Featured Writer: Joseph S. Pete

By Raja's Insight on August 10, 2019 • ( 0 )

The Fanatic

The fanatic leaned in, went all in with spite and bile,

retched forth discontent with his own troubled days,
reviled his own wretched life, and doubled-down most deeply,

iron-clad in ideology, certain in certitude, rock-solid in rectitude.

The fanatic felt superior, elevated, above everyone else.

The bilious soul staked his worth on a gilded balustrade

of borrowed ideas and banal talking points that turned increasingly venomous.

It is, after all, always easier to hand over the keys to another driver.

About the Author

Joseph S. Pete is an Iraq War veteran, an award-winning journalist, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio. He was named the poet laureate of Chicago BaconFest 2016, a feat that Geoffrey Chaucer chump never accomplished. His work has appeared in Indiana Voice Journal, Prairie Winds, The Grief Diaries, The Dime Store Review, The Five-Two, Chicago Literati, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Dogzplot, shufPoetry, The Roaring Muse, Blue Collar Review, Lumpen, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pulp Modern, Zero Dark Thirty and elsewhere. He once Googled the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. True story, believe it or not.

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