Poppy Tinged Kiss

2013 promises to be a banner year for my "poetry". "Scarred Canvas" will be released June 2013 to outstanding reviews. Normally reviews mean nothing to me. These reviews however, have come from people I respect and read. I hope everyone will grab a copy upon release by Underground Voices Press.

I've also just put the fimishing touches on my next book (let's hope the editor agrees) "Poppy Tinged Kiss". It is much too early to announce a publication date, so stay tuned for more information. For a sample, here is the poem from which I took the books title:

Poppy Tinged Kiss


I didn't intend 
to miss you more 
than the few moments 
it took to wrinkle  
2-3 t-shirts 
& a torn pair of jeans 
into a rucksack
  
1000 miles away
& 230 days of memory 
the flop houses 
are just as crowded 
the sex even more 
meaningless 
than the sugar cut 
heroin my veins 
still ache for 

but on some nights Bridgett 
when candlelight bends 
at a perfect angle 
I catch a tiny glimpse 
of your face 
in the Meth glossed eyes 
of teenage girls 
who spread wide 
their souls 
& legs 
before the gods 
of this street life

& wish not 
that you were here 
but that I  
for one final time 
could melt into 
your bloodstream 
like a warm  
poppy tinged kiss

"Scarred Canvas": Final Cover Art

"Scarred Canvas"

Selected Works 

by RC Edrington

Published by Underground Voices June 2013

Final Cover Selection

Cover Artwork by

Cecilia Ferreiara

"Scarred Canvas" Review by Bart Solarczyk

"Edrington splatters the page & scars the canvas with scenes of runaway goth waifs, bored housewives on the make, aging tattooed punk rockers, assorted drunks & junkies all shuffling a broken bottle landscape where what passes for love is measured out in dime bags, bad booze & bargain cigarettes. Rented rooms, always the hustle, dirty money changing dirty hands, one day winners & other losers, the smell of infection, an itch burrowed beneath skin digging deeper. Hard times, hard liquor, whores & heroin, for the sake of the hard story, for the poems come to break & hollow bone. A man endures & writes it down & now it's yours dear reader. A rosey blood cloud blooming in a shared syringe." --Bart Solarczyk

Ron Androla "Scarred Canvas" Book Blurb

"Scarred Canvas", is to be released June 15, 2013 by Underground Voices Press. Here is an early review by small press heaveyweight Ron Androla:

"Fuck you. I mean that as both message & sentiment in regards to reading RC Edrington's latest book of poems. Fuck you & yr clean poems. Fuck you & yr  undamaged mind & veins & heart. Fuck you & yr preconceived perceptions of what a poet shld say, or be, or how he or she shld act. Fuck you &  intellectual density, even emotional density, spiritual density, allow for the transparent ghosts. & fuck you for being a ghost, & transparent. RC's  poems are unapologetic. His poems are not kisses & smiles – rather, the poems are raging, & insane. I don't know how a man cld manage to rein in  the anger in the form of a poem, but RC has attained the feat. This is a  rare achievement. These poems are LIFE, & not manufactured, manicured, College-altered equations. Fuck you. These poems are tough, & messy, &  existentially sad: reality. Reality is always saying fuck you."