VoicesAdmin

Dylan

by

by Carmen Mason

My mother taught me lay and lie
and I went on to teach it well
to all my kids in school and
gave extra credit when they got it right.
My daughters still call to check
when working at their jobs and writing
something important
and I still yell at TV newscasters
when they say it wrong
and then Bob came along and
sandpapered the truth to me:
Why wait any longer when the one you love
is standing in front of you?
Laaaay laaady laaaaay, laaay across my
big brass bed, until the bray-ache of daaay
stay awhile and make me smile…
and of course it mustn’t be any other
way today.

Carmen Mason has written poetry and prose since she was six. She first got published in P.S. 106‘s Children’s Press. She has kept going, winning a few prizes along the way, but mainly just enjoying sharing and, while waiting for her muse to (hopefully) visit her again, telling her friends jokes by Steven Wright.

What We Owe

by

by Rosalie Frost

Consider what we owe
earth’s flora and fauna living
and dying for nearly
five hundred million years
of geologic time.

As Earth heaved, squeezed,
bumped and grinded,
the detritus of once-living things
decomposed into countless layers,
morphing into the black gold of
power, progress, and pleasure
—- but the plagues,
they are icumen.

Possessing Earth’s gifts, we stay
stubborn as the pharoah who would not heed warnings and signs till
ten plagues exhausted his people and land.

My creative life over the last two decades —- after retiring from the last of my several professional lives —-  embraces writing, photography and gardening, sometimes mixed up together, feeding each other. While I try to be disciplined in my daily practice, I cherish being curiouser and curiouser as well as free to follow non-linear and free-wheeling ideas.

Girl-Talk

by

by Rosalie Frost

As I kissed them goodbye
on their tony, tanned cheeks
in the perfumed air
(my still singleton girlfriends,
high-pitched mares), he silently came up
from behind, tied a dish towel
around my waist, pulled me back
away from my friends as tiny pink bubbles
rose up from still soapy hands,
tickling my nose.

He growled low into my ear,
what was all that girl-talk
while he was in the kitchen washing up?
G-spots, gadgets—
we talk so loud.

My creative life over the last two decades —- after retiring from the last of my several professional lives —-  embraces writing, photography and gardening, sometimes mixed up together, feeding each other. While I try to be disciplined in my daily practice, I cherish being curiouser and curiouser as well as free to follow non-linear and free-wheeling ideas.

Unfallen

by

by Mark Fischweicher

xxxxxxFor Andy

Frost bites the ground I walk on
in the woods. Moss
carpets fallen limbs,
and leaves the cobbles lush
and verdant as some
random emerald gem.

On stones the lichen grows
like bark
and leads me thru the undergrowth
and leafless branches
thru the fallen twigs and leaves,
underneath the leaden skies,
which whisper
as I walk along
beside this frozen
glory.
Winter is alive.

Death seems to be unspoken
within these woods.
Who knows what lives or dies here?
Winter hides the crime
except among the pines.
Look up beyond the old and broken shoots.
No way to tell. Just
as you
remain to
be
to me.

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets.

Tirade To Dismiss My Fall

by

by Mark Fischweicher

As I get older my memory fades.
His name, her name, that place, this.
No matter how I try, I can’t recall.

The emptiness that fills my mind pervades
though some say this aloofness should be my wish
to be detached to let whatever comes to me be all.

I say my nimble wits have never been my ace of spades
My greatest attribute has always been my gibberish
just letting all my fears and cheers flow out without a stall

Not trying too hard to manage all my weird crusades, my escapades.
If I am not remiss, that should be my bliss.
That’s all. I think I’ve hit the wall.

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets. 

