Book Review/ Interview: Ron Lucas The Mother Goose Market (Lummox Press, San Pedro, 2017) 30 pages

This is the first poetry collection by Ron Lucas, the Fort Wayne, Indiana resident and former factory & warehouse labourer. There are twenty-two short, stripped back confessional poems in this book. The poetry typically slaps you hard across the face. Drags you by the hair. Chokes you. Puts your head in a burning stove- much like the personal childhood anecdotes that Lucas so harrowingly describes in his poems. We lie on the bed beside the young, fearful Lucas and listen through the thin walls of time to the sobs and “inhuman” screams of his mother as she is viciously bashed and raped and strangled by his father.

The poems appear to put into print actual events that took place perhaps forty years ago. In a recent interview with Ron Lucas (which appears in full at the end of this review), I asked him what prompted him to write and publish his work now:

“The first poem in the book was probably written in the ‘90’s. I think it was the only poem I’d ever written about my childhood until a couple of years ago. I don’t know why. Around 2014-2015 I found myself forced to be back in my father’s still repugnant presence quite a bit again. I didn’t witness any physical violence, but he still treated my mother, as well as the rest of the family, terribly. I think that probably inspired most of the poems by bringing back bad memories.

“I feel the work needs to be published now because he is still gas lighting and lying about it all. He still denies everything. I believe it is an ethical imperative to expose him. He has no right to take what he did to the grave with him. I sign copies with “Remember: Montaigne was right!”- a reference to Montaigne’s axiom that “One must either hate the vicious, or imitate them.”

In the aforementioned opening poem ‘ELEMENTARY EDUCATION’, we realise that Lucas does not make shit up. He writes about what “is going on in his life”. He tells us straight: “Fuck artifice!/ There are only/ Scars and scabs”:

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

The willow

In the front yard

Hung its head

In shame-

Fuck artifice!

There are only

Scars and scabs

And those things

That will never be

Quite either.

Those things

That will neither be

Quiet ever.

The raging man

The wailing woman

Damn, how she could weep!

It is where I learned

The meaning of

The word

Where I learned

Everything

That

I know.

(reprinted with the permission of the author)

Later in the collection, we discover in the ironically titled poem ‘HAPPY FATHER’S DAY’, what Lucas has learned about life from his father: “To fear/ And/ To hate”.

These are poems of hate and bitterness. Lucas is unforgiving, venomous, ugly in spirit. He metaphorically compares his old man to the devil in some poems, such as ‘WAKING THE DEVIL’ and often directly addresses him. In ‘EIGHT’ the young Lucas listens to his mother sob on the other side of the wall and cries “Because/ You/ Were/ My father, and Because/ You/ Were breathing.” In ‘PILLOW TALK’ the father is depicted as a possessive, violent brut who uses death threats to keep his wife in line. Through the wall he hears his father whisper:

“If you ever

Try to leave,

I’ll kill you.

No matter where

You go,

I’ll find you, and

I’ll kill you.”

(A copy of ‘PILLOW TALK’ can be found here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Goose-Market-Ron-Lucas/dp/0998458007

As outlined in the poem ‘LESS JACOB, MORE THE LATTER’, Lucas’s father later in life became a born again Christian and Lucas sarcastically quips that “He/ Has become a/ Much better person.” In the interview which follows, Lucas is scathing of this transformation:

“I don’t believe religion tends to change one’s personality so much as exacerbate it. If you were nice, you’ll be super sweet, like a sister of his. If you were an arrogant, overbearing ass, like him, you’ll become even more insufferable; and he has. He’s just living in a more populated area now where it’s more difficult to get away with actual physical violence. Please note, I say more difficult, perhaps not impossible. I don’t know. I don’t live there, and he always hid it pretty well before.

“He converted at approximately age 50, I think. He’d been diagnosed with some benign colon polyps and freaked out. He couldn’t sleep, or even eat (a BOLD statement for him) for days. Then, one night, Jesus, Himself, glowing like a firefly, showed up in his bedroom and threatened him with eternal Hellfire and damnation. I should have probably mentioned that he is a lifelong, diagnosed, untreated schizophrenic. But, don’t worry, he says J.C. cured him of that the night of His Divine home invasion (laughs).”

In one of the best poems in the collection ‘Rescission’ (literally meaning the unmaking of a contract between parties), Lucas addresses the old man in a tone of personal disgust and horror:

RESCISSION

You may be

Saved,

But

You are not

Forgiven.

I don’t give

A damn

What your God

Tells you.

I have built

You your

Very own personal

Burning Hell,

Here;

Inside my

Skull.

(reprinted with the permission of the author)

Although this small book is not arranged in sections, it has two main parts. The first are Lucas’s childhood recollections of domestic violence (pages 6-16). The descriptions of abuse are brutal and rip a hole in your gut, but can be somewhat repetitive at times. ‘GREENDALE’, ‘BRUT 33’, ‘EIGHT’ and ‘CAP’N CRUNCH’ are simple but highly disturbing poems of wife bashing and emotional abuse.

Asked about the consequences of his childhood experiences, Lucas is candid in the listing of his various mental conditions:

“The official diagnoses of those consequences are: anxiety disorder, depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, mysophobia, mild psychosis, and various and sundry other assorted neuroses. There was also nearly 30 years of self-medicating with daily drug and alcohol abuse (from about the age of 15) and 10 years of opioid addiction. It’s been fun (laughs). I’m told (laughs again). I only know about much of my life second hand. Actually, that all, of course, caused a lot of problems.” 

The second part is written from Lucas’s present perspective and essentially charts the ragged path to his healing process through the “liberation of vengeance” (‘JUBILEE’) of writing poems about what he has witnessed as a child (pages 17-28). In ‘COLD DISH’ he openly declares his personal war against the old man:

I

Saw

Everything.

And,

I

Am

Telling

Everyone.

In the poem ‘A CHILD’S EYES’ he addresses his father, both of whom are now old men. He says he needs “no/ Confessions/ of you” and evokes the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 19:15):

You

Have been

Convicted for

Years,

In

Accordance

With prescribed

Biblical

Law:

Two witnesses.

‘GRAPEVINE’, ‘LESS JACOB, MORE THE LATTER’, ‘HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, PERSEHONE’, ‘ORPHEUS IN NEED OF THERAPY’ and ‘BIRTHDAY WISHES FOR YOU (OCT.24^th’15) are other significant poems in this section.

‘GRAPEVINE’ is the only previously published poem in the collection and can be found here on poeticdiversity: http://www.poeticdiversity.org/main/poets2.php?nameCode=RonLucas

 Asked how he is fairing now, Ron Lucas is upbeat, optimistic:

“Other than my emotional issues, which I now have meds and Doctors for (since I have healthcare for the first time in my life) and some physical health issues, all of which, as well as my drinking (I kicked the opioids in 2011), seem to be under control, I’m doing pretty well. I have the love of my 2 grown daughters and my mother. My 3 year old granddaughter’s growing on me like an adorable little fungus. I’m getting poems published. Hell, I even got a book of poems published.”

