Dark Lady Poetry - Karl Koweski

http://DarkLadyPoetry.com/GoogleSitemap.xml Dark Lady Poetry - Karl Koweski

Karl Koweski

Should Have Read the Biography

I tell her

she reminds me

of Anais Nin

her fearless,

confessional style

of writing

bursting with

a pagan exuberance

which is to say

I like to remind

myself

of Henry Miller

any chance I get

with the cock

or the pen

I want to be

the Henry Miller

to her Anais Nin

Anais Nin, huh?

she mulls this

over

yeah, I beam,

you even keep

a journal

just like her

not too mention

our torrid affair

unbeknownst to

our clueless spouses

you know, she said

Anais Nin

fucked her father

when she

was in her thirties

and once

had an abortion

in her

third trimester

oh…

well…

maybe I can be

the

Ted Hughes

to your

Sylvia Plath…

Grade School Wonder Boy

I can trace not only my desire to write

but my need to be adulated as a writer

back to the fifth grade where

I scored my first fiction success

with my seven hundred word story

An Invitation To Death.

the plot, near as I can recall

involved my cousin and I

being invited to investigate

a house of notorious reputation.

within minutes of entering the house

my cousin was devoured by a monster

and I escaped out a back window.

my classmates hug on every word

reacting to every dangling participle

and graphic description of disemboweling

with the sort of awe and reverence

I can only dream of recapturing today.

flushed with the respect of my peers

I quickly penned the sequels

Invitation to Death II, III, IV, V, VI…

in which all manner of friends

and relatives met gruesome demises.

by the time I wrote

An Invitation to Death X, The Final Invite,

I sensed my literary star descending,

and by the fifteenth installment,

I’d lost my status as literary lion

to Leticia who wrote convincingly

of magical ponies in faraway suburbs.

it was too much success too early,

thinking back on the intervening years

where I couldn’t write anything.

and I never did explain why

the narrator kept bringing people back

to the slaughter house and being

constantly surprised by the gory outcome.

Goose Steppin' Gramma

Gramma

left a ruined Germany

pregnant and married

to a

bullet-crippled GI

believing

Hitler

was a good man

one

only had to look

at what he’d done

for

the country

before

the allied decimation

of everything

taking

the people from

the bread line

to the

assembly line

providing

identity

direction

a sense of

national pride

absent

for so long

Gramma

tells me this

when

we are alone

my resemblance

to her

youngest brother

Paul

thirteen years old

when

captured

by the Russians

in the last days

of the war

breaks her heart

which

doesn’t keep her

from

dragging

a fistful of

diamond-encrusted

white gold rings

across my head

when

I’m not

paying enough

attention

you’re too weak

she tells me

you need

to toughen up

you read

too many books

Karl Koweski is an enemy of Amish everywhere. There are death warrants for him in no less than 14 Mennonite communities. His crimes against the Amish are often recounted in his monthly column "Observations of a Dumb Polack" at www.zygoteinmycoffee.com where his latest collection of stories, Low Life, is also available.