Greenwich Village Poets

2009-01-24T07:39:00.004-05:00

Photo by BP

THREE POEMS BY IRIS BERMAN
-----------------------------------------------
A NEW YORK STORY

In the crowds
Of passengers
Standing in the aisles
Through the noise
Of people sitting on
Cracked plastic seats
Yakking to each other.
And their random
Cell phone chatter
Add to that the clamor from the street
From passers by, and cars whizzing by
As the gears of the bus
Grind and whine
Above all this din, a little girl sings out
Random letters of the alphabet
Oh, the lilting “L’s”, the rolling “R’s”
The hiss of “S”, the crisp movement
Of the tongue as it forms a “T”
She trills a tune so gleefully
Staccato rhythms of the city
Imbedded in those measures
I had forgotten how happy
Language can be
She brought it all back
To me as I sat there listening
To her joyful jabber
As her mother soberly
Speaks to her in Spanish.

ON THE FLUTE PLAYER
PHOTOGRAPH IN “THE
FAMILY OF MAN” BOOK

His flute is a chalice
Splintering into snowflakes
Prodded by the wind
Up, Up, into the sky
Descending again
To form teardrops
As his eyes smile into mine.

THE SPACE BETWEEN THE EARS

I am talking to you
Telling you about my day
I want to tell you more
About how I feel
But your eyes are gazing
At something far away

I am growing old here
Cold here
With you sitting so comfortably
On the sofa
This couch which has become too soft
And compliant over the years

The food I prepare for you
In our cozy kitchen
Has become tasteless.
All the salt and pepper in the world
And the cinnamon and brown sugar
Cannot add enough spice.

Our cheery bedroom
With the flowered wallpaper
(Like when we first met and I
Was the wallflower you came to save)
Has become a chamber filled with dread.

There is even something wrong
In the bathroom
With its faint smell of Lysol and cleaning grit
The toilet constantly gurgles
It heaves and sighs in my own melancholy voice
In wave after wave of watery tears.

I am too tired to call the plumber.
Something is blocked
In the space between the ears
You haven’t heard me for years
My fears have festered log ago
We are no longer much of a pair
With you sitting so easily
On the gracious settee
Thinking nothing is wrong
Between you and me.

Iris Berman is a poet who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

2008-12-26T10:47:00.003-05:00

Photo by BP

POEMS BY
JOSÉ CHAVIN PRESSER

© 12/24/08

AN INVISIBLE KISS

Her kiss…written
With a fountain pen
(Empty of ink)
And signed
On the dotted line
By Cupid.

A shipwrecked kiss
Swept out to sea
By the current,
And catapulted
Back to shore by
Fickle, capricious
Waves.

A castaway…left alone
On the burning sand.

Nothing else remains
From that ill-fated voyage:
Nothing, but the roar
Of the sea.

Her lips
Still linger.
Now, only a memory:
A moribund kiss at dusk…

LET’S DANCE WITH THE FISH!

A Salsa dancing salmon, while swimming upstream, saw the following:

A cat dancing with a catfish.

A clown dancing with a clownfish.

A pony dancing with a sea horse.

An angel dancing with an angelfish.

A banana peal dancing with a banana eel.

A carpenter dancing with a hammerhead fish.

A bird dancing with a flying fish.

A fast lover dancing with an octopus.

EL CID dancing with a swordfish.

Fidel dancing with a fiddler crab.

A blue moon dancing with a bluefish,
but that only happens: Once in a blue moon.

A NEW TWIST ON AN OLD TONGUE TWISTER
Everybody knows that
“She sells seashells by the seashore.”

But did you also know that
At the famous Seashore Sushi she saw choosy Susie choosing sushi.

Everybody knows that
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

But did you also know that
Piper Peter’s patter pitter caused
the pitter patter of Harry Potter.

I’m sure you’ve asked yourself the following:
“How much wood could a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”

But have you ever asked yourself:
How much soup could a soupman sip if a soupman could sip soup.

ARS POETICA

I dive
From the highest diving board
Of my mind
Into a sea of words…

Words, whirling on their heads
Words like magnets
Moving at the speed of light,
Colliding with each other,
Exploding at different levels of reality.

Particles of words...inventing new words
Creating new worlds.
No boundaries, or limits or roadblocks to see.

I ride
On the magic carpet of poetry:
A cornucopia overflowing with words.
An extraordinary journey of the mind,

Beyond the horizon...
Beyond the “ne plus ultra” of infinity!

A NEW YORK CITY CABBIE

A New York City cabbie
Accused of being so blabby
Was really very flabby:
An eccentric New York cabbie.

Not only was he flabby,
Not only was he blabby,
This New York City cabbie
Was also very crabby.

He yelled and was obnoxious
Then he took us to the lobby..
The lobby was not shabby!
But throughout the entire trip
This guy, he was so gabby!

What a character this cabbie:
A flabby, blabby, crabby cabbie.
Should I write to Dear Abby?

JOSÉ CHAVIN PRESSER is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop

2008-10-09T05:49:00.005-05:00

Photo by BP

11 poems by Pud Houstoun
..........................................................

QUICK GLANCE

A cloud sweeps west at sunset,
a long swirl of soft magenta,
the moon, a silvered curve.

White mist remembers the
light of today, street lamps
glow soft pink on brownstones.

Windows, yellow, follow one
by one down the tree-lined street.

NEWS PHOTO

Mothers, where are you?
Is that your son lying as in
sleep upon that armored tank,
his arm folded to his face, his
hand, if still there be one, his
domed head turned as to breathe.

Did he recall the smiling tears
of those with patriotic pride
who cheered him off to "Hell."
More precious, to the vultures!

Now, despairing sobs;
a medal for his life.
Mothers, where are you?

GRACE CHURCH
..............Bach at Noon
..................Patrick Alan, Organist

Like throbbing waves of the sea pounding rocky cliffs
we are spirited with hope triumphal, being transformed by
the chromatic sounds with Patrick Alan, on the organ in
such passion and dedication to Bach’s genius.

TURN TO THE POET
.......................to Denise Levertov

Words stream like rivers, ocean waves,
sounding waterfalls, of sorrow and joy,
leaves, grasses, thistles grateful to the light

weaving through the changeling rains
floods treasured by the earth, wept,
hungered for with bird song echoing,

a mist rising beyond the unknowing --
in a plea of gentleness.

JULIANA

She’s in my arms, a bundle of sleep,
April born after winter’s thaw,
when buds stir with promise of more,
together we planted a garden to keep.

POEM

meadow wondering
Sky so blue
we tumble into tall grass

...............Frogpond

A FOUNTAIN IS FOREVER

With each gushing jet, I imagine
courtiers and their lovers rising
falling in a ceremonial dance of
glistening mist forever pursuing
grace of life, thriving in a world

to conquer or submit to indignity,
enduring heartfelt losses; being
renewed in a flow of love and
forgiveness. I am drawn beyond
my belief, my insight to wonder

on each gurgling rush, reflecting
the crystal light of this summer day.

SOUND OF WATER

At his touch the keys
become a melodious wash
of tumbling stones, a floss
of seaweed in a swirl of wave.

Chords thunder like breakers,
pebbles and shells strewn along
the sodden sand becoming a
whirlpool of crystal light.

Trill glisten like silvery sand
in a rapid scale runs to a curling
spume of stillness, cry of gull
to hush of dunes.

FELLOW POET

His poems are a deep murmur,
rumbling of sadness, loss with
an attempt to change the past.

There’s a kind of holding back
treasures not quite realized then
or now, a heaviness, a closing-in,

a sense of retreating to a lace
of silence but not yet quieting
enough to withdraw entirely.

No warm light seeps in or would be
welcomed. He carries a burden alone
on a hill that never finds its summit.

WISDOM/ANGUISH

Those scraps of phrases scattered,
bring to justice to form a moment

in time, missing now on a slippery
slope, stashed somewhere yet taunting.

Wisdom if ever there was...
now, to anguish for all things done.

Rush on to the present, forgive losing
treasures, float on the still pond.

Take flight swooping with the
blue heron gracing the meadow, green.

IN WONDER

Sorrow and joy creep upon the stair
we scale attempting to discover
a stasis in out of life, a bond a lover,
losing balance we stand and stare.

PUD HOUSTOUN was a member of the Jefferson Market Poetry Workhop.

2008-10-01T18:40:00.005-05:00

.........................................by Pud Houstoun

Pud Houstoun, a long time member of the Jefferson Market Poetry Workshop, passed away. She will be missed by us all. I thought of Pud as a true New York City force of nature. She was indomitable in spirit and energy always going somewhere. An award winning poet and painter. She recently received a coveted POLLACK-KRASNER grant. Her paintings have appeared in many shows and her poems have been in Midwest Poetry Review, Rattapallax,, Token, Acorn, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Mobius and many others

STILL

A brooding emptiness

under the moon

drawn across the night,

time and tide linger

deep into the dark,

still as ice, broken only

by a sudden embrace.

If you need to contact her next of kin or find out any info regarding a memorial please contact me: Brent Pallas at email: sallap@aol.com

2008-09-21T05:42:00.005-05:00

Photo by BP

Callery Pear Tree
.............FOR JENNIFER

Looking down the street toward
the river, under the vaulted ceiling
formed by the green ribs of your
summer growth — seemingly all so very you,
I forgot that mere weeks ago you
were that tough street-wise survivor,
caged trunk, missing limbs
all-weather bark and naked branches
standing alone, defiant,
until your stunning spring debut
your brief exuberant coming out
flush with white blossoms overflowing
to blanket the street, blushing, seductive,
reminded me …
deciduous, changing expressions,
facets of some deeper, hidden essence:
this is who you really are.
Oh, how I love you, Callery Pear.

...............-- W. J. Davidson

W.J. Davidson is a poet and also edits the Westview Poetry Corner Poetry Corner: New Voices

2008-08-29T06:06:00.010-05:00

Photo by BP

. WHAT MATTER WE
.......... ...-- Obit' Oh, Amy Thomson --

.............I...ceased; and through the breathless hush
.............That answered me, the far-off rush
.............Of herald wings came whispering
.............Like music down the vibrant string ...
.....................Renascence -- Edna St. Vincent Millay

We saw a shoot of star stuff sky
It lit its candle, up side down high
Forever Mar More sea fluff flies
From Vineyard Haven, go Amy ride

What matter are we all of us
In tale trial trails 0' tears as such
Worset sorrow e'er now ides
Tomorrow Thomson lilac lies

Will 0' the wisp, whippoorwill why?
Yesterday whisperers "dusking tide"
Eternal journey paradise child
"Waiter another" mother of isles
.
"Gee whiz" for sure she speaks still eyes
Oz, Moses, osmoses, cosmostist blue sky ...
.
.............-- E. Kearon Lorenzo.08/18/08

Edward Lorenzo is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-08-19T18:04:00.006-05:00

Photo by BP

A BAD NIGHT AT POKER

He went out with the boys to play poker
And came home a wounded warrior,
His wallet empty as a quiver,

All its arrows shot
And not a one of them making its mark
He skulked into the bedroom

Looking for love,
More to be held
Than to take me by the force
Of passion, a certain amount of that
Dissipated by a bad run of cards.
.
We slip into bed in the shape
Of a "C", my back to his chest.
How glad I am my warmth comforts him.
How happy I wasn't born
An Amazon woman,
To go to war with a helmet
Flattening my hair,
To have to kill a man with a spear,
Me, who can hardly bear
Slicing a steak.
.
I would have come home
Bent like a bow
In retreat before I had tried.
The only part I would have liked
Was riding on horseback,

Which reminds me,
As soon as he recovers I'll ride him.
His thrust can take the place
Of the conquest
He didn't make last night
When his queens lost
To somebody else's kings.

.......................-- Linda Rothstein

Is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-08-18T09:27:00.003-05:00

Photo by BP

Who Knows?
I wonder if anyone can really hear me

Are my words just amusing sounds

That beat upon your ear drums

Then bounce among the clouds?

I wonder who can really see me

Where I stand or why
Or if I seem some sort of illusion

A black floater in their eyes

Does anyone realize when I've touched

them
I know they feel it

Cause they move
Or am I like that bump you took

The only evidence an unidentified bruise

I wonder if I'm better off

Making a difference of no significance

Or should I insist on recognition

And chance the sting of indifference?

--Arlene Cassarino

Is a member of the JML POETRY WORKSHOP.

2008-08-18T06:00:00.007-05:00

Photo by BP

(A poem in progress)
FROM HIMALAYAN HEIGHTS

I made a friend in India last night
a technical support man as he's called
but Swapan is his given name he said
In Hindi it may well mean Help is Here.

Tell me what your problem is he asked
in a cheery voice yet with authority
is the power off, not query but command
on the phone he seemed right at my side.

