Ron Torrence published his first short story at age 50 and his first poem at age 80. Even so his fiction, non-fiction and poetry are pretty widely published. He’s also written five novels and a screen play, all unpublished. Much more to do. His work has appeared in American Writer’s Review, Crack The Spine, The Dirty Goat, Dos Passos Review, Existere Journal, Forge, The MacGuffin, Menda City Review, Nassau Review, riverSedge, Orange Willow Review, Slipstream, Eureka Literary Magazine, Oxalis, Ash, Potent Aphrodisiac, Rockhurst Review, The Tower Journal, Thereby Hangs A Tale, Typo, Sour Grapes, Circuit Traces, RE:AL, Reflections Literary Journal, way station magazine, West Wind Review, Wild Violet, Yellow Mama and Pleasant Living.

unbearable maelstrom of being

 multitudinous torrents
 cascade 
 life’s cliffs
  
 gravity’s arc 
 etching air
  
 turbulencing plunge pools
  
 joy    sorrow
 rage
 peace         love
                                                                      hate
             hope
 despair
  
 unequal streams
 disbursed 
 life by life
  
 god? 
  
 demon?
  
 indifferent fate? 

mirror on time’s wall

  she sits 
 at her window
 all day
  
 cars below become 
 model t’s her youth
  
 dancing 
 all night every night
 songs fitzgerald knew
  
 face across the ballroom
  
 her face
 boys fought to lay bouquets
 girls pined to be her court
  
 picked     discarded
 peanuts in a bowl
  
  
 bands stopped playing
  
 swains died away
  
  
 cocooned in wrinkles
  
 reduced to diapers
  
  
 where dreams?
  
  
 bubbles children chase 

ultimate meanings

 long ago
 from a mossy bank
 a small brook
  
 tad poles
 wiggled tails
  
 pontoon boat bugs
 waked tiny waves
  
 nearby salamander
 snuggled a log
  
 tucked safe from adults
  
 their blood soaked wars
 their endless tyrannies
 their broken dream eyes
  
 now many years
 part of their world
  
 wars
 tyrannies
 broken dreams
 never ending
  
 brook became houses 
 long since 
  
 my center still