Poetry by Jason z Guest
A limited collection of my poetry is available here for public viewing. Email subscribers can access previews for two months. Paid subscribers gain full access to my expanding poetry collection. To learn more, click on any poem below.
The Old Guard
A nostalgic, free verse poem that looks at my childhood memories of majestic pines that towered over our local golf course. The poem, heavy with imagery, uses personification as a rhetorical device, in which an idea or thing is given human attributes and/or feelings or is spoken of as if it were human.
Coatepeque
Considered an eighth wonder of the world, the volcanic crater lake Coatepeque (Lago de Coatepeque) of El Salvador measures eleven by fourteen kilometers. The environment exhibits great natural wealth and the lake’s vivid blue waters cyclically change to turquoise green. Mayan ancestors of four lineages migrated to various water-protected environments in 8207 BCE following a triple-star event; its Quiche lineage settled onto Teopán, an island within this lake.
Hill Country Cashier
The daily life, hunger for connection, and struggle of small-town life are captured in this quotidian poem of a simple encounter in a Texas Hill Country store.
Observation Tower
Gamboa is a small town in Panamá, on the Chagres River which feeds into the Panama Canal. The town is surrounded by rainforest and wetlands, home to countless flora and fauna of the Soberanía National Park. This poem is centered around its observation deck, offering majestic views of an exotic territory, and a perspective of just how small we are in the grand landscape of our busy lives.
Chasing the Light of a Wonderful World Below
In this poem, I am working the interlocking rubaiyat, an ancient Persian form of poetry. As contemporary as Robert Frost, this quatrain form is made of four quatrains following an aaba rhyme pattern. Each successive quatrain picks up the (third) unrhymed line as the rhyme scheme for that stanza. I’m using this to capture the unmistakable beauty I once witnessed atop a mountain that overlooked the Uncompaghre Peak and National Forest, just northwest of Telluride. Words cannot adequately describe this heavenly view, but herein lies my attempt to capture its effect on me.
The Shoe Shine Man
Reflecting on the power of human touch, this quotidian poem is a tribute to the lost art of shoe shining, small talk, and thus, a nod to the trades.
Catch and Release
This sporting afield work is written as a series of “essence” poems created by American poet Emily Romano, featuring a short, structured form of two lines, six syllables each with an end rhyme and internal rhyme.
We Interrupt This Message
The nature of counting down helps us measure the remaining time of some outcome as we approach an anticipated good. In this structurally concrete poem, I am counting up by the use of the number of words to a dreadfully-common weather occurrence in Texas - tornadoes.
A Surprise in the Shrublands
Field notes of an evening hunt whereas the hunter I became the hunted, captured in a free-verse poem with internal rhyme schemes.
Morning Reprise
Heaven is all around us, and certainly within the beauty of a majestic morning reprise, captured in a simple free-verse poem.
Rain Over Puntarenas
A series of ramages gives an account of observation while caught in a rainstorm within the bar island community of Puntarenas, Costa Rica. The poem is really about vulnerability, especially in this area. The pirate Chipperton journaled to have arrived at a "Punta de Arena", or “Sandy Point” in 1720, referring to its long, needle-like surface threaded miles out into the Pacific.
Sonnet of the Songbird
This poem employs the poetic form of the classical Shakespearean sonnet, capturing the morning magic of songbirds over the high plains of Taos in late summer.
I Don’t Know
In the company of best friends and with hearts for all things Latin America, several of us stumbled into this unforgettable “experience” in the streets of Antigua … so much more than a bar.