The front cover was designed by Chris Yeseta of Lummox Press and features an old black & white photo of the Mother Goose Market which is alluded to in the poem ‘1. BALONEY 2. BREAD 3. CEREAL 4. MILK’. Mother Goose is usually associated with affable childhood nursery rhymes but in Lucas’s hands it takes on sinister connotations. The speaker of the poem, Lucas, recalls a childhood incident in which he was sent to the Mother Goose Market to buy some basic grocery items. He stuffs up the order and in retribution, his father beats up his mother again. The boy is guilt-ridden and runs to his grandmother. His father, infant like, cries in her arms as she gently soothes him. The poem concludes wryly:

He

Never

Sent me to

The Mother Goose

Market

Again.

Asked why he dedicated his book to his father, Lucas tersely explains, “Sadism (laughs). Given the content, I thought it’d be a nice extra turn of the knife. I love that the book basically came out on the Ides of March. Hate to be a dick and all. But I am. So I will. It’s hereditary (laughs again).”

The Mother Goose Market is a short but powerful indictment of domestic violence. Lucas doesn’t attempt to explain his father’s vile behaviour, he merely reveals incidents which have haunted him in a series of pared back, matter-of-fact poems. You enter Lucas’s personal hell which still “burns” brightly in his head after four decades. In view of the dysfunctional subject matter, I wouldn’t say I enjoyed reading this book, but you have to admire Ron Lucas’s courage in coming out and exposing the crimes of his childhood, in which some of us are capable of or might fall prey to.

Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Goose-Market-Ron-Lucas/dp/0998458007 or here: http://www.lummoxpress.com/lc/the-mother-goose-market/

INTERVIEW WITH RON LUCAS 6-7 MAY 2017

You have been writing and publishing for decades but this is your first book. Where have you published previously? Has your writing changed much over the years?

I never attempted to get a book published before. I never dreamed that I would. I always assumed I’d be leaving my daughters a, hopefully large, unwieldy stack of dusty, small press mags in the corner of some closet when I died.

I’ve published, over the years, in the first LAST CALL anthology, DUFUS, STAPLEGUN PRESS. The DRAFT SPECIALS anthology, the DOPE anthology, quite a lot at REMARK., and various other places. More recently, I’ve appeared in the LUMMOX 5 anthology, POETICDIVERSITY, DISSIDENT VOICE, etc.

I tend to write about what is going on in my life and/or my emotional life, so my writing has probably changed more in content than style as I’ve aged and my life has changed. That said, I do hope I’ve gotten better (laughs).

Many of the events you describe in your collection appear to have happened about forty years ago. When did you write the poems in the book?

What prompted you to publish this work now?

The first poem in the book was probably written in the ‘90’s. I think it was the only poem I’d ever written about my childhood until a couple of years ago. I don’t know why. Around 2014-2015 I found myself forced to be back in my father’s still repugnant presence quite a bit again. I didn’t witness any physical violence, but he still treated my mother, as well as the rest of the family, terribly. I think that probably inspired most of the poems by bringing back bad memories.

I feel the work needs to be published now because he is still gas lighting and lying about it all. He still denies everything. I believe it is an ethical imperative to expose him. He has no right to take what he did to the grave with him. I sign copies with “Remember: Montaigne was right!”, a reference to Montaigne’s axiom that “One must either hate the vicious, or imitate them.” 

I’m curious as to R.D. Armstrong’s  involvement in this project.

RD was, of course, instrumental in every aspect of the book coming into being, from the moment I queried him and he agreed to look at a sample of, I think, 4 poems. He worked hard on it for something like 2 years, putting up with my utter ignorance very patiently all along the way. I’m sure I asked every conceivable stupid question possible. Repeatedly. He is a great Editor who gives poets so much control over their work, and does things like take a chance on putting out a first collection by some hillbilly in Indiana, like me. I can never thank him enough or praise him and LUMMOX PRESS enough.

Considering the domestic violence inflicted on your family by your father, why did you dedicate the book to him?

Sadism (laughs). Given the content, I thought it’d be a nice extra turn of the knife. I love that the book basically came out on the Ides of March. Hate to be a dick and all. But I am. So I will. It’s hereditary (laughs again).

Who designed the front cover and what is its significance? I note that the poem ‘1. BALONEY 2. BREAD 3. CEREAL 4. MILK’ refers to your shopping trip to the Mother Goose Market.

Chris, at  LUMMOX, did the wonderful design work. I’m so thrilled with the work they did on the book! I chose the cover photo because, yes, that experience from ‘1.BALONEY…’ profoundly affected me, but also just because that old architectural oddity of a market is such a powerfully evocative symbol of that time and place for me.

I take it the events you describe in your book actually happened. If so, how long did your father’s drunken, abusive behaviour last and how was your mother able to hang on and continue the relationship?

Oh, he wasn’t drunk. He’s a lifelong teetotaller. He did it all stone cold sober. He was never out of control either. He guarded his reputation very carefully and most jealously. He hid it all. My mother is one of the very few women I grew up around whom I’ve never seen with a black eye.

She didn’t exactly stay. She always swore, behind his back, she’d split when I turned 18, and she did. She got her first job, car, and driver’s license at 40. When I saw her again a few months later, she looked 10 years younger. But, unfortunately, she took the bastard back.

You depict a violent, highly dysfunctional family. Did you have any other siblings? What was your grandmother’s relationship to your father? Your grandfather’s influence?

There were no other witnesses. I am an only child.

I loved my grandma, but she, as she can still be seen doing in the book, in her own words, “…spoiled him rotten… “ and “…petted him…”. She always blamed herself. I always blamed myself, as a child. I Think it’s common for abuse victims to blame themselves.

My grandfather’s influence was, as described, one of abuse and violence. My great grandfather was the same, as was my maternal grandfather. I knew them all 3 well; monsters all. My maternal grandfather blackened my grandma’s eyes shortly before the sonofabitch finally did the right thing for once: died.

In some of the poems you directly address your father? Why do you use this technique?

I suppose it’s just the literary equivalent of that thing where you stand in front of a mirror and practice telling a bully off, knowing you’ll never actually have the courage to do it (laughs). Except, I suppose I have now, haven’t I, after a fashion anyway (laughs again).

In ‘Cap’N Crunch’ and ‘Whipping Boy’ you express guilt because your mother shielded you from your father’s violence and copped it instead. Did your father have any redeeming features? Can you describe the life long consequences of the domestic violence you experienced as a child?

Of course he did. Humans are too complex for anyone to be a total caricature of a complete cartoon villain. When I was very young he taught me to draw. He taught me to tie my shoes. Okay, that one was kind of terrible too (laughs). But he used to paint when I was little. He did 2 horse paintings for me that I kept on my childhood bedroom wall. He also went about, in his rare better moods, extemporaneously singing, shall we say, adult song parodies. I still do it constantly, much to the delight, I’m sure, of my neighbours (laughs).

