January Poet's Place!

POETS PLACE

JANUARY EDITION 2023

It’s January 2023!!! The start of the new year. I am starting the new year with a fuck you world tour beat poetry show! YES!! I want to start off this year making a statement about death and how it feels to me in my senior years. Waiting at death’s door is a trap and I have fallen into it. Everyday I’m given a pass to keep on living. I’m pretending to not notice it’s approach, but death’s mojo keeps slapping me in the face letting me know it has no soul. When death’s tattoo starts to fade thats a good sign. Death is incongruent with life, there’s no shelf life. No grey area. If you hear the death rattle, get out of its way! Just turn up the stereo and dance the night away! “All but death can be adjusted” writes Emily Dickinson. And “Life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest” says Walt Whitman. So let’s get out there and plow MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

Thank you everyone for another year in prose!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Love, Linda :0)

 

Keep On Living
By Linda Kaye

 

I keep on living like a time bomb without the fuse

I keep on living because dying is just too painful

I keep on living because I love to watch the sunset crawl through the clouds that pass by my bedroom window

I keep on living not because I’m afraid of death

I just don’t wanna be there when it happens

I keep on living because I haven’t finished paying off my fees for my final resting place

I keep on living because I want to be alive when Trump gets arrested and goes to jail

I keep on living to watch my son’s progress as he grows and to see his face light up when he sees his mom after months apart

I keep on living hoping to one day travel to foreign lands and eat my way across Italy!

 

 

Start From the Beginning
By:IE Carlo
27 March 2021

 

What’s on my mind today. I am not responsible for my parents behavior, nor do I have much to say about their behavior.  I know as much about life as they knew about theirs.  Judgement not a concern of mine for what do I know?  I defend myself by the awareness of what I know.   I suppose nothing. Today is the day and only today exists, tomorrow I leave for tomorrow.  Plans I make from second to second, minute to minute, hour to hour, and when tomorrow comes, if so, I’m sure I’ll be planning in sequence as well.  My moment to moment thought is of the self, the thoughts that enter from moment to moment are sparks at times, at others, boring with little to add.   I have a romance with life, it’s inspiring this thing called living, especially when I laugh and make others laugh, maybe not so much by what is said as to how it’s said.  I also give myself challenges and with these challenges comes failures, but failure can be a grand reward, for then I know to change that failure into a mistake.  Unhappy, sure at times!  Especially when that unhappiness is brought forward by someone I love and care for deeply, a friend, a lover, and family can be hurting by way of their actions, especially that of trust.     My behavior at times is crude and unsympathetic; there’s a madness to my madness of being as well, you see it's not what I say but how I say it.  Forgiving, I think I forgive but I also equate whether or not to trust again? Some of us are directors at heart, we direct not others but ourselves; given the situation we change the narrative and outcome of that narrative.  There’s an old saying, a quote: “The Devil knows more, not because he’s the Devil, but because he’s old”.  

Jealous of others, there are times that that enters my being, but that’s part of that behavioral thing, the outgrowth of negative advertising.  I view that of the haves and the have nots, a pattern of inequality as a follower of righteousness…Yes, even at this tender age of 79 plus years I want to change the world.  I want to see people laughing, having deep philosophical conversations of life, family, and all that incompasses life, be it politics or death, and most important showing respect and love for all living things, be it air, earth, plant, or animal.  But believe me there are times I wish I was somebody else, another person, me!  That of a person full of anger and hate perhaps.  Full of prejudice, not caring for others, not involved, giving no quarter. No explanations, just that of the ‘me’ syndrome.  And to hell with others, and I mean all others!  This feeling could not exist if it were not placed there by others.  [B]ut I am not that person, and could never be that person, or blame others for my actions. I do not hate anybody, I don’t love everybody but neither do  I hate anybody.  My anger lasts two minutes, that’s thirty seconds too long, and then it’s over, forgotten! The question is: “Does it matter what this person is doing to me?” Or, “...why even contemplate it”!  There’s no room in my space for hate.  Neither do I fling accusations, nor look down on another individual.  But I am a person with thick skin and vibrations justify my actions.  As the saying goes, if it doesn't feel right it isn’t right!  So move on and find your justification and happiness somewhere else.  Regrets I’ve had a few but never enough to mention.  Can’t change what’s already happened or came before.  So, why give it any weight of thought!  But change can be rewarding in and of itself.  And that’s what I aspire too, change of mind, change of will, change of heart, changes!   Always looking for the bright side of things, what makes me who I am is what I aspire to be and for...to be with honesty of heart.  Clear of mind, brevity of words; as Shakespear wrote: “...brevity is the soul of wit”!  

 

Ismael (East) Carlo, poet, actor begins on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio whose monica of “East” happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…

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. Paz en Vida  

 


JOY
6-3-20
1:23 a.m.
By Mary Cheung 

 

When u dance , its infectious,

Like a smile spreading across my body.

Transparent and apparent,

Ur joy hooks me in .

 

Starts at my toes and races up to my heart.

Wipes away all worries and dumps away lifes shitty parts.

 

Ur joy hooks me in,

I cannot deny.

It just does,

Don't think or ask why.

 

releases my soul, timed in step to the beat.

Soaring to new heights,

On two new happy feet.

 

A cheshire smile wrapped up in plaid,

grooving and moving , ur such a cool cat....

 

Joy rolls off of you,

The scent intoxicates, seeps into my nose.

Caught up in ur rift ,

Spinning out of control

 

Infect me with ur joy,

Im high on living this dream

And in those few minutes

2 bodies become one team.

 

When the music finally ends,

And the energy fades

Lingers still the feeling,

I'm still glowing,

in a magical haze.

 

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”.

 

 

Victoria Ester Orantes

My Man is a Mountain
By Victoria Ester Orantes

 

My man is a mountain who is not made of sand, 

Thus to solid stone safety, wild waters ran. 

 

Raging femininity freed after all these years. 

A solidity whose warmth evaporated fears. 

 

A virile embankment that diserns his complement, 

Therefore are the sacred equipoise of opposites. 

 

United not from a despondent longing, 

rather two autarkies found true belonging. 

 

Here, she is nourishment and not a flood. 

With her, his soil yields growth and not mud. 

 

A frontier for what is feminine, 

Is the moralistic masculine. 

 

Victoria was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  She is the owner and operator of the first 1966 Volkswagen Beetle boutique, V.E.O. Visions, where she sells her original art, original jewelry, hand-painted clothing, and curated $5 thrifts.  Victoria’s art has been featured in local NELA establishments, art-walks, and recently Shoutout LA magazine. 

 

 

Poema
By G. Billie Quijano

 

New days have begun

The opera of La Sirena is sung

 

Landscape of mind

Love universal

We return to the divine

 

Mystery of life unfolds, illuminating

Breath of cosmic messages

Energy, forward, rejuvenating

 

Brilliance, dreams

Poetry swaying in the streams

 

Allure of color weaves emotions

Vastness of light and passion

 

Peace flowing

Bliss exploding

 

Unforgettable

19 echoes of children's laughter

Now in the beyond

 

Torrential tears

Flood our dreams

 

Club Q

Negligence of civil rights

Justice prevails

Drag not a crime

 

Mantra to connect soul

Tragedies and victories

We remain whole

Britney Griner, home

 

Synchronicity

Synergy aglow

 

La Mariposa, constant flight

Inner festival of light

 

Ocean of consciousness

Shadow of the moon

Vida, gratitude, spirit, corazon

 

 

G. Billie Quijano-Hija de East Los, Hermana de San Pancho. Palabra mujer, Natural Creative, Instigator of Beauty. My wish is to share my art and my words. A desire to make a connection, contribution and to maintain beauty and balance in the universe. Only Love, never Hate

Feliz Ano Nuevo, 2023

  

Big Night
By Michael Meloan

 

Driving up the long incline toward Bukowski’s New Year’s Eve party, we could hear music. Cars were parked on both sides of the street all the way down the block. We walked along the dark and narrow driveway toward the front door.

Chrissie rang the bell and we waited. Then she rang it again. Finally, I knocked hard. Linda came to the door smoking one of Buk’s Beedis.

"Oh my God! You have got to be kidding!"

Linda laughed uproariously, then called people over to see Chrissie's leopard print Lycra spandex body suit. A number of other women laughed. Chrissie shot me an angry look. It was my idea. We stepped inside.

A man with a heavy German accent said, "I like it!"

Chrissie’s face was flushed. I grabbed her arm and led her past Linda into the living room.

There were two scenes: one centered around the hors d’oeuvres table where director André Broussard stood; another around the long sofa and wooden table in the living room where Bukowski held court.

People were perched on big pillows arranged next to the table. Chrissie and I sat down on the sofa. Buk said nothing as we arrived. He was already drunk and in the midst of a story. There were long pauses as he sucked on a Beedi. The group hung on his every word.

"I read in the downtown public library during the day and slept in the alleys at night. Told stories in the bars to hustle drinks. Normal people bored me--I couldn't live that life, couldn’t be around that. But in the end, the bums bored me too. The only thing that lasts is wine.” He took a puff. “Just drink, and drink...and whatever else happens is just what happens."

Bukowski’s speech was slow and his eyes were like slits. He continued.

"Later, I had my own room in a skid row hotel. After a long night of drinking, I started puking up blood and foul-smelling chunks of flesh. It just came and came into the toilet. The stench was overpowering. They took me in an ambulance to the charity ward at County General. One of the doctors said he'd level with me--I had about a 50-50 chance. I stayed there for a month, and slowly got better. When it was time to go, a doctor sat down with me in a little white room. He said if I EVER drank alcohol again, I would die." Long pause. "So, I walked out and found a shitty little bar right down the street. It smelled good--cigar smoke and stale booze. I sat down and ordered a glass of beer. No hard liquor, because I was trying to go easy. I watched the bubbles rise up for about 30 seconds, then drank it down fast.” He paused and took a puff. “I didn't die."

"Amazing story!" blurted out a young guy.

“Wow,” gasped a middle-aged woman. Everyone murmured with approval as they took deep pulls of wine.

Bukowski stared out the window toward the harbor. Then he turned to me. "I was wondering if you'd show up, man. I thought you might be grist for a poem if you have enough wine. So drink up!"

He raised his glass to me. I clinked it and took a drink. Then I glanced over at Chrissie. She was scanning the room looking for rock stars and listening with one ear to André Broussard’s monologue. He was saying something about the French Revolution.

A guy sitting on the other side of Bukowski said, “You’re the most important writer of the late twentieth century.”

Bukowski slowly turned and asked, "What do you do, kid?"

"I'm an actor," the guy said. He had a finely trimmed goatee and wore a black turtleneck with tight jeans.

Bukowski paused and looked into his face, then took a drink.

"You'll never make it man...your eyes are dead. There's nothing there. Give it up now, before you waste any more time. Go into insurance or real estate."

The group went silent. Bukowski took another drag from his cigarette as the guy nervously got up and walked away.

I suddenly noticed that Chrissie was standing next to Broussard, looking at him adoringly. Sean Penn and Bono hadn’t shown up, so Broussard was the biggest fish in the house. As I got up and walked past that group on my way to the kitchen, Broussard was telling Chrissie a story about the Marquis de Sade.

“The Marquis whipped the people into a frenzy, with political rants and kinky sex monologues.”

I saw him glance at her chest. Then I heard him say, "I like your outfit. It's very chic. I think you are making your own fashion statement."

I sat back down on the sofa next to Bukowski.

"I'm glad you're here man," he said. "I need somebody with a brain sitting next to me."

He stared at me, waiting for a response. I took a drink. The crowd around the sofa had thinned out since the encounter with the actor. Nobody wanted to get too close.

Linda came over and sat on the floor next to Buk, with her legs crossed in a semi-lotus pose. Long strawberry blond hair flowed halfway down her back. She lit up a joint.

"I've got my own rock 'n’ roll groupie," he said. “She parties all night in the brand-new convertible I bought her. And I don’t even ask who she’s fucking. Do I?”

"This is not the time," she said, taking a drag from the joint. The muscles in her jaw tightened.

"You've been riding my coattails for years. If it wasn't for me, where the hell would you be?”

“I have no idea,” she said. The room was silent. Linda’s eyes blazed with anger.

"I think you're being too hard on her," I said.

"I think you'd better shut up, motherfuck. You haven't been very entertaining tonight. In fact, you're beginning to bore me," he said, moving his face close to mine. His eyes were mean and glassy, like a vicious animal.

He got up to go to the bathroom, lost his balance and reeled. I reached up, but he swatted my hand away. Then he staggered across the room.

A group of Linda's friends from the health food restaurant stood near the bathroom talking about how much they liked John Tesh’s music.

The bathroom door flew open. Bukowski emerged and walked quickly toward a balding man in a cardigan sweater.

"Where's your drink?!" Bukowski demanded.

"This is my drink," said the man, holding up a Calistoga water.

Bukowski turned to a woman nearby, "Where's your drink?"

"I don't drink," the woman cheerfully replied.

Bukowski went nose-to-nose with her and said, "Then get out! You bore me!" He turned to the man and said, "You get out, too!" Then he looked around the room and shouted, "In fact, I want everybody out. I should be upstairs typing. I might die tomorrow and I DON’T want to spend my last night on earth with this bunch!"

He walked around the room screaming in people’s faces, "GET OUT! GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!"

Most looked afraid as they gathered up purses and coats and quickly headed toward the front door.

Bukowski continued to scream, "GET OUT, GET OUT!"

The arteries on his neck bulged and his face turned purple. He occasionally planted his hand on a back, male or female, and pushed them out.

Linda watched in silence, still seething with anger. Bukowski stood guard until the last stragglers had gone.

As I left, I looked over my shoulder but there was no hint of recognition.

Walking slowly down the long driveway, I scanned the crowd. Chrissie was missing. When I got to the sidewalk, three men in their early twenties were craning their necks, trying to look inside the house.

"What is happening? What is happening?" one asked, with a German accent.

"Bukowski threw everybody out because we weren't drinking enough.”

"This is very cool," he said. “Very Bukowski!"

“We’ve come all the way from Munich to meet him!” said another guy.

“It’s a bad night to ring the doorbell,” I said. “He’ll tear your head off.”

“We saw André Broussard!” he added. “Got his autograph as he was leaving in a limousine with a nice prostitute.” Then he smiled, “I’m sure he got a good blowjob as soon as they were inside.”

My throat knotted up.

 

I got into my old Citroën a few minutes before the stroke of midnight. Skyrockets whizzed into the darkness. Gunshots erupted from the neighborhoods at the bottom of the hill. Rounds were going off in all directions. Suddenly I heard the buzz-and-zing of a nearby bullet.

 

Driving aimlessly, I screeched around corners and floored the accelerator, almost hoping the engine would blow. When I got home, the message light was on. I thought it would be Chrissie giving me some bullshit story about where she was. Then I recognized my mother's voice. She was sobbing uncontrollably.

"It was...almost midnight. One more day…and we would have been gone on our cruise. Just one more day!”

She was gasping for breath. Then the message ended.

McIntyre and my mother had stepped onto the balcony of the Jonathan Beach Club for some fresh air. He lit a cigarette as they gazed out at the sweeping arc of lights spanning toward Palos Verdes Estates.

         “I’m so happy tonight, being here with you,” he said, turning to look at her.

         She hesitated for a moment, then turned toward him. They kissed.

         He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly midnight. I’ll get some Champagne.”

         My mother stared at the towering Christmas tree covered in fairy lights and hundreds of ornaments. It reminded her of New York City when she was a young woman. 

         She made eye contact with McIntyre as he left the bar. Smiling broadly, he walked toward her. Then his expression suddenly changed and his eyes widened. He abruptly stopped as his face became a twisted mask of pain. The glasses dropped to the floor. Clutching his chest, he staggered, then fell to his knees.

         “My God! Somebody help! My God!” she screamed as she ran into the ballroom.

 

I called my father. He said that McIntyre was dead on arrival at the emergency room at St. John’s in Santa Monica. My mother had ridden in the ambulance. Then she called my father and he picked her up at the hospital.

         “She’s here with me now.” He sounded more himself than he had in months. I could hear her crying in the background. “I have to go,” he said.

 

I turned on the TV. It was a replay of the ball drop in Times Square.  Counting, 5-4-3-2-1…then explosive crowd noise. Happy New Year. I cracked open a beer and turned on my computer to write an email to my boss Lamont at Raytheon. The company had demanded that I break up with Chrissie because of her drug bust, or my secret clearance would be denied. But in the middle of the note, I deleted it. Instead, I started writing a story. By 3:45 am, I had knocked out seven pages rapid fire. I had the machine gun rhythms of Bukowski’s black Underwood typewriter in my head. Then the telephone rang. It was Chrissie. Her voice sounded faint. She was in the lobby of the Château Marmont hotel.

         "Broussard said he was going to put me in a movie. How stupid could I be? He’s a drunk and a bore and an asshole. You’re the only one who really gets me. I love you. Will you let me come back?"

         I paused, "Yeah…come back. We’re going to hit the road--Prague, Morocco, India, who knows where. Are you ready for that?"

         "Cool," she said without hesitating. “I’m there.”

 

Michael Meloan's fiction has appeared in Wired, Huffington Post, Buzz, LA Weekly and in many anthologies. He was an interview subject in the documentaries Bukowski: Born Into This and Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There. With Joe Frank, he co-wrote a number of radio shows that aired across the NPR syndicate. His Wired short story "The Cutting Edge" was optioned for film. And he co-authored the novel The Shroud with his brother Steven. This fall, RUP press in Germany will release his memoir/novella PINBALL WIZARD.

 

A Nation on the Verge
By Ronald G. Carrillo

 

“Look at Mother Nature on the run in the nineteen seventies”

 -Neil Young 1970

“They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot”

 -Joni Mitchell 1970

“Come on people! Sons and mothers! Keep the dream of the two

  young brothers – Save the children – Save the country – Now!”

 -Laura Nyro 1969

 

The heralders from a past golden age

Sounding the alarm

The house is burning

The children aren’t learning

Our government supports concerning

The wheels of justice slow in turning

The blue and red no longer conferring

Domestic racial unrest and violence returning

White supremacy spewing and gurgling

So many global issues converging

Mother Earth in crisis and surging

The common people cutting back and conserving

Whilst the elites continue diverting

Polar social economic spheres headed for a cruel purging

Our democratic system and its people diverging

Global wars and hatred whirling

Children coming of age and their futures swirling

The window of climate change very worrying

The red, white and blue of democracy unfurling

The political left and right continually quarreling

Their division reflecting on the American streets churning

In the swirling winds our nation lurching out of control

Ancient wounds from antebellum times festering

Our constitution of ideals only words curdling

Good Americans hurling to a breaking point

Uncertain future lives searching for answers

Hurdling over obstacles at high risk

The nation must change course divorce herself from this insanity

Reaching our breaking point

Survivors and liars no longer conversing

Liars scurrying toward extremes

Americans homeless and verging off course

A merging at year’s end for judgement

The blade of justice hurrying toward closure

Returning her people once more toward balance

Coda: The ghosts of Lincoln and Kennedy

Twin martyrs overlooking the precipice of the nation’s state

A manifest destiny of ill fate

A check that the current generation can create

Before a disastrous global checkmate

Think back when the glass was more than half full

Remember when the dream was truly real

Not a red, white and blue political cliche

Our country becoming a cracked abstract surreal image

Russian and Chinese hackers pillage

At our backdoor gates of bounty

Depleting our creativity and invention

For deception and ill will that will spill blood

The giant chessboard will be toppled in animosity

A species self-destructing for what gain

Turn back from enmity people of this earth

Recognize our common bonds as brothers

Or we will continue to suffer the horrors of war

That Bob Dylan wrote of back in a time of nuclear buildup

O humanity let the children suffer no more

Their careless caregivers only deliver greed

O rulers of nations put down your swords, your bombs

Go look into the children’s eyes

Realize the true value of life in our children

Suffer no more in war

But instead play with your children

Little girls can do anything even rule the world

Little boys no longer forced to carry the load

Kings and queens be gone

Dictators and tyrants no longer have a place at the table

Once again we must return to the garden of our best possibilities

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.

 

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

 

Most recently, 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

https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

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 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-theatrical-poetry-producer-retired-social-worker-and-professor/

http://voyagela.com/interview/daily-inspiration-meet-linda-kaye/

November Poet's Place

POETS PLACE

November Edition 2022

Life is sometimes fraught with immeasurable challenges. To deal with these challenges, we as a people often seek refuge in the comforts of what’s knowable, comfortable and safe. But we are not always knowable, comfortable and safe. When we are at our most vulnerable, people can often misguide us, taking us places where maybe they feel less judged and less at risk of exposure. The heart beats with intensity because we know there is something amiss in their intentions. It doesn’t feel authentic. Why do I write about this? Well, I am empathic by nature, not nurtured. And because not everyone has the power to see through those with impure intentions. I want to impart wisdom that encourages critical thought, that is nurturing, supportive and empathic. I believe that sharing what you have learned and experienced is important. To teach, so that my experience and wisdom passes on. Maya Angelou said, “when you learn, teach, when you get, give”. From my profession as a social worker and professor, I have taught so many students, co-workers, doctors, nurses, patients, clients, friends and family, all that I know about the importance of trusting and respecting your instincts and allowing your authentic self to dictate your choices. Only then can you fully reach your potential with the knowledge and respect that it came from your own passions and heartfelt, honest choices. That, I believe, is our responsibility to human kind. Self-actualization is defined in psychology, as the achievement of one's full potential through creativity, independence, spontaneity, and a grasp of the real world. Are we all capable of achieving this? Is this only relative in the context of our own personal environment? What about the people who have lost their freedoms? How do they self-actualize?  When we are personally confronted with those who do not have the same freedoms as ourselves, and are given the opportunity to help, and teach, and share our gifts of wealth and knowledge, I hope you do. Because that show of altruistic kindness can potentially alter someone’s course, possibly towards attaining self-actualization. Sharing the love that we have been blessed to experience can be life changing. 

And now we share the gifts of poetry and storytelling…

Love, Linda


IN GRATITUDE OF LOVE
By:IE Carlo
11 August 2022

“…only you cared when I needed a friend

Believed in me through thick and thin…this poem

Is for you filled with gratitude and love”

For you have brought peace from within to

This other celestial soul

If only you could touch my soul the way you touch

My heart my hand

A feeling of intense awareness of the self

A feeling so much more than words can ever express

Need you look at my rostro, my eyes

That touch you’ve grown accustomed to, I’ve become accustomed to is there

And if ever we were too part

know this love will still burn from within

For it travels with us no matter where we may go

Deep in its meaning is this love, for it lingers with anticipation

Of touching you again

For every new day brings with it a new beginning…

…only you cared when I needed a friend, believed in me

Through thick and thin, this poem is for you filled with gratitude and love…”  

Ismael (East) Carlo, poet, actor begins on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio whose monica of “East” happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…

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. Paz en Vida  

 

MY TURN
10-21-22
11:56 pm
By Mary Cheung

It's my turn,

My time to shine and grow.

No commitments and nothing to hold me back anymore.

No children to raise,  lunches to pack. 

No homework to help work on. 

No dr appts to head out to.

No girls scout trip functions.

No school events to attend.

No playdates to arrange or host.

No dinners and meals to make but my own.

No staying up late or round the clock playing nurse to my kids.

No life that is centered around theirs.

 

It's my turn. 

I can finally attend to my needs.

The physical and the mental.

The lazy or boring days if I so choose.

The hectic art filled days just because I can.

The late night binge fest, just because I can.

The leaving the house work and clean up to, "ehhh, maybe I'll get it tomorrow"

Yup, it's my turn.

Time to get busy living my life, my way. 

 

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”.

 

Alone is an Illusion 
By Victoria Ester Orantes

Alone is an illusion seems like an insult to say, 

When looming reclusivity has been real everyday. 

Tenebrosity is often the source of a birth. 

Afterall, do not seeds flourish in darkness of earth? 

You have been planted; for a time you must be alone. 

