fWelcome to 
                     The Poems of Job 
                      Job Conger, Springfield, Illinois
                             This page was most recently updated Sunday, June 01, 2008

Thanks to Iles Elementary School and Kellie Robinson
for their hospitality  when I spoke to each of their classes about poetry.  I spoke to the students about what poetry is and things to consider when writing poetry, told them about Vachel Lindsay, probably the most famous "native son" of Springfield, Illinois, and recited some of my poems and Vachel's poems. AND I enjoyed some of the best pizza to ever do the tango on my tongue during the lunch period with the teachers. Thanks to Kari Abate for the most excellent photographic production.

Is there room in central Illinois for a group of poets who want to meet to share 
                                                               p o e t r y 
and let Poets & Writers Literary Forum continue to serve those who want to write proseandpoetryandplays? There IS ROOM FOR A POETRY GROUP IF YOU SAY THERE IS. I say there is, and I need YOU to say there is too, so together, WE can make it reality. How about Central Illinois Verse Artists Group? If YOU want to help make it reality, share your thoughts with me, and let's   get going! writer@eosinc.com

  Kevin Stein and Job Conger



Considerable Mystery Still Surrounds
by Job Conger
written 9:10 pm, March 13, 2008

It’s fitting if we can, and without shame,
embrace that legacy to Oak Ridge eyes
--sparkling still today for visitors to see --
that shows the ages love that never dies;
reminds the world how God can join as one
what biddies cannot denigrate with spite,
and sings to us from firmament of stone:
Scotch granite topped with ghostly marble white.


--  written for the seventh annual Museum of Funeral Customs Poetry Reading, March 15, 2008.

The Moral Way to Kill
by Job Conger
drafted 11:29 am,Wednesday, August 17, 2005

There was a lesson worth remembering
when Cain killed Abel.

If you believe that humanity
proved its imperfection
with a shared apple,
but still you chasten our species
as though you are God
and not of the tarnished tribes,
you should understand
the fallibility of the fallen
is not only my woeful shortcoming;
it is yours.

Every society has murdered
raped, plundered
hurled unwholesome epithets
and made fun of people.
It has been intrinsic to our humanity
since we walked out of Eden.
It isn't right,
but
it's inevitable.

The self-sanctified pedants
who claim the higher moral ground
and consider their pee perfume,
wage a lie crusade against God’s own teachingL
From one side of their mouths, they say
perfection in life
leads to perfection in heaven.

From the other side of their mouths,
they promise earnest seekers of truth
who don’t eat meat on Friday,
and don’t use birth control,
and believe that planet Earth
is the center of the universe
(Galileo took that one on the chin),
who consider immutable
the teachings of the church
will find salvation for their sacrifice..

The knowing few,
understand how
no matter the pain and injustice
we suffer on this earth,
our souls will live forever
with or without 100 temporary virgins
or 100 clones of Omar Shariff.
My salvation will happen not by deeds,
but by grace,
that ultimate gift, which I cannot buy.

God doesn’t say life will be easy;
God says life will be
and not be.

The right kind of the right kind --
mostly their kind
and few of the other kinds
because the other kinds
are not as perfect as their kind --
say "Whistle at my wife and I will kill you."
They also say
"Kill the convicted
because it is better to reap
vengeance from the occasional innocent,
who is caught in the vice of injuistice
every now and then,
than to let one guilty person get away with anything,
even if he or she does get away
when the system guesses wrong.
And besides,
even if we snuff the innocent by accident,
God will sort it all out anyway,
so there is no blood on our hands."

Christ said turn the other cheek.
Is this how the right kind
of the right kind
behaves?
No.
They fight as though they love to fight,
as though the blood of their all-consuming deviltry
excites them,
as it excites the unbeliever.
It’s the incomparable turn-on
of getting even.
Don’t muddle their minds with Christ's holy example.

We have lost the moral imperative
to demonstrate our understanding
of the lessons
proven true
through the ages.

Even the gazelle puts up a fight
when confronted by the hungry lion.

Self preservation matters
when reacting to a demonstrated
unprovoked threat of death
that is real and not a lie.
I do not understand why
you want to kill me, but I want to live,
and if you insist on trying to kill me,
I will try to kill you first.
As there is self-preservation for humans,
there is self preservation for nations of humans as well.

