Tag: #poems

A California-cool option for Late-Night readers…

~ Greg Beckman ~ 1 Comment

You can read my latest poem collection, Late-Night Lucid, through your local library! For free! Through Indie California, library patrons throughout The Golden State have access to an electronic version of the book that already has one 5-star review on Goodreads. (It’s the only review; we all have to start somewhere.) I am proud to have had my work selected by an organization whose purpose is the promotion of independently published books and their authors, and am delighted that you have access to it through your local California library. Suits my ethos.

If you would like the give the ebook Late-Night Lucid a try, click here. It pops right up.

AND if you so enjoy the poems that you just need to have a copy for yourself, click here. Sometimes you just want to hold a book.

Some words on The Indie Author Project:

The Indie Author Project (IAP) is a publishing community that includes public libraries, authors, curators, and readers working together to connect library patrons with great indie-published books. IAP has helped hundreds of libraries engage their local creative community and assisted in getting almost 20,000 indie ebooks into their local libraries. Most importantly, the project has worked with top curation partners and librarians to identify hundreds of these as the best indie ebooks available to readers—so they can be sustainably circulated to library patrons with confidence.

For more information — and instructions for independent writers wondering about how to participate — click the State.

Happy reading (and writing)!

*

“Libraries are one of the few public spaces where you’re allowed to exist without the expectation of spending any money.”

Neil Gaiman

Checking-In: Not a Newsletter

~ Greg Beckman ~ 1 Comment

Halfway through summer here in the Greater Los Angeles area. We haven’t been hit too hard by hot weather but there’s still time to join the club.

I hope you are well, grand, and finding yourselves adventurous. Stories are my way of staying all three. I’m especially fond of micros, a new playground that keeps me honest and under-300-words-succinct. Find them here.

A few new that bought a wow:

Pomes! Just like poems, only without the pedigree. If you’ve ever adopted a dog rather than bought a breed, you’ll understand.

This time, I’m happy to report I was invited to a reading for a pome published in the latest issue of Sortes. Jeremy Tenenbaum kept ten writers to ten-minute time limits AND played some of the most eclectic interlude music I’ve heard. Only glitch: I guess I move around a lot when just sitting still and the Zoom camera did a great job of repeatedly inflicting my video feed on unsuspecting viewers. The whole evening was NOT about me; it just seems that way in the beginning.

Soooo….if you would like to see me fidget AND read four or five poems in a great shirt AND hear some other fantastic work, hit the link to the Youtube video HERE. (I show up at 1:14.55, but really do take a listen to the others. Julia Yong is especially cool.)

And just because it’s easy to get lost on the internet, I’ll re-direct your attention to a few pomes that have been published off-site. Tap a mag below and fall for words again.

That’s it! Play around with the website’s buttons. Thank you for your follow, your thoughts, your care. Until later, best of life and love to you.

*

For Now

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
The sun feels good in this world,
warm,
wide-windowed breeze
and your brown clone sunglasses
with golden wire frames.
I think I’m falling.

With you, my skin is tanned to sand,
porch-picnic-ready,
your mom asking “So is he
treating you good?”
When I say yes,
she gets that twinkle
so I know what she means.
I nod, shy; she smiles, 
proud of her son.

I sit in your world
and we all eat chicken and talk
about school and 
TV and
how you know when you’re in love.
(They had a lot of wine.)
Here, your parents are mine;
they don’t have to say 
I’m welcome.

Now I remember:
Mom hides fear in her smile
while dad tries hard to forget
me,
sewn up tight as he
feasts on fury.
I am a billion sand-pieces
waiting for glass.

“Come on,” you say.
“The road’s too cool
for that.”
So I wrench out of then, 
kiss this
forget that
for now.

More? Click here.

“Lorca”

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
Hey, bro!
     I did her!
     With sunglasses on!

     — Memorial Acclamation

Go do it, then,
whatever it is that you do —
sex someone, buy that ring — 
film it, even, make
a record of your elementary courage
and then social your accomplishment
to your kind.
After all, you have the keys — 
     (Secret gesture.
     Secret gesture.
     Secret gesture!)
— and I should want to be
just
like
you.

But, 
no.
If you’re going to do it, hijo,
choose a field where 
you will get caught
and shot
and then I’ll know you’re real.
Let your body stand erect 
as rifles are raised by priests and soldiers;
stand before their righteous hate, alone,
knowing you die for your desire.
Then I’ll follow.

In your childlike voice:  
“It was just a little fun!”
“Why do you have to be so serious?”

Mi pequeñito, you have a thousand ways 
to explain your survival — 
as his blood sings from Spain,
intones a truth known only to me:

Divinity is a dead body,
sinking and stinking,
unliked and unfriended,
shot by justice,
abhorred by Church,
buried nowhere but my heart.

     Cristo amó.
     Cristo murió.
     Cristo murió.

Located here.

“School”

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
They told me what an orgasm was.
They showed me how it worked.
Lots of effort went into its making,
and you needed something close-by,
a rag or sock (for the cleanup).
But it felt good, so good,
and so I said yes, and yes, and YES!
and began the road to Bliss.

They told me what sex was for,
what its end and purpose.
They showed me lots of playful children.
They seemed to run everywhere,
and you had to keep an eye on them
(loud little shits).
But since I was once a child,
and had some happy memories,
I said okay, that sounds about right. Okay.

They told me what my life was for.
They talked in terms of sacrifice.  Honor.
“All gave some, but some gave all.”
And tears slipped out of their eyes.
So, looking at the soldier’s head-stone,
it seemed right to forget myself,
settle the debt I’d somehow incurred.

But then I rode an hour-long orgasm,
waited amazed for my bliss to subside,
didn’t need a rag,
produced no children,
and thought something they didn’t teach me:

No.

“Mirrors”

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
You can take yours home — 
and yours, too.
No offense,
but I don't like 
what I see at all.
You bend the wrong way;
your adulation,
adoration
skews everything — 
and by such a band of old,
an army of ugly
well-past skill —
I can't stand it!

Send in, please,
those convex faces;
laugh at my smallness
as you mock my gaze.
I demand broad frames
that diminish and belittle,
that show with a smirk
my world

and leave me wanting
more.