Poets In Port, July 25, 2008

Poets in Port will feature Jack Barrett Wohl at 7:30 pm on Friday, July 25, 2008 at Caffé Portofino, 249 Main St., Northport, opposite the theatre. There will also be an Open Reading — the audience is encouraged to bring their poems and participate. For more information, contact Steven Schmidt.

Leonard Cohen ("Anthem", on The Future): "There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."
Many poets write poems showing one thing, one crack, one ray of light. What I like about Jack's poems is that he usually tries to do more.

Too... You

I've walked rivers with carnivore gods
each step through burning darkness like coals
and I      to stay alive         thought
I buried what I needed to

but how did you know where my heart was hiding?

why did you shine your angry siren-light
your hurt hunger
into my almost becalmed
memory of fury and tears?

will you say I signed up for this as a writer?
I can hear your voice: "you should have read the small print"
when I thought I could trickle
the hurricane I had felt

I cannot turn away ... put you back ... tuck you in
 between covers

can't walk away or break the weld
to your bared soul

can't find the door to close
can't outfly or climax out of it
you've entered me en flagrante
by love and lust and burning smothered tears
you've been too honest

too raw   too you    to turn away

--Jack Wohl