The official diagnoses of those consequences are: anxiety disorder, depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, mysophobia, mild psychosis, and various and sundry other assorted neuroses. There was also nearly 30 years of self-medicating with daily drug and alcohol abuse (from about the age of 15) and 10 years of opioid addiction. It’s been fun (laughs). I’m told (laughs again). I only know about much of my life second hand. Actually, that all, of course, caused a lot of problems. 

You see God as blind in ‘Cold Dish’ and compare your father with the devil in ‘Waking the Devil’ and other poems. In some of the last poems in the collection, such as ‘Less Jacob, More the Latter’ as a much older man your father has become a “born again Christian” and “a much better person”. How do you now view this transformation? Why did he convert? How old was he?

I’m an agnostic. I use such terms as “God” and “Devil” strictly as metaphors. I say he has become a “much better person” very sarcastically and ironically. I don’t believe religion tends to change one’s personality so much as exacerbate it. If you were nice, you’ll be super sweet, like a sister of his. If you were an arrogant, overbearing ass, like him, you’ll become even more insufferable; and he has. He’s just living in a more populated area now where it’s more difficult to get away with actual physical violence. Please note, I say more difficult, perhaps not impossible. I don’t know. I don’t live there, and he always hid it pretty well before.

He converted at approximately age 50, I think. He’d been diagnosed with some benign colon polyps and freaked out. He couldn’t sleep, or even eat (a BOLD statement for him) for days. Then, one night, Jesus, Himself, glowing like a firefly, showed up in his bedroom and threatened him with eternal Hellfire and damnation. I should have probably mentioned that he is a lifelong, diagnosed, untreated schizophrenic. But, don’t worry, he says J.C. cured him of that the night of His Divine home invasion (laughs).

You refer to your grandfather’s abusiveness in ‘Whipping Boy’ which your father later learnt to use. In ‘Jubilee’ you mention that “Blue eyes/ Run in/ The family” but say that you are determined that your life’s work “To be the / Liberation/ Of / Vengeance.” How have you faired so far?

I always say a poem is an emotional snapshot in time. It is just how one feels at that moment, not necessarily philosophy. I really only wrote that about vengeance in, maybe, 2014. It was just a feeling.  But, other than my emotional issues, which I now have meds and Doctors for (since I have healthcare for the first time in my life) and some physical health issues, all of which, as well as my drinking (I kicked the opioids in 2011), seem to be under control, I’m doing pretty well. I have the love of my 2 grown daughters and my mother. My 3 year old granddaughter’s growing on me like an adorable little fungus. I’m getting poems published. Hell, I even got a book of poems published. And some cool blog in Australia’s even reviewing it AND interviewing me! How cool is that?!

What do you want your reader to take away from your book?

A general, powerful revulsion to domestic violence. One might say, a violent reaction against violence, in general. Oh, and a shared hatred of my father (laughs). One need not know him. He doesn’t need to know entire large groups of people to hate them all. Come on in. The water’s nice; aflame, but nice (laughs again). 

Thanks for taking the time Ron!

Thank you, very much, for the opportunity George!

Book Review: RD Armstrong Tracking the Rabbit. Lummox Press, San Pedro, 2016 (40 pages)

Tracking the Rabbit was written in memoriam for RD Armstrong’s late father, Thomas K. Armstrong (1927-2015). The book includes previously published blog narratives about his father’s struggle with Vascular Dementia and a series of poems which explore the central metaphor of the black rabbit which Armstrong strongly associates with the spirit of his father after his death. RD uses his writing in this collection to help him to try to articulate his grief, guilt and other conflicting emotions. Amongst the turmoil he finds solace in the realisation that his father is no longer suffering, and he is able to return once again to his journey of “going it alone.”

In the introductory section ‘About the Black Rabbit’ Armstrong explains to the reader the origins of his fascination with the concept of the black rabbit. In the week following his father’s death, he saw himself as a “bad son” because his grief was “slow to bubble to the surface”. RD wonders how he is “going to deal with this” and in the next day or so he finds himself in a dream and he is standing in his father’s backyard during a violent thunder and lightning storm:

“Suddenly, something was thrust into my arms: a medium sized furry thing as black as this night, unidentifiable except for its two white, buck teeth. Then I knew it was a black rabbit. I could feel its heart racing in fear (but also alive!) and pulled it closer. But just as suddenly as it had appeared it now leaped out of my arms and bolted into the dark! I was devastated, thinking that it had been a gift from my father, that I had not understood what it was until it was too late and now it was gone for good (like the old man)…but then, out of the darkness, the rabbit came bounding and leapt into my arms again!

He is quick to link this image of the black rabbit with his father’s departing spirit:

“I awoke from this wondering what in the world this meant. I knew enough about Native-American lore to realize that the black rabbit was my father’s spirit animal and that it would guide him through the death process; and this little bunny would serve as a talisman for me, as well.”

The collection is not sequenced in strict chronological order, instead we gradually learn more about RD and his relationship with his old man in the inter-weaving of texts. In the blog narrative ‘Blues for the Old Man’ (16 December 2014), RD writes that when he first heard about his father’s medical condition in 2008, he could only stay in touch with him by phone as his father lived about 500 miles away in the hills of Sierra Nevada above Sacramento.

Later in the post, he describes how he drove up to Grass Valley to visit his father and his third wife (in late 2014) and was shocked at how much he had deteriorated since he last saw him only 10 months before, even though he was 86 years old, “He had aged as if overnight. He had become a feeble old man! … He didn’t say much and he never seemed to notice that I was there…The old guy would mutter something, then cry a little, then my step-mother would tell him to quit but I wished she would leave him be.”

Before arriving to visit his dad, RD imagined his father staring out a window, glancing at his watch occasionally and quietly marking time. Now sitting with him during the last hour he wished he “had a big, fluffy pillow” to smother him. He is genuinely horrified and cannot find the words to describe what he is thinking,” I just wanted to go and put as many miles behind me as I could.”

In the blog narrative, “The Dreaded Phone-call” (17 January 2015), RD receives a phone call from his brother Chris who informs him their father has died. RD is still struggling within himself to reconcile the “hulking” image he has of his father with what he saw a month before, of a man with “dead eyes”, with “this caricature of a face, once familiar.” He was totally expecting his father to die at any time but he has great difficulty processing this news,” I told myself that this was a good thing; that his spirit was free to do whatever it was that spirits do. I didn’t really believe that, but I needed something ‘tangible’ to believe in, to hang my heart/hat on while I came to terms with this fact.”

