This week's Poet of the People is Charles Watts. I know Charles from his work with the Poetry Society of South Carolina when he sends me emails asking if I paid my dues this year and from hearing him read his work at various events. He uplifts any room he is in and is an asset to Carolina poets. —Al
Early in his career, Watts had an underground play (“Visigoths”) produced in Los Angeles, which led to scriptwriting contracts for several TV series, including “Kojack” and “Here Come the Brides.” He fled Hollywood, got an MFA in poetry, and went to Iran to teach literature at several Universities. For five years, he edited Seizure, a magazine of poetry and fiction. He has also been a cab driver, social worker, refugee worker in camps in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Costa Rica, and owner of a tour company. His poems and stories have been anthologized in Road Poets, Adirondack Epiphanies, Schroon River Anthology, Northern Oracle, and Karma in the High Peaks, which received the “People’s Choice Award” for best book of 2010 from the Adirondack Center for Writing. His poems won the Patricia and Emmett Robinson Prize (2015 - Poetry Society of South Carolina) and first place at the North Country Writers Festival twice. His books include Cure Cottage (five one-act plays), Raptures (short stories), Waking Up in a Beautiful Room (poems), and The Road to Swat (a chapbook of travel tales). He splits his time between Charleston, SC and Lake Placid, NY.
Of That Which We cannot Speak
“Of that which we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.”
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
-Ludwig Wittgenstein
God does not manifest in the world
Because s/he does not exist in it
The mystical fact is that creation abides
Beyond the realm of words, beyond saying
Theology is an impotent attempt
To blur our vision with bones
Sans flesh, odes to the ineffable
That can only lead to misinterpretation
The ethical, the metaphysical, the aesthetic
The existence of the real and indescribable
Truths that my words can only compromise
Or misrepresent or falsify the meaning of
Darwin my beagle inhales squirrel musk
Spots the beast on a branch and howls, leaps
Against the tree truck and snorts like a pig
And I can describe it but not what he feels
Not the truth within his experience
Which is equally real to him as his dream
Of a forest filled with rabbit deer coyote fox
And all the joys that force his tail to wag
Oh, do not ask me to be silent
I must write my words until they approach
The edge of truth, not the truth itself
For that is where God dwells
Cancer Redux
A year and a half
Clean and clear
Is all that was granted
Through the chemo and
Immuno and who doth know
What else became involved
There was not a single symptom
No nausea, palpitation, fever
Fear, regret, or why the hell me
Took up swimming and made a mile
Took up walking the dog as we
Both forest bathed in the mountains
In fact, did all that was asked
And yet here we are
With new scans and new cancer
Send no damned affirmations
No prayers or it will be alrights
No links to peace and serenity sites
I am not happy nor am I pissed
Nor have I given up nor
Accepted what I cannot change
The recycling truck just passed my window
My view of the pond is clean and clear
If Nothing Lasts
If nothing lasts
Everything matters
The lizard on the palmetto palm
The glass hummingbird feeder
Its contents and patrons
The mouse I emptied into the trash
After the trap I set committed murder
The monk who condemns me for it
The sparrow that broke its neck
Trying to fly through the window
Into my room, the fly I swatted
Fireworks over the palace of ice
A week before the rain
Begins its melting
The mushrooms I picked and ate
Even though I could hear their screams
In the silence of the forest
The snow leopard that stalks me
In my dreams, the poison frog
I lick to fall asleep
My coonhound, who ambled with me
Out of the car into the vet's office
For his final shot at life
Everything matters
If nothing lasts
The Emptiness of Time
In a world with no sense
Of time, no word for past
Or present or future, where
All is the eternal moment
With no separation of then
From when or when
From now, there is
No need for watches
Watch only the moon
Test your emotions
As they change from
Night to night
At the new moon
You will be open
To new ideas
Write a poem
As the moon moves
Toward fullness
You will get more done
Edit the poem
As the moon begins
Its fading you will
Get no thing done
Time to dance
And in the moon’s
Fourth week
Organize yourself
Coldly calculate
The subject of your
Next poem