Events

[POETRY] Touring in support of his new book out from Ahsahta Press—Phantom Hour—James Meetze brings a poetic style that marries pensive, lyric verse with a more traditional form for poems that undercut our daily assumptions by pointing out the ghosts that lurk in our closets and corners. Joining Southern California’s Meetze will be Nate Pritts, author of seven books including the brand new Post Human. Local musical talent Little Cake will pay complement on Thursday inside the Box Gallery. 

Dark Art 4, James Meetze

The moon is a burnt-out Edison bulb.

You can’t read by it, it’s so cold.

A realer cold gathering in the touch

of dreams of real people

as ghosts, saying words that won’t ever return.

The words have not unfinished business.

They are magicked into being

in our throats, our mouths, in air, to say

“where language fails, poetry begins.”

So we are present at its genesis

on I-don’t-know-what day.

We thump out its rhythms metronomically

like a phantom hand drums on our shoulders.

If the rhythm of all life, if you listen,

shines in the body like a celebration,

then why is it so hard to be happy

to be inside a life, and living it?

To not be darkness

or the absence of real light under a dark sky?

Why does the city’s glare subjugate the stars?

It’s the history of light being guided

to each of us, to illuminate a path

to follow the voices that lead us on our quests.

To find whatever the grail might be.

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