Randall K. Rogers

Randall Rogers says: I am fifty-three, now from the town I went to high school in, that is Rapid City, South Dakota, where many Original Americans, mostly German and Scandinavians immigrant's descendants live.  I have spent the thirteen years from 2000 to 2013 in Cambodia and Thailand.  I just yesterday traded in my American made Stratocaster, the 60th anniversary issue, for an acoustic, mahogany bodied Taylor guitar.  It should be fun.  Last published in The Camel Saloon, and Dead Snakes, but I think some of my best stuff is in the Feb. 2010 archives of Ross the Russian sounding last name guy's Asphodel Madness, and in the archives and books of Scars.TV.  I was the editor of The Beatnik Cowboy from 2003 to 2008, it was an hard copy only publication that I put together from Pattaya, Thailand.  Usually little magazine editors like Joe Speer, David Pointer, Jonathan Penton, a rather famous old Beatnik gent-poet from San Francisco whose name escapes me now, and even Lyn Lifshin submitted to the Cowboy.  It was going well and I had the penultimate issue on my fine Dell newly bought computer when the Cambodian cops got me (I was charged with shooting at the too poor to purchase a uniform or gun cops, destruction of property, and ganja - my takedown was a wild two days or so) and the poor policemen stole my computer and much more like sheets, towels, and all the booze in the bar in the bar-hotel I was running.  Later I asked why they didn't steal the fine art I had up in the place, and the Cambodians replied "no need".  They even took my dapper, Cambodian tailor made clothes.  Must have had a "need" to style up.  I started writing at age five, and, believe it or not, I won a contest with my short story then and read my work over the radio.  Russel Struer of Camel Saloon brought me back into the US poetry fold in 2010 by publishing a lot of my stuff.  I was sort of making a small splash in Baltimore and England when I gave up writing and sending out from Cambodia due to lack of internet, computer, and crushing loss im my attempt at starting up and running a twelve room small property hotel and bar.  Old famous rockers, washed up, used to come ashore at our Native Khmer Hotel and the Jerry Garcia bar in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  And I did sort of well until I gave it up too as a professor of Sociology, working for among other academic joints the New School, the famous place in New York city, where I worked as an online or distance learning professor for eight years.  I am hoping to revive my poetry career.  I am so Teddy Roosevelt like dee-lighted you like and are going to publish my stuff!  Still a thrill for me!  Thank you exceedingly so very much!  Or, as they say in the eastern and Russian speaking part of Ukraine, where I taught Sociology for one year at Kharkiv National University, spaseeba bolshio or big thanks.

Is that fine enough for bio?

A Hairy Loss

I can't see for miles and miles,

anymore,

and I get freaked out

on details,

it is sort of like Kerouac said,

while trying to write "Memory Babe"

"The story is in the details,

and damn it I can't remember them."

And, commenting on Allen Ginsberg,

he declared Ginsberg was

little more than

"a hairy loss".

Oscar Wild

Geez, I started getting

right with me dying

alone and stinky 

unfound

in my early fifties.

And I watched older people

and saw how they reacted

when one of their group

died.

And I thought, wow, isn't

it great that studies have

shown when you're freaked

and freaking out you're

losing your mind, it is not a

prelude to actually,

spontaneously, losing

your mind.

On the contrary, one eases

into mindlessness, and no

no one became senile

ever panic attack freaked

out about their thoughtless

slide into the abyss.

Of Satan.

 

Mindful Numbness

Oh shit,

redirect,

stop the too much

detail-notice

minute differences

uber-real,

and nip in the

half sentence

the intrusive/automatic

thoughts or

internal dialogue,

that sooner

than later

usually

may spiral down

soar in mis-judgment

and bring you

to where all is nonsense

seems a pity

and you wonder

feeling this bad

every sleepless waking

hour of life and is

it worth it?  Appears, the

only way to stop

the most

horrible brain pain

is to act yourself

on yourself,

to ensure, Earthly

non existence.

Where all

the needless suffering

seems a colossal waste

and a pity

considering your

correct thought

non-rumination

very real philosophical and

problem solving

potential,

if you can ever get

over your present

condition.

Bet your bomb shelters

Marxist-Leninism

will rise again

in 2030 CE.