The seven poems in the chapbook add layers of myth and metaphor to RD Armstrong’s musings about his late father. He consciously goes in search of the black rabbit to see if it can help him make sense of the traumatic situation. In ‘Tracking the Rabbit’ the persona follows the rabbit through the snow to try to uncover its secrets, only to have it disappear into thin air without a trace with “no sad farewells/ Or long goodbyes.” In ‘The Black Rabbit Makes an Appearance at a Poetry Reading’, RD is reading a poem by Tony Moffeit and the black rabbit somehow pops into his head. He explicitly describes it as “the mythical spirit guide/metaphor for my/ Dad guiding him from this world to the next” and partially explains its appearance as being the result of “emotion not dealt with”, including the memories he harbours of his mentally ill dad with “big sad eyes and quivering lower lip.” In “The Day Room” RD painfully describes his helpless father as “the soon to be black rabbit” and as “a frightened little/ bunny/ trapped in this/ slumping body// awaiting the shroud.”

The crowning achievement of the collection is perhaps “Poem for My Father” in which RD Armstrong uses elevated elegiac allusions to compare his father’s passing with that of a great and noble figure:

Poem for My Father

He was a tree

He’d be an oak

With gnarled branches

And many rings

If he was mythic

He’d be Odin

An ancient god

With many a tale to tell

If he was a sea

He’d be the Sargasso

A kelp filled pocket

Of unexplained

Mysteries

But he was a man

Bent with age

No longer plunging

Headlong into the darkness

Forging his own way

And as such his last days

Were spent lost in a

Chaotic storm filled night

Alone and frightened

He was at last

A black rabbit

Trembling in my arms

Waiting for Morpheus

To gather him up

And carry him from

The battlefield

(reprinted with the author’s permission)

We are given a further glimpse of the rabbit in ‘That Damn Rabbit’. The poem represents a significant turning point in Armstrong’s acceptance of his father’s passing. In the poem he has “another strange vision” of the rabbit sitting on his haunches “and staring at me from/ Across the river Styx”. He realises that the black rabbit is of his own creation, and therefore, can be shaped and controlled by him as he sees fit:

His beady eyes staring me down

Probing into my soul…I can

Feel them penetrating deep

Deep deeper until I find myself

Shouting as loud as I can

What are you doin’? What right

Do ya have to probe my soul

Ya bloody rabbit! Then I

Remember that the rabbit is of

My own creation…so it’s

Really me knockin’ on my

Own backdoor tryin’ to show

Me something in a different

Light or in a different way

In the final blog narrative ‘Letting Go’ (28 January 2015) RD comments that he was surprized by the notes of concern and condolences he has received following his father’s death. The last time he saw him alive “he was very much a vegetable, not my dad” and concedes “so death, was a release from the suffering of this life.”

Through each text we gradually become more aware of the larger picture, although RD’s relationship with his dad, particularly as a young adult is left murky, incomplete. Interestingly, we are only offered glimpses of what his father, Thomas Armstrong was like as RD grew up. The poems ‘You Me and the Dog’ and ‘The Talisman’ refer to a kind of idealised past of “happy times” when his dad and his first wife, RD’s mother, were “still in love.” In ‘You Me and the Dog’, RD cryptically wonders out loud directly to his dad as to whether things could have turned out differently for the family:

I wonder what would have happened

If your dream had remained small

Where would we have ended up

RD explained these lines to me yesterday, “When we moved to Calif. from Indiana, it was like it said in the poem, my dad, my mom and me. He was an electrical engineer in the beginnings of the aerospace era, we lived in a trailer off base and my dad’s idea of a wild night was to cruise on his Indian motorcycle w/pony skin upholstery. It was a simple life...I don't know whose Idea it was to move but after a while we moved and my dad got a bigger dream. 

“See my dad had three careers: Elec. Eng., then Attorney, finally as construction exec. In the end he was a glorified landlord, picking up checks. But by then he was showing signs of dementia. So he retired. A few years later he died. But he'd had three careers, three wives, two planes, three boats, four kids...it was a lot different than you me and mom." 

The family eventually drifted apart and RD embarked on his own path as a young man. In ‘Blues for the Old Man’, RD expresses gratitude that much later in life he was able to make some amends with his old man: “I’ve spent most of my life being a mystery to him and it wasn’t until recently that I was able to come to some sort of understanding with him, a negotiated peace of sorts. I guess I’m lucky to have gotten six years out of the deal.”

In his ‘Afterward’ Armstrong says that he has some regrets and implies that he wasn’t as close to his dad as he would have wanted to be but he is firm and unapologetic: “I wish I could have given him the things that a father would like, a wife, a family, a career that he could be proud of… but life had a different plan for me, one that took me out on another track. I regret these things that I couldn’t offer up to him myself. But I ended up going it alone. While I can’t say if this way was better than some other, I only know that this is the way I have gone.”

This is a deeply personal and inventive response to death from a son’s perspective. The work is richly layered and profoundly authentic. It is heartfelt, without being sentimental.

More about the book and where to purchase it: http://www.lummoxpress.com/lc/tracking-the-rabbit/

Read selections from the book here: https://issuu.com/poetraindog/docs/rabbitsampler

Book Recommendation: DOWN THIS CROOKED ROAD: Modern Poetry From the Road Less Traveled (Edited by RD Armstrong & William Taylor Jr) Lummox Press, San Pedro, 2009 (153 pages)

INTRODUCTION

I recently came across this old book  & found it interesting and entertaining to read and discovered some new poets working from the streets. In his Introduction writer and editor William Taylor Jr. says he was approached by Lummox guru RD Armstrong and was invited to solicit work from a handful of his favourite poets with the possibility of creating a book. It didn’t take Taylor long to draw up a list of writers and he says that they are not from any particular region or school of poetry:

“What connects these writers in my mind is obviously not location, or even style of writing, but more a spirit that I feel shines through in the work of all involved. All the poetry contained here is accessible without being mundane, well crafted without being academic…Poetry for people who might not realise they like poetry.

“It is my belief that your average reader can pick up this volume, open it to any page, read a bit, and think: This makes sense to me. This is a fellow human sharing their vision of what it is to exist, and it inspires me. Or, it could well be they’ll think something more along the lines of: This is some cool ass shit! That works too.”

The title poem ‘Down This Crooked Road’ is taken from Christopher Cunningham’s poem of the same name. It speaks of the uncertainty and daring of striking out on the road. The poem concludes:

we

are almost ill-prepared

but

there

is madness

and daring

in our eyes

as

we cut ties

and

stare back

at

the abyss,

laughing.

The collection includes seven poets:

Poet	pages
M.K. Chavez	11-28
Christopher Cunningham	29-48
Miles J. Bell	49-70
William Taylor Jr.	71-96
Christopher Robin	97-116
Father Luke	117-133
Hosho McCreesh	134-151
Bios	152-153

In this short summary of the book I will provide a brief overview of each poet’s work and will provide some links to their latest work, if available.

M.K. CHAVEZ

Chavez is the only female poet in the collection. As it says in her bio, she “writes about the beauty that can be found in ugliness.” ‘Ode to Methamphetamine’ is her strongest poem but ‘Mission Street Love Story’ and ‘Everything that I needed to Know about Writing I Learned from Being a Stripper’ are also highly impressive.

