Unleashing the Second Edition of The Fates of Stars

Today we kick off 2015 with a new edition of The Fates of Stars and Other Poems. This second edition is revised, expanded, and illustrated. It contains new poems and ink drawings and over 30 new pages. Now over 100 pages! You can get it now in paperback from Amazon, and we offer a Kindle version, too.

 

 
From the Introduction:

The first edition of The Fates of Stars and Other Poems, published in January 2014, enjoyed a number of favorable reviews and sold both in the US and around the world. It collected a cycle of poems from 2012 and 2013 which grew out of sessions with a writers’ workshop. But in 2014, I completed a set of poems which continued the themes of that body of work. This second edition includes them.

While expanding the collection, it occurred to me that I created several poems in a process that may interest readers: redaction. So, some of the poems now sit side-by-side with images of their original redacted versions. These are pages of printed text blacked out with marker so new combinations of words or themes present themselves.

This second edition also includes many ink drawings added as visual complements to the poems. As a lifelong fan of comic books, I like to see words and pictures together. Maybe you do, too.

Finally, in terms of expanding this second edition, I made the pages and the font size larger. While quite successful in its Kindle format, the printed text of the first edition seemed a little too small. Designing the first edition opened the door to some professional work helping other authors in 2014. Those experiences gave me an improved sense of designing a book for print and encouraged me to give The Fates of Stars a tune up.

Sailing

Sailing

All our friends are ships at sea
Sailing straight into the storm
They will weather the storm
Becoming stronger for it
Or maybe they will not
We can’t do anything about that
So make me this one promise
Love me here, love me now
For we have nowhere else

When you set sail tomorrow, take this diary
Write me every day you’re gone
Tell me everything you see, touch, and hear
The sharp scent of saltwater
The impermanent paths gulls trace through haze then disappear
Your boot heels hammering the deck
When you stride fearlessly from port to starboard
Scanning the horizon with eyes as keen as raptors’

Keep this diary somewhere safe, under lock and key
Its fragile parchment sealed from water, air, and time
So that if we never meet again
I might hold the hope of rediscovering you in its pages
Long after the storms have exhausted their anger
The rains have satiated their thirst
And the sea has settled flat and calm like steel
Sheathed in its scabbard and laid to rest

This poem is part of the collection The Fates of Stars and Other Poems, now available as an illustrated paperback and a Kindle edition.

Puppet

Puppet

You could make me, you know
I would have everything but a soul
Just the one already in you
But never my own
Not one that animates itself
To look back into your eyes

That’s alright
I’ll see you when you sleep
And sometimes here
In some small way
We will always have our dance
This implacable music
Until they shut it off

This poem is part of the collection The Fates of Stars and Other Poems, now available as an illustrated paperback and a Kindle edition.

Copper

Copper

Your green eyes
Burned with a fearless flame
Barium torches sparking, shimmering
Copper colliding with the sun

Strands of red hair fell across your face
A strontium shadow obscuring your reflection
Then tossed aside
You knew how this world was made

Let me bathe in your blazing beauty one more time
Before this brief night is torn asunder
Let the secret songbird in your hands take flight
To carve intangible melodies across the sky

Then come to rest, to nest, in our hidden temple
Our inaccessible and sheltered purity
Where silence drowns out noise
You taught me how this world was made

This poem is part of the collection The Fates of Stars and Other Poems, now available as an illustrated paperback and a Kindle edition.

Impression

Impression

Others came before you
Some with leaden feet
Stamping pathways in the dirt
Others with a touch so light
Scratching patterns with a fingernail in the frost
They melted in the afternoon sun

Now here is the print of your palm
Here is the pattern of your iris
Take this linen for your clothes
And then your glowing skin
Wearing an image of two hearts pressed together
A Mesozoic leaf outlined in stone
A jaguar

This poem is part of the collection The Fates of Stars and Other Poems, now available as an illustrated paperback and a Kindle edition.

Roses

Roses

She requested a single promise
One unbreakable bond
And then we left roses

What makes you feel safe and secure?
Is it worth what makes you feel free?
What if you could have them both?

We left behind a wasteland of supermodels staring at the grass
Empty toys, waiting to be filled with limitless desire and
Synthetic passions

I miss the way she touched me
With fingertips or fantasy it made no difference
A word, the way she said my name, she knew me

This poem is part of the collection The Fates of Stars and Other Poems, now available as an illustrated paperback and a Kindle edition.

Seed

Seed

Disfigured dreams grow in anger’s garden
Twisted loves with faces bruised
Fertilized with cyanide, shriveled

Starved of love and sound
Starved of touch for the trespass of living
Crushed for a moment’s amusement

Everything we ever hated
Wanted to abandon or destroy
You unfortunate seeds

Your cause already lost
Your doom already sealed
You have but one future

Pain
and then
nothing

This poem is part of the collection The Fates of Stars and Other Poems, now available as an illustrated paperback and a Kindle edition.