Truth is the key.
Without truth, the fabricators of lies
who draw nations to war
earn themselves
a special place in hell.

When the demise of my brother or sister
or my neighbor
threatens me,
I am bound,
in the interest of self preservation,
to defend my brother and my neighbor.

How do we know the truth when we hear it?
We know it because it stands alone
and doesn’t take sides,
though sometimes a side takes it
and stands for truth.

"Initiating war with Iraq so soon is wrong."
is as true from the mouth of a Republican
as from the mouth of a Democrat,
as from the mouth of a Samoan,
as from the mouth of a Belgian.

==============
Wars of Summer
by Job Conger
written 6:10 p.m., Wednesday, Auguts 3, 2005

We paint our personnas
with hues of hope and love and peace,
marching to the dirge of dreams
soaking desert sands with crimson.

While protesting wars we cannot reach
we lock up our hearts and minds
to imprison the wars of silent rage
we wage from deep within our chastened souls.

Song of My Soul
   by Job Conger
    completed 5:50 pm, June 15, 2005

My conscience  e x t e n d s
further than I can reach with my hands
but not
further than I can reach with my heart.

Life is not logical,
lived by brittle,
un c o m p r o m i s i n g
rules.

Love is more than silent truth.
It is a demonstration.
Love is the tree that falls in the forest
and people hear it.
Anything less is hearsay
and I do not believe it.

As I am not my brother's keeper,
you are not  m y  keeper.
I know this for certain
when I try to sell my books
and try to get a ride to Bloomington.

As long as I believe
that the creating entity
to whom I owe my life and my soul
is the only arbiter of my salvation,
I will not lie to others,
pretending I can save them.

Because I am human,
unlike the rabbit who may
run from the fox without despising
harsh fate who sometimes takes the fox's side,
I protest the words and actions
of those who pretend they possess
as the unknowable will of Yaweh.

When the pretenders
to the power of salvation
seek to prevail against my words,
the way my blustering brother
protested mightily
when I sneaked sips
of Dad's deeply-closeted Crown Royal
when I was all of 14 and he was all of 12,
I will remind the pretenders
that  salvation
is not theirs to give to me
or to take away from me.

And when the assassins
reap perverse satisfaction
from killing doctors
while celebrating
the sentencing
of innocent, but convicted, defendants
to death by wanton vengeance,
strapped to a chair,
I will remind them
that the soul is not
made or destroyed
by sleazy pontification
and cowardice.

The soul will not be sanctified
by the likes of them
or by the likes of me.

My best dream is
that I will be true
to my understanding of the creator,
true to what lies within
the reach of my hands
but not beyond the reach of my heart.

My best dream
is that I will live according to
the will of Yaweh,
and that He
will be well pleased.

My best dream
is that by living this way
I will bring honor to my name
today
and beyond today.

= = = = = = = = =
Eight Seconds in South Carolina
       by Job Conger
                    completed 4:03 p.m., May 26, 2005

Vacation trips are best from the back seat
rolling over two-lane state route concrete
with pimento cheese sandwiches passed back
from Mom who turns cheddar, red thingees
and Miracle Whip into ambrosia, the family’s
purveyor of paper cups of Thermos jugged iced tea.
She does 60 mile-an-hour crossword puzzles
between junction advisories to Dad,
the driving force behind the steering wheel
of our new 1959 Buick Electra,
the first one purchased in Springfield, Illinois.

Five hours ago, we pulled out
of my sister Dorothy’s driveway
in Wheeling, West Virginia,
aiming for Aunt Stelle’s country home
in Elberton, Georgia.
Younger brother naps in the left corner of the car,
18 inches away and two years behind me,
oblivious to the passing panorama.
My eyes survey the South Carolina countryside:
a land of pig pens, shallow red rivers, and ragged grass
of weather worn houses that haven’t seen paint
in 30 years, almost hidden at the ends of dusty lanes
that bend into sentinel groves of trees
up the hill and a world away from pimento cheese
on white bread

The only clues to human habitation hereabouts
in this rain-spitting, barren, Monday afternoon jumble
are tin mailboxes topping posts installed roadside
for rural mail carriers driving federal vehicles,
the interface of messengers bearing catalogs from Sears
and news from California cousins who moved away in ‘48 and
up ahead -- LOOK!   Someone’s walking up to a mailbox!

