POETS PLACE
JANUARY 2024!
YES!!!!!! It’s the NEW YEAR!!! 2024!!!! AND it’s all NEW! A new opportunity awaits you just around the corner. A new chance to make good on all the promises you have made to yourself this last year. A new realistic choice. The new plan that you can actually accomplish without feeling guilty or ashamed. A gift horse so to speak waiting to be ridden to all those places that you’ve been afraid to tackle. If you can imagine it, then you can manifest it! The world awaits your brilliance!!! It really is as easy as that. Simple. The task is to make a realistic plan that fits within your wheelhouse of skills and experience. Create a doable timeline. Set your sights, realistically. If it’s not realistic, then you have set yourself up for failure. Writing a poem is realistic, becoming President is not.
So let’s get this NEW YEAR started!!!
Love, peace and true unique happiness, Linda :0)
It's just a technicality
By Linda Kaye
When life shoots you a raw deal and we failed to win the prize
alas it's just a technicality
When physical loss hits, has tempered your life, wreaking havoc with your soul
alas it's just a technicality
When you can no longer keep it up, limp no luster, and sadness and depression grows
alas it's just a technicality
When dreams are squashed no money in the bank your last dime spent on dope
alas it’s just a technicality
As love was squandered ignored and refused your heart broken wickedly defused
alas it’s just a technicality
As parents grow old and die painful deaths, their spirits pass beyond without regret
alas it's just a technicality
Full Moon Meditation
By Cindy Rinne
She holds up the slice of shell
like pearl windows.
She desires to be porous
like the rushing tide,
fluid and changing.
Sometimes solid and carved.
Once a life lived here
home in tectonic plates,
the shifting tides.
Now, it rests in her palm
where heart energy expands her power.
Light sways in endless ribbons.
She views the rabbit in the moon,
a snow-mountain-moon.
She had forgotten that story.
The rabbit offers her
the elixir of immortality.
The kind rabbit whispers,
Move and flow in cycles
as seasons shift.
The tenant on the moon
reaches with his paws
and welcomes her home.
Cindy Rinne is a poet and fiber artist living in San Bernardino, CA. Pushcart Award nominee. Her poems appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art exhibits, and dance performances. Author of Dancing Through the Fire Door (Nauset Press), The Feather Ladder (Picture Show Press), Words Become Ashes: An Offering (Bamboo Dart Press), and others. Her poetry appeared in: The Closed Eye Open, Verse-Virtual, Mythos Magazine, Unleash Lit, swifts & slows, Lothlorien, and others. www.fiberverse.com.
super succinct sayings
by daniel j. schack
1. perhaps goodness could not even exist in reality unless, perhaps, reality is mostly evil. 2. i would rather be completely crazy than completely phony. ha. ha. 3.more often than not, think tanks are usually just stink tanks. 4.it may be that, largely, our entire society has become quite mentally incompetent.
5. what kind of world is this? where too many talk phony baloney of love and togetherness, yet live in their hearts and ways with hate and divisiveness. 6. Some may say I have a dirty mind. To them I say, at least I have a mind. ha. ha.
daniel schack is an online poet and art. see poetrysoup, tumblr.com-adanthemanworld, facebook, and a cool tiktok video under danielschack7. peace.
KICKED TO THE CURB
By Mary Cheung
12-30-23
7:23 a.m.
Kicked to the curb
That's what I'm gonna do.
2023, I have no more use for you
You came in with an last minute effort.,
To rattle me, to cause mayhem, to turn my world upside down.
Got me feeling bummed out, sending tears out,
enough to make me drown.
You're panicking cuz your days are numbered, you're frantic and feeling frayed.
Causing turmoil, squeezing my heart tight... my happiness is delayed.
Nothing worse then the stress you create, paralyzing my body and much more.
So I gotta do it man, drag you kicking and screaming.
And kick you out the door.
In a few short hours, and in the dawning of the new day.
I'll welcome 2024 and the abundance of good tidings, ready to come my way
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."
Hut two three four..
By lee boek
He got up,
That is no longer easy
To just stand up from sitting
Since when did he suddenly find himself struggling?
Trying to get out of an overstuffed chair or even a couch
Concerted effort must now be exerted.
A young man reaches down and helps to pull him up,
“What? Wait, Never mind I’m up.”
“O.K., good…Now move my legs
Wobbly?,..since when?”
“Me a Wobbly,” he thought giggling a bit.
Trying to stand straight
Trying to remember
Trying to muster, the physical power
That once held him standing straight
Walking forcefully
“Once I get going I’ll be alright.”
Fascinating how things can break down
Physically debilitating
Not just an older person
He had his bouts with health
When younger
There were those wonderful days
Running and leaping
The athlete
Catcher on a hot local baseball team
Quarterback, throwing long perfect passes to the left end
Connection cosmic…”touchdown”
Basketball with twenty year olds
At sixty eight
Holding his own with the “ole hook shot”
Perfected at a young age
Brothers on the side court
Only hook shots count
Aye, but now, standing is nearly impossible.
Walking well again seems out of sight.
Will this ever change?
Will he ever walk without a cane..again?
Yes, the dynamic can change
Older people carried away
On rolling stretchers
To waiting ambulances
Returning a month later
Actively, smiling and feeling pretty good.
Medical attention can go a long ways
When specifically directed to an older person’s well being.
I guess almost any kind of attention could go a long ways.
