Never Too Many Sunsets: Three Generations, Whitehead, Amram and Messina, reviewed by Belinda Subraman

Whitehead, Amram and Messina

Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate, Frank Messina and David Amram, Music Artist and Beat (2020-Lifetime) Award from the National Beat Poetry Foundation, have come together to share their talent and souls with us. They recite story poems with the accomplished musical backing by David Amram. Every track is moving and beautiful in its own way but I'll just mention some of them in hopes you'll listen to them yourselves.

Amram starts the album with deep reflection in Old Man in the Mirror.  In Track 3, Whitehead tells of his deep love for his roots in Kentucky Bound. Then, in The Bottoms, he tells about working hard, farming in his homeland. You can hear his pride and excitement in helping his father tame the land. In Track 6, Mrs. Brickman, Messina reminds us that everything we do leaves a lasting impression.  On Track 9, Playing for the Mets, Messina relays an exciting story of playing baseball with his friends, age 10, with a couple of real NY Mets players watching and encouraging them. Track 10, Mama, is one of the most moving pieces, taking us back to Ron's childhood watching his mom kill chickens by popping their heads off or shooting a chicken off a high roost, also shooting a tree down for Christmas! On Track 12, Daddy Screamed in the Night, Whitehead tells of his father's nightmares after a long day's work and how he would sometimes yell out his name and made him realize his Dad really loved him. Track 14, Emotional Frostbite, Messina tells of a long period of depression but how he recovered through the love of his son. On Track 14, My Heart Swells for You, Messina tells the story of a deep love for a woman, a child they had together and the tragedy of her death/departure.

This album also features the excellent music of Owen Reynolds on on bass and Teddy Owens (Director/Conductor of The Louisville Symphony Orchestra). on clarinet and beautiful, moving vocals of Robin Whitehead Tichenor. David Amaram plays piano, French horn, flute(s), & percussion. He plays at least one instrument, and often more, on every track.

 Mama Gave Me the World by Ron Whitehead from Never Too Many Sunsets: Three Generations, Whitehead, Amram and Messina.

Available on Amazon, Apple music  

 

Listen FREE on Spotify!  

NEVER TOO MANY SUNSETS CD and many other titles by Ron Whitehead & Jinn Bug are available from Trancemission Press 

You can also find this album on Pandora and other online venues. 

GAS Featured Poet: Bruce McRae

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy; (Cawing Crow Press) and Like As If (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

 A Little Chat With Ourself


I’m talking to you through a rip in the seaside,
out of a warmed dent in the passing nothingness,
from behind a loop of tightly woven angel-hair.

I’m talking to you, and the wind is rubbing a cornfield.
I’m telling you the sun is sawing its right hand.
That the moon is a knothole in God’s coffin,
the stars His marred and excitable match-heads.

I’m going along, caught between a feather and a flower.
I’m shouting from the top of my voice,
from the foot of the stairs.
I’m talking to you from a squeak at the circus.
Pointing out opossum’s breath.
Explaining, carefully, gunpowder.

I’m telling you the world is a fog of consciousness.
I’m telling you about the mountain chain
that’s fallen in love with a river.
About a river pouring itself into your tea.
About a cup of tea embarrassed by the cosmos’s antics.

You’re listening to me spouting forth
from the swirling vortex in mommy’s sewing machine.
You’ve been asleep under a stone for a thousand years.
You’re hearing my voice, but believe it’s the rain falling,
and that each cold drop is a planet or miniature Himalayas.

I’m talking to you from the ragged hum of my hands.
I want you to realize that I’m snow
drifting in a far-off land.
I want you to see how the world still loves you.
To know the stars understand.





Chickadee Thinking

In the mind of the chickadee
is a ball of sparks,
a knot of entrails,
the planet’s littlest vacuum.

The chickadee’s mind whistles,
colour fusing to colour.
It smells of beetles’ fears.
It tastes like summer.

Actually, phantoms there
stroll between atoms of moonlight
and lordly Titans gambol
over the seemingly endless vistas.

There are great thoughts,
and these crackle like spruce tinder.
Like soda bubbles, but they weigh tons
and feel barbed to the touch.

Like wind over a hilltop.
Like lines intersecting wires.
Like smoking campfires of the Mongols,
as seen from a blood-red sky.

• 
  

GAS Featured Poet: Michael Ceraolo

 

Michael Ceraolo is a 64-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) and has two more full-length books, Euclid Creek Book Two, and Lawyers, Guns, and Money, in the publication pipeline.

