Featured Poet: Peter Kaczmarczyk
Good morning and welcome to another Feature Friday! Today is Peter Kaczmarczyk. Peter is an incredible poet, we met a short time ago at Poetry in the Park in Columbus and, much to my surprise, he already knew who I was and sought me out, a huge honor. He has two books out in the world, Distant Yet Always Heard and The Scars Across My Thigh, the second having just dropped November 21st. There will be links at the bottom on where to purchase both.
I am thrilled to say Peter is also one of the poets featured in October Stories and Rebirth. Today, I’ll be sharing with you a poem from October Stories, two pieces from Rebirth and a poem from each of his books. I highly encourage you to check out of more of his work, you won’t be disappointed.
I See Our Mothers
Today is the last day of the first days of my life
The wasted years too many to count
The aches and pains too numerous to ignore
The hours added up to days
The months so quickly to years
So much time filed with a false contentment
Illusory moments I thought I enjoyed
Dreams I convinced myself had come true
The moments of pleasure I believed were real
Never held my hand to dispel the fear
I worry my Best By date has passed me by
Though I want to think there is more to come
I see our mothers and I know what awaits
I’ve used up my quota of waste
But I never learned how to seize the day
I was best at counting the moments till the next commercial break
Now I will push beyond memories of lost days
The best words I have to say are yet to come
If you will please just hold my hand
As I learn from scratch how to do it all again
The Right Friend
So much time I spent
On the search for a lover
For physical touch and intimacy
Yet it’s you my friend
Who deserves the credit
For showing me who I once was
Who I could be again
We never touched
Never kissed
Never held hands
But you saved me just being there
The right friend
In the right place
At the right time
Shattered Souls
The road we walk is often not
one that we would choose,
but the one we have been put upon.
I’ve walked the path where the world pushes
those who shine too bright,
or emanate an unknowable darkness.
Our place for those whose aura brings pain to the eyes
of the cruel and dominant unseeing masses.
This path goes through neither shadow nor light,
it’s shrouded in a perpetual twilight
of muted thoughts and silenced dreams.
It’s travelled by those overwhelmed by arbitrary rules,
overcome by inconsolable loss.
For those who threw away love for lust and desire,
who accepted complacency calling it contentment
who let their anger at themselves
make them nothing more than vessels of resentment.
And most of all a place for all those
whose dreams simply drifted away.
I walked it long, feet bruised and torn from being dragged
across the ragged edges of the harden shards of broken hearts,
the scraps and pieces of shattered souls.
Sometimes I would see others on the same journey,
though their faces were nothing more than an indistinct blur,
even when they passed right by me, so close
all we had to do was reach out
and we could have touched each other.
But we did not, for we dare not
or knew not how.
This road was not designed to allow its travelers to meet,
closeness constrained to nothing more than a furtive wayward glance.
Eyes would be momentarily raised until the pain
dragged them back down again,
to the jumbled pavement beneath bloodied feat,
made of shattered souls and broken hearts.
After so long our eyes connected.
We just needed each other to realize
we were not bound to that road anymore
that we could free ourselves of the rules laid down by the unseeing.
Our stories were different, our trials our own
but together we pushed aside the structures that bound us to this place,
to see that together we could leave the path
Begin again and forge our own road.
We took the place society sent us to
where it taunted us for our differences
and we left behind the twilight existence.
One journey now complete, another just beginning.
One to be taken hand in hand,
by our two lost souls no longer shattered.
Sunday Vest
Deep in the closet
My grandfather’s box
His pocket watch
His Sunday vest
A journal stained
With dirt and blood
He prayed the guards
Would never find
Tales of the war
Mixed together
With words of love
He thought grandma
Would never get to read
I do not know
If she ever did
Costumes
Untouched is the closet where you used to lay
When there was nothing more to say
It holds your costumes
The blue pants suit that would lie for you
Telling the world “I’m okay today”
The ruffled red skirt for when you were ready
To make believe and go out and play
The dark flowing dress that swept everything away
I always thought it smelled just a little like decay
Bio
Peter Kaczmarczyk is a lifelong writer who only began to seriously pursue poetry in the last few years.
Raised in Massachusetts, Peter was willing to leave the comfort of Red Sox country when he learned there were Dunkin Donuts in Indiana.
His writing’s assisted by cats, who think they can do better than him by walking across the keyboard.
Peter has been published in several dozen journals and anthologies and has written 2 chapbooks.
He is also co-creator of the Captain Janeway statue in Bloomington, Indiana.
Thank you Peter, for being today’s Feature!
You can find Distant Yet Always Heard here https://a.co/d/8H2knML
You can find The Scars Across My Thigh here https://a.co/d/38F4Rrm
