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Nobody Lives Here Who Saw This Sky

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In the foreword, Nebraska poet and educator Greg Kuzma states that "...the human spirit runs loose still in the world...." Those few words express perfectly the writings of Greg Kosmicki. He's a poet who puts his heart into words. He writes about his children, his work, the land, and longs for simple times when man understood his place in the world. As poet, Kosmicki does not become "...too tired to care too blind to see.", despite the fact that his work as a UPS driver is slowly draining him dry.

In "Driving", he speaks of "...laughing desperate men." In "First Time on a Time Clock" he documents such desperation clearly without mincing words, shown here in an excerpt:.

Felt like I was being castrated and having a current of a thousand volts
of electricity run through me through the time recorder.

Like a man who has to stand by and witness the death of his best friend
by disembowelment at the hands of a cruel ogre.

The slow inevitable sliding climb toward death had begun

Kosmicki is a man who longs with yearning spirit to preserve the beauty around him in verse. He watches birds, "....longingly wanting their songs..." His eyes take in the glorious Nebraska Sandhills as his heart grieves for birds that smash into the windshield and snakes he accidentally crushes on roadways. Locked into a soul-numbing routine, he seeks to find a balance between death and the natural wonders around him. Such balance is struck eloquently in "Trail Road Sky."

I ran over a bullsnake today,
a beautiful 4 foot long one.

under a prairie grass sky

I couldn't stop.
It was stretched across the road,

under a meadowlark sky...

...for the next hour,
or more, I thought

under a killdeer sky

about that snake
and how alike we are.

under a ruffled grouse sky...

...and dammit,
I kept running into birds all day -

under a dragonfly sky...

Greg Kosmicki tells it like it is. All but the luckiest among us are forced to toil at jobs that kill our creativity and hope. That the heart of this poet survived to share his thoughts with readers is a gift.

This book is a brave and honest work, the work of a father who makes the move to quit his job as a UPS driver and live with the consequences. Moving, well-written, funny and touching, Nobody Lives Here. . .proves that the small presses still produce the best poetry. If you like Hayden Carruth or the softer poems of Charles Bukowski, this book is for you.