POETS PLACE
NOVEMBER EDITION 2023
Ah the smells of fall, so calm and cool. Wait. Wasn’t the temps in the 80’s this last week? Oh well. Climate cluster fuck. Let’s just pretend all is well and good with the world. The leaves will change colors and represent the mystical magic of the holiday season approaching. The happiness and joy that befalls everyone during this time of year that jacks everyones attention to the buying craze of Christmas and Hanukah, is needed to distract us from the truths. Hanging ornamentations that represent one’s beliefs, showing off their taste in garlands and lights, definitely pretty, and sometimes ostentatious, demonstrates to the onlooker their wealth and style, religious or not. I’m all for decorations. I’m someone who often dresses up for the occasion, deliberately flashy, sexy, and sometimes over the top. It’s important to look good to myself in the mirror. Since it’s usually me looking at me. I’m a bit self involved. I like my basic needs to be handy, that way I can have everything that I need close by. I don’t see the point in not being comfortable. Not being comfortable, it’s not in my wheelhouse. I make a point of being comfortable everywhere I go. Otherwise I just bail. Every moment of our life is a gift, so take hold and enjoy the ride, it may be your last!!! No one ever said it be easy. In fact, life is hard, but hard work begets treasures far beyond what you can imagine. Just use your imagination and trust your heart. It will never lie.
So let’s get this holiday season started with delightful poets and stories tellers galore!!!! Everyone is always welcome to submit, anytime!!
Love, Linda :0)
Poetry as a commodity
By Linda Kaye
poetry, as a commodity
poetry, as a tool, a commodity given the right circumstances
poetry helps the fool conceal their oddity
poetry rises from the ashes, and prepares the dead for burial
poetry sends a message written on the blood soaked backs of the survivors
poetry can write the wrongs committed by the rapists
poetry can heal the wounds, stitch the scars and mask the pain long forgotten
poetry looks deep into the soul of the devastated, the traumatized, the battered and the doomed
poetry can release the chains that have bound and paralyzed your heart
and
poetry is a life support system that cracks the chest cavity with every thrust of resuscitation
This Is Lacuna
By Ashley Abigail Gruezo Resurreccion
Energy comes and goes
As I learn how to make it so
The material feels consistent and
I feel confident with how things stand
And I spend countless hours practicing
But the stresses are exhausting
Extending beyond the physical form
To people and places that surround me
Molding my thoughts deeply
My actions crumble
Like clay when it gets dry
With too many impressions
And not enough water
I’m trying my best
To do something good but
I need to take a break
Because I'm failing
I don't want to do this any more
Create art in anger to hide my shame
So I recite to myself gently
I don't blame you for
Finding solace in self-sabotage
Ashley Abigail Gruezo Resurreccion (siya/they) is a second-generation Filipina Asian-American, certified 200-Hour Yoga Teacher, and Returned United States Peace Corps Volunteer (Thailand 130) who graduated from Seton Hill University as a MA Art Therapy with a Specialization in Counseling. Twitter @twiischibis x Wordpress.com/Twiichii
Their previous work promoted mental health wellness and educational sustainability with Project DATE, The International Child Advocacy Network, Self-Discovery Through Art, Art Expression Inc., Project Art Pittsburgh, and Upward Together Los Angeles.
Sonnet #2
By, Anna C Broome
2023
If I would stay too long this way again
I could and should just slip into a sleep.
But I alive, awake, a child again,
Can make a lie about the truth too deep.
Too much is said; remarked upon; then dead
before it lives as a phrase so dear:
A word or two or more destroyed by lead
Of mouth between the teeth we tend to fear.
If I would go away around the bend,
I could and should just stand and live all day,
And shield myself from harm to seek and mend
The heart I held too close and made of clay.
Alone with hand in hand and eyes above
I left and leave each time I think of love.
Anna Broome is a Los Angeles published poet
and producer of the monthly free-to-the public performance art show, The Anna Broome Room for the passed ten years and the Solo Concert Series, The Broome Closet. She earned two bachelor’s degrees: Creative Writing, Poetry and English Literature and Language with an emphasis on British and American Romantic Poetry from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where studied under Pulitzer Prize for Poetry nominee, Michael White. Her first book of poetry, Orthodox Bats was published in 2019. Her second book, Sex Ed: A Prerequisite at Columbine was published this year by Four Feathers Press. Her first novel, A Full Sun is due out in 2025. And first collection of novellas the following year.
