Poets November 2008 (1)
This page contains poems by: Margot van Sluytman, Wanda Sue Parrott, Jennifer (Jinks) Hoffmann, Wendy Mesguich, Lisa Okon, Michal Mahgerefteh, Stephen Mead, Tim Congdon, Yossi Faybish, Jeffrey Spahr Summers, Dewell H. Bird, Michael Lee Johnson, Ada Aharoni, Carla Thomas, Patti Tana, Moshe Ganan.
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The following works are copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the authors.
Margot van Sluytman
Margot Van Sluytman is an Award Winning Writing and Healing Facilitator whose courses, workshops, and talks have been presented in Canada and the United States. She believes in, practices, and teaches writing, the use of words/palabras, poetry, as both art and healing voice.
She knows that every human being has at least one important and worthy story to tell that has shaped her or his life. Her writing has been published internationally in magazines, anthologies, and literary eZines. Margot teaches how to let energy flow from within, to liberating and inspired written word.
Her most recent books include: Contemplative Waiting~Write Into the Heart of Your Spiritual Journey; Sawbonna: I See You. Dialogue of Hope, with an endorsement from Sister Helen Prejean author of Dead Man Walking; Dance With Your Healing~tears let me begin to speak; Layers of Possibility~Healing Poetry from The National Association for Poetry Therapy, this book features the poetry of the poet-healers, and a Foreword by Robert Carroll, MD, of the Department of Psychiatry of UCLA.
She is a Recipient of a Facilitator Scholarship from The Merton Institute of Contemplative Living, as well as a Seeds of Joy Award and Scholarship from the Foundation for the National Association for Poetry Therapy.
Stones From a River
I am stones from a river.
I know generations of blood
And wanting. Generations of
So much hate, I have wanted to
Dissolve and disappear. And
I have known so much beauty
That I spin my yarns to
Sweet lilies and lanky
River weeds, who tell me
Their tales as well. I know
Brutality and barely fathom
Why love chooses, always,
To speak. I know misted mornings
When dawn, streaked with fragrant
Orange-gold hues, pin my heart
Upon hope and only hope.
I hunger for calm and tenderness,
And daily, I find myself torn
Though ready. Ready for what
Is, has been, can be, will be.
Ready to let the water cleanse
And strengthen me, even as my
Weaknesses breathe their voice.
In the Dreams
To dream of you
Is to make love to you,
And though you are my
Phantom-lover, all is right
With the world. My
Hungry, hungry mornings
Are shattered by nought
But bright longing, fantastical
Shapes emerging, where
Silence sips a knowledge
That will never see
Me lose again. For it
Is not in having you that
I am more, it is in the
Wanting.
It is in the dreams, the
Dreams that never stop.
Feed Me Your Impulse
Must I turn against the flesh and soul that has
Fed me? That feeds me? Love, love me only
But a few times each year, that you might
Bleed from my craving pen more and more
Of calamity's pronouncements. Sweet Muse,
I do not wish to be a black-widow, weaving
My plight and passage with destruction. I
Am as Ishtar, lover, goddess of love, and
Liberal lust. Drenched in sweat and sweet
Blood, as my untempered ruthless heart
Is truly generous, compassionate, kind,
Ever tired and worn. Yet, tell me, what must
I forfeit to swallow you? Where am I to
Tread? Muddy fields? Cold, icy caves,
The visage of millennia
Of secret knowings?
Gentle, gentle rain falls like liquid
Tears, over fierce, hard mountaintops,
Where I have sought you. Where the heavens
Weep her masterpiece that is love's muscular
Rendering, passion's inimitable voice.
I drink all that falls, consuming each droplet
For my strength wanes, and I will not, yet,
Surrender. I thirst.
Today, I will carve cardboard hearts, and
Paste snippets of love poetry upon their
Thin breasts. Inscribing my longing for
You, with cuniformed-clarity, potent, potent
Premises of possibility.
I will translate your embraces and silent,
Distant tears, here, here, now. Bathe me.
Cleanse me. Breathe me meaning. Silks
and spicy gravity. Embrace this chaos
That is but monstrosity pining for your
Honeyed field of fertility. Of purpose.
Let me lie with you, as you ripen with
Sage vision, as I pry the proof of your
Soul's fire, inviting it to spill upon
My belly, rubbing divine delight,
Sticky-sweet like unsinged metamorphosis
Enflaming disaster upon disaster.
Find me beneath you, swallowing
Eternal satisfaction. Find me awake,
Aware, as yet alive with prophecy.
Feed me. Feed me. Feed me.
Slave Ship
Have you? Have you?
Have you disappeared
Within the teeming
Questions. So many
Questions. Each of
Them a pool of grace.
Hear this, and know:
A pool of grace awaits
At the end of those
Questions. Say your
Sorrow. Say your joy.
Let me slip my moistness
Into your cluttered
Landscapes. Let me
Divine your queries.
I am drained. I want
Eternal stamina. I
Murmur nothing and
Feel it all. How do we
Live in those pools?
How do we let terror
Shudder within our
Magnificence? Why
Does the voice of
The Mountain, relieve
So much of yearning?
Come here and whisper
Your warrior wanting,
And your rituals of
Freeing love. Dawn
Can bear all. The
Shock of heartache,
The losses.
Last Breath
She returns home from nocturnal
Meanderings, on the edge of
Love’s tangled, tantalizing
Periphery, and tears pour
From her, as a child who has
Lost a treasured toy, not
Knowing of fragility,
Beauty, and so much more.
She wants only to kiss the
Round, sensual, star-steeped
Sky. Wants only to sigh
His name, as if it were
Her last breath she breathed.
