I BECAME ALONE by Rich Quatrone

I BECAME ALONE

I became alone when the world spun out like a mad globe
in the dark universe when I was 22. That night on the Columbia
campus when the stars shifted and nothing was to be the same again.

I became alone that night. Not a loner, although maybe that.
Alone no matter what.

When I was married I was not alone. Or I was only partly alone.
Because I slept with my good wife for thirteen or fourteen years
and the world was safe when I was beside her.

But that was not enough for me, it seems. My body was not
fully with me or with us and not fully with my wife.

Because she too was alone. And we tried to reach across the endless
gulf to one another but somehow didn’t reach far enough.

I left in one terrible violent act of abandonment, wife with child
in her womb. I was still there in body but I had already left when
I met another woman who was more alone that either my wife or me.
She was alone and reckless. Alone and angry.
Alone and in disguise. Alone and sad, deeply, so utterly desolate
as to strike angrily at the universe in the form of me.

But that was all so long ago. Many lonely days and nights and years ago.
Now I am alone and old.
That is a special kind of being alone.
A terrible being alone.

Rich Quatrone

RICH QUATRONE is a poet and playwright living in Spring Lake, NJ. He was educated at Rutgers College and Mason Gross School of the Arts, both at Rutgers University. He and Lorraine Quatrone founded PASSAIC REVIEW in 1979, inspired by Lunch magazine and the groundswell of poetry that was then in the Passaic-Rutherford area. Other mags to come out of that period were Footwork and Lips. Footwork became the current Paterson Literary Review, headed up by Maria Mazziota Gillan. Quatrone introduced Gillan to the poetry world by having her read at Passaic High School, publishing her first efforts in PR, and by having her interviewed on EYES OF THE ANGELS, the cable television poetry show, produced by Paul Juscyk and Rich Quatrone. Gillan turned her back on those who endorsed her and has made some kind of mark on the poetry world.

Rich eventually left north Jersey and the life and wife he loved there. Much of this was brought about by a rigged prosecution of Rich as a home instructor in Passaic and Lyndhurst. Some people knew the truth and encouraged him to fight the bastards who set him up, but Rich knew he’d been tried and convicted in the Herald News by people like reporter Steve Marlowe, so he accepted a very, very unjust plea bargain. This is a decision he has regretted often in his life, since he allowed the State to strip him and his family of every cent they possessed. He has never really recovered from the financial poverty. He received an expungement in 2006.

After the infamy of September 11, Rich began an all-out, six year campaign of reading hard-hitting poems, poems to educate, poems to connect personal love and world love, at the Java Hut, which later became the diluted Coffee Blue, in Belmar, NJ. During these six intense years, Rich founded CHILDREN OF SEPTEMBER 11, along with Timo Scott, as a guerrilla theater group taking on social issues often left unaddressed by too many others. Online Rich resurrected (actually the third incarnation) of Passaic Review, following the original magazine, then Passaic Review Millennium Editions. The new PASSAIC REVIEW EZINE, published some 1600 online issues, covering every conceivable part of Rich’s political, social, and personal imaginative landscape. Joined in this effort were scores of poets, including Bob Quatrone and Amiri Baraka. Rich kept the Ezine going until he abandoned it after the invasion of Iraq. Rich felt the country was no longer worth the risk involved in speaking so honestly publicly.

Rich is also the producer of PLAYWRIGHTS ON THE RISE at Lakewood’s historic Strand Theater. He’s done this series into, now, its seventh year under his helm. This is a staged reading series of new plays from predominantly new playwrights. Rich has two sons, John and Eric, both poets, musicians, and athletes. Their band THE LYRIQS is on the rise.

Rich Quatrone

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.