  Honest and unashamed.  Witty, observant and nostalgic.  

Buzz words.  Buzzwords.  I could fill this page with buzzwords to describe the first published work of Christopher Ethan Burton.  They would be accurate, but they would be pale in meaning and be lost in the ocean of milk-toast descriptions.  This slim, self-published work deserves, in my humble opinion, a much closer inspection.

Between the covers of this unassuming volume is a microcosm(s).   Pulsing through these pages are what I call an alchemical blend that is matter-of-fact punk-rock simplicity combined with rich imagery.  Through this medium Mr. Burton creates a vehicle that can transport us to NYC in the 80’s through a child’s eye, dusty Hudson Valley libraries where the literary ‘greats’ reside or to bleak upstate Penitentiaries.  Through this blend, Mr. Burton offers us the opportunity to experience a myriad of emotions.  Righteous indignation, ennui, longing for the bitter-sweet past, the ego debasing and ultimate freedom of the quest for redemption, love, both young and innocent, tainted or that wise perfect love seldom described with accuracy.  All of these are possible destinations within the pages of Once Upon a Time in America.

That said, I encourage anyone who wants to take the trip, to pay the fare and hop aboard.

Gold Rush

Searching for Chinese food 

   in these odd times, 

like panning for gold in California

     after the rush was over

       and so many natives dead.

San Francisco transformed by that fever 

   into a robust city of vice.

      America, today flooded

with toxic politicians, 

      polluting our air waves. 

  It is mind numbing to think

   the populous falls time 

and time again for the old ruse 

  of smoke and mirror tricknology. 

The river alive with speed boats

   and families fishing for catch

hazardous to eat.

    Everywhere we look 

  rubber gloves on the ground, 

   like empty heroin bags

            and used syringes. 

Face masks finding their way 

         out into the ocean. 

   The gold was never in the mountains 

 or streams. 

  It was never in the oceans or rivers. 

The gold is the mountains and streams. 

    The oceans and rivers. 

   The gold is everywhere but our wallets.

   The gold is that piece of ourselves, 

like “Blue Birds trying to get out,

      we fight to keep down.

“Pouring whiskey on

   while inhaling cigarette smoke,

    and the whores and bartenders 

   and grocery store clerks, 

     never know that it is in there.”

Order Once Upon A Time in America on Amazon.

 

C.E. B.

Christopher Ethan Burton is a forty-year-old poet from New York. He began writing at fourteen, shortly after his father was murdered.  Fifteen years of his life were spent incarcerated, over ten of those years in New York’s worst maximum security prisons.  Today he lives a simple life with his girlfriend and her two children in Germantown N.Y.  He is the author of two chap books, “Once Upon a Time in America” and “A Dog’s Life.”