This meeting with my Hindi help-mate came
as my newly purchased printer baffled me
though Staples said installing was a breeze
I soon was lost as complex prompts appeared.

I'll take control my new friend volunteered
the tone still friendly but to be obeyed
suddenly from 6 thousand miles away
my cursor moved across the yielding screen.

Without my touch by seeming magic means
with clicks both right and left I don't control
Swapan has gained from Himalayan heights
the printed words required for this poem.

...................-- Lou Gersten 3/25/08

2008-08-17T20:27:00.007-05:00

Photo by BP

"PANIC ATTACKS"

No use panicking

.....over money

Just make it

.....over teeth

Take care of those that are left

.....age

Roll with it

.....truth

Deal with it

.....guilt

Forget it

Give yourself

.....some credit

No use panicking

............-- Phyllis Krim

Is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-08-17T07:22:00.005-05:00

Photo by BP

EMILE ZOLA IN A PHOTOGRAPH

WITH HIS MISTRESS, JEANNE

CIRCA 1900

Gentlewoman
Who knows better than I? Justice
does not rule our lives or the tender

weight of any dream.
At the theatre the zinc candelabrum
imitate the Florentine bronze —

a green deceit.
Act III: The murderer goes free to kill
again and again. The sweetness

on the old prostitute’s lips
is not love but hunger’s unforgiving
touch, a sugary paste she steals

off the café’s plates
as the Fat Man carries her away
into the boulevard’s shadow.

Every life
feeds on itself. The serpent is wise
devouring the head first — a bright

narcotic.
Or does the soul dream? White fragments
of the whole being reefed

in uncertainty,
distrustful of strangers. But do not tell me
the moon’s pale fire

through the curtains
is any less than the white
hats of the bourgeoisie bobbing

like sun-bleached flowers
along the Rue de Clichy. Precise
measurements make a still

life. A pose. A boat.
A mere reflection in the current
watching our children

feed the swans
on the lower lake. Maybe this world
is more than light, than you

Jeanne
unbraiding the long silken breaths
of your hair, than a beggar

breathing warmth
into the cold nest of his hands.
Nothing is as ordinary

as it seems.
In the still lens
of an imperfect world

joy flows, sorrow
is motionless, and there are never
any secrets from the maid.

......................-- Brent Pallas

Is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-08-14T09:24:00.004-05:00

Photo by BP

Wordsmith
..........for Lorenzo

Not only do you bellows

the fire to fashion
your horseshoes,
but you lock in the gears

and crank up the motor
to make your carousel reel.

The stallions and mares glitter

as they glide up and down
to the magical music you pipe in.

You bid us to jump in the saddle,

dare us to reach for the beckoning

brass ring.
And when we stretch,

and when we grasp it,
we find that tile "brass" is pure gold.

You lament the lapse of your member's

membership in the League of

Whambammers, but take heart-
you won't be dismembered by our

Society of Wordsmiths.
Your status there is completely secure.

And when you set sail from
the Port of Poets on that journey

to the calmest of waters, you
will leave behind a treasure trove

for future catchers
of carousel rings.

Like the best poets, you are

a wordsmith an alchemist

who turns brass into gold.

...................-- Jerry Halpern 10/2007

Is a member of the JML POETRY WORKSHOP.

2008-08-14T09:14:00.005-05:00

Photo by BP

AND NOW

Each breath, I wonder, the last ...

I fear to be as the wild flowers

of the field, scattered dry
on the autumn wind, no bird

singing, no one passing by,

no return to a burgeoning
of poppies cherry red, bobbing

on the pond's reflection,

never again a moment of insight

bringing a poem to perfection, or

composing a painting pulsing in

pigment and gesture to fruition ...

Ochre leaves rustle in the evening

breeze, one last hush of bird song as

the sun lies on linear hills, granting

me a deep-breathing sigh of sleep.

.............-- PUD HOUSTON

Is a member of the JML POETRY WORKSHOP.

2008-08-14T08:50:00.007-05:00

PHOTO BY BP

6 POEMS BY HOLLY ROSE DIANE SHAW

The Flower

For a few moments
Glory serendipitous synchronism

What am I doing?
What are you doing?
With the gifts we are given?

With our few moments?

Seemingly Seamless

Threads of splendor weaving golden seasons

in and out of one another
spring's lust summer's passions fall's regrets winter's resignations

wearing all glories joys sorrows
until love's threads of time become thoroughly worn out.

Such Brief Kisses - Ours

Don't sweep away
the falling petals fragrant blossoms

silken memories of spring.

Sun Appearing

from behind a cloud

shadows of a poet's hand a butterfly

on notebook pages.

Waves of Pigeons

Soaring circling the sky leaving returning
two left behind..... .....catching up ..........slowly
maybe they wanted independence

then realized dancing is better with friends.

Chance

How can this be?

Our lost flower

found elsewhere -
somewhere we have never been!!

..................-- Holly Rose Diane Shaw

Is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-05-26T16:06:00.001-05:00

Dear Anne Doggett: who just sent me a message via the no-reply response on this blog. For me to get in contact with you I will need an email address. Please send your question to sallap@aol.com for a response.
Thanks
Brent Pallas

2008-04-24T09:54:00.004-05:00

Photo by BP

THE RUSE OF FIDEL CASTRO RUZ

Fidel Castro is in the news.
Fidel Castro has the blues'
Cause his revolution failed:
It was nothing but a ruse.

Now he does not get applause.
Instead, all he gets is boos.
The times have changed for Fidel,
And now his ego is bruised.

And the Cuban people suffer
Lack of food and lack of shoes.
Fifty years: "Hammer and Sickle"
Means fifty years of abuse.

So, Fidel, times are-a-changing--
We all heard it on the news.
With so much blood on your hands,
It is you that we accuse.

What goes around comes around.
Now you have to pay your dues,
And if you had hopes of winning:
Instead of winning, you'll lose!

What a phony—Mr. Castro:
Is that you singing the blues?
Now we know all of your tricks:
Fidel Castro is a ruse.

.................-- José Chavin Presser

José Chavin Presser is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-04-08T06:41:00.005-05:00

Photo by BP

Pebbles Thrown

I cried till all was silent within
My hand extended, yet
Found no offerings –
To rescue and
Bless and
Cleanse my soul.

Only dry scorching sand
Of memories past
Was blowing

Staying in corners of my eyes
Blurring
Blocking vision of
God’s things beautiful,

Except for concerned
Thoughts and opinions
Thrown carelessly at me.

It all settled down at
The bottom of my soul,
As if pebbles thrown
Carelessly into pond,

Creating circles of
Forgiveness and
Forgetfulness for --
Life has to go on.

WINTER SKY

The Moon --
Bleached pale skull of
A man, or something or,
Somebody high above;

Darkness…
So vast and
Engulfing,
Gulping
Intruding
Swallowing all
Of one’s ambitions…, and
Workmanship, and
Life.

Blow off, misplaced
Homeless clouds
Crawling, sliding
Across the night sky,

Leaving a foamy froth of
Boiled over milk-like
Illusion…
Sending one’s thoughts
quickly home –
To warm comfort of
Hot steaming fragrant milk;

But the Sky
Is Dark,
Darkest I have seen
This Winter!

..................-- Nora Glikman

Nora Glikman is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-04-07T15:45:00.002-05:00

Photo by BP

CHRYSANTHEMUMS

Now, the last chrysanthemums
Are poised on the edge of winter
In a clay pot on the windowsill.

What silent alarm told them
To bloom indoors, away from gardens
In the cool of autumn, the pale sun?

All year they burgeoned green, green.
Then the buds appeared in multitudes
Of lavender and gold – gifts for loss

Of summer – Altruists, how they gave
And gave, flower after flower,
Whether in the open air

In small squares on a city
Street, or in an airless room.
When I see their hot yellows

Circling meager trees along the curb.
I know again what I’ve always known
But seem to have forgotten:

Earth still hangs beneath
These sky-borne hives of stone.
How to thank them for their light

When days grow cold and darken early,
Th sun a blur of its molten self:
Mums who tach me all I need to know

Of blooming, early, or late,
In any earth at all.

DRY RUN

Lying in bed, holding my breath,
Arms crossed on my chest,
I imagine a tag on my big toe,
Jane Doe. I take inventory

Down the length of me. Goodbye
Legs veined like rivers on a map,
Fulcrum of my wheel – pudenda –
Sparsely fuzzed as a peach.

Goodbye breasts that once swung
Like lady apples when I bent
To lover’s work; aureoles pale,
Nipples silent as buzzers someone

Once pressed to let him in.
My eyes cannot see themselves,
But see the other. My head
Must be there on its thin stalk,

A reliquary of memories
Brittle as the finger bone
Of a saint; my voice offering old
Sorrows dark and sweet as fudge.

Dear one – myself – fear not.
This was only a game of death
To practice resurrection.
Now, rise!

-- Gertrude Morris

Gertrude Morris is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-03-25T11:13:00.003-05:00

Photo by BP

2 POEMS BY WARREN SPRAUVE
............................................................

ANGEL

An angel
Cried for me
Aloed droplets at her feet
Making her way
Toward the break in the clouds
No more
Chances for me

An angel
Cried for me
Her assignment she had to keep
But the last grain began its descent
No more time for me

An angel
Cried for me the tears dried
Her bow arched
And she released

TIAMBER

She clings to my heartbeat
for she still has yet to break way from the warm rhythm of the womb
I wish I could hold her here forever
to far from forever but

One day

I will have to tell her that
All the world is not warm and all the world is not rhythmic
The sky’s not always clear and
Sometime when the rain falls it stings

And one day

I will have to tell her that
No matter how she feels or what she does
some just won’t love you
others will just want to replace you
and if anyone if anyone should ever hurt you
Fire would fill my eyes and

One day

I will have take a step back and let her live her life
let her find her own way and

One day

I will have to leave her and one day
Unable to hold her and
She clings to my heartbeat
For she still has yet to break away from the warm rhythm of the womb
I wish I would hold her here forever
Too far

.........................-- Warren Sprauve

Is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop

2008-03-24T10:16:00.005-05:00

Photo by BP

This is a poem by Wendy Cope. I heard her on the BBC recently and surprisingly enjoyed her work. I say surprisingly because it is mostly in rhyme schemes of one form or the other. She is very popular in England and goes after websites that put up her work without permission. She states she makes her living from her verse which is remarkable. Don't come after me Wendy please. I just bought 2 of your books and they sailed over the sea here from England. I really do like her work. Listening to her on the BBC however she sounded quite humorless though her writing is extremely witty.

BEING BORING

If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.

There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion-I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last,
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.

I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.

................................-- Wendy Cope

Clicking on her name will take you to a site called THE WANDERING MINSTRALS. A great site for poems.

2008-03-07T10:41:00.002-05:00

Photo by BP

Revive Me, Oh Lord

And I Shall be Revived
Renewed
Refreshed
Sustained

By You, and Surely Will
Give it Back, All
You Have Done for me

For my Mother
And Daughter
And Others,
So Many,
So Many…
Countless of Souls

Whispering Your Special
Soothing
Comforting Name
Above all Else, above

The World that’s Blind and
Shallow

But You,
Great, Most
Merciful
Heavenly Creator
Lover of All Doomed, and
Unforgiven

Please,
Care for Us, and
Throw Us not Away

Deliverer King
Lord of Love.

....................-- Nora Glikman

Nora is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2008-02-27T05:42:00.002-05:00

Photo by BP

life's a bird's stomach

carrying the fate of raspberries

................-- George Spencer

Is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop currently living in Quito, Ecuador to escape the cold weather perhaps. We are anxious to have you back George.

2008-02-24T06:33:00.009-05:00

LOW RENT in Singapore...Photo by BP

2 poems by Ciaran Berry

Tapping In

I go out to the early hill
That's sheened and bristled after rain,
A world made clear, come to standstill
Nothing to goad it toward a change

Or redefine a weather shape
That's stalled between a clear and dull,
That swabs the crack of dawn landscape
In silence, unperturbed and full.

I go out to the rocks above
Those small holdings, scant Carna farms
That learn their owners love and death
Season to season, arm to arm

They break this earth and make it work
These sons of meager acreage,
Primal alchemists of the dirt
They pass their art down as the age.

I go beyond where there are walls
To bog uncut, to common land
Where briars and whins scrab, catch and maul
The flat flesh of the parting hands

That lift them up to let me pass
On further up the soft incline;
They close behind me once unclasped,
Quiver and slowly realign.

I go until I'm beyond view
Between bogholes and further in
Through green fleshed folds that cleanse, renew,
That move as water over skinInto me wavelike, regular,

The bogs low pulse divined and tapped
Fuses blood and mind together,
Feeds famished thoughts on its brown sap,
Lets me within its ancient vein.

