Free Verses: January 2026

God always likes to

contradict Himself.

First He told me I was

the greatest poet in the

history of the universe.

The next day, He introduced

me to Peter Payack.

I was busy minding my own business, trying to raise three kids in Section 8 housing with my beautiful wife, the only person I know wiser than me, and typing up a draft of the First Philosophy of the 21st Century on the side.

In my spare time, just for the pleasure of having money to buy food, I was working as a Health Enthusiast at the Vitamin Shoppe. In walks this health nut crazy genius who knew all the secrets of time and space. And then another. And another. It was Harvard Square in the era of Bush (Dubbya,) and the most interesting and important people from all over the world came in order to live forever, supplement the vanity of their exercise regimen, and spy on each other. The beautiful young daughter [not as young as my wife (and I) were then, nor half as hot n beauty as she is today & every day. -Ed. 😍] of a delegate to the United Nations tried to give me her phone number and said she would like to get together before she had to fly back to Bourgeoistan, or wherever she was from. I said I was gonna be busy. After all, after selling these rich entitled brats from East & West their placebo pills and kicking out the bums only when the smell of urine became completely intolerable and my bosses didn't have the heart to do so, I still had to go home and cook dinner for my wife and children. Actually, at least one of them was still eating baby food out of a jar: which was healthier than all the bullshit these health freaks were wasting their Euros on.

"I was just hoping we could get together," she said as she slowly walked out the door, turning to face me with what I suppose was meant to be the intent of seduction.

"Well, that's too bad..." I replied, and went back to dusting the shelves.

Then in came some bozo with his sneakers hanging by the laces from around his neck. When he made his purchase and I accidentally scanned the wrong bottle that someone else had left on the counter and had to return the item to give him his refund, I accidentally noticed the name on his credit card was John Malkovich.

Finally, I met another running freak, this one who had ran the Boston Marathon so many times I'm not even sure if he can count them anymore, but I'm pretty sure he may have even been running ahead of Mr. Revere saying, "Hurry up, Paul, or the British will be here before you are!" In fact one day in May of 1775, when eight hundred score patriots were assembling on the Cambridge Common to found the U.S. Army, now the biggest gang on the planet, Peter may have even been a few blocks away at a little hole-in-the-mud tavern, sandwiched in between a thriving law office and a pile of cow dung, and sharing a mug of lukewarm beer with yours truly, who had just bought some grass from General Washington in a crumpled up piece of parchment on which was written the first draft of the Declaration of Independence.

Well then! ...but back in the late 00's Peter and I started talking about music, probably in reference to whatever hit of the 60s or 70s was playing from the ceiling on our satellite radio system. Somehow the subject of Led Zeppelin's shameless plagiarism came up, and how they had still not given Howlin' Wolf credit for one of their songs (which I think may have finally been addressed by now. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!) Anyway, he mentioned that he taught at Berklee, I told him I played guitar, and he probably should have offered to manage me then and there and my band would be so big Taylor Swift would be our opening act, but neither of us had the balls to quit our day jobs.

It also came up that he was a poet. I found a really loquacious way to say "ditto," and we have been friends ever since. Right now I have four of his books on my shelf, in between Pablo Neruda and Edgar Allan Poe; because even if he can never find the keys to his apartment, a poet's gotta have his books in alphabetical order. Don't even get me started on the digitization of library records and the decline of the Dewey Decimal System...

Peter helped me publish the first and only poem (aside from a limited edition out-of-print collection I put together right before the pandemic, All Seasons) I've ever had in print, in a collection called On the River, featuring a variety of poets from Cambridge, some better than me, most worse. Seriously though they were all great voices with a unique perspective on this beautiful city that has shaped my life since I moved here at the age of 5 or 6 and became an instant philosopher. I have befriended, learned from, leered at, worked and fought with people from Japan, Haiti, Iran, Bangladesh, Dominican Republic, Nepal, Portugal, West Africa (Togo, Ghana, Congo, and probably one or two other nations,) Somalia, Puerto Rico (yeah I know that's still America, but few of us can stay up partying as late, show up early to work as hard the next day, and still talk as loud!) and the Ukraine. Rich, poor, young, old, Cambridge is such a pretty tapestry but Peter's right, to really feel it you have to go down to the Charles River, or Quinobequin, its name in Massachusett, which means 'meandering,' kinda like this book review has been doing, you're probably thinking...

Anyway we had a great time reading some of our poems one day at the old Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square, now gone (thanks development! thanks landlords! I laugh when people think we're all liberal lunatics: Cambridge has always been the second most conservative city in the nation, behind only New Haven.)

Some time after all that Peter gave me my first copy of Conceptual Anarchy, which I loved to death literally and left in one of the Little Free Libraries that also make our city so great, so that some other child of Goddess could be blessed to read his Words. Before that I wrote a review on one of my older blogs that no longer exists, about how I had been trying to write the aforementioned First Philosophy of the 21st Century, but Payack beat me to it! (Just like when I was a kid at the playground and Saban read my private thoughts and stole the idea for the Power Rangers.)

Now in possession of an autographed copy of the Book of Conceptual Anarchy: Future Edition that Peter gave me as an early Chanukkah present, along with some other merch, I owe him another review: but Peter, I'm going to need another one of your pens; the one you gave me broke when I was using it as a drumstick on the coffee table.

And so, instead of arguing the relative merits of this book and its author in pretentious prose as I'm sure my imaginary readers have all come to expect by now, I present to you all:

Conceptual Anarchy

Kingdom of the Word

You decide: a

("Choose Your Own Adverb")

A Dialogue in Verse

Let us put off till tomorrow, those things which do not concern Eternity.

Or not: I have to go to the bathroom...

