Brighton Bar Reading

Off to read at the Brighton Bar tonight.  I think I'll read a mix from "The Departed Friend" and some from "Supposing Roses."  Of course, if anyone decides that the Christmas "Not So Silent Night" Poetry Show is the perfect place to get pointlessly political, I'll have to pull something from my hoary arsenal in "Black Champagne."  Time will tell what fools these mortals be....

UPDATE: Went on second for the evening after Dan Weeks. This precluded any "revenge" political poetry--which was called for by one and all. Only Anthony displayed a spirit of bipartisanship--by casting Bill O'Reilley as the Grinch, but having his heart grow at the end of the tattling tale. Dems and "thems" are instructed to embrace "peace on earth."

Black Champagne--Political Poetry Collection

"Black Champagne" is a collection of ostensibly political poems. The motivation was a series of conversations and fights with friends over the 2004 Presidential race--an invidiously contested election. The casuistry and baseless claims of the one side, and the patriotic posturing of the other left much sour mercury in the mouths of the electorate. This is my acid contribution to that wad of spit.

Now available at http://www.gregglory.com/blackchampagne

T-Shirt is also available with that conniving Jimmy Carter saying "The American Revolution was an unnecessary war."

Supposing Roses Published on gregglory.com

Final Edit

“Supposing Roses” is finally done—
each blossom hacked and thorn shellacked.
What had grown lovely in my release from loneliness
is now packed back into perfected sonnets
—raw squares that define and defile.
Artifice filled out the feeling a kiss first insisted.
I gussied up the ghost with dresses,
rhetoric’s high fashions, and, after,
stripped the pickings at my sex’s insistence.
Naked and dated she lay there like a final draft.
None of her winsome tussle was left in her.
Inert and silent, she awaits a reader,
the dazzling sequins of approbation,
the instructor’s star or apt remark,
tender repeat of touch and tongue.
Her backside’s bare and brazen as an existentialist.
What words she uses are more music than meaning.
I lay beside her loosely—mute, inutile.

Finished the poetry collect "Supposing Roses."  It is available at http://www.gregglory.com/supposingroses.
In other news, working on the mostly political collection "Black Champagne."

12/19/05