POETS PLACE
DECEMBER EDITION 2023
The end is near!! December has reached our borders. Hopefully it won’t reek too much havoc. The state of the world continues to reflect the unhealthy climate of violence, war, destruction and increased hate. And now for the bad news. Covid continues to infect and new strains of flu and virus’ have penetrated my invisibility cloak. I have noticed an increase in illness raging through my friends’ lives and bodies and triggering death for some. Death, my arch enemy. Death is a topic that most people avoid discussing, naturally. It makes perfect sense to deny the inevitable. It’s actually healthy to avoid the thoughts about death. Nothing good comes from that. Super buzz kill, pun intended. I think about death, daily, sometimes hourly. Checking my pulse for any signs of slowing and thinking about whether I have safely hidden those secrets that may be found by my unwanted demise. I am definitely slowing down, physically. And I do see and feel differences in my intellectual capacity. Those normal aging symptoms relative of the slow decline and deterioration. I have been an active poet and writer for the last 10 years or so. Establishing myself as a producer and filmmaker in that arena. People in the art community have begun to recognize my talents and I am starting to gain some recognition. Just as I am slowing down. Ugh. After several bouts of illness these last few months, I have come to see the affects of not wanting to jump back in to the race. I’d rather watch another episode of Fargo, or read another Jonathan Franzen novel. I truly enjoy publishing this column and reading everyone’s poetry and short stories. I look forward every month to hearing from you all. And will continue to do so until my death. Lol. I do hope you are also enjoying the column, although I rarely get feedback from my readers and writers. Oh how we all love some validation!
Death Quips
By Linda Kaye
Rejection Letter from the Death Council: It is our understanding that a request for an early retirement from life has been rejected. The death council found no evidence in your apparent wonderful life to support an early retirement.
She/her waiting at death’s door. Be careful, it’s a trap!
Death’s tattoo starts to fade. That’s a good sign
Death say’s “It’s all about what’s on the inside!”
Death has no soul
Death knocks at the door. Don’t answer it!
Death is incongruent with life
Ranting
By Laurie Gonzalez
Can’t sleep tonight
The tarot’s say to let you go
My dreams say they lie
The spirits smile
Fear takes my breath away
Beaches haunt me
Only way to get you back
Is to say goodbye
Where are you now
I know thinking of me
Be miserable wt me in mind
Please as I walk away
Confusing as this might be
But then again me and you where always that way That’s what made us
Late in this moment
Tonight I will not sleep again
Only for a while
Then walk away forever
In this life we weren't mean to be
Or maybe I’ll find you in your wrinkled skin
That aged so fast to only
Wait for me on the beach
waiting to be held by me again
Laurie Gonzalez, 39 year old aspiring poet from Los Angeles, CA. She has only had her work published once during her teenage years for a kids poetry book and hasn’t submitted or been published since. She is looking for a chance to get her bold and sometimes straightforward style of writing out there to a culture that is changing constantly, and maybe finally they will understand her poems and that they come from the heart.
VII +
By Anna C. Broome
Lust
Bacon at 90
dollars a pound on zebra
tomato slices
Anti-lust
a celibate mind
according to barry long
Psychoanalytic lust
Can something be similar to itself?
Buddhist Lust
Suffering is caused by lust
Unbound Lust
sepulchre for a liver
between a sky and mountain
Sinful Lust
matrimonial
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.
Sometimes
By Richard McDowell
Sometimes, I wonder if all the media coverage helps sensationalize
making us desensitized
wondering who lied
as we go live
to the killing of the killer
and all this killing - will it ever stop - let's discuss
and who will be the next to be killed by – us?
As we make a list of who's died
and so we can say some s***' gotta burn - fry
until we, the human race, learn - try
to love thy neighbor but find it hard
sometimes - realize
to appreciate what graffiti and grime can cover, yet symbolize.
And all these ladders we got to climb
makes me ask,
to what, for what, so what?
Babies born just to stand in line no need to announce, but gots-to-gets mine.
Can you get behind me?
Can you backup your jump drive?
and as the oceans rise,
we haul our rubbish to the next floor
while waiting for the next door,
to open, to get through
to count your s***- click the next link with your thumb groupon, Amazon says I better - feel better –if you get some - dumb s***
so you can fit in.
So sometimes,
you can say - I win.
While you look through windows too dirty to see through
You, me, we, she, he, her, him, they, us, them - Yet who is the cause of all our sorrow? Who will you love to hate - to tomorrow? Who will become the next totalitarian? Advancements in civilization - but don't let hatred be the bank you borrow from
Richard McDowell riding high on my first award in the sixth grade, I don’t believe I have submitted to a poetry contest since that time. It has been a journey to get to a place where I can hear my own voice and impart it through and onto a page.
COMING EQUALS LOVE
7:11a.m.
6-30-23
By Mary Cheung
All the foods you use to make,
Looking at all of the photos,
It's now easy to see.
What you are creating want you just did, just for me.
In black and white pictures, I see you making egg rolls here.
In color photos, you cooking our first Thanksgiving dinner over there.
So many memories they all coming rushing back.
You gathered up your family feeding our minds and souls, so we would never lack.
Through cooking you taught us skills, passing down all that you've learned.
Teaching us how to survive, how to create, how to nurture, taking back nothing in return.
And the time we spent gathered around that table.
Became a symbol of family, love and unity as one.
I get it now, how you fed our minds and our souls.
Using cooking as your form of love and how you spoke it so.
And now this is what I have left of you.
These memories and your cooking style.
The best care you gave to me in my life, in my childhood and when I came home.
Was the cooking you gave to me,
Always in hopes that I would return soon.
To reciprocate that love and to share with you a dish that you shown.
And I have those favorites. Those dishes that like a warm hug to me and more.
