Stevie and Vincent
Stevie and VincentA Passion for Color A colorful journey into art, imagination, and finding your own voice. When Stevie is drawn into a Van Gogh painting, Vincent helps her discover her passion for color. Perfect for young artists, museum lovers, and dreamers of all...
Ecstasy and Death: Keats and Shelley in Rome
Jack Ramey, poet and spoken word artist, brings to life the poems of Keats & Shelley and the revolutionary times in which they lived, with parallels to his own life in the late ‘60s at Kent State. Rome was of special importance to these two poets. Shelley wrote...
Grafton Street Serenade
[Poem] On Grafton Street a legless busker Begged a tune from his plastic flute Gazing the while at his missing feet By Saint Stephen’s Green With the swans and the palms and mist And the rain and his upturned orange cap Lying filthy and empty on the street As...
Celluloid Elegy
Jack Ramey reads Celluoid Elegy. [Poem] ------------------------- - for Judy The pigtailed killer of the wicked witch led daddy's kids thru Emerald City before she made it there herself while Round John Virgin smothered the child (holy infant so tender and mild)...
In Memoriam, Eric Marciano
February 28, 1959 – August 9, 2022 [Poem] Day after day becomesnight after nightand he is still gone . . .gone of a cancerdeep in the bones from filming 9/11 disasterhim and first respondersinhaling toxic vaporsfumes and ash and then 20 years latermarrow turns...
The Doomsday Clock:
Two Minutes Till Midnight
[Poem] At the near tipping point of the worldthat tilts ever more sharply now, greed and brutality slide down towardthe vast abyss that gaps beneath us and we stand at the still edge of raptureas the candy-colored clown laughs half-aloud his metamorphic chuckleand the...
Freedom Day
Jack Ramey reads Freedom Day. [Poem] We hold these truths to be self-evident: all white men who own property are created equal – this of course excludes black people and Indian people and women and poor white whiskey tangos who have no pot to piss in. Nonetheless, it...
Field of Dreams
[Poem] ................. In Memoriam: Steven Urchek Death is the mother of beauty The mother of us all Birthing us on to new journeys Into new identities Melding us with the Holy Spirit The All-One Over-Soul. And on January Twentieth 2021 A day of hope for our country...
Un Secret
[Poem] Marc and Anne-Marie live in the shadow of the Marquis de Sade's chateau between Le Coste and Coustellet in the hot magic of Provence. They live like children of wonder who have no past or future who laugh at everything and sing secret songs to the sun. They...
Prologue: The River
. [Poem] The Iroquois called you O-he-O, the Wyandot the Oheezo, which some took to mean “sparkling,” others “white,” while the French took it to mean “beautiful” :– La Belle Rivière, the beautiful river they called you and they were right, at times you are white, at...
The River
. [Poem] 1. A great bronze god This morning Swollen and muddy, Slowly silting down, Muscles rippling like some Giant water stallion, Moving past Broadway, past Elm Past the geese at the floating marina Past the stacks of the monolithic power plant Past all the bare...
Onondaga Lake
[Poem] ....................- .- for the corporate heads of Honeywell Hiawatha combed the snakes From the mind, preparing the way. Preparing the way for Tadadaho, Keeper of the fire of the One United Longhouse of the Haudenosaunee, The people of the longhouse, who Keep...
For Jack Carlton, Requiescat in Pace
[Poem] Barely contained laughter slicing open the heart of the matter exposing the irony or hypocrisy of all our tendentious moments here on this long wave we’ve been riding for half a century. Jack, I see you now in old man’s shoes, a linen suit, a straw boater and a...
Dawali
[Poem] Today light conquers darkness good triumphs over evil knowledge beats ignorance as millions of Hindus light lamps and decorate floors with colored rice and sand and flour designs designed to banish the dark side of the universe from their little corner...
By the Villa Borghese
[Poem] By the Villa Borghese park and the statues Of Lord Byron and Goethe, I wait for a bus And watch two old homeless Roman women Sitting on a bench on the street opposite me Sorting through their ragged belongings, Plastic bags and shopping bags and...
Turtle Island
[Poem] Part I Sorcerer’s Moon Part II Journey to the East Part III The Planting Moon [/Poem] 350 BC (Before Columbus) in the land between Niagara and the Great Salt Sea, in a world where no Europeans had set foot, there lived Five Great Nations...
Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café
Jack Ramey, the author of Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café,at Village Lights Bookstore, Madison IN In real and imagined terrains, where the past often mingles with the future, and is always alive in the present, the poems in Jack Ramey’s provocative new collection,...
