I recently embarked on a Poetry Book Reading Marathon since so many of my WordPress friends have created and published poetry collections. Since they’ve been supportive of me, I want to support them! I will be posting a series of reviews of their books.
The Muse’s Bad Touch by Bogdan Dragos (2021). Available on Amazon.com.
Bogdan is a Romanian poet who appears regularly on MasticadoresIndia, MasticadoresRomania, and Gobblers & Masticadores. His poetry is dark and rich, like strong expresso, and leaves you questioning your own reality. He explores the darker side of life with characters that can only be described as eccentric, exotic, and deeply disturbing. His ability to test acceptable social boundaries and express a point of view that would shock most people, is what defines his work. In this collection, he writes about his dark muse:
A man's whole life revolves around his work that's what we've been raised to believe, haven't we? What right under the heavens have you, a man, to demand acceptance, love, gratification, without giving something in return? From the very days of creation you have been told: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Put in the work, man. Put in the work. There's no way around. There just isn't. The words were carved deep with a hunting knife on the top of his desk, and whenever he'd fling and hurl the papers and pens away he'd see and read them and then cover them back with papers and pens Being a writer is just as hard as any other job but you can make…
she'd never seen a room so barren before Only white walls, a brown door and large windows with white frames Yet someone was living in it Someone who wanted it to be this way Her younger brother sat, as always, in the wheelchair by the window “Uh, forgive me if I'm being a nag,” she said, “but I gotta ask again. Are you absolutely sure you don't want anything in this room? Not even... I don't know, a bed maybe?” He wouldn't face her. Only the large white framed window “I don't sleep in a bed,” he replied. Why do you even ask?” “Ah, s-sorry. I just... I wanted you to feel like home in here, you know?” “Oh, dear sister, but I do feel like home. After all, isn't this what home felt like all along as we grew up?” She lowered her gaze to the gray floor as…
she sat him down at what she judged to be the most isolated table in the restaurant and then seated herself across from him took off her shoes and did what she always did when they shared the same table placed her feet into his lap and began to work around the belt and the zipper She was getting quite good at it. Unnaturally skilled. Her toes having the dexterity of fingers “When will you get tired of this?” he whispered She smirked at him and said, “To get tired before the climax is a sin.” It was true. In her world. But her world was a most weird one If not in the restaurant, she'd only want to get intimate in the back seat of some bus. If not that then in the bathroom of some gas station. If not that then in some changing room of a clothing…
father was very patient today after he came back from work patient enough to wait for diner to be over and the table to be cleaned and the bedroom door closed before he started shouting at mother Well, she couldn't just sit back and take it. She shouted right back, louder, and just like that another fight exploded there Fights were always a problem A growing boy can't jerk off to drawings of busty women having great fun with tentacle monsters on the screen of his computer while his parents are fighting in the other room It breaks the immersion, goddammit So he turned off the computer and stood with his pants and underwear about his ankles and jerked off to the fight itself Shit, sometimes it's harder to stop the horniness than it is to stop a war An ungodly accumulation of energy has to be released somehow, else…
Daydreaming as a profession 