Learn to live in love; the sun will summon you home. 

Skyward from the depths your stem will reach. 

Lead with faith; lithic soil will breach. 

When the time is true, you’ll find all that you've sought. 

Kindred spirits await at the mountain top.

 

Victoria was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  She is the owner and operator of the first 1966 Volkswagen Beetle boutique, V.E.O. Visions, where she sells her original art, original jewelry, hand-painted clothing, and curated $5 thrifts.  Victoria’s art has been featured in local NELA establishments, art-walks, and recently Shoutout LA magazine. 


Make America (____________) Again?
By Ronald G. Carrillo

Cancerous hearts made of nicotine and tar

Drips the blues from an absent muse

No longer able to see the stars

Cacophonous guitars refuse to play in harmony

The world falls apart in every way

DNA cousins at war instead of loving brothers

The Doomsday glacier about to fall

Two disgraced presidential hooligans still scamming

One now out of office spreading an incredible lie

Guided by his sick ego for attention

The other risking war for a by-gone degree of greatness

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum humming the same political song

Rogue masculinity devoid of empathy

Covid strains mutating creating a global plague

Building nuclear instead of a truer consciousness

False religions still controlling the masses

Pedophile priests hiding in Vatican mansions

Hollywood mogul perverts facing years of crime

Strange times as the pendulum of time swings

To extremes cutting off monster heads that do not bleed

A hornets’ nest of white nationalistic trouble

But upheld in the White House by Republican dysfunction

Holding the party line in a sick loyalty to authoritarian rule

Congressmen and women more focused on their political lives

Disregarding their oaths of office and unable to develop a spine

Constitutional erosion blowing away democratic ideals

The winds of political collapse in the making

Baking poisonous bread for public consumption

Giving into our worst fears and the bad angels of our humanity

Insanity upholding the red, white and blue

Make America right again heal the nation

She has gone off her democratic rails

Make America just again she fails her people

The evidence for an indictment is plentiful

Make America continue developing toward a more perfect union

Greatness is empire and ego building

Make America great again was a campaign lie

Such lies and shallow beliefs brought down Alexander the Great

And so many supposed others in their brief period in the spotlight

If we do not embrace our strength in diversity we too will perish

Our republic will come apart

Its red, white and blue stitching is already undoing

Racial infighting will end our prosperity and domestic tranquility

White nationalists are focused on the wrong scapegoat

Misplaced hatred and a lack of empathy spawn violence

For a power group that feels now they are being outnumbered

And losing their place at Uncle Sam’s table

Ego and gluttony when there truly is enough room at the inn

Proud boys who feel they are losing their political toys

Oath keepers not promoting the general welfare

And unable to secure the blessings of liberty for ALL Americans

Tantrum patriots of the lowest regard for their democracy

Spewing hatred and violence that goes against everything

They are trying to save like evangelicals who love the sinner

Supposedly but hate the sin no win only judgement

Make America democratic and constitutional again

Not red states not blue states not “white only”

Not exclusive make America inclusive again

Make Americans dream again

Coda: “Being great again” are pretty but shallow words

Hollow political breadcrumbs to get votes

Leading a sheepish constituency in his/her view of greatness

Great being measured by the vision of that political seeker

I want depth in my democracy supported by strong foundational ideals

Being great is temporary but the depth of a democracy

Is built on strong beliefs in freedom and liberty for all

Being great is fool’s gold and usually a one trick pony

Democracy should be a cavalry utilizing all its citizens’ talents

A full skill set of potential not just some pompous wizard

Calling the shots with scarecrows trumpeting the hero’s voice

A return to sanity and valid true choice in our vote

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.

God bless America
By Daniel Schack 

Having received the American history award in 1981 I can honestly say one needs to know only 3 things to win it hands down. these are, it stinks, it always stunk, and will probably continue to stink. just live your life the best you can and try to love life and people as much as you can. oh well life is hell. swell.

The poet ,daniel schack can be seen on poetrysoup.com and his art on tumblr adanthemanworld.daniel schack is 57 and is a high school grad. With 3.5 years of college.peace.


Beginners
By Michael D. Meloan 

Lorrie Logan lived next door. She had flaxen hair, freckles, and little gingham dresses. One day, I asked if I could carry her books home from school. I’d seen some other boys do that.

She paused, then said, “Ok.”

While walking, I had no idea what to say. My mind was a blank.
Finally, I asked, “Do you like ‘Runaround Sue’ by Dion and the Belmonts?”

“I don’t know what that is,” she replied.

As we arrived at her house, she paused, “My mom’s car is not in the driveway. But I have a key. Do you want to come in for a minute? Um, for a glass of lemonade.”

“Ok,” I said.

There was a note on the fridge. “Honey, had an emergency errand. Back as soon as possible. –Mom”

“Gone again,” said Lorrie, as she removed a carton of lemonade and poured two tall glasses. Then she clinked hers against mine and took a big drink. We sat down at the kitchen table. Again, my mind was a blank.

Suddenly Lorrie got up and left the room. She returned wearing one of her mother’s silky black dresses and a pair of red high heels. The dress was way too long, but she held it up while she walked. And the shoes were too big, but she clomped around in them anyway.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“You look great,” I replied.

Then she disappeared again and came back with lipstick, makeup, and a small mirror. While I drank my lemonade, she used a brush to smear black goop on her eyelashes. Clumps were on the ends when she blinked. Then she drew around her eyes with a big black pencil. And finally she pushed her lips out and smeared on bright red lipstick. It was messy and didn’t seem right. She looked into the mirror and frowned.

“How do you like it?” she asked.

“I like it!” I said. And I kinda did.

“Have another lemonade,” she said. “I’ll put on some music. My mom likes a song called Swing Swing Swing, she plays it over-and-over.”

As it started up, there was a lot of energy--drums going crazy and wild horns.

“Let’s dance!” she said, pulling me by the hand into the living room.

Holding up her dress, she twirled around to the music and threw her hands up in the air. I had never danced before, so I tried to follow her moves. It was fun. When the music ended, she came toward me and kissed me on the lips. I could taste the lipstick. As she was walking over to the hi-fi to put on another record, the front door flew open. Her mother was suddenly in the room. Wearing a tight white skirt, heels, blouse with a v-neck, and the same red-red lipstick.

“What the hell is going on here?! Take off that makeup for God’s sake! Who is that boy?!”

But before Lorrie could answer, her mother ran into the bathroom and came back with a wet washcloth. Then she angrily grabbed her arm and started scouring. Lorrie sobbed. Her face was a smear of red and black.

“Mike likes me this way,” she whimpered.

Her mother turned to me. “You! Go home! Now!”

With my head down, I slunk out the door, hoping she wasn’t going to call my mother.

 

The next day at school, I saw Lorrie. When we made eye contact from across the playground, she looked away.

A few weeks later, I heard my parents talking. My mother said the Logans were getting a divorce. Lorrie’s father always looked angry, with a flattop and a cigarette in his mouth.

 

The day the moving van came, I walked outside. Lorrie was standing in the front yard. This time when we made eye contact, she didn’t look away. Just as she opened her mouth, about to speak, her mother came out of the house. Lorrie turned her head. Then they got into a Plymouth Barracuda and drove away. For just a second, Lorrie looked back.

 

Michael Meloan's fiction has appeared in Wired, Huffington Post, Buzz, LA Weekly and in many anthologies. He was an interview subject in the documentaries Bukowski: Born Into This and Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There. With Joe Frank, he co-wrote a number of radio shows that aired across the NPR syndicate. His Wired short story "The Cutting Edge" was optioned for film. And he co-authored the novel The Shroud with his brother Steven. This fall, RUP press in Germany will release his memoir/novella PINBALL WIZARD.

Thoughts on Heroes--Real and Otherwise--at Veteran's Day 1986
By Marilyn Fuss 

Last Spring, when our family traveled in France, the fallout from Chernobyl passed us by, we read. There was also a short hiatus after the worldwide violence of March and April, and before the most recent terrorist atrocities. We felt a little charmed when we arrived in the Champagne district. So many folks we saw had a pink glow from the regional and iconic specialty--tables in even the simplest cafés had pails of ice with sunken green bottles. La Vie en Rose, Champagne, and the countryside and Reims Cathedral that time of year was all it was fabled to be.

When entering the Argonne Forest and Verdun, we were awakened out of our hedonism by reminders of World War I. There were markers, memorials, and an

unspeakably large ossuary. This was the Great War whose Armistice on November 11 we celebrated until 1954, when the holiday was expanded to recognize all veterans.

Seventy years ago, 800,000 men died in battle in the region. Evidence of war is easy to come by in Europe. Yet all around Verdun, the bunkers and deadly trenches 

were covered with forest and dense fields. The earth itself showed renewal--most of the rolling landscape appeared intact. Rich verdure even smothered those war 

markers which must remain, lest as the adages go, we forget and repeat our history. The land is as close to a jungle as it could be, given the cool temperature of Eastern France [!] even in late Spring. My thought then was that Chernobyl [site of a different set of ancestors as well as the nuclear power plant], whose initial fires were still being put out as we gazed by the Meuse River, will have no such second chance. The earth will not recover if a nuclear war should occur, and with arms limitation agreements just squelched in Reykjavik!

Shell-pocked buildings in the cities of Lorraine and Alsace are also not as resilient as the soil nearby mentioned above, and they spoke of the Second World War.  Outside of the South, we don't have many such wartime damage reminders in the U.S. There are the people we have lost to battle in wars far away, but our most concrete examples are in the news and via Hollywood. Rambo, that veteran of a recent jungle war, was a hot topic last Spring in France, as much as he was here. People there did not appreciate Sylvester Stallone's public announcement that he would forego the Cannes Film Festival for fear of a terrorist attack. A few days after Rambo's alternate had made his sensational statement, my  husband's French cousin Daniel said wryly  over lunch, "Stallone, Rambo, does not come to France. He is afraid. But you are here! You are the heroes." He echoed my own satiric thought, although we were less likely to be targets of terrorism than Rambo. This incident notes the role in world consciousness of a current war hero archetype, real or not. It also introduces Daniel Handfus.

Daniel is cynical, in a good-natured way, about the vicissitudes of politics, with good reason. He is representative of another kind of wartime survivor, a Jewish man whose life was interrupted for five or six years during World War II. Having spent a year or so hidden in a home with a righteous French family not his own, and losing part of his family to the Nazis, he waited out the rest of the war as a farmer, under an assumed name in the Île de France (called île, or island, because since it surrounds Paris, it has always been a distinct agricultural and cultural hub). Daniel's type of veteran did not have the option or even any of the few rewards, of being a soldier, though he did share the risks.

It is soldiers whom we honor this week and month, both for the bravery many displayed and (like refugees) for that concession of years of time in their lives.

Those who are dead or disabled physically and emotionally were affected permanently. For other veterans the more temporary gaps in their lives, and all those lost periods meant or might have meant, are something which the rest of us need to appreciate, whether by admiration or merely reckoning. They went instead of us, no matter what their reasons for going to battle were, and no matter how we feel about those wars. This country was engaged in them, and most of us did not have to go and risk everything. We may consider the many possibilities of what they gave up, and credit them for that. And if we contemplate and visualize trauma and sacrifice of past wars, can we summon that reality to prevent the country from involvement in battle again?

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.

Como Vuelve El Amor…
By G. Billie Quijano

Divine departure

Ancestral blood ignites

Your translucent glow in flight

 

You return

You never left

Grief and joy beating beneath my breast

 

Reverence of intuition and memory

No need for translation

 

My journeys path, flowered with golden glitter

Souls connected, cosmic transmission

 

The whispers of marigold petals

Flirting with the winds

 

Ancient metamorphosis of thought

Galaxies of stars dancing in dreams

 

The fragrance of your smoldering copal

Your footprint in my DNA

 

Your traumas and victories

Bridled on my shoulders

I survive, history revived

 

The ritual of passage and return

My heart eternally yearns

 

The vibrato of Mariachis await you

Nectars to be imbibed

Pan dulce to delight

We are your audience

As we watch you dance the dance of time

 

G. Billie Quijano-Hija de East Los. Natural Creative, Photographer, Watercolorist, Assemblage/Textile Work. Bruja, Poeta, Instigator of Beauty, Mestiza.

The landscape of my childhood, my classrooms were elements of urban life, cool concrete, vibrant colors and sounds from a place I love, prepared me for my life as an artist.

My ancestors surrounded me with calla lilies, majestic cactus, sunflowers and bird of paradise. My neighbor Rafael’s rooster was my alarm clock. Trio Los Panchos played the soundtrack. Olvera street was my playground. Saturday’s breakfast was the delicious aromas of menudo, carnitas and freshly made tortillas de maiz from the local tortilleria on Whittier Blvd.

My heroes are the hard working, courageous street artists all over the world. My work is a humble practice of keeping tradition and history alive.

My wish is to share my art, a desire to make a connection and contribution. To maintain beauty and balance in the universe. I want to evolve and participate in the cultural rhythm of the streets and beyond.

10 Steps to a Happy Thanksgiving
By Jennie O  

Step 1 includes clean shoes and sox. 

 

Step 2 can’t be too far, but maybe shoot a bird? 

 

Step 3 smoke a joint and snort some coke it will be a long night.

 

Step 4 is clearing some space to hide the bodies under the cornucopia and then check their wallets. 

 

Step 5 and I don’t know why we cheers each year.

 

Step 6 she’s not your mom so don’t be shy to give her your package early.

 

Step 7 avoid uncle Mike because that isn’t candy in his pocket .

 

Step 8 is not that far, say you’re going to go say hi to the neighbors and disappear for an hour.

 

Step 9 look at the clock and think, this is almost over and then check the medicine cabinet for the real THANKS to thanksgiving. 

 

Step 10 is great, take your families hand and give thanks your weren’t apart of the slaughter of native Americans, but we all kinda were.

 

Jennifer Guillermina Otero Aka Jenni "O" is 43 years old and a native of North-East Los Angeles, where she still resides with her mother and boyfriend. She has a degree in psychology and the culinary arts and is a certified life coach. Her hobbies include photography, videography, creative writing, dancing, and making people laugh. She is an Ex Jehovahs Witness activist and has the largest Ex Jehovahs Witness only Support Group in the world. Currently, she is making a webzine for her brand, Punk Slut as well as writing her memoirs.

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 producesa 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

Most recently, 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

https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

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 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-theatrical-poetry-producer-retired-social-worker-and-professor/

October Poet's Place

POET PLACE

OCTOBER EDITION 2022

Boo. October is here! And so are we. At least some of us are. We seem to be losing a lot of our our friends and family members lately. I guess that’s life hitting us in the reality face. Do you sometimes feel like you have been long dead and buried in another town? With the ashes of residual guilt? Caught in the eruption of a Vesuvius like storm? That’s how my head feels. Icing helps. Drugs can sometimes mask the pain. For a minute. Finding solace and contentment is often a reach. But with the knowledge that we are all doing what we can to survive, hopefully we find peace within our own surroundings.

Here are the October offerings from our lovely village of poets and writers from all over the universe!!

Headspace
By Linda Kaye

The road downhill is fraught with mysteries

jammie packed with new discoveries many unwanted juiced with new frailties

peppered with disabling disabilities doused and flamed from inflammations

sucker punched in the gut pockmarked and puking

gobsmacked at the mere thought of the loss of physicality lurking like a rapist in the future packed with a bag filled of horrifying cancers

arterial pressure rising inside the brain frying out the memories of the past

 

hold your breath count to 10

Am  I still alive?  Is it a good thing? I’ll ask Siri- they say “organisms have a survival instinct

they want to be here

they only want to be here if they thought it was good to be here”

Hmmmm

  

THE FIFTH GLASS
By  Jon G. Jackson

This afternoon, my ex-wife came to visit

with her new wife. And we all

set up a table on the back porch.

 

We were having wine and cheese

purchased on our long trip,

a big loop locally. And we all, somehow,

thought we were one wine glass short.

 

When we talked about it later,

we all agreed: Yes, they had told me

to bring the glass out, and, yes, I did.

Like we were one glass short.

 

And, yet, there were only four of us.

In attentive silence, we examined

that fifth glass — the one that

all of us said was missing.

 

Then we clinked our glasses, and we

shared that wine amongst ourselves —

a good one, from a Calistoga winery.

 

And we all said,

“Well, she’s not here, anyway. . .

 

Jon G. Jackson is a retired psychiatrist and depth psychotherapist, and an award-winning poet. He facilitates an ongoing Rainer Maria Rilke reading group sponsored by the Friends of the San Francisco Jung Institute. He has taught two ten-lecture courses: “Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet” and “A Psychological Approach to the Old Testament.” He currently teaches a shorter course on Rilke for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Sonoma State University. He is the author of a book of poems Practicing Silence.

 

Saying Goodbye
By Sherrie Lovler

It took our whole lives
to see each other.
To see beyond the stuff
that fathers and daughters hold.

For a second I saw you.

I saw you
as you always wanted to be seen.
And in that moment love flowed between us like never before.

It was more than knowing it was goodbye.
It was, in fact, hello.
And though it seemed late in our lives

it was perfect — because
I saw you.

I saw you with my soul. And though words
cannot express that feeling

I know you took it with you as much as I know anything.

©Sherrie Lovler

Originally published in On Softer Ground: Paintings, Poems and Calligraphy by Sherrie Lovler

Sherrie Lovler is a painter and poet from Santa Rosa. She teaches classes in calligraphic abstract painting and bookmaking online and nationally. Sherrie’s paintings and poems inspire each other, and are paired in her award-winning book On Softer Ground: Paintings, Poems and Calligraphy.  www.artandpoetry.com

 



think or stink
By Daniel Schack

 

 think or stink. I say I do not know what to think. I also say I do not like those who do think they know what to think. they are often do do. this is true.

 

The poet ,daniel schack can be seen on poetrysoup.com and his art on tumblr adanthemanworld.daniel schack is 57 and is a high school grad. With 3.5 years of college.peace.

 

 

FLOW
(Dance is Life Series)
6-25-20
9:04 a.m
Artwork and Poem by Mary Cheung 

 

Energy moving, atoms flow.

Fluid Like water, I'm like nothing you know.

 

Freely and wild,

Can't be contained.

Falling, moving,

touching you like the rain.

 

Can't hold me back.

I adapt with change,

Chameleon of my environment

Let me show you my range,

 

I am shapeless,

flexing and fluid,

I cannot break.

warm and soft,

hard and cold,

becoming whatever it takes.

 

I am shapeless

Let me seep into ur skin

Soak up my essence,

See where I'm going,

not where I have been.

 

never stopping, see my ideas take flight,

watch them unfold,

let them inspire,

let them delight.

 

I am water, watch me flow.

Jump into my river,

let me take hold.

 

Energy that can't be contained.

Creation that can't be restrained.

Im a force, like that,

of a

    Gentle,

       falling rain.

 

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”.

 

LOVE
By:IE Carlo
30 December 2021

 

It’s the commonality of mind and spirit

That gives it meaning

The significance of the heart

Is its shape and color, its brilliance

Brings awareness of its

Meaning

I’m I from somewhere else

Where love is never at a lost

Regardless of all things

Being out of line

Travels with intensity

Of mind heart and spirit and

Reaches its place in an others

heart and mind and spirit

It’s not a rhetorical manifestation

But an awareness

Of the self

 

Ismael (East) Carlo, poet, actor begins on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio whose monica of “East” happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…

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. Paz en Vida  

 

 

Solace of Self
By Victoria Ester Orantes

Oh how saddening, oh how exciting, 

To be my friend, and my adversary. 

 

Refreshment dealt, heaven’s spout. 

Dilute blight of mind and mouth. 

 

One side wilts, the other waters, 

The aid to rise when one falters. 

 

May there be strength to never tire. 

This is living, stubborn survivor. 

 

The seasons of self, healed then heartbroke. 

Choice of sedulity is my yoke. 

 

Victoria was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  She is the owner and operator of the first 1966 Volkswagen Beetle boutique, V.E.O. Visions, where she sells her original art, original jewelry, hand-painted clothing, and curated $5 thrifts.  Victoria’s art has been featured in local NELA establishments, art-walks, and recently Shoutout LA magazine. 

RED DIAPER BABIES
By Jeff Chayette 21 September 2022

 
sexy ladies fertile babies

screaming hot rocks

get your jaw breaker

belly ache full straight

winning hand

the glam band slam band

hard hitting face spitting

mini skirts under oversized shirts

hey there bernie bros

we’ll top you sock you

take you to the battle of the baby rattle

Katie Rule and Lydia Jewel

drove the spike into the heart

of the death metal Neo punk junk

they brought retro soul blistering beats

played street fairs

teen queens on a pick up truck

winning battle of the bands in

Chicago Grand Rapids Saginaw

Flint Gross Point Detroit

Wyandot Ann Arbor Toledo

Gary back home to Chicago

and a recording session

at Chess Records studios

commercial success in hot red dress

the red diaper babies

Mixed the little caesars

piece of pizza piece of pizza

into a multi genre soul punk

speed metal rhythm and blues

head spinning ear splitting viral sensation

everybody wanted a piece of that pie

 

honey pie you are making me crazy

Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr

invited them on tour

crazy pressure

peer pressure

under pressure

 

nineteen exploding dreams

hearts bursting at the seams

too much too soon

men descending like baboons

they cracked up broke up choked up

5150ed in Chelsea Alabama

 

that Muscle Shoals recording session never started

 

Lydia froze up

Katie wracked up assault charges

that pervert who grabbed her skirt

in the mosh pit had his face split with her Les Paul

doc martins to his balls she spit and raged

they wrapped her in a straight jacket

shot her up with Thorazine

locked her up in Chelsea Hall

the hell of Alabama

 

Crazy sick adman looking

to revive a sinking ship

tired brand was YouTubing eighties hits

and found his golden ticket

tall skinny teen chicks

mini skirts doc martins oversized shirts

piece of pizza piece of pizza

was a piece of pizza pie

what a funky chicken tail

tap dance lap dance

male gaze rat trap

this crazy act

can take us back

 

red diaper babies attack

 

Lydia was a buddhist monk

had saved her head

took a vow of silence

was the monastery gardener

 

Katie was a retooled dominatrix

working as a dental hygienist

it was the perfect job

every day she got to say

it’s going to hurt and it’s good for you

 

Jeff Chayette has lived and loved for 4 decades in Los Angeles. 

A multi-faceted artist who attended Art Center College of Design In Pasadena, Jeff has worked on stage, television and films. 

His design work has been peer recognized with National and local Emmys, CBS Eye on Excellence and Promax BDA awards. 

His current poems are reflections on past and present life in Los Angeles through the eyes of the pandemic. Recent Emmy winner for Best Short promo!!