Letter to an Insurance Broker

Man walks up to Postal Clerk to mail a certified letter a few days before Christmas.

Postal Clerk:  Do you need stamps, or anything else?

Man:  Not today, thanks.

Postal Clerk:  Is anything in here liquid, perishable, hazardous, etc.?

Man:  The letter could be harmful to someone's ego.

Postal Clerk:  Thanks.  I needed a good laugh at this time of year.

                           

                                  THE END

The History Game Show (Episode 3)

And tonight's show is

                                   FEAR FACTOR

                                                             with host Russell Alger

                                                             and co-host Charles Eagan

Tonight's challenge:

                                 Will the soldiers in Cuba

                                 eat the beef procured for them

                                 from American companies?

                                (disparagingly referred to as "embalmed beef")

(Stock footage of soldiers eating.)

Thousands of soldiers have accepted the challenge, and their prize for doing so:  far more will die from food poisoning and disease exacerbated by food poisoning, than will die in combat.

                                       THE END

GAS Featured Poet: James Cochran

"I am a proudly Appalachian writer, transplanted from the soil of Southeastern Ohio to the hilly streets of Charleston, West Virginia. I embrace the practice of mindfulness through writing and enjoy listening to the neighbor’s wind chimes. I believe in the power of writing to access and understand our shared experience in a way that can heal and empower all of us."

February 

Awaken to wind chimes and crow song

to follow highway of dazed February

 

sunshine, cut-banks piled with shattered

ice formations like ruined chandeliers.

 

The stubborn COVID winter asked us all,

“How much more can you take?”

 

We answered with chemo and blood

tests, then small vanilla milkshakes

 

and filthy piles of snow in the grocery

store parking lot where sparkling streams

 

of meltwater run the gutter

and disappear into storm drains.

 

How can anguish and nothingness

and hope live together in the small

space of the heart?

 

It was a thing that had to be done…

it was the thing that could be done.

Eavesdropper

 

I.

 

by day I do my work as interpreter (interprete)

remotely, at home, by telephone (teléfono).

I parrot the words of otros, feeling them

flow through me like electricidad through

conduit (conducto). For the minutes or hours

the calls last I am merged in séance with

disembodied voces, we live our lives

together, though their problemas are

not mine, I’m only paid by the minuto.

 

II.

 

press 2 for Spanish (oprima dos para español):

911 calls, parent teacher conferences, workers comp,

ancient medicare enrollees, WIC, car insurance,

home foreclosures, tech support, but most of all,

the immigrants waiting in detention centers…

 

III.

 

Do you have any heart problems?

No, I have two bullets in my head

from an attempt on my life.

They were unable to remove them

in the other center where I was.

That doesn’t have anything to do with your heart.

Do you have heart problems or high blood pressure?

No heart problems, just these two bullets in my head.

 

IV.

 

There were a lot of cockroaches in the cell where I was.

At first I would kill them, but after awhile I started to talk to them.

I told them that they could crawl on my body, as long as they didn’t

go in my mouth or ears… I needed the company.

 

V.

 

At home everyone in the family has their own bed, even my wife, because I like my space.

I have a big bed, and when I’m asleep the kids will sneak in and get in bed with me.

Now I’m in here on this narrow uncomfortable bunk and all I can think about is

how I wish I could have my kids in bed with me. I miss them so bad it hurts.

 

 

VI.

 

Sometimes, I’m just sitting there, and I feel like I have powers…superpowers,

like one of those Power Rangers, like I can just point my hand at the wall

and make a hole in it. But then I reach out my cane and touch the wall

and there’s no hole there. I don’t tell anybody about this because I know

they would just tell me I’m crazy.

 

VII.

 

The workday ends with a dial tone, no more voices in my head.

Bullets, cockroaches, lonely bunks, and superpowers evaporate,

and I head out to the YMCA to exercise and exorcise my pain

and the pain of others, still not knowing what number to press

for freedom, safety, healing, or a second chance.

GAS Featured Poet: Victor Clevenger

 Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing.  He is the author of several collections of poetry including Scratching to Get By (Between Shadows Press, 2021).  Together with American poet John Dorsey, they run River Dog. He can be reached at: crownofcrows@yahoo.com

3 Haiku


over morning coffee
discussing who heard
a mouse’s footsteps

stress relief
a child finger painting
the sun

ever-changing
the paths that lead us to
the madhouse

Contemporary Tanka


young girl at dinner belle
crawling through milkman's dreams
dainty spider legs
trudging across greasy floors
her crisp smile & our bacon 

 

Contemporary Tanka

morning begins
writing words that’ll disappear…
my lost notebook
like distant thunder taunting
small children with sidewalk chalk

GAS Featured Poet: John Dorsey

photo by John Walz

John Dorsey is the author of several collections of poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), and Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles, 2021). He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Punk Rock is Cool for the End of the World

for Ed Smith

you can’t hear screaming

over the sound of the radio

on a wooded highway

where a cat curls up

with the noise of youth

forgetting there was ever a time

& place for anger

before just diving into a mosh pit

of rivers & more rivers.

