Michael Roberts

The Lightning Bug Romantics are Michael Roberts, author of the Pushcart Prize-nominated collection No More Poems About The Moon (Write Bloody Publishing) and Jason McBeth, runner-up at the 2008 Individual World Poetry Slam. Together they are like day and night. Peanut butter and jelly and Siamese twins. Michael is trustworthy and, generally speaking, in good with peoples moms. Recently he was caught on camera making change for someone on the city bus who only had a five spot. When people applauded quietly he declared, Please, let these acts go unrecorded. I wish to be remembered as surly and mean. Jason, unfortunately, is criminally insane--half man, half Watusi--and was told by a psychic in Venice (Beach) that in a past life he was a Pharaoh, but for his many acts of indulgence and Old World mischief was reincarnated as a performance poet. A gypsy in Paris (Texas) once cautioned, your friend is wind rattling a lions cage.Jason McBeth and Michael Roberts both contributed poems to The Good Things About America, a new Write Bloody anthology sweeping the country like flapjacks and corn syrup. Jasons own collection, The Cities Under Your Tongue, is also forthcoming on Write Bloody Publishing. In addition to being steadfast purveyors of poetic throat noises, they are madly in love with you. Together they have been hailed as the greatest show on earth, but who said this exactly, and why, is unknown and it is rumored that this mysterious soul may have been sleep-talking or B.S.ing, biased, both, or all of the above. "