 

Friendly Racists
By Ronald G. Carrillo 

That man of perdition preaching his lies and narcissistic vomit

Surrounding himself with friendly racists wearing masks

Assigned various tasks to complete presidential goals

A rebel rouser of the highest order

Spewing his low-grade divisiveness

To his mostly fearful malcontents

Wanting to keep the white social economic mainstream order

Guarding their lion’s share of the kill

Unwilling to see a more diverse and equitable future

A changing of the American guard that friendly racists cannot abide

Fear and a seeming loss of their power and status

Making these once friendly racists sharpen their tongues

Take up their guns and show their true colors

Veritable wolves baring their teeth beneath sheepskin

A peaceful protest in D.C. and that ungodly man uses it as a photo op

Holding a bible upside down in front of a church

Jews and Palestinians hurling rocks

That give way to missile attacks

Sunni and Shia Muslims kill each other in holy wars so unholy

White Americans and their fellow citizens of color

Becoming a pecking order battle for inclusion

Dominance defended to the death

By fringe fanatics and white nationalists

Suddenly struck by amnesia forgetting their immigrant origins

Closed borders and walls to keep dreamers

Of the red, white and blue out

No more “White Only” signs but their ghosts remain

Behind closed doors the skeleton bones of segregation still live

A once silent dialect of racism again returning to a Dixieland

Spreading its venomous cancer of white superiority

A false supremacy uprooting the foundations of liberty

The cracks now beginning to show more deeply

Like weeds obstructing the constitutional ideals

Of Jefferson and Adams’ seeds of our founding fathers

Friendly racists no longer wearing long white robes and hoods

Burning crosses and only coming out at night

A new yet still lethal breed of haters

And flag wavers to remake America

Thinking great again but doing the exact opposite

Destroying freedom for all so only they can benefit

A land of manifest destiny stolen in a global cycle of empire

Now spiraling out of control

The planet growing hotter

And government grabbing hands getting greedier

Friendly racists becoming bolder

Not willing to shoulder any responsibility for criminal actions

Seeking presidential pardons

From a trumpster still blowing his horn

Tweeting like an insane parrot

Not willing to tolerate justice but seeking white privilege

Friendly racists thinking they are above the law

But acting like outlaws nonetheless

The planet spinning in climate change

Antisemitic leanings once again rearing its ugly head

Conspiracies abounding confounding enlightened consciousness

Democratic platforms collapsing

The country relapsing into antebellum

Liberty held hostage by false patriots

No republican regrets only political dispensations

Common sense hard to be found in our congressional halls

D.C. a squatters’ paradise for friendly racists

The yin and yang of justice

Her scales swinging wildly out of balance

Will the fury for equality neutralize the insanity

America clean house

Fortify the peoples’ democracy

Time to exterminate friendly racists

Set the traps

 

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.

Skeeter Hunting Way Down South
by Lee Boek 

Layin’ in bed

A skeeter in my head

Skeeters in my mouth

Skeeter Hunting way down south,

 

Turn on da light

Jump on da floor

Grab that swatter

Near to the door

 

Catch ‘em in flight

Or up on the wall

Standin’ on the bed

Make ya real tall

 

Catch ‘em with yer swatter

Catch ‘em with yer mouth

Skeeter huntin’ way down south.

 

Long come black Dart

Fastest Skeeter alive

A welt raiser

A Buzzin’ Blazer

 

Try every nite

Just to see him in flight

All I got was a bite

But never a site

 

Puts me up tight

Jump back in bed

That buzzin’s in my head

He’s back in my mouth

Skeeter huntin’ Way Down South.

 

Lee Boek: Artistic Director/poet

An integral part of Public Works Improvisational Theater Company since the 1970s, Lee took over as Artistic Director of the company in 2001 after founding member Marlene Rasnick’s passing. The California native, born in 1941, has had successful careers as a Fundamentalist Evangelist preacher, radio host, actor, writer, producer, union organizer, husband, father, grandfather to many & champion for the under-served & wronged. A staple of the Silverlake arts community, Lee continues to be on the forefront of accessible, socially-relevant performing arts productions

 

Papoulis
By Michael Meloan

After completing his BA in history at UCSB, and a teaching credential, George Papoulis began to believe that he was the Son of God. Then he became convinced that a secret Nazi cabal was out to get him, due to his Greek roots. After a shouting match with his family, men in white coats wrestled him into a straightjacket and he was carted off to a state facility for seven weeks.

With a new lease on life, via daily doses of powerful anti-psychotics and mood elevators, he began teaching at Locke High in South LA. It was a stressful job, with high levels of classroom chaos.

After a particularly bad week, he decided to cut loose at the Red Onion disco in Redondo Beach. It was a notorious party spot.

 George set an intention to find a woman. He approached the crowded bar and drank one Cadillac Margarita after another, until he lost count. With an explosive head of sugar and alcohol, he walked up to a woman with a teased-up beehive hairdo and a voluptuous figure.

“Hey, wanna dance?” he asked.

She glanced up at him, “Yeah, Ok.”

George didn’t really know how to dance. But the alcohol made that irrelevant. After gyrating wildly through one song, they went back to the bar.

“My name is Charlene,” she said.

“I’m George. Hard to hear. So loud!”

“I know!” Charlene replied. 

“Do you want to go somewhere?” George asked.

She paused. “Well, we could go to my place.”

“Where is that?”

“Downey,” she replied.

“Downey! I don’t even know where that is. It sounds far.”

“It’s not that far at night. The traffic is light.”

“I’m part Greek. Is that Ok?”

“Sure. I’m part Mexican. Who cares?”

George felt relieved.

“I’m with a friend. I’ll go tell her that I’m leaving,” she said.

 

After what seemed an interminable drive, from freeway-to-freeway in George’s 1964 VW Beetle, they arrived at a tiny stucco house with a chain link fence around the front yard.

As soon as they were inside the front door, they began ravenously making out, then she led him to a side bedroom where they tore each other’s clothes off and made frantic love.

When it was over, they both lay in the twisted covers heaving for breath. Then George was out. He was quite drunk.

When he awoke, it was pitch black. He squinted at the tiny glowing markers on the hands of his watch. About 4:05.

He unsteadily got out of bed and started looking for his clothes. When he was almost dressed, she awoke. She jumped out of bed in the nude and turned on the light.

“Are you trying to sneak out?!”

“Umm, I need to go. I’m a long way from home.”

“We need to go see a priest! I think I love you!”

“I hardly know you. I don’t even know your last name!”

“I need some help from a man. A good man.”

“This is too much. I’m a new teacher. And I’m a schizophrenic!”

“And I have three children! This is my father’s house. We live with him. He took the kids overnight to Disneyland, so I could have a little break.”

She began to cry. Running mascara. “I just needed…a little break.”

They both stood in silence, bathed in the harsh glare of the overhead light. Then George approached her and kissed her on the lips.

“You are a beautiful woman,” he said. “Any man would be lucky to have you. But I’m treading water as fast as I can, just to keep my head above the waves.”

“So am I,” she said.

“I have to go,” he said, as he headed toward the door.

 

On the way home, as the sun was coming up, he cried.

 

Michael Meloan's fiction has appeared in Wired, Huffington Post, Buzz, LA Weekly and in many anthologies. He was an interview subject in the documentaries Bukowski: Born Into This and Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There. With Joe Frank, he co-wrote a number of radio shows that aired across the NPR syndicate. His Wired short story "The Cutting Edge" was optioned for film. And he co-authored the novel The Shroud with his brother Steven. This fall, RUP press in Germany will release his memoir/novella PINBALL WIZARD.

 

Good Person
By Ed Burgess 
9/25/22 

I’m not a bad person. 

That’s what my friends say 

I am not a mensch

No more than I am a Good Fellow

I am not a Bon Vivant 

Nor am I your Tio 

Or your Cuz’ 

How could I possibly be

Your homie

Your boy

Or brother and confidant 

 

We are not from another mother

We were not switched at birth

Or abandoned among the reeds 

Down by the river

 

I am a good person 

Ask my friends 

The ones I have left 

The ones who know 

I am not a bad person 

They know when my push comes 

And then the shove 

We are on the other side

Blue skies 

Smooth sailing 

Red sunsets 

Good or bad 

Is not the question

We just are 

 

And We are the good person 

And you are there with me. 

 

Ed Burgess is a very creative person who has lived in Los Angeles now for over 20 years. He is an artist, an occasional poet, a troublemaker and a good person. 

  

Sacrilege
By Lauren Orozco

Art Fair

Curly Hair

Green Glass

Holy Mass

White Wine

Stout Stine

Flawless Face

Saving Grace

Faith Kept

Eden Wept

 

Lauren Orozco is a poet who doesn’t have a hometown. She’s a proud MexiCuban Californian, and honorary Montanan. Born in Long Beach, California, lived in various cities across Northern Orange County and currently resides in Corona, CA. Lauren spent her twenties in Missoula, Montana and studied archaeology and philosophy at the University of Montana.  

She devours any poetry she can lay her eyes on, queer memoirs, war novels, Wittgenstein,  Baldwin, and Steinbeck. She is not a fan of labels or being defined by others. A self-proclaimed Cowboy Surfer, Lauren has narrowly escaped with her life after being bucked off horses, hospitalized due to surfing and skating accidents, stung by stingrays, and getting thrown off a raft in class 4 rapids. But she lives to tell her tale.  
 

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

 

Most recently, 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

https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

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 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-theatrical-poetry-producer-retired-social-worker-and-professor/

August Poet's Place - Deep Summer Edition

POETS PLACE
AUGUST EDITION 2022

This month, as every month, we host writers from everywhere. Anyone who wants to submit work can and do. We are fortunate to be a publication that doesn’t discriminate. Your words matter, not your celebrity status. You are celebrated for your courage to speak your mind and share your words of wisdom and creative art. All we have is this moment. The here and now. A precious gift that we give to ourselves is to take advantage of what we have, now, not tomorrow. For tomorrow many never come.

 So grateful for you all XXXOOO

 Keep on submitting!!!!

 Love, Linda :0)

 

Jazz Composition
By Linda Kaye

 

I feel like my life is playing out like a jazz composition sometimes with strong rhythms, and lustful sounds caressing a soul fueled heart with improvisational strings tugging and pulling on the once solid notes harking and cajoling the structure of my life‘s music

Luckily the cacophony of surrounding sounds of human kindness permeates, often cracking my head space and drowning out the incessant drone of negative head chatter

mind matter

laughter of the serious kind

What resonates most though is the unintentional witness of life’s constant jokes at my expense

the hardy haha of bodily decline mental exhaustion the tick tock of time masticating in my mouth unable to spit out words of wisdom once rolling off my tongue with ease and intellect.

Mind constantly wandering off towards the sea of abysmal dread seeking refuge on the floundering ship that floats by with no more space for the elderly the aged the almost there but not yet ready to drown.

What’s left is a sticky mess of ugliness the harsh realities that time is definitely of the essence an out of control out of body handiwork of chance.

 

  

“So ya’ wanna be a rocker. Study the moves. Jerry Lee Lewis. Buy some blue-suède shoes. Move yer head like Rod Stewart. Put yer ass in a grind. Talkin’ sock it to it, get the image in line. Get the image in line, boy. The fantasy rhyme.”
The Tooth of the Crime Sam Shepard

The Ghost of Sam Shepard 
by Jeff Chayette
15 October 2020

 

jelly jam slam
don’t scram
just belly up to the bar

you rock n’ roll star
the dwarf stood tall

pulled her skirt up high blouse down low
bop hopped on the stool as white Russians
in shot glasses
lined the bar
the man
sam be damned shepard

ordered drinks all around said
why staring
sit down clown
don’t frown
you’re welcome
hear
there
and everywhere
dumb ass
line from a Beatles song

it won’t be long
I’m a loser
the blues you choose

the blues you made

those shoes ain’t suede

shake your ass
parade

 

shade the dawn
tend the coals
our father’s rage
has taken stage
trade for blood
our old Kentucky home

natives dance on
Daniel Boone’s
bowie knife
Andrew Jackson’s tribal raids

America’s stain is plain

as acid rain
on golden crops
spoiled rotten
from the coal mines of Kentucky

to the California shores
bobby mc gee and me

 

our ancestors molestation

endless devastation
of natives riches
blood spilled

nerves frayed I cannot rest

there is no test of shame

no primal scream to wake me
from this dream of barren waste

as Elliot said

“here we go round the prickly pear

the prickly pear in the morning”

pain in my voice

the voice of fathers fathers fathers

I look at the land
say what have I done

what have we become

the land of dumb
this cannot be
my eyes can’t see
the glory of the coming
of the lord
knock down these boards

mystic truths have roots
I spoke for the earth
the wheat
the street

 

Jeff Chayette has lived and loved for 4 decades in Los Angeles. 

A multi-faceted artist who attended Art Center College of Design In Pasadena, Jeff has worked on stage, television and films. 

His design work has been peer recognized with National and local Emmys, CBS Eye on Excellence and Promax BDA awards. 

His current poems are reflections on past and present life in Los Angeles through the eyes of the pandemic. Recent Emmy winner for Best Short promo!!


parasols
By Devin Murphy

They
built the empire state building in 14 months

tore out the LA streetcars slowly

and they’ll find use for parasols indoors before

everyone on the sidewalk gets one when the sun drags across the

top of your scalp like sandpaper scraps

and
breath is hot like

microwaved tupperware

they’ll sell better sunshine indoors

they’ll sell galoshes in the flood when the ground has gone too long

without being wet
and the skin has formed of

oil and pollen and hair

I will watch gravel clouds break into

hazel rain turn

to overflow turn my

shoes
into colonies of

living things and all around me

the residue
will linger with a dull sheen of the

dish soap
that clogs your pump and shoots at

you

I will recall the moments over

decades
I felt powerless when we cried for

a roof
and they sold us each an umbrella

cheap and fragile from narrow brown boxes

on rusting ships crossing oceans

and
long after it’s too late

when disaster is upon us like spam calls

someone will ask why, and

we’ll be
the ones left

to
tell a story, crowned in thorns

our generation of declining standards

and
free markets

not old enough to make the change not young enough to be

freed from blame sick, shuffling, hot

we will carry that for you pariahs in

this world of your making

©Devin Murphy, 2022

Devin Murphy has been described by acquaintances as “a team player.” When pressed for comment, Devin responded “I love the well-wishers, but they’re selfish little freaks.”

 

Those possessing familiarity with the matter confirm Devin last played organized sports in 2002, his season ending with a “middling AF” [sic] .600 average.

 

Currently, Devin is living in a jungle in the ocean. Contact DevinPMurphy@gmail.com for poetry samples, video + audio arts, and publication requests.

 

 

Cariño Cochineal
By Victoria Ester Orantes

 

At last she was the choicest burgeon of the mēde 

Alas, verboten cultivators, you chose me 

A genuine venture 

For closeness to quench her 

An appetency for adjacency 

Deserted despite her sincerity 

Sublime streams inadvertently ebbed away 

Marshy water nourishment, a piquant plague. 

Biological necessity 

May veracity bring harmony 

 

Victoria was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  She is the owner and operator of the first 1966 Volkswagen Beetle boutique, V.E.O. Visions, where she sells her original art, original jewelry, hand-painted clothing, and curated $5 thrifts.  Victoria’s art has been featured in local NELA establishments, art-walks, and recently Shoutout LA magazine. 

 

Sleazy sally
By Daniel Schack

 

No if, and, or buts. delightful, though somewhat demented love song I wrote in 1984 at age 20.          

Let me tell you about sleazy sally.she wants to be everyone's pally.just deposit 30 dollars in her slot, and sally will give you everything she's got. Sally says, oh oh oh oh oh. Do it fast or do it slow.  Oh.oh.oh.oh.oh. hello Joe, let me give you a blow. I want to marry sleazy sally.cause I love her so.   Sleazy sally.she's all right.I tried her just the other night.sleazy sally.she can put up a fight, and after years of working, she's still tight.   Oh.oh.oh.oh.oh.  marry me sally.I love you so.oh.oh.oh.oh.oh.  I'm begging.I'm pleading.please don't go.  I want to marry sleazy sally, cause I love her so.    Me and sally married just the other night.  But she still works on the side.she's got her pride. She enjoys her job, with her johns and her bobs.but she's mine for free.for eternity.  Dilly dally in the alley with sally.dilly dally in the alley with sally.dilly dally in the alley with sally.sally.sally.sally.

 

The poet ,daniel schack can be seen on poetrysoup.com and his art on tumblr adanthemanworld.daniel schack is 57 and is a high school grad. With 3.5 years of college.peace.

 

GRATITUDE 
7-24-2022
6:09 pm.
By Mary Cheung 

 

Gratitude , 

You know that feeling you get that starts inside you?  

Somewhere around your chest? 

You feel a warmth expanding..spreading through your veins,

And you can only guess. 

 

The trigger for that feeling,  

set off by a person. 

Action, reaction, something magical and it's not stress. 

 

How a simple act of kindness, 

or thoughtfulness... can leave you on cloud 9....

 

Yes, you gave me a gift and it's left an impression on my soul.  

Filling me up and feeding me for days.  

And I'll never hunger again because your actions fulfilled me just so. 

 

So that's what gratitude feels like...

 

You planted this seed, and it's dying to be passed onto to someone else.  

Share that feeling and save them from starvation, deprivation, the lack of love and kindness too.

 

I can only image now what a world can feel and look like. 

One where hungers been abolished, of your mind body and soul. 

 

And it all started with the simple act of you....

 

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”.

 

 

LIFE, ONE OF THE LAST THINGS OF LIVING
By: IE Carlo
30 July 2022

 

In this world living is not life

Living is just breathing in and out

Living is nothing without life

For life gives living its vigor

Its either

Life is he/she who has reason and purpose accepting all things to enter

Giving life joy of excistance

The smells, views, feelings of that panarama of life,

Like that of a beautiful landscape painting of yore

We make too much of life

Making living the thing, is the thing

Life is all things happening that happened

Living is all those moments of life that make the total of life

So that moment is the thing; “That’s living Life”.

 

Ismael (East) Carlo, poet, actor begins on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio whose monica of “East” happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…

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. Paz en Vida  

 

Lansing
By Michael Meloan

 

After flying all night from LAX to Heathrow, my brother Steve and I arrived exhausted at the Reese Hotel in the King's Cross neighborhood. The exterior was dirty brick with black wrought iron railings and a narrow white door. It was more a youth hostel than a true hotel. We were greeted by a rotund older woman with curly close-cropped grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She tersely introduced herself as Mrs. Reese, inspected our passports, then copied our information. After paying cash up-front, we were shown to a room. The hallways creaked and sagged; everything was stale and musty. She opened a door, revealing two young men, wearing slacks and white shirts, sitting on narrow beds. It was a large room with two more beds on the other side. The men stood.

"Hello, I'm Charles," said the first, with an accent I couldn't immediately place.

"And I'm Tony," said the second, with a straight-up English delivery.

Steve and I quickly introduced ourselves.

"Cheers then," said Mrs. Reese. "Breakfast at 7:30 sharp. If you miss it, then you've missed it." She turned and left the room.

Steve placed his guitar case and battery powered Pignose amp in the corner. We arranged our canvas duffle bags next to the guitar, then sat on our beds. It was 9:30 pm. There was an awkward silence.

Tony spoke first. "So, you've come to London to be discovered as pop stars?"

"We're software coders at home,” I said. "But we've come to London to busk in the Tube tunnels…and maybe be discovered as pop stars."

Tony and Charles both laughed.

“Well, let's hear a bit of what you've got. Play us a song," said Charles.

Steve took out his guitar. I sang "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads, while he played. 

Then Charles picked up the guitar. "I'm an accountant, from Johannesburg, South Africa, on loan to the London office for six months. I'm going to play a traditional folk song, originally sung by Ndebele men traveling by steam train from their homes in Zimbabwe to work in the South African mines. It’s called "Shosholoza."

He sang in a high register with striking authenticity. His delivery was unaffected by rock influences. And his guitar work was precise, with complex picking structures and clean fretwork.

"Wow," Steve and I both said, simultaneously.

Then the door flew open. It was Mrs. Reese. "Lights out lads. And no more music. Working people need their sleep. G'night."

"That old biddy is a pain in the arse," said Tony.

We all laughed.


Charles and Tony were both up at 6:30, knocking around the room. Charles put on a cheap-looking dark blue suit, combed his short brown hair, and quickly used an electric razor. Tony's preparation was more elaborate. He stood in front of the mirror in white briefs while blow drying his dirty blond mop. He was rail-thin with alabaster skin. Then he applied cologne, and went over his black suit with a lint roller. There was a United Airlines pin on the lapel.

"I'm a ticketing agent at Heathrow," he said. "But my dream is to move to Lansing, Michigan."

"Really," said Steve. "Why Lansing?"

"In The States, you can reinvent yourself. The UK is too locked-in. I want to rise from my ashes."

We all nodded.

"Also," he continued, "I want to drive an Oldsmobile 88. Lansing is where they make them. I might even get a job at the factory. Or maybe in marketing. Who knows? Anything is possible in Lansing."

Again, we nodded.

"Well gents, I'm off," Tony said as he put on his suit jacket and left the room.

I paused and poked my head out the door to make sure Tony was gone.

"I hope he won't be disappointed when he gets to Lansing," I said. "It's hard to imagine that Michigan is the answer."

"He's never going to Lansing," said Charles. "And he's not a ticketing agent at Heathrow. A stewardess passing through gave him the United Airlines pin he wears. The truth is, he's on the dole and plays darts all day at a pub just down the street. Mrs. Reese told me that he's taking some sort of psychiatric medication. But Lansing is what keeps him going day-to-day. The fantasy of driving that big Oldsmobile along a wide American boulevard."

Then Charles lit a cigarette. "I have to be off."

He shook both of our hands and was gone.

 

Michael Meloan's fiction has appeared in Wired, Huffington Post, Buzz, LA Weekly and in many anthologies. He was an interview subject in the documentaries Bukowski: Born Into This and Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There. With Joe Frank, he co-wrote a number of radio shows that aired across the NPR syndicate. His Wired short story "The Cutting Edge" was optioned for film. And he co-authored the novel The Shroud with his brother Steven. This fall, RUP press in Germany will release his memoir/novella PINBALL WIZARD.

 

 

Abuelos Míos

Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin

 

 

I searched the place in Sonora for my Yaqui great grandparents. So in November 1970, I traveled through northwest Mexico, from Nogales at the Arizona Sonora border to coastal Bahía de Kino, then east to Hermosillo in central Sonora, the birthplace of my mother’s grandparents Ignacio Carrasco, Micaela Ochoa, Luis Luna and Sacramento Marquez. An old guidebook led me to the oldest cemetery in the city.  

This campo santo in the middle of the bustling city of Hermosillo, looked forgotten and pitifully small, a half block at the most. The gatekeeper told us that some of the burial plots were moved to other cemeteries outside of the city. The two major streets traversed this historical cemetery and therefore destroyed it. All marble and stone sepulchers were moved except for a few. Some sepulchers remained, but the hundreds and hundreds of the common plots were simply covered over with asphalt. I cried when I saw the few fallen over wooden and iron crosses.

Plots were unmarked. These gravesites contrasted with the handful of remaining monumental pillared and marble towered tombs that belonged to the founding wealthy Mexican

families. I mused as I saw the cruel reality of poverty’s fate. Are these influential and affluent upper class Spanish and Mexicans to be the only abuelos eternally remembered? Will  the common mixed mestizos–of native, Iberian and African heritage people, like my ancestors, be brown blown about dust to be trod upon. No, abuelos mío’s. You are not forgotten. To you, I dedicate this poem.

 

 

Gente pobre

Sin sepulcro

Sin flor

Destitute, without tombstone, without marigolds

the poor lie not in that gilded

cemetery, marbled and encircled

with wreathes of paper and silk flowers.

 

Those pillared concrete monuments

on Calle Yanez–

Are they to be the monuments

forever eternalized?

From your seeds, come my Chicana self

abuelos mió’s

searching like the wandering

Aztecs and Tarascans for your Texcoco

searching like the Yaqui Yoemem

 for truth in the talking tree.

 

Your sons came to Arizona, Texas,

New Mexico, and California–

searching, bleeding, giving birth

to Chicanos still

searching for Aztlan.

You are not forgotten.

 

Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin was born in Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles. She taught drama

at 32nd Street School and Special Education for over twenty-two years in The Los Angeles

Unified School District. Chicana On Fire, Ignited by the 1970’s East L.A. Chicano Protest Movement is her current debut poetry book. Vibiana is the author and illustrator of Mi Amor, a Memoir of poetry and stories about her mother. Her writing appears in Beyond the Lyric Moment, Inscape, The Altadena Poetry Review, The Southern California Haiku Anthology, Flor Y Canto USC, Dismantle, and The Phi Kappa Phi Forum. She studied creative writing and art at Immaculate Heart College, University of Southern California, VONA, Self Help Graphics and Art, The Idyllwild Summer Writing Institute and at Antioch University. Aparicio-Chamberlin is the founder and director of the first Chicano street teatro in the US, El Teatro de los Niños. Vibiana continues her family’s storytelling tradition by retelling La Llorona as one of her poems in Chicana On Fire based on stories told to her by her mother, Chabela Luna Aparicio, a Mexican Yaqui storyteller.

