Richard Schnap

Dear Readers & Poets,

I know I closed this journal last year, so I don't know how many of you are still subscribed or reading Poppy Road, but I wanted to share some sad news I received this morning about fellow poet Richard Schnap. As you know, he was a constant contributor to this journal with his poetry appearing just about every month. He was one of my favorites and also became a good friend to me. His partner emailed me this morning and told me that Richard passed away on Christmas Day. I had no idea and I'm still shocked and completely saddened by this news. I just can't believe it.

I published a chapbook for him last year, under Flutter Press, titled A Wind from Nowhere. He was so excited about finally putting together a collection of poems. If you're interested in purchasing a copy, it is available at this link:  https://www.createspace.com/6215080. I'd like to make it available until the end of the month because I know so many of you enjoyed his poems as much as I did. After the end of February, I'm going to retire his book as I don't feel it's right to continue selling it when he's no longer here. All royalties will be sent to his partner, Alice.

As the Shadows Deepen by Richard Schnap

There are seven billion souls

You can learn to call your own

But there’s only really one

That you can know

And there are seven billion songs

You can hear upon the wind

But there’s only really one

That you can name

It has seven billion words

And the language that they’re in

Is the only one that

Ever stays the same

And the only time

That you won’t ask why

Is when I say I love you

As we ride into the night

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Mirror of the Heart by Richard Schnap

She first passed it

After her first night of love

The mannequin in the window

In a dress embroidered with flowers

Then again on the day

When she became engaged

This time in a gown

Covered with sequined stars

Next on a cold night

After her fiancé broke it off

In a long dark coat

With a matching black veil

And finally in the rain

Falling from an ashen sky

Wearing nothing at all

But a face as pale as a ghost

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

In the Realm of Dreams by Richard Schnap

Graveyards are gardens

Where the dead are planted

To bloom in better worlds

Gardens are temples

Where the faithful flowers

Sing hymns to the sun

Temples are oceans

Where the lighthouse of deities

Guides the lost through life’s storms

Oceans are highways

Where the counsel of stars

Leads the homeless back home

Highways are stories

Where travelers find endings

Unmarked on any map

And stories are graveyards

Where epics are concluded

As new ones begin







Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Burden of Hope by Richard Schnap

As the candles melt into the cake

And the wishbone cracks into splinters

And each penny swallowed by the well

Only makes us one cent poorer

The road from cradle to coffin

Stays a journey we must take in the dark

Through a landscape drained of color

Where even the flowers seem grey

As we lift our eyes to the heaven

Hidden behind its webbing of stars

Asking once more for an answer

To the question a thousand words long

And as we find where we’re going

Is the same as where we began

We wrap ourselves in our shadows

To wait for a new sun to rise






Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Elegy in a Realm of Ashes by Richard Schnap

By the shores of the river

I can still see the steel mills

Like ghosts in the moonlight

Among the shopping malls

And where there once stood

Furnaces forging girders

A man haunts the restaurants

Where hungry families dine

And he looks at me sadly

While wavering and weaving

By the luxury condos

Built to house the rich

And he seems to be trying

To tell me some story

But a wind out of nowhere

Comes and blows it away





Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Beneath the Slate Grey Sky by Richard Schnap

Death is not solely

Reserved for the dying

It wears a thousand

Faces in the world

Like the woman I saw

Alone in a cemetery

Kneeling by a grave

On a cold winter day

She seemed to be speaking

Words in a language

That only the one

Lying buried would know

And when she rose up

To walk away slowly

I could see in her eyes

That she was buried too

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Two Poems by Richard Schnap

Portraits of the Heart

I didn’t know their stories
Only hints from what spoke to them

In a gallery of collages
Where they each made one their own

A smiling man holding
A woman with a mirrored face

A hand in a room reaching
Past a ruined wall toward the sky

A desert highway curving
By a sign with a question mark

A woman on a road wandering
In the winter with her eyes closed

And when they left I wondered
Why they all seemed so alike

Like birds in an aviary
Caught in the same cage

Whispers

I hear the night
Talking to itself
In an uneasy sleep

As it wanders through
The strange landscape
Of someone else’s dream

Where dead cabarets
Are now the havens
Of lonely ghosts

Who cling to a past
Of easy love
A lingering shadow

Like an old song
You can still hear
From time to time

That grows more faint
As it’s lost in the howl
Of a savage wind






Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Two Poems by Richard Schnap

AS ABOVE SO BELOW

The stars seem caught
In strange, obscene orbits
As if crippled by the wishes
Of the madmen of the world

