Outlaw Poets is an inclusive electronic publication produced by Studio Appalachia and features poetry and art by the Outlaw Poets Group. Contact studioappal@gmail.com for more information.
Thursday, May 26, 2022
MY LIFE
Prove Me Right
THE GREATEST MAN IN THE WORLD
"Boondocks Land"
Missing
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING A POET
Poems of the Road
Sunday Drive
It was a Sunday drive
but I wasn’t driving like
a Sunday driver on backroads
going to a main highway going
to the city going to a street
going to a house thinking about
the past and future trying to sidestep
the present knowing how everything
goes through the moment
how every end has a beginning
and every beginning holds an end.
Well-known Roads
I don’t know if I can drive well-known roads
anymore the way memories pile up mile
after mile adding weight making me want
to suddenly brake forgetting there’s ice
on the road not being able to stop anything.
There are only so many roads and the new
ones become like the old – memories transfer
from one backroad, from one highway
to another so I can't tell when I’ll get there
and when I get there if I can say, “I’m here.”
Ascertain
I am trying to ascertain why some things
remembered and some things yet
to be remembered make me cry.
What strikes my heart,
what strikes my eyes,
and why I cannot strike
a refusal to cry.
-Byron Hoot
hootism: we should not be surprised by acts of gun violence when so many TV shows, movies, video games, music depict a gun in someone's hand as a solution to a problem.
hootnhowlpoetry.com is open for business.
Friday, May 13, 2022
Satisfied
I crested the curved hill,
watched three crows fly away
from a chipmunk on the road.
Apologized.
At a glance in my mirror
saw their return.
Creation
The red-tailed hawk
erupted from the red-
leafed hillside something
in its talons
thought,
“This is how we were made –
a fury of earth
full of desire clutching
what cannot be let go.”
-Byron Hoot
Lauds
It is Sunday and I feel the futility of prayer in the air and the urge to pray as if each holds a danger. I think of the infant Hercules st...
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Help me, Lord… As they deplete me of my grace… Help me, Lord… As they inflict scars upon my face… Help me, Lord… As they strip away my natur...
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They know I hide my howls in cheeky places Always have and no valid argument has dared me successfully to stop The playing field caters with...
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The tongue can cause life of death It can give you another breath It's a powerful tool But yet it can make you a fool The tongue can say...