Bruce Owens lives in Soquel, California. His work appears in the Robinson Jeffers Newsletter (No. 93 & 94, Winter & Spring) in tribute to friend, and fellow poet WilliamEverson. He lectures on the nature of the creative process, and conducts poetry workshops, mainly with young adults, especially those struggling with addictions or who have come from abusive households, using poetry as an instrument of self discovery and as an entry into the world around us. Bruce's collection of poems Eddies in the Rush (1998; ISBN 0-971256-0-0 ) was endorsed by C.C. Bailey and poet (1914-1993) . |
Writers mentioned in text |
A journal on the writer's role in society edited by esther altshul helfgott ____________________ |
Give Me The Poem That Can Remake The World by Bruce Owens I can almost think of it: butterflies in the space of my mind, gold and blue spots of fur. Then something simpler: the way a tall building structures light in windows, how, under the bridges of the modern world wrangled men, women and children wrap around withered bottles of opiate flowers flown forever as flags of nations over their bodies turn stone or wheat has left their eyes to starve in the night. I think I am one of the lucky ones here on the breath of an empire. Rationing my guilt, I blush in the mirror. Today we bomb an entire village while I eat Kentucky fried and enter the cool white melon where black seeds shine with their own music. At the other end of it the television in digital image: a father cradles his small daughter, the women wail over the stretched body of a young man, one eye slightly open still trying to catch light. I can count my selves in all of this with tyrants children, toys and guns, drive by shootings and grocery lists from church, kings and bosses of the midnight dump heaps behind the factory prisons. I look out across the long night of freeway lights glare of something beyond fright, beyond wonder. An ideology of detached sensations creeps up on the carpet in the soft living room with the fireplace and mantle. We bomb another village, another town. An entire city falls through autumn like fire in a leaf. The skeletal ash drifts along the edges of an oath sworn as vengeance. I have no place to put myself. No bell jar safe like Plath. No vision like Baldwin. I feel cold like no one knows cold. Fear like no one knows fear. Time inside my head like no one knows time inside their head. Lunar landscapes pock the inner city. A broken bottle rips the belly of the empire engulfing simple cries. Where are you Walt Whitman with your burly eyebrows arched over the invisible word America? Where are you Lorca in your white shirt open like a field under moonlight stained with blood? Where are you Stroud with dark bees swarming your tongue? I need you my friends. I ask company from those who have fallen asleep under the sinister shadows of the false tree. I summon you old crows, wind beat on the wing. Give me the poem that will remake the world. We bomb another village, another town, another city, and all the eyes of the world crowd into one mirror, and stare back at me. © 2001Bruce Owens |
A journal on the writer's role in society edited by esther altshul helfgott ____________________ |
Writers mentioned in text |
Bruce Owens lives in Soquel, California. His work appears in the Robinson Jeffers Newsletter (No. 93 & 94, Winter & Spring) in tribute to friend, and fellow poet WilliamEverson. He lectures on the nature of the creative process, and conducts poetry workshops, mainly with young adults, especially those struggling with addictions or who have come from abusive households, using poetry as an instrument of self discovery and as an entry into the world around us. Bruce's collection of poems Eddies in the Rush (1998; ISBN 0-971256-0-0 ) was endorsed by C.C. Bailey and poet (1914-1993) . |