Mom’s eyes focus on 35 across,
Dad’s eyes ride the dashing yellow line,
brother Bill dreams (probably) of frogs,
but I see her. She’s not much older than me,
hair to the shoulder, dark, like coal,
ordinary clothes, but the eyes!
She looks up from the mailbox, and her eyes find mine
and she holds my eyes as I hold hers,
not smiling; just contact. I KNOW her!
We have found each other!

I want to shout to Dad to stop the car
and back up to that mailbox!
But Dad would never stop . . . because we are on vacation.
He is director of the travel itinerary, which
does not include scaring teen-age girls
who came down to get the mail.
But she and I will not let go
of each others’ unblinking eyes!

So I shout through my irises and pupils and eyebrows:
I KNOW YOU! I might have loved you!
(God only knows where or when or how.)
Don’t forget me!
I won’t forget you!
And we will – the concrete rises
between her and me
as the car heads down the hill with no apology
for this brutal intercession.

And eight seconds to remember
on a forgotten byway
come to an end,

which is to say almost.

She lives with me.
Madder moments
with now-forgotten passing fancies
in high school and after
have faded from my memory.
But she is my soul’s companion now,
though I do not know her name.
I know that she remembers me
after, perhaps, her first two husbands
and moving to the city
after grand kids and diets and
lots of good times too.

So when I think of summer vacations
and the places I’ve been
and the people I’ve seen
I think mostly of a girl in
the chilly high hills of South Carolina
whose searching eyes found mine, decades ago,
and warm my heart today.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

To My Unrequited Love
       by Job Conger
             written 9:25 p.m., Wednesday, March 2, 2005

Rest In Peace "Thankyou"
by Job Conger
written 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, February 1, 2005

Your time has come and gone
and now you're dead,
thankyou.
You're often seen in print
but seldom said,
thankyou.

A courtesy of days gone by.
drifting off -- just God knows why,
a star in heaven,
now banished from the sky,
thankyou.

A word or compound word
so right for special times:
thankyou.
And 'cept for "dank poo"
'n' "rank stew," it's hard to find good rhymes.
thank you.

Still, you held on through the ages,
uttered from the tongues of sages,
simple on time
saga's pages,
thank you.

Now, this verbal up-and-comer
leaves me cold:
thankyousomuch!
Chitty chatty cliche mouth fart;
mere fool's gold:
thankyousomuch!

Ramble-blather, modern
emptiness of heart
thankyousomuch!
Syllables a plenty,
poetaster's art:
thankyousomuch!

Would I wordcrafters true
might convince friends, family too
thankyousomuch to eschew.
Thankyou.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What the Middle-Aged Guy Said
by Job Conger
written 1:37 p.m., February 1, 2005

When I am old, I shall wear people.

People who fit me like a glove,
I shall wear on my hand.
People I take to the dance,
I shall wear on my arm.
People I love
I shall wear in my heart.

People whose lives do not
harmonize with mine,
but who like me,
I shall wear . . . . . . . . . . . . . at arms' length.

Those whose minds move
to the beat of the drummer
whose rhythms also inspire me,
I shall wear them well.

Wonderful conversationalists
I shall wear on my ears.

Lovers and friends lost to time
I shall wear in my memory,
ready, at the drop of a hat,
to pull them out and share the colors of their lives
with lovers and friends today.

People whose physicality
is a beautiful symphony
I shall wear on my eyes.

People who live in perpetual solmemnity
I will not bother to remove
from the hooked, triangular
wire apparati from which they hang.

People who grate on my nerves,
I will wear thin.

Folks for whom I feel rapturous affection
I will wear on my lips as often as possible.

People who have turned my hope to anguish
one time too many
I will wear
on the bottoms of the soles
of my unpolished shoes.

When I am old, I shall wear people
as I wear them today, and am worn in return.
And if the reader thinks that "wearing people"
is an idle, simple whimsy, a milkweed, a whiffle ball
struck with a plastic bat toward the outfield of philosophy,
that's okay with me.

