A(nother) Great Poetry Event! (a little something for the off-season)

Young People’s Open Mic
Students from grades 6 to 12

Saturday, October 19
7– 9pm
Sign-ups begin at 6:30pm
Poems in all languages welcome.
Family Friendly –Please make sure content and language is for all ages
At the Roslindale Branch Library
4246 Washington Street, Roslindale, MA

Light refreshments served
Sponsored by the Friends of Roslindale Branch Library
Street parking available
Questions? Contact roslindalelibraryfriends@gmail.com

Untitled/For MF

Untitled/For MF

Each time
you answer
I am grateful
in a way
that make poets
cringe--
trite
over-the-top
metaphors
and hail marys
and whatever
jews and buddhists say
in thanks
when a miracle
has occurred.

Maybe
you really do know
what it is like
to shadow box…

to tiptoe
amongst
land mines
laid down so long ago
that the parties no longer
remember the war

yet each soft step
is one
toward freedom.

And so I tread
first with a quiet prayer
and now,
as you have taught me,
with a breath.

--Nancy Marks

Thanks, Ed - a poem wrapped in art.

Time for Poetry & Stout

When the winter sheds its scaly skin
And slinks up to the hilltop once again
We gather sticks and horns with it to clout
Then it is the time for poetry and stout

And as the warming sun the snow does slice
And the slithering season recedes with melting ice
And manic love begins to stretch and sprout
Then it is the time for poetry and stout

And when the children with their drums and packs
Parade along yale terrace to and back
As a rite of spring, establishing the serpentine route
Then it is the time for poetry and stout

So look not for invitations to partake
But gather up your poems to kill the snake
And herald glorious spring with whisper, song or shout
For now it is the time for poetry and stout

-- Michael O'Connor

My Heart's In The Highlands

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.

-- Robert Burns

Joel and Shaw

Maggie + Katie

On the Beach at Night

N the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter,
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades.

From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine.

Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

-- Walt Whitman

Save-the-date! March 16th is the 13th annual. Please be there!

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?


-- Robert Hayden

The O'Connors' St. Patricks

All those beautiful dear faces
Seen but once a year on Yale Terrace
A magic connection everywhere you turn

Poetry and music in the air
On this auspicious night
A James Joycean William Butler Yeatsian
Movie of hospitality so grand
That in this fine house
Instills in us, and by their leave
A lust for spring and all good things

Profound and indeed, so merry
The presence of the Leprechaun and
The wee Faire

The splendid declamation of Young Liam
Of "Emmet at the Dock"
Everyone present feeling
As to their Irish stock

II

The songs so grand heard nowhere else
In all the land
Played sublime, intricate and well
By the brave musicians of the band
A fitting prelude to the Earth
Tilting on its axis toward the Sun
The Minstrel Boy to the War is Gone
And a tribute to what the bloody battles cost
For Freedom a century ago
That our Ancestors fought and won.

Untitled

And God encapsulates us with His spirit before we were even born or thought of
sitting spirits
waiting to be sent down to the world
we were bathed with blessings and hope
and sent down into the sacks of our fathers
to be buried in the warm wombs of our mothers
and as we cycle through the stages
we prepare ourselves for release
but this weary globe is not what we expected
and our newly beating hearts are taken aback by the scene
the warmth we had in our soft cozy wombs
has been replaced by a chill
we become afraid and worried
"God, what is this?" we ask
"Just continue and you will see"
as our hearts continue to beat
and our form grows in size
we reach out again
for those of us that remember now
"Do not let yourself be eaten up by the illusions of this world, do you not remember your mission?"
and by this point we have forgotten
and our first instructions have become lost to us
and so our new journey is to find our mission again
and in desperation we go to places that are suppose to be of dedication to God
although our true education of him is better found alone
because the so called peace seekers may really be heat seekers
trying to suck up light from our souls
or maybe they are just as lost and confused as we are or more so
but still insist on advising us
and in our ignorance we continue to let them advise
when God has all the instructions we need