The attached narrative poem Abuelos Míos is in Chicana On Fire.

 

Chicana On Fire, Ignited by the 1970’s East L.A. Chicano Protest Movement, Bambaz Press, 2022 is her debut full-length poetry collection.  ISBN: 979-8-9857696-0-9

The Huntington Library and Gardens Store and Amazon.

Abuelos Miós  ©

Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin vibi@sbcglobal.net    

www.artediosa.com

 

 

Homage to my Youth in Song
By Ronald G. Carrillo

 

Slept in my Bowie T-shirt

And woke up in a Moonage Daydream

I was an Elemental Child with Marc Bolan

Before I grew my Beard of Stars

I stood In The Court of the Crimson King a gentle Moonchild

It was my Epitaph to observe a 21st Century Schizoid Man

Talking to the Wind in the Wake of Poseidon

Commingling with Cadence and Cascade then I had to leave

Sugar Mountain with a Cinnamon Girl

I was On The Losing End Down By the River in a Déjà vu

I Had a King and now I Think I Understand Blue

The Priest came in a Big Yellow Taxi

And that was The Last Time I Saw Richard before Woodstock

He was playing For Free to only a Coyote and a Black Crow

Another Communication Breakdown as you Ramble On

Leaving me Dazed and Confused out on the Gallows Pole

Of love unable to find my way back to your Stairway to Heaven

I Never Meant to Hurt You but The Confession I now make Mr. Blue

Is Upstairs By A Chinese Lamp my Sweet Lovin’ Baby

I have lost My Innocence in this Crazy Love so now I retreat

To find some Mercy on Broadway looking up at that Man in the Moon

And When I Die The Man Who Sends Me Home

Will still be my Companion for another Coffee Morning

Such a Handsome Devil was he that I became The Boy

With the Thorn in his Side because I was Girl Afraid

Then This Charming Man told me Meat is Murder

Never Had No One Ever Well I Wonder if I am Still ill

Louis and I We Used To Know all the Reasons For Waiting

And that there would be A Time For Everything

Even A Song For Jeffrey My God if it were Up To Me

Just Won’dring Aloud I’d go Back To The Family

With You There To Help Me it would be a New Day Yesterday

Or become A Passion Play Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day

But Nothing Is Easy Help it’s been A Hard Day’s Night

Wish Me Well for In Held Twas In I by glimpses of Nirvana

There is Too Much Between Us Still There’ll Be More

On this Pilgrims Progress toward a Crucifiction Lane

(These artists/musicians of now vintage Rock and Roll

 sustained and nurtured my Soul. I took early direction from

 all of them in those early days of finding my own poetic voice.)

Thank you David Bowie, Tyrannosaurus Rex, King Crimson,

Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Laura Nyro, The Smiths,

Jethro Tull, The Beatles, Procol Harum and so many more. Also

celebrating my 50 year high school reunion class of 1972: “Who

Knows Where the Time Goes” by the great songstress Sand Denny

of Fairport Convention fame. Fun fact this song was the B-side of a

single then the title track of her album both released in 1968 the year

I started high school.

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.

  

By Jane Cantillon

What I know for sure is that the longer the years peel away like a clear clean onion skin, the less I know. I keep walking, proudly with my head held high, pretending I know more. Now at five feet and five inches shrinking closer to the ground while my head seems further in the fog, my body complains a lot more, too. “Where are we going?” whispers my achy feet. How much longer can I carry you? murmurs my tired legs.  “I don’t know but be patient”, I say lovingly, “you too shall pass.”

Then I wonder how many more people will I say goodbye to before they throw a going away party for me? Year 2020, vision is blurred in teardrops and uncertainty and I’ve cheated death so many times that it wants it’s money back.

 

What I know for sure is when I see hungry people living under the sky blue tarps that that my heart grows so heavy I think I need a basket to carry it and I would like to serve it like a Valentines cake to some, and collect it back from the greedy ones in the tower that I have turned my back to.

 

What I know for sure is now the sun will rise again though, like me, Mother Nature’s hot flashes are growing more violent and unpredictable. She’s been irritated at the arrogance and entitlement of the scrappy human beings misusing her wondrous resources. I try to show a somewhat angry Mother Nature the same love she gives us everyday before she takes the sun back from our children.

 

What I know for sure is that authentic love has guided me through my life and has never let me down.  When I feel so overwhelmed with gratitude for my life, my family, my friends and my four-legged love machines, that is what I know for sure that love is my own private heaven.

 

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".

 

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

 

Most recently, 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

https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

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 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-theatrical-poetry-producer-retired-social-worker-and-professor/

It's July! Here's Poet's Place!

POETS PLACE

JULY 2022

Sometimes all the closure you get is a kick in the ass! I have been putting off starting July’s Poets Place edition because I was afraid to open up the pandoras box located in my head for fear of unleashing massive amounts of hate towards our country’s supreme bigoted racist misogynistic court. What the f is happening to our country??? My friend mentioned to me that the turning over Roe V Wade and other horrific reversals of women's and gay rights have been in the making since the republicans found their way in through Trump. By having Trump put in their bombastic cronies into the supreme court to rule as they say was always their plan. Like minded Americans want their republican heads on a plate right now! We the people can make demands and protest protest protest. But how likely will those demands be considered?  We are in serious trouble and my hopes remain stifled. The best I can do right now is to offer a forum for writers and poets to speak their truths. I quote Ronald G. Carrillo from his poem Triad, I feel his pain, that “Democratic bruises of infidelity and injustice” have permeated our souls. I pray things will be better…some day…

 

And now poetry and stories from you. 

America, land of the free?
by Linda Kaye

America, land of the free? Home of the unjust?

Curtains pulled and borders closed

Do we still belong?

Is our status revoked?

Are we still citizens of the United States?

Have we changed the declaration of independence?

Do we wipe out generations of immigrant existence?

 

If forms of government become destructive do we have the right of the people to alter or abolish it?

Don’t we have a right to freedom?

A right to equality? Freedom from slavery? Freedom from gun carrying, destructive and homicidal maniacs? Freedom from torture or degrading treatment?  A right to recognition as a person before the law?

Or are we just dreaming.

 

Who is watching the country’s store?

 

We the people of the human race in order to form a more perfect humanitarian world demand justice and tranquility promoting general welfare securing the blessings of liberty and freedom to everyone

regardless.

 

E pluribus Unum

 

One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice

For all

 

Really???

 

Moon Poems
by Aleka Corwin
Do you remember

 

that full Moon

 

Over bright white

 

Fields of fresh snow

 

Encircled by black woods,

 

 we strapped on

 

 Cross-country skies

 

swooshing, swooshing

 

Across New Hampshire

  

Winter silence

 

Carving deep grooves

 

Seeing our own shadows

 

In the moonlight?

 

 2)

 

Do you remember

 

Dancing under the full moon

 

In the soft grass

 

On the Kona Coast

 

At that great hotel, the Orchid Princess?

 

The only time we ever got

 

Stoned with our daughters

 

The four of us laughing and dancing

 

With the moonlight shimmering

 

On the ocean

 

keeping us company?

 

3)

 

The Blood Moon:

 

The shadow of the Earth

 

moves across the face of the Moon.

 

We are on the rooftop

 

Of the Bendix Building in

 

Downtown L.A.,

 

Watching two dancers

 

crawl and cavort in the

 

dark soil of earth art

 

created by an artist from UCLA.

 

Mysterious, hypnotic, the full

 

Moon behind them blots out

 

for just a moment

 

with a red halo,

 

 a sacred moment,

 

 we catch our breath in wonder:

 

Then a sliver of our Moon

 

Slowly re-appears.

 

Aleka Corwin is a poet, journalist, artist, set decorator for film and theater, mask and puppet maker. She has been published in The Viral Voices Anthology. Ebell Magazine and Women In Film and has told stories at The Moth. She publishes annual Artist’s Calendars about travel and food which are in private collections and the Los Angeles Downtown Public Library permanent collection. She is married to writer Bill Ratner and is the mother of two grown daughters. Having raised children, dogs, cats, and an iguana, she is down to the last family cat. She teaches Parent/Child art classes and adult workshops in Los Angeles.

 

Make Light to Me 
By Victoria Ester Orantes

Make light to me my majesty.

Deliver me delectation.

Converge without caress

Your discarnate deference. 

Riding upon the waves of mind, 

The greatest gift to give is time. 

Prismatic essence to be true.

Freedom is found in loving you. 

Warmth that widens a wild rose. 

Love is not to lust, but to know. 

 

 

Victoria is born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  She is the owner and operator of the first 1966 Volkswagen Beetle boutique, V.E.O. Visions, where she sells her original art, original jewelry, hand-painted clothing, and curated $5 thrifts.  Though her degree is in fashion design, as her previous aspirations were to be a costume designer, she chose to reconnect with her love of visual art after a tumultuous year in 2018.  Since then, Victoria’s art has been featured in local NELA establishments, art-walks, and recently Shoutout LA magazine.  Part of what keeps her motivated is embarking on solo road trips where she finds kindred spirits and new homes for her art.  She is an upcoming artist who has the vision of rousing the healing power of painting with her community through the distribution of her soulful artwork, that also features original poems, and providing a community canvas in her mobile boutique to awaken the artist in everyone.

 

 

The Visitor
By Michael D. Meloan

 

I had been tweaking random number generators for slot machines in the basement of the Wynn/Encore complex. Steve Wynn’s CIO wanted new algorithm strategies. Too many slot addicts were heading to North Las Vegas where the odds were better. I created a Java Virtual Machine as a testbed and went to work modifying code and running simulations. When I finished at 4 am, I went out for breakfast at Encore’s 24-hour café.

On the way back to my apartment, while heading toward the freeway, I rolled along Industrial Road in my ancient Citroën DS, just as the sun was coming up. A man with a shaved head, black tee shirt, and polyester slacks stood in front of a storage locker with the corrugated metal door open. He gazed at me intently for a moment, then held up his hand, indicating that I should stop. His gaze was riveting. I slowed the car, then pulled over in front of the locker.

“Thank you for stopping,” he said, in calm voice, with a slight accent that I couldn’t place. “I have something to show you. His eyes were ice gray.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Difficult to succinctly explain--a bit of technology that I think you will find intriguing.”

I was wary, but somehow, I couldn’t turn and walk away. Slowly I followed him inside the locker. He turned on a light, then slid the metal door all the way down to the concrete floor. Black plastic boxes were stacked up against the wall. A simple wooden chair was positioned in the middle of the room.

“Please sit down,” he said with a smile, opening his palm to the chair.

I hesitated, then sat. He opened one of the boxes and withdrew a sleek helmet with a dark metallic polished sheen.

“If you would be so good as to put this on, I can guarantee you an interesting experience.”

“What kind of experience?” I asked.

“The kind you have been waiting for,” he replied with an impish smile.

At this point, I wanted to flee. But I had been in a strange personal space. No significant relationships. Grueling long hours coding. Reading deconstructionist philosophers. Hiking around Red Rock Canyon when it wasn’t too hot. I was ready for something.

He carefully put the helmet in my hands. It was light.

“What if it doesn’t fit? I have a very large head,” I said.

He smiled. “It will accommodate any head.”

As I placed it over my cranium, the helmet seemed to come alive. Expanding mysteriously as I moved it onto position, then contracting without a sound to create a snug comfortable fit when it was in place. I had never seen technology remotely like it.

“If you will close your eyes, we can begin. Relax. It will be a thoroughly pleasant experience.” Something about his voice and manner led me with absolute certainty to believe that he was telling the truth.

For about thirty seconds, I experienced nothing. Then I began to see vague hues of indigo and the rise of geometric shapes— polydodecahedrons, like a geodesic dome, with throbbing blue nodes at each juncture. These geometric forms increased in complexity and resolution to form the vision of a futuristic metropolis. The images were rendered with crystalline clarity. Monolithic corridors of buildings criss-crossed by green parkways. People strolling below. And suddenly I was part of a stream of levitating humanity traveling along a virtual highway. Thousands of people surging through the air, in effortless flight. It was exhilarating and unfathomable. Then I was inside a shimmering grotto. Everything made of light. A solitary man stood about twenty feet away with his back turned. He faced me. It was the man who had given me the helmet. He spoke telepathically.

“I’m sure you have many questions. And I know there is much worry. But be reassured. The future is safe. As long as you follow my instructions.”

I nodded.

“At 10 PM, one week from now, stand beneath the large animation screen at MGM. Affix your eyes at the lower left corner, for one minute.

Make certain you fulfill this request.”

He approached and put his arm around me reassuringly. Then he rapped between my shoulder blades. It was jarring and transported me into a state of near panic. I felt disoriented and momentarily lost consciousness. As I slowly regained awareness, I was gifted with Akashic understanding. As if every question had been answered, and all knowledge was mine. But then, as if rising from beneath the water, the state of gnosis began to fade. When I came to, I was alone in the storage locker. It was completely empty, except for the chair. No sign of the visitor or any of his equipment. Much time had passed. The sun was down. I staggered to my car and drove home in a daze.



One week later at 10 PM, I stood on the sidewalk gazing at the lower left corner of the MGM Jumbotron. A few minutes passed—nothing. Then, a spiraling square pattern began. It flashed stroboscopically, in both clockwise and counter-clockwise patterns. Dizzying. It began flashing as a block of white and black, almost like Morse code. After about two minutes, it ended.

 

I stood there. Waiting for something--a profound change of state. But I felt nothing. As I continued to gaze at the screen, no further data appeared.

Slowly I navigated along the sidewalk among throngs of tourists sipping tall fluorescent drinks from long straws. Then I got in my car and drove back to my apartment near UNLV.

 

Ever since, I’ve been watching for the visitor. Hoping to see him again. Waiting for my destiny to unfold.

Michael D. Meloan’s fiction has appeared in Wired, Huffington Post, Buzz, LA Weekly, Larry Flynt’s Chic, and in many anthologies. He was an interview subject in the documentaries Bukowski: Born Into This and Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There. With Joe Frank, he co-wrote a number of radio shows that aired across the National Public Radio syndicate. His Wired short story “The Cutting Edge” was optioned for film. And he co-authored the novel The Shroud with his brother Steven. For many years, he was a software engineer. In addition, he does killer karaoke.

 

just a beautiful dream
by linda m. crate

 

maybe it's better

you're gone,

we're both different

people now;

 

you learned to live without me

and i am sitting her telling the

gods and anyone who will listen

of how i miss you—

 

i know it's my fault that you're gone,

but it doesn't make me miss you any less;

 

sometimes my mother asks me

about you even still

i don't know what she expects to happen

as if one day you will wake up and need

me again—

 

i admit i had a dream once we were reconciled in

a place where white roses curled their petals around

every corner, and tea was set upon a white metal table;

as we sat in puffy white chairs sipping upon tea—

 

i woke up happy until i realized it was just a beautiful dream.

 

Linda M. Crate's works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She is the author of ten published chapbooks, four full-lengths, and three micro-chaps. She has a novella, also, called Mates (Alien Buddha Publishing, March 2022).

 

 

SACRED FLOWERS
By Eduardo Cueto
For Evangelina Correa

 

I write as your eyes

like sacred flowers

 

blossom before me

like the righteous sun 

 

as I imagine your hips

undulating

 

and reciprocating

true love

 

as my pen runs dry

upon the pages

 

of your light skin

as if we were immortal

 

as if your exquisite

and divine legs

 

wrapped themselves

around my poetry

 

that seeks

your omphalos

 

and your revolutionary

bed upon my bed

 

and your tight lips

floating in the heavens

 

like a painting

like a sonnet

 

and like the birds

chirping harmoniously 

 

as we make love

for love

 

is the manifestation

of you within me

 

and I within you

a la sacred relics

 

and sacred memories

blossoming

 

exponentially

until we become one

 

and until our oneness

gives birth

 

to the ambrosia

of our exsitential selves

 

seeking true beauty

seeking true beauty

 

Eduardo Cueto, graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA), with a Bachelor of the Arts in English, and a Creative Writing emphasis, Eduardo Cueto has taught literature, rhetoric and composition in such universities as the Euro-American Institute of Technology (EAI-TECH) in Sohia Antipolis, France, and the University of San Pablo - Tucumán, in Argentina. In addition to teaching, Cueto has also had a career as a classical ballet dancer working for such choreographers as Alonzo King, John Neumeier, and Mats Ek, in Lines Ballet from San Francisco and the Hamburg Ballet in Germany. Currently, Cueto is writing screenplays and directing and producing independent film projects.

 

Neverthess
by daniel j.schack.           

 

normal.adjust. to what.  I'm out of control.I'm out of control. Its good for my soul.its good for my soul. Me oh my oh.me oh WO oh. Oh my god,I must be psycho.   I'm Dan Dan the psycho man. Dan Dan the psycho man.do the can can.   I don't care what other people think. I don't care what other people think

.I don't care what other people think.   I think other people stink.  When you learn how to act human then you will be treated with respect. Respect. What is human? Could be almost anything you want it to be.   Fortunately or unfortunately.  Nevertheless.  They get you with the word.the word is love.  Sucker!  Who are they? Us.  Who's a sucker. You're a sucker. I'm a sucker.  We are all a bunch of suckers.  Some more. Some less.  Nevertheless. Is there love. I suppose.it means leave me alone. Your always alone. More or less. Some more .some less.neverthess.  welcome to the wonderful world of stupidity. Is it you? Or is it me? Anyone's guess. Nevertheless.  There's money in intelligence. Oh,yes. There's money in stupidity too. Oh,yes. There are more important things than money though.aren't there?  Yes. Then again.nevertheless.  nevertheless.nevertheless.nevertheless. we have all heard nevertheless.we have all said nevertheless

Will there ever be a time when you can ever say never to nevertheless?   Never. I guess. Nevertheless. After all.only human and we have all got bad taste.  Some more.some less. Nevertheless. I guess. Why? Because.            Written in 1986 when I was 22.

 

The poet ,daniel schack can be seen on poetrysoup.com and his art on tumblr adanthemanworld.daniel schack is 57 and is a high school grad. With 3.5 years of college.peace.

 

 

ON MY MIND
4-25-22
6:48 a.m.
By Mary Cheung

 

It's all new and I can't get you out of my mind.

You've got me hooked.

My dreams are all booked.

With images of you...

 

I fantasize about what's underneath, 

your name,  your exterior, your clothes. 

 

Your lips upon mine.

Igniting a fiery trail..

.. making me burn.

 

I can't get you out of my mind..

Your voice is like velvet,

Vibrates against my throat.

Rumbles on like a freight train.

I want to wear you like a coat.

 

Against my Skin with nothing.

But my desire, licking, soaking it in…

 

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”.



Poem
By G. Billie Quijano

 

My vagina is de-colonized

Your shit is finalized

  

My womaness is magical real

It's not your perversion of laws to steal

 

My womb is exploding, as it swells with the sea

My eyes are open, I will not flee


While the Goddess sighs

Overturning Roe vs. Wade feels like sci-fi

 

Back alley abortions

Resulting in death and explosions

 

There is gross negligence in your refusal to acknowledge the evidence

The truth is in the anatomy, solid in the remedies

 

What's left? Plan B?

Will it be the only currency?

 

You traffic in oppression and control

It will not invade heart and soul

 

You will be stripped of patriarchy

Once again we will make history

 

Our bodies, our agency

Our humanness, your oversight

 

Our rights dismantled

Emotions manhandled

 

We are not a collection of body parts

Uprising, resistance, global boycotts

 

Misogyny, a crime

Deficiency of humanity in overtime

 

You sit there in your black robes

Festering in your conspiracy

 

My uterus is in revolution

Strength, courage, resilience is the solution

 

The universe has a plan

Look at me, I will stand

 

The divine radiates in me

Don't fuck with what is free

 

There is poetry in our synergy

You will not suppress our energy

 

We Feminize, to organize

You make judgements to minimize

 

We take to the streets

Sacred ground beneath our feet

 

We rise, we rise

You will hear our cries

As we raise our fists to the skies

 

Times up pendejos

You will not own this being

 

This is my voice

This is my choice

 

 

G. Billie Quijano-Feminista, Pro Choice, Pro Voice. Poeta, Artista. Instigator of Beauty. Bruja. Hija de East Los. The landscape of my childhood were elements of L.A. urban life. Cool concrete, vibrant colors. Sounds of girl groups and lowriders. In the background, records of Trio Los Panchos and John Coltrane playing. Remnants of Mexico. Surrounded by calla lilles, cactus, sunflowers and bird of paradise, like they were singing. My neighbor Rafael's rooster was my alarm clock. Olvera street was my playground. Saturdays breakfast was the delicious aromas of menudo, carnitas and freshly made tortillas de maiz from our local tortilleria on Whittier Blvd. My work is a humble way of keeping my ancestor's traditions, history and vision alive.

 



Las Vegas On The Potomac
By Richard Q. Russeth

 

The Las Vegas sun blazes apocolyptic sadness. We swim in pools filled with water that never fell from these cobalt skies. At night, it's a desert of castaways awaiting rescue under a neon sky powered by the death of faraway others.  It's the last place to find the last thing you'll ever need. When dusk slithers onto the Strip, trading cards with photographs of nude women are handed out. Buy, trade or sell. Last week, the pit bosses at SCOTUS pooled their misogyny and bought a complete set of all 167,000,000 cards. They are betting no one will call them on it.

Go all in.

 

Richard Q. Russeth is a poet, baker, conjuror, photographer and Attorney. He is found on Instagram @rqrusseth and @slowmoonbakery. Also www.richardqrusseth.com



Triad Poem
By Ronald G. Carrillo

 

1.    We reap as sowers

We inherit our actions

We manifest our consciousness

Our karma is alive and ever developing

Where there is regret and sorrow

There is also hope and opportunity

Growth is being truly human

Stagnation is indoctrination to the mainstream

The American dream is a scam

Magic beans a pyramid scheme

Keeping us enslaved and not fully awake

But in a dreamscape waiting for something to fulfill us

We are running after a fake prize

Like greyhounds chasing a mechanical lure

The goal to be in the chase but never realize a catch

Mass illusion like subliminal commercials

Like a paper constitution of deeply inspired words ONLY

Fourth of July celebrants waving a small red, white and blue

Flag of fifty stars built on the scars of slaves

Recall the plaintive voice of Frederick Douglass in 1852

“All men” did not include his people

Unalienable rights precious yet denied with chains and servitude

A false statue of liberty made of stone

Bleeding our hopes to the bone of injustice

But we keep running to be free all good Americans

Yet not realizing we are still enslaved and traumatized

We suffer at a DNA level waiting for freedom

We redline and build a wall at our southern border

The message is clear YOU are not welcome here

We seek happiness despite our inherent fixed system

We have public and private schools

We have a rich and poor caste system

For those who can pay to beat crime

And those that are unable to buy their justice

Divide and conquer over and over

This cancerous division is now in stage three

 

2.    The lions of Daniel’s time

They invade my dreams but I am not injured

But I witness a violence and savagery to come

I fear the racial karma of this nation

Will bring terrible repercussions before we can heal

America is tearing herself apart unable to abide

By her own guiding doctrines of constitution for the nation

Her fringe diseased white supremacist half seeks blood

Rather than reason or any sort of compromise

Their eyes live in the past of Dixie, cotton and masters

Their gangrene of sin and evil

Are harbingers of death and disaster

 

3.    Los Angeles downpour of tears

Her rain not restrained

Drought hearts constrained in democracy’s pain

Senate hearings while a nation comes apart

Loose gun control killings in the heartland

Inflation running rampant as sacred laws now repealed

Stage four of this cancerous death now deeply invasive

The White House, our capitol and the presidency itself polluted

The nation remains under predominantly white men’s control

Yet a fringe fanatical white citizenry fears full inclusion

For its becoming more populous brethren of color

Fear and fever spread like a pestilence of civil disobedience

The founding fathers were wealthy British plantation owners

This precedent set in motion future cracks in our constitution

America’s sorrow

Her decline rupturing from the inside of a corrupted history

Her founding principles although groundbreaking on paper

The blessings of liberty were rotted on the vine of exclusion

The constitutional wine of a more perfect union

Did not produce the fruits of justice and tranquility

That immigrant foundation that built her

Its immigrant diversity now a lightning rod

For division and ruin in her false fabric of democracy

Are her stars and stripes to be dispersed throughout the universe

A failure for a species that could not love one another

 

Coda: Red so much blood spilled

The nation’s crimes as tall and widespread

As her spectacular skyscrapers

Blue dishonor and disrespect of all our people

Democratic bruises of infidelity and injustice

White is not our skin color but rather our innocence

And hope in this still fledgling and faltering democracy

The brilliance and talent in this nation can revive liberty

Two centuries four decades and six years

We are still perfecting ourselves with all our faults

But with acquired knowledge and new skill sets

And hopes for the generations that can realize

Those constitutional ideals on paper and make them live

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.