We Were Twenty-two
By Carolyn Weathers
for Sharon Roberson
We were twenty-two.
Our dark hair,
Our bones.
You lay on your back
on the pavement,
like a doll in the trash,
your blood flooding the cement,
your loafers and socks
sticking out from under
the coroner’s blanket.
I, in my loafers and socks,
standing over you,
staring down
at the coroner’s blanket.
We were twenty-two,
Our loafers and socks,
Our dark hair.
Our bones.
You had said, “Gotta go, see you later.”
I had said, “Later, gator.”
Our eyes smiled,
our dark blue eyes matching.
You left for your car.
I stayed in the Wonder Bowl Bar.
Suddenly police lights were flashing,
people in the parking lot
shrieking and shouting.
We were twenty-two.
Our loafers and socks.
Our dark hair.
Our bones.
Our dark blue eyes matching.
His shotgun blasting
your stomach to shreds
from two feet away,
lifting you and your loafers
into the air,
blasting you into death
In the time it took you
to fall to the pavement.
We were twenty-two.
Our loafers and socks,
Our dark hair,
Our bones.
Our blue eyes matching,
our dark blue eyes
locking and smiling.
Your loafers and socks,
Your limp, still feet.
My halting steps away
from the coroner’s blanket.
The unspeakable hole.
Carolyn Weathers is a memoirist, poet, ex-publisher, and retired librarian with the Los Angeles Public Library. She has published three books—two memoirs and one book of short stories. Her writings and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and online publications. She lives in Long Beach CA.
Dynamic Dawn
By Don Kingfisher Campbell
Up in pastel blue
sky clouds swarm and
turn around each other,
cause frayed rolling edges.
Unseen sun below is
a dragon breathing orange
into warring nimbus strands.
On the surface, palm
trees and power poles
reach high but don't
communicate with cool air.
It's the opposite, wind
invisibly swirls through wires
and fronds. At street
level, silent road cracks
and ages under daily
heating and movement down
into darkness. Eyes close,
wait for next morning's
display. What shall we
sight tomorrow? Traipse on
to gaze horizon where
creatures conjure models that
shadow imitate massive nature.
Don Kingfisher Campbell, MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, taught Writers Seminar at Occidental College Upward Bound for 36 years, been a coach and judge for Poetry Out Loud, a performing poet/teacher for Red Hen Press Youth Writing Workshops, L.A. Coordinator and Board Member of California Poets In The Schools, poetry editor of the Angel City Review, publisher of Four Feathers Press, and host of the Saturday Afternoon Poetry reading series in Pasadena, California. For awards, features, and publication credits, please go to: http://dkc1031.blogspot.com
November Trees
By Caleb Delos-Santos
Who doesn’t love November trees
enriched with golden flakes
that break into the western breeze
and rest on frozen lakes?
Who doesn’t love November trees
adorned with pouring snow
that trickles into little seas
of acorns stowed below?
Who doesn’t see November trees
and roam and breathe with ease?
Caleb Delos-Santos (he/him) is an English graduate student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Throughout his four years of writing, Caleb has published poetry with over twenty literary magazines, including North Dakota Quarterly and the Madison Journal of Literary Criticism, and most recently released his first two poetry collections, A Poet’s Perspective (2022) and Once One Discovers Love (2023). Caleb also won the 2022 Esselstrom Writing Prize and the West Wind Literary Magazine’s 2023 Best in Genre Award for his nonfiction. Today, Caleb teaches English 101 as a teaching assistant and dreams of a successful writing and teaching career.
TEARS LIKE RAIN
10-12-23
4:12 p.m.
By Mary Cheung
H.A.M.A.S.
Hate -All? Military- Attacks (no one is ) Safe
It's not enough that war
is in Russia and Ukraine already.
5000 missiles
1600 deaths, the number is rising, it’s not done yet.
Hostages, beheadings, barbarian moves…. To motivate what?
To end deaths with more death?
Bombings, relentless air attacks.
So many homeless, so many dead, lives lost, too much to forget.
10-7-2023
Horror
Terror
Brutality
Demoralize
Executions
Breaking spirits
Death tolls mounting
No water
No power
No food
No home
No lives
Kill, Kill, Kill
Blocks of buildings flattened to dust. Debris and cinders, nothing left.
A huge Crater in the earth, an opening into hell, on earth..
No sign of life, everything razed….
