Poems & Song Lyrics From the Year 2020

It was the year of the lockdown. The year of economic collapse. The year of Covid, unemployment, political madness, and depressing confusion.

It was the year I wrote 146 poems and song lyrics.

This book contains poetical sketches of my inner landscape during this period.

Some of the topics I explore in this book include: Whistleblowers, friendship, my feline companion, death, the life of the mind, a circle of women, a cockroach museum, old men planting trees, being a poet, dead angels, art, private pictures, press freedom, good wine and cheese, white supremacy, my willie, the Blues, full open hearts, the power of love, dreamers, armadillos, cheap apple wine, and pure honest love.

Here's a sample:

Cheap Apple Wine

Money
doesn't grow on a tree.
This much...
I have divined.
But apples do...
and to my advantage...
I'm surviving this crisis
with my cheap apple wine.

Grandpa
was very tight with a buck.
Taught me...
a tree is the thing.
Said, "don't rely much upon luck...
raise you an orchard
full of good apples
and you'll be able to sing.

I can sell apples for five bucks a basket
and rove through the dumpsters for the rest of my food
and I keep on writing my lyrics and poems
knowin' Grandpap's advice is still good.

Money
doesn't grow on a tree.
This much...
I have divined.
But apples do...
and to my advantage...
I'm surviving this crisis
with my cheap apple wine.