 

 

The River of Life - short screenplay - Synopsis:
Original short screenplay, based upon actual event, by Adrian Brooks Collins.
1998.

 

After the spirit Aaron visits his respective future parents; he consults with his guides on the astral for reincarnation final approval.  Approval is denied for “unstable parental candidates” and this forces Aaron to invoke free will.  Meanwhile his future mother Portia visits a psychic Magdah who relays a message from Aaron as being the spirit of her future child.  Magdah also foretells of Portia meeting a man for companionship.  

 

Once Portia meets this man, Gabriel, by “happenstance” she confides in him.  When Portia conceives and Gabriel abdicates his paternal duties; Portia is forced to take drastic measures and terminate the pregnancy.  

 

Magdah meets a depressed Portia in passing and delivers a message from Aaron, now safely returned to the astral.  Aaron confirms he is fine and knew the chances weren’t in his favor, but that she should feel neither shame not guilt.  This lifts Portia’s spirits.  Later realizing his mistake Gabriel begs Portia for forgiveness and they rekindle their feelings for one another…



Adrian Brooks Collins Growing up in Idyllwild, CA. (1971-‘83) as a gay, mulatto, creative artist, pianist, inventor under the unfaltering gaze of mentally imbalanced mother was torture.  I was denied formal education (including a full scholarship to Elliot Pope Preparatory) friends and social gatherings in order that I may ultimately serve only her.  At fourteen, before entering a tumultuous year in foster care, I made a promise to my soul that come what may I would see my films realized.

 

I have attended four writing groups and two formal creative writing classes, sporadically over thirty years with the churning sense that something big would eventually erupt.

 

I’ve been a story teller since childhood and have completed three feature length screenplays; two true crime thrillers: The Carriage House and Idyllwild Under the Spirit of Tahquitz (JuntoBox Films 1st place contest winner 2013 - about my serial killer neighbor John Michael Hale “Cowboy Mike”) one family film* and one short screenplay (attached) since 1998.   

 

To date I have two feature film screenplays optioned (budget $5M per) with Cineville of Santa Monica, the second based on my authored, illustrated and self published children’s book *Jamylah and the Giants. (Dragonflytotembooks.com)  Chronic, extreme tinnitus has challenged me since 2010, though I prevail.  The universe conspires to support our endeavors.

 

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 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. 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

 

Most recently, 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

https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

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 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-theatrical-poetry-producer-retired-social-worker-and-professor/

June Poet's Place! I See Summer! I See Summer!!

POETS PLACE
June Edition 2022

So here we are at the start of Summer. Looks like it will be a hot one. One of the ideas for this months column was to reflect on how one curates happiness. Lately, we have been in a constant state of stress with the spate of gun violence producing tragedies and lotsa death left and right. So, how do we continue to curate our happiness in the depths of despair??  Or, maybe you/we are in a state of denial. Denial can sometimes be a healthy form of getting through the day. How I curate happiness for myself is simple: 1. maintain daily relaxation practices 2. deep breathe often 3. love and accept myself 4. always dress up 5. organize and prioritize 6. don’t weigh myself 7. shop and buy art 8. attend to my friendships 9. stay involved with artistic projects 10. garden.

Life is relatively simple. It’s you that makes it hard for yourself. There’s been a whole lot of somethings to emotionally deal with lately, so that nasty feeling of helplessness creeps in and fucks with our heads. If you know what calms you and makes you happy, channel that daily. Tape those words on your fridge or your computer and make those words your mantras. Narrow your world so you have a healthy bubble to keep you safe. If friends have not shown up for you, then kiss them goodbye with a loving hug and say vaya con Dios! We can choose who we want to spend our precious time with. Life is a gift, share it with those you love and who love you.

With Love, Linda

And now, stories and poetry from you xxxooo 

The Slime In All Of It

                  By. R. S. Rocha
(1944-May 21, 2022)

In memorandum- this poem was sent by his loving friends, Joanne Payne and Marilyn Fuss, who also shared a poem in today’s column. It was his last poem- Ronald read many of his poems over the years at my poetry shows. 

Skimming stones 

Flying Drones 

Ancient and the new

Shocking to the gods

 

The now has come askew

Mad man in the castle

 

Public minds wrestle

No logic from the 

 

Bald red-comb-over

An immoral mind

 

In full disclosure

There’s a crime

 

In all of this

I can’t capture

 

The slime in all of it

Trying to stop the Tic Toc in the towers

 

China wouldn’t give him

Golden showers

 

Campaign filled with glitches

He’s just another

 

One of Putin’s bitches

Rise up 

 

Stop the rising tide

Help the nation stay alive

 

Punch a wooden spike through it

Put an end to the four-year violence

Put an end to it with a mallet 

We can kill him with the ballot

 

Ronald Stephen Rocha, known to his family and close friends as Dusty, was a loving, passionate father, husband, writer, poet, and civil rights activist who passed—somewhat unexpectedly—on May 21, 2022 at age 77.

 Ronald was boisterous, outspoken, loved to laugh, and never gave anything less than the entirely of his effort. His hobbies became passions and his passions became obsessions.

 He was born in Los Angeles to Victor and Margherita Rocha in 1944, the youngest of their four children. His father was drafted before he was born and was killed in the war shortly thereafter. Having never met his father left an indelible mark on him, which would lead him on a quest through France and Luxembourg where he would discover secrets about his father’s final days.

 As a career, Ronald worked as a peace officer. A Mexican American, he found himself passed over for promotions in favor of white candidates leading him to sue—and win—two consecutive lawsuits against the Marshals Department where he retired as a lieutenant. Along the way he became actively involved in civil rights groups where he rallied and made many lifelong friends.

 Ronald’s greatest passion, however, was English, and it was always his goal to be remembered as a writer. As a masters student he devoured everything from Chaucer to Joyce to Bukowski, keen as ever to develop and hone his personal voice. Later in life he published several poems and wrote a novel based on his travels in Puebla, Mexico, which he was editing when he died.

 Ronald is succeeded by Laurie, his wife of forty-five years, as well as his four children, Ingrid, Ronald Jr., Christian, and Daniel—all of whom love and miss him dearly

Looking back
By Linda Kaye

Looking back, remembering and reflecting in my old bedroom in the San Fernando Valley, circa 1960’s. Thinking, what did we know then? What could have determined the journeys taken

the doors opening

the hearts broken

the pain experienced

sour fruit ripening

stomachs churning

people always starring

family disappearing

skin peeling

At an age when the world is the size of your fist, you still dream big. Maybe it’s an unrealistic dream, or just a cloudy vision of something heroic, or just imagery of putting on some fancy lame’ pants and sparkly rhinestoned high heel shoes that allows a larger view of the world

Maybe just enjoy a puddle of creativity

a slice of love and acceptance

write a string of hits that nobody ever heard

 

Mental weather report
By Daniel Schack

There are lots of less true minds in this world now and lots more mindlessness.

The poet ,daniel schack can be seen on poetrysoup.com and his art on tumblr adanthemanworld.daniel schack is 57 and is a high school grad. With 3.5 years of college.peace.

INCUBUS
12-29,14  
12:31 a.m.
By Mary Cheung
 
It paces back and forth, 
Locked, in a cage of bone and skin.
The Scent of  lust and desire,  
Passion and fire,

Obscures my thoughts.

                       
I cannot think....
   my insides turned out,
Throbbing, hot, liquid, 
   starts to seep out.

Feelings of yearning,
   and fragrant with desire..
An ache that lives, 

   just below the surface and alive 
     with a buzz.

My mind is blown, 
    my vision lost,
In a haze
    of pale
      blue 
        fire.


You burn me
   and yet I still,
      want,
         more.

The  electricity,

   the energy,

      crackling on my skin.


I want to drink it, 
   I want to roll in it,
      and drown,
        from  within.


I drift to insanity knowing,
  That a single breath from you,
    will push me over the edge,


Wanting, waiting...
   I'm left holding,
     my breath .

It scares me ,
  and it should , 
The things you inspire in   
   me.


I just want to be consumed by it,
  and burned
    by
      your fire

 

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”.

Our Hearts in Crisis
By Ronald G.Carrillo

Our hearts in crisis

Held hostage from maniacal devices

And Americans who’ve lost their way

Exchanging hearts for guns

Why must there be one number one superpower

That country will only have a limited time in the sun

A brief period then be replaced by another

Then another with possible wars and countless casualties

This system is outmoded and no longer serves our humanity

Why not unite our global strength for the common good

Of all the world’s people – a global village of intent

This intra-species warring is primitive

Why are we historically destroying one another

It is idiocy and counterproductive for moving us forward

It is not red, white and blue, Russian bear or Communist China

We must recognize we are but one race not warring tribes

John Lennon planted the seed for us to Imagine

That all we need is love for one another

Why not gather our best doctors, scientists, teachers

The best of the best to promote optimal human progress

No more the one percent with the lion’s share

No more wealthy elites

No more royals

No more Vatican wealth and pedophile priests

No more evil and greed hiding in the shadows of democracy

No more judgements of our cultural or racial differences

Development and maturity will rule the day

And the people are ready for the next level

The warmongers, the brutes, the bullies

Will die out and become extinct

What are we waiting for

It is time to pull together

It is time for the people to unite

And demand all world leaders to think globally

World class education, health care for all citizens

Financial support for cutting edge medicine and science

Technology for all people and updated infrastructure for all nations

Global thinking for global problems

A collective governmental form of leadership

Using our best and brightest for living standards of the highest order

 

Our hearts in crisis beyond the blue

Guns sounding their vengeful dues

And blood dripping from their barrels of insanity

Draining us the bystanders of our humanity

 

We must rid ourselves of a master servant mentality

No more slave species and supposed elite rulers dominating

Why are we held in this constant state of fear

Most of that fear owned by those unwilling to relinquish any power

The royals, the super wealthy, the blue bloods

With a self-entitled elitist complex of hoarding

There is plenty of good China dishes and silverware to go round

Conflict with neighbors and the West leading the way

Uncle Sam’s hands are not clean and the democratic republic

Cannot hold its crooked course of playing dirty world cop

Compromise and sharing this planet’s resources is possible

No more dictatorial thugs

No more democrats and republican infighting for scraps

While the masses are held in economic slavery

Slaves to our 8 to 5 jobs

Slaves to our mortgages and interest rates

Slaves to our credit cards

Slaves to student debt

Slaves to addiction

Slaves to apathy

Slaves to guns

Slaves to public murder

Slaves to republicans and democrats

Time to clean house again

The Spirit of 1776 stirring in the red, white and blue

Air of freedom releasing a second independent breeze

 

Our hearts in crisis beyond the blue

Murders being treated like the flu

Not subdued just another obstacle on our plates of apathy

Discontent and tears spent then lives forgotten

Round and round we spin like dead leaves in the wind

These hearts unable to heal

The heartless seats of power lacking the will

To show normal heart beats

Remembering the horror of Uvalde, Texas May 24, 2022

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. 

Poem
By G. Billie Quijano 

The burglary of children's souls

Raging gun owners, unwhole

 

The weight of life

Seized in seconds

Enveloped in your strife

 

This unbearable grief

Will not erase our dreams

Tears flow in rivers and streams

 

You pray on the altar of AR-15's

Your response was obscene

 

Sanctuary of schools

Disrupted by gunfire

Countless acts of evil will backfire

 

Your villainous hearts

The void of consciousness

Leaves blood on your hands

Non violence is the counter plan

 

Laughter and glee never to be heard

Their innocent voices

Your concern is so absurd

 

Today they will not dance

They will not sing

Not looking forward to wearing that ring

 

Stories will be memories

Kissing the waves and the seas

 

On this earth their imaginations will never soar

Our babies in the cosmos free to explore

 

Answer me!!!

How many futures will be stolen?

Your guilt will never be free

 

We will move from darkness to light

You cannot hide your wrongs

Us, empowered with the fight

 

Well, how many more?

How many more?

How many more?

 

 G.Billie Quijano-Hija de East Los. Poeta. Artista. Bruja. Instigator of beauty. Love and peace for the children of Uvalde, Ukraine and Syria. Healing and light for the survivors. Ni Una Mas

 

Nutrition for the Baby in Me…
By:IE Carlo
18 June 2021

A baby, the most precious of life’s reward.  Neutricain is not just food, it’s food for the entire being of a baby.  A baby gives its bearers a will of continuance, it anchors the self of the bearer.  It gives creativity of achievement to grow and gives the baby a model of which to grow with. 

All this from a layman's point of reference.  I am a man so my point of view is just that, but a point of view with awareness.  I had a mother who lived to the age of 92.  The last couple of years were a little difficult having to do with a fall on the hip that incapacitated her.  Mother was an active woman, she’d mop the floor, clean the shutters, wash down the porch, bathe the dog, cook the meals, and watch novelas.  She was funny, we’d sing songs, we’d dance, she’d tell dirty jokes. 

I asked her about her childhood.  She wrote me a letter telling me of this, her story:  How she was a tomboy growing up.  She’d like to climb trees, throw rocks, play marbles with the boys, and win all their marbles.  You see, she wore no underpants, so of course they lost their minds, marbles and the will to win.

She liked a little gossip as well, maybe a lot of gossip!  But in most cases it was with us at home, maybe she was protecting us from that that was happening around us? 

She had but a six grade education, but she had great penmanship, read her newspaper, could add and subtract; taught me to read in Spanish, and stressed education, yet never participated; from what I can remember education was a sort of practice of ‘that’s on you’! Wrong? Who knows?

She told me of her romance with my father, how happy she was, and how much of a woman she felt when she got pregnant with me.  She said she would sing all day long, rubbing her stomach, always aware of where she stepped. She was seventeen at the time.  Strong woman she was, big gluteus maximus, 5’9” tall. Dark healthy brown skin.  Eyes full, nose short, voluptuous lips, hair of that of a black woman.  A woman of character, yet full of life and laughter.  Serious? you didn’t want to know!  Our home was always full of friends and family.  Many of our family friends were gay, they were welcomed by all in the family. 

She told me of my childhood, being the first born of the entire family.  I was a star, lol. I asked her what she fed me as a baby.  At the time of birth from what I know, there was a product called pablum.  She said that was s--t.  She’d take a green plantain, split it open, cut it into wedges and place it in the sun, then she’d place these dried wedges in the pilon (malet), pound it into powder, boil the milk of the goat, add a little sugar and feed it to me. Orange juice from the garden, papaya, viandas, mangos, bananas, all from the garden.  Aside from the fact I was being fed from her breast until I was three years old. 

So here I am today 79 years old.  Like all of us at sometime or other we will feel our age and that of the consequences of our age.  But one can’t allow oneself the luxury of giving into that of old age.  Some may have all the genes of sickness in them, and that’s the way it just is!  Others have a will to live on by way of routines, food intake and exercise. 

I make things a little difficult for myself, which is the way I maintain a healthy attitude, and spirit. I place things up high that I may need, so I have to stretch to retrieve them.  When I shower I reach down to my toes making me bend over.  I walk to the supermarket, I walk to the post office.  I walk to my favorite restaurant, or I walk the beach, yeah I’m one of the lucky ones, and give to beautiful dreams; and because of it I give myself the awareness of this beautiful life I lead.  I’m sure that sometime in this existence things will change, I’ll deal with it as best I can when that time arrives. In the meantime I listen to, Chuck Mangione’s, “Land of Make Believe”, and the Average White Band, “If I ever Lose This Heaven'', the Four Tops, “Still Waters”, Louis Armstrong, “What a Wonderful World”, y El Gran Combo, “Las Hojas Blancas Siguen Callendo”.  For now I’m taking a walk.  Happy Fathers Day 

Ismael (East) Carlo, poet, actor begins on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio whose monica of “East” happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…

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. Paz en Vida  

Prison Dad
By Jenni O

The first rule is “you never talk about family business,” which is another way of saying “snitches get stitches”.

I could not have been older than 12 years old and it was a school night and I was out with my parents and my father's friends at a restaurant. I was the only kid, as always, at these dinners. The TV and the school tell you, “don’t get in the car with a drunk driver” and to get help when situations like this arise. All his boys were telling him not to drive, but no one would take away his keys. That’s how it always went. I told my mom the enforcer, if I had to get in the car, I would call for help. She told my dad the shot caller, then the shanks from him and her came out. I still see that phone booth phone in my head and thought about what all the repercussions would be, if I challenged to commit that ultimate offense and be a rat. I looked at the waiters and other people around me that could help and guard me protect me because they could see this guy was going crazy.

I had broken the first rule and I would have to wait to get to the confines of our home to receive my punishment. I don’t remember the drive back, but I know it was frightening. As soon as the clank of the front door closed the screaming started. I was now on their turf and I would have to try to fight back because this was where I would be confined since birth. I wasn’t in a position of command and but I tried to argue back because I was a favorite child of my fathers and my brothers never had to go to these things and were at their friend's house getting in their visitations. I wasn’t allowed visitations to other homes with kids and I had always been supervised.

I don’t know what I said, but it pissed off the shot caller and I knew he was coming after me. I ran to my room fast, and tried to close my door with him fast behind me.

My dad now was the Enforcer and my mom was now a victim. She was crying and yelling on the other side of the house which she confined herself to. I didn’t get the door fully closed when my dad used his physically fit 230 6 ft body to push the door open. I used my body with my feet against a column that was between me and the door to try and push him and the door closed.

His voice changed in to a childlike voice and said “little mommy let me in” as he pushed his head and hands between the door and the door closing. I could see his face. His eyes were red and with bulging out. I screamed for help, that I knew would not come.

“I love you little mommy. Why are you doing this?” he said.

This was a different face on him and I had seen all his faces. This face was not one that was going to punish me with a fist but most likely his dick. His hands grabbing at me while talking in that childlike voice and his eyes looking at me like I was a meal. My mom had told me he had raped someone before and she got him off, but that was when he was in his 20’s.  I continued to scream for help and he continued to talk to me in that childlike voice and push the door open.

“Little mommy, why are you doing this to me?’

I was strong for a little girl and was able to get his head, arms and hands out from being wedged between the door. He turned the door knob so I could lock it, but I was faster. When I heard the clink of the lock, I still kept pushing the door shut in fear. The enforcer came crying and took him back to his side of the cell.

Jennifer Guillermina Otero Aka Jenni "O" is 43 years old and a native of North-East Los Angeles, where she still resides with her mother and boyfriend. She has a degree in psychology and the culinary arts and is a certified life coach. Her hobbies include photography, videography, creative writing, dancing, and making people laugh. She is an Ex Jehovahs Witness activist and has the largest Ex Jehovahs Witness only Support Group in the world. Currently, she is making a webzine for her brand, Punk Slut as well as writing her memoirs.

 

For LA Art Magazine
1973—Los Angeles had the First Legal Gay Pride Parade
A true story based on the book:
MORRIS KIGHT - HUMANIST, LIBERATIONIST, FANTABULIST: A Story of Gay Rights and Gay Wrongs (Process Media/Feral House)
By Mary Ann Cherry

1970 was a time when homosexuals would be criminalized if they walked down the street holding hands. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, three men who had nothing in common except their deviant sexual secrets decided to have a parade.

It was an inconceivable undertaking. It was also very dangerous.

An irrepressible ringmaster, Morris Kight was already 50 years old when he and his friend Bob Humphries, a few years older and an unapologetic hedonist with an insatiable appetite for boys, booze, and gambling (in no specific order) decided to have a parade. They invited Reverend Troy Perry, the handsome 30 year old ordained Baptist preacher who wore a priest’s collar and commanded respect. They agreed that the parade had to be legal. It had to be legal to advance the validity of the homosexual existence.

They began to organize a gay themed parade called Christopher Street West, all the while still doing their other works for gay liberation. Kight was a busy antiwar activist and ran an underground bail fund and a not-for-fee counseling for gay runaways and rejects. Humphries founded and ran the United States Mission and the Church of the Androgyny. Perry was already a busy activist as well as founding the Metropolitan Community Church, a gay affirming ministry that was growing quickly. Between the three of them, they certainly had the makings of a grand parade.

Kight filled out the parade permit application and Humphries paid the $50 fee. Immediately alarms went off throughout the police department. All the principals listed on the application (Kight, Perry, Humphries) were summoned to a hearing before the police commissioner. Troy Perry, in his priest’s collar and speaking his smooth southern drawl, stood before the commission, representing the gay community After some grandstanding on both sides, the commission decided to grant the permit with a few onerous restrictions including a $1,500 bond to cover the cost of additional police officers and liability insurance to cover property damage in the inevitable riot that would ensue in event of a gay parade.

The ACLU was called and a restraining order was filed against the LAPD.

Plans for the parade continued. Flyers, posters, and press notices went out - always stressing “peaceful and nonviolent.” Tulle was being cut, pounds of confetti were being purchased, and large banners were printed. People were coming from out of town and costumes and floats were being constructed. Legal or not, something would happen on Hollywood Boulevard on June 28.

Opposition to the parade wasn’t just from outside the nascent gay community. Kight received death threats. Many gay people felt safe in the closet, they were convinced that they’d be beaten or killed if they marched in a parade.

Finally, two days before the scheduled parade, the California Superior Court heard the case. The judge was appalled at the Los Angeles Police Department and cited the obvious constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. He ordered the parade permit be issued without conditions. “These are citizens,” the judge said, “they are tax payers and they don’t have to pay extra money to have a parade. I don’t care if you have to call out the National Guard, you are to protect these people. They can have their parade.”

And what a parade it was.

When the story of twentieth-century heroes is written, let the people who marched down Hollywood Boulevard in the first Gay Pride parade be remembered. No one knew what to expect when the metaphorical closet door was blown off the hinges. It could have been a riot or worse.

The afternoon of June 28, 1970 did not disappoint. 1800 participants and 35,000 spectators peacefully followed a prescribed parade route.

From the beginning, there was nothing sedate about gay lib. Floats and marchers were wild, dramatic, humorous, unapologetic and a bit irreverent. There was a woman on a horse, a Tarzan with a five-foot boa constrictor, a raccoon and a monkey, two men walked sheepdogs and carried a sign that read, “Not all of us walk poodles.” A few duchesses, butch types, leather-clad motorcyclists, and quite a few “transvestites,” the press reported. There was a “Homosexuals for Ronald Reagan” float and another, “Heterosexuals for Homosexual Freedom.” And then there was a supersized Vaseline jar (the following year this was accompanied by an oversized “cockapillar”).

It was a historical march, starting at McCadden Place and moved east on Hollywood Boulevard and then south on Vine. It changed the course of history. The LAPD was ready for a riot. Instead they got a traffic jam.

The parade ended at Selma and spilled into an impromptu mingling in the street, a bit of disorder, pandemonium, sweet frenzy and excitement, a “mill-in,” the hippies would call it.

Even the biggest naysayers had to concede that the parade was “electrifying.”

Every year since then, with the exception of 1973 and Covid cancellations, there has been a legal parade and celebration of Gay Pride. Now Pride is celebrated in every major city in the world and many towns off-the-beaten-trail. No matter where, every Gay parade is bright, fun, and a bit wild.

And most importantly, it is always nonviolent.

Happy Pride Month!

