Poems
Original Poetry by Warren GastonWords Working (6)
The purpose of this poem is to prevent you from thinking about a rhinoceros. What are you trying not to see? A word or an animal. What real is really there? A real word? A real animal? A real word representing a real animal.
Words Working (5)
We have vocabulary; utilitarian utensils. multipurpose tools. Swiss army knives. But do we have language, lavish letters, sensuous sounds, words licked by the loving tongue, lifting worlds from concealment.
Words Working (4)
We have words for spoon and shovel. If we had a spoon or a shovel what would words be?
Words Working (3)
Our alphabet needs scrubbing, twenty-six tacky letters gummed too long, a mush of murmurs, mumbling vapid vowels, insipid syllables, wooden words, squeamish sentences, frivolous paragraphs, language bruised by languid tongues, or fingers lazy on the laptop, or...
Words Working (2)
The things we can’t say, we don’t say. Would we be better off saying? Interpretation comes into play. Motivation comes into play. Priorities come into play. Politeness comes into play. The thickness of skins. Longing for transitory tranquility, do we reveal...
Words Working (1)
Water plunging over stone. Gravid words scrambling hard to escape civility’s incisor edge, unscarred by courtesy. The risk: saying what needs to be said.
A Blessed Life
Evidently, I don’t feel the need to be somebody. No exertion toward celebrity for me. It’s too late now. I’m in my eightieth year. If I wanted to be somebody I should have started years ago. Once I was almost somebody, briefly. Something I did a reporter thought...
Cadillac, Michigan, January, 1963
for Bill & Randy Deep winter, barely the new year in. the lane impassible, we parked the car on Highway 55 and hiked a freezing mile through a pine infused shadows. Arriving at the ice crusted cabin, we gathered wood, paper, matches built a fire in the cast iron...
Beyond ‘About’
I didn’t need a t.v. weatherwoman. I knew it was cold from information gathered from the seat of my pants as I sat on an iron bench on campus in love with Mae. How did I know it was love I was in, and how did I know it was Mae? A pilot, relying on weather reports,...