POETS PLACE
OCTOBER 2020
Well well well. The great debacle. The diffuser. The bully. The despicable orange hustler and grifter in chief. The countdown has started. Who are we supposed to rely on to get our country’s dignity back? What planet, can we go to when we have destroyed ours? These questions continue to plague my mind as well as for everyone who is waiting for an answer. The RIGHT answer. The all consuming and mighty answer that will ease our anxieties and help us to wash away these last 4 years of this devastating nightmare.
I have definitely joined the ranks of the depressed and hopeless.
So I wait.
This month we are sharing poetry from some known and familiar local poets who have continued to share their hope and wise musings for our future. A BIG Thank you to them who have kept me focused on the here and now. A mindful place that helps me daily to stay, in the here and now.
Waiting
By Linda Kaye 9/21/20
waiting for all this shit to end
just staring staring
doesn’t seem to matter how any one individual feels because we are a collective now
one overwrought brain fused with 1 million others
fretting fearful frightened
fighting off the feelings, the darkness and not winning
looking for reasons to be here, to stay, to laugh again
closed up in the bubble can only protect from the outer world
what about what’s inside?
in the dark recesses of the mind there lives the bogeyman with sharp teeth and a piercing tongue that extinguishes with rapid fire loving thoughts of happiness and the will to carry-on
it’s a MAGA force radiating from the devil’s powerful hypnotizing voice
his captivating orator speaks of death daily as a relief and a release from the feelings of despair and hopelessness
the great escape.
Shoe string musings on the edge of a pond
By Mike Mollett
Feathers in the pond,
idle & soggy.
The dove is in the tree.
____
Mirror image of what is:
the pond filled
with mountains, rocks, & trees.
____
It’s dawn. A mosquito
nears my ear.
Slap.
____
Fog is a blanket
cocooning this morning
until the sun says hello.
____
Speaking of wonders & joy...
there’s dust
on a chair in the sun
Thoughts jumping around variously
By Mike Mollett
Words mean everything
as the wind speaks
we billions scream & hurrah.
_____
Dancing, bellowing, pausing for air...
so many elements.
A single (((explosion))) will do.
____
Count them.
The beats of a heart
before & after waking.
____
Crazy world today hits me,
layered, full, fragile.
Absurdly true on the world stage.
____
Tornados & hurricanes
of the heart / tear apart
in the politics of nastiness.
____
Not haiku. Not sonnet.
Not an ocean of a novel
can contain what I know & love.
____
Ceiling. Floor. Window.
All the space between
you & I together
and
Mike M. Mollett
Mike M Mollett -short lit focused bio 9-20
A native L.Alien & surrealist punk beat poet. Performance, installation, & visual artist. Edgy art festival DADA Club Blab guy. Found & lost ZTZU, “the ugliest gallery in Los Angeles”- LA Weekly. Co-founder w/perf poets the Lost Tribe & Carma Bums. In the 80’s & 90’s performed in LA, the westcoast & southwest in clubs, bars, coffee houses, New Wave Theatre, etc. Find & Read: The Carma Bums’ “Twisted Cadillac”, “After the Break-in”, Evergreen Review w/ M. Bruner, #102 online, “The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry”, “The Hideous Bible”, sadly w/out Scott Wannberg RIP). On the flip-side: leader/founder of the L.A. MUDPEOPLE (National Geo. Mag, 6/92). Now collaborating w/ Lost Tribe members Michael Bruner, SA Griffin, & Doug Knott on an audio variety podcast, Sharktalk (2 shows in the can. Posting it when there are at least 6.)
Yellow Daughter
9-25-20
4:20pm
By Mary Cheung
Yellow daughter in a white world.
Balancing between tradition and old.
In a world of apple pie, cheerleaders and teenagers,
who are so so very bold.
Our lives referring to a lunar calendar.
We make moon cakes in late fall.
While other dishes and foods make other days,
some I can’t even recall.
Mom and dad was always ready,
with a fable and a story to tell.
Like why we wrapped spiced pork in lotus leaves.
Tasty treats, that tantalize and triggers my memory well.