God is screaming our names
but we can not hear through all the chaos
all the voices of the people that claim to know
I dont believe in evil
but I do believe in lost
and they rather be lost in company than alone
if we quiet our waters
we will hear It speak
and will slowly be re-introduced to our forgotten mission
slowly as not to overwhelm us
because our trust and belief is not the same as it was in the womb
neither is our confidence
but instead of seeking him out we run away in disbelief
we stab and pound and murder ourselves
with foolishness, lust, greed, and shame
we take God's materials and create costumes of fake beauty
and inventions of fake power
and bombard ourselves with destruction
we hurt the people next to us and far away
we attack the ones we claim to love
but our sad confused minds have lost complete meaning of the word
always defined as a feeling when in reality it is action
we run further and further from God into the haze
the smoke
and are blinded and deafened
with false ideas of knowledge
Get quiet
like we were in the womb
when God was loud in our ears
the only voice we knew

we fear silence because of its truth
we dont really want to know how far we have strayed
but if we dont realize our distance, we can never go back
He is screaming our names
let the lusty smell of chaos go
some of us hear Him and it ignore it
to chase desire
then scream "whoa is me!" when they are gashed in the head with strife
and they then give up on a God that they never truly believed in
or make fake promises to listen next time
if we only shut our busy mouths and open our ears to Allah
listen for the silence in his voice
no need for long winded apologies or stories
He knows us and the distance of our hearts better than we will ever know ourselves

close your busy mouth and listen
no need for loud emotional rapture
or huge congregations that mix in folly with their truth
we were born with what we are looking for
no need to search the corners of the earth
we were born with what we are looking for
no need for the rituals of our fore fathers
or the lectures of men that are just like us
you were born with what you are looking for!
and have only forgotten

be quiet and still
pour a cool pitcher of hope into your souls cup
and hold on to those few glimmers of faith that you remember
that were given to us while sitting on heaven's ledge
hold them quietly close to you to grow
so that they become stars within you
endless as the ones you see in the nights sky
and you will be bathed again in It's Spirit
your faith unyeilding
your courage plentiful
deflecting the boulders of those that attack you
your unusual strength will amaze them
and urge them too...
to be silent
and ahh now
Our mission has been fulfilled

--Alicia Mooltrey

Buddha -- The Return

I am exchanging my life,
I say to Buddha.
We have bumped into each other
as we wait on the
return line.

Buddha opens his crinkled bag
to show a red robe.
Wrong shade
and the threads are unraveling,
he says to me.

I understand this,
as it is how I would
describe my life:
peppered and ashen,
with missing pieces.
I remember my birth:
half of a whole
and whole of a half.
my mother’s jagged scar
tearing the seams of a
not-so-hidden war.

I should have returned
when I was born.

I feel awkward in this explanation--
not wanting Buddha to think
I am a snob and only like
shiny new things.

As the line moves up,
we stare
at the large woman
returning a flowered scarf.

I want to say something to him.
To ask him
if I return my suffering
will I know something more.

But it’s too late—
Buddha’s number has been called
and he slowly approaches
counter number three.

-- Nancy Marks

Lost

This is no fairy tale.
The crusted crumbs
cast on sodden umber moss
are now gone
and I feel my way
through blanketing darkness
and weighted slumber.

Against grooved lichened bark
my hands scrape
leaving trace
as I pass under
then over
felled elm and maple.

Earlier, I placed seeds
of yellow maize in rows
and waited.

The storm came
as fast as it left.
A tempest,
first welcomed
then feared
for its
hard rain.

-- Nancy Marks

Look Here for the Chocolate Stout Cake Recipe

https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=85bc17cefe&view=att&th=13617f91716a6732&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P-kUh2-u2NfYa8gUzKjIj5B&sadet=1331866049324&sads=Ps3Jju-E2zTF_KWxuSdKXzFAm0g

Friends, it is time for the 12th Annual. Please come over on Sat., March 10 and join us for songs, poems, stout and the like. Hope to see you!

So Much Happiness

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records….

Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

The Willies

"Public restrooms give me the willies."
-Ad for a disinfectant

There is no known cure for them,
unlike the heebie-jeebies
or the shakes

which Russian vodka and a hot bath
will smooth out.

The drifties can be licked,
though the vapors often spell trouble.

The whips-and-jangles
go away in time. So do the fantods.
And good company will put the blues
to flight

and do much to relieve the flips,
the quivers and the screamies.

But the willies are another matter.

Anything can give them to you:
electric chairs, raw meat, manta rays,
public restrooms, a footprint,
and every case of the willies
is a bad one.

Some days flow with them, ride them out,
but this is useless advice
once you are in their grip.

There is no way to get on top
of the willies. Valium
is ineffective. Hospitals
are not the answer.

Keeping still
and emitting thin, evenly spaced
waves of irony
may help

but don't expect miracles:
the willies are the willies.

--Billy Collins

Where the view is unobstructed

the sun setting looks just like
the sun rising
split in two on the curved horizon
balanced on the edge
of the same half-lit, hopeful worlds

the yin and yang once were tears
the dots in each, the pairs of eyes that cried them
now light and dark are twirling cheek to cheek
the sun setting is the sun rising
far away, just out of sight

--Sandra Storey