Author Description

LIVE VERSE is fast-moving underdog poetry that has its own view of humanity's disorderly conduct as it deals with love and politics, music and baseball, hard times and corporate greed. Live Verse is conversational, down-to-earth poetry with a bemused view of the world from the bottom looking up. It reflects the author's life as an often-out-of work traveling musician whose resume of odd jobs is way past colorful. For music lovers the bonus is a first-hand account of the boisterous journey of American popular music from ragtime to rap. Live Verse comes from America's bars, ballparks and truck stops. From a country music bar in Anchorage, Alaska and from a jazz joint on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans. It comes from an all-night diner in Bakersfield where the juke box is playing Merle Haggard's "The Bottle Let Me Down." It comes from Dodger Stadium on the day that every baseball player wears number 42 to honor Jackie Robinson. It comes from a bus depot in Cincinnati where a mute TV shows President Obama speaking in front of the presidential seal and two American flags while a few distracted travelers sit staring at the screen and wonder if any of it matters. It comes from every union hall that celebrates the American wage slave who creates our prosperity but is still fighting for a fair share of it. It comes from the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C., where some noisy demonstrators brave snow flurries to wave signs declaring that capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class and that Wall Street is a high crime area. At the same time, on the floor of the Senate, a senator from an oil patch state shows off a snow ball and declares global warming to be a hoax. A keen observer of political absurdities, the author claims that "politics has gone from bad to verse" and goes on to prove it. For the reader who is trying to make sense of mankind's twenty-first century mess and doesn't know whether to laugh or cry, LIVE VERSE is here to help.