GAS Featured Poet: Allen Itz

 

In Allen's words:

I grew up in La Feria, Texas, a very small town (2,000 people, one stop light) in the Rio Grande Valley in deep South Texas, about 10 miles from the Rio Grande River, and the border with Mexico, and about 40 miles from South Padre Island, in the days when it was barely developed.

 

My wife, to whom I’ve been married for 45 years, is from San Benito, a slightly larger town near La Feria. We met through our work. She was a job counselor when we met, and later completed a 30-year career as a Juvenile Parole Officer and later Regional Parole Supervisor.

Terminally bored with college after two years, I joined the Peace Corps in 1964 and completed a semester of training at University of New Mexico. I completed the training but never had an overseas assignment.

Barely a year later in 1965, I joined the Air Force after receiving my draft notice two weeks before Christmas. Most of my first year of service was spent at Indiana University studying Russian for my military job as Russian Linguist. Before my discharge in 1969, I served in West Germany (before German reunification) and on the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan. My job in both places was monitoring the activities of the Russian Air Force.

 

Upon completing military service, I returned to complete my university degree at what is now Texas State. It was during that time that I made my first efforts at writing poetry, publishing two of my first poems in a journal in Austin.

After earning my degree I returned to the little town I came from and where I knew I would at least get fed. (After two years living on the GI Bill, I graduated with a very old car and 35 cents in my pocket.) I began work for a state agency as a Veteran’s Employment Counselor. I retired from the agency in 1998 as Regional Director. That was my first retirement. I’ve retired twice more since.

I quit writing when I began my professional career in 1971, I didn’t begin to write again until my retirement in 1999, publishing my first poem in 2000. I continued to write and publish in small journals until 2007 when I started my own blog/journal, Also, in 2007 I began a regimen of writing a poem every day.  About a year ago I quit writing again, running out of ideas I hadn’t already covered during the previous 12 years of daily poems.

 

In 2007, I published my first book, Seven Beats a Second, my only print book,  featuring my poems with art on every page by my collaborator, Vincent Martinez. The book is available on Amazon, both in a new print on demand version as well as, usually, used copies.

 

Following publication of that book, I published seven eBooks, five poetry books – Pushing Clouds Against the Wind, Goes Around, Comes Around, Always to the Light, Places and Spaces, and New Days, New Ways, and two books of fiction – Sonyador, the Dreamer and Peace in our Time.

 

The eBooks are available everywhere eBooks are sold, in the U.S. and overseas, including Amazon.

I continue to use my old poems today in a new blog, I began a couple of months ago at allenpoetryart.com. At the same time I quit writing, I tried my hand at art, abstract, spray on wood, large pieces, 10 to 12 inches by 4 to 5 feet. I have had one informal showing of my work and am scheduled for a more formal gallery showing early next year. The work is large and very unique, not painted to match anyone’s curtains, and I don’t expect to ever sell much, if any.

 

Currently, I’m 77, going on 78 years old, and not in particularly good health. My day is centered around two things, my blog and my art.  Don’t have either the ability or interest for much else, so, like most old people, I make do with what I’ve got.

PURITY

From a fellow poet’s comment

On the idea of “immaculate Conception”

I am led to consideration

Of the eternal human desire

To have our cake and

Eat it too,

Our secret desire,

As a twelve-year-old

For mom to clean

Our room, how much better

It is when clean and neat,

How much pleasure there was

In the messing-up of it,

About all the decisions we make,

Proclaiming love of all there is,

While leaving a trail behind us

Like the snail’s sticky goo

Which is the essence of its life,

Like our own mess

Is the essence of our life

Like the purity

We say we yearn for

That we will never find,

That we never really want,

For it is the dark,

Not the light

That brightens our day

CONTINUING MY LIFE AS A NON-ECTOPLASMATIC

my quarterly brush

with mortality today

as I see my doctor for the regular

review of my quarterly labs

the schedule

is pretty well set so I rarely

have to wait long

before she comes in with

her quarterly

declaration

“IT LIVES”

and turns the rest of the session

over to her assistant, Igor,

who finds some reason or other

to give me a shot in the butt

and an appointment for the next

quarterly visit

the fact is, I have pills for everything

so I remain relatively healthy

for person in my

condition

and the primary purpose

of the regular visit being to confirm

that the meds aren’t killing me

by destroying my liver and good humor

and whatnot

the fact is (again, another

unfortunate fact) I have a lot of dead friends

and a lot of friends presumed dead

through long absence, so, a quarterly stopover

at the doc’s office and a quarterly blood draw

is a welcome confirmation

of my continuing non-ectoplasmatic place in the world

of the not-so-quick but living

I feel better just thinking about it

FLESHWARE

Blood and gristle

Forged from the trash

Of exploding stars,

Fragile, short-lived,

Prone to sag 

And corruption,

Helpless at birth,

Pitiful

In unremitting decay

 

Such poor use

Our body seems 

Of the external elements

Of creation

 

But lightning strikes within

 

Tiny electric jabs that jump

From receptor to receptor

Creating art,

Imagining love,

Finding courage, honor,

Theories of own origin,

Joy and laughter

To mock the truth

Of our condition

 

So much more

Than we appear to be

 

Star dust

 

Offspring of unimaginable light

Seeking an antidote to dark

LOTSA HOTS

I’ve worked in August

Under the noon-day sun

Digging post holes

In hard-packed caliche

On the Texas-Mexico border

 

That’s one kind of hot

 

I’ve won six months’ pay

Throwing dice in Reno

 

That’s another kind of hot

 

I’ve seen pretty little whores

In Piedras Negras

Hot enough to melt the silver tip

Of a cowboy’s dress-up boots

 

That’s pretty hot, too

 

But no hot is as hot

As thinking of you and me

In a big white bed

In a room with curtains whispering

To a low midnight breeze,

Soft lights, satin shadows

Shifting over pale skin

Your dark eyes shining,

Liquid in their knowing