...................* scrab - colloquial of scratch

The First Sting

It's the summer of my third year
And I have slipped for once unchecked
Into the fields beyond my bounds

Where my short body will not stretch
Above the wild grass or the stems
Of African daisies where bees,

The season's door to door salesmen,
Alight from stamen to stamen
Bartering, for nectar, pollen

Spores they have extracted from
The yellow flesh of the male plant.
My small arms flap up after them

As my fingers ache to capture all
The things that rise and lurk beyond
The limits of my current reach;

Holding is grasping I have learnt
And I mean to hold everything
In those soft, threshing hands of mine

That careless swat at the loose air
And come back empty as they were
Until the first sting cuts their flesh

To teach them hard a fear of bees
That is lifelong as any fear
That settles on the self in youth.

Ciaran Berry’s first collection of poems, The Sphere of Birds, has been published in North America by Southern Illinois State University Press (as the winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition) and in Ireland by Gallery Press. His poem, “Electrocuting an Elephant,” was selected to appear in Best American Poetry 2008 by Charles Wright. Berry lives in New York City. I recently met him at a reading for the new magazine LOW RENT at Lucky Cheng's on the lower East Side of NYC. It was a terrific venue for a reading in the back room while on the other side of the curtains transvestites entertained seated guests. It worked for me. Loved the reading and getting to meet, though briefly, Jason Koo ( poetry editor of LOW RENT) and Ciaran Berry and his companion Hope. And I appreciated the free drink or two. I admire Ciaran's work and LOW RENT is a wonderful new literary magazine that highlights four writers (Fiction and Poetry) in each issue. All the best.

LINK for: Low Rent Online
LINK for THE SPHERE OF BIRDS purchase:
Amazon.ca: The Sphere of Birds: Ciaran Berry: Books

2008-02-23T06:41:00.006-05:00

Photo by BP

TWO POEMS by HOLLY ROSE DIANE SHAW

.......................................................................

MY INSISTENT LOVER

Autumn .caresses. nudges

pecks at me

leaves falling .falling .falling

showers of gold whirling .twirling

caught in winds .veils

pushing .pulling .swirling

surrounding landing

in capricious wreaths of joy

around my honored feet.

TENACIOUS

in wild December winds .snow .slush .rain

after most leaves have long let go

stands one vibrant aspen tree

with myriad last green and yellow-green leaves

still holding on .still holding on.

Holly is a member of the JML POETRY WORKSHOP. I know she's not on the internet but I hope she sees this some day.

2008-02-23T06:20:00.004-05:00

Photo by BP

WOULD YOU...

Would you abandon me to rust in the rain?
After all the years we spent together,
Would you have me taken
To a forsaken cemetery
Surrounded by wasteland as seen from the train?
Would you abandon me to rust in the rain?
We were friends for a long time
I didn't come cheap
You paid quite a lot for me
And it was years before I was yours
To keep but I kept on running
For you, serving you, taking you
Everywhere you wanted to go
Don't you remember
The beach, the fields flowing by,
The fog in the mountains
In and out of cities and forests and
Parking garages, would you
After all this time together
Abandon me to rust in the rain?
Would you let them take me away
To those forsaken places you see from the train
Row after row of faithful, abandoned companions
Left alone to wait in the dust
And be picked apart for parts.

....................................-- DEBBY DIAZ

Is a member of the JML POETRY WORKSHOP. She will probably hate me for putting this on the blog but I really love this poem. And I did finally spell your name right.

2008-02-23T06:05:00.005-05:00

Photo by BP

SUNDAY CROSSWORD

They make it tough. Why the hell

Would I know the ingredients in a sidecar?

That Isaac means laughter?

I don't recall that Isaac was all that funny.

Is it hubris? I did insist on

MARCEAU for mime instead of PIERROT,

ERA for EON, a common error.

Betray for descry instead of DETECT.

Mid-week something falls into place.

Why there Thursday what wasn't last Sunday?

What shuts the door one day

And opens it the next?

And what ribbon of thought,

Threaded through the mind's maze,

Heads to the mot juste while tossing in bed

At four in the morning?

Finally, staring at the bare little squares,

I radomly fit any letters into them at all.

A blank space, an empty space,

Is such an affront.

.....................................-- NORMA NOVAK

Is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop who neither types or goes on the internet but I do hope she sees this one day. It's a fine poem. One of her best.

2008-02-23T05:50:00.003-05:00

Photo by BP

Advice for a Young Artist

When you start out, as you soon will, reach
into your backpack and pull out sheets from
pages not obliterated but increased from stiff cardboard in
galleries of what will be left to be drawn later.
Avoid tracing sculptor's contours, nor stretch space, the
solid clay expands museums; sketch only with charcoal for
fear of losing too much, for fear of conceding to
a sharper realism. Nor duplicate imagery.

What is left then for an artist's rendition?
The thinker atop a block of stone, the wall-
to-wall Mexican mural favored over the field painting
en plein air. Is it possible to travel through
the ages? For you only the introverted atop a
balcony of shaded mansions, suffices. The bound soul
of the stretch of the imagination, the Manhattan privacy
that structures the nightmare. Each talk captures that which
cannot be spoken. In an architect's dream, the subverted
symbol, Displayed like a bauble for socialites to get
returns in, and a tapestry of figures to collect modernism.

On a tight precipice, the staleness of clean galleries,
subverts you in a flighty thought, in a spiraling
image, Bid by no one. Who has stolen the
net of conjuring symbols? These are things we cannot
weigh, or huddle by in the fire of perception
our spectatorship, compelled, now, centered in the
silence, stared at within glass encasements.

In it, an art student sits cross-legged, the clean
realized sophistication of fellow artists singles him out, and
with an impressionist's stroke over a wheat field, yellow
strands is all we see of him, who sits unaware.

Be with us, in the corner in the ivy
or if you should fail at your attempt, camp
outside our window in the soundless world of faith,
starving and packing large swathes of color in the
cold world, with all the muses of inspiration.

......................---- Jonathan Andrew Perez

Jonathan Andrew Perez is a young poet I know.

2008-01-31T09:45:00.001-05:00

Photo by BP

2 CLOWN POEMS
.............................................................

VILLANELLE FOR A SAD CLOWN

Why is it I'm such a clown:
Humming to the same old tune
Long after the show's shut down.

The crowds are gone but still I dance around.
I shuffle now. My knees are both a ruin.
I cannot stop being such a clown.

My makeup runs. I wear a rumpled gown
I need a bath, a meal, all soon
After the show has been shut down.

My thinking has not at all been sound.
I find that each morning, night or noon
I cannot stop being such clown.

Why didn't I play it straight -- why did I clown?
Why didn't I come to my senses soon
Not long after the show wound down.

Long after the show wound down
I shouldn't still be barking at the moon.
I cannot help being such a clown
Long after the show's shut down.

..............................-- Linda Rothstein

Linda is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

.........................................................................................

THE CLOWN’S MOTHER

She’s worried. He’s out again
in his big shoes, confident
as a clear blue sky radiating
bewilderment like the spring sprung.
That little pinch of disregard popping
its red balloon in him. Every habit
of the inappropriate filling his pockets
concealing doves with endless blossoming scarves.
Look at me, he seems to say.
Some inner ball of faith bouncing
at the precipice of every occasion:
birthdays, picnics, elephants lumbering
toward retirement. He always
comes back. She knows this. Safe
as two hands tucked away into pockets.
His big red nose a moon glowing
over the dark and dishes of every moment,
the playlot bullies, the unswept debts,
whatever refuses to budge.
That's when he walks in without a breath
of doubt, slipping on peels of disbelief,
a king in his element, grasping reason
like a squirting rose, a grin drifting
through an angry crowd, juggling saws
with the wings of whatever he touches,
resplendent as a leaf blown in
from the rain, carelessness
dripping off his big floppy shoes.
While all her earthly burdens: the would haves,
could haves, should haves snap and snag
in the wind like just-washed pajamas.

............................ -- Brent Pallas

Brent is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop who couldn't resist putting two clown poems on the blog.

2008-01-31T09:28:00.000-05:00

PHOTO by BP

The End of Natasha

Anyone can write good poetry if they apply themselves
sufficiently, or learn to prepare champion dishes that everyone
loathes and despises, but to appreciate a life long in eager
wonder and full expectation of reward in such enterprises, that
is something occurs more rarely.

One assumes, as the Greeks and Egyptians did, that such
bearers of infinite grace will live forever, but Natasha is there
to prove that they were all wrong again -- though it's a pretty
conceit, I'm sure she'd be the first to admit

.....................................--Geoff Leone

Geoff Leone was once a member of the JML Poetry Workshop. He now lives overseas. He contacted me via this blog. Thanks again Geoff.

2007-12-06T17:05:00.000-05:00

2007-12-06T15:09:00.000-05:00

10 POEMS BY E.F. WEISSLITZ

Let me tell you how I came upon these poems: Last week I received an email from E.F.W.: Someone (e.f.w.) surfing the internet for names had come upon a member's name from the workshop . They then found that person on this Blog and contacted me to forward their email.

They also included a brief note about themselves. It seems E.F.W. is/was a widely published poet. From the poets brief info (publishing history)and initials I was able to figure out who they were. I contacted them and requested more poems. 10 are below. They are all lovely, terrific poems. E.F.Weisslitz has been in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, The Carolina Quarterly, The Beloit Poetry Journal and many other publications and has yet to have a book of her work published. A shame.

.....................................................................................

CURRENTS UNSEEN

A curled leaf moves

swiftly away from the
edge of the pond.

The water is absolutely still.

Thank you, small vessel,
For your gracious lesson...

(Untitled)

These bursting yellow pears I hold,
In burning hands so lately cold,
My quiet autumn day confound;
I feel my fingers pressing round
In quick delight - old thoughts renew...
Ah, who's to say when summer's through?

SECRETS

Not everyone may
hear him,

but you and I know

the moth pleads
with the flame -

Send me away,

Send me away!

(Untitled)

Spring said I will seize you
and it is true
I had to lean back
before the tentacles of green.

MEDITATION

The pine-grove is
filled with snow
and quiet

as Paradise
must be quiet.

You do not
deceive me,
Earthly Beauty,

my pine-grove
is quiet a minute
and the quiet of Paradise
is eternal.

PRANA

Thinned in the fingers
of the wind the leafy
hemisphere is like a
feather drawn between

our own. So closed and
spread and closed again
we see the breathing
of all things.

(Untitled)

If I did not bend
so close, lily of

the valley, how would I know
what is hidden in the

coarser leaf?

CANADA GEESE

I do not know
if they migrated
this way a thousand
years ago or if they
will a thousand years
from now, but they are
still all about always
to me the way they
reach back into my
own years when I
hear them and look
up and see them
and remember they are
on that list of things
we may have nothing
to say about.

AMARYLLIS

You are a fearful guest:

your flamboyance derides
our northern austerity,
your extravagance intimidates
our parsimony; you dominate

the whole room,
snubbing your little
purple cousin -

but, then, your visit here
was forced...

BARNSTORMER

The "airport" was a tan stripe
in a field of grass;

I remember pilot that trip
when you flew low for me
so I could see how the cornfields
were laid out -

Do you remember pilot my friend
how we skimmed the yellow miles
on the wings of an afternoon,

You shouting to me in the sun --
isn't it peaceful here--
isn't it peaceful here?

COSMOLOGY, ANYONE.....Is there really a floor...an endplace...at the bottom of it All -- a rest from strings; waves; black holes; angels on pins; big stuff, little stuff....

......................-- E. F. Weisslitz

2007-12-06T07:46:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

Are you sure, you're not just dizzy...

With all the constant universal spinning

Spinning of different revolutions

While being held

To a great stone ball

Rolling

Grateful for the cushioned atmosphere

Could it be

You think you see clearly

Because we're spinning

So fast

Things stand still?

I think we're all dizzy

try not to get in the way

............................-- Arlene Cassarino

Arlene Cassarino is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop

2007-12-06T07:20:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

RECOVERY

Hyacinth perfumes the air;
a solace longed for. I vision
colors flashing before me;
violet, cobalt, alizarin crimson,

yellow, touching, blending,
scattering in swift brushstrokes,
images emerge from isolation like
flowers flourishing, animals of

the fields on trails of the hunt,
wood ducklings peep, their house
mirrored in the pond where rushes
sweep under the wooden bridge.

A purple martin preys on insects
in the dancing birch tree. With
a red-wing's song I celebrate
working again in my garden.

......................-- Pud Houstoun

Pud Houstoun is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-11-12T03:15:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

Oh, my little…

We love the kinglet
and the chickadee
the tufted titmouse,
the quintessential bird,
the plump little bead and butter
of the dime store potter,

Chia Pet ceramist, doll maker,
cartoonist, tchatchke collector,
forgodsake these flyers
have button eyes,
little beaks, tubby bellies like
rubber ducky squeeze toys.

