Dancing At the Peachtree Manor

By William Fuller

These poems were written over a period of several years. They cover a range of topics from memories of segregation in Alabama, to high school loves, to the discovery of an exotic, albeit unsavory, world from Malaysia to the Philippines. Back in the U.S., the elation and heartbreak of love led to philosophical skepticism which he expressed in brutal sarcasm. Both the light and darkness of life can be found here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Apr 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483408781

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A Faith of Fiction

At eighteen I chafed

at the trivial and ordinary,

the daily blocks to some afflatus

just beyond the reifying

of heroic craft and skill.

Taking stock now at forty

I find the beast still lying

across the same small leap

of thought, only more dangerous

for the patient length of his crouch.

Having imagined a world beyond

the ordinary, some greatness

or grace to transcend suburban life,

wife, children, dog, station wagon,

the bludgeon of domesticity,

I find the malice of the iron fact,

reality like a clenched fist, wears

out all suspension of disbelief,

forcing the denouement of the ordinary,

the inevitable climateric anti-climax.

A Long Dying

The diamondback’s strike

is a flash of beauty

out of dead leaves.

A quick fire in the side

and night slides quietly

behind the eyes.

Other poisons work

more slowly in the blood.

Your memory, like

a slow acting poison,

stirs fever and chills

but does not quite kill.

Words and places

pop into the mind

without warning, looping

heavy coils around the

heart, squeezing and

killing by slow degrees.

About That Jar in Tennessee

Waving words like a wand

an illusionist of great skill

cast a spell over men and women.

A preacher wearing a black hat,

Shuffling greasy cards and reading

bible verses to save the multitude

of sinners, the man in black

stipulated a jar in Tennessee.

A jar of moon shine it was, of

such import its devotees raised

their voices hymning praise

to such totem of God’s bounty.

Speaking in tongues, annointing

sinners, the preacher empties the jar.

Will the Cherokee then