Cleaning the Gutters of Hell

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital, a publisher, a Dad, a lover, a drinker, a sharp-eyed observer of the world, and he writes about all of it. That is to say, Tohm is a poet—a writer who strips it of hubris and noise. He’s published two dozen chapbooks of his own work and his Between Shadows Press has done hundreds of chapbooks for writers all around the world. He has turned himself into a one-man literary revolution. He says that poetry should be accessible and dangerous, and these poems are both. His work made me guffaw, worry, breathe sadly, and see into the crazed human predicament that holds us all in these times.

–Bruce Isaacson, Publisher and 1st Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada.

moths dance

he quickly looked away
after I caught him
staring at me.

i saw him grimace
and laugh to himself
as he muttered something
under his breath—

i didn’t question it
i knew I’d see him soon—

i looked into his eyes
and saw the fear he experienced
because he knew what i was
and he knew that i knew
he wasn’t supposed to drink
on all the antipsychotics
he was supposed to be on…

and so i looked away,
toward a cracked window
with buzzing moths
dancing madly in
the fluorescent light.

From Cleaning the Gutters of Hell, Tohm Bakelas