Lee Boek: actor, playwright, producer, storyteller and poet, recently awarded The Joe Hill Award by the Labor Unions of Southern CA, remains a staple part of the DTLA/Silverlake arts community as the Artistic Director of Public Works Improvisational Theatre since 2001 and has produced and performed in nearly every production of the company since then, including Confessions of a Pulpiteer, his play about his days as a fundamentalist evangelist, during the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, and The Pilot Who Crashed the Party a play written and directed by Paul Sand, and performed at the Broadwater Theater in LA. His most recent films credits are the award winning Skitoz, written and directed by The Twins Perrotte of Paris, France and Twenty Years Left produced and directed by Linda Kaye.
The inspiration for this little fiction came from my urban birthplace called The Bluff in Pittsburgh, PA
AFTER THE STRAWBERRY MAN
By Giulio Magrini
The strawberry man was eighty-four. Every morning his Chesterfield chant was heard above the clatter of his cart on the cobblestones. His donkey ambled down Pride Street to McGee and Gibbon. His strawberry travels were part of the daily rhythms of the neighborhood. His jingle was the music of the day, and his wailing serenade through the dew was a sign to the neighborhood that they belonged in this place.
This was the morning of his death, when his broken strawberry chant shattered the April dawn. His fractured wail was his last morning interlude, and closed his life. The sound of his body hitting the cobblestones was the call that suspended commerce and tranquility that day. His motionless silhouette against the cold gray Belgian block made sense in the neighborhood that morning, and a perfect and final conversation was initiated between the stilled strawberry body and the lifeless stone, that attracted snooping voyeurs. The locals buzzed around the scene, like foreigners in a strange land trying to understand a culture they did not want to appreciate, and whose language they did not recognize. Their eyebrow wonder and spectator perspective were exactly where they wanted to be. Everyone who was brought up in this rocky neighborhood knew that you do not touch what you do not know. Death provided them with the comfort of ignorance. When you eat your strawberries here you remain grateful, and do not question the uncomfortable queries of the eternal.
Two men roam the old man’s kitchen. They are the strawberry sons. In the spirit and time of death they are appropriate and predictable. The units of measurement that day were furrowed brows, mumbling half sentences, and uncomfortable pacing in the kitchen. The smell of masculinity and grief is stifling. One had come from his job at NYU.., a teacher. You know how they are... Honorable, yet ambitious with their lesson plans. Not unlike Caesar, crossing the Rubicon without respect, and home for death again. He was not like the strawberry man. The family reviled his attempts to adjust. It was true that no one could understand the cobblestones, but they were the footprints of the neighborhood, and it was easy to see that he was uncomfortable walking on them. He had abandoned the family for a corduroy sports coat with those stupid fake suede patches. The bystanders understood his motives, and were offended with the strangeness of his manner. They resented him and his intrusive ways. There was no allowance in the cobblestones that measured the pain of a professional home for death.
The other son was a pudgy little dog in a cheap brown suit that might have fit one day. He was unevenly shaved, and his part looked like a back road in a map. He also had one of those clip-on bow ties that little kids wear. Women in the neighborhood would say that they trusted one man to teach the kids, and the other to play with them, but not to do both.
There was an old man sitting at the table, sipping anisette. He looked peaceful, almost happy. He had the knowledge of strawberries and cobblestones in his eyes. It was the moment after the funeral, the pain, the tribulation, and the amenities. It was the moment when people asked themselves what they are going to do with their feelings, with his house. It was the moment when life is evaluated and divided, like strawberries in little green baskets. Each son’s eyes burn silently into the other. “Why is this man dead?” And they immediately blister back, “Where were you when I needed you?” The indictment of life is in the air. The blazing sorrow smolders strawberry hearts in an instinctive catharsis. They radiate to the realization that the strawberry man is dead, but the strawberries kept growing. The strawberry man had died, but the strawberries did not stop. The teacher thought it advisable they stop. The one who played with the neighborhood children thought it would be a nice, considerate thing. They did not know that the strawberries will stop. They will stop when they are ready.
Giulio Magrini is a writer from Pittsburgh PA and is the author of The Color of Dirt, which is an anthology of his poetry and flash fiction over the past fifty (50) years. He enjoys performing his written work and states, “We have put our hands in the dirt, and sanctified each other” His book is available through the usual online channels, but the better choice is to email giulio27@verizon.net for a personalized copy.
Turn the page
By Carrie Gordon
Thus ends another chapter, happily never after
Getting ready for my next obsession, always ask the wrong directions
Looking back on all I’ve ruined, looking back at all my ghosts
I look ahead to find redemption and to see what matters most.
Then a voice I forgot reminded me today
If you think you’re lost, well you’re really on your way
Yeah a voice I forgot reminded me today
If you think you’re lost, well you really found your way
Now it’s time to turn the page, only then will you mend
Another chapter to the story before it finds it’s final end.
A voice I forgot reminded me today,
If you think you’re lost, well you’re really on your way
Yeah a voice I forgot reminded me today
If you think you’re lost, well you finally found your way
Turn the page, turn the page, turn the page …
Carrie Gordon is a Los Angeles artist and her work has been shown in and around California at various locations in both solo and group shows including LA live arts, Avenue 50 Gallery, Artapalooza, Coffee Gallery,Colony theater, Cypress Art tunnel walk Altaarts Festival, Encino Terrace Gallery, Portfolio,Ten feet:Art meets the Riverwalk, Blue line Arts museum in Sacramento, Middle Ridge Winery in Idyllwild, Eden Cafe and Islip Arts museum in New York.
Poema
By G. Billie Quijano
Arte gave voice
Harvest mindfulness
Brush strokes, poetry
Perpetually moist
Look to the cosmos
Enchantment in your stance
A new year unfolds
Narrative explodes
Time for new faces
Time for new places
G. Billie Quijano-Artista, Poeta, Mestiza. 2024 is going to be an exciting year. Peace, love, prosperity and boundless creativity.
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/