I am an award winning artist exhibiting in Chicago and Philadelphia and my writing has that immediate and visual aspect. My novel “Desert Flower” was called “ … innovative and original …” by Large Print Review and “…so skillfully devious it could have been written by Heinrich von Kleist two centuries ago in Germany.” by Kirkus Discoveries. My short story “Holy Night” received the Critic’s Choice Award in the Eric Hoffer Award competition and was published in Best New Writing 2007. My poems have been published in reviews such as Mobius, Willow Review, Waterways and Edge, and "(A Brilliant) Record," and my recent collection “The Time Hotel” was described by another Kirkus review as “… a deeply thought-provoking …compelling reading experience.” I paint and write expressions of humanity with the hope that I capture its dreams in the midst of adversity.
Sincerely,
Rex Sexton
MIDNIGHT RUN
I pocket the fives, ones,
put the tens and twenties
in the duty booty.
Too good to leave behind,
I take my beer with me and
drink it in the alley.
Dissolving night over urban
blight, dawn pointing at the
“on the run” like a gun.
All over the Dead Zone the
junkies are searching the
catacombs for that breakfast
of champions hidden in the
labyrinths.
Being, being, nothingness,
I close my eyes and down
my beer, feel the darkness
of the universe and all its
shadows disappear.
NEVER-NEVER LAND
The room is like a coffin,
sleep a death-dream of
childhood delirium,
sweating, tossing, running,
hiding …
“Come in from the night.”
A voice says from behind a
door the kid has never seen before.
The night. The night.
Outside the sounds of the
dead zone abound: sirens,
gunshots, screams of terror.
“Come in from the night.”
The voice says.
Never never is the
ghetto’s answer.
THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES
Work comes harder while the pay gets
smaller and the hours longer.
If there’s one thing I learned by growing
older it’s my life went nowhere and it’s
getting shorter.
I lay down my shovel and pick up my
lunch pail. I search the towers, spires,
domes, silos, the docks, walks, doorways,
windows, every nook and cranny of the
industrial buildings, looking for suits,
white shirts, hardhats with clipboards,
snitches, rat-outs, lifers and squealers.
They are out there, everywhere.
I unscrew my ice cold thermos top, look
around again and take a pop. Cheers.
AMERICAN PIE
Better to blackout than be;
better the bottom of the bottle
than reality – dead end days,
sleepless nights. Why paint,
why write: about the old
lady in the alley asleep in a
doorway, the raggedy kids
playing in the gutter, their
families living in squalor,
the derelicts, lunatics, pimps,
pushers, muggers, killers,
the lost vet begging for cigarettes?
Scenes too real to find a refuge
in bookstores or museums,
amidst the soup cans and
American flags, and the golden
words penned for the aesthetic
ruminations of future generations.
Rex Sexton
