Two poems by Gary Beck

Desperate Girl

Your past and present weavings
(the inevitable shroud falling between
you and your desires,)
will not ensure partings.
You remember furtive moments
(from the icicle beast, dreader of ties,)
but trapped by reluctant hungers
in a world of no reassurance
(coincidence shapes configurations)
subtract another unkindness
from  men of perpetual motion.

 
Literary Wasteland

The strange time flow passes all men in the hot flush of day and lengthens
into the lonely, silent watches of the hoar-frosted night. Along a dark,
deserted street a figure breaks the long pause of desolation, a night
wanderer searching the lost midnight streets for an unknown face, the face
that once in a dream of passion spoke in a night of fiery waste, long past in
the days of youth’s hunger. And now, pausing to look into the store
windows, at racks of new crisp books, and feeling a twinge of regret at
seeing the standard publishers junk, instead of the great bawdy tales of
Chaucer, Boccacio, Rabelais, The Chinese classic Ming novels, the
wondrous storytellers who have elevated man, now mouldering somewhere
on neglected shelves.



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Bio: Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays (Winter Goose Publishing). Fault Lines, Perceptions, Tremors and Perturbations will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Resonance (Dreaming Big Press). His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing). Call to Valor will be published by Gnome on Pigs Productions. His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.