Her latest book Mothermorphosis (Nomadic Press, 2016) can be purchased here: http://www.nomadicpress.org/store/mothermorphosis

CHRISTOPHER CUNNINGHAM

Cunningham is a highly observational poet who compresses everyday experiences to often make metaphorical comments on life. The title poem ‘down this crooked road’, ‘GO’ and ‘bending, but not the other’ are some good examples. His writing is pared down, exceedingly clear and excellently conceived.

Find an old post on NYQ Poets: http://poets.nyq.org/poet/christophercunningham

A 2007 interview with Cunningham on Poet Hound: http://poethound.blogspot.com.au/2008/04/interview-with-christopher-cunningham.html

Blog: Upright Against the Savage Heavens 2006-2012: http://savageheavens.blogspot.com.au/

MILES J. BELL

Bell is an English writer and is probably best known for his 11 page poem ‘Icarus Rex’ which appears in this collection.

Some of the other poems represent threshold experiences which prompt the speaker to make a realisation, such as, the need to move beyond the expected & to surprise yourself, that feelings like pain and love are fleeting and “will eventually fade to shadow” and the like.

Find some of Bell’s work online:

http://www.wordriot.org/template.php?ID=801

http://www.alittlepoetry.com/vv05mbell.html

http://www.killpoet.com/issue_3/articles/21.html

Interviewed by Sean Kilpatrick in 2006: http://anorexicchlorinesextoymuseum.blogspot.de/2006/08/interview-with-miles-j-bell.html

WILLIAM TAYLOR JR.

Taylor who lives in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, is the best known poet in the collection. In these poems he wanders through the local bars and cafes in the search of  sad woman and material for his writing. My favourites include ‘Slow’, ‘The Strangest’, and in particular, ‘It is Enough’. The poems are highly observational and chronicle the passing of time, in which Taylor shapes his experience to make some subtle but profound metaphysical statements about life.

His latest book To Break the Heart of the Sun (Words Dance Publishing, 2016) can be bought here: http://wordsdance.com/to-break-the-heart-of-the-sun-by-william-taylor-jr/

Follow William Taylor Jr.’s latest  writing on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/William-Taylor-Jr-134877363275335/

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN

Robin brings to us the world of food stamps, of women with kids with foetal alcohol syndrome, of bathrooms which haven’t been cleaned for six years. He describes in blunt detail those who live at the bottom of the food chain. His best poems include the brilliant ‘Freaky Mumbler’s Manifesto’, ‘Infinite Joy In Spite Of’ and ‘Slingshot’.

Robin is a labourer from Santa Cruz, California. He has published  three chapbooks and is editor of Zen Baby zine, a self described “pseudo-literary train-wreck in print form since 2000.”

Find the zine here: http://www.christopherrobinzenbaby.com/415033576

FATHER LUKE

Father Luke Miljevich from his 2009 bio describes himself as a person who “waits with a woman he loves for a perfect world.” He writes about the pain and loneliness of living on the fourth floor of an old hotel in an up-beat, often humorous way.  His best poem is ‘With A Seagull For Company’ about the death of  Little Bob, his aquarium crab.

Find Father Luke on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Father.Luke.Miljevich/

HOSHO McCREESH

In this collection McCreesh writes grand philosophical poems about the inevitability of death, the lack of purpose, our loss of innocence, the snuffing out of the light & the approaching darkness. He likes using long-winded titles which emerge into the poem, such as, ‘You Never Want To Say That/ We Owe It To Ourselves/ To Be Happy As We Can Possibly Be/ For All The Many & Nefarious Ways It’ll Be/ Taken Out of Context, Be Co-Opted/ By The Greedy., The Self-Important, The Gluttonous, & Idiotic & Insatiable…’ and ‘As Madness Abounds, As Brutality Trumpets & A Cold, Hard World Gets Colder, Harder, & The Death Of All That Might Save Us Increases…’

Hosho McCreesh hails from the American Southwest and more information about his writing can be found at his official page for his books of poetry: http://www.hoshomccreesh.com/poetry/

See also: www.nyqpoets.ner/poet/hoshomccreesh

For more information about purchasing Down This Crooked Road contact Lummox Press: http://www.lummoxpress.com/lc/

Book Review/ Interview: J.W. Gardner IN THE SHADOW OF THE BOMB. Lummox Press, San Pedro, 2015 (229 pages).

Joe Gardner, 40, lives in East Lakewood, California and In the Shadow of the Bomb is his first full-length collection of poetry. The book consists of 135 free verse narrative poems. The writing is characteristically first person and recount memorable experiences from Gardner’s life. The tone is candid and colloquial and poem by poem, section by section, Gardner reveals different perspectives, new layers of meaning to help the reader to connect with his world and to understand the poet more intimately.

In his preface, Gardner pays tribute to his late father Lee Gardner (1949-2008). When Joe was about 14 he showed his dad his fledging attempts at writing and drawing. Lee’s response to his son’s “generic macabre imagery” was, “Why don’t you paint me a sunset? Write to me about a dog finally coming up on some luck? Give me something I can find identity in, something I can understand. Tell me about living a real life.”

Gardner’s work is solidly entrenched in the real, in lived experience, however messy, and unresolved. As Gardner explains in the preface, “Now, here I am, 40 years old and I’m repeating my father’s words; trying to tell you what this is all about. I write about what I know. I write about the last 40 years of life I’ve seen.” 

In the extended interview with Gardner which follows this review, he states clearly his intentions in putting this book together, "This book was like a greatest hits of the last forty years. I wanted to write a book that the kind of people I grew up knowing would be able to read and get. My stories/ poems are nothing new or unique. For a whole segment of America, hell a whole generation, this is just living. Just how things are. So I wanted to tell those stories."

The title In the Shadow of the Bomb derives from the title poem in Part 1: The San Joaquin Valley. Gardner says that his was the last generation to grow up “in the shadow of the bomb.” They grew up in front of a television which taught them fear and in the process their parents "squandered our future away” and never gave them a chance. In the interview he is more scathing about how the baby boomers stuffed things up for his generation, "Baby boomers dropped the ball. Dumped my generation onto grandparents and the state and had their party. Our infrastructure is falling apart. Our living wage jobs are being outsourced to either technology or to 'more lucrative labor markets'. My people, all these people from so many different backgrounds and cultures and places, they used to be innovators and builders and workers. We used to build things. We used to be the people who did the impossible. Now it seems we've all been turned into mindless, sightless cave fish consumers."

The cover illustration was painted by Gardner and displays an inverted American flag with what appears to be in the foreground a homeless person sleeping on a green park bench wrapped in the stars & stripes. He says of the cover, "It is meant to express a lot of different things. From Veteran homelessness to the 22 a day we lose to suicide, to being shunned and mistreated by the VA, to being Generation X, the Baby Boomers forgotten burden who grew up in the shadow of their bomb." 

The book is loosely chronological in structure and is divided into five distinct parts of approximately forty pages, each of which represent different periods in Gardner’s life. Most of the first four chapters were written over a 20 year period while Part 5 was written between 2011 and 2015.

