POETS PLACE
FEBRUARY 2021
LOVE EDITION
Hello! February is here and it’s the time of love! Love sharing, love seeking and love giving. Valentines for our hearts and souls. Although it’s a difficult time for so many people who have lost loved ones, I’m hoping we can find the love in our hearts to send them some so needed LOVE. In any form. Be it cards, phone calls, face-time, Zoom calls, carrier pigeons. However you can, make the effort. It will be truly appreciated.
What does love look like to you? Love isn’t wrapped in cellophane tied with a neat bow, it, I believe, develops from those around us, family, friends, schoolmates, coworkers, teachers, anyone who has touched our lives, and who have shared experiences and commitments towards our personal growth, our welfare, encouraging our spirits with a recognition and respect for our achievements and sometimes failures as human beings. Unconditional and non-judgmental.
Love is letting go as well as keeping up with relationships by investing your time, your heart with loving attention towards nurturing them. Relationships do not flourish without the needed attention. Like your garden, without water, pruning and nourishment, it will eventually die out.
I have been nurturing this column for the last year and it has grown from just a few submitting poets to a large base of multiple writers from all parts of the country. This month we have poetry of love and stories of love lost. Love for the cinema and the love of lust. Love does come in all shapes and sizes!!
Love
By Linda Kaye
Sensuous and sentimental
easily seduced
often aroused
excited
ignited and aflame
frisky but contained
never aloof
inviting desiring
wanting waiting wishing love
UNDONE
12-19-20
11:17 a.m
By Mary Cheung
I stare at the card, unopened.
Rejected and returned.
Sits there and refuses to be acknowledged, undisturbed.
Over a year later.
Forces me, to interact.
Finally I relent and I open the gift I sent.
Ignored and unacknowledged.
Opening the card I made with loving care.
Feels like closure to something that was never meant to be.
Danced on the edges of possibilities,
But never fulfilled...
It's been over a year and I read what I wrote with selection and caution.
Careful, to not expose too much of my heart.
Least it gets damaged and hurt.
Yet the inaction taken was more damaging than if it had been accepted and than rejected.
It tears me up that I took so much time in carefully crafting my art.
In making the art.
In choosing my words carefully...
Only to have it unread, unseen… By your eyes.
Eyes that I can't remember any more...
What color they were.
Your presence and power bulldozed me, each day.
And pulled me in, in an attraction that was so magnetic and powerful;
I .... couldn't resist.
Fighting it everyday,
Was bittersweet and torturous.
And trying to pull away. Was as futile as two polar opposites that attract,
stuck on your path.
I write to you my heart:
- take time in life to appreciate art.
- take time in life to appreciate kindness.
- take time on life to appreciate uniqueness.
- take time in life for gratitude & more.
Thank you,
I appreciate what you did for me and,
Hope you appreciate this art I made for you.
And if not, well heck, there's always the beer to help you see the art better
Now it feels done. I can finally move on and stop thinking bout you.
Sometimes I still wonder,
Why, what could of been..
Why nothing ever came of something that seemed so promising and destined.
Yet never came to be.
I guess I'll never know,
why you never took a chance and why you didn't see,
All the possibilities that laid in wake,
of walking down a path,
that would lead to me..
Mary Cheung 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”.
