Featured Poem - September/October 2006
BEAUTIFUL MACHINE
I’ve learned to love you
Oh Beautiful Machine
At first, I hated you
As if you kicked me when I was down
Sometimes you’re like an overbearing boss
Demanding time I don’t want to give
Although you insist on making me see you
3 times a week
I learned to love you anyway
Like a vicious dog gone good
It’s the simplest of equations
You plus me equals life
The ultimate finality is
Without you, I will perish
That’s why I’ve chosen to embrace you
And I’ve learned to love you
My Beautiful
Dialysis
MachineErik R. Nusom (a.k.a. Finesse)
“I loved the ASC Creative Writing class off the bat. At first I wrote poems with lots of rhyme. But once I got serious about the mechanics of poetry and was exposed to different writers like Neruda and the haiku poets, I started realizing I didn’t have to rhyme all the time. I’ve tried to get away from the mundane in poetry. If you’re going to do it, you should have some slickness to it, some finesse. That’s how I’ve tried to write.
“Creative writing has been an outlet for me. In my battle with addiction, I didn’t always have any other outlet to replace my ‘get high sessions.’ But writing poems and going to Creative Writing was a replacement for doing drugs and something else to occupy me. The class was something to look forward to. I felt a part of something important and the camaraderie was good for me.
“At the time I started in ASC’s Creative Writing Workshop, I was bouncing around city hotels. I didn’t have an anchor. The class was the first normalcy I got. I could go there and get away from the stuff going on in the hotel—the money issues, the drugs, the dreaming—the workshop was an escape from that. Writing, drawing, and listening to and creating music have positive energy that eclipses the negativity of drugs and alcohol.”—Erik R. Nusom (a.k.a. Finesse)
Erik R. Nusom is a drummer and visual artist. He joined ASC’s Creative Writing Workshop in 2003. His poems have appeared in the eighth and ninth issues of ASC’s literary magazine, Situations.