It is her only breath.
Wanda Sue Parrott
Wanda Sue Parrott, 73, is a retired reporter. Her journalism career started with the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1968 and ended in 2000 when she was a syndicated columnist with Senior Living Newspapers. She grew up in Southern California but now lives in the Ozarks Mountains area of Southwest Missouri. She is co-founder of the National Annual Senior Poets Laureate Poetry Competition for American poets age 50 and older and director of Amy Kitchener's Angeles Without Wings Foundation, Inc., a non-profit literary society. She has won many poetry awards, most memorable of which was Champion Hog Caller of the 1993 Ozarks Empire Fair's "Ham It Up" contest for a free verse that ends with a hog call. She says, "I have never called a hog in my life, but I won a fake pig nose that reminds me the essence of true poetry is its power of persuasion." She is co-author of "How to Try Your Own Case in Court--and Win!!" and "There's a Spirit in the Kitchen" (both published by Galde Press, Inc.), and winner of the 2007 Sleuth's Ink Mystery Writers "Mistress of Mayhem Award" for her short sci-fi story "Elfinetta's ETs."
Divine Revelation
I spat some spittle from my mouth.
The last I knew it headed south.
Airborne upon an August breeze,
small exudate, asthmatic wheeze,
spread out until, at my last glance,
it looked like fairy wings in dance.
A passing eddy tossed it high;
drops fell like raindust from the sky.
Then gusting winds from northern clouds
spun cloaks of leaden sputum shrouds.
The sun peeked out, began to strobe,
transformed each shroud to golden robe.
Death-rattle rails from hacker's breast
unlocked true Spirit's treasure chest.
I know not if my spit fell flat.
God took me home the day I spat.
Twelve Lines about Love
The mystery of Virgin Birth
is proven by the worms called “earth”
whose dual-sex function simply means
they're reproductive “androgenes.”
An earthworm needs no outside force
to fertilize its eggs; of course,
it's lonely loving just one's self
upon the continental shelf.
So, who's best off? I must confess
my human love life's been a mess.
Perhaps I'd find life very fine
if I were just an androgyne!
Jennifer (Jinks) Hoffmann
Jennifer ( Jinks) Hoffmann was born in 1943 and was raised in South Africa. She and her husband Alan immigrated to Canada in 1966, where they have lived since. Jinks is a psychotherapist, and also a Spiritual Guide. She trained in the Lev Shomea program, which means “listening heart” in Hebrew. She is on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International. She has three adult sons, and is blessed with thirteen grandchildren. Jinks loves to write poetry, and to work daily with her dreams. These are two of her most loved ways of listening for God...
Jinks may be reached at
Dear Reader
One of my organizing experiences,
one of my “things,”
is to race against time, to feel hurried because
there is too much to do and
too little time.
I have wrestled this “angel”
as long as I can remember.
And again. Today. Here. Now.
The Shadow side of this “thing” is the richness and fullness
of my life;
so much I love to do:
a walk in the sunshine,
buy tomatoes for lunch, asparagus for dinner,
work with my dreams,
do my exercises and my new weight-lifting regimen.
For example.
And all this before I leave
for my Talmud study class
in less than an hour.
The light and the dark of the cornucopia
of my life.
I hate racing, feeling hurried,
tightening my chest because
there is too much to do and
too little time.
Oh, and I have omitted
the most important:
my worship,
my prayer-in-writing,
my poems.
So you see, dear reader,
who is of course only me,
I wrestle now
with my “thing.” Once more.
And in the wrestling, in the worship,
in the prayer-in-writing,
I learn, once more,
that our “things,” our organizing experiences
are seldom cured.
That, unlike Jacob, who wrestled
only once and triumphed
and who received a new name,
we are blessedly “condemned”
to eternal wrestling.
To having the same name forever.
For you see, dear reader,
who is of course only me,
the wrestling can bring us closer
once more,
to the One Who bids us wrestle,
and Who loves us in and through
the wrestling, and Who
right now, dear reader,
is wiping my tears
of relief
from my face.
My Grandaughter’s Eyes
For Maya
This is where I find You, God,
tonight,
insistent, demanding.
In my grandaughter’s eyes.
My seeking, my yearning, my knowing, is awakened instantly.
With a fullness that takes my breath away,
do I recognize You,
Ruach ha Olam
Breath of the World.
My granddaughter has not yet learned
to turn away from open love
to shut her eyes
avert her gaze
from deepest meeting.
My granddaughter has not yet learned
to close You out.
And so she stays,
eyes wide, unblinking, trusting, open.
My grandaughter’s eyes
and I weep
for the meeting with You.
Wendy (Leah) Mesguish
Wendy was born June 11, 1954 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to a free-thinking and creative family. As a teenager she began to write, but settled on investing my creativity in the plastic arts. In early adulthood she chose to convert to Judaism and moved to Israel, where she raised five children. After her divorce, through many personal changes, she began to delve more fully and determinedly into writing. In these past three years that she has been writing poetry she has produced a large body of work.
Hold On
Shadow regrets flying in your face,
Ancient fears stirring it up in there.
I'm taking no shit, enough of this,
You're testy, on edge, tend to shout.
The demons are dancing now, my dear.
I toss at night with something unclear,
Sweat, cry, crack, tussle, and moan.
You can't sleep, too hot, you've got an itch,
Something is knocking around your head.
The demons are dancing now, my dear.
Got you by the throat, twist an arm,
Lay a low one in your gut, bend you.
Take a breath, take heart and purpose,
Hold on, we are going to win this.
The demons are dancing now, my dear,
Easy now, one on one, we'll take them,
Clear as day, clear as a bell, in time.
