The Member's Corner
The following works were done by our members. Enjoy, reflect, contemplate!
Get out that piece of paper and send us your own messages. Happy writing!
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU
Molly Tabachnikov
Middle, mean, median.
Average
Never!
I gravitate to the edges of the bell curve
(Keep to the right, please)
where the unusual, extraordinary, different
congregate.
And so I write poetry,
and play Scrabble against the computer.
and watch chick flicks and Trasformers,
and listen to acoustic guitars and balalaikas.
and make friends with the robins who gaurd the road.
I am not a mean girl.
Anything but.
MY SUMMER RETIREMNET VACATION - 2008
ELLIOT THAUL
What do you - when you're 92?
You get a bit lazy! - Your memory is hazy!
You don't hear a thing - when the cell phone rings
Old friends disappear - year after year.
You finds naps to relaxing - staying awake over taxing.
Mirrors don't lie! - Yes, it's you - Don't sigh!
Get up! Move around! - Call that new friend you found!
Meet for lunch! - Talk! - Tell a joke! - or - just walk!
Smile! --Let it linger a while!
Don't be scrappy! - Think happy!
Be wise! --- Philosophize!
Try to cook! - I just published a book!
92? - So what! - Old age! Tommyrot!
Here's the Bottom Line! - Let youyr constructive Ego Shine!
DISBELIEF
LINDA BRATCHER WLODYKA
Incremental pieces fall onto page,
pieces of words.
Poetry has pieces;
letter that flow into words
one follows another,
wordiness.
Edit, minimize,
take the wordy out of word.
Words that bind, cohere,
provoke. Pensive words,
left to the reader to decide
about a poem's potentiality.
Save for the space
that separates the words,
mosaics lie side by side
are bound by grout;
colorful, made of glass,
like fragile unsaid words.
Words that fill a vessel
leaks ink letters onto page;
"Mosaic shards mirror
reflecting artisan's face,"
while this poet's fingers bleed,
wordiness - disbelief.
POWER POINTS
DIANA GOMEZ
As an aging Baby Boomer
my idealism has more reality
more cynicism, more red flags
that it did 40 years ago.
I trusted more.
I believed civil rights for all
would be realized and change the world.
I did not understand yet the dynamics
of power and the varieties of its violence.
Civil rights are improved with one law
taken away with another.
Loopholes.
It is a bait and switch. A magicians skill.
Violence of Poverty, War, Crime, Fear Tactics
are permanent Power Points to control.
The power of those over life
be it government officials, health care workers
and even some clergy, have earned
my distrust.
I am not sure where listening was lost
and sounds bites of meaninglessness took over
or whether it is the posturing of animals
for control still reigns.
I, MOSAIC...
W. C. WAMPLER
Over the years, the pieces have assembled, of me.
So many little fragments, like crystals, through which I see.
The countless color filters of the things I've learned,
overlap in rainbows-
yet are separate as chips of stone, assembled together,
in a statue of this being. I, mosaic.
And I feel my breakable self rumble like fragile sand stone.
Time worn, weather beaten, gradually wearing away.
Yet then revealing my heart, a flawed crimson ruby,
reflecting delicate strength, and the shimmering light of life.
I feel my blood as lava, that bleeds out and hardens in the air,
yet replenishes itself form my deepest depths.
This, as my mind endeavors to see the world fairly,
through translucent black onyx widow.
A window tinted, even tainted, by the shadowy sculptors
of woe.
And even my precious love is formed of fractured dark blue
sapphire.
The facets uneven, rough cut, odd angled,
break the greatest light into scattered sparks and sparkles,
and distorted images of what could be beautiful.
Still, my spiritual vision is clear, industrial diamond,
which has no value for trade, and can only be a lens,
carved by me, by hand, ground and smoothed
over the course of mylifetime, to permit
the prismatic world to reassemble into a complete light,
and strengthen the mortar, which is my soul,
and hold together this animated statue of me in progress.
I, mosaic.
