10 posts tagged “poetry cafe”
Untitled
The soul within me longs to be a part of you.
It chafes at it's chains
And stretches out
It's bindings.
Foolish child! It will not know
That I have bound it
Only
To perceive it.
As it cries out to me, I punish it -
Reduce it to tears
And small,
Keening
Wimpers
Of longing.
Teri Sweeney
For Maisie
If ever I had taken pains to look
I might have seen the dark behind the smile.
Have read the sadness in your face's book
And stopped, to sit and chat a little while.
I might have seen the shadow o'er the sun
Of bright delight that filled those deep blue eyes.
Upon my coming - stayed instead of gone
And listened to the fond and endless stories
Of triumphs past, of bygone, halcyon days
When every crown was yours! You basked in praise,
But scorned to meet your sister's envious eye
Till all the clapping hands were quiet, still,
And you were left - alone, and old, and ill.
Terri Sweeney
Miss White's Heart
We learned to write fat red pencils,
write ABC's in wobbly manuscript,
read stories of Dick and Jane and Spot,
count by tens, add, and subtract.
Miss white also taught us
to weave heart baskets
guiding our little fingers
again and again
to go around and through
not over and under
turning ordinary paper into treasures.
Now over half a century later
And as my fingers guide paper strips
around and through
I marvel at her patience
and remember her loving heart.
Carol Robbins Hull, 2007
The Opposite of Love
In preparing for tests
we were reminded
that antonyms were oposites,
hot/cold, high/low, love/hate,
Always the questioner, I asked
"How hot? How cold?"
Was hate really the opposite of love?
The teacher replied "Life has its lessons."
The love I thought would last
longer than forever eroded
bit by bit with every hurtful deed.
then came his crushing final words
that left my heart hollow,
yet heavy as a stone.
The place that had been my heart
like a black hold devoured itself
leaving in its place not hate
but nothingness, an emptiness
that seemed not the absence,
but the opposite of love,
"I just don't love you anymore."
Carol Robbins Hull
The Clock Dreams on my Birthday
Above the stove the clock calls
eleven fifty. I add a.m.
although the clock doesn't care
if it's morning or evening,
midnight or noon.
In the back bedroom
Mother sleeps, not caring either
when morning becomes noon,
afternoon, night,
her body under the flowered sheets
the frame of an ancient child
slipped to bone and skin.
But in the kitchen now Eva stands
mixing flour and lard
with her two smart hands.
The blue and yellow kitchen
dreams Eva alive
as she is in the watercolor
painted by my sister.
Next I know Eva
will step out of the painting,
knead the biscuit dough,
roll onto a floured board,
shape precisely with a rounded tin,
my father untangles his long legs,
rises from his dented Chevy,
settles into the mahogany armchair
reserved for him,
her auburn hair pulled
to a woven chignon, Mother
sets the dining room table
with Grandmother's cold sterling,
rings the brass bell for lunch.
The hands of the clock
read August 7th, 1950.
Ann Cope Wallace
Haiku Yearly Cycle
Steel blue Winter dawn
Freezed twigs in crystal grip,
Far off smoke won't rise.
Crocus bold erupts
Robin stops and broods, that Spring
as all things, must pass.
Deep blue sea shimmers,
Wind blown sail heels into foam,
Then takes wing - a Gull!
Look! The Phoenix Pear
Tree flames once more at dusk - Yes!
We live forever.
Samurai Hara Kiri
Cherry blossoms fall.
Sword and death poem polished.
Next life hopes give joy.
Haiku - Humming Bird
Dance, Ruby throat, whirr.
Suck broods sup. But look, stars rise!
Nested, what is joy?
Haiku, Reflecting Pool
Mist elopes with wind.
Stork legs sway. On shore, worn rough
pillars give no ground.
Haiku - Dying Bud - Version Two
Moon bud falls in pond.
Crimson waves set night aglow.
All life cries, "too young!"
Haiku - Rose in Crystal Vase
Luscious red cut rose;
Vases of endless starry lights.
Tearful petals fall.
georgiawill
The Nature of the Dog
Loyalty, the vibrant nature of the casual dog.
Know forth by the destitute and common mortality
of the daily friend. Man's best friend resides in a dog
for it grows by heritage like a small child flamed with
a passion for a purpose, yet chilled witht the persistent
wait to arise. Ageless, the child grows and comes
to age for that purpose and wakes as being first born.
Thus is the nature of the dog.
