Charlie Wren is a poet, artist and combat veteran turned Buddhist who lives in Los Angeles, Ca. Their work examines love and loss, while probing the messy truths of authenticity. Known for an edgy, gritty style, Charlie's poetry invites readers to confront the darker corners of human experience while seeking truth in vulnerability.

THE $1 RACK

I hope someday to have my book on the $1 rack at the library. 

Worn and weathered but loved and ready for someone new to cherish. 

The colorful spines like blinking Broadway neon to the eyes of kids who’ve saved up their allowance for something new to devour. 

For lonely night-shift workers who need the warmth of a friend during the cold and hardest hours. 

For business people to use on shelves as backdrops to video presentations where audiences might pause to see who they’re reading. 

For hipsters to toss into messenger bags and scribble into while drinking paste-like coffee as k-pop bleeps from the surround sound. 

For me to stumble upon - bringing full-circle the long-lost friend whom I’d had an intense love affair. 

I imagine we would pause, 

study one another, 

flip through the pages like memories from our past, 

I’d run my fingers over her letters, cover and spine 

shove my nose into her and inhale the musty sweetness of her old paper

then thank her for being a part of my journey. 

I would say goodbye and slip her back into the tiny slot between worn and weathered but ready to love copies of Nora Roberts’ and Agatha Christie’s past love affairs. 

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GLORIOUS DAY OR ALL POETS GO TO HELL

She asked me if I knew how to pray. 

I told her I didn’t and held up the crumpled dollar bill my dad shoved at me as he pushed me out the door. 

“For the offering plate.” He’d said

“And don’t act like an asshole.”

She snatched the dollar and ushered me into a basement stairwell that led to a pastel dungeon filled with terrifying Bible character marionettes strung intricately upon wooden crosses. 

There were a dozen other kids my age that were obediently staring at a mural of heaven. 

“It’s quiet time” she instructed. 

She got mad when I whispered to a little girl that the eyes on the Jesus puppet were “giving me the creeps”. 

Judas, on the other hand, had kinder eyes. 

Like those of someone who’d been forsaken by someone he loved. 

I don’t know how to pray. 

I didn’t learn that in Sunday school. 

All they taught me was how to sing songs to a god who never showed up at my house while satan possessed my drunken father’s fists. 

In their sanctuary, they taught me how to take all the worst parts of me and use it to hate myself. 

And people like me. 

Threats of hellfire and damnation wrapped up in Christ’s everlasting promise. 

Then we sang “Hymn 212, Glorious Day”.

So when a fresh-faced young man holding a clipboard outside of Smart & Final asked me if I’ve taken Jesus into my heart, I told him I never learned how to pray. 

That I learned everything I know

about love and compassion 

from a book of poems that I stole from a neighbor’s back porch when I was 11. 

“Will I go to hell for that?” I asked And before he could answer I told him that all my favorite poets would probably be there with me. 

What a Glorious Day that will be! Then I shoved a crumpled up dollar at him and pushed my way past the door.