Crumbled Receipts and Pizza Boxes: Poems by Sean Berk

By Sean Berk

Crumbled Receipts and Pizza Boxes challenges the conventions of traditional poetry. With a fresh new style, these poems speak directly from the past- from a kitchen table in the midst of a divorce, from a fraternity basement during a drunken college stupor, from the underside of a dimly lit basketball rim long past midnight. Composed over five challenging years of life, Crumbled Receipts and Pizza Boxes establishes Sean Berk as a passionate voice of modern poetry. Berk speaks his mind and heart sincerely, randomly, and intelligently in this tantalizing collection meant for all individuals with a soul.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 29, 2002
• ISBN: 9781469115726

Sean Berk

Sean Berk is a poet that brings intensity back to the written word. He reflects on many facets of American life through angry but hopeful eyes. Hailing from Philadelphia, Berk combines the brashness of urban life with his vibrant style to create poems that are alive and determined to tell the truth. He revisits different areas of his life to tell his poetic story. Berk is a basketball junkie, a high school English teacher, and a fresh new voice in the Philadelphia Poetry Scene. Crumbled Receipts and Pizza Boxes is his first major publication.

Book preview

Copyright © 2002 by Sean Berk.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission

in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover art and all photos by Sean Berk.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

CONTENTS

crayons

clouds stay up

curb at 2 am

the main course

on flowers and such

settling

summer 97-me and my boys

began at the end

tiger skin

an idea

542-LHWT

via satellite

EYE

girl behind the counter

wait for people

her story

clarity (to my father years later)

weaknight

reasons why I don’t buy jewelry

no tip

generalizations

before i fell asleep

you vs. me or me vs. me (im not sure)

kerouac, stipe, moving on

on looking up

at sea

moving day

there is (

don’t

shitty ass poetry

small child

boy who cried

until

believe

the greatest poet

welshy on the railing

happy

pitiful goodbye poem

cig, butt, smoke

frat boy

evolution

hands

honestly

morning mirror

thoughts before sex

made love despite

writing for a purpose

tired eyes

child molesters without cancer

love

chuckle

i knew you before tomorrow

cherry water ice

buck 25

dream after fight

after

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to the memory of all those that have left us before their time, all victims of violence, and all those with evil diseases.

crayons

these little fingers

fingers create with yellow, green, red

not so much yellow cause yellow’s hard

to read and orange soft against white

construction paper and black so definitive

these fingers-they tell stories of times

of homes and memories they live

-similar at times but never identical

cause mothers and fathers and families vary

just as the lives that color them

different as the mother and father stories

that gave birth and conceived and grew to

be together and apart and

I dream about the fingers that

will grow from the reproduction

set forth by my loins and hers

and I’m sorry if I rush such thoughts

at an early point in time but I

can vividly recall these fingers

wrapped around red, green,

invisible yellow wax,

creating and recreating the paradises

I knew at age six

at rec centers

in classrooms

on kitchen tables

in my heart

in this vast land we live

where children dream so similarly

but grow to live and draw

in so many different colors.

Image294.EPS

clouds stay up

Clouds stay up

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