Featured Poem - May/June 2005
BROKEN MAN
I lived to get high.
I didn’t care if I lived or died.
A fool on a mission of death,
constantly destroying myself.
I got “busted” and went to the “pen.”
That’s where poetry became my friend.
Poetry saved my life.
Poetry became my mistress and my wife.
Poetry helps me to fight the war raging within.
This broken man made poetry his friend.
Luther Jarman
“I’ve been writing poetry for the past 40 years. When I was young, my grandmother saw that I was good at writing and bought me my first typewriter. As a teenager, I went to the library and read poetry by Langston Hughes, e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost. In English class, they introduced us to Poe and Shakespeare and Longfellow. I was fascinated with these people. I knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be a poet. I fell in love with literature.”—Luther Jarman
Luther Jarman is a participant in ASC's Creative Writing Workshop. His poetry appears in Situations 7 (published in Fall 2004) and Situations 8 (forthcoming in Fall 2005).