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POETSWEST ONLINE
Volume XV, No. 4

Poems by J. Glenn Evans, George Gott, Charlie Henderson, Nicolas Grenier, David Michael Joseph, Maggie Kelly, B.Z. Niditch, Charles Portolano, Len Tews.

And a special message from John Peterson of Poetic Matrix Press http://www.poeticmatrixpress.com/.

If poets and lovers of poetry don't write, publish,
read, and purchase poetry books then we will have
no say in the quality of our contemporary culture
and no excuse for the abuses of language, ideas,
truth, beauty, and love in our cultural life.

A COLD DECEMBER NIGHT

On a cold December night he walked the streets alone.  The cuffs of his old worn denim jacket needed a haircut.  A ragged moth-eaten sweater offered little defense against the cold.  A crumpled black canvas hat sheltered his head.  A small pack on his back bore little weight.  He kept his ungloved hands in his pockets.  His right hand squeezed a folded knife.  Passing a neighborhood restaurant, he stopped for a moment to gaze at those inside, laughing, talking and eating from sumptuous plates of food.  Walking on, he found himself in a neighborhood where windows streamed amber and red seasonal lights.  He could see people inside.  He could almost feel their laughter and remembered other times.

At the end of the block he saw a churchyard with a large well-lit Nativity scene.  People drove by, some stopped to look, others speeded on.  Standing in the shadow of a nearby tree surrounded by English laurel, he waited.  When no cars were in sight, he dashed toward the Nativity scene.  Squeezing behind Mary and Joseph, he sat down alongside the manger.  He took the knife from his pocket and carefully peeled the cellophane from a shrink-wrapped piece of cornbread.  In the warmth of the light he sniffed its fragrance.  He slowly savored its taste as he ate his Christmas supper with the Lord.

J. Glenn Evans
J. Glenn Evans is founder and managing director of PoetsWest. Has written three books of poetry Window In The Sky, Buffalo Tracks and Seattle Poems and a novel, Broker Jim. Has written several local histories under the name Jack R. Evans, and two local biographies. A former stockbroker-investment banker, he has engaged in mining and co-produced a movie, Christmas Mountain, featuring Slim Pickens. Widely published in magazines and anthologies. Listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World. Past president of Seattle Free Lances, Academy of American Poets. On advisory board for the University of Washington Extension Writing Program. He is also producer and host of PoetsWest's weekly syndicated radio program on KSER 90.7 FM.

On the Brink

Sitting in Starbucks
sipping café au lait as cabs and buses
crisscross this intersection of the world
while we, young and old, sit in virtual reality
marking time as we march to the brink
where casino capitalists dig a deeper ditch
for America to fall into history's grave yard
of empires:
Persian, Greek, Roman, Ottoman, British, Soviet
A blinding sun rises in the East

Tomás Gayton, 2011
Besides being a poet, Tomas Gayton is also a Civil Rights Attorney, social activist, world traveler, teacher, and lecturer. His work has been widely published and he is the author of five volumes of poetry and prose, including Vientos de Cambio/Winds of Change, a bilingual volume. He has performed his work in varied settings in Paris, Cuba, South Africa, Peru, Dominican Republic, as well as many places in the United States. He lives in San Diego.

The House of Sorrow

Let us
live
in sorrow.

For it is better
than living
in luxury.

Let us take up
our cross
and follow
the word
of the Almighty.

It is
not happiness.

And
it is not
the affliction
of disobedience.

The Lord loveth.

The Lord chastiseth
his children.

And the Lord
is our source
of benevolent pleasure
forever and ever.

#9383 George Gott

******************

Ekstasis

The raindrops
desire
to be among
the flowers.

As I desire
to be
with you.

Do you
want me
too?

We could
sing
of flowers.

And make
them
our enchantment
forever.

#9384   George Gott
George Gott is a retired teacher from the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where he taught for many years. More than 700 of his poems have been published in numerous magazines in the United States and abroad.