In celebration of GAY PRIDE MONTH, get your copy of the biography of gay-rights trailblazer, Morris Kight, co-founder of Gay Pride.

There will be a reading and book signing of the biography: MORRIS KIGHT - HUMANIST, LIBERATIONIST, FANTABULIST: A Story of Gay Rights and Gay Wrongs (Process Media/Feral House)

Thursday, June 23, 2022, from 6:00-8:00pm at Small World Books in Venice 1407 Ocean Front Walk, Venice, CA 90291.

For more information call (310) 399-2360 or visit https://maryanncherrywriter.com.

Mary Ann Cherry has a wide-ranging background which includes television and film production as well as creating and maintaining the historical archives for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.  Cherry befriended Morris Kight during his last decade and with his blessing, she began researching and writing his biography. The Mary Ann Cherry Collection in ONE Archives at the USC Libraries includes all the Kight research and ancillary materials.

The first gay demonstration in Los Angeles (Jim Hansen and Morris Kight outside of Barney's).

1970, the first Christopher Street West parade down Hollywood Blvd, co-founder Bob Humphries and Morris Kight (also co-founded by Rev. Troy Perry, not pictured).

   

MANHUNT
--by Amy Fogerson
April 2, 2021

Helicopters circle overhead

So close they rattle the windows.

 

Sirens crescendo and diminuendo

As police cars circle the block.

 

A text from our building management

Reports a gunman in a nearby apartment

Two blocks away.

 

I imagine him stuck in the stairwell,

Whatever anger or fear or hunger

That caused him to take a gun

And wield it to achieve some aim

Now overwhelmed by the knowledge

That he is the subject of a manhunt.

 

Surely he knows he will be caught,

That this bad day can only get worse,

That his decision has started a cascading

Series of actions and events

That will change his life forever.

 

If a bird flew from my balcony to that building

It would cross 2 swimming pools, a tennis court,

And a lushly landscaped courtyard.

An oasis of calm in this urban center.

 

Not so calm now,

As the whirring blades drown out the birdsong,

The sound of one neighbor swimming laps,

And another neighbor practicing Rachmaninoff

On her grand piano.

 

And I imagine that man,

His heart pounding so loudly

He can barely hear the helicopters.

 

I imagine his thoughts racing

As he wonders how he got to this place,

Which moment of this day was the one

Where a choice he made turned his future

Into something frightening and violent.

 

I imagine the hopelessness he must feel

Knowing that the only choices he has now

Are bad ones.

Knowing that he is alone in that stairwell

With no one to help him.

That he has written the next chapter

Of a book he doesn’t want to read.

 

I wonder whether,

If he had had access to a swimming pool

Or the ability to lose himself in Rachmaninoff

Or even a moment hearing the singing of birds,

He would be in that stairwell

Holding a gun

Waiting for the helicopters

And more guns.

Amy Fogerson has made her living as a classical and session singer for more than 30 years. In addition, she works part-time for Street Symphony, an organization that brings collaborative musical events to Los Angeles’ Skid Row and incarcerated communities. She has written poetry sporadically for years; the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine provided the time and mental space to focus more deeply on the art form.

Brief Flights
By
Marilyn Fuss
April, 2016 

A trinity of wrens, one at each point, fled the cross on the church next door

to make way for the Regular, a crow who delighted us at that station--

the FOREVERMORE raven,

above the hammered tin backing of the Mission Revival pediment,

beside the spire thrown in for good measure by an eager architect,

over the composition shingles where Toby the cat cried himself silly for an hour once,

before he found his way down the graduated holy roofs

to storage shed and service counter,

preventing a call to the fireman. 

 

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 2021. 

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 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. 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

Most recently, 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

https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

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 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-theatrical-poetry-producer-retired-social-worker-and-professor/

May We Have Some Poetry Please. Poet's Place for May.

POETS PLACE

MAY 2022

It’a May! What’s in store for us in May of 2022? Well, for one thing, women are about to lose their rights to make decisions about whether they can safely and legally receive abortions when a child is unwanted. Hard to imagine that we are being jettisoned back to those dark ages. So I just breathe deeply.  There are just some things we have no control over. Literally. To our dismay.

On another note. Some interesting facts about the month of May:  1. The month May was named for Maia, the Greek goddess of fertility. 2. In any given year, no month ever begins or ends on the same day of the week as May does. 3. May's birthstone is the emerald which is emblematic of love and success. And 4. May was once considered a bad luck month to get married. Okay. So don’t get married in May, but if you do, don’t accidentally get pregnant because, some asshole, May tell you you have no rights to abort a fetus, that you have to carry the baby to term and then what??  Not the right time?? Too bad. Raise a child you are not equipped to take care of? Can’t afford? Was impregnated by a rape? Again, too bad. Can you imagine carrying a baby to term, spending 7-9 months caring for that baby and then relinquishing it to another? How distressing and challenging that whole experience puts on an individual?? Just having an abortion in the initial stages of gestation is hyper emotional and devastating enough, let alone giving up a full term human being. I have witnessed and assisted many women in my social work career, mostly young, often teens trying to make up their young minds to give away their babies. Some nurses and doctors will shame them in the obstetrics units telling them how horrible they are for not accepting “GODS child” when all they did was to have made the mistake of having unprotected sex and getting pregnant. Their future lives teetering on that ignorant mistake. I have counseled countless women and teens about their options and choices. Now what are the social workers going to say to the teenager whose father sexually molested her and now she is pregnant. Good luck with that??? It’s so fucked up.

 

And now some poetry …

Linda :0)

Pretty don’t mean happy
A soliloquy
By Linda Kaye

 

 

Pretty don’t mean happy

Pretty happy

Happy mostly

Pretty sometimes

 

Sometimes not too happy although feeling pretty helps to feel good

 

Feeling good is key

Having a key is freedom

Freedom to feel pretty is key

 

Pretty don’t mean happy

Pretty happy

Pretty sometimes and

happy mostly

is key

 

 

Human Capital?
By Randi Lavik

I had been wondering about whatever this HR/AI/Corporate Global Conglomerate Metadata Newspeak term meant for a few months now, and was seriously afraid to look it up.  For the purposes of this piece, and more importantly, as a means to educate and inform my fellow beloved Angelenos…

…you know, #Science!

The Oxford Dictionary definition is cited below:

Human Capital

hu·man cap·i·tal

/ˈ(h)yo͞omən ˈkapədl/

noun

“The skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by an individual or population, viewed in terms of their value or cost to an organization or country.”

Oh boy.  Worse than I thought.  Worse than ‘Monetization’ even.

Let’s see how we rate, hmm?  I love a Quiz!  I’ll start…

Skills: Nervy.  I make a lot of people happy by sharing musical joy. 

I’ve saved two lives?

Knowledge: TMI.  Be careful what you wish for, Sis.

So many showbiz biographies.  So much schooling.  So much information disseminated. 

Curiosity literally almost killed this kittycat, four times, at least.  Connections, achievements, trivia, disappointments, facts, lyrics, lies, loss, relationships, stacked in cabinets full of files in a massive file room in my noggin, keeping me up nightly. 

I was almost a Librarian.  I can’t pick up a book and relax ever since.

Kids sprouted and blooming, doggie happy, so these days I think about work 24/7. 

Experience: It got me here, for better or worse? 

Stupidly cared and trusted mediocre men, in the name of love.

Gratitude keeps me going.

Value: Subjective; constant debate, both internally and externally. 

[Extra Credit:  Part A: Value System

Short Answer: Quite different than most, whew!  It sure ain’t monetization].

Cost: Everything.  More than.  Be careful what you wish for Sis, Part II.

Organization: Designated family fuckup.

Country: It’s one hot mess.  I love it like family.  I long to love it from a distance too.

Volunteer/Writer/Supporter of The Arts/Humanist Randi Lavik was born in Inglewood, raised in West LA and Downey, and once got a standing ovation in the Second City Writer’s Room, on the first day of class.  She recently mouthed off to Conan O’Brien on Twitter, and made the South Korean news as a result.  In addition, Lavik is a Spotify Presenter (BTS7 Podcast, Season 1, www.snippet.fm/shows/bts7) with Co-Host AAPI Activist Sylvia Park and a Volunteer FM Radio Producer and Host in Laguna Beach (The Drop, Friday Nights, www.kxfmradio.org).

 

A Sensible Conjecture
-- Stephen Buhler


Reflect we on the likelihood this day
Was born to us a child who would be styled
“Sweet swan of Avon” in his after years.
Alas! We know not with firm certainty
When William Shakespeare truly shuffled on
This mortal coil – the Stratford records note
“Gulielmus” (William) was so christenéd,
The son of one “Johannes Shakspere” (John),
On April twenty-sixth. Nativity
Into this solid flesh was no precise
Concern for either clerk or chronicle
Within the walls of Holy Trinity.
A later clerk, near Lincoln, Lancaster
(O Pioneers! with place names redolent
Of geographic Anglophilia),
Confesses that the twenty-third is but
A sensible conjecture, no plain fact
As far as when to celebrate Will’s day
In accents like the Bard’s and festivals
Of pomp, and triumph, and much reveling.
E’en so: by Harry, England, and Saint George
(Whose feast this fairly is) let us applaud
The inexhaustibility of Will,
Whose date of birth must needs remain, much like
His plays and poems, open to surmise.

Stephen Buhler teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and performs with the Americana-and-More group Tupelo Springfield.

 

 

The Rape of a Tear…
By G. Billie Quijano

 

I once lost my soul in the moon

The conscious rhythm of the conscious crime

Against my unconscious thigh

 

His swell did not make me swoon

My little hands grasping for the moon

 

I was so young

My praises had not yet been sung

 

Azul caressed my thoughts

That prepared my slumber and dreams

How easy those clouds moved

What do these words mean?

 

Depression comes and goes

How do I slow down the flow?

 

I am restless

But nevertheless

 

I survived

My life revived

My am the divine design

 

I am glitter and dust from the bones before me

I glide between the raindrops and the trees

 

My flor is in revolution

Fearlessness is the solution

 

The universe has a plan

So I need to take a stand

 

There's no bullshit here

When lipstick wasn't enough

Joy started showing up

 

My heart, my rage, my tears

All of it taking a knee

My soul, my spirit refuses to exist in fear

Now my heart explodes with glee

 

Warriors truth will prevail

Oceans of poetry

Imagination will not stale

 

No more raping of tears

Patriarchy is extinguished

There's no way around it, you will hear

 

G. Billie Quijano-Hija de East Los. Poeta, Mestiza, artista, instigator of beauty.

 

LET GO
3-29-22
8:13a.m
By Mary Cheung

  

Let go, let go 

Release the hands you've held onto since birth. 

Let go, let go,

Of the breathe you are holding in anticipation of your up coming lost.

 

Make room, make room ,

In you heart to expand from joy of hearing bout her daily adventures soon..

 

Just trust, just trust,

That they'll remember all that you've taught them and more.

 

Accept, accept,

That as sure as the rising sun and nightly moon...

Change is coming

Just breathe, just breathe.. 

You'll adapt and become something else soon. 

 

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”.

 

Graffiti Street Verse
By Ronald G. Carrillo

 

Stop greed and violence in all politicians

Raid the Vatican to solve homelessness

Open the Vatican archives to the people

Where are the giant skeletons

Inter-dimensional beings mingling with Earthlings

Deals made Mafia style US Congress

Hatfields/McCoys – Capulets/Montague's – Democrats/Republicans

The slave/master mindset still in our fossil record

Cruelty condemned to be a fool/Kind and refined in the sunshine

Greedy from a seedy pool of fools

Violence violates to the highest degree

Self-actualized verbalized conceptualized

The garden breathes – Smell her aroma

Civilization has evolved technologically but remains savage

I am strong and grateful in kindness

Put-in Put-OUT

No effort to mask the insanity of DC during COVID-19

Elevate the global consciousness – you’re next!

Purify your being in mind and heart – STOP all Killing that is the true path but not religion.

Manhood blooming on a street corner in Glendale

The heat of desire only memory now extinguished

He was erect but hardly hard

Hurry down – Surrey- picnic – gospel – learning Nyro dialect!

The common man only a slave species – awaken!

Your enigma has haunted me purple figure of my innocence

D.C. & NYC are America’s Sodom and Gomorrah

Put-in/Bi-den/Jin-Ping no harmony – these dudes can’t sing!

Remove this cup from me: I have lost faith in prophets, Popes and politicians

Divide and conquer utilizing fear and religion

Religion is not God but collective control through FEAR!

Jesus was a great achievement of deceit

Do right by the people American Congress

Poets are natural observers of their environments not watching the birds but their own species

Pieces of your heart in places in my heart

A lone thought suspended in a sunbeam

Climate deniers will have a special place in hell -

they will burn with their oil

Capitalists’ priorities will ALWAYS be money first

EVEN at the cost of human life

Capitalist money can buy off CongressMEN!

Shame on Exxon for not doing the right thing!

Science versus capitalism no contest – Science will lose!

Creating doubt when scientific fact and data are becoming even more certain that is how insane capitalism is becoming.

Truth and the people lose against Big Corporate Money!

We will choke on Koch propaganda!

Save the planet NOW – Protect the grid

Five decades on phantom fairies imprint hearts and minds

The impact of Nyro a musical landslide of emotion and song

Orgiastic plastic addicts drowning in drastic fanatical behavior

FREE energy now

Cancer free America from politics to health

Immigrants have ALWAYS been the fertile soil of growth and invention

The more I learn about our history the more I am appalled

The news should have a daily report of spontaneous kindness

  

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 Man of Quality Must
Un Hombre de Calidad
By:IE Carlo
16 April 2019

A man of quality must have

had and read books

Add that to the beating of the heart, wepa

Un hombre de calidad

Ha tenido y leído libros

Añada eso a el ritmo del corazón, wepa

 

A man of quality

Has friends

Now there’s a song for many

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene amigos

Ah! Ahí hay una canción para muchos

 

A man of quality

Loves music while standing still

 

Un hombre de calidad

Goza la música estando quieto

 

A man of quality

Has curiosity

Not using one's brain is a terrible thing to waste

 

Un hombre de calidad Tiene curiosidad

No usando el cerebro sería un gasto terrible

 

A man of quality

Has patience in all things human and beyond

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene paciencia en todas cosas humanas y más allá

 

A man of quality

Has integrity since it's not that difficult, being its yours for the asking

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene integridad

No es difícil, ya que es de usted solamente por preguntar

 

A man of quality

Has empathy for others since it's so very human

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene empatía por otros, ya que es tan humano

 

A man of quality

Being loyal is caring for others beyond their ability to loyalty

 

Un hombre de calidad

Es leal y bondadoso más allá de la habilidad de otros serlo

 

A man of quality

Having a conscience opens the path to recreate all things now and in the future

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tener  una conciencia abre caminos para recrear todas las cosas ahora y en el futuro

 

A man of quality

Having courage does not mean to fight but to know when not to fight

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene valor, no de pelear, sino saber cuando no pelear

 

A man of quality

Has manners that makes the meal taste much better

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene modales que, hace la cena mucho más agradable

 

A man of quality

Has respect to all things present

 

Un hombre de calidad 

Tiene respeto por todo presente

 

A man of quality

Has character of the self

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene character de su persona

 

A man of quality

has morality

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene moralidad

 

A man of quality

Has compassion and loves animals

 

Un hombre de calidad

Tiene compasió

n y amor por los animales

 

And dances the mambo..

 

Y baila el mambo

 

Ismael (East) Carlo, poet, actor begins on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio whose monica of “East” happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…

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. Paz en Vida  

 

 

Thanks for joining us!  We will continue to host writers and poets of all genres.


Love, Linda Kaye :0)

 

Please submit your written work to: lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.

 

Linda Kaye writes poetry, curates 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. 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

 

Most recently, 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

https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

 

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 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-theatrical-poetry-producer-retired-social-worker-and-professor/

April Poet's Place!

POETS PLACE

APRIL 2022

The slap heard around the world!!!! Yes. We are human beings with a wide spread array of human emotions, most often guilt, that can be triggered by a sense memory. Such as seeing a familiar dog on the street, which triggers a loss about the family dog who was lost in the woods on that last family outing, “who was supposed to watch her last?”  Uncontrolled emotions can often spark irrational feelings and subsequent rash behaviors that scare the soul. And sometimes scare the bejesus out of others that are caught in their wrath path.They are reactionary. Many of us humans, act on our emotions before we have a chance to process what we just heard, or misheard, as an attack, an affront to our personhood. If Will Smith took a deep breath before he reacted violently to what he believed was an affront to his wife, he may have allowed his anger to sit still a moment. That momentary reflective breath, could have helped him to see things from a different perspective- But alas, too late. Life changed in that instant for him. If you have a gun in your hand, well…

 And then there is this….

 “The invasion of Ukraine has created a humanitarian disaster for its people, the entire world is facing the greatest threat in history: a large-scale nuclear war, capable of destroying our civilization and causing vast ecological damage across the Earth.” From the open letter by 16 Nobel laureates including the Dami Lama.

I have written in the past about the dangers of repression. How repressed thoughts and feelings become inflamed distorted toxic goo that can infiltrate the mind and cause reactionary behaviors. Um well.. Putin? What is he repressing? A friend of mine mentioned maybe he is a closeted homosexual? “Repression is a key concept of psychoanalysis, where it is understood as a defense mechanism that "ensures that what is unacceptable to the conscious mind, and would if recalled arouse anxiety, is prevented from entering into it." According to psychoanalytic theory, repression plays a major role in many mental illnesses, and in the psyche of the average person.” Wikipedia

And how does one deal with anxiety? Well that's a personal choice. Putin is expressing his anxiety through its worst form- violence directed towards others. Dictators need to release their inner toxic ideologies. Once a narcissist rises to power, as sadly exemplified by such notable dictators as Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong (or Tse-tung), Josef Stalin, and Pol Pot, their fear of exposure rises to an extreme level of paranoia. They become driven by an irrational fear of the fate that could befall them if they are exposed as their worthless true self. Oh yeah. Linda :0)

And now, April poetry for the soul!

Killer within (for Putin)
By Linda Kaye
(first published in my chapbook Teetering on the edge of the emotional cliff)

 Picture someone scary hidden inside your soul 

a haunting creepy feeling 

ghoulish sour and foul 

afraid to delve too deep? unlock the monster that's asleep? Or lurks with unsavory peeps?

Open up the window reveal yourself behold unleash your killer instinct unmask uncloak be real!

Uncover that you're someone something scary

evil 

don't squeal 

imagine that you're someone 

dark deceiving and stank 

reviled reclusive repulsive allowed to kill to shank

to defile 

to humiliate

and rape

No escape

 

A powerful thrill engulfs you 

starving for some blood you realize you are manic

decompensating thoughts

searching for some action

some excitement horrifyingly distraught

an uncontrolled thirsting is gnawing through your bones

sentencing a ménage of mayhem

the remains covered in stones 

that night a miracle happens you wake up all sweaty and hot 

your hands sticky and wet 

your head stained with guilt

the shame bubbles over like sloppy burning champagne

the dream disgusts and shatters you 

your sleep forever disturbed

 

 

FIGHT
By Mary Cheung 
2-9-2020
10:57 a.m

I write this for a friend who is battling cancer...

 

Your a fighter,

Armed with designer stylish clothes and fabulous shoes.

 

Your sly impish smile disarms your opponents .

They never saw you coming, yes that's true.

 

Your energy and spirit dominates. 

They won't take you down without a fight.

 

Life's too precious ,

Nothing can hold you down,

Try as they might.

 

The dips and the lows,

Are eclipsed by the highs and it shows...

 

In the life that you've built and the love that

follows you.

You only need to reach farther than your phone.

When life deals you the blues. 

 

Yes you're a fighter,

Don't let age slow you down.

Your spirit and will is stronger still. 

Let love surround you in warmth all around.  

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”.

 

Words n’ Wine
By lee boek

I took it in hand

As from the bottle wine took flight

Words flowed, and with a sponge

I soaked them up

And squeezed it tight

Into my glass

Swirled them

Drank them

Head swimming

Me Spinning ‘round

Still talking and writing them down.

Lee Boek: Artistic Director/poet

An integral part of Public Works Improvisational Theater Company since the 1970s, Lee took over as Artistic Director of the company in 2001 after founding member Marlene Rasnick’s passing. The California native, born in 1941, has had successful careers as a Fundamentalist Evangelist preacher, radio host, actor, writer, producer, union organizer, husband, father, grandfather to many & champion for the under-served & wronged. A staple of the Silverlake arts community, Lee continues to be on the forefront of accessible, socially-relevant performing arts productions

  

Thoughts
By Daniel Schack

Imagine a future where it is illegal to have a personality or a mind.

 

The poet ,daniel schack can be seen on poetrysoup.com and his art on tumblr adanthemanworld.daniel schack is 57 and is a high school grad. With 3.5 years of college.peace.

 

death on the set
By Jeff Chayette 6 January 2021

6/8 time

dime bags and lines

dressing guessing rooms

which dress to choose

whose blues to lose

 

cocaine down the drain
cops on set time for regrets

a happy shoot gets the boot

 

we squirm and yearn
for bill evans’s waltz bliss

jazz time 6/8 6/8 6/8

bouncing off the walls

 

lighting screams

dresses tear

breast are bare

that’s not it cover your tits

 

back to places remove the traces

catch your breath

 

take two is set drop the bets

no time for lines

 

this is the scene of a crime in time

we lost our youth in the corner booth

 

swing me low

drink me high

if the powder’s dry

we might stay high

 

and live through this night of gruesome

fight and decadence

repentants waits at heaven’s gate

 

your life’s at stake

you’ve got one take

save it for the movies

 

time to regroup

the meter’s running

time is money

 

producer screams

where’s that harlot starlet

 

nymphet left the set

caught the train uptown

has not come down

the lines are dead

 

bill evans riffed

debby’s waltz tripped the time to 4

closed the door shot up more

 

where’s the girl

set’s in a whirl

 

acting coach smoking roaches

strangely unconcerned

masking controlling craving pacing

 

tracing her last steps

a broken strand of time

 

he broke the rule

lost his case

she screamed molestation

next stop police station

 

he grabbed her throat

ripped her coat

 

police swarmed in played jungle gym

on his back held the gun against his neck

said move we’ll shoot dug in their boots

 

your life’s at stake

you’ve got one take

save it for the movies

   

Jeff Chayette has lived and loved for 4 decades in Los Angeles. A multi-faceted artist who attended Art Center College of Design In Pasadena, Jeff has worked on stage, television and films. His design work has been peer recognized with National and local Emmys, CBS Eye on Excellence and Promax BDA awards. His current poems are reflections on past and present life in Los Angeles through the eyes of the pandemic.

 

On Living
with Elizabeth Kubler Ross
for a Long Weekend
at The Atrium Hospital
In Middletown Ohio
By richard q russeth 

It’s something,

this being alive;

a beating heart

cures all.

Waking in

the middle of the night

and realizing the nurse

is not an angel

is a sweet revelation.

Accepting today

as your entire life,

go for a walk,

even if slowly,

and dragging

your IV pole.

It’s spring,

but it won’t last,

just like anything.