Struggling to understand the madness.
decades-long battle over land and sovereignty.
How can such evil exist?
How can the perpetrators live with themselves?
How can they justify their reasons?
The sadness overwhelms me, can democracy survive?
Enough tears to end all drought.
Tears of red rain.
Mary Cheung is a multi-disciplinary artist. She has been creating art since she was young. Grew up the youngest in a family of eight. She came to America at the age of 2 and grew up in San Francisco. Attended American school during the day and Chinese school at night.
Mary has an AA degree in Fashion Design and a Best Costume Design Award from the NAACP. She often creates costumes for her art narratives and creations. Sometimes building the sets as needed.
Mary was the Producer for the Santa Rosa Spring Festivals 2011 and 2012 which incorporated live performances and festival games.
She produced the EVOLUTION Music and Arts event in 2013.
LUSCIOUS, Music Art, Live Body paint Art Event IN 2014 followed by
OPEN FLOOR IMPROV EXPERIMENT whose purpose was to engage the community, encourage local business growth and artists involvement. Her real passion and drive come from being able to engage the community while bringing hope, healing, joy, and human connection.
It is her goal to be able to continue to do this while making an impact on society’s values and thinking.
“I hope that I can be a role model for others to find their own true voice in life through my art."
4am
By Joshua Dresser
“you’re a survivor
always have been”
said with good intention
I’m sure, some form
of supportive vibes on the air
I don’t want to be
a fucking survivor
I wanna be a thriver
I’m tired of being
a weathered tree
it’s time I’m the fucking weather
the shit drops
from bad decisions, or
cold incisions
I can only smile
sadness my religion
I was a survivor
but I’ve had enough
Joshua Dresser howled into this world in the year of Halloween. He went to university, wrote plays and short stories, and eventually allowed life to alter his plans indefinitely. He lives on the Autism spectrum, works as a technical writer, and enjoys logomachy.
He resides in Los Angeles.
OFFERTA TO GEORGE 1940-1985
By Marilyn Fuss
2016, Dia de los Muertos 2023
A young, singing Gene Autry Google image,
downright winsome,
informs me (Damn!) of why my brother
loved him with passion at age four.
I'd never understood.
He appears before I can type in "Museum" while checking an exhibition.
This star's status not explained 'til sibling's premature last decade,
yet it was in his first that he determined that preference,
with Gene a catalyst. What would that bovine-directing horseman
and pillar of industry have made of this?
As years tossed themselves away,
paper calendar months retreating black and white
in the movies that nurtured the boy,
later objects of affection
were not so unattainable.
His decoys for 1950's mores, and for himself
(second decade conformity begetting some denial),
girls drew in, natural thralls to vulnerable mosaic eyes, Greek in fact,
perfect teeth within a trigger smile, shy, sweetly sardonic.
He did adore them in his way, same sex as mom, conflicted all his life.
Just short of fifteen, black-and-white again, there's him between deckled edges
with loose ROTC gear,
hand flat on the arm of a barely older tawny tulle blossom, thin-stemmed.
Mother ventured dryly, "She's not fifteen!"
There was an audition for "normalcy" in high school, with little German mom ringer winning for a long spell.
What had her papa done in the war a dozen years before? Just this month I note their gainly home
in a town once known for being to the right of right.
Was her first child my kin?
Wondering, from that glimpse so long ago, his kindergarten head.
Surf, sea-scent, and the compelling maintenance of an olive skin tone
pulled him like their tides from campus to shorelines funky and sublime--
Earth's longest and most worthy cause to party.
Love of his life a large lifeguard,
cut from cloth of golden TV traveler Tod, who surveyed Route 66 with pal.
That series outlasted their run.
And travel is what they did:
merchant vessels in high seas, their own old sloop in low,
finding close corners in a roundish world,
contracting the grog habit, the usual contagious ills,
jaundiced to the color of spicy mustard before returning as Prodigals.
All good things must, and theirs did end.
Four years were over, and our boy chose warm insulation
of Isola Oahu to recover. Evenings on Hotel Street--never mind its nickname--
seeking a sailor for another recruitment.
Perfunctory instructor by day for survival, he passed
muster through a cult of personality and connections,
then as later.
But Monday mornings were the weightiest challenge,
at least until a new virus changed the game for that century before this one.
By that time, home was San Francisco Bay, as in 1906, an epicenter for disaster.