After all,
I was only putting you on.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

just the moment's rum
without the "ble" or thunder --
haiku USA

-- Job Conger
   October 21, 2000
(filing some earlier creative writing and discoverd this, not shared until now)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cameron Do Well
by Job Conger
written 10:15, Sunday, December 5, 2004

Thanks to Karel Keldermans for providing   names of internationally known composers of carillon music snd for the news that he and Thomas Rees Memorial Carillon will present a concert of holiday music starting at 4 p.m. Sunday, December 12. Karel also notes (no pun intended)  that tours of this fascinating landmark are not available over the winter months. Tours will resume in the spring.
============

A Distoibing Tot
by Job Conger
    December 1, 2004

John F. Kennedy asked
"What can I do
for my country?"
and they assassinated him
before his vision came to be.
George W. Bush asked
"What can my country
do for me?"
and they elected him twice
to the presidency.
DUuh

NEW -- POSTED NOVEMBER 11, 2004

Veteran’s Day 2004
by Job Conger

While looking for a way to boost sales
before the real recession takes hold in mid December,
a marketing VP at Flash ‘n’ Trash corporate
planned a Veteran’s Day
15 PERCENT OFF ENTIRE STOCK
(special exceptions may apply) SALE,
and as for the quick and the dead,
the military men and women
whose sacrifices won him that privilege,

On this hallowed, solemn Veterans Day,
so many true Americans,
with their superior moral ways
reach out to those who must live on
after the intended and unintended
sacrifices for freedom’s ways,
made by their loved ones,
and what do these moral Americans say?
They say "History! Ain’t it a kick?
Hey, let’s go buy something!"

Posted October 8, 2004

Page 2
    by Job Conger
    written June 26, 2003

(introduction)
For months, President Bush fed us lies
Served by pious, righteous cronies, sleek and wise.
Some of us  didn't care to dine on their siren soup du fear.
Now digestion time is over, and the truth is odiferously clear

He'll dodge and dance like few Yale frat brats can
When Dubya's feces of lies hit the fan.
Though he sold us a war, second guessing is a drag.
It's amazing what some folks take home when you wrap it in a flag!

He has stained our proud Stars and Stripes true
With new colors of brown, black and blue.
Those who saw through his blow; we ain't real 'Mer'cuns no mo
As Dubya's feces of lies hit the fan.

Front yard Patriot signs are the rage
Like arm band fashions in an earlier age.
The feared weapons are as real as the emporer's new clothes.
Those facts should be so clear to all who breathe through their nose.

The Congress feasted on pork barrel pie.
"The sounds of silence" was their battle cry.
They stayed cool and well-fed while soldiers brave died and bled
And Dubya's feces of lies hit the fan.

Now he tells us "Hussein had to go!"
"Nobody ever really liked the guy, y' know."
Though the U.N. tried hard, they could not find a trace
So the "compassionate conservative" sent war in their place.

Now  as we hold noses tightly and pray,
It's time to send Chief Inspector  O. J.
For gasless, germless blue skies, can't match a pro's alibis
As Dubya's feces of lies hit the fan.

Soldier Song
    by Job Conger   
        written July 14, 2003

There is no greater sacrifice
Than to serve the U.S.A.
In a military uniform, not knowing
What might become of you some day.
While civilians adjust their central air,
Brave soldiers fight and die.
What a shame the war they fight to win
Was launched upon a lie.

(chorus between verses)    We're entitled to our opinions,
                                            But I want to tell you, true:
                                            When you spit on our fighting man,
                                            I'm going to spit on you.

The couboy landing on an aircraft carrier
To make a campaign video
Insults the sailors who sweat for freedom
Umpteen decks below
The president who slashes V.A. hospital funding
And cuts back support for folks like customs inspectors
While strutting like the cat who ate the canary
Aid and abets his check-writing electors.

(chorus)

The troops fighting clear and present dangers
Or to settle an old, un-forgiven score
Deserve our prayers and sincere respect
In peacetime and in war.
To those who give unselfishly
Responding to duty's call,
I sing the thanks of a grateful nation.
May God bless you all!