Those stories have become faint memories now.
Wisps of smoke that escape my mind,
Try as I might to grasp them,
Only to disappear in time.
American School in the morning,
Chinese late at night.
I remember walking home when it was dark.
Illuminated only by the street light.
One foot in each culture,
Calligraphy, history, and folk dance.
I tackled learning to be American.
Seduced by its glorious trance.
You can be all, you can be!
In this White Devils world.
My hair was long, black and straight.
What I wouldn’t give, to trade it for big boobs and curls.
I tried to fit into this new world.
The one of red, white and blue.
And in doing so, Yellow daughter got lost.
And so I struggle to find who it is I am, and what really is true.
Obedient!, respectful!, you better work hard, like a dog.
Words ingrained by Ah Mah, Ah Bah.
If only they could see how far I’ve come.
Would they cheer for me? “rah, rah!”
Or would they of wished I were a son?
It took losing myself, to want to find it again.
I try to remember the dishes,
The herbal remedies and more.
Despite how gross they were;
I drank them and what they were made for.
50 years later, I’ve finally found my voice……
This beautiful mixture of the 2.
Yellow daughter has become a fusion,
A strange,
new,
interesting hue.
Mary Cheung- she is an innovative Artist and Costume Designer. Her works contain a strong sense of story as well as a highly sensuous style. She mostly works in paint or photography and sometimes making art that is wearable and innovative. She states “I am usually more of a Visual style Artists and have only recently been open to sharing literally art/poems, often paired with visual art of my creation, birthing a new form of spoken word art as another form of expression”.
Start Over
By Julio Rodriguez the CongaPoet
7-28-17
I need to die
Bury my old self
Stomp the dirt real hard
So I don’t rise
Need to change my name
Change my mode
Change my habits
Need to dig a big hole
Get me a shovel
Find me a pick
The dirt is real hard
I’m half dead and I reek
Got no choice
Got scars and pain
No ice can shrink
My shit just rains
The past is gone
The present is here
The future is there
Gotta start somewhere
Saw the John Lennon tee
T-shirt said, ”you are here”
With an arrow on it
Let it be, let it be
Be humble
See the whole pic
Do the right thing
One tick at a tick
Julio Rodriguez is a rare act. A cross between the late 50's beatniks playing bongos and doing radical 50's poetry and Gil Scott Heron and the "Last Poets" of the Late 60's early 70's. People have said that his poetry takes them back to NY's Harlem days... Julio Rodriguez, the Conga Poet found his nitch when he started writing poetry. He had found himself without a music band to play with, and one day combined his newly found poetry with his Afro-Latino conga rhythms. For the last few yrs he has played in many of LA’s poetry venues, concerts, nightclubs, protests, and street festivals. When he could, (pre-covid) his favorite place to play was on York blvd during the 2nd Saturday of each month. The Conga Poet recently released his first dbl CD (one in Spanish and one in English). He sells hard copies but the CD's are also available on iTunes and CDBaby .. His poetry is simple, sincere and provocative.
