Open your sketchbook and draw life. Not charcoal, but color. Let bright stand for tomorrow. The past is dark. You can get detailed if you have the skill. Trees, rocks, …

Click on the link below to hear John Mann interviewed on WIUM,-FM: http://www.tristatesradio.com/post/award-winning-poet-changed-course-after-911-attacks

Poetry Reading at Western Illinois University Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 7:00 p.m. Sherman Hall Auditorium John Mann will read from his new book, Able, Baker, Charlie Book Signing and Reception …

Entry requirements are stiff. Body irrelevant. Names, who can say. A big thing is, can you count. Do you understand decay. Can you throw a skull on a potter’s wheel. …

In class today he learns the Garden of Eden. He eats trees, feels Eve run her hand over his chest. She is supple and disappears like rain. Serpents are god …

Water conservation can be a way of life, he learns. Ski across the flow of the high desert on a pair of burning feet. Let the sage be your guide, …

Ying/Yang magnets on the fridge. Press them together to neutralize the field. Soccer uniforms can be unisex. Everything becomes a dayglo poster. Swirling clothes loose in the arms. Boy/girl names. …

Someone put a meter on his life and it ate all his coins. He was sure to get a ticket. Several start-ups had failed. Some guy was eating poems on …

They rode his head all night, the wild horses of hate and desire. Now comes the scythe-man aiming for his middle. Run run run screams the poetry of hunger. Oh …