Well, its time to do some self promoting.  I have a new book of poetry out called News of the Day  poems of the times.  This is a work that spans many years and, as the title indicates, many of the poems in this collection are tied to a specific event, some social, some personal.  I found, when looking through my poetry some years back, that I, like many poets, wrote about events of the day.  Some of the events of the day glavanized ideas that found their way into poems. As I write in the Acknowlegments, "...the events may date the poem but if the event and the poem are worthy then something of lasting value may come along with the piece." And so I put this collection together.


Carin and the Beat Chicks
          Beat Conference - 1994

Listening to "Beat Chicks",
Hattie, Joyce, Carolyn, Jan,
I thought of you.

I don't know where you are now
but you did the road way back.

You didn't hit the road with the guys
you did it yourself, catchin' rides from
California to Iowa—

I remember a photograph of you
sittin' on the porch of an old Iowa farm.

What our older sisters couldn't do,
you and your sisters did years later.

Your road is still way out there.

Some day you'll tell your younger
sisters how it was in the 70s,
hitch hikin' on the road
in the u s of a without fear.

No fear that your brothers on the road
would harm you.

Tell your sisters
that it was this way once,

When the innocent
were free
and we did   love    each other.

***

Bopal

TV news report
of the Union Carbide pesticide leak, 1984
that poisoned and killed two thousand
in Bopal India.

This was immediately cut to a bombastic ad
for Vacation Holiday Cruises
to various parts of the world.

This image, one on the other,
close to the new language of the earth,
so close to the earth in speech
that it cannot be misunderstood.

Close to one heart beating in another.

***

November 30th
           Upon the Death of George Harrison

First, we were born the same year only weeks apart,
the heavens opened terribly at that moment.

We streamed through the opening when the world
was full of grief, and we share with others that grief.

'My sweet lord' he sang out and I like many others
found a momentary blissful connection.

Enlightenment some say is but a stringing together
of momentary blissful connections.

They come, they go and they alter us, only so
that we can realize who we are.

We string them together, he in his moment of birth
and in his moment of passing and all the songs in between.


    So, this collection covers many years and for me is itself a news of the day.  It was time to put it out.

NEWS OF THE DAY
POEMS OF THE TIMES
BY JOHN

126 PAGES, FULL COLOR COVER, PERFECT BINDING
ISBN 978-09789597-3-9
PRICE $15.00

    Take a look at it at www.poeticmatrix.com, order it on-line at Amazon.com through our website or ask you favorite bookstore to order it.