Phillip Hall
Poetry, the Gay Science
Poetry, mockingly called "the gay science" for it's whimsical
stance of ideas for fancy and toil is likely so called, for the
whimsical way they toss as if some blatant scribble from an
internet blog. When in the past they were used to move nations
with the fever of grand speech and talk. Yet saw so many men
those days that stood against them, discard each as easily
as before by our present mention. Perhaps the men of old
had colder hearts, so perhaps they had the brains of the so
called adolescents, so vain in their strain of thought,
to dissuade any and all that which doesn't meet it.
Phillip Hall
The Joint Chiefs
The joint chiefs are stirring,
their blood, coarsing with hope
and justice.
They wake and recognize.
The joint chiefs can see
around corners.
They are the warmed up droplets
of water coarsing through the
iceberg, picking up water droplets
melting the freeze.
Heart of a lion,
They commence.
Amina Kilgore Hall
Voices
The roundness of a river stone
forms upon the river foam
a small oh,
and that is all it speaks.
Above the marsh
one low cloud
follows a tidal path
and makes no sound.
A curling leaf loops down,
touches the ground
and settles with a whisper
so quiet only grass can hear.
On winter shafts of air
when wind lifts fallen snow
to rise again, we cannot know
what seeds are speaking
what prayers.
Sue Scalf
The Children of Summer
"We write to taste life twice." - Anais Nin
White banks of clover
draw them like bees.
A welter of scratches
and skinned knees, children
know the bliss of running.
choosing sides, choosing friends,
making a chain of flowers,
patting out mud pies.
Dirt-smeared and sweaty,
they taste sour grass,
split maypops and hold
on their tongues the fleshy seeds,
pick passionflowers
that wind along the fence,
sip nectar from honeysuckle.
Making pacts, telling secrets,
they climb trees,
bombard their enemies
with pawpaws and chinaberries,
take prisoners, make treaties,
tumble and get up again,
cry and sing until the sun sets
and fireflies appear;
then heavy-limbed and sleepy,
children watch the moon,
a silver quarter they're too tired to spend
instead, they tuck it away
like a coin tied in a handkerchief
kept for ice cream.
Sue Scalf
Reprinted from What the Moon Knows
Christina's World
Alone is a word that stalls on the tongue,
chokes the throat; it is beyond solitude,
for it offers no choices. It is a landscape
barren and bleak, gone brown
with the last of the hay,
winter soon to come. Here she sits,
crippled, hair disheveled, one hand
clawing upward toward the house
on top of the treeless hill.
there is no sound but the wind,
the whirr of grasshoppers.
Gray as the empty sky, the house
with its open dooor calls her in.
Ladders lean against the roof.
She knows each room, the barn,
the clothesline, the world
from her window.
All is clean, scoured with light.
In the night, boards crack,
clapboards ring with cold.
Day and night her bones ache
with a namesless desire.
Sue Scalf
Reprinted from What the Moon Knows
E.K. Daufin
Approval Addiction
Addicted to approval,
Looking for a hit,
Your flattery soothes me,
Your criticism - - the pits.
Most of us got too little of it,
As we were raised or grew up,
Cut to pieces by the belittling
beast,
Criticism,
Was my family's forte,
Our July 4th,
First through 31st,
through next June's
holiday feast.
I pick myself apart nightly,
And all through the day,
So no need to add
your negative opinion,
I'm already working to do things
the impossibly perfect, right
way,
Never get there,
But make a hell of a lot of
headway.
Tell me I'm pretty,
Brilliant,
Dazzling and Smart,
Tell me I've got the brains and
beauty,
To match my kind and wise heart,
that crack-quality,
Compliment- high,
Doesn't last long,
"You did all right,"
Is skanky methadone,
Instead of sprinkling me
liberally with Angel Dust
decadent description of high
laurel and sparkly purity.
Don't pimp me for a hit,
Just cause you know how
desperate approval addicts can
git.
Bring home and fry up the bacon,
As well as lick the hot, greased
pan.
Wish I were cool and clean,
Didn't care one way or d'other,
If you though me worthy,
or just another motha',
I feel the withdrawal shivers,
When a foot is up my ass,
Giving me shit about,
What I didn't do perfectly last.
Know:
You're a dirty dealer;
When you up the ante,
Demand some panty,
For some praise,
Or to turn away the critical eye,
Or that harsh gaze.
