The April Featured Poet is

Sam Talley

Please feel free to email Sam at: samtalley@rocketmail.com

I AM NORMAL

Laurel has a tempting smile
It's full of razor blades
If you get to close to her
She'll cut you full of pain
I asked her if she'd share a kiss
So she pressed her lips against my wrist
Loss of blood
And dizziness
Collapsing into the
Floor

VARLETS OF AN ART MUSEUM

Look at these photographs around you and me
They are the portraits of my enemies
All so numb
And none quite right
Like the men who sweep these floors at night

Dancers in black and white poses
Are placed in tasteless frames
Those starry eyed employees
Just longing for some fame
Are drawing out the images that shouldn't ever be
Set upon the display wall for all the world to see

Hung from velvet ropes
Pulling out their stems
Naked mannequins inside the glass
Like varlets of an art museum

Hung from velvet ropes
Pulling out their stems
Naked girls inside the glass
Like varlets of an art museum

I am forever in debt to this priceless advice!

Stare at the images that surround you and me
The pictures were drawn, but never seen
Actions can speak louder than words
And are molded into clay shapes and broken folds

Thespians encrypted into their perfect script
Upon those words lie tears and rips
Like men who flee from sinking ships
They cannot swim for long

Hung from velvet ropes
Pulling out their stems
Naked mannequins inside the glass
Like varlets of an art museum

Hung from velvet ropes
Pulling out their stems
Naked girls inside the glass
Like varlets of an art museum

I am forever in debt to this priceless advice!

But tonight, if only for a moment
I will trace my reflection in the bathroom mirror
Through all her shouts and screams
I cannot hear her
Outside the door, people line up for a tour
I'll put on my uniform to sweep up the floor

Advice is useless.

TORI'S TUMMY

The contrast of her scars and skin
Against the sheets of this anxious bed
Could make eyes roll back in empty heads
Press nails into my back again
Her locks of hair gripped in my hands.

Tennessee poet Sam Talley is a man possessed; just take a look at his life. Although only 18 years old, he's had quite the large amount of experiences to his name, including homelessness, obscurity, heartbreak, hate letters, love letters, and just about everything else in between.

"My mother and I moved to Tennessee when I was around 15, and it being a new town and new school and all, I developed a good bit of loneliness, and I guess that's where it all started." he says. Inspired by the likes of Poe, H.P Lovecraft, Steven King and his feelings of alienation, Sam sat out on a journey to bring his imagination to life and find his place in the world, crafting thousands of poems and short stories under his desk at school or on the bus ride home.

Writing was truly his way of staying alive. He says "There was never a goal or finish line that I had in mind when I first started writing. It was really just my way of letting the world know that I was here."

Sam's talent went unnoticed for years until a zealous English teacher noticed his writing on a school project and encouraged him to pursue it. "Mrs. Cox was really the first person who made me feel like I could do something with my writing, that I was special and needed my voice to be heard. She changed my perspective and really my entire life." The rest, as they say, is history.

With his intense mix of emotion and truthfulness, and a wide array of subjective matter, including suicide, unrequited love, beautiful women, lucid dreaming, and incompleteness, Sam's poems are quickly becoming reader favorites. Currently, he is working on his first book of poetry and hopes it will be out by next year.