1963 (The year the real America died) – by Ronald K. Mc Kinley
Miss Suzy – A Love Song – by Mary Getlein
Cosmic Grandeurs and Warfare – by Laura Shepard Townsend
Lives Without Time – by Humberto Gomez Sequeira-HuGoS
Forgetting – by Emily Wood
beats – by Steve Tegel
Reflectionless – by Arist Niciforos
Adullam – by Roger Houston
Haiku – by Devakinandana
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1963 (The year the real America died)
Fifty years ago I became a man.
My father, then my president died.
My father died from a blood clot; my president died from a bullet.
My innocence also died; so did America’s.
It was not real, like a dream. But it was real; it is real, real as pain that does not go away.
My father dead in bed at home, my president dead in a limo in Texas.
I was in school at the time. My teacher was called to the office, left us kids alone. She returned to a noisy classroom crying. The room became quiet after she said,” How can you be so noisy after your president is killed?” We did not know. I was thirteen.
America has never been the same. You can see it; you can feel it. Who would it benefit to have him dead. Ask yourself.
How can a few men shut down the whole country? Tea anyone?
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” – JFK
– Ronald K. Mc Kinley
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Miss Suzy – A Love Song
she skips, she turns and runs
she sings –
oh how she sings
she opens her mouth wide and sounds pours out:
a blessed sound
lift up our voices and sing!
she lives that commandment, every day
she writes her own songs
and performs them
she is a teacher,
tenderly telling the story of what it is like to be human
what it is like to be in love
and not loved back,
she’s our own Judy Garland
such a tiny body to bring out such beautiful sounds
her posture is erect and beautiful
as she is
she’s a flirt to all, a lover
she is interested in people
and makes it personal
she is delighted in discoveries, young and old
she is jazz, jazzy, jazzified
she is Miss Suzy Williams
and we are lucky to have her
a singer, a teacher in the art of living and loving life
she never holds back,
packs all her craft into song after song
living gloriously in the moment
magnetizing the audience
they can’t look away, they are drawn to her
and bask in the warmth of her smile
– Mary Getlein
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Cosmic Grandeurs and Warfare
On a Mesa
High above San Clemente
The sun is in its daily surrender to the sea.
The wane of light distills the sky
Into a serene backdrop of cerulean
For sanguine striates of scarlet
Swathed in lustres of fire blazes
As Finale a flicker, a
Flash of emerald bids adieu
In splendorous surrenders of amethyst horizon.
In antithesis, to the East,
Explosions of clouds spatter the sky
Etched in neons of silver as
The supreme orb of moon, round with tribute
Mounts amidst tumbled shapes
A Full Moon Rise synchronized with the Sun’s Setting
My soul soars with portents and possibilities
But wait!
The music of the spheres
Is displaced by an overture of boom cadences
Ah, it is the Marines in Camp Pendleton
In practice with heavy artillery
Games to simulate wars
In Afghanistan (or wherever we might find them)
Such a Malevelance of Projectile Blasting
On this night
This night of cosmic grandeur
No time for the regard of the Earth
Nor Her Universe of Infinities…..
Of Star Light
Or Constellations,
Ancient and guiding
No siree!!
The Marines to whom it has been charged
To protect and to serve, we are
In pursuit of the Real McCoy,
YES SIR!
And by the way,
Blasting to smithereens
Lots of the Do-Re-Mi!
I wonder about the wildlife?
The Bobcats and the Bunnies
What about the Trees
As the men of war convert the magnificence
Of High Desert
To a Wasteland of Bomb Craters
Too bad, they’re missing the boat.
And, man, why don’t we stop them
For their own good?
– Laura Shepard Townsend
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Lives Without Time
By Humberto Gómez Sequeira-HuGóS
For María del Rosario Aguirre Durán
I am a particle of dust
structured
in the thoughts of awareness
produced
by the fusion of electrons and neurons
concatenated
in the chemical current
of the germs of lives
without time
created
by the explosion of stars
in the void.
———————————————–
Forgetting
By Emily Wood
Sometimes I forget who I am
Who I am
Sometimes I forget who I am
Who I am
Sometimes I forget who I am
Who I am
Sometimes I forget who I am
Who I am
So I close the eyes
On this tumultuous head
A thousand fears strike – Take me over
But I remember what I said
Have patience
Have patience
Have patience
Have patience
And it opens me
Tears streaming to the ground
There’s no hope
I don’t need it right now
Faces appear – I become them
Feel through their skin
And then there’s mine
In its insignificance
I’m all over
I’m all over
I know now
I know now
But do I stay here?
Can I stay here?
Should I stay here?
Will I stay here?
I don’t know
I don’t know
I don’t know
I don’t know
Eyes open
To the place the girl was sitting
Someday I’ll choose
For now I’ll try to stop forgetting
————————————————-
beats
By Steve Tegel
sometimes
i hear people say,
“i make beats.”
but beats are found
not manufactured.
why is your turn signal
so funky?
it’s no accident that
every machine works
in time.
the first beat i ever found
came from a dryer
and a washing machine
operating on clothes.
the second beat
was produced by the
machine designed to
wipe the rain off the
windshield of my
mother’s car.
the byproduct of any
machine is music.
in this sense,
music is waste.
beautiful waste.
if you turned on a blender
and a powerdrill
at the same time
you’d hear harmony.
i am also a machine.
(a machine designed to
detect and decode the
musical waste of
other machines.)
when human machines
discovered rhythm
everything else probably
made a lot more sense.
i cannot hear the music
made by the machine
which records these words
on this screen.
but someday
someone will discover it
and invent a new dance.
————————————————
Reflectionless
To live in the light
of the world. Is the
top of life only to
be revealed. A flavor
in time, as a child,
since gone.
To find again
unmasked, you
must shatter the
glass of the mirror
that holds your fears.
Release the pain
of what you believe
is true. It is your
quest to validate
the truth.
Sift from those
who feed what
they would have
you eat. It starts
when you care
enough to live now.
To be a child with
love, break the
glass. BREAK
THE GLASS!
It will reveal itself
and you will play
in the fields
once again.
Free the false
reflections that
have bound your
truth of what you’ve
known to be real.
To live in the light
of the world. Is
the top of life
only to be revealed.
A child in the field
…of truth sifted,
and free to play
with the others
in love.
for my diva daughter
Arist Niciforos
—————————————
05:55 Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013, Adullam ….. A wolf, apartment-sized, lays
on my floor, Where melting moonlight found a place to pour. Was quick to note
the symbolism. Saw The irony in this. I heard the call. It woke me up. It would
not let me sleep. It made me take dictation: record keep. The wolf, oblivious,
just snores away. In moments, will begin the light of day. I let this
interruption slowly steep. Then rendezvous once more. Plunge ever deep.
Somnambulation. Writing on the wall. Awake, and dreaming. I’m beyond the pale Of
ordinary, rising at this hour. With this last line, begin another tour …..
Roger Houston, Post-Beat Romantic (formerly a metaphysical cavalier)
———————————————–
Haiku
Dive Deep the self wait
outside there is nothing Real
Can you see Her smile!
– Devakinandana
Categories: Poetry
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