Ode to a Nightingale
Jack Ramey reads Ode To a Nightingale. [Poem] My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains ....My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains ....One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy...
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Jack Ramey reads Ode on a Grecian Urn. [Poem] Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, .....Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express .....A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts...
Ode to the West Wind
[Poem] I O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who...
Ozymandias
[Poem] I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its...
Rome I
[Poem] III The ancient Forum Romanum: a miracle of marble! Columns Ionian and Corinthian and statues of gods And consuls, temples lined inside and out with marble And mosaic and tiles. Now ruins. Used for centuries As a quarry to be mined by Bishops and Popes...
Rome II
[Poem] VII Lay me down in cool salt water. Lay me down like Noah’s daughter. Lay me down and tell me you miss me. Lay me down when I’m dead, and kiss me. In the non-Catholic cemetery in Rome Close by the pyramid of Cestius The bones of John Keats lay down in...
The Resurrection of Galileo
[Poem] Vincenzo Viviani and Giovanni Battista de Nelli strove to save Galileo’s legacy : Viviani keeping all of his master’s papers in a huge closet along one wall of his house in Florence rewriting many letters excising references to Copernicus and blasphemous...
1941 Noir
[Poem] The caper always goes wrong. Some dope makes a stupid move Like shooting the cashier or a copper Or someone gets the shakes And talks too much or Someone doesn’t move at all and staring Into the abyss he inadvertently Screws the pooch Or someone moves...
Two Hundred and Six Bones
[Poem] The skin that hangs from this skeleton is cloud stuff: tree limbs on a hilltop seen from a moving vehicle – ineluctable like foxfire in nightwind, vanishing within seconds after sight. The tegument between these bones feels right; tightened to keep me strung...
Spring Again
[Poem] After winter’s ragged grin, spring comes greening in with leaf-curling smiles of hope for new beginnings: delirious-wild-flowerings in the serious month of May and, in spite of Eliot’s cruelest month, crocus and Iris and lilac and clematis, jonquils and tulips...
March, That Classical Month
[Poem] March, that classical month, sits upon her pillars supported by the plinth of dying winter and yearning towards the moony start of spring. The first of the month that classical month where the fish still swims towards the ram and the longest day of the year...
Through a Glass Darkly
[Poem] . . . . . . . . . Withered willows in the Fall . . . . . . . .. . whither go thy leaves? The layers of oversight have been changed. Bare ruined choirs stain the landscape dripping with rain in late November. The 21st century limited exists in tandem...
The Spiral Destiny
[Poem] Look at the light beams pouring down from the sun:– slicing through morning fog and mist like a million surgeons’ carefully sharpened knives in a medieval cathedral of medicine, where patients wait patiently, supine on the mossy floor of love in the nave...
Burnt Almonds
[Poem] The world was made of black and white. Carnivore description bears their names written on the launching pad: David Ghost, Astronaut. Nathan Faltoon, pilot. Zackadu Monguenski, bombardier. They knew what they had to do and they did it all for the red, white, and...
A Tribute to Native American Heritage
[Poem]Richard Riviere at a workshop in Israel.[/Poem] This month is Native American Heritage Month, but unfortunately, the study of Native American history is neglected in most schools. Our students are given a day off to celebrate Columbus, who never stepped foot in...
The Untold Story of the Kent State Massacre
The Untold Story of the Kent State Massacre Screened at the KIVA, Kent State University, Sunday, May 3, 2015 This documentary features an interview with Nancy Rodgers about her experiences at Kent State where she was a math professor from 1968-78. Rodgers had...
Renaming the Species
[Poem] Pagans, Christians, Muslims, Jews: You are all the sons of blood. Worshippers of Mithras Of Horus, of Isis, or Mars: You are all covered in blood: The blood of sacrificial bulls And lambs and doves, Crucified messiahs and saints Lining the Appian Way For...
Ohio River Sutra
[Poem] Something white floats on the water Close to the opposite shore: White like floating paint or a ghost Made flesh, hanging there, unmoved by the current. A white plastic bag hangs high in a tree, A vacant soul blown by a swirling wind: Breathing in and breathing...
Whose life is this anyway?
[Poem] . A white plastic bag hangs high in a tree,A vacant soul blown by a swirling wind:Breathing in and breathing outLike a broken balloon on a naked limb. Whose life is this, anyway?The loudest towboat on the OhioOwned by American Electric Power —(AEP) emblazoned...