(chorus)

VOTE FOR GEORGE BUSH!
     by Job Conger
            written 8:15 October 17, 2004

I will eat no more cheesecake
except during December.
I will run all the way to Rochester and back
along the Lost Bridge Trail
and never stop for a sip of water.
I will do 200 situps every morning
before breakfast.
I will always love
the one I'm with.
I  will always be courteous
to telephone solicitors,
but
I will never
VOTE FOR GEORGE BUSH!

Will a price of a
fraudulent premise
Reveal
Just a hint of gross shame?
Will it change how
You feel?

What will you say, America
When the chickens come home to roost?
Since no nation’s an island
We need more than a smile and
A president’s blow
To set right what we know.

What will you say, America
When the chickens come home to roost?
What resolve will you make?
Will you eat crow or cake
When the chickens come home to roost?

Important Sins
      by Job Conger
       written at 6:25 p.m., September 19, 2004, home office

If you think sacrificing
more than a thousand lives
for a contrived war in Iraq
and tolerating sadistic extremes
in POW pens,
sanctioned by those
who have been taught
to lead better
insults the national conscience,
just wait until the next
Democrat official gets caught
in the company of a whore
with his zipper down.

That’s when we’ll learn about "morality" --
when we chastise one who spurns a higher code.
Sin’s what happens under desks;
not in sending soldiers off to eternity,
waiting for them on a dusty desert road.

IMO’s August 18, 2004
       by Job Conger
       written at IMO's Pizza open mic 7:15 p.m., August 18, 2004

Aspiring eyes
twinkle in anticipation
of streams of hopes and points of view
coming together in
one flowing
confluence,
the way a fireworks display is
a confluence
of flowing
light.

If His Name Were Hideki
     by Job Conger
   written 6:09 p.m., Thursday, August 26, 2004

 He’s a barker at the county fair
For a penny pitch game.
He’s a pre-emptive striker
with no feel for propriety and shame.
Yet we know from the annals of history
What Justice brings to the brazen misanthrope.
If his name were Hideki
He’d be hiking to a dangling rope.

Joe McCarthy sang a siren song
Of Commies lurking under rocks.
In the name of liberation, Hitler troops
Took North Africa with a Desert Fox.
And to side step petty truth, a frat brat
Put us sliding down a slippery slope.
If his name were Hideki
He’d be hiking to a dangling rope.

Just remember the lessons
Taught by tyrants who invoked God’s name.
Whether Shinto, anti-Semite or Christian,
Hate chokes freedom just the same.
Only citizens of founders’ ways
Can fix a nation searching for new hope.
If his name were Hideki
He’d be hiking to a dangling rope.

-- posted September 21, 2double-naught4

Tomar YO
by Job Conger
completed in the home office 11:30 a
Sunday September18, 2004 after starting it at Washington Park

I’m resigning from humanity
I do not want to burn in hell
with sullied souls who ne’r do well,
careening through the flames to sell
their mother’s spleen for the asking price
with tongues of fire and hearts of ice.
This is not my dream of paradise.

I’ll be the animal I must be
but not with laggards limp and crass
whose justice comes from mobs en masse
who live in homes of shattered glass.
My fate is sought on higher plains
where harmony of hopes sustains
the poet’s muse and seldom wanes.

On God’s green earth and living free
Within each soul, solutions sleep.
Sometimes it takes a running leap
to span the chasms wide and deep
which hide ‘neath snows of arrogance
and under artifice, perchance,
to miss the mire of petulance.

My love will touch eternity
where kindred souls with kindred ways
will share my words from early days
and toasts with fine red wine will raise
for truths transcendent of the clock,
the shards of clay that once were crock,
and of the sand which once was rock.

Scan Human
by Job Conger
written 9:37 a.m., September 17, 2004,at Washington Park

Rag men and dissidents,
guilty and innocents,
uncultured sycophants
with dirty underpants,
legions of sullen swine,
heedless of words divine,
grizzled, devoid of hopes,
morn’-after misanthropes,
caustic rebutters, droll,
-- Fate’s reaped a heavy toll. –
lost to the end to die.
There but for Grace go I.

