Poem of the Month
April 2012 Poem of the Month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, April 3rd, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering. Written by Robert Shelby who served as the second Poet Laureate of Benicia, 2008-2012. Next reading is May 1st at 6:30 pm.
Backyard Saga
The snail, like a pop-eyed Chinese lion
folds in and out of its spirally armored mane,
gliding on ovate belly, a foot
like a shielded Viking ship. The figurehead
elaborately bows through swells, weighing
from side to side. Flakes of sunlight
flock on its irridescent dome
while over the seacalm jungle lawn
trees throw a motley shadow gown.
A bubble drifting through the drowse
of wee, discrminiated woods, accelerating
to keep up with shade, the wayside
bides its time toward faint and darkening
escarpments of the back porch steps
beyond the rising moon of a sandbox-
burnished, thrown down gravy spoon.
--Robert M. Shelby, 1970s/10-3-11.
March 2012 Poem of the Month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, March 6th, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering. Written by M'Rell Wong.
I'll Be Missing You
1. You once told me you loved me. You gave me wings shaped as dreams, put it into my chest, & I flew every single time tht you told me that you cared about me. Like somehow I was special to someone.
2. All I wanted was to be yours & hopefuly with that you would be mine... but,
3. You went left and forced me to go right and when you left you promised me it was the right thing to do.
4. I've come to the conclusion that I was never anything special. I was just like your f#@$ing option!
5. You were my daydreams!
6. I let my walls down!
7. I made you my world so you could be a part of my universe. I shot you the stars making a wish that somehow maybe someway you would be mine. I gave you my all.
8. Was the number of days you stopped talking to me before Valentine's day. Maybe you never really love me.
9. Maybe I never really loved you!
11. Maybe when you love someone you don't just leave and expect them to find the easy way back into a life filled without love!
11. I skipped 10 because I can't think straight without you.
12. I said 11 twice, like the time, hoping that my wishes of you would come true.
If I could I would download your voice into my rib cage and let your vibrations be the beat to my heart. I would replay the moment you first told me you loved me.
You stole my dreams from out of my chest, and the depression collided with every rib that harnessed all the happy emotions I ever had for you. It weighed down to the pit of my stomach and crushed all those gorgeous pterodactyls. You tore those wings shaped as dreams & stripped me of flight. I felt you twist and pull your arrow from my heart, felt the emptiness, felt the hole you left me and knew that there would always be a missing part of me that could never be filled.
Like a lazy Sunday afternoon, I was yours whenever you felt it. I spoke the sunlight in your lips until I understood angel words. I whispered shooting stars peeled from the night sky into your every wish. Why couldn't you hear me? I was practically screaming. I was so much louder back then.
You always wanted me to be real with you, well you had me when our eyes first played freeze tag. I never wanted to stop being it. I never wanted to stop chasing you, and to be honest I still don't.
February 2012 Poem(s) of the Month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, February 7th, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering. Haiku written by John Hamling.
1.
The older couple
at the graves are holding hands
swaying as leaves fall
2.
Zazen garden, one
thought after another, space
growing between thoughts
3.
Fall's snow disappears
on flower petals, flowers
disappear in snow
4.
One letter difference
womb to tomb just a little
breath separates them
January 2012 Poem of the Month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, January 3rd, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering. Poem written by John D. Berry.
Librarianship
Information is relevant,
With organization.
Information is old,
Found in Double Helix.
Information is mutable,
Endless new combinations.
Information is adaptable,
Look at complex you.
Information can be new,
Technology creates adaptation.
Information solves problems,
Which may be gone or present.
Information is managed,
In double helix, in print, in electrons.
We are all Libraries,
And Librarians.
Some of us even have degrees.
John D. Berry, Benicia, 2012
December 2011 Poem of the Month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, December 7th, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering. Poem written by Jady Montgomery.
O' Elephants
Patiently they move over vast seas of land
observing rituals of herds before them.
In circles they pray over the dead, the young
who survive close inside, learning how its done.
They make time for nothing but play and laughter,
it is true, and all the while remembering
the swathes they cut, every tract, the way back home
and who was friend, who foe, even who was owed.
