Poetry by Adam Shechter

            ​Peter Organisciak CC



​How Now to Read the Text

How does a Bukowski line 
go down without the warm burn of alcohol? 

Like a lump of warm tears in the heart
that burns brighter and brighter,
as it slowly makes it way to the laughing star, lost waaaaaaay deep inside.

Sitting in explosive yearning is in fact smarter
than studying the ecstasy of the same old numb experience. 
Hard to believe when exploding through the giddy wet lens of drunkenness
recalls as the luminescent interlocutor found behind the clank of a liquid jail. 

Can the good old tranquilized emotions of dreams
be de-neutered of their anesthetic origins,
like shaving off the pimply bumps of facial brail,
so that the heart only senses a baby’s smooooooth skin?

Though we cannot see the soft touch, we can ask,

Who are we poets who have survived the alcohol wars,
sustaining ourselves on the confetti of the Beatnik’s document,
crazy text bits of deep paper texture that rain down 
from the fountain of the inner sky.

This bliss of peacetime, so they say.

Adam Shechter is a poet and psychotherapist in private practice. His poetry explores the psychotherapeutic intersection of theoretical and emotional experience. Mr. Shechter’s writing has been published in numerous print and online journals. He is also the book review editor of the psychoanalytic journal Vestigia.

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