In December: Tom Piccirilli, Bram Stoker Award Winner

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To finish up 2014, a year that has seen the HWA Poetry Page shine a spotlight on Bram Stoker Award winning poets (as well as publishing the first HWA book of poetry), I’m honored to present an interview with poet Tom Piccirilli, who won the very first Bram Stoker Award for Poetry for A Student Of Hell in 2000.

His latest book of poetry, Forgiving Judas, is now available.

Forgiving Judas by Tom Piccirilli

HWA: Any chance you still have the first poem you ever wrote, or something equally early in your poetry career?

TP: No, I wouldn’t want to subject anyone to my first poems. Undoubtedly they’re about broken hearts and evil girls.

HWA: How does being a poet fit into the rest of your writing life; is poetry or prose your ‘first love’?

TP: I must admit that prose is my first love.

HWA: Who are your favorite poets?

TP: Favorite poets include: Baudelaire, Bukowski, Ginsberg, and poems include: Sylvia Plath’s Lady Lazrus and Christopher Bursk’s “Adjust, Adjust.”

Adjust, Adjust
By Christopher Bursk

I was born committing suicide,
holding my breath; they had to drag me kicking
out of this damp garage, this airtight inside,
the gases I struggled back to
until the doctors slapped me alive
and shouted: survive, survive.

After Hiroshima, turning four,
I battered my head at the master bedroom door;
every night I dreamt I was a child burning at that town dump
At the world’s edge, Japan;
and every night my father yelled: be brave,
behave, behave.

I ripped his set of Plato at eight,
the year my mother was put away at Boston State,
and war was fought in some darkness called Korea;
all winter, I played dead in the corner
while my teachers clapped:
adapt, adapt.

Grandmother took me in till I was ten;
with her best silver carving knife I locked her with me
in the den, all night, clinging to her bathrobe, demanding
to cut our wrists in a lover’s pact;
the only promise I could secure
was: endure, endure.

I threw tantrums in to eleven;
I couldn’t sleep; McCarthy lashed out at reds in the nightmares
where he held me witness; they nailed grandmother up for heaven,
that year; I pounded my fingers bloody on the pews
while the minister spit:
submit, submit.

I counted my bones, waiting to be dead;
at thirteen, an invalid in this nursing home, my bed,
between commercials, curse the first graders
whom they tried to storm,
shrieking: conform, conform.

At fifteen, in South Station where I ran away,
every week, I bedded down on papers inksmudged with the blood
of freedom fighters, left in heaps in Hungary to decay,
while old men rubbed against my thighs,
lulling me to them with the hum
of succumb, succumb.

I couldn’t. Even with sleeping pills,
razor blades, I couldn’t. While the U.S. played chicken
in the hills with atom bombs, I gave up my body like sixteen years
of hardened clay to be moulded slippery
under the touch of my girl’s hand and thigh
while she moaned all night: comply, comply.

Why couldn’t I? When the world lapsed wide
and elastic into too much, too bright space when Kennedy died
and the roads wore bald; and the yards stretched between houses,
and the towns gleamed like chrome, I drove into walls,
day after day while police barked:
obey, obey

Can’t you bleed? Coward, you can’t die
while wrists are cut, throats slit, those children, all suicides,
are gassed in Vietnam; at twenty-four can you only cry
while men shoot themselves to death
in the DMZ, and your analyst coughs; you must
adjust, adjust.

Source: Lowenfels, W (ed.), 1969, The Writing on the Wall: 108 American Poems of Protest, Doubleday, p. 65.

HWA: What is your favorite poem from Forgiving Judas?

TP: Favorite poems from Forgiving Judas include the title piece and “I have lived many lives.”

Forgiving Judas
By Tom Piccirilli

I am Lazarus sliding the stone aside,
groping in darkness, mute, choking on the black
Without even the squeaking of rats or bats
to guide me back to the world,
God’s light fails, God’s voice is an immutable breath,
I await the angry angel Azreal to commit me
to the pit, as I sit and patiently await for Lucifer to visit.
I have lost all dreams,
all fantasies, all memories
And given them to the dust,
except for when I write and come alive.
At thirteen I awoke in the morning angry and mean
And stayed that way for twenty years.
Would I have thought so much of suicide if I only knew how hard
I would one day fight for my life?
I remain stolid and solid only because I am stuffed
Full of regrets, fears, cancer, love, and sins.
If only my mother could forgive me for my aimless transgressions,
My ingratitude. My betrayals. My lack of a kind word. My inability
to speak my heart and thankfulness.
Outside the rock are sacrifices left behind. Oil and lamb and dried fruits
I eat in the moonlight. I wash with the oil and dream to burn
It’s the only yearning
The finality of my learning.
There is so much drama, theater, posturing, and screaming.
You all need to just calm the fuck down
Like all those nice cool, quiet people in the ground.

I have lived many lives
By Tom Piccirilli

And then the dreams come with tidal force
Where I awaken without knowing where I am,
Who I am,
Who my wife is, or remember how to breathe.
And I live somewhere else,
And my wife is someone else,
And I am someone else.
I sweat in fear, in acknowledgement of madness,
The taste of seaweed kisses in my mouth,
In the throes of darkness on my belly.
I have lived many lives at night.
The alternate dimensions of possibilities confront
Each other between midnight and dawn. Perhaps I’m
A boxer, or a chef, or a cop, or a billionaire philanthropist
With a carload of kids. We’re off to a picnic, a school play,
The choir, a soccer game, sometimes I’m dead, sometimes
I’m somebody named Ted, or Al, or Bill, or Fred. And when Fred
Goes to bed, he sometimes sees me, peering at him from inside
his head.

HWA: Finally, what’s next?

TP: Next is a novel called Blue Autumn.

For more on Tom Piccirilli:

Website: thecoldspot.blogspot.com
Twitter: twitter.com/TomPiccirilli

On an HWA Poetry Page related note, with the new Dark Poetry Scholarship now open for submissions [horror.org/dark-poetry-scholarship-rules] here are some tips for applying:

Tips for Poetry Scholarship Applicants

The following are suggestions you can use for your application presentation and expenses.

Go through the newsletter archives of the Dark Poet’s columns (BLOOD & SPADES) which addresses all forms of dark poetry, with examples from established dark poets such as Mike Arnzen, Bruce Boston, Ann Schwader, Wendy Rathbone, Jeannine Hall Gailey, James S. Dorr, Michael Collings, F.J. Bergmann, Elissa Malchon, and more. Pick several columns that speak to you and discuss how they have been useful or enlightening.

Poet’s Associations: SFPA (Science Fiction Poetry Association)—run by volunteers, is worth joining to get more information about writing genre poetry (sf/f/h) as well as reading some of the best contemporary poetry, dark or light. Provides members with quarterly issues (PDF or hard copy) with articles and lots of poetry: www.sfpoetry.com

Poets & Writers Magazine would be approvable.

Suzette Hayden Elgin’s Science Fiction Poetry Handbook—though the title doesn’t say so, it is for genre poets, sf/f/h—can be ordered from Amazon—and is also approvable.

Courses in writing poetry (may be part of a writing course) will be evaluated thusly:

• recognized genre authors or anthologies listed on the syllabus
• openness to genre poetry explicitly mentioned on the syllabus
• published genre author instructing the course
• course title in college catalog directly mentioning genre-related topics

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