Things That Return

by

by Mark Fischweicher

we can walk on the trail
as it runs by the brook
where a heron we’ve seen seems
a statue of sorts
still as stone
till it catches the fish
in one gulp

and down where the tracks still run
where we board the train
going down to the city
there’s this one single woman
who walks out
on her lawn
across from the station
who stands with her hands, statuesque,
deftly stretched

there before her
balletically smoking her one cigarette
not to fill up the house with her ash
I suspect
these are the things that we look for in life

the things that return

even memories
and poems

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets.

For the Birds

by

by Mark Fischweicher

It is being God
to feed the birds
and they have dressed up
for the feast.

I will teach them
how to worship.

common knowledge
for the Cardinals,
already dressed in robes of red,
old hat for the gray cheeked
almost threadbare Thrushes
and the black capped
Chickadees
Who already wear their yarmulkes
to shul

I should not worry who will feed them
When I am gone.
They have gone without my industry
for forever and a day,
for eons.
for a crow’s age, an
eternity;
and the bird-seed aisles are always full
of somewhat seedy people
all the time,
but we have brought them tragedy as well;
the Willow Flycatcher may soon
no longer play the field
and the Yellow-Breasted Chats
may not cluck or cackle
as much as you have heard

but I will feed them still
with no religious purpose
after all.

Mark Fischweicher has been involved with poetry all his life. As an elementary, junior high school, high school and adult educator he has published poems at all those levels and has taught courses on the Beats, the Black Mountain Poets, Ezra Pound, and The New York School of Poets. 

Theban Shocker

by

by Stewart Alter

What tabloid today wouldn’t long to tell
“Cult Mom and Aunts Rip Son to Shreds!”
How Pentheus died at the Bacchanal
When they thought him a boar
And then tore off his head.

This story surely would lead the news,
“King who Defied the God is Slain!”
They’d replay his speeches and interviews
From his famous attacks
On Bacchus’s train.

How online comments could fuel that debate,
“Killers or Victim, Whose Crime was Worse?”
For didn’t this king seek to violate
A god’s sacred rite
In spite of a curse?

When the TV talkers tackle this theme,
“Men and Mothers They Don’t Understand,”
Could they ever explain that feral dream
Of family bonds abandoned,
Lured by a tambourine band.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

The Businessman’s Lament

by

by Stewart Alter

After he dies, he will finally
Have time to spend with his family.
He vows presence and patience
As he listens and delves,
And grows closer than
Their own thoughts to themselves.
No more flights abroad,
No separate memories stored,
No more windowed wonders
While adrift aboard.
He will get to the heart of things.
Study how each behaves,
Exploring even their darkest caves.
He will seep through their soil,
Embed in their clay,
Live in the liquid dream
Shaping their glass of day.
Yes, he will use his time well,
Unseen, but committed to stay,
Becoming the chemistry
Their clouds employ to play.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.

Misplaced

by

by Stewart Alter

We were no longer talking
About the field across the river,
The one with the giant rock emerging
Out of the ground at a funny angle.
We agreed it would be tempting
To slide down that slope together
When the snow covered its jagged edges.
And we agreed also that the rock
Was exposed for one of two reasons–
Either the grass’s frantic fingers had
Lost their grip on this prow, upside down
To us, as it steered the earth around
On its axis–or else it was
A monumental sculpture from ancient times
Which, like the glass shard in the garden
Near the house, would keep rising,
Revealing the bridge of the nose
Of a huge broken bust
Whose forehead is now the sky.

Suddenly we were talking instead
About my misplaced tie, the one
That you picked out for me. I have searched
Everywhere, retraced my steps three or four
Times, rummaged through every drawer
And closet, and looked into the shadow
Beneath the bed, but have come up with nothing.
Except that I do remember
The last time I saw it,
Resting there on a chair.
I studied it, asking, “Is that really me?”
Just as one casual random doubt among many,
Like one arthritic brown leaf
Swirled among many, and it seems
This really is how things get lost.

Stewart Alter, who joined LP2 in the Fall of 2020, has been writing poetry and painting intermittently before, during and now after a long career in business journalism and corporate communications.