GPPReader
Selections From The Poets Of
The Guerilla Poetics Project
Edited By
Ed Kauffman
Published By The Guerilla Poetics Project
Copyright 2011 Guerilla Poetics Press
This free ebook may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, and transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. We offer it with our deepest thanks for your interest and support. If you enjoy it, please seek out other work by all the included authors.
Table of Contents
Editor’s Note — Ed Kauffman
David Barker
The Wheels Of Government
To The Lady Who Fell Down The Stairs
Just In Case I Become A World Traveler
justin.barrett
Alone
Downtown
Heredity
A Portrait Of Ourselves Only/30 Years Down The Line
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
Four Crickets
Something Beautiful
The Rust Factory
Seed
JJ Campbell
You Can Only Watch The Same Movie So Many Times
Sadness, Through Male Eyes
The Unexpected Death Of An Old Friend
Making A List, Checking It Twice
Alan Catlin
Hugh Casey And Ernest Hemingway: The Artist And The Ballplayer
Working Girl
No Smoking
8-30-06
Leonard J. Cirino
Logic
Modern Times
Sorrow And Joy
The Rich And Famous
Glenn W. Cooper
A Room Like This
4 Year Old Collecting Eggs
A Destroyer Of Men
Some Men
Christopher Cunningham
Words Like Terror
Nothing Is Remembered
A Moment Of Something Glittering
These Quiet Nights
Soheyl Dahi
No, Not Me
You Know
I’d Give It All Up
Dave Donovan
A Toast
In Memory Of Ray Augustine
Driving Lesson
Doug Draime
The Earth Is Exploding Where Lawrence Of Arabia Once Slept
Ivy
Old Homeless Man In St. Francis Hotel Lobby
If I Could Paint I Would Paint This
Nathan Graziano
A Vampire In The Mall
A Frat Guy On A Motorcycle
Two Girls In A Tub Together
My Wife Has The Memory Of An Elephant
S.A. Griffin
Everything Is All Right In Time Even Death
This Place Of love You Make
Lady
One Night In San Francisco
Christopher Harter
Poems For D.A. Levy
Poem
Farmer’s Market (6.16.07)
To The Quiet Voice Of Tom Kryss
Richard Krech
Mindfulness Of Changed Circumstances
After The Storm
After The Intermission
That Place Is Always Attainable
Mike Kriesel
The Great American Novel
Country Garage
September’s Almost Gone
Watching Boxing
Ellaraine Lockie
Man About Town
Censured At Starbucks
Edge Of Night
If You Go To Budapest
Adrian Manning
For Tomorrow
Your Anger
There Must Be A Way
Black Days
Hosho McCreesh
Call It A Battle Cry, Call It Guttural…
Dark, Dank, Ignored Spaces…
In Every Place The Sun Drags It’s Light…
Brian McGettrick
Alright?
From The Shore Out
Tanning The White Band
This Drawn Out Thing We Do
Amanda Oaks
Sirens & Lullabies
Gravity: Iron Hearts You Can’t Save Or Kick Start
Lost Petition For An Endangered Species
Insurgency
Bob Pajich
Beer Without Sugar
Missing You
Magnolia
On Hearing Of The Bankruptcy Of Converse Shoes
Kathleen Paul-Flanagan
The Megaphone Man
I’m No Soccer Mom
Inevitable
Michael Phillips
I Don’t Understand Birds
The Benefit Of Distance
Crawling
The Only Man For The Job
Sam Pierstorff
The Grammys Were On
The Perks Of Being An Editor
The Changing Station
Coming Home
C. Allen Rearick
Death Comes For Us All
The Terror
Poem For The Dying
These Tired Hands Can Hold No More
Charles P. Ries
Birch Street
I Love
Big Woo
Communion
Ross Runfola
Suburban Killing Fields
Nothing To Lose
Orange Juice & Death
William Taylor, Jr.
