Gary Beck, 4/10/2017

Current Occupation: I am currently a writer
Former Occupation: I was formerly a director/playwrite.
Contact Information: Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks and 3 more are accepted for publication. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions (Winter Goose Publishing), Fault Lines, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Resonance (Dreaming Big Publications). His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Call to Valor (Gnome on Pigs Productions), Acts of Defiance (Artema Press). Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing), Sudden Conflicts by Lillicat Publishers and State of Rage by Rainy Day Reads Publishing. His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.

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Policy Factions

The issues of our time
are seldom what they seem
as we sanction countries
for developing nuclear weapons,
yet sanctions never stop
development of nuclear weapons,
only hurt ordinary folk,
since the wealthy and powerful
remain comfortable, well-fed,
secure in their positions,
never deterred
by economic pressure
to change their ways,
an American fantasy
that the people will revolt,
replace their leadership
with democracy,
a political delusion
common in the U.S.A.,
where we want everyone to love us,
despite the mess we made
in Iraq, Afghanistan,
in ill chosen invasions
that changed nothing for the better
at a prodigious cost
in national treasure,
our young men and women
volunteers trusting their country
not to expend their lives
without good reason,
and we gave them wounds and death,
then withdrew our troops,
another failed venture
that weakened us at home, abroad,
while all the lands that hated us
gloated at our defeat,
calculating how to harm us
as we cowered at home

in a crippled economy
overseen by a selfish congress
enrapt with it's own agenda,
apparently unconcerned
that many Americans
may fall off a fiscal cliff,
the people's suffering preferred
to distressing their masters,
whose comforts come before
the needs of the nation..