Feeling lighter, the load lessened,

The Road before me: the Lesson

To teach the world about the poetry of Payack

To row your boat? Or drift in a

Kayak

Photo by @peterpayackpoet on X

#winter #solstice #BostonHenge

The Man is a great photographer on top of it all. Apollo, Dionysus & Socrates in One:

Nietzsche is very proud, Peter!

In the Beginning:

Peter kept the Keys

Gabriel gave the Word

Y'heard?

In my 'hood (Cambridge)

It's all good!

In the Beginning...

Happy New Year!

Happy True Year!

The sky is blue

& something new... (from New Thing)

I checked my watch when the bell did ring

I gotta get off my butt and write this thing

Though no oath sworn, I promised to Peter

to credit: indebted, a review to write...

Write "NOW"

right now.

Cut & paste

is such a waste

U gotta type it out on the tiny keyboard

on the touchscreen of your phone/device

Verses of Vice

& vice versa...

Happy New Second's Eve!

What a moment

to be born again

Wait a moment...

silly syntax of sin

Can bug us no more,

We've swum safe, ashore

(now all my best poems are water-damaged)

Peter is the only guy I've ever met who knows his Nietzsche as good as I do

Well, almost...

Yesterday was unseasonably warm

When Hermes Trismegistus said,

"As above,

so below"

It could just as easily have meant:

As outside

so inside

And just as it was warm enough outside to take your 15-minute

break beyond the walls of the building you work in and call a

loved one without wifi

So was it warm enough in my heart to get closer to the Spirit

that wrote this book

Anima et anima

And to get closer to finishing the book

Even as I put in a lot of time yesterday

on this review and hit "Publish" by mistake

even though it isn't finished

but there are no mistakes

There is only time

Yesterday gave me time

to give Peter a hug

Re: Making the Grade

I was commissioned to write a review, and by the Muse I still have a job to do. I have to take off all the Santa Claus and Rasta hats that have been keeping me warm this Christmas and put on the thinking cap of a critic, and ponder in all earnestness: does this book, do these poems, does this writer make the cut?

When I wanted to finally print and publish what at the time seemed almost a lifetime of poetry, my collection All Seasons, Poems '99-'19 (just a history lesson to bore you to ego-death for another Eternity: that's from 1999, when Clinton was still the president and his likely successor would be the inventor of the internet, dancer of the Al Gore Rhythm, and I had not even tried my first puff of the grass that was still illegal, not even decriminalized as it would be in Massachusetts around the time Obama was first elected, all the way until 2019, under the first term of a president whose supporters and detractors alike seemed far less worried about the way things were going than either of them do now, and I have learned through trial and error that the only drugs a poet needs are coffee in the morning, to add another epic to the Homeric canon before heading off to the dayjob, and beer at night when he gets home, to drown out the noise of the voices that only know how to speak in prose,) when I put together a PDF file to have printed at the bookstore I thought it was too long to fit the requirements so I had to cut a few out. One of those poems that ended up on the cutting-room floor was dedicated to my friend Jacob, who I haven't seen in a while, since drunken BBQs of the past summer while I was still mourning the death of Ozzy Osbourne. Even though it didn't "make the cut" for that printing, I like it better than some of the poems that did. We all cut people out of our life sometimes. And other times they ghost us, on the phone, on social media, whatever...I suppose it's probably just karmic retribution for never answering the phone when your Dad calls! But then who has 45 minutes to talk about something that could be said in less than ten words? I guess that's why I'll always prefer poetry to prose, whether it's the poetry of Moses and the Apostles; Rodgers & Hammerstein; Cole Porter, Chuck Berry and Mick Jagger; or Metallica and Christina Aguilera (the first album was her best, both the original release and the Spanish version;) William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud & Jack Kerouac. Nietzsche was always disappointed with himself for not writing in poetry. One of his books is called The Gay Science, which was the term the Provencal troubadours used for poetry back in the day. There's nothing wrong with being a scientist. Just make sure to be a gay scientist.

Anyway the pun seemed to be on the word cut for a moment and before we move on, it's important to consider the importance of words, the sound as well as the meaning. Mozzarella is also named after an Italian word that means cut, because of how the cheese is made. And mozzarella is how pizza is made. I'll take a slice! Of life, what more can be said: if you're here, you made the cut. Maybe we just needed a few extras for this particular scene, but nobody else showed up, and here you are, and guess what? We got catering...thank the Executive Producer for your daily bread.

Measure once

Cut twice

I have yet to write a poem about gramma

or my NaNa

but I will tell you about my Dog

my Mom told me I could name her

so I said, how about

"Cold water, hot water"

Like the faucets back in the day had the blue C

and the red H

"Or how about Goldwater?"

that was before I started reading history

or presidential politics & electoral BS

but we ended up shortening it to

Goldie.

RIP Goldie

I think I'm getting a call

on telephone #....?

God is Real.

He's really your Friend.

Friend & Follow He/She/They back

A good friend says Sorry

if I was wrong

& made You cry

He also tells the Truth

even to the Lord

when He gets out of line

But a good friend will marvel

when between those lines

that didn't rhyme @ the time

he descries delightful Stanzas

& gives Thanks & Praises

partners in rhyme

InI

P&G

The preceding has been a work of Poetry. Any characters, events or organizations, real or imaginary, mortal or/and Divine, should be taken w/ a grain of salt, a sense of humor,

kindness compassion & ❤️

Ah-so

Amen

Peace

See you next rhyme

Socrates did have one good line, though:

"The beginning of all philosophy

is a sense of wonder."

Free Verses: Poetry for the People

🖊 ✊️

Free Verses

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Tuesday, January 13, 2026

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