Nathan Alan Schwartz, editor of Five 2 One Magazine and contributor to Drunk Monkeys, has released his first book of poetry, The Melancholy Spectator, in the Amazon Kindle Store. The collection features 49 of Nathan’s original works, three of which we have sampled below for you.

Appetite

I swim in the warmth of your arms
I bathe in the kindness of your eyes
I hold your sweetness in my hands
And I still haven’t had enough of you
To fill my appetite

The Wounded Sparrow

Chess tournament
Cold night
Boys and Girls Club
In Pasadena
Players concentrating
Not willingly
Participating in
Emotion
Just logic

I a spectator spot an injured sparrow
Underneath a table
Behind the glass door
Breathing heavily
Suffering endlessly
It had injured its leg
Flying into the unknown

Where can it go?
What can we do to help it?
We are helpless
As is it

It spots us with its tiny black eye
And attempts to fly
Only to fail
And fall behind a couch

It lay breathing heavily
Suffering endlessly
I paced
Back and forth
Back and forth
Trying to comfort my mind
“There is nothing they can do” they all said
“Animal Control doesn’t care”
“Just squish it” another man shouts
A suffering soul who can survive, doesn’t deserve to die
But why?
Is this sparrow insignificant?
Woman behind counter doesn’t
Acknowledge the existence of the bird
As if immune to pain of another
She sits and watches

An innocent bird injured
Nobody does anything
Until myself and a friend attempted to aid it
We cared enough to bring it to a spot where it
May be spotted by another person
We cared about the wounded sparrow
Will the sparrow survive the cold night
I don’t know

But it made me think

We are
At one time or another
Wounded sparrows
Who take comfort in love
And like that wounded sparrow
We breathe heavily
And suffer endlessly
Until somebody cares for us
And brings us to spot where
We may fend for ourselves

The Insomniac Romantic

He lives somewhere between the apartments that
Have been built on the wedges of my brain.
He calls out to me almost all of the time
At first I was able to ignore him
Now he is constantly beating at me with his thorny bat
Sometimes I wish I could squeeze that little sucker
Until he popped
Or grab him and place him on a shelf
Until I need him
But he is squirmy
Alas I am stuck with him
As a curse
Or maybe a blessing I am unsure.

The Melancholy Spectator by Nathan Alan Schwartz is published by On Impression Books, and is available at the Amazon Store.

Click here to purchase.

Nathan Alan Schwartz is a Film major at Los Angeles Valley College, one of the editors of Enhance Magazine, and Editor-in-Chief of Five 2 One Magazine.
He can be reached at 521magazine@gmail.com