GAS Featured Poet: r.s. mason

r.s. mason’s debut book of poems, Nearer to Never, was published by SUNY Press in 2015. The text was a finalist in the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize. Poems have appeared in Chronogram, THEMA, Milk & Cake, AMP, Sorte and Island of Yak-Yak. 

"My desire as an artist is to have others sense poetry as an essential bridge to what waits to be articulated, rather than confirmed; a bridge to something both intrinsic and extrinsic; something seeming, and therefore possible. " 

DECONSTRUCTING ATLAS

Once, doing so would have

shattered the very Cosmos

 

after all, your shoulders

once sustained the earth

and all the heavens.

 

Thank you, Atlas, but you

needn’t strain anymore;

 

such one-pointed devotion

is no longer understood.

 

your strength of just force --

now a tired obeisance.

 

You see, you’re only stone, 

and there’s nothing to be held

 

no purpose, or nature,

or world to be revealed.

SOMETHING NEW

          i’m more in accord with

the world to come --

 

so bequeath me nothing

leave me undone 

 

no story of pilgrims who

find home once again

 

(no carnage made glory

by ancient cenotaphs)

 

but something new,

impossibly offered;

 

something unacted

hiding in place:

 

beyond us, for us –

 

all this time, abiding

WAITING ROOM

as figures come and go in

sorties about the chairs --

 

(chairs of worn faux leather 

with stains on the seats)

 

we blink, and are pensive,

& swaddle seeming wounds

 

similar to everyone here  

who loves a weary shrine --

 

in lieu of acceptance: its

the drama of reprieve; 

 

waiting for absolution --

never wanting to leave.

WHAT I CAN'T TRANSCEND

Distance       Lust             Boxes

 

Pansies         Deathbeds   Chairs

 

Daydreams   Brilliance       Carnivals

 

Trump           Gravity         Choice

 

Paradox        Drought        Birds

 

Events          Fascism        Rotation

 

Oblivion        Delight         Entropy

 

ENERGY DISC 

Oh, my!  – now i’m  

an energy disc, light-

filled and beating 

 

my center shooting

radial sparks about

in all directions

 

while a smaller track

of colored lights chase

around my edge

 

(a sign of my own 

festival, a sign of

my own play  --)

 

a wild & happy 

gnostic joy i so 

wanted to display.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Michael Lee Johnson

Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 436-plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 47 countries, a song lyricist with several published poetry books, and a nominee for 8 Pushcart Prize awards and 8 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 678 published poems. He is the editor-in-chief of three poetry anthologies, all of which are available on Amazon, and has authored several poetry books and chapbooks. Michael has administered and created 6 Facebook poetry groups. Member of the Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/ and Poets & Writers: https://www.pw.org/.  His poems have been translated into several foreign languages. Awards/Contests: International Award of Excellence 'Citta' Del Galateo-Antonio De Ferrariis XI Edition 2024 Milan, Italy-Poetry. Poem, Michael Lee Johnson, "If I Were Young Again."  

Dream On

 

Wrinkles etch stories on skin,

tears carve rivers through time.

Both are loyal cartographers of the heart,

mapping jubilation and lancination alike,

to the drumbeat of passing days.

Focus on the years.

Here, children burst like crocuses in Illinois soil.

Old folks fade like dusk devoured by the horizon.

Brief footprints on soft earth.

Resurrection, the sun rising anew,

rebirth in every dew-kissed morning.

It is a dream that stitches beginnings,

and endings into a single sky.