That made me happy to be returning home, stepping through that welcoming door.
So now I'm my adult years, I see why it's important, this ritual of cooking together and making meals .
And I try pass down what I've learned and pass on the love to my children.
Hoping they learn all of the joy and love that I feel.
And learn how to stand on their own as well as well as the other important skills.
But mostly that cooking equals love, a bonding in time, a memory in a moment, lessons to be learned still.
To see you cook in your life, well that just gives me the biggest thrill.
To know that the seed I planted has grown to be this magnificent tree, standing tall and thriving, it gives me chills.
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."
Sebastian: A New Myth
By Caleb Delos Santos
Speaker:
Sebastian saved this place
by poisoning a tree
that siphoned people’s glee.
His actions lit each face.
Sebastian saved this place.
Sebastian drank for free,
owned any lover’s key,
and starred on every vase.
Sebastian saved this place.
Eventually,
Sebastian stabbed Marie,
his pregnant wife,
amidst his drunken rage
and idiocy,
but no one cared.
Why would they?
Sebastian saved this place,
and we give “saviors” grace.
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.
Disillusioned With Love Poems
By: IECarlo
18 September 2023
I am disillusioned with that of flowery love poems and their similes and metaphors
Something of so much value
Is spent on so many undeserving of love
Heart break, cruelty sponsored under the guise of love
I am disillusioned with love poems, flowery love poems They are too serious for me
To pour oneself of love to that of undeserving love what a waste
Yet, it’s what drives us, steers our
Emotions to that of this dissolution
For love does hurt at times, and spins all things
Related to it,/ the thoughts,/ the time invested is never given a reason/ because love has consequences beyond that of reason
Choices of that of love are many yet never materialize for today love is a forgone thought of reason/ the give and take of love is one sided
The fun of love is lost in these flowery poems of love
I write while dancing/ ideas flow easily ‘than’ when I sit and think of loves depth and place words on paper just to make me feel smart
Laughter is the thing to me, and love is laughs
Most love poems miss the point of love
Love is not suppose to be serious
Love is fun, pleasure, understanding
I listen to love poems/ read love poems/ it seems they are spoken/ but not lived/ in recitals they are written but not lived/ they are mouthed but not lived/
I am disillusioned with love poems/ particularly flowery love poems
but know I too will live love and continue with love for it’s a part of me/ perhaps it’s a love-hate plight of thoughts that materializes when love is undeserving yet love lives on in me...I am love!/ and I do love flowers
I am disillusioned with flowery love poems
Hola...Ismael (East) Carlo, where to begin...on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio (no, it’s not how I came about my monica of “East”). That happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…
...mom, was an avid theater person, live stage was her favorite, movies every Thursday night at any of the Spanish theaters venues available. I mean they use to give away whole dish sets, one piece at the time, so she would take us all, in this way all would get one piece each of dish ware.
At the age of 33 East took to acting…”It was an easy transition for me. I mean you couldn’t get more material or characters than you could from observing people and their ways on one city block in NYC”.
Moving to Miami in 1973 was the start, things were changing and Hollywood was on the cusp of that change. Latino’s were in, and “East” was right there in that place where all things Latino was beginning to happen. Cuba was a hot topic, drugs, sex, and rock n roll was the thing.
One day out of nowhere East said to himself, “I’m going to Hollywood and play with the big boys and girls…” and that’s exactly what he did. But that grew into a bigger and more advantages career. It would also take him to what has always been his passion, music. He met Robert ‘Bobby’ Matos, and that’s where the creation of Cafe con Bagels and music recordings had its genesis.
From there to now; Bobby encouraged him to write seeing East had an awareness of what life and its meaning meant to him and others. Through writing East has been able to make inroads and contribute to awareness of that thing called life by way of a recording he and Bobby shared, titled: “Provocateur”.
East, considers himself more a storyteller than a poet, although at times he gets lucky and poetry emerges from his stories...
For more about East, visit IMDB. He would’ve written more but Linda just gave him but one day to come up with this...LOL
Paz en Vida
dissevered
by jerry the priest
all my songs are speaking in code to me
they allude to your absence
not one day gone and much to ponder
I write in purple ink from a pen you left behind
baffled that you are to me no longer what you were
my music alludes to profound ineptitude on my part
at preventing your unravelling
my morning steeped in regret
in purple ink I mark this sad milestone
I'd give anything to have carried you home
especially when, but for a single detail, I would have
you were the one variable I had no contingency for
undone serially and habitually
while I fumbled in your shadow
our connection dissevered.
jerry the priest, legal name Jerome Dunn, has been creating material for exhibition, publication and live presentation since 1979, when he studied experimental music at the University of Redlands. A vocal performer since early childhood, his formal study of music began with his first trombone lesson in 1967.
Essays, poems, stories and illustrations have appeared in Coagula Art Journal, La Quadra, the Nervous Breakdown, Bombay Gin and others, and his guitar/vocal/ trombone work and lyrics are featured on Cheap Disaster (’92), Stark Aloe Vera (’95), and Lovely Children (2011).
He’s lived and taught in Katmandu Nepal, Istanbul Turkey, Boston Massachusetts, Boulder Colorado, Portland Oregon, San Francisco/San Leandro/Los Angeles California, and written in Banaras, Bodhgaya, Konya, Damascus, Petra, Jerusalem, Mexico City, San Cristobal de las Casas, Antigua, Buenos Aires, Seattle, New Orleans, Chicago, Denver, Santa Fe, Bar Harbor, Vancouver, Halifax, Atlanta, Asheville and Manhattan, among other locales.
He holds a BA in Performance Studies from Naropa University, and an MFA in Theater Directing/Production from California Institute of the Arts.
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 at a living room near you!!!!
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 her last seven years of employment 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/