February Poem: 2021
By Ronald G. Carrillo
I have learned from masters
To do the opposite of their ill deeds
Confessing and releasing my sins from the past
Has freed and refreshened my outlook toward the future
Like Paul of Tarsus I have become a new man
Love has taken me on a wayward journey
Through perilous peaks and vulgar valleys
All thrilling and savage but holding my attention
My will not always able to prevent their harsh lessons
This quest and eternal search for Eros
Has sometimes robbed me of my energy and rest
Its beauty at times has taken away my breath
Other times it has insulted me
I was a sapling youth when first love bent my trunk
My leaves were scattered in a whirlwind of lust
I lost my trust and forward direction
An endless erection of longing for that special one
Who no longer existed
After a purple Sophomore year of innocence
My Frank-in-sense spirit dissipated in a false independence
Detours that decorated my gutters with glitter and glitz
A bitter disco season of “I Feel Love”
Played relentlessly to an erotic synthesized beat
And drugs that numbed me
My heart no longer operating
A different appendage dominating my feelings not to feel
A revelation and long appeal toward some good will
My journey devalued my original intent
I cast my jewels before this world
I spent years making little progress only steps
On the silken roads of loneliness
Now in my golden years my tears have dried
But I continue my quest toward Shangri-la
Like Marco Polo I am an adventurer
But like Peter Pan I know love is a Neverland that truly exists
I still view the stars waiting to find you
Where is your constellation perhaps near Venus
My senior eyes will soon detect you
I feel you in the rhythm of new songs
Your muse is there in each line I write
You will be part of my evolving history
From imperfection can come perfection
For love is transcendent, everlasting and divine
Love truly is being in the presence of God
Somewhere among the stars is your light
Reflecting back at me
We will see each other in a glance
Coda: My branches are getting less sturdy
My leaves less green and some have blown away
My roots absorbing less water and nutrients
My memories leading me into the future
The enigmatic Sphinx guarding the Giza plain
I’m becoming an archaeologist of pain and truth
The phoenix will rise again in Eros
No loss in getting older only gaining a new strength
As my concentric rings widen and my patina deepens
No more sorrow only pride in my journey
Creating a personal history
Chronicling my time through love and poetry
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.
A Valentine of Fodder and Regret
By Jane Cantillon
Their pretty lips on my lips and red lipstick smeared around heart shaped mouth and a velvet heart shaped G-string, a gift I will never wear again
tongue curled heart shaped pink a trickle of blood falls painless,
a bittersweet cosmo with a stripped plastic straw next to an empty bottle of Moet upside down in melted ice in bucket next to chocolates half bitten into oozing pink cream. My breasts pop out of heart shaped bra licking sucking wet pussy fucking. Yes, did I forget—and with who?
Oh yes but I heard it was great
and without regret.
There is pain to never forget
what could have been, more babies and the college degrees
or the great jobs I didn’t get.
Or opportunities like fruit ripe let rot on the vine.
But those are just some regrets in time.
A Valentines with no farewell kiss before the end of the war in his head
oh how I regret I never said I loved him. A Valentines I shall never give or forget.
Watching him weeks before the pain in his heart stopped.
Handsome sipping red wine as his broken red capillaries traveled up his shadowed grand nose. His blood shot eyes seemed brighter from the shock treatments but they never helped him forget, no he could not forget.
How strange he took his life on Valentines for all the flowery words arranged as orgasms of rhymes a poet was he
his pain was his only lover and the horror of life exploded his heart in an instant
it was over. “A very strong combination of drugs took him, I inform you with regret.” The small town coroner said, then sighed. “A tragedy I will not soon forget.”
Multi-talented Jane Cantillon is an Emmy-nominated producer, working in daily television for over 24 years. More recently, Cantillon been an improvisational creative writing and arts facilitator who hosts private salon-type workshops and retreats in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. Designed to help non-writers and artists manifest their dreams through sharing their work, she creates unconventional prompts that develop into moving stories. She also conducts art and music therapy at various assisted living facilities in Los Angeles. Cantillon also fronts an original rock band backed by her husband called The Dick and Jane Family Orchestra, and she produced and directed a critically acclaimed documentary called "The Other Side: A Queer History's Last Call".
February 24, 2021
This poem is dedicated to my beloved John who rode on the wings of hummingbirds onto the cosmos February 24, 2019
Para John
By G. Billie Quijano
There is poetry in my dreams
What does it all mean?
