AboutThePoems: 
I must admit I'm enamored with the montage created between a poem based on an 
historical personage and the bio at the bottom of the poem.  The Israeli 
Ezine, Ariga, has termed my efforts 'bio poems.'  In "Wedded in Belief," I 
take interest in the passing of the gods.  "Betrayed by the Very Soul" 
concerns a rebirth.  And, "Sexuality of the Dead," examines different types 
of communication.

As for me, I'm a 49 year old business executive with 3,600 people in the 
division reporting to me.  I only mention this because in a sense the daimon 
that propels my occupation also propels my poetry.  For instance, Gertrude 
Stein once said, "If Mr. Robert Frost is at all good as a poet, it is because 
he is a farmer -- really in his mind a farmer, I mean."

Am I a businessman who writes poetry, or a very minor poet successful at 
business?  Who knows?  But my daimon propelled me into such a good financial 
position that I could now quit my business dealings and comfortably write 
poetry the rest of my life . . . yet I am afraid to quit for fear my daimon 
will leave me, or my greed will taunt me for decades.

Formerly I managed distribution centers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, 
Arizona and Illinois.  My wife and I now live outside of Indianapolis and are 
currently toiling with much determination on our second crop of children, 
having adopted four wonderful girls and fostered several others.

Fairly new to publishing my efforts -- this most challenging of all endeavors 
-- I have still been fortunate to enjoy some initial successes, and have 
published 608 pieces since late '96.  Please see the attached list of 
credits.  Current successes are: being nominated for the 1999 Pushcart; 
completing an interview with Israeli poet Elisha Porat (1996 winner of the 
Prime Minister Prize for Literature) which was accepted by ACM, Another 
Chicago Magazine; being accepted by Rattle, Sunstone, Spillway, Porcupine 
Literary Magazine; the Ezines Pif, 2River View, Artvilla, Oblique and 
Offcourse; and by print magazines Potpourri and Skylark.  Lastly, I was 
selected as the Featured Poet by the Ezines: Seeker, England's Poetry Life & 
Times, and Canada's Pyrowords.
 
 
 

Ward708@aol.com
http://www.publishers-editor.com/kelley/                               
 

Wedded in Belief
by
Ward Kelley

This worship of one god --
the sun -- has ruined me.

I fear my ruin in my ceremony,
I fear my ruin in my dining . . .

I see it in the flesh of my wife,
and I feel it in the explosions
of my concubines: centered
within all my pleasures,

within all, is my ruin, a daimon
at the core of me who turns

and turns and pushes for the one
religion of the one god, pushes,

pushes, even when it knows
it brings me to my ruin.

Most of all I see it in the faces
of my priests, a baleful eye
as they go through the motions
of worship of myself and my god,

and I fear they smile for the daimon,
smile as if they saw my ruin long,

long ago, long before I myself
became aware of it.  So there it is.

My ruin.  My push.  I see my only
device is to learn how to abandon
the daimon.  For the truth: the one god 
and myself are wedded in the belief

that even us immortals know we must
one day pass from the days of this earth . . .

only the daimon remains.
 

Artist's note:
Akhenaton (circa 1350 BCE), was also called Amenhotep IV.  A pharaoh of 
Egypt, and husband of Nefertiti -- whose great beauty is chronicled through 
celebrated busts of the period -- Akhenaton was the first known historical 
person to establish a cult of monotheism.  Seven or eight centuries prior to 
the Hebrew prophets, Akhenaton began the religion of Aton, the sun god.  
Moving his capital from Thebes to Akhetaton, he fought the powerful priests 
of the old polytheistic state religion.  After Akhenaton's death, his 
son-in-law Tutankhamen returned the capital to Thebes and restored the old 
religion.
 
 

Betrayed by the Very Soul
by
Ward Kelley

Pounce,

pounce, it will pounce
and it will fall, it will sidle
and it will stall yet all the while

slide from side to sunny
side, slipping here to there,
out the back, then up the wall,

across the yard and through
the fence, down the alley,
down the gutter, up the sluice,

then rolling, rolling into
the pathways of your heart,
artery here, vein throb there,

pump, pump, breathe in,
breathe out, pump, pump,
then flop the substance

of it all from the dumptruck
that at last became your heart,
dumped into the coal bin of your

very soul, and that was what 
the pounce was all about,
you know, the pounce, the little

pounce, it's how you slipped
back inside the breathing,
never intending . . . perhaps

wanting, but never saying so,
perhaps considering, but never
taking a step, an actual step,

then betrayed, or fulfilled,
but mostly betrayed, by your very
soul who always thinks it knows

much more than you.
 

Sexuality of the Dead
by
Ward Kelley
 

"Our sexuality," the dead ones wish
to enter a topic that I usually avoid
at all costs, "is terribly difficult
to convey to those of you entrapped

in the breathing with all your
malfunctioning fleshy addendum."
I shoo then away -- wispy, giant
mosquitoes -- but they always

flit right back in.  "Now listen,
listen, you need the sex to catch
a hint of our own mortality,
but as communication from

breathing one to breathing one
it really is a faulty device."
Who can argue?  "But over
on this side of the soul, oozing

around without bodies, the sex
is purely one of communication,
dead one to dead one, and one
does it all the time, time,

all the time . . . until one yearns
too much for imperfect flesh:
so time must then become more
solid for one thus afflicted, so much 

they find all the time to be born back."
 
 

Credit list:
 

NOVELS
 

Two novels, "Divine Murder" and "Keenly Alive, Tony,"
are represented by The Sternig & Byrne Literary Agency
 

POETRY COLLECTIONS

"comedy incarnate," forthcoming on cd rom 
by Kedco Studios (Las Vegas, NV)

"histories of souls" forthcoming as an ebook 
by Word Wrangler Publishing, Inc. 
 
 

Of the 608 published pieces, some have found their way into:
 

PRINT MAGAZINES
 

ACM, Another Chicago Magazine
The GSU Review     
Limestone   
The Listening Eye   
The Lucid Stone
Mad Poets Review    
The Old Red Kimono
Porcupine Literary Magazine 
Potpourri
Rattle  
River King
Skylark     
Spillway
Sulphur River Review
Sunstone
 

INTERNET

Ariga   
Artvilla
Big Bridge
Lynx: poetry from Bath
Oblique
Offcourse   
Pif
Poetry Magazine.Com     
Pulse
Pyrowords   
Renaissance
The Rose & Thorn    
San Francisco Salvo
2River View
Unlikely Stories