 

Blues
By Ronald Carrillo

I have carried these blues with me since

I discovered him his male charms saying nothing

I did not understand their meaning

I gave them a depth of value they were not worth

Only believing his words and what I thought

I saw in his eyes and felt in my empty heart

Those empty arms of his and me falling apart

A false disguise I surmised was love and affection

I expected continuity he expected more of me

A young heart unable to find warmth

But instead being molded for sin

Like being given gin instead of mother’s milk

I vomited on the formula but accepted the sustenance

Given me in increments until I succumbed

Still sucking the thumb of my youth

I write with my heart

He knew my skin but not my name

A fool’s game looking for love

Not forsaking the fairytale

But innocence maturing a heart enduring

Those first steps of romantic Spring

There were bright seasons but then the flood

Of HIV/AIDS came to reset Gay Liberation

No more separation joining the mainstream

A rainbow dream come true

Awakening the nation to extend emancipation

Degrees of acceptance in the democratic pecking order

The liberal zeitgeist of America arising out of the trumpet smoke

The conservative right no longer having a chokehold on power

Will this new breeze of freedom be ephemeral or mind blowing

My gay blues tempered with age and experience

But remain like the weather

Now however I can forecast their temperatures and movements

More rainbows in my sky

More smiles of maturity in my heart

Gone the defiles of men of little substance

I have built up my resistance through loneliness

Men are no longer primary in my life

A primary life is my necessity and goal

In my past I was never whole now I am architecturally more complex

I will always welcome support and be supportive

I move forward despite the blues

Now I sing them away as distant memories

Of who I used to be for they no longer have a hold on me

I have released them

Blue notes ascending to the sky

No longer falling like rain

Coda: We all have to navigate loneliness

          In senior time the pitfalls more precarious

          Isolation may be darker and frigid

          My heart more accepting while the mind more rigid

          These fears of couple conformity

          When my solitary emotions rule

          Invade my private space still

          I move in the security of my poetry

          With an open heart and strong will

 

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.

 

Is It Possible?
By Congapoet

IS IT POSSIBLE?

That your fear can destroy you

That your want can destroy you

That your greed can destroy you

That your ego can destroy you

 

IS IT POSSIBLE?

That living in bliss can destroy you

That being ignorant of history can destroy you

That lying to yourself and others can destroy you

That looking the other way can destroy you

 

IS IT POSSIBLE?

That being self-centered can destroy you

That not being yourself can destroy you

That not allowing others to be themselves can destroy you

That not caring about others can destroy you

 

IS IT POSSIBLE?

That not allowing freedom of speech can destroy you

That destroying other people can destroy you

That destroying your planet can destroy you

 

IS IT POSSIBLE?

That not allowing other possibilities can destroy you

 

 Conga Poet  Plays Congas. Jams with bands. Caught the tail end of the 60’s. A Revolutionary man. Started poetry in 2009. The drums mixed. The Conga Poet found his niche. 2 poetry CD’s.15 YouTube Conga Poet videos.You can Google  Conga Poet!!!                                        

 

Thanks for joining us!  We will continue to host writers and poets of all genres.

Love, Linda Kaye :0)

Please submit your written work to:lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.

 

Linda Kaye writes poetry, curates 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. 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

 Most recently, 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/

 https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

 20 Years Left youtube live stream 2/19/22

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 from medical social work, 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-theatrical-poetry-producer-retired-social-worker-and-professor/

March Poet's Place - Spring Springs!!

POETS PLACE

March edition 2022

 

Here we are in March with madness still permeating the nation and the world!!! March also hosts mental health awareness month. How can we not be aware of our mental health, it smacks us daily in the face like a swarm of mosquitos gnawing at our face. The constant numbing of deliberate threats of war, purses and burns our throats as it leaves the sour taste of rotting fruit in our gullets, its course races as an inflamed piranha in one’s anus once it passes through the coiled tracts of the colon. This impending war resonates like an unpleasant culinary gastroenterological warfare in my gut. A frequent visitor pounding on my stomachs door. We are constantly victimized by the state of our country’s decisions, quelling our thoughts and tricking us to believe that we have a proactive president and an honest government that can and will lead us through this mire. Yeah, will they really protect us? It’s a calamitous diet of sick, unhealthy people serving the best interests of their people. Hey wait! I didn’t order that plate? In whose interests are they (?) really serving? It reeks of a putrid stink that we cannot get rid of no matter how many protests and chemical defoliants we use to strip them of their damaging devisions and decisions. They (?) march on like ants that refuse to be destroyed with the best chemical exterminates. As we continue to float in the vats of Republican formaldehyde concoctions to keep us alive while they destroy our world with climate denying rhetoric, we power on and fight the good fight, albeit blindly and without democratic control.Their wimpy supports allowing us to spiral down into the abyss of depression, clinging to the frayed ropes with our deployed feelings of helplessness. Gee whiz.

Linda :0)

 

And now…

 

 

FRANZ FERDINAND

MEET VLADIMIR PUTIN

By Richard Russeth

 

 

In drenching rains and rivers rising,

the angels of love retreat along the path

by which they’ve escaped before -

yet still returned in time to bloom spring.

But my heart tells my eyes

this way may be lost,

and panic begs for time.

 

Drums and fifes remember all the old scores,

but are never brought to account.

This is no new madness nor even history,

we’ve been in these trenches before.

A tsunami of extinction gathers

just beyond the horizon;

nothing’s so contagious as war.

 

The mistake is in thinking hell is heaven sent,

forgetting it is us who raise the revival tent;

Franz Ferdinand is preaching again

and any poor excuse

will suffice for salvation.

 

Gazing through February rains at the forest  edge,

a small hope flickers in this morning darkness,

for not a despot alive will outlive

the hedges there waiting to bloom

or the sycamores standing with them,

framing the sunrise

for a hundred years

yet to come.

 

 

 

©NO HABLE ESPAÑAL

By: IE Carlo

29 May 2018

 

No hable español ni de agua en Flint Michigan

No hables del crimen ni de las atrocidades escolares ni tampoco de la sangre de los estudiantes murto por medio de los tiros al blanco

No hable de las calles de Chicago ni de negros desproporcionadamente matados por ser negro

No hables español porque si lo hablas eres un animal sin educación dicho por un presidente que no sabe quién es quién, ni de letras, ignorante y estúpido, criando disgustos por medio de ‘FAKE’ news

No hables español especialmente si tu piel es de color negro

Si eres negro y hablas otro idioma en este país eres considerado un elitista

Entonces, ¿cuál es el problema?

Una amiga lo puso en su propio respectivo:

“Son escrófulas monstros-humanos personas, sin conciencia, sin escrúpulos, de lo que es vivir una vida tranquila sin odio, sin maldad.”

Paz en Vida Amigos, Familia…

 

Ismael (East) Carlo, poet, actor begins on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio whose monica of “East” happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…

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. Paz en Vida  

 

 

 

 

WHO AM I?

By Mary Cheung

 

Who am I,

She’s forgotten that’s all.

Too much noise, distorting me

Now I can’t recall.

 

Deep down in my bones and rooted in my core.

Who I am, and the faith in myself,

This,

I must restore.

 

Lost my confidence from others influence.

Everyone telling me…

Who I should be and How, I should  act.

Wearing down,  my resistance.

 

Once upon a time I had dreams of my very own.

Unfettered by other voices.

The road was clear to me,

There was no other choices.

 

So Who am I now?

Do I even know ?

Pulled in every direction,

it’s gotten out of control.

 

If I can stop, the fear of acceptance.

The fear of approval..and needing your love.

Than I can burn through the fog surrounding me.

And kill all this negativity stuff.

 

I’ll have the chance to think..

What is my one life worth?

How should I live it before it all ends?

Maybe than I’ll finally remember.

Who I am …

 

And begin my life all over again.

 

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”.

 

 

Poem

By G. Billie Quijano

 

 

Love, respect and honor womyn in all of her universal form...

Her grace...

Her intellect...

Her beauty...

Her body...

Her poetry...

Her artistry...

Her Brujeria...

Her Feminism...

Her age...

Her vision...

Her warriorness...

Her sensuality...

Her allure...

Her Goddessness...

Her wisdom...

Her intuitiveness...

Her medicine...

Her cosmic energy...

Her clarity...

Her humor...

Her ruby red lips...

Her strength...

Her courage...

Her survival...

Her renaissance...

Her dignity...

Her meditation...

Her spirituality...

Her vivaciousness...

Her pride...

Her solidarity...

Her value...

Her sacredness...

Her playfulness...

Her voice...

Her love...

 

"I will have my voice:Indian, Spanish, White. I will have my serpent's tongue-My woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence"-Gloria E. Anzaldua

 

As a poeta, I am a rhymer at heart. I love the rhythm of all styles of poetry. When I was a child, I was introduced to Ella Fitzgerald, Queen of Scat. It evolved into adoration for Al Jarreau. Jazz is pure poetry. The Last Poets created word vibration. It gave birth to Rap. Sor Juana Ines, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou and Gloria Anzaldua, amongst others, helped form my journey into feminism and poetry. This month's submission will not have rhyming. Just wanted to be a provocateur of thought. In honor of mujeres all over the world, my words.

 

Poetry, peace, love and solidarity for our sisters and brothers in the Ukraine.

 

G. Billie Quijano-Hija de East Los. Poeta, Mestiza, artista, instigator of beauty.

 

 

 

 

 

Dan “Bone” Weinstein

 

17 November 2021 by Jeff Chayette

 

 

 

Daniel Bone king of the dixie trixie whiskey land

bong man bone man educated musical historian

yeshiva valedictorian Danny Boy Weinstein

 

never late to the gate and never straight
curly haired gravel voiced like Hot Lips Page

Danny swung to his own parade

 

whatever musical tricks were needed he delivered
his quill pen swathed the grand staff with dexterious craft

glorious harmonious notes arrangements without constraints

his musical mind on overdrive without a stop
until a dark skinned beauty whispered in his ear

 

a grace note

 

his equilibrium was knocked off it’s axis
he hovered at the foot of the stage tall and lean

high as usual nothing new for the rasta Jew

always puffed a few

 

hanging fly we don’t know why on this swinging night

Daniel Bone fell out of sight

tipped right over like a circus clown
and hit the deck like a drunken wreck.

 

love theme from Spartacus
birds swirling round Danny’s head

a Tex Avery looney toon

 

never got this high and tight
was mr dependable another expendable

 

he got a whiff of her perfume it filled the room
and brought him to like smelling salts

caramel sweet tones almond eyes and a smile bright
told Danny it’s OK tonight no shame on your fame Daddy-O

 

I’m your biggest fan slipped you up
tripped you up

so I could make you my butterfinger

take you home and we will linger

 

don’t worry bought that bump on your head
your lips were spared and all is squared

they love you dan now you’re my man

 

his head was spinning he liked them wild
but getting tripped up was not his style

 

he was in a trance that trombone in his pants

screamed dance dance dance

 

this lady bird has set the nest ready to put you to the test

tonight’s the night the script is written

an accidental fall on swing dance night
changed the course for Swinging Dan the family man

 

Jeff Chayette has lived and loved for 4 decades in Los Angeles. 

A multi-faceted artist who attended Art Center College of Design In Pasadena, Jeff has worked on stage, television and films. 

His design work has been peer recognized with National and local Emmys, CBS Eye on Excellence and Promax BDA awards. 

His current poems are reflections on past and present life in Los Angeles through the eyes of the pandemic.

 

 

 

 

March Winds (in short verse)

By Ronald G. Carrillo

 

A.   The gospel girl of Tendaberry

Windswept in her blues for a captain man

With tomcat feet leading her to confession

On the streets layered in holy pigeons

New York City was her musical religion

Where the firecrackers of her fury were set to song

Her Samson hair gave her a woman’s patience

During a Winter interlude of spicy romance

Fearless in love she took a slow train

During that season of cocaine

A lavender forecast until that whistle of her freedom blew

One child left to cradle and wash away her dormant blues

 

B.   And what if it’s to be there are no arms around me

And what if it’s to be that love never finds me

What if my senior years are solitary

And what if it’s to be all illusionary

A big fairytale with a real ending

Sending me more into myself and my writing

Willing to share my artistic space

Still holding an Ace but waiting for a King

 

C.   We are moving backwards

Once again becoming savages

Technological Neanderthals

Our advances have only pronounced our worst traits

Finding easier ways to kill and hone our greed

Survival of the fittest and gluttony of our ages

Despite a long history our priorities are primitive

Our glass ceiling is in the gutter

No wonder there was a flood

The human genome is flawed

Is there no God particle

Truly there is but the seats of power are occupied by asses

These donkey men are destroyers of this world

Wanting the lion’s share of everything

They swarm like locusts eating all of humanity’s harvest

 

D.  Youth now in my rearview mirror

Middle age gone too soon

These senior days are my nirvana

But I find myself still waiting for you

Cruel Eros jilted blue skies of lies

Love stilted in the fairytale marshes of illusion

The muses of poetry rescue and settle me

Flirting with the world and growing

So comfortable in my senior skin

Every day a win-win

 

E.   She is in her full bloom

The perfume of her femininity so fragrant

A young woman blossoming right before my eyes

Youth’s beauty so fair and alight

She is ripe like an apricot

She walks in Camelot

Her womanhood in perfect balance

Her grapes pulled from the vine of chastity

Her bouquet unique savory and sweet

 

F.   Poets choose their words sometimes in absentia

Automatic writing appearing on their pages

Messages being received from the sages

Being the messenger is a gift and a spiritual lift to the soul

 

Laura sweet Tendaberry girl of gospel and heartache

Songs of desire that set my teenage imagination on fire

Songs of sorrow that were a warning of what might come

Surry and picnic as cherry blossoms flurry down

 

What kind of lover could he be

Simple but alluring like Stanley K

I could not resist his passion calls

Like Stella I fell while Belle Reve was lost

The spirit of Blanche flashed before me as I descended

Bringing me to my knees and losing my vision of heaven

 

G.  When I look at your city skyline view

Even though I can see the gray of your sky

It’s the shine and radiance I see in your countenance

Your citadel beauty is young and angelic

Not like your decadent eastern sister of Manhattan

Her image looms large still but has been tainted

This nation’s good angels are at your beck and call

Her manifest destiny fulfills her continental family tree

From your Elysian fields in the east

Overlooking Chavez Ravine and Chinatown

Your music center complex and fountains

The stainless steel skin of your Disney Hall

Shimmering in the Los Angeles sunlight

Reflecting bright modern vogue architecture

And your west coast point of view

From surfer culture to gangland chic graffiti logos

That dot your city complexion

Like geographic exclamation points

That I can read and interpret like my own breath

City of my birth embrace your child

I continue to walk with you through your changes

My own rings can be related to your history

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Big Aeroplanes

By Theodore A. Hoppe

 

There were dreams

that all had wings

I flew them like a kite

 

They came to me

in the evening

and left before daylight

 

the rest is complicated

so foggy and so dense

 

There is no house

no dog, no swing

No white picket fence

 

Between the sheets

 the darkness

is everything I own

a tired lump of flesh

so naked and alone. 

 

The dreams have turned

to memories

it's there that we still dance

 

I drink some wine 

and smile...

fixed, as if in a trance

 

Yes, I do still think of you

every time it rains

every time I hear that song

or see big aeroplanes.

 

Theodore A. Hoppe enjoys life in Vermont beside a temperamental brook but has managed to spend a considerable amount of time in Los Angeles in the last ten years. When he is not sculpting the landscape one might find him practicing the piano, making art, or writing an occasional poem.

 

 

 

 

 

Just Before He Croaked

By Joe Kevany

I was there but didn't know it, just before he croaked

2 weeks earlier in his split-level unit

if his floor was any indication he was already turning into dust

We feasted on Gus' chicken as I squinted at the live action SC hoops

from his dad's old tv

Living trusts, Vanguards , and Wellingtons, annuity shamuity

We gotta game goin' on here !

Oh, thanks you most gracious host, I'll take you up on that orange Gatorade.

Indulge me as I rap 'Dear Santa'

I know you like when I say, ' I'm still your little soldier'.

But you are pure improv baby,

like the time you were jivin' with the Mamasan

I could see YOU drop the mic

Like those old Academy days at the University of North Vermont

when you paced those ancient hallways practicing your lines

Oh, landlord messin' with you again?

Tell me one more time and I'm gonna advocate 4 u Homie

cuz you gotta give people sheet music for their tonteria

and there's your sunroom to the right, at night

brimming with potential, an exercise bike ? some weights ?

no clue within 7 days you'd be slumped at that glass table

in what became an ad-hoc powder room

taking your final breath

like what's-his-name who wrote his first novel at the age of 78

I was there but didn't know it

just before he croaked

Dedicated to Ray Woodson ( 1960-2021 )

 

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Joe Kevany is a retired LAUSD teacher with a lovely wife and three kids. While primarily a songwriter and front man for his band The June Gloomers, this is his first venture into the wonderful world of poetry.

 

 

 

 

One word

By Daniel Schack

 

There is perhaps only one word that best describes the increasing decreasing and barbarically hypocritical absence of the truest reality of love in our present world. death.

 

The poet ,daniel schack can be seen on poetrysoup.com and his art on tumblr adanthemanworld.daniel schack is 57 and is a high school grad. With 3.5 years of college.peace.

 

 

Thanks for joining us!  We will continue to host writers and poets of all genres.

Hang in there y’all!!!

Love, Linda Kaye :0)

 

Please submit your written work to:lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.

 

Linda Kaye writes poetry, curates 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. 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

 

Most recently, 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/

 

https://youtu.be/GT1D5k2EeKU

 20 Years Left youtube live stream 2/19/22

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 from medical social work, 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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

October Poet's Place!

POETS PLACE

October edition 2021

Hello writers and readers!! Here we are with another edition of Poets Place. Truly a blessing. It’s a place where you can pretty much say whatever is on your mind. Your profound words continue to fuel our souls, and quench our thirsty desires for adventures into the arenas we are most curious to explore and to devour. Word by word.

As a relatively new writer to this forum, I am learning from all our contributors how a well-written piece should flow, spark interest, send prolific messages and carry us with you on your journey. It takes a lot of practice and a perseverance to challenge yourself daily. Not only to write down your observances to your truths, your personal perceptions, but to write them with your hearts. You are not intimidated by others’ brilliance, you are courageous and gifted. We are only to be illuminated by your light.

I truly give thanks and blessings to all of you who contribute to my journey.

Love,

Linda :0)

Hurricane Sandy
By Linda Kaye

October 30, 2012

out of the shadows in a dream a dark devastating message was sent that revealed a token

a key that exposed a heart

a chest left barren although

filled with resounding regrets

20 years after the fact the ghost an apparition the likeness of Sandy a mother lost early in life from the pull of lust filled debauchery

the aftermath of silly narcissistic choices

leaving the earth with no rhyme no reason no excuse just treason

was it the season of the witch? that pummeled the eastern seaboard with ferocious massive anger humiliation and histrionic greed and gluttony? destroying the homes of her people that represented the harsh restrictions

her parent’s expectations

from an old world village of collective thinking

and cultural beliefs

made perfect sense for the American born child of the 50s the #MeWantEraOfSelfishnessMeOnlyWorldOfSexDrugsAnd of course rock ‘n’ roll

to destroy the very land that gave her birth, and freedom

And free love. It was the guilt that created this hurricane. All evidence destroyed.

“Places in the Pack”
By Stephen Buhler

We read books aloud at night.

We read Joe Ide. To stay connected with soCal.

We read Anthony Bourdain. To touch as well as taste more of the world.

We read Mary Oliver. To realize more deeply our place in nature.

We read Tyeimba Jess. To inhabit more deeply our past, our present, and our music.

We read Hilary Mantel and Maggie O'Farrell and Jane Austen and Timothy Schaffert. To rethink what we thought we knew, to absorb what permeates and inspires the past.

The dogs are delighted with storytime. They settle on the bed and listen. They do not sleep.

They try to tell us that their ancestors were drawn to the fires of our ancestors for several reasons.

Light for safety.

Heat for survival.

Cooked food for savor as well as survival.

But they were also drawn to human voices, sharing stories.

The voices of the bard and the prophetess; the voices of companions.

Bird song and cicada call are essential. Stories may seem superfluous.

Communities are not – and are sustained or wounded by stories.

The dogs sigh contentedly and hint that they, too, are nourished essentially.

Thanks to these stories, as well as food and light, we have well-earned places in the pack.

Stephen Buhler teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and performs with the Americana-and-More group Tupelo Springfield.

My Hero
By Jennifer Bouchard


My Knight in Shining Armor
When you shook me off your horse with emerald green fire I fell from grace
Became like the Hulk
Cloaked in Goddess Power
Now my system reboots nightly at lightning speed Ascending light codes
Growth spurts accompanied with 3 am astral travel

Leading to the ultimate point of location
The United Status
Chisel my curves into thirst traps
Prop Me Up On My Throne
Slap a filter on my selfie and call me Queen Status
The danger of sitting above is
I put My Hero below me like
When Lucifer was rejected by God
The pain
Hardened him into an entity of fear and hate
Seducing the planet away from love consciousness Domination ruling
We all have the tools to build magnificent palaces
Put our gifts together
Our heads and hearts together
Sparking a mass exodus
The tower falls
The dust clouds quake the earth
As we shift
Relax back with faith
Trust the process
Knowing soon
We arrive on better days
I never feel lost in the dark
Ha
I live in a land of a billion stars
Lighting the midnight sky
We all live under the same sky
We all have a right to shine
In a manner that makes our soul fly

Jennifer Bouchard is a poet/actress residing in Los Angeles. Being a abuse/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.

The Rape of a Tear...
By G. Billie Quijano

I once lost my soul in the moon

The conscious rhythm of the conscious crime

Against my unconscious thigh

His swell did not make me swoon

My hands grasping for the moon

I was so young

My praises had not yet been sung

Azul caressed my thoughts

That prepared my slumber and dreams

How easy those clouds moved

What do all these words mean?

I survived

My life revived

Depression comes and goes

How do I slow down the flow?

I am restless

But nevertheless

I am glitter and dust from the bones before me

I glide between the raindrops and the trees

My heart, my rage, my tears

All of it taking a knee

My soul, my spirit , I am told has always been free

And still I can breathe

My Flor de Vida is de-colonized

And your shit is finalized

It's beauty is magical real

It is not for you to steal

My time is now

Don't be a fool

I no longer put you up on that stool

My dreams are no longer of you

My chocha is in revolution

Strength, courage, resilience is the solution

The universe has a plan

Look at me, I will stand

Theres no bullshit here

When lipstick wasn't enough, joy started showing up, not fear

I am stunning

And oh I loathe your cunning

The divine radiates in me

So don't fuck with what you can't see

I glide between the raindrops and the trees

My warrior's truth will prevail

My words will not stale

There will be no pussy grabbing

No assaults on my soul with your stabbing

Times up pendejos

No more raping of tears

Patriarchy is extinguished

Theres no way around it, you will hear

    15% of children will be sexually abused before the age of 18.

    90% will know their abusers.

    1 out of every 6 women in the U.S. have been victims of attempted or completed

    rape in her lifetime.

    When I was considering what to submit for this current issue, I thought about composing a poem honoring the 20th anniversary of 9/11. No hesitation it is an important event. But after hearing the news that R. Kelly was found guilty on all counts of sex trafficking, I felt compelled to share this with you.

    I am an incest survivor. I was made a statistic of sexual assault. I know what it is like not to be heard, not to be believed. I am grateful and humbled that I can channel some of my life experiences creatively.

