Wednesday, September 29, 2021

GAS Featured Poet: Peter Krok

                     


I was in Ohio during Kent State and my poem, "The Misfit Generation: In Memory of the Kent State Four" was a reflection and historical over-glaze of the tragedy, Sixties, an uncertain youth and questioning individual, I was always trying to find out who I am. My first book, Looking for an Eye,  should explain my searching. My moniker is “red brick poet.” The city is in my skin. Someone was associating themselves with an animal; I did the same and decided on “a caring owl,“  My book, Wounded World deals with the hurt in the city and my place in it all. I have been editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal since 2001.



FACES WITHOUT NAMES



Getting off the el

they come here

to the darkness slipping

In and out of cars

 

No one knows them by their names

Names without faces

Faces without names

Strangers eyeing strangers

    looking to get a fix

 

They get what

they are looking for

Then they fade

to rooms and alleys

 

Many fall and can’t 

get up   The siren comes

Their heartbeat a flatline  

The fire and the ashes

The ashes and the dust

 




JANUARY 1   



The first day is a burden. I cannot celebrate this day. 

Three years, my son lay on the floor

lost to the world of breath.  Now he lives only in my mind. 


Some say if they had to do it all over again, 

they would have done nothing different. 

I am not one of those.  

If only …the cruelest words. I cannot explain 

The continuum that is our breath. 

Regret hangs on me like a leash. 


The New Year always has it own reckoning.

The loss and silence speak too loudly. 

I’ve brooded this and won’t stop brooding. 


The summer and heat. The sweat and bees and praying mantis

that keeps staring on the fence. I do not know why this thing 

is always there. The dust .


My son lies on the floor.





Both poems are from Wounded World.



Cover art by Rob Kaniuk




























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