TOUCH CREATURES: SELECTED POEMS. Ryk McIntyre.

TOUCH CREATURES: SELECTED POEMS. Ryk McIntyre. http://destructibleheart.com $10

Ryk McIntyre is such an accomplished spoken word artist you forget how well his stuff works on the page. His wit is both deliciously subtle, and can also have the impact of a cream pie smacked in your unsuspecting face. McIntyre cut his teeth on the Boston poetry scene in the early 80’s, and if you have been around the block it would have been hard to have missed him at the many venues he read at, organized, hosted, etc…over the years. McIntyre has a hilarious and pithy poetry book out “ Touching Creatures…” that deals with his own creature comforts, those creatures or monsters who lurk in his fevered imagination or on the Silver Screen. McIntyre also writes about childhood friends, old movies; all his signature themes are in this collection. In his poem the “Jesus of Ugly” McIntyre realizes that beauty is skin deep, but ugly is to the very bone:

“ I’m a good example of a bad example,
I’ve never been one of them personable people,
but I got a good face for some bad memories,
Mirrors and me, we have agreed
if I don’t look at them, they don’t talk shit to me.

God must be Ugly,’ cause he gave me so much.
Was beauty born without two good feet,
and needs the crutch? One look at this face,
don’t your heart skip double- dutch? Don’t it clutch?
Medusa looked at his face and just had to get stoned.
Look up “ugly” in your Webster’s-that’s me:”

And talk about original work, how many poems can you recall that deal with an “aging” vampire. In “Old Blood” McIntyre writes about this poor old “sucker”:

“I am old.
I smell bad.
Hey, you sleep in the same dirt for five hundred years!
And I am not interested in going to a bar so we can talk
About how much you wish you were me.
I don’t drink…whiney people.

Okay, fine. I am a vampire!
But it’s not this hot-shit sex-thing you kids think.
The grim truth? Nothing stays stiff in the grave.
I don’t even take people in their beds anymore.
The last time I tried? You remember my bad back?
I made a very funny bat, hahaha….


Look kid, the best bloodsuckers today?
They’re alive and hold Law Degrees,
Not a cape and a badly faked European accent..”


Highly Recommended.