Download PDF Here 13th Anniversary
Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Four December 2022.
Grace and Beauty, poems by Scott Thomas Outlar.
Grace and Beauty
Your adventurous spirit
is a poem in motion
like a pelican dancing
with its shadow on the waves
before skipping atop the water
proving the truth that Jesus
wasn’t the only
force of nature
to play around
with miracles and magic.
Centered, calm, and balanced
in the groundless experience
of “just being”
your oceanic presence
radiates outward
with peace of mind,
strength of body,
and kindness of heart.
Each ripple returning
from shoreline to source
is imbued with the essence
of goodwill you share
and spread across the earth.
In It, of It, and Can’t Skip Around It
A friendly butterfly
fluttered by
in the summer breeze,
landed on a leaf
beside me on the path,
and proceeded
to slowly spread wide each wing
like a peacock strutting during a private show
to reveal its black and sharp blue beauty.
I did what any reasonable man
wandering through the woods would:
stood and stared in awe
before whispering a prayer of appreciation
for the magical nature of this blessed existence.
Later on, some beast of the bank
stuck a finger in my eye
while sucking several notes
straight from my soul.
It all balances out in this world.
A pound of flesh for the frenzied feast
and a wink to the stars come the save.
Dozen Bottle Black Light Special
Masochistic rites of passage
like an inverted Saturn’s return
that flips you back
to ancient pages of the script
for one final taste of sorrow
before ascension
Take it on the chinny-chin-chin
where a goat beard grows
to cushion the blow
or snort pixie dust
to gain heights of heaven
until Alice can fetch the antidote
offering survival
Let’s dial down to the granular tones
and teach our tinnitus ears
that even old buzzes can learn new tricks
when data flows in waves
from the depths of a pulsing tube
the pressure point
is sure to shatter static’s senses
But what remains of the shards and specks
with memories etched upon their tiny fabric?
It’s all a reflex of muscles
twitching in the neurons
of two split hemispheres
that eventually reach
a state of exhaustion
and decide to form a third
that births true oneness
© Scott Thomas Outlar
Scott Thomas Outlar lives and writes in the suburbs outside of Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He is the author of seven books, and his work has been nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. More than 2,300 of his poems, essays, and short stories have been published in 400 different literary venues. Outlar guest-edited the Hope Anthology of Poetry from CultureCult Press as well as the 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 Western Voices editions of Setu Mag. He has been a weekly contributor at Dissident Voice for the past eight years. Selections of his poetry have been translated into Afrikaans, Albanian, Azerbaijani, Bengali, Cherokee, Dutch, French, Hindi, Italian, Kurdish, Malayalam, Persian, Serbian, and Spanish. More about Outlar’s work can be found at https://17numa.com/