SNOW IN THE AIR

Snow, in the air taken, dizzy,
To the origins quite coming back.
(White cloud falling back
On the landscape, silently.)

As a Vast Dream Lying

As a vast dream lying
You stare at the sky
Back to the air, fleeting.

Between Sky and Earth

Between sky and earth,
Snow, as a Beauty
Which is changing
Every moment
The form of the landscape.

*translated from French by Emmanuel Cheiron.
Nicolas Grenier, winner of the Paul Eluard Prize from the Society of French Poets, has been published in fifty literary reviews. He lives in Paris and is a professor at HEC Paris.

Pumpkin’s Lament

From Latin roots
My Family came,
Though Greek derived
My common name,
And prehistoric seeds, I know
First burst the soil of Mexico

Both-sex flowers crown my pate
So never do I want a date
The honeybees my surface bless:
With sexes close, they travel less.

A roving Yankee, I strode the tide
And spread relations near-and-wide
Leaving offspring away-and-far
In every land ‘cept Antartica.

Famous authors invoke my name
For topics told by hearth and flame
Of mouse-drawn coach and Hogwart’s ales,
Such darkling myths and witchy tales.

Yet all my honor is ignored
For people think me but a gourd,
And so, ignobly, I die:
Filling for a spicy pie.

Charlie Henderson

*The pumpkin “family” is Cucurbitaceae (Latin), the common name comes from the Greek “pepon” meaning “large melon,” a plant with both male-female flowers is “monoecious,” and the pumpkin variety that spread in variations worldwide was the “Connecticut Field” variety.

Charles Henderson is doing FEMA Joint Information Center work in Lincoln, Nebraska.

ODE TO PACIFIC

Others don’t see you as I do.
Or maybe they just don’t want to
Or maybe they do but deny.
So I will bravely testify.
For I see the magic that you hold
The many stories left untold.
Channeling through the pen of a non-righteous man.
Who with a uni-ball vision micro will I take a stand?
While other see misery.
I see history.
Your long dirty stretch is like museum.
But too many a mausoleum.
You are home to the homeless.
Throughway of the oppressed.
Your ground provides a bed.
For a vagrants head.
A land of the lost.
Where the unwanted have been tossed.
More bars them churches.
Around the corner trouble larches.
But this is just a human battle for survival.
Not like the white picket fences of the burbs.
Where your neighbor is your rival.
To many you are home to the miserable.
Some would wish you invisible.
With the aroma of urine clinging to the air.
Everything that happens in the dark is fair.
You are the gateway to the Ocean.
While you dirty brick building show no emotion.
I see you.
I have learned you name.
Street.
Calle.
Ghetto
Hood.
All these phrases prove you are misunderstood.
You are a survivor.
Caught between a harbor and a hill.
You were always there and at 12:00 you are quiet and still.
Slowly living while other die.

David Michael Joseph

******************

CALIFORNIA SUNDAY

I slept on the gym and awoke to the soda machine
Staring at me like a blue and white sentinel
I was so high the canvass became my bed
I saw the rafters to the ceiling
Floating above me like a wooden sky
The ropes became my walls.
For the square of destruction were my quarter
 But just a snooze
The Latino rap show was my alarm clock
At six o'clock low Rider music fills the air
Sundays in LA are magic
A Golden backdrop to the setting sun
Sunday is a California day
Ignored by the east
Abused by the south
Manipulated by the Midwest
For the Golden states loves the Lord’s Day
We smoke, drink and do drive bys
We wave at the sun and wink at her
She is our ally
For the ball of gas is a groupie
She loves Sean Penn too
I asked the homeless man what time it was
He said Domingo
For the hazy, smog filled days belong to us
We will fight you to the death
We have Arnold, Ramirez and Manson
Pray God is a better prison guard then gardener
For blasphemy is a tool of the faithful man
For God loves a warrior
He laughs at the politician
I turned over on my right hand side
I stared at Pacific Ave
I thanked all the Gods: Pagan and Catholic to forgive the east
For they never slept in a ring on a Sunday night
I used dreams as pillows

