Paul Pines

Songs From the Page of Swords

[Download the e-book]

ARS POETICA

  •            Herbert, my friend, I hear you've taken out the fiddle
  •             again.
  •             What can I say?
  •            I once knew a man who shaved his head and went to live
  •                 with Cajuns
  •                 because they fiddle in bogs.

  •             I fiddle also,
  •                  with myself.
  •             My fantasies hang like Spanish moss
  •                  outside my window and are always in my light.
  •             My dreams swim like alligators
  •                  around my home,
  •                                   reptile minds
  •                                  diencephalons
  •                  of merciless clarity.
  •             I look out my doorway
  •                  squared against the impeccable mitre of
  •                'things-as-they-are'
  •                  and am moved to say,

  •                                      "I lie."
  •            I do.
  •             I fondle my prick
  •                 and slobber over the lady in my mind
  •                 bending to my anger and my need,
  •                 wringing her hands,
  •                 salt air whipping her thighs.
  •             I tell her:
  •                          "Take me!
  •                          Make an honest man of me!"

  •             I look for her everywhere.
  •             In bars. In banks.
  •             And everything I think is cheap,
  •                     is worthless
  •             without her, if she isn't there, with her naked eyes.


    • Reviews



    …Paul Pines' Songs from the Page of Swords consists of those personal, bounding poems, deceptively simple in short measured lines, a soft voice that is loud enough to resonate...

    ...Pines is conscious of every image, locking them with threads of sound. He has traveled, and loved, and spent difficult time alone. He has erred, sinned, and found peace. There are poems here of family, of the teachings of The Good Book, of detours through drugs and lust. There are considerations of the next life, as well as this one: in "Homage to Guy Lombardo" (sic), the passage of years is weighed, and what we might have done: Taken the violin practiced scales until we could play the conversion of matter into energy

    Louis McKee - AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW