Not Concrete by Anthony Ward

Not Concrete
by Anthony Ward

In our indeterminate future
I imagine stepping onto a barren landscape
Looking over at symmetrical mountains
Towering above immense craters-
As if set in stone.

Yet this world is not concrete.
It’s a living thing,
It grows and breathes-
Is constantly moving,
Prone to different temperaments
While it wails with despair.

Its grey complexion obscuring
A vibrant colourful persona
Exulting from the darkness,
That’s sheer lunacy to ignore.

Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Turbulence, Underground, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

Poetry Breakfast suspended due to Hurricane Sandy

Just wanted to let everyone know that Poetry Breakfast is on hold for right now. I have not even looked at the site or any submissions since we began preparations for Hurricane Sandy more than a week ago.

While my family, myself, and my home survived the storm, many neighbors were not so fortunate. We live along the Raritan Bay which sits between NJ and Staten Island. Like all coastal areas of NJ we were hit hard. Many of the homes down the street were washed away and most of Union Beach, a small working class town, has had more than half of its town destroyed.

Needless to say, Poetry Breakfast is not a top priority for me right now.

I know there have been many pleas in the media and even a benefit concert to raise money for the Red Cross. Yes they are a wonderful organization, however, they are not here. I’ve heard they are in NYC and in Southern Jersey. But I haven’t found a sole around here that’s seen them.

A vast majority of our needs are being served by a little local non-profit called RAINE (Reaching Anyone In Need Everyday). On Sunday alone, they served over 20,000 meals, handed out clothes, helped residents clean up their damaged homes, provided diapers and toiletries, and so much more. They have been doing this every day 10 am to 7pm since the day after the storm hit and will continue working daily to help our neighbors in Hazlet, Union Beach, Matawan, Keansburg, Keyport, and other Bayshore areas.

100′s of people have volunteered to help RAINE with their relief efforts. ALL the volunteers are local. Many have been without power for a week. You’ve seen the destruction that Sandy caused. What you have not seen is how amazing the people in Central New Jersey are. On the news, you see people pleading for help from the government and Red Cross. Around here, there are no pleas. People are taking care of each other. The best way I can put it is this: The wave of volunteers and donations from our own community is stronger than the 15 ft tidal surge waves that demolished half of our neighboring town.

If you want to be inspired, or just find a place to donate where you know that the next day, your donation will actually be put in the hands of someone who’s lost everything from the storm, please check out RAINE on facebook at www.facebook.com/groups/raine/ You can visit their main website at http://rainefoundation.com/ . They are accepting financial donations through their main website. And like I said, basically the next day, your donation will be in the hands of someone who needs it right now.

If you’re local to the Bayshore NJ Area, I am posting where help is available and where donations and volunteers are needed at www.facebook.com/BayshoreNjReliefCenters

For those of you who have submitted poems for consideration in Poetry Breakfast, I don’t know when I will be getting back to reading them. It may be a week before I get back to that, or it could be a few weeks. If you don’t want to wait and wish to send your submissions elsewhere, I completely understand. Just please email me to let me know that you’ve sent them somewhere else. If you’ve already received an acceptance for your poem, it WILL still be posted on its scheduled day. Those are already scheduled and in the system.

And yes…I am asking you to donate to RAINE. And to spread the word about them to your friends. Also, I’m asking you to look at their facebook page just so you can see the amazing generosity and resilience of people here at the Bayshore. With all the destruction around us you would think it would break your heart, but with the hundreds of people volunteering thru RAINE and the tens of thousands they are helping, it lifts your heart to a level you could never imagine. If you can’t give, just go to their facebook page and let them lift your spirits too.

A Fine Wine by Anthony Ward

A Fine Wine
by Anthony Ward

These finely aged novels,
Stored like bottles in a cellar,
Become all the more portent with maturity.
You want to drink their contents,
Be intoxicated by their words,
Until they have you speaking so fluently
The language pours from your mouth,
While those staid sober
Will stress you’re slurring incoherently-
That they’re far too precious to be drunk.

Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Turbulence, Underground, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

Tested by Kay Robertson

Tested
by Kay Robertson

Critically ill, hurting,
mind fogged by drugs,
he endures possible cures,
deadly side effects;
survival remains
a fickle bitch.

A year later, despite the odds,
scarred by many surgeries
he’s very much alive.

Home at last, he wants
to get his driver’s license back,
fly the Cessna again,
apply for grad school.

He’s always loved to write;
poetry, prose will come
from mind, spirit tested by fire,
wisdom paid for in blood.

