“THE GREATS” by PJ Laska
The Great Tower
The Great Wall
The Great Power
Conquering All
The Great Look
The Great Weave
The Great Assets
Of Make-Believe
The Great Story
The Great Tweet
The Great Businessman
With Chicken Feet
The Great Buildup
The Great Spin
The Not-so-great offspring
And next of kin.
The Great Deals
The Great Trades
The Many Promises
The Great Charades
The Great Betrayal
The Great Scam
The Great Lies
Ad Nauseam
Change the World
With the stroke of a pen
Make the Great
Even Greater Again
The Great Floods
The Great Fires
The Great Wisdom
Of Science Deniers
The Great Legends
Of Famed Lands
With Great Pyramids
Tilting in the Sands.
PJ Laska was born into a coal mining family in the Marion County WV town of Farmington. After high school, he was able to spend two years in Japan as a guest of the U.S. military, where he studied Zen and developed a lifelong interest in Eastern philosophy and literature. After completing Ph.D. in philosophy, he taught at universities in the U.S. and Canada, and at Antioch’s Appalachian Center in Beckley, where he was part of the Soupbean Poets collective. Recent publications with Igneus Press are “Seasons in the Ravine” (2017) and “The Sleep of Reason” (ed.) (2019).
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Jay Brackenrich
The few the words, the greater the ideas.