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Lost Among the Hours

by Alan Britt

Alan Britt believes “Each poem has its feral destiny,” and I have resounding faith they are destined to touch many lives as they have touched mine. Reading Lost Among the Hours (dedicated to none other than Daphne, his prized blond Bouvier), is like negotiating unexpected bends in a densely forested, thought-inked journey. In Britt’s very first poem, “The Ego,” you stumble upon a philosophic milestone: “The ego must be misunderstood like any good myth.” And when you have absorbed its essence, you encounter “khaki nightmares” following which, phantoms of Kabir and Rumi, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Brando, Lorca, Shelley, Byron, Blake, Bacon and Bonnefoy appear, to haunt you delightfully with their palpable presence―allusions evoked by the masterly poet. From his sensuous word paintings and contemplations of life and nature over 13 previously published books, Britt has been as much, preoccupied with the whims of history and politics that shape our lives. In his biting “Sense of Humor” and the power of “Written Words” we witness a deep concern for humanity and the descent of human values. But his spirit is infectious as his “own humble poems” that seek to “rescue us all, once again, / from the latest, bigoted new world order.” We need to be nourished again and again by Alan Britt’s words.

—Bina Sarkar Ellias, Poet and Editor/Publisher, International Gallerie

Alan BrittAlan Britt served as judge for the 2013 The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. He read poetry and presented the “Modern Trends in U.S. Poetry” at the VII International Writers’ Festival in Val-David, Canada, May 2013. He read poetry for the 6x3 Exhibition at the Jadite Gallery in Hell’s Kitchen/Manhattan in December 2014. Also, sponsored by LaRuche Arts Contemporary Consortium (LRACC) he read poetry at the Union City Museum of Art/William V. Musto Cultural Center in Union City, NJ in May, 2014. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. A new interview for Lake City Lights is available at http://lakecitypoets.com/AlanBritt.html. His latest books are Lost Among the Hours: 2015, Parabola Dreams (with Silvia Scheibli): 2013 and Alone with the Terrible Universe: 2011. He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

by Alan Britt

Giant Manuscripts

Some poetry manuscripts
are monster hurricanes
gripping the entire state
of Florida,
eerie eyes focused on West Palm,
Stuart and Ft. Pierce.

It just so happens
I dated a girl
from the Port St. Lucie corridor—
goldfinches igniting
quartz blue eyes—
but I digress.

These manuscripts, like elephants
spraying one another,
grow heavier and heavier,
down in our basements,
night after night.

Someday, with proper cultivation,
they could resemble
sperm whales 2 miles deep
trolling
their favorite meal,
the giant squid,
that elusive, mythical creature
whose 50-foot tentacles
occasionally litter
our shores of dementia.


Wild Parakeets of Florida

(For Duane Locke)

He parted the wall
so that we could enter.

He melted mortar from the bricks
supporting our future superstitions.

Ultimately, this allowed us to enter.

But, once inside,
we realized that genocide is a disease
more rampant than AIDS,
genocide ancient as DNA.

And now we’re petitioning
what new stadium, exactly,
which new sports franchise,
while our children
slumped in overcrowded classrooms
are herded by underpaid sheepdogs?

This can’t be why Blake
parted the Red Sea.

I’m telling you,
Blake was an escaped convict
from the 18th Century
with nowhere else to go.

He reminds me of a poet
who once watched pale blue parakeets
blistering the pine trees
of St. Petersburg, Florida, 1969.


For George

George eases his slide
into Gary Moore’s
“That Kind of Woman.”

Sneaks in, sans wah wah,
three quick licks,
then leans back into
a Bonnie Raitt sultry riff.

Brass on steel suggests
“Apple Scruffs” or “Layla”
as his Gretsch grinds its
antlers against the elephant
trunk of a thorny acacia.

He’s no yearling,
this George Harrison,
though hairless now
and staggering
through the gilded halls
of the Almighty.

A blue note from George’s guitar
sparks the nearby stall
of a nearby barn
igniting nearby hay.

Soon the entire barn is ablaze.