Thursday, September 28, 2023

GAS Featured Poet: Mark McCormick


Mark McCormick is a writer, painter, and yoga instructor living in San Francisco. Professionally, he is retired from a corporate career where he managed large digital design teams. He has a fledgling TikTok channel @markdoespoems. 


I Just Wanted to Say

 

I want to say something about magic

                                                                  But I don’t know what to say

Except once I was reading a poem about a peacock

                                                                  And one landed on my deck.

 

I want to say something about ghosts

                                                                  But I don’t know what to say

Except when I was eighteen I saw one

                                                                  And he was wearing a brown plaid blazer.

 

I want to say something about lust

                                                                  On that I’m an expert.

It made me break the law once or twice

                                                                  And that’s all I’m saying. Wait for the movie.

 

I want to say something about God

                                                                  Only I’m afraid.

But once on the Ganges my boatman’s oar

                                                                  Thudded on a dead body floating.

 

I want to say something about mother

                                                                  But is there anything left to be said

Except once I had a drowsy therapist suggest I should just accept her as she is

                                                                  I rolled my eyes and never went back.

 

I want to say something about whiskey

                                                                  But dad was the authority

There must be fifty ways to hide your liquor

                                                                  I hide mine behind these lines from time to time.

 

I want to say something about truth

                                                                  But I have no idea where to start.

 

I’m 57 now; check back 

                                                                  In 50 years and I’ll try.

 

Before I go I want to say one more thing about 

                                                                  Mothers and God and the spirit and ghosts and death and truth and the Ganges and whiskey and whatnot.

I released a candle on a flower on that river, then your ashes in the heat of the flames by the crematory ghats

                                                                  I cried once and for all. Finally I got you to India. 

I guess that’s what I wanted to say after all.

 

 


Thursday, September 21, 2023

GAS Featured Poet: Jim Ferguson

 





I started to write with serious intent in 1984 during a period of illness and convalescence. Due to a bump on the head I had developed an epilepsy which luckily diminished, and I was able to live free of medication and other restraints from 1990 forward. During this period I lived in Paisley, Scotland. In 1986 I joined a writers’ group that met weekly on Monday evenings in Paisley Central Library. The group was tutored by poet and critic Tom Leonard who was immensely inspirational and from whom I learned a lot about the politics of language. Some of us formed ourselves into a group called Itinerant Poets. We published several pamphlets and did readings throughout central Scotland, mostly in the Paisley/Glasgow area. My closest partners in this endeavour were the poets Graham Fulton and Bobby Christie: we published work by Ronald McNeil, Christine McCammond, Brian Whittingham and Margaret Fulton Cook.


I have always enjoyed writing poetry and prose. My starting point was with poetry and short stories. Over time I began to write longer prose pieces and have written five novels to date, three are unpublished. Two were published in short print runs by small presses: Punk Fiddle (2012) and Neither Oil Nor Water (2017). My first poetry collection, The Art of Catching a Bus and other Poems was published by Ramsey Kanaan’s AK Press in 1994. Since then I have published five other collections, numerous pamphlets and a couple of CDs.


I have contributed poetry, short stories, essays and criticism to academic books, literary anthologies and arts magazines, including: Air, West Coast Magazine, Variant, Nerve, Cutting Teeth, Minted, Common Sense, The Purple Patch, Edinburgh Review, Scottish Child, Rebel Inc, Billy Liar, The Echo Room, The Wide Skirt, Harry’s Hand, Blade, Cerasus, Dog, Dreich, Gutter Magazine, Metachrosis Literary and New Writing Scotland. I also had work in the Clocktower Press publications, Folk and Zoomers edited by Duncan McLean in the early nineteen nineties.