Non-birders titter at titmouse,
I did, but they take peanuts
from your palm, and in their silly
tiaras, stay all year with
the lower middleclass of no
second winter homes.

Kinglets, some with gold crowns,
twist of lemon in a fizzy drink,
are gorging on maroon berries.
I think they had sooo many they
fly in loop de loops, Tweety
Bird bouncing off park benches,

but they'll be heading out
like my best friends with a
fortunate confluence of time,
health & money, and perhaps,
purplest nectar of zaftic salvia,
"a special travelling companion".

Oh well. The feeders are up.
I wonder if there'll be chickadees.

...................-- Mary Orovan

Mary Orovan is a member of Jefferson Market
Poets; she sends hugs to the workshoppers, and
a request for edits, tweeking, tweeting, even. Dah,
get rid of some of the the's, and cut, cut, cut.

2007-11-10T09:02:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

Dan Kelty is a poet I recently read in the NIMROD INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL 29th Annual Awards Issue. The poem TWO WORLDS was a finalist in The Nimrod/Hardman awards for The Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. I enjoyed all three of his poems. I was too lazy to type the third. They have a distinctive voice and outlook and perhaps a few too many commas. But I've read them quite a few times with pleasure.

2 POEMS by Dan Kelty
............................................................

TWO WORLDS

And what would you be in the other one?
The same engine, that stick of grass, the
same smoke rising over town? A shadow
in a window, composing itself, outlining
the answers to July, and August
and the entire beguiling season?

What would you step into and how do you
imagine it? Colorful, as flower prints,
or more like a negative with all its secrets
cryptically encoded?
And though you have watched one or two
close friends fade slowly into the August light,
and imagined a hush and a slight swaying,
you think it may also be
loud and garish and unbearable.

But always it must be in August, this entryway,
because August sways and leans its back
on doors, and on the cottonwoods, issuing
its goodbyes day after day, into a light
that has begun to recede from this one.

THIS NOW

Now, with so much behind me, lines and mesh screens,
And the small pools after a rain, their silent wishes
Fading into them like a handful of pebbles;
Now, with this street and this tugging forward,
Train-like, into a succession of mornings,
The promises heaped upon it like coal.

We know, now, placing our bowl of minutes
Before us, that the knock upon the door
Is now, will always be now, and that
We must answer with a wish and a hush
Because this will unfold before us forever:
Verdigris and shimmering.

2007-11-01T08:56:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

sonnet written in an alabama laundramat

laundry grows as stars fall over 'bama;
missing socks, handkerchiefs, half a pajama.
me in line with Downy, Dove, some quarters.
not responsible for clothes with zippers.

the radio preacher shouts out his text
john 12: all sinners brimstone and wild sex
while all those thongs burn out the next dryer,
for the sonnet such incorrect attire.

then's the hard part, the turn circuitous,
this horrible rule, this part confuses us
but while pentameter rules the sonnet
with cliches and textbook rhymes we'll fake it.

the dryer's broken like this quasi-tome;
dripping wet, clothes and verse, shoulda stayed home.

......................................-- George Spencer

George Spencer is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-10-26T05:57:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

BLIND DATE

poetry?
his eyebrow lifted
I only read non-fiction

poor fellow
no time to waste
on wondering

gliding across the moon…
migrating with butterflies
to Mexico…

or lingering in
the lives of
other folk

no visions of drifting
on golden leaves
in late October

he cut his meat
into little square pieces
looked up at me ....and smiled

....................... -- Barbara P Gordon

Barbara P Gordon is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-10-25T04:01:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

THINKING ABOUT LOSS

Ruthie died
just as the tender green shoots
of spring
thrust into life around her

a flower of a woman
slim and curly-topped
made of goodness
and bubbling laughter

my young cousin
who helped me build cities
of smooth wooden blocks
with arching gates and turrets
when we were young

who held my hand all day
when my father died
a silent affectionate presence
bulwark against my greatest loss

as she fought
for every breath
still marveled at the
beauties of this world

who will hold my hand
against her loss?

...................-- Barbara Gordon

Barbara Gordon is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-10-24T09:10:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

ATTITUDE WITH LOVE

Trembling I come to you
Singing weakly my tale of pain
Stumbling over words I can't explain
While you sit and watch me

repeating my one refrain
The one you best tolerate
Hoping that you'll understand
How hard it is to articulate

Knowing that you'll hear me
Still unable to listen
I succumb to our ritual
And assume the position

......................-- Arlene Cassarino

Arlene Cassarino is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-10-24T08:28:00.000-05:00

TERESA: who wrote a message to my post on Natasha (Tash) Sylvester;
please write to me at my email: sallap@aol.com. My name is Brent Pallas.
I will be putting together a hard cover book with the help of Kathryn of Natasha's poems. If you have any of her poems please send copies of them to me by email or snail mail. It would be greatly appreciated.
THANKS SO MUCH

2007-10-19T18:21:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

SALT WATER BRINE

Mister of the watch, Master of what?
Aweigh ketch a sail to Katmandude
GPS plots and measured knots
Prayer flag regatta, high altitude

All hands come about, refraction fixed
Horizon Venus sun ever verse sexist
Declination minutes units in eunuchs
Mark speed o’er ground, easy each miss

Ne’er sink swim flotillas from depths below boat
Reservoir fathoms rapture, nor’ east west or blow
Poop-deck, down wind open sea-cock
Pink pony poem Paris, call Polaris land lock

Sextant my mirror, lo-cal queue late noon
Dead reckoning parallel, Islamic moon
Chart a way-point, magnetic rose float
Achilles binnacle, nearsighted coast

Outbound downwind, a grounding reef
A sleep with the fishes’ kelp and keep
Bleach sandstone shell, bone crystal shore
Spring tide the storm’sle sky isle weep

Beware lea shore and shallow channels
Sailors in flannels with bell bottom camels

.......................................-- E K Lorenzo
10/16/07

E K Lorenzo is a member of the Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop.

2007-10-17T06:54:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

IN MEMORY OF NATASHA SLYVESTER

Natasha was a past member of the Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop and a long-time resident of the village. She lived only doorsteps away from the library. A few years ago her interests took her elsewhere. I know she was working on a children's book and other types of fiction. I know she loved Keats (she gave me a book of his sonnets)and George Eliot passionately, a few glasses of wine at dinner, her corner health food store, Martha Stewart, her friends and reading; not necessarily in that order. I last saw her for dinner about a month ago on 13th street and 6th avenue at a restaurant called SPAIN. We had a great time. I know she adored her daughter and her grandchildren and her daughter's husband. She will be missed by all who knew her. And by me. Natasha goodbye.

Photo by BP

AS FROM THE DARKENING GLOOM
A SILVER DOVE

As from the darkening gloom a silver dove
......Upsoars, and darts into the eastern light,
......On pinions that naught moves but pure delight:
So fled thy soul into realms above,
Regions of peace and everlasting love:
......Where happy sprits, crowned with circlets bright
......Of starry beam, and gloriously bedight,
Taste the high joy none but the bless'd can prove
There thou or joinest the immortal quire
......In melodies that even heaven fair
Fill with superior bliss, or, at desire
......Of the omnipotent Father, cleavest the air,
On holy message sent. -- What pleasures higher?
......Wherefore does any grief our joy impair?

..................-- John Keats

........................................................................................

12 Poems by NATASHA SYLVESTER

GROWING UP

Each week I bother to gather wild flowers.
I take my scissors and go into the woods,
Out to the fields and up into the hills,
Sighting a few deer and families of Canada geese.

Each week the wild flowers change:
Orange honeysuckle, blue gentian, pale-pink primrose,
Now spiky purple larkspur or dark brown cat-o-nine tails,
Miniature lemon snapdragons, Queen Anne's lace, and black-eyed Susans.

Each week I bundle them up and set them out
In tall vases and tiny squat, white pots,
Grouped to show each special bloom,
Extremely delicate, fine and spare.

Each week I wonder what their real names are.
My mother would know, I say. I do it for her
she never gathered wild flowers.
Perhaps I do it for myself.
..............................................March 15, 1999

......................................................................................

THE LEGACY

I went to help her pack the many books
ranged by subject in sturdy wooden crates,
retrieved from the streets, tucked along the walls,
under mammoth light-filled artist's windows.

They will go to the city library
to be sold to collectors and students:
philosophical treatises, art books,
the Japanese/English dictionary,

poetry, novels, scientific tracts,
mute proofs of our human development.
We pack and stack and label the cartons,
ignore the solemnity of our loss.

The truckers arrive, leaving the shelves bare,
deleting out friend's lifetime as guardian.
What, ho, to landfall, you silent hailstones,
full-blown and burning deep in our minds.
......................................................................March 2000
......................................................................................

SPRING HARBINGER

the bird is cooing outside the open window today,
its tail dusting the sill.
My darling, I tell it, my darling,
Do not get your hopes up.
You are not invited inside to hide again
on the shelf packed with avian statues:
........The winged Delft candle holder
........The clay spotted "measle" bird
........The brightly painted Mexican pigeons
........The wooden Cape Cod mallard
........The yellow plastic "Woodstock"
losing yourself in the world I control,
escaping into the guest room
as if you had been invited,
shivering in dark corner,
scattering a twirl of feathers and pellets,
ignoring our wall of separation,
........scaring us both.
...........................................................February 28, 2000

......................................................................................

PUSHING MY FUNNY-BUTTON

She makes me laugh
out loud and rolling
holding my battered
....."Daniel Deronda."

Rich, preening Hanliegh Grandcourt
.....aided by his Iago
destroys gorgeous wife Gendolen,
.....squeezing the last drops of greed.

All the while George Eliot
.....the astounding polyglot
supports her lover's hare-brained wife,
.....his legal children not his own.

Just as I think to cry
.....she tobaggons down
Hanleigh's narrow, specious nose,
.....brings Daniel in to shovel.

I wonder how she does it
.....standing way back there
and reaching across the ageless morass:
.....she makes me laugh.
........................................................March 14, 2000
......................................................................

LIKE LOVE

I have a plant with elephant-ear leaves,
soft and pliant, green and shining.
Sometimes I touch it gently.
Sometimes I forget, even starve it.
It will not die.

I marvel at its strength,
its perserverance: new shoots,
relentless, unending but contained.
It transcends its simple pot.
Is this like love, I wonder
.........................................................December 1999

.....................................................................................

JULY FOURTH, MANHATTAN

Second Avenue, a red riverbed
shimmering, stopping
then streaming forth
oblivious of revelers
crowding the FDR Drive
hanging over rooftop parapets.

Erupting in thunderous explosions
that ricochet off concrete and steel
clusters of multi-colors refract
in the skyscraper cave
acting as history’s mirrors
slightly dulling the sharpness, the pain.

At the edge of the night-blue sky
the black water
the glorious and brief display
stretches across centuries
iIn repayment for
the terrible price of birth

........................................................................

MOON TALK

The October cat tiptoes daintily
round the rooftop’s guard rail
a small white autumn ghost
some memory of mordant nights

It stops atop the corner post
surveying the golden sphere
all four feet united in one spot
balancing like a seal on a ball

Ears pricked, it emits a protracted note
drowning the roar of the city’s violence
a deep tone pulled from somewhere
far below the earth’s spurious wraps

Perhaps bereft of too brief mother-love
or saddened by inbred feline wisdom
of denied parenthood, stripped and lost
communing alone with the silent moon

......................................................................

DIRGE

The abandoned dog howls
All day and long into the night
The dog alone tied to the tree

Circling in agony and yowling
Strangling its hind legs
Immobilizing its circuity

All but the path from its larynx
To its chops, parched the pitiful
The lone dog wailing

Leashed to the lolling willow
Its pale leaves swinging silently
In the wan night-time breeze

Only the rudtling of the grass and
The crickets and the dog’s cries
In the quiet shafts of the moon

...........................................................................

WINTER EXPERIENCE

Often with snow
..........I sight the birders
..high over the Hudson
under the stand of cedars
..frost-coated, stately

My dad in his Christ-of-the Andes pose
..........no saint
..no Francis of Assisi
winter birds pause
..........crackling sunflower seeds
nibbling millet from the sleeve of
..his Harris-tweed jacket

As the nuthatch scurries
..........down his trouser
..he turns to my mother
..........the supplicant
his long goofy smile

......................................................................

THE MARRIAGE

The promise is clear
..........no shadings
..no shifting shadows

preserved against time
..........like Manet’s violets
..in a blast of light

Moments proceed
..........in the private
..turbulence of minds

leaving the vow
..........a lingering question:
..What will we see?

.....................................................................

Autumn’s leaves descend
wildly, from glorious heights,
returning to start.

.......................................................................

