POETS PLACE
JUNE 2020
June!!! How many days now have we been locked out of our normalcy? Lunacy more like it! I have been feeling as though I’ve been dropped off a cliff, tethered to a long bungee cord banging my head against the hard rock, swinging back and forth and back and forth trying to knock the reality into me that- Yeah. Now what?? Plans? I had plans. Yes, and Bam! I was omnipotently believing and shockingly thinking, as we all have, and forcefully been hog tied and brought to the realization, that all is different now!! And not to say that I’m religious, but what was that saying in the bible? “You make plans and God laughs”. Haha. Guess what! This one’s on you! Me! All of us! Sheltered and ordered to stay in place! Keep your distance and cover your face! Okay. Of course I will comply. New rules.
Enjoy this month’s offerings from local poets. Keep em coming folks!!!
Lunacy
By Linda Kaye
5/20/20
Lunacy is thinking that you willed the squirrel in your garden with your mind to kill that annoying mockingbird.
Lunacy-lunaticus- madness. Driven mad by the confines of the country’s stay at home order. She bathed in her vomit thinking it would heal her nerves.
Irrational thinking by whose standards? Could she instead have drunk Clorox bleach to kill any virus still lingering in her body? Is someone a lunatic who believes that Moses actually could part the waves for the Israelites to escape the Egyptian‘s?
I think therefore I am.
I believe therefore it’s true. First signs of lunacy- confused thinking.
Pandemics create pandemonium the capital of hell, Paradise Lost. Don’t eat the apple it’s contaminated! Equals extreme fear, worry and anxiety-signs of lunacy.
Social isolation equals social withdrawal drought from human contact equals depression, accelerated cognitive decline-lunacy.
The lunatics once released from captivity will create a new world order of chaos and mayhem isn’t that happening now in Wisconsin?
WHEN THE NIGHT GAINED ITS STARS
By Richard Q Russeth
There is the sadness of flowers of course,
when they throw their seeds to the wind and
there is nothing to hold them.
no angel or sun or rain.
There is the suddenness of loss -
as when a friend dies that you’ve been
meaning to call but then you get the news and
everything is broken glass.
There is that place where love and hate intersect,
that sniper’s dream, that place where
you can never run fast enough,
and everything is far.
There is the dream that ends with an alarm.
Another that ends with eternity.
And another that just ends and you realize
the sunrise ever does not wait.
There is hopelessness of course. Always that.
The wonderment of god
and why does life hurt so much
when all you did was open your eyes
after a journey of blood and stars and months.
There are times when
only bare trees make sense,
only clocks keep time,
only babies give hope,
the impossible cost of truth
is revealed,
forgiveness is given,
and the trees bloom
with a passion born of forgetting
that they’ve done it a hundred times before.
We are given this life for remembrance,
for that moment when truth had a beating heart,
for when all that was thought lost was found,
and the night gained its stars.
Richard Q Russeth
Baker, Poet, Conjuror, Photographer, Attorney
www.richardqrusseth.com
Pain in America
By Ronald Carrilo
I want to release the pain in your national heart
Before our allegiance falls apart let me hold you
My prayers are mixed with sin
I live in the duality of America
Her gaps ever widening
Her politics false
Only win win even in the face of loss
But you are my constitution
Your love for me is my Bill of Rights
Your flag of stars and stripes are my refuge and republic
Your kindness is my democracy
Release envy of the mind
The paradigm shift has started
We now live in another time
Our gold is not worth a dime
The old financial guard fears a coup
A people’s flu for recharged freedom
A viral awakening in a cesspool of greed
When there was no need
The money changers from ancient times have followed us
The crusades perfected this thievery and spread its evil seed
Our federal reserve is neither federal or the people’s monies
High crime in desperate times wash to our shores
The masses are easy to control when asleep or masked
But the giant must awaken and tend to the task
Our migratory routines no longer work in the scheme of things
We are chained in serfdom
Our democracy has become polite slavery with benefits
Profit is everything but it requires a stealth sleight of hand
A high demand for wealth
Engineered adroit deception of the people
Even a manufactured virus to deceive
Fake news the people receive daily like manna
Survival mode rules in the cruelty of this world
Coda: That dream time has passed in sorrow
Alas we reap what we sow
Although we can still find salvation in our penance
The years of our toil in a city of tears are slow
Our angels have dispersed into the shadows of our shame
Many fingers point to those they think to blame
Pick up a mirror and find your truth
Many lessons still to be learned
But we begin again dusting off past errors
Looking toward heaven we take new steps
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, and Neil Young.