Welcome to my new normal
I refuse to be so formal
In my heart
I explode with art
Colores and palabras guarded by Lola’s rebozo surrounds me
I continue to evolve, a desire to be free,
My soul did not flee
I have screamed at my four walls
My womaness was at war
La Duende flows through my veins
I can still hear my tear drops through the rain
My light shines in the face of dark times
The universe has shown me I am eternally fine
So the poetry in my dreams
Is what John gave and gleamed
As he left for the cosmos
Words glide through osmosis
My heart twists and turns
Ebbs and flows
Love is planted, deepens and grows
Will I love again?
With remnants of the pain?
News at 11, see you then
G. Billie Quijano-Bruja, Mestiza, self taught Artista, Fotographer and Poeta, recently published in Modern Latina magazine.
I was born in the Corazon of East Los. The landscape of my childhood were elements of L.A. urban life. Cool concrete, balmy nights, vibrant colors, sounds of girl groups, low riders and Trio Los Panchos. Mexico was all around me, surrounded by calla lillies, cactus and sunflowers. My neighbor Rafael’s rooster was my alarm clock. Olvera Street was my playground. Saturday’s breakfast was the delicious aromas of menudo, carnitas and freshly made tortillas de maiz from our local tortilleria on Whittier Blvd. My work is my desire to keep my ancestors traditions, history and vision alive.
“Love and Not”
By Ed Burgess
2/1/21
You say
Write a poem
about love
I say
Pass a camel
through a needle
A shot in the arm
An easy love
A dromedary
In an allegory
Senseless Love
With out reason
You Drink me
The cat smiles
The bug smokes
The shark jumps
The tea is spilt
And we are late again
For another date
Now and Forever
And forever for now
We pass the afternoon
In my room
In love
And not
In love
Ed Burgess is an artist, poet and all around bon vivant. He has lived in LA for 20 years and is an active member of the art community. He has exhibited his artwork in many galleries around Los Angeles. He also writes poetry and sometimes reads it publicly.
Golden Memories: Tarantino’s L.A., A Love Letter to My Town
By Randi Lavik
Poet/Documentary Filmmaker/Cabaret Singer/Actress/Fantastic Party-Thrower and Overall Real-Life L.A. Woman Linda Kaye asked me if I might like to contribute a love letter and I’m happy to oblige, because I love her too.
I’m going to start out with a declaration. I’m not in love with new movies. I love the classics. I have a BA in Communications/Radio-TV-Film from Cal State Fullerton’s highly-acclaimed curriculum—yet, learned more about the art of the filmmaker from Turner Classic Movies Hosts Robert Osbourne (RIP great educator/overall lovely man), and the knowledgeable and charming Ben Mankiewicz. After decades of repeat viewings, I feel as though I can finally extrapolate the deep cultural meaning behind Citizen Kane with a decent amount of clarity.
I finally realized I had seen A LOT of old movies, and sadly, subsequently unsubscribed from my beloved Turner Classic Movies channel, after being a faithful viewer for more than a decade. I had literally enjoyed everything in their glorious catalogue; in many cases more than once. That’s an awful lot of celluloid.
With all of that said, in 2019, I very uncharacteristically took a chance with a newly-released Oscar-Nominated, popular pick amongst film-loving pals, and accompanied my teenage son to the cinema, to see Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
I have a love/hate relationship with Tarantino movies; so brilliant, sets so glorious, music so fine, yet dialogue so brutal, and violence so violent.
To illustrate: I recently attempted to watch The Hateful Eight on cable, and the dialogue and acting were so stellar, that I was downright angry at Quentin by the end of the second act or so, no offense Sir, because I just couldn’t get through it. I still don’t know who or what was in the stew. I don’t know who survived that twisted hot mess (with very fine acting and dialogue), but I have my best guesses.