Fragments from the Gone World
[Poem] XXI Louis Congo they called me when I was alive, my slave name – Louis for Louisiana, Congo for where I was taken from. Portuguese taught me to read and write but sold me off to the Frenchman who took me to New Orleans when she was young in 1721. Why...
Fragments from the Gone World
[Poem] XV Imagine a planet where mammoths and bears outnumber people. A mere ten thousand years ago the human population of Earth was five million bodies and souls. You could fit them all into two Toronto Canadas. They were pretty much the same as us except that the...
Fragments from the Gone World
[Poem] XII Dionysus was a god who could take a joke. In one of his plays Aristophanes gave him diarrhea in Hell and the wine god did not strike him dead on the spot for blasphemy. But, it is said, Aristophanes later died of drink. XIII The Romans...
Fragments from the Gone World
[Poem] I The gods are far too literal minded : Ithmonike of Pellene pregnant for three entire years after imploring the god Asklepios at Epidaurus. You silly woman, he said upon her return, why did you not say you wanted to give birth? II Fingernail-clipping...
Wolfman
--- Jack Ramey reads Wolfman. [Poem] No savage fit of barking Will bring back the kiss of Eurydice. Orpheus lies daggered in Mecca’s Hashish clouded streets And the calm dusty breasts of Helen No longer sweat for the heat of cold Paris. It is apparent...
All at Sea
Jack Ramey reads All at Sea. [Poem] Camp Mingo Nirvana peek-show northeast ohio end-all-dreamy- thursday afternoons : it is sunny as the Lord’s Day & no kids play in the park but me & a lean stray cat who danced his paws on my stomach & circled my...
Event Horizon
---[Poem] Psychotic dogs bark at cold winter stars, chips of dead ice on the black painted canvas of night. They sense the distance. The distance between them and all other matter, the enormous space between all living things: atoms, planets, people, mountains, worms,...
Ghost Road
... Jack Ramey reads Ghost Road. [Poem] These passengers are always with me On my journey down to the sea Where sailboats list and bob endlessly by the quay. I do not know them. They do not know me. We ride together on melting roads each day. Not speaking. Only...
Kali Yuga
[Poem] On cracked ancient krater painted red, men black- bearded wrestle, hoist spear and penis or recline in drapery drinking wine from shallow cups restating thus this vessel’s earthly purpose. Keats’ purple bubbles winking at the brim and yes they are all fixed...
To Age Slowly Without Pain
[Poem] The insubstantial beauty of smoke lilting upwards from an unseen stack on a clear winter morning, lifts the heart as briefly as it rises, and then fades away with the wind; attacks the senses with acute demand as sharp as battle lances brandished centuries ago...
Shan-Shui: Rivers-and-Mountains
[Poem] No rivers in China Return to the sea As once they did Throughout millennia Bringing tiny bits of mountains To form sand on the ocean floor. All rivers now are dammed. Valleys flooded; cycles destroyed. Ghosts of Wang Wei and Li Po weep. Art and poetry vanishes...
Fandango
[Poem] The last few bars of Mysticali Rose drifting down the street mixt with dust and rolling mesquite the beat lingering there in that corner where heat gathers itself up into a knot of tangled memories and squats in a heap of rags and print and sighs out loud for...
Gun
[Poem] Oh America, you never got over your youth – All those slap-happy penny dreadful tales of Billy the Kid & Wild Bill H. went to your head and stayed there like lead poisoning. You talkin’ to me? You must be talkin to me cause they ain’t nobody else –...
Song of Gog
... [Poem] And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out and deceive the nations Which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: The number of whom is as the sand of...
Fragments from the Gone World
[Poem] XXVII Simonides of Keos inventor of the art of memory said that painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks. He knew the true poet’s wish: to make a poem whose images speak to so many people that its words live on forever. But forever is...
The Selected Poems of Wang Wei
I was first introduced to the poems of Wang Wei by my friend and fellow poet, George Kalamaras, when he mentioned that Wang Wei was his favorite Chinese poet in a poetry reading at the Village Lights Bookstore. George, who is the Poet Laureate of Indiana, also...
Vanity, All Is Vanity
[Poem] Sometimes I want to be like Wang Wei or any other Chinese poet silent on a cold mountain top looking down on corrupt civilization and the brutality of all species struggling to live out their days feeding on others. Sometimes I want to be like Bruce Wayne with...
Resurrection and Ascension
[Poem] After reading the morning news Such properties as these do make me funk. I shall go outside and become one with ducks, who must for now remain invisible, even though they seem indivisible from my poor twisted psyche today in a world full of...