Pressing
Pressing a question against the future,
Wondering, as I do, what then may come.
What will we cook tonight, which movie see,
And will you be awake when I get up,
Your eyes lit from the night, in the morning’s light.
Our days stretch, tumble, disordered, humored.
And I press a question again, again
Silently, in the quiet garnered from
The edges of our time spent together.
Through a long narrow window I look out,
Particularly when there's fading gold.
I am looking for the future to come
In from the withdrawing day.
Tonight you will be awake while I sleep
In bed struggling with the empty side.
Along with our morning coffee I garner
Touches, breathe loving looks over you, let
Desire sigh for one moment, pass over,
To this or that, pass the time, and wonder.
I'm often wondering, you know, silently
Pressing a question against the future.
Sailing Troubled Sleep
Sailing the ocean of the night,
Holding course through storms of strange dreams.
My arm clasped about you, drift, then
Tack, close haul, reduce sail, pull in
Your back to me, my belly
To your butt, my leg laid over yours,
At stern the caress of a foot.
Your arm thrown back, along my side,
Momentary thrust of a hip.
Then you shift, sleeping face to me,
Trim the hull, point of sail to broad,
Arms folded up against your chest.
I place my hand on your side, arm draped
Across the lulled space between us,
Thigh upon thigh, knee bent between.
Reaching, trim the sails to the wind,
Your arm around me, bring me in,
Sailing a troubled sea of sleep.
Lisa Okon
Lisa Okon came to Israel in 1966. She now lives in Kfar Saba.
Prayer
When all else is gone
Let the words linger.
The tapping foot
The flashing eye
The racing heart
All swirl away like feathers in the wind.
But words are more than memory
They are creation
Renewal
The proof of life existent
When all else is gone.
This Is My Temple
This is my temple
Here we have spent many deep slow hours
Becoming as one.
Here I was reborn
In this room of shadows and light
This is my temple
Here you became the air I breathe, filling me.
You are the sweat that bathes my skin
In the summer heat
You are the fresh breeze that strokes me
This is my temple
Here I have learned to see all that is around me.
I find your face in all faces
Your voice in all voices
And they are music
This is my temple
I have traveled over great distances to meet you
And many years
Wandering through vast desert spaces
Of meaninglessness
This is my place of peace
In the purr of motors, the roar of engines, the clamor of machinery
I can sleep in silence.
I open my eyes and you lead me by the hand
Into wakefulness
In this place of love and lust
You have invited me to enter you
And I have responded
Living with my obsession
Awake in my dream of life
But as they demolish the houses of our neighbors
Let them demolish too this temple
For these words are only scattered markings in the sand
Scratched by a baby with his stick
Or footprints made by bathers
To be washed away by the sea
Michal Mahgerefteh
Michal's bio and photo can be found on the Genesis page.
In Search of Yeeud
Nightly the ladder shines,
and I wake hungry, aware
of You and I. So long ago,
before the amniotic fluid,
You planted my yeeud as
Yehudia. You said, breathe
it, every letter at a time,
till your limbs don the shawl
of thick calluses. But O God,
Here Your image is stained
within a false intent (I shout),
Religion, sermonizing failures.
I live imaginarily, forgetting
my creators, Adamah/Elohim.
Still, from dawn through mid-
day till midnight I give my
thoughts to the eastern skies
till my womb swells. At time
I even hear a faint hum of wings
poking at My darkness; they
know the way of My journey.
I live in the desert among brambles
and thorns looking to find another
Moses, untouched by the bitter fruit.
Glossary
ladder – refers to Jacob’s ladder/conversing with God/angels
yeeud – destiny (Hebrew)
Yehudia – Jewish woman (Hebrew)
Adamah – Earth
Elohim – One of God’s seventy-two names
eastern skies – Jews direct their prayer east toward Jerusalem
wings – refers to angels
Kaddish
All colors gone from the world
Life is redone in black as his coffin
Lowers into the thawing ground,
And I, frail lips and imploring arms,
Scour the distance for my Maker.
Between shacharit and maariv
Through minchah till shacharit,
Sackcloth rends my upper
Garment, exposes the invisibility
Of the unsayable words of the
kaddish: life has meaning, plan
and purpose till death overtakes.
The sun startles into motion; I bind
My left arm in leather straps, warm
Under a prayer shawl, and dance on
Spines of Books, like gravestones.
But within each scripture words that
fortify touch feel hear breathe.
Above the waters of many voices
Prayers, passing intensities, refresh
With language and sound. And as
Shabbat starts to depart sweetly,
Circles of meaning slowly brush
Shoulders with every chorus.
Glossary:
shacharit - morning prayer
maariv - afternoon prayer
minchah - evening prayer
Kaddish - prayer said over the deceased
Shabbat - the Sabbath
My Ancestors’ Voice
Lately I’ve been withdrawn,
trudging the realm of identity.
Your echo gradually increases.
Wacha, my ancestors, it is your
ash and manna that intimately
unveils the words of Torah.
I open my eye. Eagerness still
shines through, and traces of fig,
almond, and olive in bloom.
Curled at the edge of my bustan,
an ache full of fragrance and within
its unfolding a starved soul, so pretty!
Glossary
Mellah - Jewish Ghetto in Rabat, Morocco
wacha - okay in Moroccan Arabic
bustan – Garden of Life
Stephen Mead
Stephen Mead is a published artist/writer and maker of short films living in northeastern NY. Thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web, his work has appeared in gallerys and journals both in cyberspace and his physical space since the beginning of the decade. He has two novels, "Hang onto Your Teeth" & "Where Time Goes", aand a book of illustrated poetry for adults, "Selected Works" available through Amazon.com. To find his links to his other merchandise (cds, dvds, calendars etc.), please visit CdBaby.com, Zazzle.com, Blurb.com, Indieflix.com, Lulu.com, CafePress.com, or just feel free to place his name in any search engine.
