Smoke & Thunder
Collected Poems
by
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No Rain Sunday
There is no rain this Sunday morning,
but like Carver I would live my life
over again and make the same unforgivable mistakes,
given even less than half a chance.
I feel somewhat lost this morning, as thought my
destiny may have been missed in some sleepy church house
my mind would never think of entering,
and my soul would never dream need of.
The only song in my heart is the low moaning wail of discontent,
that ragged little interior jingle that sings of desolation
and a place passed by that I failed to discover,
missed whizzing past in my rearview mirror.
No campfires of hope burning on the closed range of this heart,
only an ocean of saw grass blowing in a wind whose direction
I can't plot across landscape I can't define in a world
too mad for my solitary eyes to record.
I have no vision this Sunday in rain-free America,
only the dull ache of things done too soon,
a song near coda before the last true note flies
from the bell of a horn of less than plenty,
the dark hole of forever rising like sudden fearsome anger.
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About the Book
If you're a fan of "moon, spoon, June" poetry, Smoke & Thunder is not for you. There are no sweet rhymes to be found inside these pages, no saccharine poetics spouted strictly for the sake of linguistic beauty. The free verse here, however lyrical at times, rides the hard edge of the road, having issued from the brain of a man who has pushed himself to dangerous extremes more times than he cares to recall, but always survived for the recounting, torn and tattered though he may have been. Many of the poems here are brutal and unrelenting, rife with tragedy and anger, but always honest to a fault. And yet the true heart of the poet shows through, as in the memorial poem for his father and poems about his grandparents.
Whether over coffee in a restaurant with his peers, or passing a bottle of wine around a burn barrel at a junkyard, this poet's home is the world. The more than one hundred poems in Smoke & Thunder, most of which were written during the past two decades, represent a small part of a lifetime’s work for a man past 60.
About the Author
Jim Chandler is a former journalist who lives in his native Tennessee and works in freelance writing, editing, publishing and web development. His poems, short stories and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers during the past 35 years, from small press and college literary journals to major mainstream publications. He is the author of several chapbooks and his poetry appeared in the highly acclaimed The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, a 685-page anthology published by Thunder’s Mouth Press in October 1999.
Chandler founded Thunder Sandwich magazine in the eighties and currently operates an on-line version of that ‘zine, which has included the work of writers and artists ranging from established figures in mainstream art and literature to idols of the post-beat and underground scenes.
He is currently working on a novel slated for publication in 2003.