We’re Fixin to Kill Us
By Eva Mauer- with a little help from my friend Pat
Based on the protest song by Country Joe and the Fish
Our right to party’s in jeopardy
No big groups says the CDC
They’re sayin too close we must not stand
No open beaches in Covidland
So put down the facts and pick up a gun
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun
And it’s one, two, three what are we waiting for
Who cares we don’t give a damn
We’ll party in Covidland
And it’s five, six, seven
Open up the pearly gates
Well there ain’t no need to wonder why
Whoopee! We’re all gonna die
Come doctors and governors let’s move fast
Your big chance has come at last
Now you can go take away our right for fun
To protect those old folks whose time has come
You’ll know our fun has just begun
When we’ve blown us all to kingdom come
And it’s one, two, three what are we waiting for
Who cares we don’t give a damn
We’ll party in Covidland
And it’s five, six, seven
Open up the pearly gates
Well there ain’t no need to wonder why
Whoopee! We’re all gonna die
Pat & Eva are retired physicians, who were both dismayed at the results of the 2016 Presidential election. This is their first foray into songwriting. Their co-writer was a nice Jewish boy who wrote the most popular Christmas song ever written. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.
DIGITAL LIFE
By Mary Cheung
5-15-20
1:06 a.m.
Life in pixels and I'm captured on a screen,
I interact on a 6"window,
Glimpses of life onto a hand held screen.
is that enough?
I interact on a 15" laptop,
is it enough?
Go bigger, go bigger.
Digitize, I fantasize...
big enough to seem real.
Like life from b4.
Only now its all digital.
We live stream,
unless you're really, really poor.
Now I zoom zoom.
Singing, dancing, working,
All fits inside of a room, room!
Streaming on the internet, caught up in the flow.
Birthday parties and celebrations.
How do we handle,
our personal relations?
Touching each other on computer screens,
Our eyes meeting on web cams as we stream.
Class rooms and higher education.
Those who are out of work and on extended temporary vacations.
I can't remember what its like, to feel a hug anymore!
Or the soft pressure of lips of ones that I adore.
Of heated desires,
electrons dancing on my skin.
The friction of our bodies,
as we commit,
the ultimate sin.
Now I'm just an observer, forced to touch the hard cold screen.
Desperate to replace human interaction.
Living life, in little,
digital... fractions.
So this is the new norm,
We're all tricked into believing it's all ok.
Losing our voices.
The government tells us,
what to do. What to say.
Inside this digital world,
Life within a little black box.
Strained and contained.
Waiting to break free.
I can't wait to go analog,
Digital just isn’t for me.
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”.
“Virus of the Soul”
(May 2020) by Lisa Montagne
Sometimes I lay
Awake
At night
Worried
That you Worry
That the Government will
Inject your soul with a virus.
During the day,
The Media
Swallows you whole,
Head to foot,
In its wide maw, chewing you,
Feeding,
Until it spits you out,
A poison after all.
The Aliens, flying through chem trails,
Will be next to sicken you with sadness.
The man on YouTube said so.
From his basement studio,
The man said they are in league
With the Illuminati—which is real, btw,
Because the Internet said so.
Things just don’t add up, you say.
Look at this, you say:
I mean, these alien footprints
Are in my backyard this very minute.
They are here!
You screamed through my phone:
They are here!
You look to the Emperor to save you.
But he wears no clothes.
Lisa Montagne, Ed.D.
A native of Southern California, Lisa Montagne, Ed.D., is a poet, writer, artist, and college English professor who specializes in online learning. She has read her poetry to audiences in Los Angeles, Portland and Tampa, including at the Beyond Baroque poetry center and for Writ Large Press and PenWriter America. She has been published by The Ear literary and art magazine, the Variant Literature Journal, Boomer Reviews, and Running Wild Press.
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.
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