NEW -- September 2, 2004
     September 11, 2001 Trilogy

Words to Distant Departed
    By Job Conger

Those who have no use for God,
may sometimes want, in wonder,
to find meaning from souls lost to new dimension.
Earnest hearts broken
by rash, random consequences
that pervade our lives in growing apprehension,
may seek to glimpse understanding --
revealed by way of those departed --
reaching out to those who quest to know.

May the blood and bones of strangers
motivate the caring living
to dream of a better world and work to make it so.

Come to me
spirits wiser than the living
that I may share
what you have come to know
from your unsolicited sacrifice,
that I may be wiser
and make many lives the better
because of your departure from our lives.

Platitudes unfurling like banners
in the uncaring wind
can’t fortify the fabric
of humanity made deaf from talk; not doing.
Vengeance never spawned
new life from bitter sorrow.
Life is all that should be worth pursuing.
In our quest for sane tomorrows,
there will be no swift redemption.
Such won’t come from shouting
pharisees, and prophets.

With strong hands
and dedicated hearts
we must build what we desire
or surrender
to the ashes
of our regrets.

(second poem)

Five Seconds
By Job Conger

Her
journey
to
eternity
from
the
90^th
floor
of
the
South
Tower
lasted
this . . .


(third poem)

Truths and Consequences
By Job Conger

Some truths transcend religion
and don’t require a voice vote
with angel-arms raised
by Bahaulla,
Buddha,
Christ,
Emporer of Nippon,
Jehovah,
Krishna,
Mohammed.
Whitman
said "learn’d and unlearn’d
Feel that it is so."
and I believe him.
Those transcendental truths
which shredded skies and dreams
on September 11, 2001
are my concern.

Life is not truths but politics.
For many opinions to trump anarchy,
there must be sides
which require allegiances
and compromises of truth.

This is how my sin against your brother
becomes more right-eous than your sin against mine.
This is why, not only must you be Christian,
you must be the right kind of Christian,
and you must be the right kind
of the right kind.

To sublimate politics to reality
is to surrender your place in
the dugout of humanity where
players wait for their turn at bat,
and the truth believers,
stay away from the ball park because
they have learned,
from lynchers of slaves
and Socrates,
that they have no business there.

Sometimes, the kid with all the balls
deserves to be told she is a jerk
by those who have no business at the ball park
and by those who do.
Tyrants wear cloaks of many colors, but there
is no fabric stronger than that of truth un-politicked.

The 19 hijackers who terminated
thousands of lives on their day to die
were not creating a war;
they were continuing a war,
taking it to the innocents,
as holy sagas have told since
Lott’s wife and before
and after.
They did not invent terror;
they followed their religion
as Crusaders in Jerusalem
followed theirs,
as Spanish priests in Peru
followed theirs,
as politicians in Tel Aviv
follow theirs
as Christpublicans in New Scarlet Letter-land
follow theirs.

Whitman said "Out of the dimness,
opposite equals advance."
Too often we bluster that we are
more equal
than those who are pro-choice,
those who eat chitterlings
or wear our blue genes like AKC pedigrees,
and we learn the truth
in the dust
of our imperiled lives
as we rail against compromise
with those who are on the wrong track.

Some truths transcend religion,
and for our world to live
in harmony,
we should consider this, everyone,
on September 11, 2004
before it is
too late.

Short Poem's Reward
                                by Job Conger

If we
are lucky,
the short poem gives us
the ice cream sundae cherry
after we have tasted
sweet, the bracing flavors,
and surprised the palate
with the near-forgotten
red reward a waiting
at bottom of the
bowl.