Part 1: The San Joaquin Valley

This section covers some of Gardner’s earliest memories. There is a pervading tone of nostalgic gloom as the poet recollects growing up in the 1980s in the working poor area. The opening poem ‘The End of the Grapevine’ cleverly establishes the context by explicitly giving the reader directions on how to find the valley and what you may see along the way. In subsequent poems, Gardner describes his first house, the park he smoked his first joint and kissed his first girl, and he also includes several poems in which he describes the vicious school bullying which made his life a misery as a young boy.

Despite the grimness of growing up in California, Gardner provides us with a few sympathetic portrait poems of friends and relatives who gave him a helping hand through the debris. These include ‘Keep Up’, a tribute to his grandfather, Mr. Paul Wieber; ‘Mrs. Rose’, about his Grade 4/5 teacher who gave him hope and ‘My Friend With The Guitar’ about his friend & mentor Crazy Joe Riley.

Perhaps the best poem in this section is ‘Childhood Heroes’ in which Gardner describes the outlaw tattooed bikies “on their iron horses. ” He sees them as an inspiration for his later young adult quest for freedom:

It was during this time

That I found my hunger

To be wild

To be free

To be like these savages

Answering to no man

The narrative perspective of this collection is worth noting. Gardner presents a dual perspective on events. He reveals his feelings as a child and as a young adult but these perceptions are layered by his more mature views as a 40 year-old adult. As Gardner aptly writes in ‘Crossing Guard,’ everything eventually percolates in the brew of his creation:

Funny how things change but stay the same

But somehow still seem to go away.

I don’t know, one day it’s all right there

And then in the hustle of it all

The Army, two failed marriages, the booze

And always, always chasing my thoughts with my pen

In this collection there is never a straightforward recount of past events as Gardner constantly re-evaluates his experiences in the light of his present reality. He yearns for a simpler and more naïve time when there were no meth labs, no seatbelts laws, no cell phones nor video games. A simpler time as in ‘Flying Back Then’ when a kid could be brought to the cockpit by a pretty stewardess and sit with the pilot and fly a jet plane to his delight.

Part 2: ELKWD

ELKWD is an acronym for East Lakewood, a southern suburb of Los Angeles embodying the American Dream, created after World War 2 where Gardner moved to after his family left the San Joaquin Valley in the late 1980s. The poems in this section largely deal with Gardner’s exploration of his teenage haunts- such as Lloyd’s Pets, his introduction to the work place- washing dishes in a pizza joint, selling newspaper subscriptions and his search for identity which is shaped through a heady teenage recklessness. 

Good green bud, getting wasted on booze, sitting in a garage arguing who is the better band "GNR or Metallica or/ Sex Pistols or M.O.D" or having to listen to the hypocritical rant of a pastor after an acquaintance blows his brains away are all seminal moments in Gardner's quest for maturity. 

In ‘Troubadour’ Gardner takes a swing at the lead singer of a band & is lucky “to get out alive.” Returning home in the back of his friend Pat’s pickup he is euphoric, “I never had felt so alive.” In ‘Mi Amores’ a mate sticks a gun in his face and he is so drunk he doesn’t understand the danger he is in. He can’t stop laughing after he is caught “making out with a girl/ In the restroom” of a restaurant as he realises that “none of it really matters.” In ‘Old Cats and Hustle’ he and his buddies truant school and skateboard to Cerritos Mall to gawk at the girls and later make their way to Hard Times Billards to check out the old hustlers looking cool shooting stick.

A significant poem which marks an important transitional moment in Gardner’s life from innocence to maturity is ‘2 Counts of Felony Assault’ which surprises the reader. The poem relates how the author is charged with a serious offence in Los Padrinos Juvenile Court when he is 16 in defence of his sister.

In the meantime, Gardner is writing it all down, re-imagining the romance of the drunken writer, 'In ‘Freshman Year Artesia High School’ the persona, presumably Gardner, reckons he spent most of high school in a fantasy, drunk “in love/ With the romance / Of the drunken writer// I wanted / The grand adventure/ Of Hemingway and Chinaski,” the later being the alter-ego Charles Bukowski created for many of his poems and stories.

Part 3: ’93 To the Falling Towers

This is perhaps the most interesting section in the book because it credibly represents the most tumultuous period in Gardner’s life between 1993 to 2001. In the four opening poems, including the extended tome ‘Military,’ he traces his involvement as a young adult in Airborne Field Artillery between 1993-1996. Gardner is naïve when he joins, “My patriotism/ Was a hard dick/ Of imagined glory.” At Fort Bragg he becomes disillusioned with the “Body bag parade/ Dressed in flags, honors, medals.” In “Bar Fighting With Mullets’ he describes in a night out in North Carolina how he is knocked out by a fire extinguisher in a wild brawl with the locals.

Gardner doesn’t find much glory in serving his country but in the interview which follows he states he is proud of his achievements, "It was a lot of fun and a lot of work and was the single best thing I have ever done for myself. I enjoyed the discipline, the structure of everything. Everyone had a job, had something to do. You knew your place and you knew everything was earned. With hard work and integrity a motivated individual can advance rapidly." Considering Gardner's staunch commitment to "the only Airborne Heavy Artillery Unit in the world," I would have liked to have read more poems about his involvement in the unit in this collection.

The most powerful poems in the collection arguably are ‘June 8^th 1996’, ‘ Peeling’ and ‘One Bad Trip’ which describe a home invasion, a brutal kidnapping and how Gardner, at 21, was pistol-whipped and flung himself out of a speeding truck at 65 miles an hour and the terrible pain he had to endure in his recovery. The writing is experimental, impressionistic in its accretion of details.

This section also focuses on his dysfunctional relationship with his first wife. In ‘The Show’ the persona has all his clothes tossed out into the front yard in black trash bags, and from the back seat of a cop car, he notices his “house of love” has burnt to the ground. In ‘Telling Lies’ after another domestic,  he is shackled up in the back of a squad car and starts laughing. He tells the cop:

We’re gonna be doing this again

Come next Friday night

When I get paid again

When

She gets sick

Of her parents

Again.

Other important themes in this section include pill popping, drinking, suicidal thoughts, fear of the crowd and the need to escape. The metaphorical poems ‘Desperation’ and ‘The Front Yard of My Mind’ skilfully reveal this on-going personal struggle between hope & despair.

Part 4: 9 Years Adrift

Between 2001-2010 Gardner left California and tried to start his life anew. He travelled around "the better part of America," including the deep South and San Francisco.  It appears that seven of these years were spent in Idaho working for a while as a granite fabricator. '7 Days A Week' and 'Granite Fabricator's Son' are working class hymns to the filthy, back-breaking toil that he had to endure. 

In the early years of his self-imposed exile, Gardner works hard at manual jobs, writes confessional poetry and drinks heavily. The poems 'Fabled Excess Path', 'White Lies', 'Drunk and remembering Denver Joe' and 'Back Monday' point unfavourably to Gardner's out-of-control excesses.

