What To Say To Death by Ron Androla – GOSS 183/CASA MENENDEZ – ISBN 978-1440414916
Ron Androla is a poet’s poet. Not the Laureate style poet, but the street poet kind. Road rash, septic back up, alleyway drunk, syringe littered, street light out reality. Poetry is a life force for him. His main addiction. Through his life he has quit cigarettes and liquor, but never poetry. As poetic friend Gabriela Stroschen once said, Ron “Lives the poem.” And there is nothing of his life excluded. One could write a biography on Androla from his poems alone, no interview needed. Prolific & diverse, his poetry plays with language like a druggie would with chemicals.. There’s always another new way to get a fix.. And for Androla, that’s laying his lines out for us to snort up. So, snort away. There are 95 pages w/white lines awaiting.
In his mojo bag of verse, Androla explains that “Language distinguishes/Concentration via movements” and that’s what it is. His poems move across the page. They bump & grind, they slither & quake, they ooze and recede. They are.
Poetic Friendship
To assert a proposition
Other than I am a metaphor
5 scrambled eggs in a blue bowl
A spiral galaxy of milk in the center
Doesn’t cut cake to piece exactly now
Now & the morning light of nicotine
Now & the flowers of bourbon in pores of skin
Now & creating smoke horse-head nebula
Now & regrets & their results whispers crack
Me, a fawn before the butcher
Me, with fingernails of granite & no teeth
The zombies have vanished
Wrens, weak with meek seed, sob on metal
Fence tops
Everyone I know wants to smile
Poems that deal with the death of his father, his own medical woes, his wife, cigarettes & booze, dentures, “6 vikes & grape jelly toast,” a dog & cats, rain & snow, eyes, chocolate pop tarts, “dingfuckingbats,” New York City, truck drivers, “Folger’s black silk coffee/Is delicious with the aftertaste//Of Hawaiian beans”, and friends of the verse.
Androla is one of the most under-appreciated masters of our generation. But then, as in his own words;
We are
Holiest
Unread
Feel free to worship at your earliest convenience.
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