David Michael Joseph
David Michael Joseph is a filmmaker, poetry/short story authorand screenwriter from New Jersey, but living in Los Angeles. He has a passion and love for poetry and includes it in his filmmaking. He has made four short films. Shadows of Sepulveda and C.A.k.E, the most recent. Check the link to view a scene:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ushhxd_74GE&feature=mh_lolz&list=LLouHxZpBrpZ0. Other works have been published in Amulet, The Ultimate Writer, Conceit Magazine, Danse Macabre du Jour, Threshold Revelations Issue 21 and The Malaysian Poetic Chronicles.

I Am a Blizzard Child
after Kwame Dawes' "Tornado Child"

The county snowplow was called out,
the only help for a young mother
to make it to the hospital on time,
a ride in the roofing company's cold pickup
that her husband drove close behind
blizzard snow lifted up and blown back
by wind on the big relentless blade.

My enwombment was no preventure
to an iron-rod fear of snow and cold
that follows me all my days with
a mild itch of nose and ear lobe once
frost-bit, but always a memory alive
when the temperatures dive below
what is considered temperate.

My loves have learned I can burn
with passionate desire, a fire
to warm winter days of the heart
but always some part could not melt
and mingle in the messiness of life
but wander off to some corner
far from the warmth of the hearth.

My heritage wants to live and dine
in the clean architectural lines
of Eero Saaranin’s sweep and curve
depending on the spawning need to build
but still I save the spilling of blood
the smear of mud and smell of molded leaf
for quill and ink in lines on yellow sheet.

Maggie Kelly, 07/21/11

******************

A Jeremiad for Today

The land has grown cold and sour.
Our dreams hide in rooms
of unfinished homes where roaming
homeless find some shelter
from the helter-skelter street.
Like the Okies of the Dust Bowl
jobless families roll through strange land
half-way across the country from
the lost sub-prime homes they sold cheap
in order to escape an endless mortgage.
Families from lost farms
roll into rest stops, state parks
trying to find respite from
their journey to nowhere.

Disappointed grads, promised
by their dads that life
would be sweet if only
they got the sheepskin now,
cry “Baa! Baa!” all the way home
through the boneyard picked
over by the minions of millionaires
who licked their greasy fingers
to scrape the bones dry even of marrow.

Turning a deaf ear to the narrow alleys
filled with cries of hungry children
groupies follow their favorite peeps,
spend more for a ticket than an average
family has for food in one week

Over it all are the awful caterwauls:
over-inflated egos sully our air,
face off and joust, pointing out imperfections
predilections, and just plain stupidity
and all is about this thing that we call “elections.”

All those whose fault this is
claim no responsibility, only their bonuses
claim there is no money for loan relief on mortgages
claim that they are not as bad as Bernie
for after all their acumen has earned it.

My sister, my brother, we must reclaim our rights
and throw out the powers in legislative towers;
cry that this blight can be no longer tolerated,
regain our right to work and be heard,
regain our pride as we gird ourselves to
take back this country of ours.

Maggie Kelly, 07/11

******************

The Virgin of the Tsunami

Motionless, erect,
she stands in contrast
to broken, bent, steel, aluminum
wood, painted metal pieces,
all piled and clustered by some angry god
while she in golden blanket wrapped
in large folds
as if deliberately draped
for window dressing at Macy’s
or Harrods or to be auctioned
at Sotheby’s as a Japanese
statue from ancient times
as if carved from stone so still
is her face, framed in long black locks
so dead are her eyes
she has gone inside herself
to some other world
where no angel of destruction
can whisper in her ear

Maggie Kelly
Maggie Kelly was born and raised on a farm in northern Minnesota. After receiving her degree, she taught on an Air Force Base in Puerto Rico, then attended graduate school. She has worked at multiple jobs, including finance, law enforcement, vocational rehab, editing, military. Today Maggie Kelly is a poet, an essayist (for the Mensa of Western Washington’s ToTems), a columnist “Art Beat” for the Senior Scene, and former newsletter editor for several organizations including Veterans for Peace and the Washington Poets Association. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including WPA’s anthology, Cascade Journal. She has been a featured reader at numerous venues here in the Pacific Northwest and produced an all-day poetry marathon at Kings Books.

