Poetry by Vince Nuzzo

                ​Timo Newton-Syms CC



Bottom of the Fourth 

Bottom of the Fourth:  Or was it Top of the Fifth? I think I like top of the fifth better, it implies a full bottle.

I might've lost my mind but at least I've found my voice again, I like where I'm at

Fifty years and some odd months. One day recently I woke up and there it was, just in time for covid. The mid-life crisis. Never thought that shit was reaI, thought it was a joke. Maybe the near-fatal pulmonary blood clot a few years ago was an early catalyst? The estrangement? The busted family ties? I wanted to skate again, I wanted to write again, I'm reading books again, bought a guitar, got on the mountain bike and I started doing it all again! Best thing that ever happened to me. Really, the best thing is that I had put all that lovely stuff into the program all those younger years, kept it on lock, and now, how wonderfully rewarding. I'm older than ever and feel like a kid again, even better, a kid with less angst and the peace that experience, wisdom and confidence can bring. Maybe it's a sweeter, gentler childhood than before. I swear it's not the drugs. It all almost feels more pure to do these things than ever, well of course I can't remember perfectly how it was so that helps, it's all new again but it's not.

I wanna write like how I wish I could play guitar.

One thing I think I know about it is that life is too fuckin' short not to jump back into the daily bliss if it's working again, firing again, get it now but it's not a mid-life crisis, it's a living life again for real renaissance. And who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks about it, I'm not lettin' it pass me by.
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Don't miss that ride if it comes to your town, you might get another lap, longer, bigger and better than the last. It took a while to come but then again maybe it never left, maybe I'm just a big kid.  Anyhow, the second half has barely begun. I'm warming up, pointing at the fences like Babe Ruth, might even find myself a fine cigar. All I've lost I shall regain, and some, yeah, it's not worth going back for





The Poet and The Outsider  

The dust settled from the gang of four wheelers and I saw Haiku Ricky was back out in the desert with his camper as I drove by cow pie rock. Sometimes outsiders need to leave each other alone too. It's covid times after all. Got to gather themselves, get settled in. Plus, I was afraid he'd invite me to participate in a poetry reading.

We're surrounded by poetry and sometimes poets

The Poet's words can be a link to an alternative reality without ingesting a drug. And it's the same for the poet although they would call it constant word murmurings in the head

If the poet curbs his reading habit, then he doesn't steal too much.

The Outsider is not always a curmudgeon or miserable hermit. The outsider chooses to live apart from the confines of societal norms. This can be hugely liberating but can bring about a unique set of problems when those around him still adhere to the boundaries of homogeneity

Ain't no life without tension, triumph and the struggle in between, it's a good song and a dazzling solo but

I wanna turn jagged speed into some smooth blotter on the page and the catalyst can really be just a hot meal, refreshing shower, warm conversation or a relaxing sedative sunset

The poet's words need not garner a wage or praise, the satisfaction comes from getting it on the page

There's outsiders and poets and there's outsider poets. When I stand in the open by the sunwall of my little shed in the baking sonoran sun and purposely cast my shadow onto the lizard, he knows I'm there and finally moves. Time to write





​Cottonwood Reading Glasses

To live and die has many crisp and blurry markers and milestones, metamorphosis measured in experiences and inevitable unstoppable shifts in the functioning and feeling of our brains and bodies

Today, it was the recollection of a recent eve spent amongst old and new company--ahhhhhh, covid's over! Ha! Nah. But man, it feels so good to breathe in unfiltered life again and let it course through our being

So, while soupy drunk, lanky urban northwestlander, underfed vegan marathon runner JL gets asked a question and does a does a stylish, near skull cracking layback to within a millimeter of the plastic razor sharp point on the big samsung bootube, saved by her last shred of grace under liquor pressure and my grab, it is Polish Jomashe, her dual citizen fifty or so boyfriend I hear muttering loudly over an epic Joe Bonomassa blues rock guitar journey across the little living room, "Yah Vinnie, it is that age, that time in our live now, it is normal, we need the reading glasses, mine are tri-focal!"  What a gem. Earlier we'd been cackling without our readers on, blindly squinting at our phones looking for tunes, trying to find his fav Polish blues band, the Poles got some blues too, believe you me

I stand now under the trees and floating, drifting Montana cottonwood puffy summer snow, some of it sticking to my back and the cat's at ninety-three breezy warm, loving degrees thinking about my need for reading specs and time during this lovely life that's slithering on majestically, careening toward the inevitable

Raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Vince Nuzzo bolted west to Missoula, Montana for the promise of college and adventure at the age of seventeen. After spending a sporadically enrolled nine years reaching a B.A. in English/Creative Writing at the University of Montana, Vince has since bounced and bashed around the U.S. and Latin America with Missoula as basecamp, considering himself a citizen of the world more than of any one state. His work and adventures have taken him high upon mountaintops and giant skateboard ramps, down into the rivers and deserts, out onto the sea and through many relationships, some successful, many not. After a feverish run of writing creative non-fiction, the novel Thirst In Montana, and poetry in his younger years, Vince, now fifty, has of late succumbed to a burning, near constant urge to be getting it on the page again. In a fit of experiential in the NOWNESS and at the time heavily influenced by reading 27 clubber, the late poet and singer Jim Morrison, he threw an entire trunk of his writings, starting with his earliest, into a landfill during a move between homes. This is a decision Vince will forever regret but it is also a grand motivator now in his search for the story and the need to tell it, along with the benefit of gaining some healing from life's dreads and wounds. He's weathered two pulmonary blood clots and a DVT clot and now writes for himself first and foremost but considers anyone willing to take a look or two to be a brave, beautiful, encouraging soul. Vince feels thankful to be writing again.

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