In the third, final section of this book appear the lines “one lone firefly flickers on,/ a luminescent messenger/ of hobo lullabies.” If that messenger were human, in a long coat scuttle across an avenue, the message, on a piece of paper in one pocket might be one word: resilience.
These poems invite reads to revel in the pleasure of reading, and also to remember, and to be, and in being “in the moment,” to hope for moments to come. Tohm Bakelas speaks of himself, for himself and his readers, for all of us, for humanity, in poems that are as public as they are private.
A reader reads a poem and thinks: that’s memorable, or that’s neat, I want to do it too. Bakelas’ poems have that effect. A reader would be hard-pressed to tell how much time and effort went into the writing of any one poem, because they are all well written and suggest resilience. One concludes with a chant-like “stay within the light,” and another, “pushing forward against it all.”
It, not only the changing present but also the unchangeable past, several times manifests itself in graveyards. Headstones are things of substance, parts of the whole where mortals remember the past and breathe the air of a sunny day or a dark night. The poet remembers dead parents, relatives, friends, acquaintances, a dead marriage, as he drives down a street, moving forward. In “bruised tongues,” nothing goes with everything. Elsewhere, forgetting goes with remembering. “Memories fade like book pages.” And in “exiting the sun” “memories remain in place.”
The less fortunate, afflicted with Alzheimer’s, struggle to remember, or can’t remember.
Bakelas, a social worker in a psychiatric hospital, knows firsthand the less fortunate, as well as the fortunate. His poems strongly suggest the good luck of being alive. To change the cat litter, to play hide n’ seek with his children, to sip from a bottle slid in front of him by a bartender’s hand, to hold his lover’s face, to look in her eyes and be held in her arms are things he celebrates. Even a hangover, and eating microwaved waffles over a sink, and seeing deer on a lawn at 2 AM, are described in ways that reveal the extraordinary of nights and days.
And of days to come? The future is an extension of the present until what was, what is, and what will be cease to be. Where would we be without hope? A person hopes it rains tomorrow, or that it doesn’t rain. The poems suggest hope and future are synonyms. In the middle of “i hope it doesn’t rain,” that person says “but any day/ spent together/ side by side/ softens the sun/ and slows down time,” in “2/27/21” talks of “lives moving forward,” and in “dinner visitation” “…with clenched teeth i start/ the car, fully aware of/ what lies ahead.”
Suicide is a recurrent word. What to say about that? This poet uses strong language. He doesn’t mince words. The person in the poems, if you ask, How are you? and he’s having a shitty day, he’s going to tell you. Also, he’s going to tell you again and again, what it means to be human, what it means to be alive, what it means to get kicked in the teeth by life, and come back. He’s going up tell you in eloquent lines, in memorable poems. “there is a certain sadness in a fallen button/ resting upon the fifth step in a psychiatric/ hospital stairwell.” Get this book, read this book, you’ll be glad you did.
One of its best poems, and there are many best poems, is “life reflex.” This is an amazing poem. In the cannon of contemporary poetry, it doesn’t get any better than this.
life reflex down at shoprite, where the poor whites make the poor blacks and the poor Hispanics look like kings, they drink their coors light tallboys and smoke their cigarettes while sitting on benches covered in advertisements and sparrow shit i pass by and am asked for loose change, but it’s the same excuse every time, “i paid with a card,” and my only offering is used air and as i load up my car with one week’s worth of groceries and look toward the setting sun, they continue to drink their shitty beer and spit onto the curb while thinking about simpler times and when they are told to leave, some will go to the hospital to sober up, some will go to their boarding homes, some will go to the church soup kitchen, some will go into the woods behind the store, but they will all eventually leave and soon i’ll be home, drinking my shitty beer, thinking about cape cod or shoebill storks or san francisco or suicide or bar harbor or masturbation or bank accounts or my girlfriend’s smile or nothing at all.
The word that reaches out and grabs this reader by the throat is: smile.
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Publisher: Zeitgeist Press
Page count: 138
Price: $13
Ordering info: https://www.zeitgeist-press.com/index.php/product/cleaning-the-gutters-of-hell/
Chewers 
A well-written review.
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