The Equalizer

My Dad and I talk most Sundays since I’m far away. He’s worried about me. I say, Dad, I’m all right, God keeps me safe. We talk about various subjects including men, well, not anymore since I’m divorced. My Dad gives good advice. He always talks about his accidents, since he came close to death repeatedly. He wants to write a book too, Called, The life of an Angel. He’s one of thirteen siblings, Black and Puerto Rican. It’s funny watching my parents talk. They have stories of how they met and when my dad pulled out a machete on two men, and when the man who liked my mom put voodoo on him.  He describes hanging from a ledge in the rain. My mom thought he was insane, but I believe him. You should see his face when he describes it. Their stories are funny; they remind me of a 70s movie. He helped me financially when I was separated and encouraged me to move on. He’s the reason why I called it quits, along with Trent Shelton and Tony Gaskins. He calls after he watches the show 60 Minutes, then goes to sleep. I appreciate my dad. I’m glad he checks on me and supports my dreams.  It’s good to talk to a man like I said in the poem, Mr. Belvedere. Thanks Dad!

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

Conundrum (on my birthday) (for Rico) by James Baldwin

Between holding on, and letting go, 

I wonder how you know the difference.

It must be something like the difference between heaven and hell 

but how, in advance, can you tell?

If letting go is saying no, then what is holding on saying?

Come.

Can anyone be held?

Can I—?

The impossible conundrum, the closed circle, 

why does lightning strike this house and not another?

Or, is it true that love is blind until challenged 

by the drawbridge of the mind?

But, saying that,

one's forced to see one's definitions as unreal.

We do not know enough about the mind, or 

how the conundrum of the imagination dictates, 

discovers, or can dismember what we feel, or what we find.

Perhaps one must learn to trust one's terror:

the holding on the letting go is error:

the lightning has no choice, the whirlwind has one voice.

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

Bio:

Ivy Rozen is an Asheville-based poet whose work has been published in Fine Art Globe, Chatham Life & Style Magazine, Education NC, Bottlecap Press and more. Previously the senior editor of Black Mountain Press, Ivy was selected to judge the Elon University Historic Neighborhood’s annual Primavera Poetry Contest for 2026, and recently founded the Midnight Draft Poetry Collective, which provides free resources to poets of all backgrounds. Her first full-length collection of poems, If I Love You, is now available from Seed Bed Press.

Synopsis:

If I Love You is a coming-of-age told in wounds, in hunger, and in fruit plucked prematurely from its branches. Moving through five visceral stages—Raw, Ripe, Overripe, Rotten, and Replanted—Ivy Rozen’s debut full-length collection maps the brutal terrain of girlhood through fractured family bonds, inherited pain, danger-tainted desires, and the long, uneven path toward self-possession. These poems interrogate memory, survival, and the stories we’re forced to tell about our own bodies. Rozen writes with unflinching clarity about trauma, intimacy, and the quiet violence of being disbelieved, crafting a voice that is at once tender, furious, and darkly lyrical. 

A central pillar of the collection is unraveling family structures. The poems expose gaslighting, conditional loyalty, and a haunting, toxic inheritance passed down through generations of women. The book tackles the predatory nature of "kindness," and the emotional aftermath of violation. There is a gritty exploration of using recklessness and dissociation as armor against past trauma. The collection details the exhausting daily maintenance of living with trauma and anxiety. The overarching theme of the book is stubborn, defiant survival. 

www.IvyRozen.com 

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

Ecclesiastes 1 New Living Translation

1 These are the words of the Teacher,[a] King David’s son, who ruled in Jerusalem.

Everything Is Meaningless

2 “Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!”

3 What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. 6 The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. 7 Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. 8 Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.

9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

The Teacher Speaks: The Futility of Wisdom

12 I, the Teacher, was king of Israel, and I lived in Jerusalem. 13 I devoted myself to search for understanding and to explore by wisdom everything being done under heaven. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic existence to the human race. 14 I observed everything going on under the sun, and really, it is all meaningless—like chasing the wind.

15 What is wrong cannot be made right.
     What is missing cannot be recovered.

16 I said to myself, “Look, I am wiser than any of the kings who ruled in Jerusalem before me. I have greater wisdom and knowledge than any of them.” 17 So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind.

18 The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief.
     To increase knowledge only increases sorrow.

Footnotes

1. 1:1 Hebrew Qoheleth; this term is rendered “the Teacher” throughout this book.

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

Flowers by W. H. Davies 

What favourite flowers are mine, I cannot say -

My fancy changes with the summer's day.

Sometimes I think, agreeing with the Bees,

That my best flowers are those tall apple trees,

Who give a Bee his cyder while in bloom,

And keep me waiting till their apples come.

Sometimes I think the Columbine has won,

Who hangs her head and never looks the Sun Straight in the face.

And now the Golden Rod Beckons me over with a graceful nod;

Shaped like a sheaf of corn, her ruddy skin

Drinks the Sun dry, and leaves his splendour thin.

Sometimes I think the Rose must have her place -

And then the Lily shakes her golden dice Deep in a silver cup, to win or lose.

So I go on, from Columbine to Rose, From Marigold to Flock, from Flock to Thrift -

Till nothing but my garden stones are left.

But when I see the dimples in her face, All filled with tender moss in every place -

Ah, then I think, when all is said and done,

My favourite flower must be a Mossy Stone!

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till traveled to Money, Mississippi, to visit relatives. He was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered after reportedly whistling at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral near their hometown of Chicago. Her brave decision let the world see the racist violence inflicted upon her son and set the Civil Rights Movement into motion.

https://www.nps.gov/till/learn/historyculture/index.htm

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

We Rode All the Way to Delhi by Ruskin Bond

In the Bicycle Age 

When I was a kid

We rode all the way to Delhi, 

Yes we did!

Somi and Ranji and I ...

It took us three days

As we pressed on our pedals, 

All two hundred miles 

From Dehra to Delhi,

And they gave us no medals!

We sheltered in dhabas 

And ate what they gave us, 

But no welcoming crowd 

In Delhi received us 

As dusty, dishevelled

We crossed the old bridge 

And rode round the city 

And camped on the Ridge.

Next day we rose late— 

Our bodies they ached—

So instead of cycling

All the way back again

We put our bikes on the train 

And went home in style

To Dehra from Delhi, 

Somi and Ranji and I ...

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

Ice and Fire by Edmund Spencer  

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congeal'd with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree

Independent Dream by Dan Higgins

In the face of oppression, an idea was born
Never again to tyranny, we’d be sworn
Determined to create a place free of scorn
Every Fourth of July, a new hope is reborn
Pursuing happiness, no longer forlorn
Each firework fired, a salute to the morn’
Nation of dreamers, by independence adorned
Dreaming of a future, by freedom’s hand drawn
Enjoying the fruits of a struggle hard-won
New dawn of liberty, under the sun
Together we stand, united as one

Support the show

Poems are green and Poetry is mean.
-Poetry Beast
 
Please accept my endless gratitude,
I'm tickled pink,
You're a gift!
Thank you for your time and attention.
It's a blessing you've stopped to observe and listen.


ADDITIONAL INFO: @thebaldheadedpoet | Linktree