While the moon seems to wear
The face of a mourner
As if the love it conjured
Is now a withered rose

And the sun seems to shine
Like a pale, weakened eye
As if it is a light bulb
On the verge of burning out

For in desperate times
Even nature seems afflicted
As if it too feels helpless
When a shadow grips its heart

COLD SPELL

The clouds hang like stained sheets
Over the unmade bed of the world
Where sleepers wander through uneasy dreams
Borrowed from the biographies of the mad

And I wonder when it was the wind began
To speak a language long thought dead
For it seems we are all now puppets again
Guided by an idiot god

But the stars still sparkle like tattooed diamonds
While the flowers turn their faces to the sun
And the laughter of children cascades like water
As pure as their unsullied hearts

For in the great epic of the earth’s story
There are both chapters of darkness and dawn
And today’s tragedies are tomorrow’s reprieves
As they fade like yesterday’s news







Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Witchcraft's End by Richard Schnap

She set out into the world
Eager to cast a spell
But everyone she met
Seemed already in a trance

For they all carried talismans
Glowing like crystal balls
That held them all in sway
As each told them what to do

And she wondered what deity
Could possess them all so
In an ironclad enchantment
No power of hers could break

But she felt a time would come
When the guiding lights would fade
Leaving all their followers
Lost in a realm of darkness

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Mystery House by Richard Schnap

His mind was a mansion

Where stairways led to walls

And doors opened to nothing




With rooms full of lights

That would turn on and off

All by themselves




And he wandered its halls

But always returned

Back where he started




As if in a maze

Whose entrance and exit

Were both the same





















Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Inside Story by Richard Schnap

I am tired of your bland science,

Your causal mediocrity,

Your simple rules.




I prefer the revelations

Of nobodies, the down and out,

Hearts behind walls.




In a place of night, I listened

To a black boy, scars on his back,

Recite rap songs




As finely spoken as Shakespeare.

I heard a soul in chains speak truth

Who could not read




Or write, heard him pull blood from air,

Pure fire from dead broken stone.

I heard the words.




I am tired of your recipes,

Your formulas. The house burns wild.

Wake up. Listen.



















Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Haunted Houses by Richard Schnap

There was the two room apartment

With a bathroom in the hall

Where the ghost of a blind man

Cried blues in the night



And the hovel with the roof

That leaked when it rained

Where the phantom of an artist

Painted the walls with his tears



And the cheaply priced residence

Next door to a church

Where the spirits of sinners

Begged God for a second chance



And the mansion once owned

By a barren heiress

Where her spectral presence

Sang its children to sleep















Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Passage by Richard Schnap

The first door led to a parlor

Full of antique tables and chairs

Where a man was erasing his face

While his wife held the one to replace it




The second door led to a classroom

Where students were taught by a ghost

Whose lectures told the story of a world

That had long ago ceased to exist




The third door led to an office

With a thousand men talking on phones

Who all spoke in perfect unison

Setting appointments for salesmen of death




And the last door led to an apartment

With a crystal ball and a guitar

One to reveal the future

The other to weave it into song













Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Two Poems by Richard Schnap

Waiting for the Angel

I see people with locked hearts

Who have given up believing

That love’s key will ever find them

And I see people with blank minds

Who watched everything they learned

Erased by a tyrannical hand

And I see people with cold souls

Who one day looked in their mirrors

At posters of missing persons

And I see them all gathered

In the ruins of a condemned temple

Hallucinating voices in the wind

Secret Identities

There was the one who became a convict

In a prison of his own creation

Who locked the door behind him

And then threw away the key

And the one who became a convert

To a faith with her as its deity

Deciding who was devoted

And who would burn in Hell

And the one who became a subject

In his own scientific experiment

To see if he could find a way

To learn to love the dead

And the one who became a savior

Who longed to wake these children

But found they preferred bondage

To the terror of being free

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Revelations in the Thrift Store by Richard Schnap

