
An interview with old friend and cofounder of Albany Poets Mr. Thom Francis about the Albany poetry scene, new projects and something about a new book :
Listen Here:
POET WRITER AUTHOR GENTLEMAN OUTSIDER
“I am the beast with a contorted grin, contracting down to illusion and dilating toward infinity, both growing and dying, delightfully suspended between hope for nothing and despair of everything, brought up among perfumes and poisons, consumed with love and hatred, killed by lights and shadows. My symbol is death of light and the flame of death. Sparks die in me only to be reborn as thunder and lightning. Darkness itself glows in me.”
~ Emil Cioran
If tragedy = permission
If love = desire
How much we could have learned.
If knights could have defeated dragons,
steadfast, strong and true, I would
have been all of these things for you.
But love thee, love thee not,
cancel my thoughts beside the vast
cataclysm of unwanted dreaming.
And here in the dark my existence still
lingers for the spark which you have
ignited once more “abandoned”
~ R.M. Engelhardt
*This entry was posted in Poetry on February 26, 2007 by PoetsHaven.com.
There are some days when I would just like to go to sleep for a hundred years and wake up in a better world where there is really good free coffee, no more wars, no more death and where poverty no longer exists. I also wouldn’t mind it if it was a world where poets and poetry were once more recognized for their work and good poetry once again in history got the attention it truly deserves.
~ R.M. Engelhardt
In this dream.
You are a painting by Thomas Hart Benton with luxurious black hair and beautiful pale white skin
Asleep.
An old hillbilly a mid-west aging Pluto attempts to touch you, looks at you from around the corner in awe and sublime wonder and its obvious and plain to see that he is complete and completely in love with you as you lie in a Cinderella-like ecstasy naked in the middle of a rural Kansas field. Persephone he is softly saying, Persephone. But you cannot hear him speak and he cannot bear to take you into the underground of his place, and his hell. In the background there is a wheat thresher and FDR’s America, there is a wide open blue & empty sky full of white clouds and depression era beliefs, and you are Beautiful he murmurs Beautiful because Cupid has overtaken him and you have overtaken all his senses and he cannot ever leave.
So in this dream. …. you are a painting
In this dream you are the spring and the awakening of all ancient wonders and all ancient things, hidden away among the fears and jealousies of all men who cannot see
The very things that makes you beautiful
“You”
~ R. M. Engelhardt