The Glen Cove Patch and Smokey Says...

So recently, I decided to Google my name for shits and giggles, and look what I stumbled upon. I few weeks back, my poetic colleagues J. P. Wagner and Marc Rosen invited me to Page One Restaurant to promote the Bards Annual 2011, an anthology of poetic works by Long Island poets amassed by the Bards Initiative, a local poetry organization I've mentioned elsewhere. At the event was a reporter from the Glen Cove Patch, a news website focused on local events. She apparently went on to publish an article about it: Bards Initiative Holds Lively Poetry Reading. She was kind enough to include an excerpt from the poem I performed at the event, as well as a link to the blog itself. To commemorate that, I have included the poem below. 

The poem is quite obviously about the nature of mankind and our relationship to this planet. The name comes from the very first sign to portray Smokey the Bear, which begins with the lines "Smokey Says..."  Just as he warns against the danger of forest fires, so too does the poem warn against the consequences of humanity's greed. I hope you all enjoy it and the wee article written about it.

Smokey Says…

Mankind is not a lowly flame

Burning in a thicket,

Who abstains and waits for rain

To come along and snuff it.

Instead, it spreads to neighboring brambles

To obliterate and scar, 

Gambles and only minimally ambles

Towards it’s weighted par.

For like a humble, snapping smolder 

Ignited by a wayward bolt

Who dreams of engulfing bough and bolder

To give its forestry home a jolt,

Mankind, compelled to transcend and molt

The queer contingency, piecemeal

Approaches exponential gain 

Wherein the burden to claim and steal

Leaves its existence feign.

Like the gluttony of a blaze

That cannot be quenched,

The scorching grip tightening

And cannot be unclenched,

Mankind consumes and multiplies

Engulfing everything in grasp

Its smoke rising into the skies

Forcing the atmosphere to gasp.

Until, at last,

The fuel is gone

Burned in search of more

And all that’s left

To feed upon

Is mankind heretofore.

Yet, like the char upon the trees

That still stand tall in the smoggy breeze,

When fervent man recedes

The world commences recovery.

For any injury inflicted

By the fiery fists of man

No matter how afflicted

Are not meant to last.

The earth will absorb the blows

And vacate for replacement

Mankind’s claims

Upon the remains,

Destined for defacement.    

For mankind is like a fire

That cannot be contained,

Who accommodates and waits for a reign

Even more aspired.