Here is a doll with a painted smile

And eyes as hollow as a ghost’s

Here is a book by an obscure author

That’s been out of print for a decade

Here is a dress from someone’s closet

In fashion for only a season

Here is a chair that once faced a desk

From a company long out of business

And I see a young girl falling in love

Leaving her childhood behind her

And a pile of notebooks left by the curb

Their words disappearing in the rain

And a mirror in a chic department store

Reflecting what the stars now endorse

And an old man passing a vacant lot

Where once stood the story of his life

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Diagnosis by Richard Schnap

There was an animal inside him

That kept changing shape

That wore different faces




A ravenous rat

With a ceaseless hunger

Burrowing through garbage




A cold-blooded snake

Coiled around itself

Drinking its own venom




A maddened dog

Crouched in the shadows

Howling at ghosts




And an earthbound bird

With a broken wing

Dreaming of the sky

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Interview w/ Poet Richard Schnap

1.  When did you start writing poetry and why?
I was raised in a very literate family. My childhood was filled with books of all kinds and I began writing when I think I was in grade school, things like fantastic stories and comic books. In college I studied fiction and poetry as dual majors and produced the first of three self-published collection of poems augmented by collages. My three passions are art, music and writing and over the last three decades I've bounced between the the three at will but eventually settled to a combinations of poetry and collages. I create because it feels natural.

2.  What is your writing process?
One of my primary rules is to write about things I know as intimately as possible: people, places and events although I leave room for pure journeys of my imagination which usually are initially grounded in something I see in the world around me but can take off in any direction, almost as if they start writing themselves.

3.  Which poets throughout time have influenced your writing?     
I actually don't read a lot of poetry. I listen to the lyrics of a large collection of recorded music I own and the only poetry I regularly hear is that from a small weekly writing workshop I'm a part of.

4.  What do you consider your poetic style to be?  
I would say my style is the inherent musical quality of my poems which I've internalized through the hundreds of songs I've written for various musical groups over the years. Also, I place an emphasis on what I call the "architecture" of a poem, also derived from songwriting, where a typical poem of mine is designed in a set number of stanzas and lines with a definite rhythm to them. I have never been a big fan of free verse poetry which is why my poems are constructed in this way. Twenty years ago, though, I did write all my work in free verse.

5.  What topics do you tend to write about?
As I've said, things in the world, people I know or have known, experiences I've had recently from the distant past, anything as long as it's something taken in some way from real life.

6.  What advice would you give to a novice poet?
I believe a writer or any artist must find their own path themselves but some hints I would offer are to notice the world around you and within you, how it looks, sounds, smells, tastes, makes you feel. Experiment, try different things, different voices. Find other writers you like especially and analyze how they do it. This process can take five minutes or five decades, it's different for everyone.

7.  What advice would you offer to someone who is frustrated because his/her work is constantly being rejected by journals he/she submits to?
An outstanding resource I have used to great success is Duotrope.com.  It can help you identify journals that your work may find good homes in.  Plus, be aware that specific editors may like your work more than others.  I have a dozen or so magazines now I regularly submit to, people who i are what I consider friends, in writing and in life.

8.  What is your ultimate goal as a poet?  Are there any specific awards or prizes you strive for?
I just want to keep writing and hopefully keep getting published. I really don't care about awards or prizes but I wouldn't mind someday to have a book, or books, of my collected work published somehow, perhaps as an ebook for free download. But if I don't it doesn't matter. I have been blessed to have my work displayed on the Internet for billions to see.  That is enough satisfaction for me.

Prophecies by Richard Schnap

In the future people will listen to silence

Watch blank screens on their TV’s

Wear clothes the color of their skin

Answer the phone without saying “Hello”

Buy food they throw out without eating

Have children they do not name

Own cars that they never drive

Write letters to random strangers

Go to parties where no one talks

Tour museums of empty frames

Collect items they find on the sidewalk

Read newspapers with the same news each day

Work at jobs without getting paid

Go on vacations without leaving home

Have the identical dream every night

And be buried beneath unmarked tombstones

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.

Time Capsule by Richard Schnap

She had it all, wireless smart phone,

Electric car with GPS tracking, several

Hundred friends on her Facebook page,

Artificially sweetened energy drinks, thousands

Of MP3 downloads and a high-definition

Flat-screen TV programmed to automatically

Record her favorite reality shows while she slept.

But in her dreams she stood in the heart

Of an abandoned city watching the ghosts

Of old lovers pass by as if they no longer

Knew her, as if they weren’t real, strangers

On a road that had no beginning or end,

Like a film she once saw a long time ago

That made her cry but didn’t anymore.

Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.