R.M. ENGELHARDT

Poet Writer Author Albany NY

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R.M. Engelhardt is an American poet, writer and author who over the last three decades has published over 20 books of poetry including “Nod” “Alchemy” DarkLands, RAW & “The Last Cigarette: The Collected Poems of R.M. Engelhardt. The founder of the Upstate NY organization ALBANY POETS & the Annual Poetry Celebration THE ALBANY WORD FEST he has through his ideas & visions helped to contribute a large amount of advocacy and creativity to the Spoken Word~Poetry Capital District scene and is the former host of the long running readings The School of Night & Vox. He is currently the host of SPEAK THE WORD ALBANY!. An Open Mic for Poetry And The Spoken Word at Ophelias. Over the last thirty years his work has also been published in many journals such as The Rye Whiskey Review, Red Fez, Rusty Truck, Sure! The Charles Bukowski Newsletter, Thunder Sandwich, Black Noise, The Hobo Camp Review, Full of Crow, on the Outlaw Poetry Network & in many many others. Look for his books “WHERE THE PEOPLE’S VISION PERISHES 2020” “DARK LANDS (2019 on LuLu, Amazon & At Barnes and Noble) The Resurrection Waltz, 2012 ( Infinity Press) & “COFFEE ASS BLUES & OTHER POEMS” ( 2018 Alien Buddha Press 2018) ” DarkLands” 2019 & “Where There Is No Vision” 2020, “WE RISE LIKE SMOKE” (2021) & Of Spirit, Ash & Bone (2022) and RAW- Poems ( 2023) all available on Amazon.com He is also the Editor of the small independent poetry press Dead Man’s Press Ink since 1998. Look for his books The Bones of Our Existence A Journal 2046 & his new books THE DYING TIME POEMS BY R.M. Engelhardt 2026 & NO KINGS 2025 available at Barnes & Noble and currently on Amazon. www.gentlemanoutsider.com *All Poems, Writings & Information Contained On This Blog Are The Property & Owned By The Author R.M. Engelhardt. © 2026 www.rmengelhardt.com

  • Sophie Podolski

    Sophie Podolski (8 October 1953 – 29 December 1974) was a Belgian poet and graphic artist. She published only one book during her short lifetime, Le pays où tout est permis (The Country Where Everything Is Permitted), in which the poems were reproduced in her own artistic handwriting. Podolski, studied graphic design at the Académie de Boitsfort and was associated with the artistic community at Montfaucon Research Center. Podolski suffered from schizophrenia and spent time in psychiatric clinics in Paris and Brussels. She attempted suicide in Brussels on 19 December 1974 and died 10 days later as a result.

    Podolski left to Marc Dachy a number of unpublished poems and graphic artworks. Her work entitled Sophie Podolski Snow Queen was posthumously published as a special issue (no. 6, 1980) of the magazine Luna-Park. Her poetry was much admired by the novelist and poet Roberto Bolaño, who referenced Podolski in his novels The Savage Detectives”, “Antwerp”, and Distant Star, and in his short story “Dance Card.”

  • Nick Cave

    I don’t claim to understand the troubles that you’ve had.
    But the dogs you say they fed you to lay their muzzles in your lap and the lions that they led you to lie down and take a nap.
    The ones you fear are wind and air…
    and I love you without measure…
    it seems we can be happy now, be it better late than never.

    Sweetheart, come.
    Sweetheart, come to me.

    ~ Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds,  Sweetheart Come 

  • Writing Is …

    Writing is beauty and beauty is writing

    ~ R.M. Engelhardt

     
     beautyiswriting

  • Archibald MacLeish

    Happy Birthday To Archibald MacLeish

    Ars Poetica

     

    Archibald MacLeish

     

    A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

                 *

A poem should be motionless in time 
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, 
Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time 
As the moon climbs.

                  *

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean
But be.

  •  

    angelstatue

     

    “If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”

    ~ Tennessee Williams

  • DUST

    depressedpianokeys

     
    I have long since disappeared from these places. Time speaks and all I have left is gone where meaningless gestures from strangers in a foreign land signify nothing, the circle once more revolving and unfolding 
the mysteries of sleep. And everything, macrocosm and microcosm, has merely become a dream. Dead sonnets 
and broken memories. Lost words and disintegrated photographs. Here they say it's easy to become "dust"
     
     
    II
     
    Tonight I have awakened you alone once more. I walked through you're house and you screamed, you're once 
beautiful brown hair now white with years, your heart still missing in all the wrong and familiar places. 
What are you now? 65? 70? You cursed me and swore that you would never let me in again. Was I supposed to be there? After all, you were the one who called me, and all I did was answer. So what's worse than a 
suicide? I know. To live day after day after day in the misery and pain that you created
     
    For yourself.

    ~ R.M. Engelhardt 

  •  

    unknown

    EPITAPH

    Equilibrists lie here; stranger, tread light;
    Close, but untouching in each other’s sight;
    Mouldered the lips arid ashy the tall skull.
    Let them lie perilous and beautiful.

    ~ John Crowe Ransom

  • I WAS ONCE DEAD TOO …

     

    image

     

    In a famous painting
    of Christ nailed to
    and crucified upon the cross
    I am the watching
    leper on the right.
    And with my one good eye
    I watch as Jesus dies
    and screams up into
    darkening sky asking
    his father for a reason

    Why?

    And then, suddenly
    as the clouds open up
    and the rain begins
    the Romans scatter like mice,
    the water, burning off their
    flesh like corrosive acid.
    As I feel the wetness upon my
    skin like the warmth of a beautiful woman
    touching my face, I raise my
    hands outward, and I am healed.
    When a voice comes
    which tells me I am now
    the angel of death, and the
    watcher in the eternity
    that is time, wandering
    the earth.

    The screams of both Jesus,
    and his murderers the Romans
    now a distant sound & memory
    in a world without messiahs
    or miracles to amaze us.
    Only questions
    which remain unanswered.

     

    ~ R.M. ENGELHARDT

  • New Poem by Michele Battiste

    A talented poet and an old friend. Check out her work here …

    blacklawrence's avatarBlack Lawrence Press News

    BattisteA poem from Michele Battiste’s forthcoming collection, Uprising, is featured in the new issue of Midway Journal–it’s a lovely and evocative slice of this powerful book. (You should also check out Ink for an Odd Cartography, available here.)

    View original post

  • To The Last …

    tothelast

    “Wisdom, you are the last to whom I turn. Not for your spear, fashioned in that same fire as all bright jealous objects of desire. But for your shield. Protect the least of us. Or lift me from this battlefield, and take me home.”

     

    ~  D. A. Powell, To Last.