ON BLUE HILLS

In whirlwind gusts
Covering
frosted birch and aspen
snow mounts
on Blue Hills
children on sleds
gather in the open air
shadows wax white
vanishing a noon sun
two sparrows
at our feet
search for bread
and a skier
with a red scarf
hovers nearby
waiting for a lift.

Barry Niditch

******************

SOMNAMBULIST POET

Half asleep
on the day bed
passing terrestrial
express trains
along a travelogue
from colorful films.
by fun house mirrors
or revealing
omens and wounds
you count on
a surreal glimpse
of first light
from past echoes,
losing flesh and eyes
to enable voices
and surprise these words.

Barry Niditch

FIRST FROST

A poet on fields
by thin stalks
and shrubs
on grassland
overhears
a landscape
of small songbirds
as first frost
covers the oak
with sparse leaves
the wind crackles
by limbs
with phantoms
shot though
a clearing
of dark red foliage
all feelings
like branches
are cut off
only the poet
remains
with his initials
carved in the wood.

B.Z. Niditch
B.Z. Niditch, poet, playwright, fiction writer, and aphorist, is published widely throughout the U.S. and abroad. His work has appeared in most of the leading literary journals around the world, including, Anthology Of Magazine Verse & Yearbook Of American Poetry; Columbia: A Magazine Of Poetry & Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review; Affair Of The Mind; Synæsthetic; International Poetry Review; Prism International; Le Guepard (France); Leopold Bloom (Hungary); and Jejune (Czech Republic). He is also the founder and artistic director of The Original Theatre in Boston, which has presented original, experimental plays on contemporary social and political themes since 1990. He has recently completed a journal, What I Think Of You, and several novellas. More info at http://community.webtv.net/buzz-worthy/TheWorldofBZNiditch
To: bzniditch@webtv.net, bzniditch@msn.com

The Power of Nonviolence

“Gandhi is smiling down on us,”
Dan thinks as he walks
with locked arms with the other
protesters as they begin to cross
the Brooklyn Bridge,
up ahead, waiting in force,
the 1% has sent their armed thugs
to crush us, New York’s finest,
playing right into the hands
of history for we the people
want to be free of Wall Street’s
unrelenting tyranny, Dan laughs
as the police and protesters clash.
“Satyagraha, holding to truth.
Our words will be heard around
the world, your actions will spread
our words for all to see this isn’t
truly the land of the free.”
The police force the protesters
into the street, then begin to arrest
them for obstruction of traffic.
“They have set a trap, hit me,
club me, toss me to the concrete
then feel free to drag me down
the street to your waiting buses
to rush us off to your dirty jails,
but know tomorrow we will be
back again for you can beat us,
mistreat us, but not crush us;
trust us our lust for equality
from financial tyranny
is our driving force.
We have nothing to lose for there
are no jobs, so we take to the street
to have our peace meet your force,
but know all the world is watching.”
As they throw Dan head first
into the back of the police van,
“Gandhi would be so glad for us!”