Kay Robertson lives near Puget Sound. Much of her poetry is inspired by the unique beauty of Washington State. She belongs to Writer’s University Word Weavers on-line poetry group. Her work appears in Pirene’s Fountain Japan Anthology, Soundings Review, Loch Raven Review, Sugar Mule.

Sternutation by Anthony Ward

Sternutation
by Anthony Ward

We are but a sneeze through time
Our lives so brief we barely notice
Travelling at the speed of life
Getting where we’re going before we’re gone
The splendour of space converged to a future
Culminating in the past.

Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, Turbulence, Underground, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.

NEVER GIVING UP by Joan Colby

NEVER GIVING UP
by Joan Colby

The railroad museum is conducted
By retired conductors and signalmen,
Engineers and ticket takers, gandy dancers.
White haired, heavy set in striped overalls.

The steam tractor show is handled
By elderly farmers and mechanics,
Boilermen and harvesters.
White haired, scrawny in short sleeves and work pants.

Some can’t give up
Who they were, what they were up to.
No Florida trailer parks for them.
No golf, no casinos, no walking tours.

In winter, they grease the monoliths
Or assemble miniature farmsteads
Complete with wooden cows and pigs
And small green John Deere’s that work.

Seven books published including The Lonely Hearts Killers, The Atrocity Book, etc. Over 980 poems in publications including Poetry, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Epoch, etc. Two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards (one in 2008) and an IAC Literary Fellowship. Honorable mention in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest—North American Review and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Contest–Margie, and finalist in the 2007 GSU (now New South) Poetry Contest, 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize, 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest and Ernest J. Poetry Prize Joan Colby lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois with her husband and assorted animals.

Voices and Visions – William Carlos Williams

An old PBS broadcast about William Carlos Williams, including biography, recordings, and just a bunch of stuff.

For Jill Clayburgh, In Memoriam By Diane Elayne Dees

For Jill Clayburgh, In Memoriam
By Diane Elayne Dees

The image we will always remember:
You, swirling and spinning
throught the streets of New York,
becoming the blue and yellow and orange.
You looked excited, not afraid, not caring
that strangers gawked at you. You learned
to move with the wind, to stay grounded
while fate turned you round and round.
At one with the blue and yellow and orange,
at one with the streak of fiery red,
standing straight and filled with awe,
you let yourself be carried by art, by wind.

Diane Elayne Dees’s poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. Diane lives in Louisiana. She publishes Women Who Serve, a blog about women’s professional tennis.

Tattered Wings by Paula Tohline Calhoun

Tattered Wings
by Paula Tohline Calhoun

A dwindling summer is the bittersweet prelude to fall.
I watch it all, just now, and sense already, on the tip of
my tongue, the metallic taste of winter. In my mind’s eye:
       the deep greens and subtler hues fading to brown, drying up,
       the sharp blades of grass pricking the soles of my stubborn-bare feet;
and know that in due time, snow will smother all that’s left of the now.
My ears prepare for the day they will be turned to the laboring creak of
       ice-burdened limbs, and bent on the splintering crack,
       the chuffing thud of branches on the snow-shrouded ground below.

Such insidious, gray thoughts are snatched away
by the appearance of a swallow-tailed butterfly.
Slower than the hastening summer and on-rushing winter,
she makes her errant way from leaf to blossom, in full knowledge
of the passing of her season of glory.
       The colors revealed on her first morning still shine on this her last.
       I wonder at such persistence through the fraying nicks of daily struggle,
       and sigh at the beauty – at the constant push and pull against the wayward
       currents of air – of her split and tattered wings.

Paula Tohline Calhoun is a 61 years old, and a life-long lover and writer of poetry – as long as she has been able to read and write, that is. She started at age 4 when her Dad first read to her from Ogden Nash’s collection. She is currently working on a collection in which she is collaborating with a poet from South Africa. This collection (untitled as yet) is her first publishing effort. Her poetry interests are very eclectic, and she employs a number of styles – whatever strikes her fancy.

http://paulatohlinecalhoun1951.wordpress.com - “Reflections From a Cloudy Mirror”

http://myphotoreflections.wordpress.com - “Reflected Glory – My Adventures in Photography”

Spin by Kay Robertson

Spin
by Kay Robertson

Incoming tides crash
on battered shore,
determined waves
splinter sunlight,
shadows tremble.

What was visible
moments ago
becomes obscured
by murky cross-currents.

In politics, veracity
resides in the depths,
at the mercy of slippery facts.

Kay Robertson lives near Puget Sound. Much of her poetry is inspired by the unique beauty of Washington State. She belongs to Writer’s University Word Weavers on-line poetry group. Her work appears in Pirene’s Fountain Japan Anthology, Soundings Review, Loch Raven Review, Sugar Mule.