I gained a doctorate from the University of Glasgow for my biographical study of Paisley poet and songwriter Robert Tannahill (1774-1810).  More recently I have been working in collaboration with artist Louise Malone, poet Derek J. Brown, musicians Carol Jamnejad, Brian McFall, and others, as part of The Glasgow Literary Lounge Arts Collective which was formed out of an idea conceived by the late Ruby McCann: under this banner we have hosted many live events and produced loadsa FnB videos


I live in the East End of Glasgow and tutor a weekly creative writing group at Glasgow Kelvin College.


Jim Ferguson 11 September 2023. 






This is a list poem

 how the world’s horrors scream at you

and how the middle-classes avoid and ignore them
and how the workers are seduced by soaps
and how the homeless and dispossessed know it
and how the poets drink to oblivion
and how the comedians think their lives serious
and how the novelists write only pulp
and how the insane are mostly in prison
and how the newspapers strive to cover it... ...up
and how the oligarchs conspire to deceive
and how the religions rush to look the other way
and how the tv won’t really show it
and how the footballers don’t know the price of milk
and how the snobs watch the cream curdle
and how the athletes compete for the money
and how the bureaucrats use forms to hide it
and how the internet is too free to tell it
and how the musicians sing nothing but pop
and how the bankers are rewarded for fraud
and how the politicians pretend nothing happened
and how the fiddlers basically fiddle
and how the junkies are mystics in tatters
and how the smokers pay all that tax
and how the gangsters are really all police
and how the police are all really gangsters
and how the teachers are not free to teach
and how the stupid are the first to condemn
and how the pious are sexual oppressors
and how the drunks are poets in disguise
and how the arms dealers blow off your legs
and how the rage at injustice rages no more
and how the universe floats on inside us
and how the spies are always your neighbours
and how the whole fucking thing is mendacious
and how you can’t even trust your own self
and how real success is to merely survive
a little longer
                       than the person
                                                  dying in the bed
                                                                              next to yours  






Our Planet, Our Home
 
the planet Earth is reading old books
as if to know our world better

as if to understand how
hearts come to burst apart

when questions physicists might ask
about light and electricity and radiation
 
and magnetic fields are all related just like
any other family, full of upstarts, wayward sheep,
 
who would have thought, all fingers and thumbs,
in the grey-green light of day, for all of us,
 
a suite of equations reveals some invisible force ─
in night’s dark-matter, in mysterious musical stars

 **

  
so the planet Earth breathes and says
there’s violence in the winds and floods

in solar flares and supernovae,
damaged hearts look out with innocent eyes
 
the earth rotates ─ a massive magnet
falling through space as continents drift
 
hift and buckle    break           apart
cracking the crust of everything

considered real in dreams of permanence ─
folk and fauna flock to higher ground
 
or busily pray to save themselves
naively smiling, children stare
 
terrifyingly terrified at the wall of fire
that speeds unbound toward them

**

Earth holds all the properties of matter in hand
while we’re trying to understand that rock
 
can bend and ice can flow and lava too, from vast
volcanic pimples, some like Arthur’s Seat
 
are now extinct, no pyroclastic or igneous spew
to roll forth over Edinburgh New Town
 
how regally it sits, a planned affair,
when we walk out and take the air

madly trying to calculate the age of the Earth,
before the shock of revelation
 
places the dice in the hands of gravitation,
she is weak but momentum is strong ─

to look abstract science straight in the eye and ask,
is progress fair? (or fare?)

while doubting doubt itself,
the old rich cling to certainty while uncertainty is king

 



Wednesday, September 13, 2023

GAS Featured Poet: Karen Warinsky

Karen Warinsky began publishing poetry in 2011 and was named as a finalist for her poem “Legacy” in the Montreal International Poetry Contest in 2013. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, books and lit mags/blogs, and she has participated in many online open mics including Rattle’s Poets Respond and Ă“ BhĂ©al.  She has three books, Gold in Autumn (2020), and Sunrise Ruby, (2022), both from Human Error Publishing and Dining With War (2023) from Alien Buddha.  Her work centers on mid-life, relationships, politics, and the search for spiritual connection through nature, and she coordinates poetry readings under the name Poets at Large.

