“Homeless Canvases” © Charles J. March III

Emergency Alert

As America subsides
into increasing poverty,
incrementing apathy
for those who cannot profit
from an unfair system
favoring the rich
grown so powerful
they’re no longer concerned
with the well-being of the people
who still do the tasks
that keep society running.
There is a great danger
that unless we arrest
the slide to decline
clinical despair
will permeate the land,
accelerating dissolution.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. 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 and his published books include 21 poetry collections, 7 novels, 3 short story collections and 1 collection of essays. He lives in New York City.

Charles J. March III is an impoverished, neurodivergent Navy hospital corpsman veteran from Chicago, who is currently trying to live an eclectic life with an interesting array of recovering creatures in Orange County, CA. His avant-garde poetry and prose has appeared in Literary Orphans, Stinkwaves, Fleas on the Dog, Harbinger Asylum, et al., and is forthcoming from Angry Old Man and Free State Review.