No cure in sight, he fought off two pneumonias,
pilgrimaged to the Big Apple and Cape Cod with a sisterly companion,
swam strong and cold near home in Clear Lake,
before he threw in the towel which had soaked up seas of ecstasy, lake, ocean, heart's grief.
A former teacher and go-fer, Marilyn Fuss has spent most of her life in Los Angeles, appreciating as many of its details as she can, and working to have a safe country to live in.
Afraid of America
By Ed Burgess
I’m afraid of you America.
You should be scared of me.
Because I’m American
A real American
A mongrel.
A bastard from a back street affair.
An unholy union of a traumatized 28 year old
And a Canadian on the lamb.
Not born so much as fell out
Lucky to be white
But I was deaf And different
Before they passed out Ridlin
I saw you America
From the back of a truck
Riding a tractor in the sun.
Hearing the dark whispers
From the good men of the earth
Their sons.
Oath keepers all
Killing small animals
Lighting fires
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I saw you America
I’ve seen your ripped back sides
Be afraid of me America.
I know where you keep your booze.
I was there when you took the brown acid and your hypocrisy kills me.
I know who you are America
And I am scared of you.
Be afraid of me.
Ed Burgess is a very creative person who has lived in Los Angeles now for over 20 years. He is an artist, an occasional poet, a troublemaker and a good person.
Poema
By G. Billie Quijano
Let me be clear
The audacity of war
Genocide inevitable
The responsibility of 3rd witness
exhausting and relentless grief
They don't see that peace is attainable
The heart is the weapon
Not the bomb of your choice
Innocence in the rubble
Crimson and flowing in the streets
Cease fire
Falls on deaf ears
Aerial bombardment
A symphony no one wants to hear
Carnage of conflict
What is the solution?
Hatred, toxic pollution
Hope never to cease
Justice in the underneath
Revolution of mind
Unity of tears
History repeats
Refusals to live in fear
G. Billie Quijano-Poeta, Assemblage Artista. Hija de East Los
Thanks for joining us! We will continue to host writers and poets of all genres.
Please submit your written work to: lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.
Linda Kaye writes poetry, curates poetry, produces films, produces spoken word and art events and produces a poetry column POETS PLACE for the online publication LAARTNEWS throughout the Los Angeles area.
Linda’s poetry events have included several summer poetry salons, and shows at the Align Gallery, 50/50 Gallery, Gold Haus Gallery, Ave 50 Gallery and Rock Rose Gallery in Highland Park .The Manifesto Café in Hermon, Pilates and Arts studio in Echo Park, and Native Boutique, Zweet Café in Eagle Rock, The Makery in Little Tokyo. And at the Neutra Institute Gallery and Museum in Silverlake. Her first short documentary film “BORDER POETS” was a socially and politically inspired event with poets and musicians filmed at the border wall near Tecate, Mexico on the Jacumba, Ca. side of the US. The film co-produced by MUD productions is available for viewing on her website and on youtube. https://youtu.be/5Te4-dlhxco
Her rap music video project in collaboration with Mary Cheung, “ERACE-ISM” can also be seen on youtube. https://youtu.be/NfrbveNUBgg This video was accepted into the Ontario Museum of History & Art show “We the People” Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. February 2- April 16, 2023. So honored!!
And… February 19, 2022, she debuted her staged poetry production of “20 Years Left” at the historic Ebell Club in Highland Park! Two sold out shows with 2 standing ovations!! Check out the links to reviews and the video!
https://thehollywoodtimes.today/20-years-left-new-show-performance-poetry-music/
20 Years Left youtube live stream 2/19/22
20 Years Left is now a short documentary!!!! Screening November 8th. 7PM Historic Highland park Ebell Club 131 S. Avenue 57 LA CA
Linda Kaye is a native Angeleno who grew up in the San Fernando Valley. She claims to be both a first-generation Valley Girl, and The Original Hipster. Educated at Antioch University and Cal State Long Beach in psychology and social work. Linda, now retired from medical social work, was working for the last seven years as a psychotherapist and licensed clinical supervisor for an out patient mental health clinic. She was a licensed medical social worker for 30+ years working on the front line of healthcare, a private consultant for Physicians Aid Association and for skilled nursing facilities throughout California and Arizona. She was also an adjunct assistant professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Oh yeah.
Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry
http://voyagela.com/interview/daily-inspiration-meet-linda-kaye/https://
shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-poetry-and-theatrical-producer-filmmaker/