Find her at karenwarinskypoetry.wordpress.com


Real Heart

 

Because I had a real heart

I understood for too long

accepted too much

missed some clues.

 

Because I had a real heart

wounds went deep

words meant more

sounds scratched and bit.

 

Because I had a real heart

it was layered over for protection

with durable material 

strong as steel

keeping out debris, rain, wind,

staying cold

preserving the insides

like a refrigerator.

 

But it’s not a self-defrosting fridge.

 

It’s an old-fashioned heart. 

Bring the hot water, a towel,

the knife to chip the ice.

It might take an hour.

 

Bring a book.

 



 The Burning of Old Love

 

Unwise to let it fester,

spiral notebooks crammed with

old feelings 

revealing too much pain

too much loss

my hasty cursive running on the lines,

an arroyo of emotion.

 

It had to be released, I know,

but it’s a decade later

and some decent poems 

now sit in books,

on the net,

shared on stage,

time now to tear the pages out

throw them in the woodstove,

let some of the secrets turn to unpublished ash. 


 


Believer


Now that I love myself

fully

to the max

there’s no one good enough

no one I’d rather wait for

at a sidewalk café,

stumble into at a restaurant, a store,

no one better than me to run an idea by,

take out for a treat,

offer half of my donut to

(maybe I’ll just save it for tomorrow)

write a poem for.


Wish, oh wish I’d had this true love

of self

all those years ago

when I pinned so much on you,

gave you the cream, the first bite, the biggest slice,

waited quiet, silent, for the yes

as you put your lips around all that was offered,

indulged yourself at my banquet,

watched for

the nod, the smile that said

you would grant your time, your breath, 

for a bit

before saying

it was time for me to go home.




Thursday, September 7, 2023

GAS Featured Poet: Derek J. Brown

 


Derek J. Brown is a poet based in Glasgow, Scotland. He published his first book of poetry, A Strategy of Mirrors in Nov 2020. He is a member of The Glasgow Literary & Music Lounge at The Scotia Bar and likes to collaborate with musicians, namely Brian McFall He also makes video poems often with fellow poet Dr. Jim Ferguson. He has collaborated with Ferguson on a book of poems titled Glasgow Jukebox  He has had poems published in various literary magazines including: The Red Skirt, The Fair-haired Review, The Banana Peel, The Singular Sock, The Scarlet Bow-tie, The Magic Muffin, The Hierophant, Gutter, The Hieroglyphic Hermit, Fathers and Daughters, The Sacred Mackerel, The Syd James Gazette, All or Nothing, The Magician's Scarf and various other literary magazines. He believes any form of completeness is ultimately deceptive. He considers his poetry to be a war against mankind's paucity of being.

Broken Days

In your cemetery eyes, sustained, in focus
Crumpled petals of an autumn lotus
Your blazing moon, your frozen tower
Aimless wreath, random flower

Broken days of wine and roses
Slender truth no mind proposes
Your passive fears, your violent hopes
Your kingdom fixed by supple ropes

A place I strive to breach, to enter
A final, peculiar, undying ember
Your knight of wands in his last uprising
Your magician's fall so unsurprising

Your swift rejection of earthly power
Fruits held sweet and yet so sour
I wait not for any bell to toll
I climb the slope of your erratic soul

Affections neither cold nor warm
Your trackless heart beats multiform
No question here of what love is
I'll be your prophet, your Orpheus

Cross your underworld, its false negations
Its guileful snares, its infestations
Your boneyard eyes, preserved, in focus
Crumpled petals of an autumn lotus.