Also prevalent in this section is Gardner's description of his love/ hate relationship with his partner/s and how self -destructive his behaviour has become as he totters on the edge. ‘Drunk Dial’, ‘Agree With Her’, ‘Psych Meds,’ and especially ‘Roller Coaster’ recount his venomous bile and his descent into rage and frustration. 

Gardner temporarily attends AA Meetings and dries out. In the poems ‘Serenity’ and ‘Me and Jim’ he demonstrates a commitment to clean up his act and to sweat the “sin out”. Yet he despises the constant babble, “the ego tripping bullshit” of the AA meetings and in ‘Leaving Serenity’ he finally relapses into his "own Mouth of Madness,” away from the prodding help of others.

Part 5: 20 Years Later

In the last section of the book, we are dropped into Gardner's life, post 2011. He returns to his old neighbourhood of East Lakewood much calmer and more stable this time. Many landmarks from his youth have vanished and initially he feels like a tourist. In ’18 Years’ he says, “It’s like seeing family and friends/ After being gone for 18 years.” Yet now in the revisiting of his past, he realises that his life now has real purpose and meaning:

Now I sit on the porch

In this beautiful backyard

At that same house

Waiting for my woman

To come home

So we can walk

Through the old neighborhood park

And ease the night away

With a good dark beer

Other poems such as ‘Drive Sober’, ‘Butterfly Kisses’ and ‘Listening to You’ elaborate further on his love for his new woman.

Gardner also writes poems in tribute to his late father Lee Gardner; including, ‘One of These Days’, ‘Old Photographs’, ‘Bullhead Catfish’ , ‘Listening to Joe Cocker’, ‘Funeral’ and ’37 Years of Memories.’

Gardner loves the sense of belonging he feels in returning to East Lakewood and quickly reintegrates into his local community. He becomes involved in poetry readings and appears to appreciate the more simple pleasures of life. The poem 'Long Beach Harbor' wonderfully evokes a sense of place of the harbour and it uses the central metaphor of human heart to show the fusion between the "endless flow" of human activity and the growing skyline. The poem won the Joe Hill Poetry Award for 2013:

LONG BEACH HARBOR

(2013 Joe Hill Poetry Award Recipient Poem)

Bellowing of ships horn

The low constant rumbling

Of heavy trains grumbling

Away

Of new products and labors born

Steel rebar and concrete

Sinewy muscles

Contract moving

Groaning bone protests

 Another building

Growing into the skyline

Connected together

By freeways

And bridges

And streets and alleys

And sidewalks and bike lanes

Glued together by endless flow

Of cars and trucks and trains and planes and people

Like blood pumping through the body

Seized with coronary traffic congestion failure

Of the human heart

As another work day

 Bleeds

 To

An end

(reprinted with the poet’s permission)

Yet not everything is now perfect in Joe's world. In 'Paranoid' we learn how he likes to sleep with a loaded weapon and how he must euthanise his cancerous dog in ‘A Dog Down.’ In 'Lesson In Mortality' he snaps a bicep in three loud pops. More disturbing still in 'Husband Father Family Man' are his random thoughts:

And I don't know what I'm playing at
Not sure I'm cut out for this

Still dreaming about the freedom
Of the open road and nowhere to go
The freedom of the hustle

And I don't know what I'm playing at

Dreaming about putting the gun
Back in my mouth

As you can see, there is a great variety of work to admire in Joe Gardner’s first collection of poetry. His writing is highly accessible and rings with authenticity. There is no bullshit or posturing in Gardner's writing. He has lived a tough life and he has survived and now acts as a leader and mentor to fellow ex-servicemen and aspiring writers. Joe Gardner is a fine new voice which strums of truth & of a growing disenchantment with America's plight.

BIO:

Joe Gardner is an Army Airborne Veteran and a 2nd Generation American drifter and writer who calls East Lakewood, Ca home. More nights than not he can be found at home, enjoying the comfort of his family and his dog.

Joe is the Founder and hired gun for Working Class Production, as well as creator and co-producer of The Last Sunday, An Evening of Poetry and Art. He is also the 2013 Joe Hill Labor Poetry Award recipient and his work has appeared in The Modern Drunkard Magazine, The San Gabriele Valley Poetry Quarterly, Cadence Collective, Spilt Ink Poetry and AMASS Magazine.

He has also been published in the following anthologies:
Gutters & Alleyways: Perspectives on Poverty and Struggle
The Men's Heartache Anthology
Lummox Anthologies, 1 thru 3.
Edgar Allan Poet 3

Find out more about Working Class Productions here: http://workingclassproduction.com/welcome/

Buy the book here: http://www.lummoxpress.com/lc/in-the-shadow-of-the-bomb/

Find a 56 page sampler from the book here: http://issuu.com/poetraindog/docs/gardner_sampler__1_/1

Interview With J.W. Gardiner 17 December 2015

How long has In The Shadow Of The Bomb been in the making?

It took about two years to collect and sort the poems for the book.  Most of the first four chapters had been written over a twenty year period. The last chapter were poems all written from 2011 forward. So about four years or so.

In your bio at the end of the book you note that your poetry appeared in Lummox Anthologies, 1 thru 3. Can you explain your association with Lummox Press and the processes involved in getting your book published?

I met RD Armstrong through fellow poet Don Kingfisher Campbell. Campbell had published me a handful of times prior in his publication The San Gabrielle Valley Poetry Quarterly. Campbell was guest editor for the first Lummox Annual. Don chose my poem 2.5 grams of Hash for publication in Lummox 1. Raindog wasn’t too terribly impressed with that poem.

A month or three later, I came across RD at a reading in the Barnes & Noble in Marina Pacifica Center, hosted by Murray Thomas, in Long Beach CA. RD was able to hear more of my work at that time. There were a few other readings where we ran into each other, and RD and I began to talk and email. He read and heard some more of my work and thought I had something going on. The man gave me a chance when no one else was willing to even look at my work. I really appreciated that. Still do. Since then, RD and I have also developed a friendship born both of similarities and differences; as any good friendship should be.

In the preface you state that you write about what you know. Is your poetry essentially confessional with very few exceptions.  For example, were you a victim of a home invasion, set your house on fire and attempt suicide?

I think my work is more narrative than confessional, though I suspect there’s not much specific difference.  This book was like a greatest hits of the last forty years. I wanted to write a book that the kind of people I grew up knowing would be able to read and get. My stories/poems are nothing new or unique. For a whole segment of America, hell a whole generation, this is just living. Just how things are. So I wanted to tell those stories.