November 2011 Poem of the Month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, November 1st, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering. Poem written by Nancy Schroeder.
Leaving
I've raked the poplar leaves
into a large pile.
There they sit, day after day.
No little girl to run through them
in turn with me
Creating star patterns on the lawn
Only to regather them
make a big tall heap
And play again
Or maybe just jump on in
and on the count of three
Throw handfuls up in the air
raining leaves and laughing.
I miss my little girl
and I am so proud
of the young woman she's become.
Soon she's leaving home.
The grass beneath the leaves
is dying.
Nancy RG Schroeder
October 1998
October 2011 Poem of the Month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, October 4th, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering. Poem written by Don Peery.
Alone In the Pool
She is alone in the pool, standing,
water up to her breasts, her shoulders
bare, the pool water splashing left
then right in time with the ship
rolling right then left in time
with the sea. Under the brim
of my hat I look up from my book, looking
over my glasses, not raising my head,
to see her looking up to me.
She is alone in the pool, the deckhands
working, securing lounges and chairs
against the night of our disuse.
She is alone in the pool and I
am alone with my book. Perhaps
I will find my voice before
she decides the air is too cold
or that I am too old to be of interest.
She is alone in the pool and I
have other commitments made, a schedule
to keep. She is alone in the pool
I shrug, look down, and turn a page....
September 2011 Poem of the Month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, September 6th, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering. Poem written by Joseph Martino.
Untitled birdsmouth
All that sweat, all that energy, all those nails all that booze...
A future generation of grandpas had to toil with rigor and immediate skill to perform their sloping task of protection two or three stories above an unlaid sidewalk.
Side by side they marked and cut and assembled with friend and enemy alike to transform a pile of rough sawn timbers amidst the frenzy of blades and dust and hammers.
That was a long time ago, long before anyone from my generation was even given a syllable. And today I stand at the base of one of those triangles marveling at their accuracy
hypotenusing all around me.
With the care and fear of a visitor to the wild, a reticent finger brushes along the dorsal needles of unfinished grain, temporarily ignoring any urgency perceived by instinctive caution.
Originally, it would have seemed easy to stand and admire intellectually at a safe distance what results the securities of dedication ad deliberation were capable of. Only this time I was on the business end of the machinery and somewhere in my boss' pocket a watch piece was ticking.
Ticking away the minutes I would feel guilt for not producing, assembling, connecting the expected pieces together, way up there out of reach above the last platform.
But it was my job.
And I must do it.
Or die.
June 2011 Poem of the month
Selected from those who read on Tuesday, June 7, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering
HUMMINGBIRD (in Spanish and English)
|
Ya no vienes más, colibri
Ya no vienes más, colibri a alborotar la mañana quietecita. Tus alitas, diminutas esmeraldas y safiros, no se confunden más con los destellos dorados del sol ni le roban un suspiro al astro rey. Ya no vienes más, colibri, a alborotar la mañana quietecilla, revoloteando y buscando, bajo aquel frondoso árbol, la codiciada roja florecilla.
Ya no vienes más, colibri a alborotar la mañana quietecita, disparando besitos, como Cupido, a cambio del dulce, dulce néctar prometido.
Ya no vienes más colibri a alborotar la mañana quietecita, y a robarme una sonrisita.
Tu vuelo, colibri, fugaz y efimero, como la Felicidad, viene sin avisar, y muy rápido se va. |
You don't come any more.
You don't come anymore, little hummingbird, to rufle the quiet serenity of the morning.
Your tiny wings, emeralds and saphires, don't get tangled any more with the sunshine, nor do they steal any sighs from the impatient sun.
You don't come anymore, little hummingbird, to rufle the quiet serenity of the morning, fluttering around the big big tree in search of that coveted red red flower.
You don't come anymore, little hummingbird, to rufle the quiet serenity of the morning to blow tiny kisses, like Cupid's arrows, in exchange for the sweet promised nectar.
You don't come anymore, little hummingbird, to brighten the quiet serenity of the morning, and steal a smile from me.
