words

Poetry Month Day Three…

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Poetry goes viral!  Check out YouTube for poetry. Search Taylor Mali, Speak with Conviction, or What a Teacher Makes. Search the Dodge Poetry Festival to find clips of Sharon Olds, Coleman Banks, or  Lucille Clifton reading poetry.  Celebrate poetry  in cyberspace!
Two more poems from our writers…

In The Name Of

written by Barbara Straus Lodge

A story of mine came out in a book.

I couldn’t believe it, wanted to hide in a nook.

I used a fake name, protecting from shame

But then I wondered, at what cost comes fame?

Opportunities presented and even more as well.

My work was recognized and I felt swell.

Some readings, a radio show, even a New York literary award,

Suffice it to say, my inner critic was floored.

***

Pieces of me float everywhere “out there” and beyond.

But wait. Who am I? Am I lost, or am I found?

Is my pen name really me, or different as syllable and sound?

My words upset, shake down, maybe even more.

But still they’re my truth, born straight from my core.

As a writer, I think, my story should be pure

I must present the truth and not be demure.

The time has come to reclaim my name.

Leigh Stuart will retire; she will suffer no pain.

Barbara Straus Lodge is here to stay.

She’ll say goodbye to her pen name,

come whatever, what may.

Radiant 100

written by Laura L Mays Hoopes

Radio, radium, rays, radioactivity. Quaint, quiet, quick, quashed. Roseate, russet, radiant, rusted. Energy, enlightenment, evasiveness, entombment. Plutonium, Pluto, plumb-line, poison. Iodine-laden, invisible, inaudible, invidious. Wind, water, wildness, winter. Icy, inclement, iridescent, indecent. Human, hubris, hint, hollowness. Promising, pellucid, pallid, porous. Trembling, towering, trumpeting, trampling. Dubious, doom-laden, disastrous, dismal. Murmuring, muttering, mastering, moaning. Mutation, misery, mystery, mockery. Authority, augury, agony, anger. Politeness, pragmatism, pontification, procrastination. Tradition, trust, tsunami, tragedy. Handful, hope, heaviness, horror. Rushing, running, rowing, raving. Dim, darkness, drama, downfall. Trees, trucks, trains, tables. Cars, cables, clothes, children. Traveling, traipsing, trailing, tumbling. Regular, rocking, roiling, rickety. Walking, wandering, wasted, wailing.

Poetry Month Day Two…

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Celebrate Poetry Month by having a poem emailed to you each morning!  Just follow the link here: http://www.poets.org/poemADay.php. And from our own, Mary Rose Betten and Laura Beasley add their voice to our Poetry Month Collective!

Love Children

written by Mary Rose Betten

Who cares for my words

once they are written?

Do they go homeless

once they have been penned?

They tumble

down

the

hallways

of my mind

hooting

laughing

aimless

naked children

running

from their bath

I catch them

towel them

tuck them in

Lie with them

alone

in the dark

The Easter Bunny

written by Laura Beasley

The Easter Bunny came early this year,

But he gave me something I truly do fear.

Like an egg in my neck, they call it a mass.

It means I’ll be put under by gas

On the day the surgeon cuts into my neck

To remove the egg-mass, oh what the heck!

It could be cancer or it might be benign,

Perhaps I’ll die soon or for decades, be fine.

I’ll get a scar in my neck, something real I can feel,

Just like this pen with the ink that is teal.

I grab for my life and I try to grip hard

To all of my dreams that seem broken like shards.

My future is hazy, my future is dim.

Will I be there to love him, her, him and him?

Will I ever hold my grandbabies in arms

And swaddle them tight like burritos so warm?

If you think that it’s easy to write of these things,

Then close your mouth tight and then try to sing.