Short nights, unnoticed,
disapear slowly -- frog songs
replaced by school bells

2007-10-14T21:45:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

Bridge Under Construction

I want
....................to tell you
something
....................if only
I knew
....................what
it is
....................my mind
has become
....................a
slippery slope
....................words
tumble over
....................the edge
language & image
....................collide
on the bridge
...................between right
and left
....................brain
syntax
....................jacknifes
causes a pile-up
....................chaos
there is
....................ink
all over the
....................page
i rubberneck
....................can't help
i'm just
....................passing through

Roses & Refried Brains

roses are red violets are blue
I wanna learn to play the kazoo
doodle loodle loo
buzzabuzzaroo
boomchickieboomchickieboom
BOOMBOOM
l’s kju oiut 9 uiojqa 005 rkoi
joijn ahuep a qoiurt, or
as they say,
khhjwpgj ajh hbalv jka aih!

rosetta stones may break my bones
but language will never hurt me!
HA!

Do you know what jive is?
It’s bogus, man!
Go back to your crib
get down tabula rasa
then tell me what you knew
before your brains got scrambled.

Refried brains. Mmmmmm.
Could use a little salsa . . .

That rhythm section is really
burnin up the kitchen!
Layin down some heavy shit, man.
Boomchickieboom etc.
(You get the idea.)

But, do you get this:
kaujo ou qaiu ipq ioou v oqwoitu, or
as we say in Portuguese,
Eu n„o sei o que eu estou
falando sobre mas È aprovado.*
(and that ain’t avocado, man!)

*I don’t know what I’m saying but it’s okay.

.......................-- Patricia Michael Morimando

Patricia Michael Morimando leads the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-10-13T04:55:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

season of pain

I search for
good weather of
the body
unrestricted opening
of every day
summer's thick and
salty passions

Remember when
breath was breeze
and in and out was poetry

Pain makes me alive
.............consciousness
how puzzle pieces fit and
are unfit

Oh to be unaware
the glide of walk
swing of arms ..temples
unthrobbing
glorious oblivion,
not knowing that joy

is feeling nothing

One fall
we go from
wonderland to winter

Sink into the pillow
into the space between
the notes of melody

Be still now revel still
......you hear
the music .for you it
still plays

........ -- Mary Orovan

Mary Orovan is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-10-11T06:40:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP

THE HITLER OF IRAN

CAME TO NEW YORK CITY

He came after Yom Kippur.

At the beginning of fall

Spreading his message of hate...

He said: "Tall buildings must fall."

How persistent is your memory?

"Never Again!"-Must Not Be!

I see soft watches are melting

On this Daliesque, old tree.

Instead of leaves, tongues will fall,

While silence is on the rise.

Never drown the voice of freedom,

Or it will mean our demise.

Yes, Hitler, I know who you are,

And I know all of your tricks.

So get ready for the journey:

Your ride on the River Styx.

................-- JOSÉ CHAVIN PRESSER

JOSÉ CHAVIN PRESSER is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-09-10T03:30:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP....Canal Street NYC

Umbrellas in Storm -1

Split, stretched –as bats’
Skeletal broken wings exposed,
Laying in pools of muddy rainwater
Metal skeletons forsaken-
Of service no more,
Left by roadside
Like fossilized remains
Resurfacing after floods.

Storm-shattered umbrellas,
Drenched wings still flapping,
As those of a moth in
Last moments of life.

Lowered crumpled sails, of
Used-to-be umbrellas --
Going nowhere. They’ve
Been abandoned, discarded, yet --
Not at owners’ will, but
Snatched away,
Accosted by frivolously
Maddening, commanding figure of a storm.

Protective shields from wet invasion were
Stolen, pulled effortlessly out of men’s
Flimsy hands.

Seizing gasps of wind
Inevitably invasive, as if
A giant mouth - gulping, crunching,
Spewing out shambled remains
Dispersed on sidewalks of a city,
Undermining, swallowing passers-by.
Umbrellas – tents of past refuge
Ripped apart, dismembered by
A wild beast of wet rage.

Parachuting umbrellas
Stripped of their frames,
Their substance stretched
To limits, disheveled.
Metal structures pulled apart
As giant knitting needles
Dropped in disarray, as if
An old knitter
Fleeing for her life.

Umbrellas in Storm -2

…And then some others scattered, as
Giant porcupines shoving crooked spears
Into passersby. About them a very
Hungry look, as they seemed to be
Tagging at our sleeves.
Umbrellas’ lonely shadows still
Searching for masters that’ve been.

Walking through a stormy city
Trying not be swept by wind,
It appeared - I was passing the
Cemetery grounds of soggy
Ruined shields of life.
Empty shells lay everywhere,
Breathless, gasping –
Not finding life.
Flesh was stripped from their bones,
Skinned alive, dismembered –
Left to die.

Deflated remains of umbrellas’ souls
Still floating by and around,
Even though tossed aside -
They rise, gathering speed
On volatile mission.

…And so, once upon a time –
As history implies,
The safety-shields
Protecting heads – were
Gratefully respected, their
Sturdy legs persistent and strong
Held high with pride and showmanship,
Paraded in everyone’s sight,
Were viewed as irreplaceable.

They had a life of their own -
Young and old,
Frail and strong.
Senoritas of flowery substance
Flirtatious or shy, with
Long fringed eyelashes swaying
Playfully on their walks.

Umbrellas in Storm -3

The old, wiser carriers’
Umbrellas with heavy rusted legs
Trembling and swaying,
Unsure, insecure they were held
In shaking worn-out hands. Those
Raven-black, enormously big and lopsided,
So scary they appeared.
As if they would collapse at
Any moment, even as
Owners’ weary hearts.

Umbrellas’ souls are in travail
Obligated, chained to hands of men
That led them into service,
Rendering their hearts
And then – discarded.

Slight wounding, reaping of
Flapping parts, as bird’s
Broken wings;
Being accosted by life’s
Mischievous intruder wind,
The future with partner
Overhead is – sharply, speedily
Abbreviated, and
Is - no more.

.................-- Nora Glikman

Nora Glikman is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-09-07T16:27:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP....New York

LOCAL 32B
(US National Union of Building Service Workers)

The rich are different. Where we have doorknobs,
they have doormen -- like me, a cigar store Indian
on the Upper East side, in polyester, August.
As the tenants tanned in Tenerife and Monaco
I stood beneath Manhattan's leaden light
watching poodle turds bake grey in half an hour.
Another hot one, Mr Rockefeller!
An Irish doorman foresees his death,
waves, and runs to help it with its packages.
Once I got a cab for Pavarotti. No kidding.
No tip either. I stared after him down fifth
and caught him looking after me, then through me,
like Samson, eyeless, at the Philistine chorus --
Yessir, I put the tenor in the vehicle.
And a mighty tight squeeze it was.

.........................-- by Michael Donaghy

Click below to read about Mr Donaghy and hear him reciting his work
Michael Donaghy - Poetry Archive

Was born in Bronx in 1954 His collections include Shibboleth (1988), which won the Whitbread Prize for Poetry and the Geoffrey faber Memorial Prize, Errata (1993) and Conjure (2002). In 1985 he moved to london to work as a teacher and musician. He died in 2004.

2007-09-07T07:53:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP....Two Men

2 POEMS BY DONALD JUSTICE
--------------------------------------------------------
UNFLUSHED URINALS
lines written in the Omaha bus station

Seeing them, I recognize the contempt
Some men have for themselves.

This man, for instance, zipping quickly, head turned,
Like a bystander innocent of his own piss.

And here comes one to repair himself at the mirror,
Patting down damp, sparse hairs, suspiciously still black,
Poor bantam cock of a man, jaunty at one a.m., perfumed,
...........Undiscourageable...

O the saintly forbearance of these mirrors!
The acceptingness of the wash bowls, in which we absolve
...........ourselves!

On The Death Of Friends In Childhood

We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.

-- Donald Justice

BELOW click the link for a FREE PDF of his poems.

Free Poetry E-Book:20 poems of Donald Justice

Donald Justice died in August 2004. He was born in Florida in 1925. and for many years was a faculty member at the University of Iowa, where he was connected to its prestigious Writer's Workshop. His poems have only improved with time. Everyone should read Donald Justice.
They are simply lovely, understated and elegant and in the end they will touch you with their loss and their love.

2007-09-06T05:21:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP....Little Girl with Stuffed Animal on Her Back

Brash

We curl along the paths
of summer float on
dandelion parachutes
in heating air,
we are hi silly as
Marsh Mallows,
Sunflower brash,

and we don't care,
we are almost bare
in our halter tops
sweat flirting between our breasts
looking for the wild lake
where we bob blue
.........clouds spilling stories,
fantasies
wave as we loft
nipples hard
in the fresh
of water
any every hair
stands &
giggles "alive"
.........in Tiger Lily days.

.................---- Mary Orovan

Mary Orovan is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-09-05T04:28:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP.....Vertical Blinds

blind joyce

serpentine in dawn boots
my army's uniforms inspected daily
and always hose slip down the shanks
and marching will be random
like love sick girls in exclusive boarding schools.

moe larry and curley will be my generals
will be paid per annum plus piece work
which is fair and ethical since an exact outcome is difficult to measure

we will fight thru pellucid light to dazzling phonemes
for leave to loll loiter long and for and yes to sun
and rivers reflow to sea(son)s new
waves jousting jousle
all forward engine full speed screw-torqued
sped spode spud
new potato on chipped china
sparrows spring make
and malison cliche sideshow the overheard

in the undiscovered country no river vu, no 5 b/r's
glissando into open fields of synapses
untriggered -metered -paginated
where there is no goldbeater's skin

and hot fire unfurls cinnamon buns
the goo asserts itself and life is good

---------------------------------------------------------------

patriarch d duck

Non illegitimi carborundum

Don't let the bastards get you down

..................-- Anonymous.

engels were right the family home is commodified
especially if the patriarchal d duck is part of the deal
with his common daylight reproductive rights
and with him around nature's electricity
barely swells the squash in the vegetable garden.

so for now forget grand schemes and eschatology
we are just peanuts in a circus of giggles
there is no ringmaster or he's drunk
looking for a left-handed monkey wrench
a sky hook an honest man
and this will not end until mama torches winter's house
but remember while we wait
we live in a galled garden
of unlighted plastic flowers
fruit littering the Astro Turf
a snarly little god with a flashlight
writing parking tickets in the underbrush...

..................-- George Spencer

George Spencer is a member of the JML Poetry workshop.

2007-08-31T08:49:00.000-05:00

Mourning Dove....Photo by BP

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

Yictove Eugene Melvin Turk

February 28, 1946 -- July 29th, 2007

Yictove was in our workshop for several months. He was a gentle giant of a guy. An old-fashioned gentleman, always gracious and soft-spoken, but when he read we all listened. He had a deep sonorous voice and his presence alone in a room seemed to bring a great peace, strength and comfort. He will be greatly missed by the Workshop Members and perhaps even more so because his brief time with us seemed to promise so much more.

Born February 28, 1946 in New Orleans, Louisiana, as Eugene Melvin Turk, but known to most as Yictove. He is survived by his daughter, Chiemyah Lunn and his four siblings: Erna Blazio, Ann Lecompte, Consuella Elizabeth Battin and John Carl Turk. He is preceded in death by his loving parents Eugene Turk and Malvina Turk. -- from his Obituary

Below is a link to Yictove's Wikipedia page.

Yictove - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

.Social Studies

School Board employs me
to substitute teach all
the pleasant teenagers
throughout this city,
kids who are multi pierced
and lipstick double dosed.
Weedheads and pill filled delinquents.
How can I save them from insanity?
How can I make them prone
to roam the streets of America?
How can I make them
irresponsible and carefree?
I do the best.
I read to them poems
of Bukowski and I dismiss
them before the final bell,
allowing them to walk
the halls with noise and laughter.
Days to come,
one of them might kill someone.
One of them might become president
of the United States.
All kinds of possibilities
in this school district.

* * *

FEBRUARY 28, 1946

I was innocently bystanding
when things all around me went crash whiz
went heat melting steel bullets.
I was in a daze and didn’t like it.
Legs felt weak.
Presumed rocky road before me
would not stop rocking.
Smoke filled sky.
Air I breathed was hot.

* * *

67

I didn’t go war.
I could not believe,
could not fumble with the blood.
in heady headache days
with purple sky I choose peace.

* * *

Reggae Dog

I gave my dog the name “reggae”
He’s a wise old dog
I say stay he stay
He’s a dreaddy dog

He’s dread that way
he barks roots rock reggae
fleas don’t bite him
because his skin’s too tough

bigger dogs don’t fight him
because he fights real rough
he likes to drink stout
and sniff my spliff

he likes to listen to the music that makes him drift
all the cats in the neighborhood stay away
and stay away they should
he walks the yard he walks it hard

..................... by Yictove Eugene Melvin turk

2007-08-22T05:31:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP....Woman Outside Building

MY PARAMOUR FROM PARAGUAY

She didn't say she had someone.
For her it was just having fun.
She broke my heart that very day;
After the fling, she went away.