Test Subject
In Our Best Moments
The Heat
Don Winter
Buffing
Lonesome Town
At The Tavern
Tacoma Tavern
Editor’s Note
I've taken the liberty of presenting the work as consistently, page after page, as possible–striving for balance between the "individuality" present in the poems as originally written, and the book's overall formatting needs. This is most evident in the "standardization" of poem titles–presenting them in a consistent "title case," while the bodies of the poems are presented as originally written, creating some significant differences, poet to poet, in punctuation, grammatical liberties, and even format. Beyond that, a very light (hopefully invisible) editorial hand addressed minor, forgivable grammatical concerns: typos, hyphens, misspelled words (of which, despite much recent criticism, "guerilla" is not one–look it up)...with extraordinary care given to never change the poet's intent, line breaks, or anything beyond all of the above mentioned. It is my sincerest hope that these changes will go quietly unnoticed by not only the readers but the writers as well, and please trust I meant no disrespect.
I’d also like to thank the generous efforts and contributions of all the inventive fund-raisers involved, without whom this book could never have been completed. I hear tell of a vintage Vegas poker chip that fetched a right pretty penny on the auction block, the entire proceeds of which were donated to the project and this book specifically. That is the quintessential spirit of the independent press—namely doing any and everything to crack the nut. It’s all a simple question of alchemy—what you start with and what you do with it. The wealth of this project lies not in its meager ends but rather its near limitless capacity for innovation, owed mainly to the type of personalities it attracts. Creativity is creativity, no matter the medium.
It’s been a real honor to be asked to cull what I thought was the strongest work for this ambitious project, and if there is anyone to thank for the strength of the book it’s the fine poets presented here. Decades of under-appreciated work among them, I’m proud to help bring just a little bit of what they do to light. If you enjoy the read half as much as I enjoyed putting this beast together, then, you are in for a real treat!
Ed Kauffman, editor
D
avid Barker
The Wheels Of Government
three of us
hobbling down the sidewalk
towards the capitol building.
two bad hips and
a gimpy ankle.
none too steady on our feet.
all three spy retirement
on the horizon.
outside the hearing room,
a sea of black suits. we shuffle in
and take seats.
7:30 AM,
the gavel bangs and
they start testifying.
I have a file thick with numbers
just in case of questions.
everyone thought to bring coffee
but me.
To The Lady Who Fell Down The Stairs
I didn’t witness that accident,
but I heard about it later, and
when I saw you on crutches,
your leg in a cast, you seemed
embarrassed by your misfortune. That
was the first time that I saw you
as a person, and not an adversary. We’d
had some turf battle years before,
when you first came to work here. Something
in your mind, not mine. I think you
saw me as a threat to your status, not
realizing that I wasn’t after anyone’s
job; I was just doing my own. Things were
tense for a while, but we got past that,
and later when you learned that I’m a writer,
and told me of your own work in journalism, we
had something in common. You
even bought my chapbook, the one
where I talk about all the crap I’ve
gone through at work, and you were shocked
that I was “so bold” as you put it. And I
explained that I hadn’t told
the half of it in there – that there’s
plenty of other stuff that I’ve
kept to myself. I think you saw me
in a new light after that, and our relationship
was friendly from then on, asking each other
“how’s it going?” the few times we
ran into one another in the hallway.
So it came as a hard thing,
when I got that email from the boss informing us
that you’d suffered from cardiac arrest
on Tuesday night and were in the hospital
in intensive care, lingering in
a medically induced coma, and that the prospects were
not good. I’d just seen you that morning
during the emergency drill, and now
I’m glad that in the chaos of the moment, I had
taken a second to say “hi.”
They said it was a rare event, but it
happens: you’d
fallen asleep on the sofa, and in that
cramped position, a clot had formed and
traveled to your heart.
Wave after wave of sadness
hit me all that day. Not
because we were close – we weren’t – but
because we were coworkers, and I knew it could
have happened to any one of us in that building. And I
remembered back to the stairs, and how you would
really be embarrassed if you could only know what
had befallen you now.