Bars
of bottles, the clear, the amber tinted, doubled by a backdrop,
the mirror as stage.
The Tender returns:
all vertical stripes, asks about re-fills, his voice, a D.J's, & suddenly
some comfort to just where we're at:
standing, swaying to song , & almost a vibraphone if these glasses, say,
each finger tracing a rim, were piped through here.
Alas, it doesn't happen. Muffled talk, miasma, occasionally dropped change,
only gives clarity a heightened blur:
that cigarette flicked, that bracelet's gleam, & eyes
as fish darting off to again stare at that screen:
some Cop Show Rerun, a female officer collapsing in sobs before her
refrigerator. The previous scene,
a shoot out, her gun & one young,
drug-frenzied victim. In reality,
this guy adjacent, tweed coat, wool slacks, hair immaculate, turns:
"I just don't get it." Again, the cop on the television.
"What's eating her?" Later,
in a bathroom, bed or diner, we're
worn out wired zealots holding something:
cup, hand, groin, something close
to metal or prayer between.
The Hair Cut
Some music is visible,
Growing slowly from roots.
So, a movement, your hair grew to you.
Was going around like that
near to towing an orchestra?
Or was it more an extra limb,
Breathing legacy's braids?
It's not that I see you as Samson.
For one thing, the sex is wrong.
For another, even if bald you'd be
melodious.
Call me nostalgic. I still love how
the tied beads, as if by training,
swung round from your pig tail
to strike me like a meteor.
I know it was accidental but, going back,
did you find it hard to be
recognized always by long locks?
When the trademark went
what were you shucking?
Beauty as weight? Blonde as a noose?
Was it ritualistic, a passage-rite, liberation,
a kicked-habit?
Whatever, whatever.
Enough questions. Enough.
So, a first visit, feeling like misfits,
we went to the hair dressers,
that salon Of the mod.
Blow dryers? Mousse?
How could one admit to not having
the tools, being new to the tongue?
Poor Hans, man of the shears,
nearly did a wig flip.
My sister, you're iconic.
I knew this while watching, inwardly
feeling the snipping, & you, & you,
facing the prophet mirror, witnessing
the act, what a Mozart conductor
what a lost piece by Stravinsky
finally revealed.
Of course, going home to wash out
The gel, the starch spray, (put out
that cig), the aerosol nets, 'til
you were you were your own hair again
is what really proved the myth.
Tim Congdon
T.R.Congdon has become an unknown figure in modern literature. A televised reading of his poems, Christmas Cards from the Killers, won 2 Pegasus Awards in Ithaca, NY and honorable mention in their National Competition. Recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Editor’s Choice Award from the Vermont Poet’s, Congdon has been published in the New England Poetry Anthology, Risley Review, One Page Poetry, Rainy Day, Voices Carry and the Vermont Press. He is currently filming and producing the New Orleans Poetry Relief to benefit the Lower Ninth Ward and United Houma Nation.
concrete parachute
first time
I drove past the hospital
saw the start of a long cemetery.
it stretched out for blocks and blocks then
over a mile, just as deep
as long.
frederickdouglas, susan b anthony
a whole lot of others buried there.
but here, from the 8th floor in the
bone
marrow transplant unit
atop the medical center
I spend the days
on more drugs now than ever
even at the height
of the psychedelic
wars.
the doctor
gave me a 20% chance and
shook my hand.
I asked him:
with that big ass cemetery out there and
after a month or so of looking out at the stones
has anyone ever jumped?
this morning
a day after my first
infusion of stem cells
I walk the long corridors
past intensive care, surgery,
the family waiting room
to the end of the building that
looks out over the expanse of the cemetery.
through rain drops
held in place on the window
defying gravity
I take in the endless rows of graves and
before turning back to my room
I say out loud:
fuck
you.
Yossi Faybish
Yossi Faybish was born in Romania, where he spent his childhood absorbing a rich cultural heritage. He finished his higher studies in Israel. Yossi has been writing poetry and short stories most of his life. At present he lives in Belgium and works in the high-tech industry while writing more than ever. He has published one book - "The Life and Death of a HighTech Patriot", and two poetry books - "Sweet Tears, Bitter Tears" and "More Like Sweet, More Like Bitter". His poem - "Creation" - won an international contest on the subject of Love Poetry.
Caretaker
Beautiful
on that high pedestal
the adulating mob worshipping your whiteness
your forms
those words hiding inside the marble unseen till seen,
Beautiful,
Lonely.
I wonder if they hear those grains of the desert you so love
filling in the liquid chambers of your heart
the sparking creases of your brain
your iris... so deep, white.
The night comes,
the mob leaves the museum
doors close
and the only memory of their visit are mud traces on the floor
a few lost chewing gum wraps
some notes in the guests book,
echoes... dying.
I pick up my mop, my bucket, my broom,
and walk the halls cleaning, polishing,
alone with works of art and works of heart and life frozen inside eternity.
I stop at your feet
gazing up, trying to catch that eye seeing all
yet not seeing me,
I take the ladder and climb up
stopping right in front of you
no one knows
not even you.
The marble... cold under my lips
melting, quivering when I bite into it, slobber all over it
my hand reaching for the heart, for the sand,
a stain of pink waking up on a stain of white
as your marble nipple turns glowing coal and your breast screams in lust
preventing me from reaching your heart
marble loins part
and I invade your body with flesh wants
and pouring life.