G. Billie Quijano
Poeta

Composing Between the Lines
By Ronald G. Carrillo

Prelude: Composing between the lines of adversity

Post George Floyd blood flows in our poetry

Still masked up and vaccinating but some not

And caught up in a covid controversary

Capitalism needs to be realigned

With a renewed red, white and blue reading of our constitution

Composing on the lines I begin a new verse

Unrehearsed I put raw thoughts down

Always in 12 size font and Arial black style

This combination brings harmony to my page

Then my composition may stray to rhyme

That is coding between the lines of my message

An alliteration that spices up the poetic string

A particular phrase that then is evolved for deeper meaning

They were hurting one another

But each hurting for love from each other

Or just some line coming out of the blue

There to provoke, intimidate, highly speculate and add drama

He stood erect but was hardly hard

And a third gear of composing the sacred word

That being working the poetic architecture

To go outside the lines of my composition

To possibly put the reader in a temporary uncomfortable position

To veer off course and to go into deep paradigm shifts

That might lift the consciousness of the reader

So the poet will write utilizing all these devices

To bring the fragrance of the rose to his page

To speak of love that can be sweet then go bitter

To objectify the appearance of shifting clouds in the sky

To examine the color blue

Or vent, analyze, repent, confess those blues of the soul

To broaden his of her rings of experience

Add to the shade of their life patina

Embellish, contest, express, languish in a feeling

The wordsmith draws from his developed vocabulary

To bring poetic life to the page

To produce something fine and good

Like a carpenter working with wood

His medium is the naked word

Disjointed until like legos they take on the form

Of his mental blueprints

He sculpts the words until he has a final product

We paint our verbiage with broad and fine strokes

The poet can be excessively detailed

Or brevity can accomplish his or her thought process

A verbal rainstorm of just drops of wordlets

I am married to the sacred words

They are my constant companions

Spouses of my feelings for this world

They puzzle me in crosswords

They can intimidate me in the bible

They can be novel in a novel

They are visitors that appear out of the blue

They can bring me to tears

They can be enthralling

Some are so stunning they shine

Others are dull but still tow the line

They can be invented but still maintain feeling

I find many in lyrics so they also have their musical side

Some are strictly American

Many have a Chicano essence

I am still honing this craft of words

I can bend many of them to serve my poetic design

To bring a finer meaning to my emotions

To define my ideas on subjects or themes of my interest

These words are my allies

We write the good fight

We uncover truths

We explore the mysteries

Like an archaeologist I dig and brush away the dirt

Of my word until it is museum ready

The unreal reality manufactured for the masses

Can be revealed through the Arts

Artists are the canaries in the coalmines

We can uncover truths that are below the surface

My poetic vocabulary is ever expanding

Demanding for air and ink

To be released to unveil diversity

Multiple opinions, food for thought and discussion

Sometimes just a mere observation

Something maybe obvious but overlooked

Or one of nature’s gems

I continue learning and yearning to reach higher ground

I try to be fully present but do not object

To short wanderings as a present to remember my past

Memories are reflections and stepping-stones to where I am

Words are a poetic present to keep me in the present

Delicious desserts that sometimes desert me in a desert reality

They can change my mood as soon as I begin to compose

I trust my instinct and choices

As I assemble my poetic architecture

(I would be amiss if I did not thank fellow poet G Billie Quijano for

her seed of inspiration in writing this poem)

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.

She’s a Drama queen
By Carrie Gordon


Perhaps the best you’ve ever seen.

Wearing her heart on her sleeve
Emoting like Bernhardt before the third act reprieve.

Like Mack with his knife just waiting for his chance

She sharpens her wit and readies her stance

While the rest wait silently for Godot to appear this queen orates loudly for all who are near.

Proscenium or thrust, black box or in the round
She embraces the moment to tear the fourth wall down.

Monologues and epilogues that always bear repeating
With the pounding of her fist, her chest she will be beating.

She basks in the limelight as the center of attention, recharging while emoting, loves the thrill of intervention.

Sit back and hold on to her roller coaster ride. A myriad of moods stretching oh so far and wide!

Carrie Gordon usually works in mixed media with pastels, acrylic and digital art.  Her work has been shown at various locations in and around Southern California in both solo and group shows including: LA Live Arts, Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, Carter Sexton Gallery, Sawhorse Gallery, Cypress Art Tunnelwalk, Portfolio Gallery, Zweet cafe, Ten Feet: Art meets the River walk, Withlove LA, the Blue Line Arts Museum in Sacramento, Eden Gallery in Loudonville, New York and Middle Ridge Gallery in Idyllwild.

Truly alive or haiku of a trubluju
By Daniel Schack

Sadness is strength.sadness is love.sadness is gladness.and more sadness is hope and more strength,but never boistress.footnote.although much absolute humanism,respect,and survival come down to dollars and cents and sense.we should not and must not degenerate into an animalistic and cannibalistic society.is this where we are going.I don't know either.

The poet ,daniel schack can be seen on poetrysoup.com and his art on tumblr adanthemanworld.daniel schack is 57 and is a high school grad. With 3.5 years of college.peace.

Thanks for joining us! We will continue to host writers and poets of all genres. Everyone is welcome!!! No experience necessary!

Love,

Linda Kaye

Please submit your written work to:lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.

Linda Kaye writes poetry, curates 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. https://youtu.be/5Te4-dlhxco

Her most recent project a rap music video in collaboration with Mary Cheung, “ERACE-ISM” can also be seen on youtube. https://youtu.be/NfrbveNUBgg

.

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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

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September Poet's Place

POETS PLACE
SEPTEMBER 2021

September is here and we are still trying to figure out how to cope with the hoards of anti anti’s in all arenas. Trying to deal with the belligerent denials for the abuses that contribute to climate change, infectious diseases, racial inequality and why many people are not nice to the human race, well frankly, seems almost futile. And it does feel like a human race to understand how people can actually deny what’s going on in front of our faces!! I cannot wrap my head around all this. Can you?? What keeps you going? When I feel down and depressed I turn on music!!! There is an immediate change in mood and atmosphere that can twist and turn around the despair that haunts the soul. Listening to music is much better than taking drugs (well) most times. Ha! So what gets your groove going? And, better yet, how can we get back into the groove of sharing the love and respecting others’ differences? Well… Poetry can help because it unleashes the inner angst, the negative disturbing thoughts that paralyze our ability to function in a positive mode. Writing helps us to literally let go and confront those demons. Throwing them up onto the paper! Swoosh!! Writing ‘unsent’ letters to people or corporations that anger us helps us to let go of those feelings that contribute to our depressions from the helplessness to change them or their behaviors. IT DOES WORK! Try it sometime. As a retired social worker and behaviorist, I have learned the tools to combat those feelings as I’ve mentioned above. We all need help sometimes to help us get out of the funk. Use your words! Get out of your head! The constant rumination of negative thoughts in the mind can distort reality to the point that we begin to believe the distortions!!! So, let’s keep on writing!! Send in those powerful words so we can share them and help boost others who may be hanging on the precipice. We/they need you!!

Enjoy this month’s offerings from a splendid cast of amazing writers!!!!

LK :0)

When it happens to you
By Linda Kaye

When it happens to you that's when you pay attention to the festering wound, the bleeding sore that was burned by that opened door when the orange haired freak came crashing through

Don’t you remember?

When it happens to you, your heart beats faster, the walls come smashing down and that once protected denial cracks revealing that the worlds are colliding and the drought doesn't subside so all your plants are dying, and the wood is rotting, the intense heat fuels the paint to peel off revealing years of neglect like your face did that time which no cream could heal once the last facial peel came off with the dead skin of masterful repression

Good lord

When it happens to you do you feel obliged to respond that you knew all along about the deaths in Cambodia, and Syria, and South-central LA?

What happened to you all those years before when Disney was King?

Coca-Cola reigned supreme; and movies guided our choices as the TV hosted specials deliciously delivering reality on a plate, a guiding light, the bold and the beautiful decadent delight? That’s right.

When it happens to you and so close to home that your guard was let down and your words spoke the truth that your hatred was real towards the sins of your kind and the rug was pulled out and you fell down the hole that unlocked all the pain that you suffered in life from the marriage that was planned by the culture that was wronged with no clues from the dead

So, when it happened to you, you were left all alone to decipher what's just without forethought or might

You just left it to rot with all the others that night

GHOSTED
By Richard Russeth

Salt falls from the sky,

the wounded feel its sting.

When I was wounded, I was

the age of that Vietnamese girl

made famous by the picture of her

running nude and screaming

down a dirt road in the countryside

after we napalmed everything and her.

Not that she wanted it,

but the entire world was hers,

and she might have wanted it

if someone had told her it was hers,

but we left and left them all behind.

We leave. Each and all of us.

We have ghosted whole nations

and lovers alike, and left them bleeding into

the sea or desert or each other.

We learn early that it is easier to move on

than fix what we have broken

even when what is broken is us.

The Night Of Fires
By Brad Stubbs

Someone said

“Go west, young man.”

And we inspired by cliches,

With nothing better to do

Went to tame the savage land.

We traveled on roads paved in gold,

Blinded by a reflection

Of sunny days to come.

We made our homes in the valleys

And on top of the hills.

We turned out deserts green,

Installed cable and computers,

Purchased jewelry and perfume.

Talked about politics and sports cars.

We hired “illegal” immigrants

To care for the land.

And they did -

And it was good.

Suddenly

Without a whisper of a thought,

The night of fires began.

Ignited by the curious and confused,

But snatched from their tiny incapable hands

Like a parent scolding a child screaming

“I'll show you, young man!”

And it took less than 24 hours

To speak her peace,

While the landscape

Was left sucker punched

By a right hook to a bruised and broken

(But not unconscious) body.

For the mourning sun revealed

It's black and blue eyes

Swollen shut from the pain.

And through mine I see Jesus on the cross

Surrounded by flames,

Hear newsman and helicopters

Tap dancing on my brain.

I smell the barbecued remains of

Nothing's what it seems

As I sleep in the streets

Of fireman's dreams.

Brad Stubbs is a songwriter, a musician and a photographer with deep roots in the L.A. Arts & Music scene. He dabbles in free verse poetry as a respite from the restraints of traditional songwriting. He creates what he calls “docu-poems” which refer to real life events.

Rattling in My Head
By Mary Cheung

June 2021

4:56 a.m.

Floating on 4:56 a.m. in the limbo of b4 waking and dawn. 

Shrouded in the darkness of my bedroom,  silence all around. 

My thoughts break the silence,  begging to be heard. 

So I must take pen to paper,  or rather in this case, text to phone. 

To write it all down,  and give life to my thoughts b4 they die the early dawn. 

Tomorrow I'll forget these early morning thoughts.  They plague me and keep me awake. 

I succumb to them and I jump up to a hot cup of tea as my companion.

But I want to tame these early morning revolts. 

I want to lay down in silence and sleep. 

I want to join the world in silent slumber.

Than celebrate along with the world the ringing of the day.

Sometimes I don't mind following along with the herd.

This is one of those times.

Shhh quiet now, slip back to sleep,  let the warmth take over me and dream.....

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”.

Grey Sky and Creamy Coffee
By Ed Burgess

grey sky and creamy coffee.

white thighs, white sheets.

what have we done?

what have we not done?

the fresh brush of sun and wind.

scrub our hairy hearts to a glow.

grows to an ember.

then a flame.

again and again and again.

almost eternal.

almost not.

the sweet ecstasy between.

to be or not to.

yet the swell of the sea crashes.

on the shore again and again.

the river of cars flow.

the train horn blows.

time devours all things.

but not this scene.

in between.

grey sky and creamy coffee

white thighs, white sheets.

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. Although he writes poetry he sometimes reads it publicly.

Where Is Love: Summer 2021
By Ronald G. Carrillo

Where is love

Abiding, keeping,

What is love

Requited, committed

Falling in love

Losing control, filling my soul

Being in love

Feeling complete, swept off my feet, totally sweet

My winning Johnny

With his wolfish smile

Reels me in like a fresh catch

Utterly charming with his eyes shining

Endearing Johnny leaves me chocolate bars and kisses

Then out the door and see you soon wishes

Fairytales that have no regard for truth

Lovely children’s stories to be eventually rebuked

Insincere Johnny but still got a hold of me Johnny

What weakness in me draws me to him

Unreliable Johnny doing me wrong

Why am I attracted to that same old song of his

Men and trouble seems to count double for me

The chase without the love

Robs my spirit to expect very little

But still I am a believer in a true Johnny

There must be love

Mature and pure

Responsible but compatible

Common ground that’s solid and sound

Reciprocal but adaptable

Garden and plant well to last many seasons

There may be floods of anger

There may be droughts of emotion

But there’ll always be harvests

Replenish your spiritual soil for the long haul

Plentiful Johnny my garden honey

Let’s get to harvesting baby

A faithful Johnny by my side

At long last my game card has turned the tide

Love depleted

Companionship deleted

But the season has changed and my fields are no longer barren

My yield no longer fallow

Union of two

Communion under blue skies

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.

Thanks for joining us! We will continue to host writers and poets of all genres.

With great hope for a loving and accepting future!

Love,

Linda Kaye

Please submit your written work to:lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.

Linda Kaye writes poetry, curates 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. https://youtu.be/5Te4-dlhxco

Her most recent project a rap music video in collaboration with Mary Cheung, “ERACE-ISM” can also be seen on youtube. https://youtu.be/NfrbveNUBgg

.

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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: @lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com

August Poet's Place!

POETS PLACE

AUGUST EDITION 2021

It’s hot! Muggy, yucky and full of grief and loss. Can someone just put on the brakes a sweet minute to catch my breath?? Dang, too much loss. If it wasn’t for the support and poetry from all of you, I’m not sure I coulda hung on much longer. Drowning. No kidding. Just full on struggle.

Poetry can soothe the soul and calm your anxiety, and it can also open up its floodgates of traumatic and depressing thoughts. Oh yeah. Truth be told. Word.

Paralyzed by loss
By Linda Kaye

Baring its ugly teeth

loss surprisingly hits hugely, quite deep numbing it’s victims

the shock remains initially intact penetrating beneath the surface smoldering

creating a guarded sense to protect its host

It forms a dull ache not yet festering just lingering contemplative

deciding its course

not able yet to find solace because the deceptive shock still exists

there’s an outer shell projecting appropriate behaviors decent enough to fool the onlookers

but just for a while

there’s a persistent gnarly tug in the gut a sickly feeling that reverberates throughout the body

It stings

trying to jolt the heart back to a consistent rhythm

needing a defibrillator shock

But no luck the dull ache remains sustained by the loss

of death

it’s permanence still exists

tears are beginning to form

filling up the empty caverns in the soul the one tear lingering in the corner of the eye waiting for the release just below the surface resembling a dormant volcano waiting for the catalyst to trigger the explosion which doesn’t come without the voicing of acknowledgement from some familiar face to unlock the floodgates that wash away the grief

temporarily, until the next loss surfaces and the hurt begins it’s paralyzing cycle once again

Raga
By Judith Terzi

There's no one sitting beside me. No one

in front. No one in back. There are no

rows, no siddurim––no prayer books––

stacked on tables in front of the sanctuary

doors this Day of Atonement. No eau de

parfum lingering between stained glass.

French roast the sole aroma. I'm listening

to a cantor on YouTube. Her voice is

nostalgia, it glistens, it's the end of drought,

our fires put out. It's a windfall of serenity,

pulse of astonishment. Now the rabbi's

perched on a boulder in mountains where

there is no fire. He's singing about the opening

of hearts. He's playing guitar. Over six feet

away is the cantor––this is a pre-recorded

portion. There's a bridge, a vigorous creek,

a waterfall. They're in casual clothes. Inside

the sanctuary they stand on either side

of the Ark in white kittels––a coincidental

distancing. The cantor smiles while she sings

words my father sang, his recitative rambling

through our house while he rehearsed, his

tremolos way too wavy for a child's patience.

His cantor's cap still lies inside my dresser

drawer, kittel given away long ago. Rocking

back and forth. I'm rocking back and forth

singing transliterated Hebrew on my screen.

Singing the English. I'm mesmerized by this

service: its relevance, compassion. Its panache.

Nothing is quite the same. Yet everything is.

Judith Terzi is the Author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay) as well as of five chapbooks, Judith Terzi's poems have appeared in a wide array of journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been read on BBC Radio 3 and has received Pushcart and Best of the Net nominations. She taught high school French for many years at Polytechnic School in Pasadena as well as English and French at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria. 

Life, a Fool's Errand
By:IE Carlo
23 June 2021

What is your objective in life, but to live!

Yet, it’s a fool's errand

For life even when pursuing a goal

Will still lead you to a worthless place, a place of no value

A fool's errand

Life is just that, life, the irony is how civilized

People make life a fool's errand

Smiles of riches, drawn faces of despair

Why? Should we ask?  

What is it to own a twenty room house, a yacht, a plane, yet

Have no place to live in your being 

Smiles of riches; laughter from artists

Art of living is not a fool's errand

But life without art ‘is’ an errand for fools

Shake, rattle, and row, and eggs migrate

I, You, the only survivors of more than over a million migrants in one shot

Born into a fool's errand

By those rich smiling faces who utilize our being and talents

As an artist I take life for granted and utilize it to my advantage knowing full well of those smiling faces and their ways of sending many on ‘a fool's errand’. 

Summery: the phrase ‘a fool's errand’ is an undertaking that is doomed to failure because it is impossible ‘or’ frivolous in its nature...so, for me, not to take life for granted would be ‘a fool's errand’...Paz

Ismael (East) Carlo, poet, actor begins on the streets of East Harlem, el barrio whose monica of “East” happened due to others not being able to pronounce the name, Is-Ma-El…

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. Paz en Vida

Fecund with Promise
By Lillian Doyle

My vision is static and it’s time to flee,

to slip out from under these ominous lights,

the colorful ads that cast red and blue shadows over my face.

Premises are why

and conclusions are what,

but there is no argument to be made.

Everything is funnier with a beer dribbled chin,

or in a quiet room-

doubled over, tight with laughter- where can we release it?

Follow the lurch in your stomach when you slam on the brakes-

your ears will ring; catch the call-

wonder seeks wonder and the road is fecund with promise.

Lillian Doyle is an artist and poet living in East Los Angeles. Lillian incorporates her poetry into zines and ambient music. Her work is self-reflective, ethereal, and inspired by the nature she grew up around. Last year she released her first ep and book "Legends". 

A Goddess Looks Over Her Shoulder 
By Lisa Montagne

A goddess without Love is 
A shell emptied of its contents 
A flower bereft of its petals 
A single bird left behind when all others 
Have gone extinct. 

A goddess without Love is 
A world without color.  
Winter without fall  
or spring or summer.  

One day the Goddess looked over her shoulder and 
Found Love wondering on a street corner.  

The strength of a whole universe 
Distilled in her gaze. 

 She became La Loba, mother Nyx, 
Durga, Coatlicue, Radha once again. 
She was Home.   
is okay.

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.

By G. Billie Quijano

As the pandemic is lifting, I feel like I am a lotus rising from the murky waters to meet the sun.

This last year and a half overwhelmed us with much grief to process. It seemed like it would never end, but we never gave up hope.

Thank the goddess I was able to channel my anger and grief through poetry. I was able to say goodbye to George Floyd and John Lewis. But I still have rage for the killing of Breonna Taylor.

Her murder like the murders of the women of Juarez are not just statistics. They are women who loved, laughed, danced and had a future of memories to make. Then comes another blow, Bill Cosby released from prison on a technicality.

It is the passion of La Corazon Feminista that will not allow them to be censored from our souls. They will not be mere shadows, but front and center in their narrative.

Their memory will echo our rage, grief, love and victories.

This is for you Breonna

Oda a Breonna
By G. Billie Quijano

Why is Breonna's womaness a crime that resulted in Femicide?
They were brazen in that act
And your assailants can never hide

She was innocent in her sleep
While her dreams swirled in the deep

Why was the color of her skin
Their win?

Her skin color was not probable cause
Yet they make their own laws

She gave service to other humans
Now we're in the streets movin'

They refused to see their crime through their hate
Their evil was the cause of her fate

Kentucky make no mistake
Our blood is not for you to take

Your decision not to indict
We will not resist the fight

How many kisses will be lost
Love always remains the cause

How many dances are painfully still?
Our rage is our will

Breonna you have graced the covers of O and Vanity Fair
Oh my goddess, at times its more than we can bear

Your sweetness will be missed
But your memory will persist

Breonna you have taken your place in the court of queens
Let our voices be heard

Let our anguish be seen
"Say her name"

         Vanessa Guillen

        Sandra Bland

          Layleen Polanco

          Riah Milton

          Dominique Fells

          Mujeres of Juarez

          Ana Mendieta

“Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately it can propel people toward social emancipation”. Angela Davis

G. Billie Quijano

Gracias Angela. My life as an artist has liberated me, my mind, body and soul. Expression is boundless, color eternal. Art ignites movements. We are citizens of the collective consciousness. This month I am submitting 2 poems. This mine and Frida’s birthdays. We share a cosmic connection-East Los to Coyoacan, Mexico. Angela, Frida, Dora Maar,Lola Alvarez Bravo, Sor Juana Ines, sisters, brothers, and yours truly are the faces of freedom.

Ode to Tennessee Williams
By Ronald G. Carillo

Tennessee exiting a fictitious streetcar of conformity
And walking to a shoe factory daily
Like giving blood after morning coffee
And a rough night of going to the movies and heavy drinking
His mother’s voice proclaiming rise and shine
Walk the line eight to five to stay alive
But he’d rather go to the moon of his imagination
Mother and sister on the ropes of existence
And the old man has escaped town handsome though he maybe
Now you hold the reins of your father’s discontent Tennessee
And also inherit his absent parentage
Becoming your father while hating your mother
But I recognize in you a brother of the highest regard
Going down in a sinking ship
So ill-equipped for dry land
You go through the disaster motions as long as you can
While getting drunk reckoning adventure from some faraway port
Writing poetry and stories during a pirate’s lunch
Gentlemen callers and bits of glass
Under the sliver of a silver slipper moon
Make a wish Mr. Williams and hope for success and happiness
Far off in the mist of memory Stanley hollers “Stella”
A banished Blanche DuBois retires to writing
For Romeos and wedding vows that will not arrive in time
I too must set sail as there is no rescue
Only cold sheets and sacred cows too many to disavow
Tennessee Williams and Miss Alma
Rising out of desire and smoke
Thick enough to choke any hope of love
But rising still to heaven to create great Art
Two souls forging yet breaking apart
The ancient original sin of Paradise lost
Tennessee channeling the great rivals
Dark and light and major and minor divisions
Our secular tendencies and those sacred traditions
A doubting Thomas but not quite a Judas Iscariot
Tennessee battling internal addictions
And external temptations but always observing human folly
Cruelty and male adrenalin facing off with fragility
The beaten down played out and escaping crisis
The lion unable to lie down with the lamb

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.

Happy Mother's Day To Me
4-9-21
5:59 a.m.
By Mary Cheung 

Where did the time go?
It all went by too fast.
You started out just as a thought.
Than as a tiny spot in my body.

 All part of my plan; 
a life to join in my party.
Oh wouldn't that just be grand!!

Committed now, of what my future will be. 
I rolled with all the changes in my body.
I looked down one day,
and my feet I could no longer see.

Throughout morning sickness
and a steady widening of girth..
I readied myself to be a mother,  
determined I'd prove my worth.

But no books can prepare you for what's ahead. 
Even if you think you know it all.
Regardless we stumble and learn;
Hoping each decision was the right call. 

All I can give you, 
is my love, my experience and wisdom of past. 
These 2 arms to hold you,
And promises of a love that would last.

I hope that my knowledge can help to lessen, 
any hardships along your way.
I can only dream for you what I hope, 
you might become one day.

I've guided and given all that I could.
Now it's up to you, 
To create, 
and to live it as you think you should.

Turn your dreams into existence.
Be the princess and the prince in your own tale.
I believe in you, your fierce determination.  
Your passion as big as a whale. 

Your whole life is ahead of you,  
possibilities are boundless and more. 
I can't wait to read your story.
It started the minute you walked out the door.

Wander off to far away lands.
I hope I've prepared you well.
One day you'll learn what I have.  
And pass onto your children as well.

That a mother's love doesn't end.
No matter where you are.
It reaches those you love.
Whether near or far.

And that Mother's day is our new Christmas. 
The gift that gives and never ends. 
Eternal is my bond with you;
You are my life,  

     my love,  

         my friend. 

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”.

Daniel Schack

To those, regardless of political affiliation or party, personal or religious philosophy, or gender or orientation, or ethnicity who are fake or phony. To say it bluntly, " I would rather spend time with a wh-re instead of a bore. The former has more character, most likely.

Thanks for joining us! We will continue to host writers and poets of all genres.

With great hope for a loving and accepting future!

Love,

Linda Kaye

Please submit your written work to:lindakayepoetry@icloud.com and include a short bio.

Linda Kaye writes poetry, curates 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. https://youtu.be/5Te4-dlhxco

Her most recent project a rap music video in collaboration with Mary Cheung, “ERACE-ISM” can also be seen on youtube. https://youtu.be/NfrbveNUBgg

.

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 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.

www.lindakayepoetry.com

Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry

www.laartnews.com