I kissed her once. I kissed her twice.
I kissed her thrice. She said to me:
You, I adore! Let's kiss some more!
My lips were sore. I lost the score,
But we kissed more Under the sycamore
Under the sycamore tree.

Was then she said: "Oh, kiss me eight:
4, 5 & 6, 7 & 8 [And it was great!]
Now, kiss me nine...for you are mine."
And it was fine.

She said: "SÍ, SÍ! You are for me.
You (r) (d) Juan (d) Juan (4) me."

"But I'm not Juan, I AM JOSÉ!!!!!"
"You are not Juan, you are José-
That's not O.K." I said: OY VEY!

She left that day. She could not stay.
She went away to a distant shore...
We kissed no more!

....................-- JOSÉ CHAVIN PRESSER

JOSÉ CHAVIN PRESSER is a member of the Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop.

2007-08-20T10:12:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP....Branches & Building

PSALM FOR NOTHING
.........................for Alexandra

There’s still time to still
the pull of movement with something less.
Ignore the gentle nudge. The wiggle of impatience.
Stay on the curb. The yellow going red.

Steam rising in the warm tub of this moment,
clouding every mirror of effort. A little sphere
of pebble left alone in its corner of shoe.
Moss cloaking every least vowel of desire.

The mere warmth of self in and out of bed.
Months of snow trickling into April.
The mind trimmed near zero, some insignificant
half-time of chatter and chips.

Without urgency or regret, any dangerous
excess of breath, the reluctant heart accepting
less and less. Living in a trailer out back,
an old cousin who goes with the place.

Like it or not the garbage never gets out
and those rusty pipes hiss their rain
while broken windows leak small winds.
I would prefer not to, is what Bartleby said.

No river of explanation can complete a scene.
The yogi on his gray slab of concentration.
The sky drained to a blank above his mountaintop
while the great yawn of existence stretches

back into his being. Knowing the now
is a soul at peace with the firmament
and fully reclined, a La-Z-Boy of reflection
letting the last tenant flick off the light.

Sloth-like, chewing slowly, frame by frame
in the sunlight, a precise, unhurried instrument
of the never taken. Every thought concentrating
through a tickle of leaves downward to its nap.

.......................-- Brent Pallas

I put this up for a friend in England (Alexandra a.k.a. Alex) who just looked at the blog. Thank you very much and asked where my poems were. So I put one on. There are a couple in previous months.

2007-07-02T14:37:00.000-05:00

Words I love you so

I chase you thru the alphabet
crash the hardness of “c” and “k”
roll over “n” charge feeble “v” and “w”
Words you slip thru the sibilance of “s” and “z”
hop over commas run over explanation marks
round enjambments

Ah here's a sentence, a paragraph
we're nearing the end of a chapter
I'm gaining on you

and you think you can hide in parentheses
never
i have you

But sadly you're just letters
slip thru my hands
escape into my dictionary my thesaurus
you and your miserable friends

So many words
So hard to catch the right ones

...................-- George Spencer

Before & During....Photo by BP

RoosterMan

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Battle To Baghdad is a fast and easy to learn game for ages 6-adult.
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products

He comes from a long line of RoosterMen
and now his fighting cocks are bloodied, torn
and there's no animal hospital for the disposable.
Why should there be, he once thought?

But now there aren't enough of them;
starving victims of peddlers of mealy chicken feed,
freezing, their winter feathers plucked at the first sign of snow,
fighting spurs blunted by their Secretary for the Defense of the Flock
who spends his time in the marble chicken coop on the hill
lying to dozing elders too feeble to fight
but can still strut preen and squabble:

i voted for
.............against
...................maybe
........................i don't remember.

and then they appoint a commission
(to report in 25 years)
to find out if poorly trained poorly equipped fighting cocks
will ever come home alive
if RoosterMan open-eyed dreams on and on.

........................-- George Spencer, July 2007

George Spencer is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-06-27T09:58:00.000-05:00

Statue, Netherlands...Photo by BP

The face that launch'd a thousand ships

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!

Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.

Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,

And all is dross that is not Helena.

I will be Paris, and for love of thee,

Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack'd;

And I will combat with weak Menelaus,

And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;

Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,

And then return to Helen for a kiss.

O, thou art fairer than the evening air

Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;

Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter

When he appear'd to hapless Semele;

More lovely than the monarch of the sky

In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;

And none but thou shalt be my paramour! --

.................-- Christopher Marlowe from Dr Faustus

of course this never happened

2 black cops checking a suspicious white guy

at the greenwich country club.
he's armed with a driver, a 5 iron.
hard to see white men in the bright sun

100 bullets

fifty from each gun.

..................-- george spencer

george spencer is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop. Christopher Marlowe is not.

2007-06-22T06:36:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP...TREES

A WALK IN THE WOODS

We rustle the leaves

through a narrow path,

a blue jay spirals by, singing.

The sun makes its way

in long golden slashes

to a small, almost hidden

clearing; a surprising stone

sculpture in a niche of sunlight,

a young girl sits listening in

rapt attention to a little boy, her

arm around him, he whispers

in her ear, her hair brushed

back, his hand cupped to his

lips, a smile on her face

like an evening prayer.

...........................-- Pud Houstoun

PUD HOUSTOUN is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop

2007-06-20T06:32:00.000-05:00

Photo By BP.... Girl on Street

I LOVE THAT GIRL NAMED DONNA!

I love that girl named Donna.
Was here, but now she’s gonna.
And that’s the girl I wanna,
that lovely girl named Donna.

She told me I was ugly,
that I looked like an iguana,
but then she said: “I’m sorry,
You look like a piranha.”

“Oh why, oh why I love you?
You mean-spirited Donna.
I’ve had a crush on you,
Since I saw you in the sauna.”

But now she’s far away…
Oh Donna, now you’re gonna.
No longer lives in Brooklyn,
She moved to Tijuana.

“Oh why have you forsaken me?
My lovely girl named Donna.
I searched for you all over:
the flora and the fauna.

I looked for you in Rome,
in Paris, in Havana…
Oh, please come back to me:
or I will go bananas!”

But it was all for naught--
I could not find my Donna.
She broke my heart that night,
that lovely prima donna.

She Said: Good-bye forever!
And then: HASTA MAÑANA!

...........-- JOSÉ CHAVIN PRESSER

JOSÉ CHAVIN PRESSER is a member of the JML Poetry workshop.

2007-06-11T11:44:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in awhile sorry. I just received this post from Bill (William) Knott.

Bill Knott, originally known as Saint Geraud, was born in Carson City, Michigan. Bill Knott is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston. He first received recognition with The Naomi Poems published in 1968. I remember reading him in high school. He is known for, among other things, short lyrical poems. His Naomi poems began his career with the pen name of Saint Geraud. I still remember reading those poems. They will always remain mysteriously lyrical.

To the left in the LINKS section you are a click away from what I believe to be all his poems. He's posted them in a PDF format for all takers and lovers of his work. This is a good deal and you can't deny the cost which is free. So take him up on it and go out and BUY: Amazon.com: The Unsubscriber: Poems: Books: Bill Knott one of his books too.

Here is a good interview with Bill Knott: Bookslut An Interview with Bill Knott

Below is a link I found to a post of one of his former students and her sterling evaluation of his teaching. Her name is Erika Krouse. She went on from her post-graduate (poetry) days to become a very fine short-story writer. It makes for an terrific read. Though an interview you can tell she has a great ear for prose. She also mentions Mary Karr, another terrific poet mostly known for her non-fiction such as The Liars Club. My Mentor, Bill Knott

This is another quite interesting take on the poet well worth a read. "Knotty, Knotty Boy:" Richard Hell on poet Bill Knott

2007-05-07T06:49:00.000-05:00

EARLY SPRING NYC....Photo by BP

THE DEFENDANT

"You, over there, what you lookin’ at?
Never seen a defendant before?
Quit gawkin’ at me like a scared cat!
You creepin’ me out, right to the core.
We got more in common than you think.
Never got hot and wild, had a drink?
..

"Yeah, I did it, I’d do it again!
.I’m a killer, skirt-chaser and thief.
I’ll be back, no one knows where or when.
But bet on it, I’ll settle my beef.
Hey, what you into? Don’t look so pure!
You want it bad, you’ll be back for more…
.

"Shot a man once, had it comin’.
Caught ‘im messin’ with my woman!
Raped, strangled her, she asked for it.
Cheatin’ on me, the no-good bitch!
What’s left? His booze, her ring, some cash.
Come to Daddy, baby, sweet stash!

"Look me right in the eye if you dare,
Tell me you wouldn’t ‘a did the same.
Didn’t think so, so don’t gawk and stare.
You know you’d see red, go wild, insane.
Shoot the scum, bang the bitch, grab the green!
You’d do it if you seen what I seen…

"Look in a mirror, see me, brother.
You say you don’t, but, trust me, you do!
Can’t run, can’t hide, can’t run for cover.
Yeah, you just like me, boy, through and through.
You, over there, what you lookin’ at?
I’m lookin’ at time, you watch your back…"

..................................--Noel David Cohen

Noel is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop

2007-05-07T04:19:00.000-05:00

Construction NYC.....Photo by BY

YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN NEW YORK

When

Pedestrians cross on the red with an inch to spare

You ask for a small and it's called a tall

But the lcals are drinking a grade with ice

You can by online, the cruise line or the FAQ and LMZ line

Taxis outnumber other cars

Walking the sidewalk is a danger

from people pulling luggage and

talking on their mobile phone

young ladies wear short shorts with long boots in spring

but the winter coat stays ready for the change

The doors of the shops are open wide on the first warm day

Flowers are being planted in spare poets and garden space

You can visit little Italy, India, Russia, China and the world

without a passport

There is the avant-garde, the security guard and you're on

guard

people chant Japanese Buddhist, love-in, sin and seek

enlightenment

Get botox, punch box or reconstruct

Learn aboyt anything or nothing

and go to Tuesday poetry class

................-- Jennifer Burgess

Jennifer is a seasonal (International) member of the JML Poetry Workshop. Welcome back.

2007-05-07T04:04:00.000-05:00

Waiting....Photo by BP

The Undertaker

The guy on the corner seems lost
In the Village, Jones Street, West Fourth
He’ll ask for directions this June
With this sugary frost on his breath
What bitter contempt you assume
This a muse meant my name is inane
By the way why we must have a smoke
Or maybe a snort of cocaine

He nods in the seat with a latte
Some dude ran away with his lotto
Then I robbed the hour glass, loot too
A woman took the edge off a little
Lue Sifer bike cycle, flat tired scythe, sickle
What goes round counter clock wise guy
When he woke, I spoke, he looks sickly
I said here’s some Prozac, taste likely

We saw his last ride roughshod rim
Rue Reaper, numbskull "Where‘ve I been?
That beat-artist rips me off of my spin
I can’t for the life of me… Who, him?
Was his name ‘Fast Eddie’ Tim alias Jim?"
Jog juggernaut judgments arraignment day Grim?
"Fairy tales, officer, possession controll substance?
Masquerading? DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?"
Said a sandwich sign read "The end Is near"
For the monk, to the cowl hooded Tombs

.....................-- Eddie Kearon Lorenzo May 6, 2007

Eddie is a member of the Jefferson Market Poetry Workshop

2007-04-19T20:22:00.000-05:00

Church wall....Photo by BP

BROKEN HOUR GLASS

The hour glass is full
soon it will be empty.

A broken hour glass
riddled with holes
cannot contain
the sand within it,

and now the stage floor
is a lonely desert
stretching far and wide:
a cornucopia of emptiness.

Like grains of sand
the stars in heaven
have fallen to the ground.

The shot glass is full
soon it will be empty.

Happy hour -- hour glass:

a cacophonous explosion
of darkness. Elongated
shadows on the wall...

overflowing into the abyss
descending to the bottom
of a six pack.

............--- Jose Chavin Presser

Jose Chavin Presser is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-04-19T07:04:00.000-05:00

Christmas Spirit....Photo by BP

ON CHRISTMAS EVE

The aborted Christmas eve
of the abruptly departed,
discarded in the recycling
area of my apartment building.

A denuded tree along with
a half-eaten gingerbread house
and hobbled, color-glazed
gingerbread children

placed where someone
may yet salvage what is left.

.................-- Rose Bernal

Rose Bernal is a member of the JML Poetry Workshop.

2007-04-18T18:16:00.000-05:00

Morning Light....Photo by BP

ONE COUNTRY MORNING

The quiet is a lone siege of muted
insects intermingling in the grasses.