The Truth

I've read Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg's Howl
I know the difference 'tween a glance and a scowl
You want to kill me, disembowel me
Throw my body in a dismal grave

Is the thirst you have one to be quenched
Your universe a slave, a sulphurous wench
The god you worship, what's he providing
Even the sheep (bless them) have gone into hiding

Liars travel by sturdy vessels
But truth, it carries its own credentials
No twisted cord it won't untangle
Nothing you build it can't dismantle

I'm no vagrant shadow that craves your light
Not some barren page on which you can write
Safe in your castle, you kiss your own loins
Hands complicit dispense worthless coins

But other hands light unnatural flames
Can extinguish faces, annihilate names
Turn a cobra deaf, blind a dragon's eye
Transform you into an ant or a fly

Keep your licorice piece in your candy bag
Call off your brute, pull down your flag
Shut your mouth, discard your pencil
Truth, it carries its own credentials.


Vespers

We listen to Vespers, we dream of Athos
His grand holy mountain 
No soul moves forward
Unless it is forced. It echoes within us
What slipped through our fingers

And yet, somehow, still lingers
Like post-mortem portraits, Greta Garbo
Expressions, monochromatic half-moons
Existence of evil such a curious comfort
My assailants swept under, I owe my small life

To illegitimate waves of monogamous oceans
I’ve spent time on planets constantly twilight
What does it mean to be part of this tragedy
A world inhabited by coarse veinless creatures 
Their aspects and hands cunningly disguised

Sometimes wounded but not destroyed
There are enemies here we can’t avoid
At last, we were free, in the sun’s rays
But freedom’s deceitful in multiple ways
We are still in a place where all love decays

The past is the present, it always has been
Where you and I covet one permanent kiss
A kiss that is more than it’s initial sensation
God speaks to people thru mouths of others
Some of us listen, we’ve no other choice

Not denizens of this city, its flesh or its bone
Our ears not tuned to its violins but our own
Nameless instruments concocting melodies
Between stone spaces and ambiguous glass
The stranger instincts are waiting to pass

A neutral sky breached by a legion of ravens
Criss-crossing each other’s elusive equations
That join then detach to then join again
Sentient formulas let loose from their slumber
While we enter dreams in which we must wake

But what does it mean to partake of a culture
A place populated by autonomous animals
Whose purified lips are so skilfully sealed
Their faces and palms seldom revealed
A riddle confounds that’s already been solved

To search for one word that equals all others
Is to seek out an entity that utters no language
And yet still possesses a mouth and a tongue
A countenance our eyes may never perceive
An object of truth our brains cannot grasp

Let us go on a journey through liminal realms
Within our patterns let us harness powers
It is the mind that keeps the world’s existence
Loneliness comes from that tiny awareness
And we walk the walkways, in our own ways

Inadequate vultures on Rachmaninov’s heart
Our eyes in sympathy with shadows that hide
Absorb sweet impurities of myth after myth
Simple light refractions feed off of each other
Let our sustenance be music, let art be our love.


A Personal Invitation (From A Psychic Notebook)

She passed me a personal invitation
Directly from her psychic notebook
While I knelt precariously between
Her lawless thighs, her Catholic eyes

Almost transposed me, her Illinois lips
Bore Gothic fruits, species I knew
Only from books. I sensed a process
The most exquisite corruption

A nectarous form of degradation
I felt a rush, a primal pressure
Her blend of Italian and Irish blood
Indecipherable lines of a secret history

Inscribed across her pulsating face
Like an excommunicated priest holding
The Cup of Christ I held with caution
Her heavenly head. She said, "kiss me"

And I wondered what it meant, what
It meant to her, as if a kiss from me
Could mean anything. Casablanca
Projected on a screen in my naive brain

But instead of going by time is betrayed
By its own seconds, minutes rebelling
In the name of romantic elimination
Ascension in vain to a perilous euphoria.

And so I kissed her and she kissed me
Yet the world staggered on, to the next
Sad but imperative new day of oblivion
And so this is the way it always has been

A dream of a dream that wasn't a dream
Cell upon cell, mutating, meticulous
A fugitive tenderness thrives in me still
An invitation from a psychic notebook.