Categories
Poetry

Gerard Sarnat – 1 poem

Thought (Problem)…….

            

Nowadays

Rounding a bend

Toward octogenarian 

            

It feels as if can read

—Almost limitlessly—

In the present moment to

            

My grandkids although I recall

When mine were that age being

Constantly distracted by concerns

            

Regards work and other consuming 

Issues which most often led you to try 

Pulling fast ones, skip words or whole pages. 

            

🍃

Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Hong Kong Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review,Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, North Dakota and University of Chicago presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles, Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King. Gerry is a Harvard-trained physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to potential future granddaughters. 
gerardsarnat.com

Categories
Poetry

Gerard Sarnat – 2 poems

“medicine work” 

 

 

does describe

Doc’s untoward

pinballoid

hellishly jobbed

womb-toy

passion play

or unavoidable

free-floating

extrastellar

steely-eyed

not forgiving

nothingness’s

highest dose

mushroom cap

black magic,

               which as

my boy gets old

is oy too much

for moi what

with losing

track pale body,

unaware parts

such as bladder

thusly pissed

meself in all

buck naked glory

— so we lower

to 2-3 grams

which remains

reasonably

        interactive;

that ends up

doing the trick

though push come

to golly shovity

shove shove,

in comparison

empathogenic

Miss Molly’s

MDMA seems

a cooly predictable

picnic lovefest of

CAPITALIZED

SILKY SOFT

POSITIVITY.

 

🍃

 

 

MOZY ON

 

 

i. Better dead than read

 

come cowboy cum slowly whimpering

to impotent late-stage capitalism

 

misfits’ wet dream dark night soul

fastfood delivery, oy maybe Turkish

 

girl takeout — defamiliarized scrib-

bling nonce doginish form swirls;

 

I used to write toward y’all once

wishing to elicit pissed humanoid

 

barks. Or as we juiced hootenanny

addicted Jewish ex-communist droll

 

dysphoric standup comic assholes

called for laughs/ boos: if gaffes,

 

booze/ shoot up drugs (perhaps

even our heads off deliverance).

 

 

ii. Hints Of Bourdain’sParts Unknown

 

 

Instantaneously after

this celebrity known for

telling truths passed, Tony’s

Q score jumped through the roof…

 

Sicily just ran posthumously on

CNN despite this seeming paragon of

inspiring lively happiness paradoxically

hanging himself without any suicide note

 

“I am famous for my optimism…

I feel something snap [diving for

octopi] and then slide quickly into

a spiral of near hysterical depression…”

 

 

 

iii. holy ghost

 

 

brain drip

….pilfers

truth, fake

news can

marshal

common

nonsense:

eyes flash

— I dead.

 

 

🍃

 

 

Gerard Sarnat is a physician who’s built/staffed homeless clinics as well as a Stanford professor/healthcare CEO. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus four grandkids and more on the way. He has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards and is widely published beyond medical in academic journals such as including by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan and in Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, Margie, Blue Mountain Review, Danse Macabre, Canary Eco, Military Experience and the Arts, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, and Los Angeles Review. KADDISH FOR COUNTRY was selected for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day nationwide. “Amber Of Memory” was the single poem chosen for his 50th Harvard reunion Dylan symposium. Collections: Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting the Ice King (2016).

gerardsarnat.com