I descend, crying.
looking up as soft flesh turns marble once more,
tears lost in the murky depths of my bucket
Beauty
untouchable as ever
ready for next day’s adulating eyes
and adoring din.
No one knows
the caretaker’s secret
and marble’s sin.
The Book
You let me touch your book jacket,
not yet the book, not even the cover.
I will leave stains, fingerprints,
I feebly objected, eager to touch.
It isn’t new,
you brushed my insincere objections aside
pointing to the miniature tears along the edges,
a few oily stains, one burned spot...
Cigarette? I asked.
Heart, you answered.
I turned the book over and over in my hands
absorbing the smell, the warmth,
pointing to some pen doodles... rings and squares and triangles...
Poems someone wrote for me, can you do better? you asked.
Yes, if you allow me, I answered
and wrote you a poem.
Then laid the book on the table, my cheek on it
ready to fall asleep, it was so soft...
When you wake up I will allow you to peel off my book jacket,
then my dress, my shoes.
Why?
Because you wrote me a poem.
And then, will you allow me to open your cover?
No, you will have to peel my cover, then my lace, my silks.
And leaf through your pages?
Peel my pages, my skin, my eyes.
Why do you keep saying peel? You are a book,
one opens a book, one leafs through a book.
I am also a woman, you have to uncover me,
discover me, then cover me with poetry.
But you are written already.
You will have to fill in the blanks.
Like my heart.
I dreamt of falling asleep on a book,
then sinking into it,
letters settling comfortably insides the groves lining my brain
delectating in the tiny electric jolts I was sending their way.
A woman started telling me her story.
I touched her.
Apocalypsis
It happened one day,
suddenly.
No one could explain.
The sun exploded,
not with a bang but with a puff
its belly bulging for one short, frightening moment of consuming fever
and the next it exploded
into trillions and trillions of butterflies
flying their lazy butterfly way
to... earth.
The chilly darkness, death awaiting
as humans cried and animals whimpered
and the ocean’s face started to freeze.
Weeks, many, later they started arriving,
their wings white
their antennae white
their eyes glowing a deep red surrounded white
landing, touching, flying again, landing, touching...
We watched the one approaching us,
uncaring, us and it,
soaking into the glass and emerging our side of the room
avoiding the last candles still burning
upon shelves and upside down turned wineglasses,
fluttering a few moments above our heads as if hesitating
and finally landing on your mouth.
White... turning pink... turning scarlet... turning red...
was it a roar we heard as it suddenly rose into air
smashed out through the glass panel
all the trillions and trillions of butterflies clustering around it
a gigantic swarm spouting upwards through icicles of air and clumps of void
in an apocalyptic landscape of death and creation...
explosion...
It exploded, the sun,
not with a bang but with a puff
and humans laughed and animals howled and fishes jumped out of ocean’s waters...
I looked at your lips,
not wondering,
knowing.
I love you even more than that butterfly, I said.
And you knew.
Freedom
You
pressed between your own pages,
the steamroller of years passing above your covers...
how many times?
pieces of you sticking to the lead of printed words
seeping through into other stories
and others’ stories
and lives,
your legs bound
your wings clipped
your fingers blunted
your mouth... where did your mouth wander
looking for its lost sighs
of once
and of upon a time?
Did you
try to pull away from the insistent glue
and the yellowed corners
and the smell of shelves
and the fine layer of dust unmarked by fingertips?
Matters not
your cough,
this is just your voice getting ready for the song,
matters not
your creaking joints,
when was the last time you stretched your bones in readiness for the dance?
matters not
those red spots,
the inset of blossoming blush foreboding skin ironed by skin...
finally... you smile?
as you tear your crumpled figure from between the pages
and your breasts swell into flesh
and your hips round into offer
and your clothes rest behind
telling all
of freedom
finally found.
With Morning
You watch for those quarrelsome billowing winds
To burden your mornings with whispering babble
As sunrise persistently shadows rescinds
Unleashing the chords of its chattering rabble,
The ear-scratching dogs,
And pond leaping frogs,
The sniveling grunts of the rummaging hogs,
Sad quavering cars
And smoldering stars
Through hammering sounds of parading red clogs.
Your skin is assailed by an impudent stream
Intent on denying a dream’s call for glory
By battering eyelid’s invincible seam
And turning your flesh into blistering quarry,
The white that you wore,
The shells to your shore,
That smiling denial in beauty of yore,
A shivering toe
A toenail aglow
And drops turning snowbells of countless the score.
Your heartbeat imparts its magnificent croon
To stairs pouring downwards beneath rushing ankles,
Your smile feeds its blush to a vanishing moon
Which constantly whines and eternally rankles,
The music in sigh,
The kite roaming high,
An innocent quest roaming patches of sky
When hand touches hand
And gold tinted sand
Writes stories of love in a famished blue eye.
Jeffrey Spahr Summers
Jeffrey Spahr Summers, Poet, editor and publisher of The Poetry Victims, Liar Liar Pants on Fire, americana photographic, Frank Talk Blog, Bent BackedTulips
blue bird
1) so i caught her once
caught her eye across the forest
a ray of sunshine through the trees
can you imagine the luck
and she flew right up to me
all feathers and blue and curious
she ate from my hand and
when i fed her well and gently
she did not fly away
2) something that doesnt want a cage
something that wants to unlock a door
3) sometimes late at night
i hear her in the trees
somewhere nearby
singing strong
and clear
shes such
a
rebel
Dewell H. Byrd
Dewell H. Byrd is a retired public school administrator living with his wife of 57 years on California's beautiful north coast. He has published two books of poetry and his work has appeared in a variety of journals, newspapers and anthologies. Those journals include: California Quarterly, Mid-America Review, North American Review, Tiger’s Eye, Prairie Schooner, Rattlesnake Review, Golden Words and ReVerb. Dewell is the runner-up National Senior Citizen Poet Laureate for 2007 as designated by The Angels Without Wings Foundation.