Tarantino’s Jackie Brown was especially gorgeous too; the subtlety was glorious. The long-shot at LAX in the perfectly-preserved mosaic hallway; Pam Grier so posh, exquisitely styled, clicking in her heels while framed by yummy Brady Bunch tones. And such fine acting in Jackie Brown—almost too painfully beautiful for an Empath/Humanist to bear. As a repeat two-out-of-three-acts viewer, I’m frustrated overall, but still a Tarantino fan.
And I can’t lie, I’m a sometimes nervy, yet mostly big ‘bockbockity’ chicken. Once again, during Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I hid under a giant hoodie for the entire third act of a Tarantino film. Whatever was happening, it sure sounded awfully graphic, you bet, and the packed audience sounded absolutely delighted. As much as I like the idea of revenge on the Manson family for terrorizing my hometown, as there’s certainly nothing cute or funny about the crime scene photos—I respectfully ask that Hollywood give me implored and implied, anytime, any day, yes, please and thank you.
I’m a lover, not a fighter, and this piece is about love. Critics agreed and loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. This film got major love. Tarantino’s masterpiece was lauded with the Academy Award for Best Screenplay and Best Production Design, among many major awards. Brad Pitt stole scene after scene from a grand cast of kooks. Costumer Arianne Phillips brought Sharon Tate to cinematic life, a joy to behold, in grand style; perfection in tailored Emilio Pucci minis. So much Biba! Quentin made Sharon real, a real lady, so full of life, beyond her untimely demise. Performances a joy to behold. Dialogue so smart.
Now for some major love: The set designers Mr. Tarantino employed, Nancy Haigh and Barbara Ling, made me fall back in love, and cry happy in my seat, remembering the heyday of #mytown. My L.A. The L.A. of my early childhood. LA streets shined like gold back then to a kid with a massive imagination.
How we got to L.A.: My people immigrated to Ellis Island in 1905, after getting kicked out of Russia, and persevered in great style. The extended family followed the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in the 1950s. My uncles owned a notorious dive bar on the West Side and my grandparents owned a store full of mid-century modern furnishings in the 1950s, on the fabulous Sunset Strip. We are talking Heywood-Wakefield and Eames. My aunt and uncle helped to integrate housing in L.A. and Orange County during the Civil Rights era.
And I was born in Inglewood, right before the Summer of Love, 1967, in L.A.’s golden era in many ways. My parents ran lunch trucks all over Tarantino’s late 1960s dreamy L.A. while falling in love, bringing hot coffee, breakfast and lunches to factories and film sets all over the city, and raising five small children on the West Side, in the process.
It’s hard to express, looking back now that I have teenagers, what a free time it truly was. Our moms told us to “go out and play” and we did. I couldn’t wait to get on skates, on a bike, in a car. When I could drive, I was on Melrose by noon if I couldn’t find a parking space at the public high school. When my Mom attended Hamilton High in the 1950s, she was on the beach by noon if she couldn’t find a parking space at the public high school.
My petite-yet-epically-brave Mom danced on Hullabaloo and was a cocktail waitress at Gazarri’s Nightclub on the Sunset Strip, eschewing The Doors for her then-favorite house performer, Trini Lopez. She listened to ‘race records’ and ‘the black stations’ in her words, and was a ‘Stones Girl’ through and through. A real outlaw. With five babies at home.
In Westwood, I saw Willy Wonka at the same theater, the AVCO, where Sharon Tate goes to the movies, to take a peek at herself, in a movie. I saw the 1976 epic King Kong at the AVCO too (I had brothers; they got to pick, for better (The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes) or worse (The Towering Inferno).
Century City literally gleamed from my second story bedroom window and I was convinced that King Kong was going show up, swoop his giant hand and whisk me away; it was just a matter of time. Amazingly, and of course only in LA, in my late teens, I appeared in a TV commercial with some girlfriends; cast on-the spot, after a preview screening of Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly II, filmed in front of the very same AVCO Theater.
