E/OR: - Living Amongst the Mangled

by R.D. Armstrong

A look into the health care system for poor Americans and how Diabetes impacts the author's life.

188 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2010

About the author

RD Armstrong has been writing since high school, but it has only been in the last sixteen years that he has been his most consistent and prolific. Besides writing poetry and short fiction, he is also the publisher of the Little Red Book series (59 titles and counting)and for 11 years published the Lummox Journal, a small print digest of the literary arts. Many of the titles are available on the Lummox Press website.

In 2008 RD decided to publish a four volume collection of his best work: Fire and Rain - Selected Poems 1993-2007 Vols. 1 & 2; On/Off the Beaten Path - 3 Long Road Poems; and El Pagano and Other Twisted Tales (short stories).

Lummox Press also plans to publish a Best of the Little Red Books collection early in 2009, as well as, a collection of essays and a passage from The Name is Dillinger by Todd Moore.

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

RD Armstrong Shares His Life Experiences

RD Armstrong is not only known for his poetry and short stories but he is also highly respected for founding and maintaining his Lummox Press that features both well-known and lesser-known poets and writings. But in this absolutely superb collection of poems - now in a Special Edition with a different cover (an X-ray image of a foot, the meaning of which is only fully appreciated after reading these poems) - he writes freely of his raw life of addition and abuse and recovery like few other poets have been able to match. A not form the poet on the back cover states, `In late 2008 I had lost my edge, as well as my grip on reality, and was coming close to some serious trouble, health-wise. I had battled with alcoholism, self-destruction and a crisis of conscience. I was, in effect, an accident waiting to happen. It took nearly losing my right foot to infection to wake me up. And once I was awake, I knew I had to get right with myself or the lord, whichever was going to be the easiest. I had to develop a plan and stick with it; no matter what happened or who I had to let go. I've always been somewhat of an oddball, living the glorious oddball life...etc'. We get a fine feeling for the contents of this collection of poems from this excerpt.

But it takes living with Armstrong's poems to allow the gut-level emotions and reactions to reality seep into the brain. Even in the manner in which he discusses his Diabetes his manner of expression is direct, pungent, and does not spare the raw edge of the dissecting knife, as is evident in the few poems here quoted:

SHIFT CHANGE
Having spent thirty years
Plying the handyman trade
I suddenly find myself
Facing a forced retirement
Brought on by a life of
Bad decisions
A genetic time-bomb and
My stubborn independence

While the scrap-heap beckons
And I foolishly cling to my denials
Reality creeps in like a cold fog
And the smell of de-comp replaces roses

Here's me
Waiting for them to call my name
One last time

STEREOTYPING
While waiting at the
Pharmacy for my
Prescriptions to
Be refilled I end
Up seated next to
Some young black
Guy with a serious
Drug-jones twitch

It's a Tuesday morning
Some game show is on
Where people get rewarded
For being outlandish
Either in dress or
Behavior and I keep
Hoping that they'll start handing
Out money here at this clinic
Because we are surrounded
By bizarre behavior too
And where's our reward?

The room is full of people
Me and the black guy
And a bunch of latinos
All waiting
When another black guy comes in
Surveys the room and heads
Right over to me and
My twitchy neighbor and
Hands us business cars
For a sober living facility
Nearby

I guess I look more like a bum
Than I'd care to admit
Is this the dress rehearsal
Or the real deal?

Armstrong mixes his poems - both long and short - with his short stories that read like terse novellas, so succinct is his ability to create a feeling and atmosphere in such a small space, a space that sticks in the mind long after finishing the `story'. These are poems of suffering and desperation, but they are also road signs on the way to recovery. And RD Armstrong, despite all his setbacks, remains one of our most compassionate poets on the scene.

Grady Harp

[R.d. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the latest book by RD Armstrong. It picks up where Fire and Rain Volume 2 left off, 2008. Once again Armstrong documents his life with poetry, but in this volume, he adds blog entries. RD's style is kind of folksy, so the blogs are more like short stories, and describe his observations with his usual ironic sense of humor. The book is broken down into four sections: Long Beach on 40 Ounces A Day, Bad Moon Rising, Business as Usual, Minding My Ps & Qs. Obviously, the first section outlines Armstrong's days as a drunken fool with lots of poems about the cornucopia of characters that populate the low-life of Long Beach, CA. The second section deals with his hospitalization and subsequent diagnosis of Diabetes. RD has spent his life avoiding contact with the medical community, so being hospitalized for two weeks and all the out-patient visits to follow has made him a "new citizen in a strange land." The third section deals with his attempt to get back to life as he knew it, sans drinking, and the realization that "you can't unring that bell." And in the last section, he comes to grips with his condition, one that has left him slightly mangled (both physically and mentally).

E/OR - Living Amongst the Mangled is topical because of its focus on the Health Care System for the poorest members of our population, or as RD says, "the lower third." What will become of those who are too poor to afford insurance in our "brave new world"?