I couldn’t let 2015 end without showing off this year’s contributors one more time. Links to their blogs and writing pages are there if you missed them the first time (or just didn’t bookmark them, like me – Valeri Beers)
Poetry Pasta invites YOU to be a contributor in 2016 🙂
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at best stitched or glued,
a pastiche of other images,
collected into a mass,
a walking distillation,
and then demanding,
pursuing some lifestyle.
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A Horror Poem About Words by Roger Still
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Chivalry by Michael Estabrook
He opens doors for her pulls out chairs
walks between her and the street
pumps the gas into her car.
He does all this and more for her
whether she likes it or not because he must.
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Michael Estabrook is a recently retired baby boomer poet freed finally after working 40 years for “The Man” and sometimes “The Woman.” No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms. Now he’s able to devote serious time to making better poems when he’s not, of course, trying to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List.
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Waiting Around (after Walking Around by Pablo Neruda) by Trish Hopkinson
And it happens while I wait for my children to grow
into the burning licks of adulthood. The streaks
of summer sun have gone,
drained between gaps into gutters,
and the ink-smell of report cards and recipe boxes
cringes me into corners. Still I would be satisfied
if I could draw from language
the banquet of poets.
If I could salvage the space in time
for thought and collect it
like a souvenir. I can no longer
be timid and quiet, breathless
and withdrawn.
I can’t salve the silence.
I can’t be this vineyard
to be bottled, corked,
cellared, and shelved.
That’s why the year-end gapes with pointed teeth,
growls at my crow’s feet, and gravels into my throat.
It claws its way through the edges of an age
I never planned to reach
and diffuses my life into dullness–
workout rooms and nail salons,
bleach-white sheets on clotheslines,
and treacherous photographs of younger me
at barbecues and birthday parties.
I wait. I hold still in my form-fitting camouflage.
I put on my strong suit and war paint lipstick
and I gamble on what’s expected.
And what to become. And how
to behave: mother, wife, brave.
Rain Cake by Monique Gordon
Rain plops Do Re Mi... We walk with its rhythm. It tickles my face, Endo’s tail. Trees with dread-locked leaves Sway aroma therapy from bakery. Coconut. Caramel. Butter Rum. The sky closes down, stinging Moroccan beats. We lean against cigar-shop with awning. Listen to men talk crap & blow smoke. Nicotine halos bounce as streams race through lines of cobblestone and trolley-tracks. Crater floods. Cherry-blossoms float. Endo nudges me with his snout, “It’s 2 o‘clock”.
https://moniquegordon.wordpress.com/
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Faded roses, teary eyes by Gary Malone
Faded roses, teary eyes and broken hearts
Orange sunsets, full moons and falling stars
Cozy firesides, tender raindrops, a cool breeze
Dewy meadows, snow covered alps and stormy seas
Dusk dark, dawn, an early morning sunrise
Are facts of life, elements of surprise
Precious memories waiting to part
So are faded roses, teary eyes and broken hearts.
By: Gary Malone
Copyright © Dec. 2004
Gary Malone hails from Athens, Alabama and is a well-known spoken word artist and teacher. His work is regularly acclaimed for its lyrical nature, rawness and honesty. Through the art and craft of spoken word poetry, he has been able to capture the emotions and feelings of a number of issues including race and class, politics, spirituality, love, and often the heartache of life.
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Abandoned by Alex Conrad
Upon the crest of that hill,
Yes, that one,
Lies an old, decrepit, falling-apart soul.
No one cared for it while it was alive,
No one cared for it while it was dying,
And definitely no one cares for it now that it’s dead.
But guess what, honey,
This old vagabond does, did, and always will.
Upon the crest of that hill,
Yes, that one,
Lies the former glory of my childhood.
I loved playing in the shade of that wise oak.
I remember backyard barbecues,
Play dates,
Romp-in-the-grass games,
Chasing that squirrel,
Being knocked over by my love behind that there,
Growing old,
Embraced by someone who loved me,
I thought there was something there,
But one day, he left me.
Just like that place up there on the hill.
And soon,
Upon the crest of that hill,
Yes, that one,
Shall I lie when my old, tired, saggy body
Longs to become one with Nature
Again becoming beautiful and lovely,
Again becoming lively and youthful.
But until that day,
I shall tell the story of that and this old soul.
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3 poems by Hanoch Guy:
A lullaby
Woods devoid of horned
giants gobbling up babies .,no
wrinkled witches
turn into milkskin virgins.
Bigfoot still cracks humongous coconuts.
.
Gone mystery of a
golden prince riding an Arabian stallion
rescuing a pale princess.
One is not petrified any more
by snorting boars.
No racing heartbeats,
in the thick canopy.
Ancient trees butchered by Burger King ,
burned by hungry tribesman.
Wide paths for tourists marveling at the sign
Past forest.
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Amazon receded
Shuttered crude wood houses
on stilts
in Manaus Brazil
trapped by caked mud.
A deformed golden frog is silent in the drying swamp
A lone pygmy owl shrieks alarm in the
in on a single log
Land littered with dead fish.
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Tombstumps
Thousand of Douglas fir stumps
just logged
with unsown bits hanging
like wet dog tongue
Torn flesh strips.
Emily Carr called them screamers
But they can’t
whisper.
sap and sawdust stuffed throats slit.
Mourning stumps attacked by busy crows
sticking their beaks in their guts.
Stumps letting out a last groan.
freezing in the winter wind.
Executioners take a nap under a lone tree.
A dozer casts a dinosaur shadow on the bare forest.
Crushed needles and cones.
Tombstone stumps in
a cemetery.
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Hanoch Guy Ph.D,Ed.D spent his childhood and youth in Israel surrounded by citrus orchard, water melon fields and invading sand dunes. He is a bilingual poet in Hebrew and English. Hanoch is teaching Jewish and Hebrew literature at Temple University
He has published poetry in Genre, Poetry Newsletter, Tracks, The International Journal of Genocide Studies, Poetry Motel, Visions International, Voices Israel and several times in Poetica where he won an award. He has also won an award in the Mad Poets Society in 2007.
His books are :
The road to Timbuktu-travel poems.
Terra Treblinka-Poems of the Holocaust.
We pass each other on the stairs: 120 imaginary and real encounters
Sirocco and scorpions-Poems of Israel and Palestine.
To learn more about Hanoch, check out his website:
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The cold
and chill is here again
The skin
is drying quick again.
Gloss on
lips I see again
Socks and
gloves on men again.
Lotions
–no effect again
Sweaters
come in vogue again.
Leaves litter
the yard again
Students
pick and pick again.
A.C is free
for all again
The rich won’t
boast to us again.
The haze is here,
it is harmattan again
Let’s play safe
perhaps, to witness another one again!
The picture above is of the harmattan, the dry season’s wind. Adelaja’s poem is inspired by it.
Thank you for sharing your words Adelaja 🙂 (He shares his poems freely on Facebook, so if you would like to read more of his work, you may go to his website to see what he is working on. Many of his poems comment on Nigerian politics, so reading them may be a good way to learn more about this country.)
To read more of Adelaja’s poems:
https://m.facebook.com/notes/?id=100000121585208&refid=21
PoetryPasta 