-- written sometime in summer 04

      It's NEW (gesundheit!) 
Vachel Lindsay: Strange Gold - a biography and apppreciation
                        of Springfield Illinois' most famous native son -- by Job Conger
       I started putting this book together in 1999 though I had been thinking about it since '94. While I was dueling with more demanding dragons, an early bio draft, read and reviewed by three friends hibernated in a file 18 inches from my right hand in my ommmm office.    
      With a solid chunk of diminishing capital in 2003, I resolved to A: publish my third book of poetry (Bear' sKin) ; B: revise and publish a second edition of my first book of poetry (Minstrel's Ramble: To Live and Die in Springfield, Illinois) and 3: complete a book I originally entitled The Lindsay Compact. An acquaintance recommended that I contact the state or local arts councils for assistance in paying for publishing the Lindsay book, but I considered that since such organizations operate with time lines of    y e a r s   from conception. . . . . . to final product, my time was better spent PRODUCING it by my self-made deadline of November 10, 2003, Vachel Lindsay's birthday.
     I changed the title in September '03 because it was not appealing; it did not draw interest from some good people I mentioned it to. It took about 4 seconds to select Strange Gold as the new title, and subsequent favorable responses validated this choice.
     SG presents five major elements:
       1. a biography combined with short mentions of events in Springfield which occurred
             during the poet's life.
       2. an assessment of how the poet is remembered in Springfield today.
       3.  poems which I enjoy sharing with others, to whom I share my knowledge of the life
              of the poet and recite his poems, usually from memory. These poems are accompanied
              by my short comments about them: why they are good, what readers should know
              about their backgrounds. This is not scholastic dissertation; it's conversation in print.
        4.  an annotated bibliography. Since I've purchased and read every book by and about
              Vachel   that I have seen mentioned in most more lengthy tomes, I considered it
               would benefit readers who are new to Lindsay, who might want to learn volumes
               more about him.
        5   finally a poem I wrote about the poet.
        Included in the book are notes about web sites and organizations who share the Vachel Lindsay story in their own unique ways.  It is softbound, with color cover, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, 148 pages long, illustrated with pictures of Vachel and his family and of sites that bear his name in Springfield, Illinois, including his burial site at Springfield's Oak Ridge Cemetery. 
        Vachel Lindsay: Strange Gold may be purchased for $10 wherever I am invited to read my poetry and/or recite Vachel Lindsay's poems. To order Vachel Lindsay: Strange Gold, sent by first class postage, please make your check for $13 payable to Job Conger and send it to 428 W. Vine St., Springfield, IL 62704-2933
            
  FLASH -- my first new poem since July 14, 2003 below....

Wisdom
                        by Job Conger
                             written 11:20 A.M. Monday, February 23, 2004

GOOD  NEWS!
     My first book of poetry -- Minstrel's Ramble: to Live and Die in Springfield, Illinois has been reprinted with the old typographical errors corrected and some new ones added in appreciation for the readers who pay attention. I have added a web page which explains the origin of each poem and additional information. You can enjoy this page by clicking here. From that page, you will be invited to read seven poems which appear in Minstrel's Ramble. The seven poems are not yet posted. When they are, we will add a link from the page already mentioned.

VERY GOOD NEWS
   Wit's End,  has  a page of inside information about the origins and background for the poems shared therein here  and a separate web page of seven representative poems.  This book is a COLLECTOR'S ITEM if anyone ever pays serious attention to my poetry. This is because I will not print a second edition to this book. I've made this decision because I'm not happy with a lot of the poems, and I am less happy with the way it comes across to the reader. I was in much too foul a frame of mind when I produced this book. So the best poems from Wit's End will be included in my sixth book of poems,  a book which will include what readers and I determine are the best poems from the first five books.  I have fewer than 50 Wit's End on hand, so now is the time to buy it  ($10 postpaid) if you can't say no to a truly skanky book that runs from bad to verse.

EXCITING NEWS       
    My third book of poetry, entitled Bear' sKin has been published. It has a page of facts and background info like the page created for Minstrel's Ramble. and Wit's End. You may visit the Bear' sKin page by clicking here. Seven poems selected from this book have been posted to a new page. Find a link to those poems at the explanations page.

HOW TO PURCHASE MY BOOKS
    Send your cash, check or money order (made payable to Job Conger)  for $10 for each of my books of poetry you wish to call your own or give to a friend  to 
Job Conger
428 W. Vine St.
Springfield, IL 62704-2933
Be sure to specify which book(s) you want. Better yet, specify all three books.

From my August 20, 2003 performance
at Imo's Pizza, Springfield, Illinois.
  Thanks to Davids Bishop and Pitchford for taking these terrific pictures!
     If you are looking for a talented songwriter/poet for your restaurant, bar, festival or special event, please do both of us a favor and email writer@eosinc.com  with your phone number and mailing address.

Visit The Acoustic Jam, Conger and friends pickin' and grimacing,  by clicking here
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