Charles Portolano

Man-made Barricade

A group of female protestors
chanting in unison,
“Banks got bailed out,
we got sold out,”
march down near Union Square
in lower Manhattan,
taking to the streets peacefully,
arm in arm, unarmed, but ready
to wage war on Wall Street
through peaceful resistance
to bring to the forefront
that the Top 1%
grow richer each day
as the middle class struggles
to keep its head above
the rising tide of debt,
to keep from drowning
in the flood of financial woes.
The Police come crashing down
on them in force,
their numbers overwhelming,
they surround the women,
penning them in like chattel
in an orange mesh corral
and when the women try
to break free
from this barricade;
the Police feel compelled
to spray the escaping women
directly in their faces
with pressurized mace;
the women fall fast to the concrete,
crying hysterically
from the burning of their eyes.
“Who are you protecting?
We march in peace,
but you attack in force, why?”
The Police ignore the cries
as they handcuff the women,
then drag them angrily away.

Charles Portolano 

******************

Seeking Peace
(in honor of Pastor Rich Lang)

He had come downtown to help
keep the peace,
to keep the protesters a safe distance
from the storming police line,
who were pushing and shoving,
agitating the crowd, waiting
for a reason to unleash their anger
on these, mostly out of work,
young people, who feel left out
from their unalienable rights
of Life, Liberty,
and the pursuit of Happiness
guaranteed by our
Declaration of Independence.

He walks among them
in his full frock,
alb, stole, and cross,
for all to see that he is a man of God,
a lover of the Prince of Peace,
placing himself between
the police line and the protesters.
Suddenly the police attack,
grabbing a girl dressed in black, and
when her friend tries to pull her back
all hell breaks out.
He leaps to the forefront
to take the brunt of the assault
on the peaceful protesters,
the pepper spray cans come out.
He waves the protesters away
only to have six policemen drench
him, soaking him down to his skin,
then one of the police blast him
full force in his face. Blinded,
he is pulled away by the young ones,
thinking to himself,
‘How could this be happening
in our America?
A priest gets beat by the police
on the streets of Seattle.’

Charles Portolano
Charles Portolano started writing poetry years ago to celebrate the birth of his daughter Valerie.
His collections of poetry include:
Storytelling, 2009
All Eyes on Us, Rockford Writers Guild, 2007 (trilogy of three chapbooks: The Devil’s Advocate, Into the Wild, The Triad)
Inspired by Their Spirits, Wyndham Hall Press
The Nature of Darkness, Wyndham Hall Press
The Soul Decision, Wyndham Hall Press, 2003
Firsts (written with Valerie Portolano).

Corpus

Hold the button
now move your digital camera
a hundred and eighty degrees to
take a panoramic view -

I would have made a brave soldier
in Korea OR Afghanistan
since I learned a surprising detachment
    from my body -
my alien feet are highly evolved
    nothing like that of any other animal
but my familiar hands are as old as a frog's

I am no longer surprised that a glass jar contains
a human fetus floating in formaldehyde,
in the late afternoon light of the prep room,
nor shocked that just before going home for dinner
I saw a moldy human head in the stainless steel pail
of the dissection room
a person starts at conception
yet the spirit seems older.

I don't get any respect (tugging his tie and sweating).
My doctor glanced at his watch
impatient after ten minutes of his time
five less than allocated by his corporation
no time to "Ask your doctor." lol Who you gonna believe?
Yet despite death panels, here I am,
lucid in my aging body, garrulous
still telling the community what it's like.

Len Tews
Len Tews retired in 1996 after teaching biology for thirty-two years at The University of Wisconsin. He moved to Seattle where he took up the writing of poetry, first as a genealogical pursuit, believing the most important memories of people are their stories, then moved on to other subjects -- Buddhism and nature particularly. He was active in the Seattle poetry scene reading at open mikes and publishing. Some of his poetry has been collected into four chapbooks: Family Poems, Dance Steps in Brass, The Moon Is Not Yet and Frayed Ends. His work has also been published in Bellowing Ark, Mid-America Poetry Review, The Wisconsin Review, Fox Cry, HA, Writer's Haven Press's Moons Upside Down, Stars in Rows, Cascade, and other places. His poetry has won prizes from Peninsula Pulse and The National League of Pen Women. He moved back to Oshkosh, Wisconsin where he raised a family.

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