We lived in the same neighborhood as my extremely fashionable grandparents, right near the National/Overland exit, right off the 10 freeway. As demonstrated beautifully in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, L.A. is such a car town. A radio town. A car radio town. My Pop always drove what is known in this town as a ‘boat’—a massive Cadillac or Lincoln, and tossed us five kids in wherever we fit, seatbelts be damned.
My grandpa drove a late model 1960s Porsche 914, tossing my brother and I into the jump seats where we couldn’t have been happier, so joyously free, loud and squished. He wore a fedora with a feather tucked into the brim. Everyone liked him. I remember when traffic jams only occurred during traditional rush hour. You could get anywhere in twenty minutes, and we did. One older brother spent hours polishing his minitruck with my sister’s pristine white cloth diapers. I marveled at L.A. radio, and still do. Then I got on it. I even worked at KRLA with L.A. radio legend Art Laboe—my Mom’s jam!
My Nana always drove an Oldsmobile and chain smoked Benson and Hedges, Menthols. The ashtray was full of them. A real lady, she wore monogrammed outfits, was always decked, head to toe, was a very early career woman, and after she retired, she ran the heck out of the Board at the Co-Op community where my grandparents lived.
Tarantino’s film shows that people really dressed then. And cared. About looking sharp. I loved and still love hats. Pearls. Brooches. Hosiery. People ironed then. So many layers and much accessorizing. Oh did I love to roam though my Nana’s perfectly organized closet and watch her “put her face on.” Sneakers were for the playground.
My Nana wore Ferragamos, Roger Viviers, and high-heeled Grasshoppers. She used a silver eye pencil. And most certainly enjoyed her VO and soda, always after 5pm, tastefully. Oysters with tabasco sauce and lemon juice on crackers. And taught me to play cards. I’d watch her dreamily fall asleep watching still-handsome James Garner solve mysteries on The Rockford Files.
And she gave quite some speech at my older brother’s very fancy Bar Mitzvah, where the VO & Soda was surely flowing that great day. My big brave brother, “the man” in a three-piece suit—the only family member who actually learned Hebrew to his great credit—holds a beer bottle and cigar in his Bar Mitzvah photos, circa 1974, Westside. L.A. was just so glamorous, so enchanting and free spirited, as captured in the film. Before the ‘pajamafication’ of America. Pre-‘designer tracksuits.’
My Nana dolled up and took me on dates: Fashion shows and High Tea at Bullock’s Wilshire, to the Hollywood Bowl, where her cousin was the Sound Director. We always sat in a fancy box with a picnic and when he came down the concrete aisles to say hello, I felt like my Nana was such a VIP—and oh she was.
She took me to the Biltmore, The Greek, The Farmer’s Market, The Griffith Observatory, LACMA and The Music Center… lucky, mousy, wide-eyed me. I think she picked me because I was too shy then to look grownups in the eyes, let alone say much of anything to annoy. I was such a happy goofy curious kid. L.A. felt very dreamy and wonderful.
I’m glad I let my son pick the movies now, or I might have missed two-thirds of a real gem. Thanks to Quentin Tarantino for reminding me that many of the landmarks I mentioned here still exist, many beautifully preserved, for which I’m grateful. I long to explore my town again, sooner than later, with wide-eyed teenagers in tow, in Mom’s noisy little convertible this round. First stop: Dodger Stadium. We love L.A.
Randi Lavik, L.A. Native
Producer and Host
KX FM 104.7, Community-Supported Radio, Laguna Beach, So Cal, USA
www.kxfmradio.org
www.instagram.com/randi_lavik
www.twitter.com/randi_lavik
Thanks for joining! We will continue to power through and hopefully make this next year more loving and accepting.
With great hope for a healthier future
Love,
Linda Kaye
Please submit your written work to:lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.
Linda Kaye writes poetry, 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 and Zweet Café in Eagle Rock. 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.
Linda Kaye is a native Angelino 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 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 25 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.
www.lindakayepoetry.com
Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry
www.laartnews.com