Night Heron
Old moon rubs cue dust
blue on the church steeple,
lays a shimmering beam
across the flight of a night heron:
silent hunter.
Patient fishing bird poised
in mid-stride
stares unblinking
into a minnow's eye,
waits, ignores
the sound of trucks in caravan
that rip the night
like glaciers calving,
across the belly
of the bay.
Blue moon on black beak,
ivory streaks of wear.
Fish frozen in terror.
Late snack
by moonlight.
Michael Lee Johnson
Michael Lee Johnson is a poet and freelance writer, author of "The Lost American: From Freedom to Exile: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7. He has also published two poetry chapbooks and has been published in over 16 different countries. Michael publishes and edits several poetry sites: http://poetryman.mysite.com/. He lives in Itasca, Illinois. He lived in exile during the Vietnam era for 10 years.
Manic is the Dark Night
Deep into the forest
the trees have turned
black, and the sun
has disappeared in
the distance beneath
the earth line, leaving
the sky a palette of grays
sheltering the pine trees
with pitch-tar shadows.
It is here in this black
and sky gray the mind
turns psycho
tosses norms and pathos
into a ground cellar of hell,
tosses words out through the teeth.
"Don't smile or act funny,
try to be cute with me;
how can I help you today
out of your depression?"
I feel jubilant, I feel over the moon
with euphoric gaiety.
Damn I just feel happy!
Back into the wood of somberness
back into the twigs,
sedated the psychiatrist
scribbles, notes, nonsense on a pad of yellow paper:
"mania, oh yes, mania, I prescribe
lithium, do I need to call the police?"
No sir, back into the dark woods I go.
Controlled, to get my meds. I
twist and rearrange my smile,
crooked, to fit the immediate need.
Deep in my forest
the trees have turned black again,
to satisfy the conveyer--
the Lord of the dark wood.
I Brew in Broth
When the silence of my
life tickles in darkness
delves into my daily routine
caught in my melancholy music
at times, not exact;
then exuberant auto racing playing
at times, not exact;
(a new poem published or a kick in the ass)
kick smacks like tornado alley
in the tomato can
left over-paste
of my emotions
at times, not exact;
I realize the split of legacy,
of loyalty on its knees fractured
like a comma or sentence fragment,
naked like a broken egg
between friendship and hatred,
I stew like beef then broth
simmering
sort of liked, sort of hated,
not exact.
Poem From My Grave
Don't bring the rosary beads
it's too damn late for doing repetitions.
Eucharist, I can handle the crackers and wine;
I love the Lord just like you.
Catholicism circles itself with rituals--
ground hogs and squirrels dancing with rosary beads,
naked in the sun and the night, eating the pearls
and feeling comfortable about it.
Rituals and rosary beads are indigestible
even the butterflies go coughing in the farmer's cornfields..
Cardinal George, Chicago, would choke on the damn things;
some of his priests would have thought it a gay orgasm or piece
remote found in scripture from Sodom & Gomorrah.
But my bones in ginger dust lie near a farm in DeKalb, Illinois,
where sunset meshes corn with a yellow gold glow like rich teeth.
My tent is with friends where we said prayers privately like silent
moonlight. Farmers touch the face of God each morning after just
one cup of Folgers coffee Columbian blend,
or pancakes made with water and batter, sparse on the sugar.
Sometimes I would urinate on the yellow edge of flowers,
near the tent, late at night, before the hayride, speak
to the earth and birds like gods.
Never did I pull the rosary beads from my pocket.
It's too late, damn it, for rosary beads and repetitions.
Ada Aharoni
Ada's bio and photo can be found on the Genesis page.
To Izmir, To Izmir
In celebration of the saving of the Jews of Spain by Turkey
more than 500 years ago
In Toledo, more than 500 years ago
my great, great, great grandmother Regina,
fleeing the Inquisition's torture wheels
poured Spanish tears into her velvet black veil
and sailed over crimson waves
with thousands of sisters and brothers to Izmir, to Izmir.
She had to leave behind her beloved illuminated poems,
her ancient Bible and painted Haggada,
her father's scientific parchments –
her whole Spanish Golden past floating away
as she sailed with the stars to Izmir, to Izmir
The bird stopped flying - "El Pasharo vola"
the heart stopped crying - "El Koarasson yora"
as it preened traumatic feathers
and nestled on a quaint new roof of beautiful Izmir.
The Turkish mosaic haven lavished filigree hospitality
sheltering a new hope in Regina's amber eyes
on the azure, silvery shores of Izmir, Izmir
Suddenly Regina's noble figure
stands majestically before me
whispering a Ladino message:
"What we should be celebrating today
is the saving of a quarter of a million
of our brothers and sisters by brave Turkey,
and not the cruel expulsion by Spain..."
I listen, nod, and write the poem.
Now Regina smiles again as we fly together
over the wide-open gates of Izmir, of Izmir.
Carla Thomas
CC Thomas has previously been published in The Chaffin Journal, Hot Metal Press, The Litchfield Review, Bellowing Ark, Toasted Cheese, and Raving Dove and many other journals. Thomas has appeared as a featured poet at The Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, Kentucky and was selected as a finalist in the 7th International Poetry Contest sponsored by Mattia.
Thomas currently teaches reading and writing at the middle school and collegiate level and has been in this field for 10 years.
