Collateral - Paperback

by Gary Lemons (Author)

The poems in Collateral aren't blind to the sometimes subtle sometimes graphic suffering that happens as we move from first breath through illness--deprivation-- isolation. It's hard to imagine this when there are sufficient resources to experience love and happiness and good health but deep in our bodies I believe that witnessing suffering is the beginning of empathy. Then what-do we put up lives as collateral--risk everything to be of service--think of Doctors Without Borders--or turn our backs and walk away--or--as most of us do--build our house somewhere between action and indifference.

These poems are vessels with my life inside them. The revolutionary and the sleepwalker-the witness and the victim--merged. If I'm lucky perhaps readers will find themselves in these poems as well.