Your visit, little hummingbird, like Happiness, comes unannounced... and, swiftly, disappears... August, 2008 Monica Tapiarene |
May 2011 Poem of the Month
For My Sons:
Sleeping at Your House
I sleep well at your house
Curving into the covers
As you once curled inside me
Kicking eagerly to get out
Between us, an invisible bond
To see you is
To want to touch you
The flesh
Your father and I created
You ran with it
Stretching, pulling, flexing
Look what I've got!
Can I take it outside?
It's mine, now
You can't have it back
All is as it should be
You on your own
Me, fading
Less pertinent than wife and children
Just as it ought to be
I never walk away from you
Without the weight of loss
Waiting to hold
What I cannot
And should not own
But cannot breathe without
Lois Requist
April 2011 Poem of the Month
AMERICAN DREAM
Dreams are a disease to the poor boys' spirit
Killing, Listen
you can't hear it
spreading malignantly all over his soul
devouring his hopes
his achievements
his goals
So what
he'll live to be a happy old man
but what of his dreams
He's an American
--Bobby Richardson
March 2011 Poem of the Month
selected from those who read at the March 1st, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering.
NAMELESS SOLDIER
They were born in order, lived in chaos
and died in order to be free.
Their names were taken from them.
for they were songs too beautiful
for a living being to hear.
They are the ones that would die
but somehow live through the
rest of time.
They are the nameless soldiers
and I salute them.
Elijah Martin, Benicia Middle School student
February 2011 Poem of the Month
selected from those who read at February 1st, First Tuesday Poetry Gathering.
Above the Carquinez
When clouds remember themselves
in one of their former shapes
as they float through fall air
down the Carquinez Strait
that on this green day
resembles a wide,
gray river of stone,
they lift into lightness
and revel in separateness,
going over the memory
of how close they used to be,
condensed then as weight
walled in by land's boundaries
they've once more outgrown.
--Sherry Sheehan
January 2011 Poem of the Month
Read by Joel Fallon at the January 4th, FIRST TUESDAY POETRY GATHERING.
Did You?
Did you hear far-off thunder in the night
and then the whisper of the rain?
Did you come to me silently in early morning
darkness and lie beside me?
Did you push aside the sheet
and caress away the years?
Did you press your lips to my shoulder
and give me your breasts?
If not you,
who the hell was that?
Joel Fallon
Copyright © 29 September 2010
December 2010 Poem of the Month
Read by ALICE FAHY-SALERNO at the December 7th, FIRST TUESDAY POETRY GATHERING.
NOT-SO-HEROIC COUPLETS
I do not sense within myself the power
Of heroism in disaster's hour.
I fear that, when confronted I would quail
And turn quisling when the pliers touched my nail.
Trust me with no great secrets of the State.
I've not the strength to hold a nation's fate
Within these hands.
But say this, when I'm gone,
Your hand politely poised to hid a yawn,
She had, at least, the clear, quixotic strength
To face her wayward life across its length
And call it good, and worthy of its pains
For compensations made by summer rains
And winters crisp with Christmases and chill
And patient loves who had the grace to fill
Her years. Decisively, she set determined sights
On cosmic joys, small hugs and peaceful nights.
No statues were erected to her fame,
No ballads set to music by her name.
Yet she possessed the daring to delight
In all the years that came before her night.
Alice Fahy-Salerno
November 2010 Poem of the Month
Read by BRUCE MOODYat the November 2nd, FIRST TUESDAY POETRY GATHERING.
Praise
God doesn't need your praise. The only reason He wants you to give it to Him is so you won't give it to yourself.
The old poems show a crying stag
standing in clover searching
for his mate.
"Don't worry. Your tears
tell you
all you need to know
and also where you need to look.
"That's right,
that's where she is,
right inside you there.
Think how lovely are her eyes
and how her bobbing tail
enraptures the very moon.
That thin white stripe down her back,
The cool dewy purse of her nose.
"Oh, yes, recite all her wonders as you weep.
Time will use your practice well,
my buck, when one day you
will kneel down on your haunches
and sing
a tearless gratitude
for being alive
Just like this."
˜ ˜ ˜
Bruce Moody
6:55 AM Saturday 25 September 2010