Radomir Luza and Sharon Rizk
    Recently I received this email message from “Radomir Luza”:

    How are you doing? This has had to come in a hurry and it has left us in a devastating state. My family and I had a visit to (UK) unannounced some days back for a short vacation, unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed, all cash, cell phones and credit cards were stolen off us but luckily for us we still have our passports with us. We've been to the Embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and our flight leaves tomorrow but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let us leave until we settle the bills. Please I really need your financial assistance. Please, let me know if you can help us out? I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Best,  Radomir.

    I was about to respond and send him all the dollars he needed for a safe return home. The dramatic tone of this message seemed right; the poet’s eternal predicament was there, too, lost in the sinister streets and alleys of London, where apparently hotels have “parks,” and embassies and policemen give stranded tourists the cold shoulder. I hit the reply button and noticed that I was replying to some stranger at “rocketmail.com,” and was immediately relieved: not so much because I had stopped just short of falling victim to a scam, but more because now I knew that probably Radomir was safe and sound at home, busy writing and preparing for his readings and out of harm’s way.

    Even though Radomir Luza is a huge, wild presence at the microphone, his poems are often  delicate and betray his gentleness and even vulnerability. Radomir is not a poet concerned with rhyme or meter; he is blissfully unworried about form, at least in a conscious way. His poems, rather, are unadulterated ejaculations of feeling:  uncooked, intense, mundane, confessional, surreal, untutored, uninhibited and tender. There are starkly prosy moments in his work, followed by startlingly beautiful thoughts and images. If you want swans and the moon, read Yeats. If you want to learn about the wifebeater shirt and the mental hospital and the night with soft porn, spend a little time in Radomir’s orbit. Today he is reading with Sharon Rizk, a poet and psychologist who works here in Pasadena.


seeing my father in the bathroom when he is not there

    my father usually lasted a good twenty minutes in the bathroom

    he walked in like a busy bear in a hurry but took his time like a bee in a bonnet

    when he left the stench was all father and it lasted to Armageddon and beyond

   
    last night I thought I saw my father in the bathroom again in all his glory and sadness his
   
    clenched teach and his whispering hands I started to talk to him from my bedroom but

    there was no answer I went out into the hallway and realized that I was talking to glued air

    my father had been dead for over four months

    I fell on the ground and laughed  because everything in me told me to cry




© 2012 Radomir Luza and Sharon Rizk
Radomir Luza and Sharon Rizk were the Featured Poets who read their poetry at the January 2012 Second Sunday Poetry Series