John Casey • Novelist and Poet Exploring The Human Condition
Poetry By John Casey
John Casey's RAW THOUGHTS: A Mindful Fusion of Poetic and Photographic Art was nominated for the National Book Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. The sequel, MERIDIAN: A Raw Thoughts Book was released by PHiR Publishing in 2021. His latest poetry title, Things of Little Consequence, is a philosophical exploration of sentiment, musings, and circumstance that poetically suggests the human condition is less complex than it is complicated—that life is not as enigmatic or indecipherable as we often prefer to believe.
John's Casey's poetry has been published in numerous literary journals and magazines.
** Nominated for the PUSHCART PRIZE
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FOREWORD to THINGS OF LITTLE CONSEQUENCE
I was told it may only have worth
when it is written in a very circumlocutory manner.
Or enveloped in obscurity.
Or laced with impossibly complex analogies,
and with words that don’t belong
together together.
Singularly weird and nearly incomprehensible
are what appear to make it most valuable,
to them.
Better to describe love as
“adventitious candy corn”
than ethereal sunshine.
Better to say someone in despair is
“an obfuscated polecat”
than a wintered soul.
Obfuscated polecat—
now that baby right there
might just win you some kinda golden trophy…
I was told, in fact, it is best not to attempt to philosophize
about love or loss, about challenge or struggle.
As if the elements of existence are beyond grasp for most.
…Unless, of course, you are prepared to twist them
in such alluringly demiurgic fashion
that there is barely a spider-silk thread of a connection left
between your conclusion
&
the original thought.
However,
they are not necessarily looking for
what I am looking for.
Many develop an aversion to the beauty of plain logic,
lost in a zealous quest for overly esoteric truisms
and seemingly sophisticated philosophies.
It somehow becomes easier to adhere
to the mystical, to the cryptic and the Kafkaesque
when confronted with a thousand disparate pieces of life
because we sense it would be impossible to comprehend
the grand sum of it all or how those pieces even interconnect.
Consequently, we cannot understand the individual parts.
The truth is, we can.
Life is much simpler than most believe.
Things are not so confusing as they seem.
Love Song
From there on to eternity,
rare palette of notes in my mind.
A herald of love’s prophecy
that’s there to hear, yet hard to find
Sustained by a refrain so strong,
the melody, too real to fade.
A whispered, emotional song,
every hour and day, always played
A distant place not long ago,
born of love, a symphony there.
Yearning for a sweet crescendo,
in time, I pray, somehow, somewhere
Love Song by John Casey, a poem (and composition) from his book Raw Thoughts, music by Susan Bell