Know:
I'm an approval addict,
Who doesn't know where the next
hit will come from,
I don't want to die,
But don't mistake me for a street
bum,
I do want you to like me,
Without having to lie,
But now,
Barely in recovery,
I don't always still pay
the inflated street price,
For a piece of my sweet jones - -
approval pie slice,
Now say somethin' nice,
To me daddy,
Ooooooh,
Found my insecurity spot,
In my fecund, got-to-have-that-
stroke,
Sweet rice approval patty.
E. K. Daufin
Charlie Suhor
That Old Feelin'
Sixteen old farts playing 40's charts--
Miller, Basie, the Dorseys, Goodman, Shaw--
strictly recreation,
beenthere/donethat a thousand times,
a bit worn now and not so hot, and yet
nostalgia is not lost on them.
In
walks
chick vocalist,
damn, the niftiest fifty you ever saw,
oozing & bluesing premenopausal charisma,
yeah very hot yet somehow very cool,
and then, a tension arises, attention arises
like an old pecker gone suddenly stiff,
and eyes go flashing, cymbals crashing
hormones kindling harmony,
band swinging out above all clefs,
They find in the music/
the music finds in them
a re-creation,
some new it, or some old feeling
that's never old, and will not ever be--
It's what the music sings about
when music is set free.
Comes the Duke
What do I know of these things?
I'm five years old and working a hand-cranked Victrola
with some brittle records sent over by Nannainne.
What I know is a Ninth Ward shotgun double
and swampy August air that settles on New Orleans
like roux-rich gumbo heaped on rice.
Everything is fresh and baby-bald to me.
Here's “Lombardo” with a languid song of Indian braves and squaws.
Here's a limping something from “Boyd Senter and his Senterpedes”
Here's a Bluebird side that asks, with some appeal,
Why don't we do this more often?
Just what we're doing tonight?
(Nannainne calls that one “zippy.”)
Here's Sharkey Bonano, more like it, with High Society
and on the flipside someone plays a penny-whistle blues.
And then, exotic and luminous a visit from robed royalty
bursting through a louvered door,
comes the Duke: I Can't Give You Anything But Love.
To sort it out in kid-mind isn't easy.
Hey, the saxes there are moving in a different sort of way.
A singer who sounds a lot like Morton Downey
is floating atop a dance-me rhythm.
And then, what's this? It's hard to say--
a muted trumpet, maybe, or gravel-voiced scatman--
some happy guttural thing that wants to jump the grooves, for sure,
and new parts of my body holler, Yes,
You can leap free with this jazz,
This swingout, bounceback man called Duke.
Decades later, stacks of 78s and 45s and LPs and CDs later,
after how many gigs and reads and writes
and all-night jams and conversations later,
after all that and this morning, too, what do I know of these things?
Only that nothing is more true or joyful than lessons learned
with the first coming of the Duke:
Leap free, mes amis, with love and swing,
with the saxes and singers and growling things of jazz.
Charlie Suhor
Published in Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature (Winter 2002)
These Gifts
To see some truth in a stranger's eyes
I feel his mind, but I can't speak it.
The green light from April leaves
That soothes my thoughts, but cannot be translated
The easy, slinking, wariness of the feral cat.
The gypsy dance of the wind in the birch
The echo of the mourning dove
from the white-washed wall of the church on the hill.
These gifts are the hoarded treasure
in this dragon's cave.
When I fly at night, I am searching for the tale-teller
who will sing my trinkets to the world
But I fear his voice will be cold and weak.
And so I fear the cave will fill 'till it's choked...
But the sweet gifts just melt into my mountainous heart.
I gaze at the clouds and valleys,
At the cypress and the sea
And listen
In the hope that someday what I hear
Will not be me
But just an empty boat, adrift
On still water.
Kevin A. Shuey
We Shall See
There is no place, perhaps
Where you and I
Can both see love the same
But then, the light and shadows
Play their differenct games
Across the garden
Yet share their father sun
And when the moon
Ducks now beneath a cloud....
Or is seen through the upstairs window
Rather than with branches laced
As in the quiet yard
It's safe to say
There is but one soft silvery orb.
Kevin A. Shuey
We Dance
We dance in unbridled joy
Then try to draw the steps
Upon the floor
Pointing with zeal
At painted feet on stone
We extol the virtue of such steps
But where is the joy?
From whence has it come?
While walking on a certain road
The light of perfect love
Dawns in our heart.
We note the spot, the day, the time
And of that place would make a shrine
Does His love shine on this road only?
When the light, the order, the clarity...
When the joy of Truth shines forth
We cling to the shadows it casts.
Listen to Rumi.
His new rule is:
"Break the wine glass, and fall toward the glassblower's breath."
Kevin A. Shuey
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