Poems

Original Poetry by Warren Gaston

Russia: 1994

My father went to Russia and came back with Russian gifts: babushka headscarves,  black lacquered jewelry boxes, and nesting dolls that live inside each other like people do. He bought a Russian army captain’s cap and an olive drab coat big enough to hide dissenting...

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The Book of Jeremiah

see: Jeremiah 20:9 I have not been caught committing crimes of omission they have gone unnoticed, therefore unreported. They were transgressions of silence, my mouth full of words needing to be said. but swallowed, not bitten by teeth into articulate sound....

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Noting Life

“There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.” Paul Valery French poet (1871 - 1945) One summer afternoon in 1955, Denton, Montana, I walked down a wet sidewalk smelling of recent rain, to buy a pen and a notebook at Mr. Graham’s...

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A Question Not to Ask

Do you love me? If you have to ask, the answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ mean the same thing. The Christ asked Peter who answered in the affirmative and look what happened. The Buddha did not ask. He didn’t care. With the Buddha it was all about practice. The Buddha asked his...

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Living a Poetic Life

To live a poetic life one does not need to write poetry. One must be in a constant state of arrival, alert always in uncontested presence, every pulsing pore a point of entry, every sensation welcomed by a curious nerve. The practice of vigilant attending with a...

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Doing It

When I was doing it, I was doing it. I did not take notes. Why would i? I was immersed in doing it. It needed to be done. I was doing it. I paid little attention to the sensations of doing it, not the weight of the hammer in my hand, not the feel of the smooth wooden...

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Duende

Duende, the shadow that is not absence but the opposite of light. Roots sucking metamorphic darkness up out of soil. Mineral density borrowed by the bone, unknown to the mischievous  the brain, the earth pulsing deep beneath the world the vibrant ache of knowing you...

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Amerigun

I can say with sad certainty, sight unseen and news unheard, that today, somewhere in America, someone is shooting, someone is shot.

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A Fiction Twice Removed from Fact

I walk through the mall being viewed and reviewed. It troubles me to know that for a moment my life might be a figment of a stranger’s imagination. I do not feel comfortable in your version of me. You fictionalize. You invent. You construe. You fantasize real people....

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