POET OF THE MONTH
The Poet
By Craig Kirchner
I’m not going to tell you who I am,
not going to proclaim pronouns.
I need to be critical without criticism,
want to walk in and not be identified
as the author of this, or any others.
My name, gender, location are not important,
the observations are too subjective
and so, the opinions can’t be pinpointed.
They are the eyes of the weary world,
watching humankind lose its humanity.
We are walking through Orwellian history
that will be told by only those in anonymity,
pointing out the irrelevance of their identity,
but their need to speak, to wage a rebellion
of sonnets from the underground.
The only poetry will be told by the faceless,
from the shadows, those that were there,
and then they weren’t, once again escaping
leaders and their robots scrutinizing
every word for propaganda resembling truth.
The Memory
By Craig Kirchner
There was a piano in the sun parlor
no one ever played, it’s now in my head,
the exact whereabouts a secret.
The sun parlor long gone, is in my head,
I can feel its morning, it’s warmth.
The piano, I can’t play anyway,
as they say in the south,
is past where the buses run.
There were sheets of music
in the drawer under the seat,
they are in my head also,
just below the surface.
Proximity is not the issue,
no journey, no north, south,
up, down, or below,
just beyond, a stone’s throw.
Some can peel the layers,
get past the conspiracies of age,
complicity and discretion.
I can’t read music, if,
and when I find those sheets,
but I will proudly write it down,
celebrate the knowing, the finding,
of all that stuff I will never know.
Craig Kirchner thinks of poetry as hobo art, loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a writing hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, New World Writing, Wild Violet, Ink in Thirds, Last Leaves, Literary Heist, Ariel Chart, Lit Shark, Cape Magazine, Flora Fiction, Young Ravens, Chiron Review, Valiant Scribe, Punk Monk and several dozen other journals.