Dreams
Dreams do not go quietly,
nor do they arrive that way.
They come screaming in the night
taking roost in your heart,
to throw out your hopes and plans
like yesterday’s coffee grounds.
Dreams are not ordered from a catalog
or even consciously created.
They are born of the darkest
fears you thought were secret.
Or, maybe, the dream is you.
And everything else
wraps around and over it,
a secret lair of impossibilities.
Until it rips your world apart
like a bomb on a timer
that explodes and destroys
the order you’ve created.
Dreams do not arrive quietly,
nor do they leave that way.
You can force dreams out
with reality hammering away
until there is but a little dream pebble
causing a blister on your soul.
You can also smother them.
Throw your favorite black blanket
of doubt over them,
the one you cower under at night.
Dreams come and go as they please,
keeping to their own phantast schedule.
Landfills of Regret
If I had known I would have
needed your memories,
I would have been more careful.
I would have gazed at you
more intently, memorized
each nuance of your face.
Filled my photo albums
with the real moments
of your life.
Infectious giggle blowing raspberries
on your milky-pale belly;
pinky nub tongue that appeared,
turtle-like, when you were deep in thought;
fearful scream as that first firefly
flew towards your sweetness;
peach fuzz softness of your palm
as you caressed my face,
as in love with me for that one moment
as I had always been in love with you.
Lazy casual days
I didn’t know I would need
to see me through.
I would document each
laugh and tear and sorrow,
collect your tears in a vial.
I could wear around my neck
to ward off your
eventual adulthood.
Our Mother Life
For you, my daughter, at eleven years old
I signed a permission slip for school;
a film on becoming a woman, a pale
introduction to your mother life.
I let you go, as I did, to giggle and twitter
as all the boys, in wonderment, were led from
the room while you joined the secret sisterhood,
learned of the true blood oath.
And your deep eyes when you stepped off the bus
asked me if it was true. Perhaps my silence
says enough for your own body will tell you our
story in its time, aching and lonely but true.
Of those who have gone before us without such
menial creature comforts. No Midol for an aching back,
of hours spent over the plough. Belts and straps that
gave way to cross-weaves and butterflies.
Can we ever truly understand such a mystical pull
that ties us to the very tides of the earth,
the cycles of the moon, so much so that close friends,
roommates cycle together, a revolution of wombs?
Strange to think that while some women ruled empires and
studied the properties of radioactivity, their bodies were patiently,
single-mindedly preparing for pregnancy and childbirth,
over and over again, despite all previous disappointments.
You will worry, I know, and lay awake deep into the night
impatiently listening for the call, wondering
if you will miss this moment, if it will slip by,
this tiny seed planted in you before you were born, my best gift.
So sleep.
Every thirty days, my darling girl, this body that owns you
has plans and schemes we know nothing about,
this womb and clock, an internal bomb that destroys
all our careful plans with such beautiful and eternal insistence.
Lost
How can they say
I lost-
the baby as if such an act
were merely carelessness
on my part,
like losing copper pennies
through a hole in my pocket
I meant to mend,
then forgot?
How can they blame
me-
at all as if every fiber
of my cellular being
didn’t struggle to bind
this child to my womb,
inhospitable place though it was?
Can’t they see
this child-
a seed who has scattered like a
dandelion feather upon a harsh wind,
this child-
who even before her birth
desired such
independence?
Blue Hole
the old man and the coal tipple
square off across the dusty road
one who wants to remember
and one who wishes he could forget
the silver sentinel speaks of times
when life flowed through here like a river
and the yard burst with the laughter of too many children
mama sitting on the porch with a baby in her lap
shelling summer sweet peas
while the old beagle dog napped in the shade of the chestnut tree
the day measured by men coming home
whistling G’yap to the jingling wagons, braying mules
hands thrown up in greetings and goodbyes
the train clacking on the track
and the engineer blowing his whistle
a long and loud H’lo that lasted until
the red caboose sank over the hill and
daddy would be home soon
life flowed through here once like a river
but time has thrown the shawl of dust over
the old man
and the coal tipple across the road
one who wants to remember
and one who wishes he could forget.
Patti Tana
Patti Tana is Professor of English at Nassau Community College (SUNY) and the author of seven books of poems, most recently Make Your Way Across This Bridge: New & Selected Writings (2003) and This Is Why You Flew Ten Thousand Miles (2006). She is Associate Editor of Long Island Quarterly and editor of Songs of Seasoned Women (Quadrasoul, Inc., 2007), poems by 63 women. Patti’s poem “Post Humus” is often read at celebrations of life since it appeared in When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple (1987). Patti reads “Post Humus” and other poems at http://www.pattitana.com/
Mother in My Arms
I am carrying my mother, frail yet substantial,
across a field urgently, as though she’s a bird
who can’t fly and I must restore her to her nest.
Her arms and legs are all angles
so I’m struggling to hold up her body
as we move through this meadow
of long grass and uneven ground.
Yet she is light, light as the silver strands
that fly around her head and brush my face.
Now I see we’re not walking to a nest
but the ocean before us shimmering blue gem
spreading wider and wider.
Wet sand beneath my feet, mother floating in my arms.
Together we enter as we entered this life.
She cradled me in her body and then in a basket
from the coast of California all the way to New York,
one ocean to another,
mother to daughter, daughter to mother.
On Call
And at the end the awful symmetry ––
changing your mother’s diaper, mashing food
then eating it for her when she can’t swallow,
helping her sip from a straw.
Searching for words, I find awe:
mingled reverence, dread and wonder,
the Middle English word for age.
At ninety-seven my mother is full of awe.
It’s hard, this dying.
Her moans are a new sound in our home.
