Tuesday’s Poem

Easy Reader News profiles RD Armstrong, better known in the underworld of poetry as Raindog.  The well known  San Pedro poet started the Lummox Journal, “with the idea that I might be able to sell enough subscriptions that I’d be able to buy stamps for my own stuff, to send out submissions to other magazines.” He pauses. “What it ended up being was that it took up all my time and basically I published myself in my little magazine – which worked out fine because I didn’t just publish schlock, you know? I was a very rough editor on myself.”

Lummox Press has come into its own over the last three or so years. Last year, the Lummox Journal was revived to be published once a year. The 2013 installment is in its final stages before being shipped to the printer.

Mozart at 22

by RD Armstrong

“My life sucks, man!”

He was 22

His hair was cut like the Dutch Boy

and dyed jet black

His overcoat covered

ragged jeans and jackboots

He leaned against the lamppost

bumming cigarettes from

passersby

A group of young men milled around him

muttering their agreement with

his wisdom and profound insight

he was 22 and life was

passing him by

He looked dejectedly at me

“Why can’t I be like you, man?”

22 and he wanted to double his grief

In parts of Eastern Europe

old men of 22 were manning the baricades

right now even as we stood on a corner

in the midday sun

Mozart at 22

had already lived two thirds of his life

Rimbaud at 22 had given up poetry,

been shot by his ex-lover

and taken up gun-running

“My whole life is totally effed up, man!”

He lived in a small, neat, studio apartment just

down the street

When I was 22

I lived in a roach infested hole of an apartment

in Oakland

My girlfriend was two-timing me with

a baseball player

and booking herself on an all-expenses paid trip

around the bend

The Blue Meanies were gassing kids on Telegraph Ave.

whilst Nixon and Company

were looting Vietnam

raping our faith in authority

and pillaging the federal government

Now this kid

this 22 year-old

this angst-ridden lost soul

wants to be like me

living the “easy” life?

One tenth of my entire life

equals his “adult” life

His life is a little fart

compared to the brown

crusty foot-long floater of a turd

that is mine

22 years old

and its all over except for the

screaming and crying

“Rest easy kid, it’s always darkest

right before it goes

completely black.”