Quarantine Poems: Quintet
By Ronald G. Carrillo
• Let’s take the pulse of the nation
During COVID and self-destruction
Yet I think of you in the darkest of these blues
Pandemic hues with no clues
Fractal faces in the clouds
Geometric patterns in the trees of my destiny
Emerging out of nature’s divine design
I observe free beauty
• Sherbet skies of raspberry stain Los Angeles clouds pink
The Summer of pandemic sink spirits in quarantine
But hope responds in a Sgt. Pepper sort of way
All you need is love and strawberry fields
Find your Penny Lane and sing your virus blues away
If we could spread love like this virus
John Lennon would be in his happy place
If the collective consciousness of the universe
Was pure love in its most positive and potent form
Our energy can reform the imbalance on this planet
• Your confessions of Eli and your virgin fidelity
Appealed to my purple Sophomore sensibility
Your fragile epistles of poverty and maiden sorrow
Were Blanche wrapped in Summer and Smoke
Wandering through pigeons in Manhattan
Puerto Ricans pitching pennies and selling dope
Miss Alma held out no hope from an anatomy chart
Love denied and carnal spies amongst the angels of heaven
A woman crying by a fountain waiting for her fate
Her chosen mate denied while a stranger arrives late
She summons her resources to survive this tide of bad luck
With the moon rising she takes the hand of her destiny
This strange man will lead her to a fork in the road
• A poet was born the Sophomore year of his innocence
His youth came into focus learning adult truths
He could not understand back then
But these truths would lead him into his future
Words were his stepping stones of emotion
His heart was compliant to learning this craft
The more he learned and perfected this skill
The more his heart darkened and his soul took ill
• Something is terribly wrong with the balance in the world
The social safety net are no longer working
Yet the possibility of more equitability can now be sustained
It is the dream come true if the masses want it
It is happening now this battle of wills
Black lives matter is blowing the cover of democracy
The red, white and blue waters of America are deeply disturbed
Tranquility will be restored after the storm
The nation will not be the same
Like the aftermath of a super hurricane
Ronald G. Carrillo is a native Lincoln Hts Angelino, living in Eagle Rock and a retired LAUSD educator and influencer. He writes of his passion and rebirth into the golden age of living. He has been writing since high school and was initially influenced from the songwriters, Keith Reid, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Neil Young.
Creating My Own Curriculum
By Jennifer Bouchard
When it is public order to retreat away from the world
Why then do I still feel like I must produce?
Pieces of livestock whose invisible owner called expectation
pulls on our utters for more nourishment to sell
That was the world as we once knew it
And this is now
Now
In my mind’s eye
I can roam free in the pastors of green grass
Twitch my ears to the sound of my neighbor’s laughter
Fill my belly with the ripe nectar of my mother’s phone call
Wrapped in her silence
Curled up to her worries
I am a little child again
Nurtured by the space of our mending bond
What task can be more pressing as this?
What test am I studying for? Whose deadline am I racing to?
What clock am I trying to beat?
I have to remind myself
I am no longer in the schoolyard
Skipping jump rope in recess before I bury myself in the next assignment
Life is my assignment and I am its headmaster
I write my own curriculum
Keep only knowledge that fuels my heart and burn the rest
Line up all friends and faculty with noses stuffed in the air
Fingers pointing down “Shame On You”
My foot pressed real firm in the middle of their ass
Slam the door with double bolt locks
How nice and quiet my school of life is without their damning words.
Jennifer Bouchard is a poet/actress residing in Los Angeles. Being a sexual assault survivor, the majority of her writing revolves around her healing process. Jennifer recently performed a piece at Healthy Housing Foundation’s slam event, The La Dream. She also recently self published her first collection, White Helmet.
About Samuel Little
By Marilyn Fuss
(Note: It's time for Halloween stories, but here is a sequential one that was real, and spanned decades. Samuel Little was a malcontent, a sometime boxer, who peregrinated
this country, and finally admitted to killing 93 women, often with sexual assault.)
Samuel was like all hunters of the rare and breathtaking,
not satisfied with the Kodak moments of his time.
And though his pastel skills celebrated rich-hued, sun-kissed aspects,
inducing awe amid frames of luxuriant tresses
rendered in retrospect: strands and purls [sic] in soft crayon,
so specifically noted,
and though he paraphrased their beauty in that hard copy,
their separation from life was his game.
Like Don Jr. cradling, caressing dead felines as if a favorite child,
Sam took time to admire, click mind's eye, and kill.
Release not an option.
Little of spirit, soon to die after life's maximum term (or close),
he makes Death Row moot.
Numbers of his quarry scrape the century mark.
He of the dull blow, tight neckhold of the ring fighter he was.
No other weapon for proof.
And for the loneliest and the lost,
whose sex was its own snare, own sentence,
no original investigation.
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
in 2021.
Thanks for joining us! Let me know how we’re doing here and PLEASE, more than ever, continue to support the arts!!
With great hope for our future
Love,
Linda Kaye
Please submit your written work to:lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.
www.laartnews.com
Bringing you art and culture in all of Los Angeles.