I gave her a bell, but she calls “Patti!”
and I come. Even in my sleep.
Even in her sleep.
At her bedside, I lower the bars and hold her hand,
her other hand reaching for Papa
who she sees with his arms outstretched.
“Papa! Patti! Papa! Patti!” she calls
holding on to hands on both sides of death
Stark Beauty
After she labored to leave her body, my mother’s face
was composed in the stark beauty of death ––
cheekbones defined her heart-shaped face,
pink skin smooth, moist lips and eyelids
gently closed in rest.
I thought she was alive.
How many times had I come to her door
to look for the rise and fall of breath.
Now I place my hands on her chest
that I saw moving just an hour before,
and in this room where she had wanted to die
I could feel her body still warm.
That evening she’d smiled
when I opened the window to cool her fever,
the breeze caressing her skin, and now with my fingers
I comb the long white hair that halos her head
to hear her say one more time,
“That feels so good.”
Moshe Ganan
Moshe Ganan is now 76 years old and feels he is born every day anew. He was born in Budapest, came to Israel 1947 (through Germany, U.N.R.RA. camps, Cyprus). Fought in the Palmach. He studied for his B.A at the Hebrew University, English Department, for his M.A. in Hebrew Literature and German Literature (1996-2006). He has two children, a boy (30) and a girl, (25). He has written nine books and publishes poetry, short stories, critiques in many Hebrew Literary newspapers.
It is not me
It is not me, sitting here.
It is some extraneous shape, succumbing.
The one sitting here, writing, listing numbers.
Maybe listening. Or, ascending the stairs,
Hastens to the vendor, buying a sandwich, a cup of quick coffee,
Snatching a part of some empty discussion around the table.
Only an image. A bubble. It is not really me.
I, meant for great deeds. For fame. For quite other worlds and milieu.
The Lao-Tse-ian butterfly (v. .i [1] Tsuang
who succintly, as usual, hints at its process of )
Entlarving, metamorphosing itself, changed, into a closed room.
Producing a sweet juice flowing freely from an inner, hidden cellar .
Now, here, it is not I. (By the way, the issue is not of
An unpremeditated soaring in a void. It all originates in a time-old, preliminary plan).
But all those hindrances. Impossible to reach. Kinds of obstacles.
Built and structured, lets say, splendidly – to fail.
(Butterflies smeared on grey walls).
Basic intuition. Complaints in grey.
It is not me. (I am colorful). There
Kinds of
Chavah’le
Odd, unique,
Her hair plaited in tresses on her forehead and her face
She has come to me tonight. She did not change. As small as she was,
And her belly swollen. “Aliens”,
She says, “I am pregnant of aliens”.
We strolled in the park. “Be it
I was the one who came to you, it wouldn’t be such a sin”,
I was about to say her, but then I remembered:
Even “Hello” I did not as yet said her.
With great gusto I locked her in my arms. “And where have you been”- I asked her
“For so many years”. “Your mother still also lives” –
She said. It made me sore. Was she ill, then, or even,
Perhaps, in some foreign country? And she is now already seventy-five.
Doubts crossed my mind. “No, she is there”.
And lo! True! She is slowly strolling, still among the green shrubs
A face, a shape like hers I see – young as she then was.
And I am looking
At the face of Chavah’le, small and dainty, in her web of hair,
The blue network of locks covering her face.
Chavah’le returns
This night you have come to me again, my dearest.
My aunt, my mother’s sister, Gisela, (Razale, gazelle, a doe)
Was sitting, her head surrounded by her pinkish locks,
As if she arrived just now from Hollywood.
(The Germans killed her in their gas chambers with her daughter in Auschwitz).
She was a strong-minded woman, hard working, of this world, the wife
Of a factory-hand, - we were waiting for her daughter,
Chavah’le, of whom I have once already told you –
That in a public garden, where also my mother, young as I knew her, was also strolling I met her,
Her belly swollen like one pregnant from aliens. Now we were waiting,
To all eternity, expecting her coming. And, after all the waiting
She really came, shyly opening the fence-gate, a woman
Already well-advanced in years, wide-hipped, strongly built, but even so
Small in size, as she was once.
Remnants of her past beauty were still lingering, shining in her face
Between the wrinkles.
How much I searched for her! After all
Do I not come every night to look for her?
And am coming again, going round and round the house.
It is closed now, no lights in the windows, through the shutters. Still
I will come again; the dream won’t cease to search her.
The House is standing still, Stubbornly empty, now for fifty years – and never a soul there.
And I still keep coming – but no! She is not at home.
Where is she? Did she go on a journey?
Or has she just returned – to play hide and seek?
Or even her brother – where is he? Have I lost them,
With the turn of time. “Abroad” – she answers, as if following the thread
Of some old debate, long forgotten. “He is as of old, a saucy fellow,
Shrugging his shoulders, caring really for none”.
Ho, Chavah’le, even now that you are past sixty five
Still I love you, like in those days long ago,
Trying to find you, who rose in smoke, in your youthful freshness.
* Chavah’le returns
Nicolas Radnothy (Hungarian Jewish poet, died in Yugoslavia, Jas, his poems found in the poet’s clothes exhumed from a common grave): Oh, if I could once again believe: it is still truly there, not as a mere picture in my heart/ All that it was worthwhile to live for/ and there is still what to return to!/ Would it all yet were there! And as of old/ …The quiet summer-end were sunbathing in the sleepy gardens/ and between the boughs pears were hanging …/ and the slow day were drawing deep shadows on the grass… But isn’t it still possible? The moon is so round tonight! Do not leave me behind, brother!/ Shout at me! And I will rise once again!