Even the song birds are songless, as though
the thread of life were cut. The trees
stand rigid, hushed and no breeze stirs.
the flowers seem to pause in blooming.

A distant mumble of a jet passes
through a cover of cloud and is lost.

Grey light of sky descends surrounding
me. I am in a cocoon wound in stillness
with no metamorphosis to come.

Time spins out a long thin thread
of endless silence.

...............-- Pud Houstoun

Pud Houstoun is a member of the JML Poetry workshop.

2007-04-18T17:55:00.000-05:00

THE JEFFERSON MARKET LIBRARY

POETS

INVITE YOU TO CELEBRATE POETRY MONTH

APRIL 21, 2007

Saturday 2:00 - 4:45 p.m.

ADMISSION FREE

at THE JEFFERSON MARKET LIBRARY

425 Avenue of the Americas

212- 243-4334

2007-04-18T17:32:00.000-05:00

Tree and Buildings....Photo by BP

THE TICKING TREE

What if climbing time would be a ticking tree

A telling twisted fate of a frost-bitten bough

A tuft of nodding wood tumbling easily

In a whistling breeze moving to and fro

how might time prepare to grow?

From roots dipped in glossy skating ice and whitening snow

Steadily stumbling forward and backwards

In waves of brittle branches bending forever bending

bowing before a glowing February freeze freezing

To seize a deceasing spray of wood be still standing

In a cold-cold crackling pool of mirroring reflective ice

Icy sounding shivers of barely beating limbs breaking

Lamenting in spite of time splitting into seconds

Of striking in halves by hands of icicles

With pointed frigid Arctic fingers of ten

That touch the traversing willowy wintry breaths

Of biting, listening, hissing, hanging, sailing exhales of air

Rising and rising in a zephyr of zero below wind

Fading into the forest of slumbering infinity

Of would be lumbering ticking trees

...............-- Lorraine Gibney

Lorraine Gibney is a new member of The Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop

2007-04-15T06:39:00.000-05:00

Ecuador....Photo by BP

Poem in Two Parts
1-Explanation

O my Villanelle web-writing machine
just now i got to the site and it will
write poems using a google search screen
to pick out the words. below what a thrill-

poem. i put in “not love girls boys but sex
polyperverse." came poem below is
where of lots of published line is from. Next
myself to address to you it: Dear Ms

Polyperverse and i you loving so.
Your reply: what to do? Do I get sin?
socialist believing in Web page go
dinner? result of believing in

and a socialist believing in the
search following: I don't get it. I don't.
went through same kind of streak up hill of the
battle to tell the program to break won't

tell them why I can't bring myself to say
break? some thing better to do copied up-
load. Too weird for me. Awful! I'll delay
it out tomorrow.Thanx.Poem was created:sup-

ple. know if you could just view it like us
back-forward-mix-up-computer-made. Might
hotel bargains; Finding of fabulous
fares are fun. Yahoo earches for sexy night

------------------------------------------------

2-Villanelle with Help from Google
Poetry Writing Software

about: know what to do? Do I get a
dinner? up as a result of enticed
I am socialist believing in a

Results 1 - 4 about spoken a
justice to get the program then repriced
about: know what to do? Do I get a

lucidity, imagination a
polyperverse and a so sexy iced
I am socialist believing in a

search following fast; don't get it. Not a
same of kind of streak uphill battle heist
about: know what to do? Do I get a

miss you as a result and without a
and a lover reliving in a sliced
I am socialist believing in a

about: know what to do? Do I get a
socialist believing in Web so diced
I am socialist believing in a
as a so love you and yet without a

..........-- George Spencer

George Spencer is a member of The Jefferson Market Poetry Workshop.

2007-04-14T20:07:00.000-05:00

French Children...Photo by BP

A DAY IN PARIS

At the Tuilleries
the garden where
the white pedestals
stand, looking down
at the leisure
of the strolling people,
and the seated,
those pencil-thin
chairs, clustered
in painterly array.

Under the bluest sky
we walked
the air sweet
with gladness
and wafts of bouquets.
Tired
we sat down
at those brasseries
scattered along
the length
of the Tuilleries
for such as us.

And ate a quiche
and a Cafe au Lait
while my husband
chatted with the
waiter in French.

..........-- Rebecca Lepkoff

Rebecca Lepkoff is a internationally known Photographer and a member of the Jefferson Market Library Poetry workshop.

2007-04-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

New York....Photo by BP

EAST RIVER TUNE

That hot July night

I followed you,

shyly puzzled.

I heard your whisper on my pillow

through an open window.

I felt my stomach rumbling

as I listened to your

soft, gentle talk.

Your voice subtle

like a pale thread of light

from third avenue.

I saw you standing

by my bedroom door

like an opaque spirit

with your gown swaying.

Was it you who painted my poem about

Jan Vermeer's "Young Woman with a Water Jug"?

Was it a museum wall

that lightened your smile?

I wanted to devour it,

wanted to embrace your slender shoulders,

I wanted to drawn in your gaze.

The moon over the east River

like your veiled shine against the currents.

..................-- Natalia Kerkela

Natalia Kerkela is a member of the Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop.

2007-04-06T17:40:00.000-05:00

THE CHAPBOOK IS FINISHED!!!
------------------------------------------------------------

1. Go to BLURB.com

2. On the home page click on the left side "BROWSE the bookstore"

3. On the upper right corner of that page where it says SEARCH PUBLIC BOOKS type in : Jefferson Market Library.

4. Viola! The Chapbook will appear with its new cover. Click on the book. It will take you to the books Detail page. There you can click on a PDF preview (beneath the cover) to see the first 15 pages of the book. Pretty exciting !!! What will they think of next. Something as exciting as spandex or 41 channels of inflight television, I hope.

5. You can buy the book there.

6. I'll be providing the first copy for everyone in it. Check their discounts.

2007-04-05T07:18:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP....Church

VIOLIN

..........Violin
my violin,
..........why so tired
full of travails you are.
..........Full of sorrow and grief –
darkness of ages;
..........your tears as glue –
holding wooden frame together.

..........Each sound - is lament escaping
from your wooden cage.
..........Mournful longings
of fallen hearts
..........grasping scratching at Life.

Centuries of hellish wanderings in
..........swallowing depths;
groanings and beatings
..........of heels, and soles of hearts
so accosted and thin from
..........being chased the world over.

Touching one’s sores through
..........frightened weeping strings,
unveiling clouds of pain
..........in Jewish man’s heart,
forced to wonder the world wide -
..........to and through.

Jewish hearts’re lonely, yet persistent,
..........never sinking nor defeated, but
being forever shielded by
..........Abba-Father, Creator -
the Shepherd of Life.

.............-- Nora Glikman

Nora Glikman is a member of the Jefferson Market Poetry workshop.

2007-04-05T07:03:00.000-05:00

Photo by BP.... Spring Field

LEE HARVEY OSWALD’S
LITTLE LEAGUE GAME
...........At school he was captain of the baseball team.
...................-- from Probation Officer's Assessment

His mother knew he was good --
before he headed home, before homework,
before eating the last pea on his plate.

Standing there with his teammates,
the pale boughs of their arms ready
to catch whatever came. The cry

of parents egging them on as a groundball
flirted down the left field line, any
easy-as-pie, lost-in-the-sun, pop-up

blown before the coach’s stare. The hesitant
breath and applauding hearts of bases
loaded, bottom of the ninth, 2 outs --

cuts like a knife. His heart one beat closer now
to the roar of a perfect swing, the winning
smack of the ball still ringing there

like the arc of some vast and irretrievable
outcome, rising out of sight
over outstretched arms.

.................-- Brent Pallas

Brent Pallas is a member of the Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop.

2007-03-24T17:01:00.000-05:00

Tomato & Avocado...Photo by BP

Still Life; Matisse after a de Heem

or Decline of Empire

On the table rich remnants of a king's excesses

scattered as the abundance of love's sheets,

grape bestrewn in casual ecstasy;

the light coming from the upper right as so often in a still life,

goblets, some empty, others half full with golden wine,

dulled brilliance of warm honey clinging to their lips,

fruit always in pyramids struggling to contain themselves,

orderly except a glistening orange,

a piece of its rind laying on the table, inside facing out,

white the color of god, inside of clouds, white of fire

and next to it a knife, silver pointed

then darker with touches of earth's ambers,

the rest of the blade dissolves into obscurity;

color cords perfect,

here a fugue's subtle counterpoints,

there a flow of big colors as they engage each other

but always the knife is there

and oysters, ham in the soft warmth

which has turned these touches of paint into swarms of sickness

mingling, splitting in anticipation:

them to us as knife to orange.

-- George Spencer ,March 2007

GEORGE SPENCER IS A MEMBER OF THE JEFFERSON MARKET POETRY WORKSHOP.

2007-03-07T18:12:00.001-05:00

In honor of a 100 years since Auden's birth I am posting this.

W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, in 1907. He moved to Birmingham during childhood and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. As a young man he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. At Oxford his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood.
In 1928, his collection Poems was privately printed, but it wasn't until 1930, when another collection titled Poems (though its contents were different) was published, that Auden was established as the leading voice of a new generation.
Ever since, he has been admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and an ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; the incorporation in his work of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech; and also for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information. He had a remarkable wit, and often mimicked the writing styles of other poets such as Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, and Henry James. His poetry frequently recounts, literally or metaphorically, a journey or quest, and his travels provided rich material for his verse.
He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war, and in 1939 moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. His own beliefs changed radically between his youthful career in England, when he was an ardent advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians. A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic.
W. H. Auden was a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973, and divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York City and Austria. He died in Vienna in 1973.
A Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Poems (privately printed, 1928)Poems (1930)The Orators prose and verse (1932)Look, Stranger! in America: On This Island (1936)Spain (1937)Another Time (1940)The Double Man (1941)The Quest (1941)For the Time Being (1944)The Sea and the Mirror (1944)Collected Poetry (1945)The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1947)Collected Shorter Poems 1930-1944 (1950)Nones (1952)The Shield of Achilles (1955)Selected Poetry (1956)The Old Man's Road (1956)Homage to Clio (1960)About the House About the House (1965)Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 (1966)Collected Longer Poems (1968)City without Walls (1969)Academic Graffiti (1971)Epistle to a Godson (1972)Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (1974)Selected Poems (1979)Collected Poems (1991)
Prose
Letters from Iceland (1937)Journey to a War (1939)Enchaféd Flood (1950)The Dyer's Hand (1962)Selected Essays (1964)Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
Anthology
Selected Poems by Gunnar Ekelöf (1972)
Drama
Paid On Both Sides (1928)The Dance of Death (1933)The Dog Beneath the Skin: or, Where is Francis? (1935)The Ascent of F.6 (1936)On the Frontier (1938)

Lullaby

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.
k

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

This is one of my own personal favorite Auden poems.

First Things First (audio only)

The Unknown Citizen
(To JS/07 M 378This Marble Monument

Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

2007-03-05T08:39:00.000-05:00

NYC....Photo by BP

ZING!

u put the G-G-G in oh my God!
u put the IN in IN-credible!
and what is odd
u put the Z-Z-Z in I’ll cop some Z’s
cuz you wipe me out
no doubt
we’re peaz in a pod
az I wuz sayin’...oh my God!

u put the G-G-G in man you’re G-ood!
u put the IN in IN-delible!
u turn my should-
‘nt into maybe I could if you say pleaze
cuz you feel so fine
my mine
is yourz my won’t is would
as I wuz sayin’...man you’re G-ood!

becuz of u
my herz is hiz
my sap is riz
I’m daft and diz-
zy buzzed ‘n biz-
zy birds ‘n beez is
knockin’ knees iz
u’z in me’z iz

u put the G-G-G in Gracious sakes!
u put the melt in the butter
of my Land o’ Lakes
u put the Z in Z-owie!
the ZI in ZI-deco, ZI-lophone, ‘nZI-clopedia
oo how I needya
to put the ZIN in ZIN-ger
the gin in stinger

the ZING in strings of my heart opens wide
u’re a carpet ride glide
when we’re outside inside
az I wuz sayin’...up put the ZING in ama-a-a-ZING!

..........-- Susan Horowitz

SUSAN "Dr. Sue" HOROWITZ authored Queens of Comedy , and is an award-winning Singer/Songwriter, Performing Poet, Playwright, Screenwriter & Motivational Speaker and host of an Internet Radio Show: Creative Conversations with Dr. Sue. She is also a member of the Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop. CLICK THIS LINK: Susan Horowitz, Ph.D. "Dr. Sue" Comedian, Singer ...

2007-03-03T19:07:00.000-05:00

Bench....Photo by BP

I just checked out James Lee Jobe's Website (again) for his latest posts. Everyone should in the workshop. He posts some terrific work with a great range and style. I'm going to purchase several books by the poets he has posted in the last few days. It reminds me of the old Poetry Northwest magazine (among others) -- just poems and some great stuff. The art of reading and enjoying poetry is much undervalued. Considering the amount of poetry written versus what is sold or consumed (meaning read) the gap is wide. James is helping to bridge that.

