Rain and storm yesterday and throughout the night, and Peggy and I are grateful that listeners were not kept from coming out to Rachael’s Café to listen to, and share some of their own poetry.
The HART Rock Poetry Series and Open-mic, hosting Bronislava Volkova and Feliz Cicek as featured poets, offered the community a program replete with well crafted and equally well presented poems in celebration of National Poetry month. Bronia read from the anthology she recently edited featuring more than 62 poets “Up The Devil’s Back: A Bilingual Anthology of 20th Century Czech Poetry” (with Clarice Cloutier, 2008), and poems from “Drink We Will from Delectable Well” her most recent collection of poetry. Filiz’s, reading came from a variety of poets with her presenting some of them in the Turkish language followed by English translation. She also shared some of her own writing, passing copies to listeners so they could see the color/emotional associations she attached to some specific words. She explained earlier, that as a visual artist, she enjoys using visual cues and each poem creates its own unique form on the paper.
Last month Peggy started a new tradition for the HART Rock readings. It is a line by line poem where one line is written and the page is passed along and whoever wants to join in can write a line. The paper is folded so that the writer sees only the line previously written. Follow is the poem composed last night.-----
Community Poem on Earth Day
– Line by Line poem written by participants and attendees at HART Rock’s Poetry Series and Open-mic, April 22, 2011
Earth and air, water and all fires of life
Purify and save us from the Tea Party!
With its toxic leaves and stolen spoons
The junk drawer burst its’ brim
Forks, spoons, & knives splash up like a bowling ball hits water
AND AS THEY FALL; I AM UNAFRAID
As the photons bubble, bubble up from the Sun
We may open to this bubbling on a soul level
So that we can paint orange colored days
That fade to a ribbon of moonlight stretching across the lake
The lake of delirious dreams
AND, so it is that
April is the month of melted clouds
Before me ruffles and lace, softening the night, creamy
And dreamy, casual and formal all at once
Converge upon me, begging to comfort me.
This, of such borrowed surroundings
Will not rest, surges out of the water like a whale
Free like a dolphin
Menaced by nets cast by man’s infirmity
And yet
A fiery anger
That fills and sears and eats away and
Does all matter of consumption, without remorse or regret