Yes, I was the victim of a violent home invasion robbery. I got out of the Army in Feb of 96. Did a little travelling around, came home in late April, early May.  I was sharing an apartment with my father, sister and her 9 month old son. The home invasion happened on June 8th 1996.  Things didn’t go well; but they could’ve gone a lot worse. After pistol whipping me and my father around, they decided they were going to take me to the ATM machine. They had my father and sister tied up and blindfolded. They stole my father’s Toyota pickup. One guy driving, the other in the bed of the truck. My family had gotten loose shortly after the gangsters took me and my father’s truck. The Sheriffs spotted the truck and tried to pull us over. The guy in the bed of the truck started shooting at the cops, the driver pulled his gun up. I popped open the door, heard more gunshots and then jumped. We were going around 50 miles per hour I was later told. I ended up being hurt real bad. Spent a while in the hospital healing up. My face was pretty much broken and skinned raw, along with my arms and hands.

In the poem ‘The Show’, the whole last section was metaphor for the ending of the relationship and the spectacle that we put on. My first marriage was very turbulent. Looking back at it today, well let’s just say I could’ve been a better husband, and she could’ve been a better wife, but we had no business being married to each other.

The suicide attempt was very real. I was in a very dark and ugly space at the time. It seemed everything in my life was failing or had failed, and then that failed. It was big wake up call for me. I knew then that I had to change my situation. There was no other options.

You include four poems in Part 3 which reflect your experiences in an Army Airborne division. What was your involvement and how do you view that experience now?

I was 4th Section, Alpha Battery, 1/39th and 1/321st Airborne Field Artillery from 1993 to 1996.  We were the only Airborne Heavy Artillery Unit in the world. We fire the M198 Howitzer which fired 155mm round. We were the heavy fire support for the 82nd Airborne. We spent a lot time in the field, always training to go on a moment's notice.  It was a lot of fun and a lot of work and was the single best thing I have ever done for myself. I enjoyed the discipline, the structure of everything. Everyone had a job, had something to do. You knew your place and you knew everything was earned. With hard work and integrity a motivated individual can advance rapidly. At least when I was in the service. I can’t say how it’s working now.

Can you give your readers some insights into your writing process? Do you write every day? How do you go about writing a poem?

I pretty much write on the spur of the moment, when the mood or the inspiration grabs me. It’s kind of a write it or lose it thing with me. I generally don’t spend a lot time on any one piece. Most of my work is a “one shot” kind of thing. Of course I go back through and edit as needed. But for the most part, either I hit it or I didn’t. I don’t worry a lot about structure or form, though I have my own patterns, I really don’t have any hard set rules. I’ve tried my hand at haikus and a sonnet once. What I found is I just don’t have the patience to follow the form and structure.

Who designed the cover? It appears to be a reference to the “body bag parade” in your extended poem ‘Military’ which documents your service record in a telescoped manner. An American flag in the background is inverted and a homeless corpse is lying inert on a park bench wrapped in an American flag in parody to the dead military heroes who are honoured upon their tragic return. What were you trying to say in your book by using this image and how is this concept reflected in your work?

The cover is one of my paintings. It is meant to express a lot of different things. From Veteran homelessness to the 22 a day we lose to suicide, to being shunned and mistreated by the VA, to being Generation X, the Baby Boomers forgotten burden who grew up in the shadow of their bomb. My wife, Jennifer, and I both thought that this painting caught the feeling of the book.

In a few poems you indirectly mention the failure of the American Dream. In your overtly political poem ‘An Open Letter To Any Who Will Listen’ you make a number of scathing criticisms. Can you sum up your discontent and what is wrong with America? How can it be fixed?

Jobs. Idle hands and Devil’s playthings. Baby Boomers dropped the ball. Dumped my generation onto grandparents and the state and had their party.

Our infrastructure is falling apart. Our living wage jobs are being outsourced to either technology or to “more lucrative labor markets”.

My people, all these people from so many different backgrounds and cultures and places, they used to be innovators and builders and workers. We used to build things. We used to be the people who did the impossible. Now it seems we’ve all been turned into mindless, sightless cave fish consumers.

For whatever reason, our incredibly successful and insanely profitable big business can’t seem to be bothered to re-invest in Americans.

Education has been priced out of the realm of the common person, unless you want to spend the bulk of your life saddled with insane student loans.

Like I said, there is a lot of work that needs to be done and there’s a lot of people who need to be doing some work.

What brought you back to East Lakewood after so many years away? What did you gain in those years away?

I think ultimately everybody just wants to go home. I travelled around the better part of my country, and found that people are just people. From the deep South to San Francisco it’s always the same things that are the common denominator. We all have hopes and dreams and fears. We generally all want for the same things, some comfort, nourishment, and someone to love and to love back. As far as I can tell, we are really not as different as we all like to pretend we are.

For me, I just wanted to come home.

I was tired. I was tired of drifting around from state to state. I was tired of living out of a backpack. I just wanted to come home and rest.

I note that you are the founder of Working Class Production. What is the intent of the organisation and what practical things has it achieved?

Working Class Production is a work in progress itself, with a goal of becoming a small, private multi-media press. There are a lot of people out there with important things that need a venue. I want to provide that venue.

Also, Working Class Production, along with Bobby Strahan and Robert Rodriguez produce The Last Sunday: An Evening of Poetry and Art. Keith Jefferies and The United States Veterans Artist Alliance have generously allowed us to use their stage and hall to host our show. It’s a monthly poetry reading with about an hour and a half open mic and generally a half hour feature. From 6 to 7pm we have the doors open so our guests and artists can have some food and a drink or two, and get to know new people and catch up with old friends as well. We have a very strong family vibe with that show. Our guests are just incredible and we have a very warm and welcoming vibe. We provide good food and drinks at the show as well, which is put together by The Mother’s Cocktails. We have paintings on display from different Veterans such as Christopher Sweeney, Veteran USMC and Roberto Carlos Zea, Veteran USMC. We also use the show to bring awareness to the plight of our homeless Veterans and with USVAA are staunch supporters of Mayor Garcetti’s program to end Veteran Homelessness in Los Angeles.

I know it’s off the topic, but the New York Times today in a front page editorial advocated for the banning of the sale of military semi-automatic weapons. What is your view on the issue?

I have mixed feelings about the matter. I think background checks make sense and should be done. I think that a thorough firearms safety and operation training course should be required I think that existing laws need to be enforced before we make even more contradictory laws. I don’t like knee jerk legislation of any type, especially when dealing with rights. I also feel that with rights comes responsibility. So if you prove yourself not responsible to own a firearm, then that should be the end of the conversation. I don’t think the average citizen needs fully automatic military grade weapons. The thing with the AR-15 style weapons, is they are no more dangerous than a .223 semi-automatic ranch rifle. One is just wrapped in scary looking black plastic. I think that is the biggest burn to me. All the misinformation out there. We have people trying to make very important legal decisions based off what they see on TV or in the movies. I really think a lot more thought really needs to be put into the matter. 

What projects are you working on at the moment?

Been doing some painting, a little writing here and there. I have a couple ideas for some new books churning around, but they haven’t really come to form yet.

Thanks Joe.

Thank you for this. I really enjoyed the interview. It made me think about my work and other perspectives. I've always said it don't matter what I meant when I wrote it, what's it mean to you? There comes a point, where it really doesn't matter what the artist meant in comparison to the eye of the beholder.