Here is a link to his site: JOBE

NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW of MESSENGER

2007-02-26T08:38:00.000-05:00

Early March....Photo by BP

2 POEMS by Ellen Bryant Voigt

THE CUSP

So few birds—the ones that winter through
and the geese migrating through the empty fields,
fording the cropped, knuckled stalks of corn:
all around us, all that's green's suppressed,
and in the brooding wood, the bare trees,
shorn of leaves or else just shy of leaves,
make a dark estate between low clouds
that have the look of stubborn snow.

In a purely scientific exercise—
say you came from the moon, or returned
like Lazarus, blinking from the cave—
you wouldn't know if winter's passed or now beginning.
The bank slopes up, the bank slopes down to the ditch.
Would it help if I said grieving has an end?
Would it matter if I told you this is spring?

Lesson

Whenever my mother, who taught
small children forty years,
asked a question, she
already knew the answer.
"Would you like to" meant
you would. "Shall we" was
another, and "Don't you think."
As in "Don't you think
it's time you cut your hair."

So when, in the bare room,
in the strict bed, she said,"
You want to see?" her hands
were busy at her neckline,
untying the robe, not looking
down at it, stitches
bristling where the breast
had been, but straight at me.

I did what I always did:
not weep --she never wept--
and made my face a kindly
whitewashed wall, so she
could write, again, whatever
she wanted there.

...............-- Ellen Bryant Voigt

Ellen Bryant Voigt is the author of six collections of poetry: Shadow of Heaven (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Kyrie (1995), a finalist for the National Book Critic's Circle Award; Two Trees (1992); The Lotus Flowers (1987); The Forces of Plenty (1983); and Claiming Kin (1976). She has also written a collection of essays on craft, The Flexible Lyric (2001). Voigt has been awarded the 67th Academy of American Poets Fellowship. Her other awards and honors include grants from the Vermont Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as a Pushcart Prize. Since 1981 she has taught in the M.F.A. program for writers at Warren Wilson College. In 1976, Voigt developed and directed the nation's first low-residency writing program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont--a design for graduate M.F.A. study that has since been emulated by many other colleges and universities. Voigt was elected a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 2003. She lives in Cabot, Vermont, and is the Vermont State Poet. Her New and Selected Poems, 1976-2006, Messenger has just been published.

2007-02-25T22:52:00.000-05:00

Skylight....Photo by BP

BIG CITIES CATACOMBS

Catacombs of New York
...............Where shadows go to rest.
Life in cement-clothed city,
...............Big heavy shoes of clay
Make me stumble
...............And fall...

My thoughts are spilled,
...............As if blood on sidewalk.
Catacomb dwelling
...............Never a green,
That bursts through as grass.
...............
Never blue
...............Spirit of heaven floating,
Easing into darkness bellow.
...............Gray feathery coated pigeons
Fly by.

...............As ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’
That none ever see;
...............Hiding, covering disfigured reality.
Cement heavy on my heart;
...............Of bricks are made
My bed and table.

Immured am I,
...............And the lights have extinguished;
Groanings cannot be heard,
...............They will burn not through the cement.
Frightened tears
...............Rolling to the ground
Full of salt
...............Planted on the sidewalk.

The sky over catacombs
...............Merging with darkened caves of city;
No exaltation nor sighing allowed,
...............And where is one to wonder
And who to lean unto...

How to find an exit
...............Leading to God’s merciful freedom,
And how to soar and to shine,
...............And ignite.

What’s the solution --
Who will come to destroy
...............The walls of hell
Of the ruler dark,
...............And where to plant the cross
Illuminating my path,
...............Leading to Heavenly Father’s throne.

...........
God Through Stained-Glass Shines

Soldered massive black frame
Holding the glass,
Plain and gloomy
Staring silently at you.

When Sun does not
Breath upon it -
To ignite
To warm and to send
Special rays
From Heaven.

Windows of churches, as
Windows of our lives
Stand stark-naked and dark;
Accentuating, pointing to
Harshness of existence.

But when the Sun
Gets all stirred up
To caress glass windows
To Life –
Vitrage lights up -
Igniting its soul.

Without warmth of
Merciful Sun (Son)
Upon the hearts of
People and churches;
Leaving us all -
Shut-inns from His Light
Without glorious
Translucent presence.

Human lives, as
Church windows -
Darkened and lifeless,
Black lead
Framing the glass,
Appears as knotted
Crude ropes reflecting
Harsh realities of Life.

They do remind one of rails, of
Trains moving no more,
As if the lives
That have been stranded
With human spirit
Shut in them.

It is the Sunshine and the Sonship
That come to break through darkness still;
It is the breath of Jesus burning,
His arrows that’s pierced within.

The touch of His caressing ways
Will make us rise, and
March again -
As Christ in us is
Reawakened,.
Our hearts are filled with joyous praise. &nbs p;

Spontaneously transforming sounds,
Holy inspiring touch of the Son -
Causing stained-glass to sparkle,
Endowing with His beauty
Expressions through ignited Light.

The Son must pierce
Our hearts and souls,
Never stop shinning
Dear Jesus!
To You alone
We owe our lives
Filled with
Eternal Thanksgiving!

................-- Nora Glikman

NORA GLIKMAN was born in old Russia and left it as an adolescent. Traveling & living throughout Europe experiencing new cultures, learning languages and starting schools. In the mid-seventies she arrived in the USA She expresses her life through poems. She is also a member of The Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop.

2007-02-25T21:58:00.000-05:00

Reflection....Photo by BP

CONTRACTIONS

‘Tis Tuesday ‘twas
Could’ve contrive us
She should’ve said
We’d wouldn’t’ve wed
You’d neither have had it
Ne’er-do-well as the
Proletariat, bourgeoisies

Construction Center
E’er, wonder bread spread
Colloquial color
But conjunction concurred
I’d’ve lower case labor
Das Kapital Marx
Level plumb bob square π

Erectile dysfunction
All over tell view
Why, when we were boys
To the ceiling it flew
And she split with her laughter
O’er yon yore pillory
Sky paper graffiti Confiteor

Fresh Kill van Kull hill
Will cross bones Great Gravesend
Spittle down spires, land ‘til…

.................-- Edward Kearon Lorenzo

Edward Kearon Lorenzo is a member of the Jefferson Market Library Poetry Workshop.

2007-02-19T08:17:00.000-05:00

France....Photo by BP

CLARITY NOT SEEN

I have become aware how
When I leave a room
I turn and view with pleasure
The décor, the total way
It looks, the little things of hers
Old and new that make it lovely.

For me it’s like a second reading
Of a line of poetry that touches me
With clarity not seen at first
Or feeling not experienced before.

These double takes, to use
A much less artful phrase
Are like an after-taste
Of vintage wine or
Proust-like, as when a memory
Recalls others that in themselves
Are reservoirs of happiness
Which I can draw on during times
Of unkind days when most I need
The comfort of remembered things.

..............-- Lou Gersten

Lou Gersten is a member of The Jefferson Market Poetry workshop.

2007-02-17T19:19:00.000-05:00

Broken Ornament....Photo by BP

I discovered these poems on James Lee Jobes website (in links at left) by Dorianne Laux and really liked them. And fitting into the six-degrees of separation mode I was trawling on Google for a link to her and found this one: Isotope - A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing. It's happenstance perhaps but Mary Orovan had just sent me a copy of this journal to read. Thanks again Mary.

BREAK

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.

HOW IT WILL HAPPEN, WHEN

There you are, exhausted from another night of crying,
curled up on the couch, the floor, at the foot of the bed,

anywhere you fall you fall down crying, half amazed
at what the body is capable of, not believing you can cry

anymore. And there they are: his socks, his shirt, your
underwear, and your winter gloves, all in a loose pile

next to the bathroom door, and you fall down again.
Someday, years from now, things will be different:

the house clean for once, everything in its place, windows
shining, sun coming in easily now, skimming across

the thin glaze of wax on the wood floor. You’ll be peeling
an orange or watching a bird leap from the edge of the rooftop

next door, noticing how, for instance, her body is trapped
in the air, only a moment before gathering the will to fly

into the ruff at her wings, and then doing it: flying.
You’ll be reading, and for a moment you’ll see a word

you don’t recognize, a simple words like cup or gate or wisp
and you’ll ponder like a child discovering language.

Cup, you’ll say over and over until it begins to make sense,
and that’s when you’ll say it, for the first time, out loud: He’s dead.

He’s not coming back, and it will be the first time you believe it.

....................----Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux was born in 1952 in Augusta, Maine and is of Irish, French and Algonquin Indian heritage. Between the ages of 18 and 30 she worked as a gas station manager, sanatorium cook, maid, and donut holer. A single mother, she took occasional classes and poetry workshops at the local junior college, writing poems during shift breaks. In 1983 she moved to Berkeley, California where she began writing in earnest. Supported by scholarships and grants, she returned to school when her daughter Tristem was 9, and was graduated with honors from Mills College in the Spring of 1988 with a B.A. Degree in English.

2007-02-17T17:02:00.000-05:00

Garbage Bags....Photo by BP

NEW YORK STILL LIFE

How many concrete miles
wore down those heels
supporting laceless
faded shoes?

They sit atop a
velvet sofa lacking
arms and cushions and
its former sheen.

Beside, a rusted screen
leaning on a fairly decent
wooden chest
examined by a passer-by.
He opens sticky drawers
wincing at the smell.

I smile, he shrugs,
I amble on
past mattresses and
broken toys. The
detritus of living
waiting for
the garbage truck.

.........--Barbara P. Gordon

Barbara P. Gordon is a member of The Jefferson Market Poetry Workshop

2007-02-17T16:24:00.000-05:00

Bedroom Window....Photo by BP

Talking In Bed

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.

..........-- Philip Larkin

Philip Arthur Larkin (August 9, 1922 -- December 2, 1985) was an English poet, novelist and jazz critic. He spent his working life as a university librarian and was offered the Poet Laurateship following the death of John Betjeman, but declined the post. Larkin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the 20th century.
Larkin was born to Sydney and Eva Larkin in Coventry, a large provincial city in the English Midlands. In 1946, he became assistant librarian at University College, Leichester. In March 1955, Larkin became librarian at the University of Hull, a position in which he remained until his death.

Free Poetry E-Book:102 poems of Philip Larkin

2007-02-17T13:41:00.000-05:00

I'm going to post some of my favorite Theodore Roethke poems. Lately he seems to be taking a licking from many lesser known poet/critics who, in my opinion, favor that form of criticism of the pithy quip. Poets seem to be their own worse enemies. Nobody reads poems anyway so why get pithy about it. It's another form of shooting ducks in a barrel. I guess it makes them feel the bigger their target the better their aim. I just read a blog (I'm not going to use the poet's name) I got to it by way of looking up info on Tess Gallagher. The author wrote a nice bio/fact article about her in a small journal and in it he mentioned that Theodore Roethke had been her teacher. He also went on to say the poet Mark Doty would be known for... the voice of the AIDS crisis in poetry. And that... will become his toe tag. Toe Tag? Too much CSI Miami watching.
.....HHe then stated that Tess Gallagher ...wrote thousands of poems over her lifetime (she hasn't)...but would be known only for her poems dealing with the death of her husband Raymond Carver. Too many critics have a presumptive time-traveling itch these days.
.... He goes on to say...She studied creative writing under Theodore Roethke. Interestingly, Roethke wrote for a whole long life (Ignoring the clumsily stated ...whole long life? He died at 55) but is really only remembered for the poems he wrote about the years between 1920 to 1925, when he lived with his father and mother in Saginaw, Michigan, operating a family greenhouse. I have to wonder if he ever even read Theodore Roethke because he goes on to say about Tess Gallagher that her book Willingly (1984) consists of poems written to and about Carver. I have the book in front of me now. The poem BLACK SILK which is the post below this one is from that book (it could perhaps be about Raymond Carver) but along with others with titles like CONVERSATION WITH A FIREMAN FROM BROOKLYN, SUDDEN JOURNEY , LINOLEUM and many others have nothing to do with Raymond Carver and several are written to other people. Certainly many of the poems have to do with Mr. Carver. But not all as the author suggests. Unless his vision of metaphor is so elastic as to include peaches or paperclips in the subtext of every poem.
.....I probably should not have spent so much time on this. We all become what we dislike. Hopefully as an antidote for my quips and the above rant here's a selection of Roethke's work: Free Poetry E-Book:27 poems of Theodore Roethke

The Geranium....Photo by BP

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine--
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she'd lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!--
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me--
And that was scary--
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

.............--Theodore Roethke