In the Morning, for Dan Wright & Carl Sandburg

maybe you would’ve liked each other

watching the fog creep in

each paw with its own shape

each body is a different city you could love

a gentle rain you could hold onto

or let slip away

through a crack

in the window

like an act

of forgiveness.

GAS Featured Poet: Kevin Zepper

Kevin Zepper teaches at Minnesota State Univerity Moorhead in Moorhead, Minnesota. His booklength publication, Moonman, was published by Jules Poetry Playhouse Press in 2018. With four published chapbooks to his credit, a fifth is currently being circulated, The Shaman Said. In addition to writing, Zepper enjoys photography and acting.

English Department

Some folks refer to our department as the “little castle on the quad.” When students graduate, they have their photos taken in front of the English department because it looks “college-y,” sharply contrasting with the other buildings, which look like businesses or banking institutions.

From my office, I hear a student tour guide say “this is where all of the English classes are held, though it’s quiet most of the time.” After a pause they add, “they say it’s haunted. A janitor accidentally hung himself from a thick rope by the stage. They’ve had ghostbusters and paranormal types come here to see if they can make contact.” The guide chuckles and the prospects laugh and move on to the next department building. This is a rare day for me, cleaning up my office. I used to hang out in this building when I was a student when the ghostly haze of cigarette smoke hung in the hallways like vapor sheets and ideas making themselves visible without the aid of device. I am less here, my old haunt, guiding students online at home, a spirit in the machine. In the midst of all these self-truths, maybe a new myth needs to be spun in this quiet keep of stories. Maybe the one about the aged English teacher, who was found dead at his desk, grading 101 composition papers. But, they might see through this one…

 

Buffalo River Bend

Fishing from a steep bank on the Buffalo River, under an old elm. The best for shade and waiting for bites on the hook. Across from me, on the other shore, a painted turtle suns itself on a grey oak log over the water. I angle for the fish, watching for the bobber to twitch, bounce, then disappear into the green. The turtle dips its head, stretching its neck and nods once under the summer sky. A dark shell, drawing all the light and warmth to quell the cold blood. My skin, cool to the touch, like a stone or sunken log. The turtle finally sees me, and we lock into a monumental stare. The moment freezes. After apprehension, curiosity, then acknowledgement. The turtle tips from the log and kerplooshes into the deep pool of the bend. A daydream follows the momentary trail of bubbles away from my shady spot. The red and white bobber, solitary, unmoving in the river water, my thoughts swimming with a painted turtle.

Road Flowers

i.

As we cross the Colorado border into New Mexico, we see our first bundle of plastic flowers and an aluminum cross. They are on our right, in an emergency stopping area for semis with failing brakes. There is a steep drop on the other side of the sandy shoulder. There is a steep drop into the canyon between the banded mesas. As we continue through the pass, the curves in the road, and the high desert, we see more memorials as bountiful as the piñon and scrub oak. For us, it’s a graveyard we can really leave, markers sprouting from every hairpin turn, sheer drop, or somber arroyo. The perma-flowers weather well here, with shades of red everywhere: red for heart, passion, anger, fire, blood. The Historical marker near Ojo Caliente has a mound of memorials, including signs of fresh cut carnations and baby’s breath. On a plaque of plastic stone, in large letters reads, “unsolved murders.” It is here where we cross the border of accidents into the realm of the intentional. 

 ii.

 The feral flowers have broken through the asphalts’ cracks at rads edge. Along the old 52 bypass, some stretches show heavy growth between failing concrete and tar patchwork. The roots of the wild easily break through the diminished crust and hard scrabble. Groups of white daisies flourish, mustard plants wave from the roadside of the ditch. Near a corn field, a pair of sunflowers sway, bright hitchhikers hoping for a life to a space filled with bright family. Mixed flowers fill the torn pockets of civilization, florid defiance! At sundown a western breeze kicks up and the flowers gently bob and wave. This is their farewell dance before a return to darkness and the bowing of heads.