John W. Gorski
The poetry in this book is both free and formal verse. The subjects range from Impressionist paintings, windows into the distortions of mental illness, current events, ecstasy and despair, aging and memory, family and relationships to droll accounts of personal experiences from childhood through adult years.
His poetry has been published in Seattle Poems by Seattle Poets (an anthology), Paper Boat, Art Access, Switched On Gutenberg (an online journal), The Metro Poetry Bus Project – 1997 and Real Change.
He has a B.A. in English from the University of Cincinnati and has studied poetry writing at the University of Washington Extension.
He grew up primarily in Maryland and Ohio and has lived in Seattle since 1976.
Brain Rapture
Electric ragas,
born in a New York City warehouse
in the year 2000,
play on the stereo
in a cold room of seeping April air
where guitar notes open
like violets on a hill side
in a Thurston Moore reverie.
A pick runs down an E string
like a dive bombing jet
and the accelerating chords
of a Dead Kennedy’s song
rise in a sonic arc.
At its peak a scream
spits out black curses
at greedy corporations
and government hypocrisy.
From the 60’s,
a young woman’s wail of pain and love
levitates above the stain glass
hymn of a multitude
singing “Candles in the Rain”.
I hear music everywhere
this fading afternoon --
sound waves radiating
in my fiery brain --
pulsing signals from a radio tower.
On a bus in North Seattle,
a rap lyric vibrates
from a man’s head phones --
drums knocking against
a wall of thudding bass.
But the steady rhythm
of tires on asphalt comes through
as the tempo slows
and a book of cumulus clouds
unfolds above breathing fir trees
along Highway 99.
In these slowed down moments
of early twilight, I see
I’ve been on this journey for years --
Familiar signs imprinted on my eyes.
Later in a darkened transit window,
under a panel of fluorescent star light,
I’ll hear the engines song
and watch my face
set like a cavernous moon
in the passing night.
2001
Talkin’ ‘bout my Degeneration – variation on a theme by the Who
In a room of twenty something’s,
I was a forty whatever --
a monotone weasel
in aviator glasses --
trying to conduct market research surveys
with the unwitting and anonymous.
Everyday was dialing households
who hung up on me,
while a twenty year old
in the next work station
played air guitar between calls --
mouthing White Zombie and Metallica.
The day dragged into a night
of middle aged migraine,
surrounded by voices that said
this rocks or that sucks.
“Talkin’ ‘bout my degeneration”
I was calling people during
their meatloaf and green vegetables
who protested “why now,
when you know I’m eating dinner?”.
And yet I didn’t know that
and said “these numbers
are computer generated;
we don’t know your name, address
or usual meal time”.
it went on for hours like that.
“Talkin’ ‘bout my degeneration”
The kids around me riffed
on Star Wars and one exclaimed
in a James Earl Jones voice,
“Luke, I’m your father.”
I was lost in a jabbering room
of energetic youth
where Korn rules and everyone
had the Simpson’s on DVD.
“That was my degeneration, baby;
I was in the wrong generation, baby”.
2004
