GARY BECK - POEMS

Gary Beck spent most of his life as a theater director/playwright. He has had 14 chapbooks. 3 short story collections, 7 novels, 20 poetry books and 1 book of essays published. This year novels, poetry books and a book of his one-act plays will be published. Gary’s  original   plays   and   translations   of   Moliere, Aristophanes,   and   Sophocles   have   been   produced   Off-Broadway in New York City, where he resides.

​Schoolyard II

​Lonely girl
hiding in the corner
hoping not to be noticed
in the commotion of the schoolyard,
brooding miserably
because the nasty girls
made fun of her dress.

Phone Ghouls

Cavemen and women
rushed to the injured,
as long as it was safe,
not to help, but to gape.
Whether genetic or acquired,
vicarious horror seekers
have always hastened to disaster
to feast on the suffering of others,
memorizing gory images
to be savored later.
Technology inadvertently
made a gift to ghouls,
the smartphone with video
so every drop of  blood,
every bit of gore,
can be recorded
in hi-definition
color and sound,
to be drooled over
again and again.

​

Ghosts
​

Ghosts cling forever to the vast stillness of the night. Old ghosts gather and in whispers scattered by the wind, speak to the possessed, who forever wander in the silent reaches of the night. Ghosts gather and appear always in the still passages of night, when a tortured and tormented youth furiously courses the dormant streets searching desperately for a face to quell the rabid ache of loneliness. Ghosts appear and disappear, forever promising a peace that does not exist, a rest that is comfortless. Voices sing temptingly, calling forth all sorrow and despair to be soothed or erased in the spell of night magic. Sorcery controls the night. The fire-bright canopy of stars, the dark limit eyes can span, weave an eerie mystery on lost streets. Constraining garments and swaying limbs of creaking trees quench the restless flame driving a youth to seek horizons, while men hide in their beds and say farewell to journeys.

​

Visitors
​

Arrivals to the troubled city
rarely notice signs of decay
urgent for tourism,
blissfully ignoring
the homeless on each corner
cardboard signs requesting help,
the gaping fronts of vacant stores
at least one on every block,
small businesses subtracted 
from the economy
along with the lives they  nurtured.
And cameras, cameras, cameras
videoing everything,
so they can take back proof
they were really here.

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Entry Bar
​

Tourists visit America
seeking a great vacation
but never quite sure
what they’ll find.
Conditioned by film, tv,
to expect violence,
the Statue of Liberty
a tarnished vision
in a time of anger
towards immigrants,
the only passports welcomed
must contain ample euros.

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