Well, don’t be. There’s no
dishonor in falling downstairs, nor in
falling from life. It happens to the best of us. It
happens to all of us. And you know what they say about
how the good die young. There must be truth to that. You
were only 45, with a husband and a 6 year old daughter.
On Monday the second email arrived, the one I’d been
dreading. I didn’t have to read it to know
what it said.
Don’t think me cold because I
worked the afternoon of your service. It
wasn’t indifference. It wasn’t because I had too much
work waiting for me to take off for an hour. And
it wasn’t because I didn’t care (I did). It
was for the same reason that I skip all funerals.
Because they’re too painful.
The stoic husband ... the
weeping child. There’s nothing I can say. They
don’t need my pity, my
minor grief.
In the days that followed, I took a closer look
at my coworkers, even those I’d
battled against, and they all looked
damned good to me. I have you
to thank for that. I was wrong when I
wrote those words. Wrong about everything.
Just In Case I Become A World Traveler
my daughter tells me that
if you go barefoot in India
these small worms in the soil
with hooks on them will
stick to the soles of your feet
and bore into your skin,
get inside your body and
give you diseases.
at first I suspected
she was passing along one
of those new urban legends,
like alligators in the
sewers of New York City,
but she assured me she had
read it in her Science
textbook.
now I've had to add
walking barefoot
in India to my list of
things to be avoided
in foreign countries,
along with drinking
water in Mexico, and
taking snapshots in the USSR.
justin.barrett
Alone
a dying streetlamp
flickers
orange light onto
the road
as an empty
beer bottle
sits on the curb
just like
me
Downtown
smoggy
gray
guy walks by
and points
to a single red
flower
growing
in a crack in
the sidewalk
“beautiful,”
he says
and
it was
Heredity
my mother used to tell
me that i could
be anything i wanted
to be when i grew up,
yet here i am
working a menial job
for minimum wage,
thousands of dollars in
debt with the drink
as my only escape.
i don’t ever recall
wanting to be
my Uncle Jimmy.
A Portrait Of Ourselves Only
30 Years Down The Line
We walk down the halls,
holding hands,
like a couple 30 years our senior.
She shuffles as best she
can, I shorten my
steps as best I can.
She does well, considering.
Then we see another couple,
one of the ones 30
years our senior, only he’s
the sick one; and she’s holding his
hand and encouraging
him along.
When we pass,
my wife squeezes my
hand a little tighter,
bringing it closer to
her hip,
and we shuffle
our way down the
bleak, sterile hallway.
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
Four Crickets
A great singer
forges his song
from behind a
few blades o
f grass.
He is small
in stature, but
great in depth and
sound. He is small,
fits in my hand.
Perhaps two, three,
four such singers
would fit as well.
A quartet of
small, great singers
would fill this room
with giant songs.
Something Beautiful
Let something beautiful out,
a song you can hang the moon on,
the one-word lovers mean
when it’s not a game.
Let the suicides die and madness
mend its own mind. Let the light
out of the caves and
bring out the paint to
color what lacks. Take sadness, grief,
and sorrow and find it
a new face: the smile
you fell in love with.
The Rust Factory
Working in the rust factory
the foreman's on my case
my job is in danger because
profit is lower than morale
my sweat is nothing to them
it stinks as bad as their
treatment of the workers
each affected by the rust
the blood we cough up each morning
has colored the walls and
floor of the factory crimson
and black when the rust hits it
I am looking to get out soon
the asbestos plant is
willing to pay top dollar to
any worker with balls and lungs
Seed
I want to be buried
off the side of the highway,
where green grass grows
and crows feed and sing.
I don't want to die.
this is not what I desire.
What I want is to be a seed
firmly planted in the earth.
I haven't decided
what type of seed, but I would
like to grow defiantly
in all four seasons.
I want to lie down
and disappear under roots
and under the soil and rest,
living in my dreams.
JJ Campbell
You Can Only Watch The Same Movie So Many Times
i see you're rushing
toward another brush
with an over the
counter suicide
and quite frankly i've
lost all my desire to
fight with you over it