Poetry Contest

The ABC's of School Shooting Massacres

Assault weapons in schools are too commonplace now!
Bloodstained walls in our classrooms are accepted somehow…
Chaos rules our new nightmare, how can this be true?
Deadly weapons in hands of a misguided few.

Everyday we watch lives that are stolen away.
Families cry out in horror…no words left to say!
Gun laws fall short, feeding lobbyists’ greed!
Horrific live coverage makes bereft parents plead!

Innocent victims shot down now with no chance to fight!
Just statistics and tears from this non-ending blight.
Killing weapons bring suffering mixed with horror & pain,
Lax rules and blind leaders make us face this again!

Mass shootings strike fear in those “captured” inside.
Not a good place to stay when there’s no place to hide.
Our outrage lifts prayers Lord, but nothing has changed!
Precious lives lost in seconds, due to minds half-deranged!

Questionable actions take lives in ways vile and abhorred,
Red Flag Laws in most states are all being ignored.
Silence drowned out by bullets and screaming galore,
Teachers shielding their students with harsh cries of, “No More!”

Unbearable pain felt by those left behind.
Violence selfishly planned in this hideous crime.
Wiping tears from shocked faces, normalcy under attack!
Xenophobic crude actions, yet, weak leaders sit back!

Yearning for a long life for each boy and each girl.
Zealots lay down your weapons…let us pray for our world!

P.S. - Recent studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) now verify that guns are the leading cause of death in U.S. among kids and teens!

Претензий к человечку нет *

Pronounced the doctor after long review
of our space baby: tiny body magnified
onto a screen, thru tiny sounds thru gel
spread coldly on wife’s tum, to seen, slight outline
of a wispy, chalky, perfect human being
against the blackness of outerine space.
Not even two inches long: a clot, a dot, but having
already now a universe of flesh and bone:
a face —“my nose, your froggy eyes” says spouse—
a body, limbs and (count them!) toes
and fingers, organs all, down to flowing blood,
down to brain in butterflying form,
down to the inner chambers of the heart.

All solidly within the norms of humanness.
And though this child of ours is still unsexed
a pelvic inclination brings our doctor to her find:
A dyévochka. I translate it to her: A girl.
And my love’s eyelids pour with wet-hot tears.
A happiness in human half defined,
meanwhile I calmly place a mental X
upon one half of chosen names—for me
our baby’s being hasn’t broken thru
from cosmic visit down into
the inner chambers of the heart.

And so I translate on: the jargon,
so much unknown. The doctor’s verdict:
Preténzeeyee k chilavyéchkoo nyet:
No faults to find with the humanette,
all blissfully, god-blessedly fit.
And here the doctor stays a pace her speech
and waits for sixty millimeter daughter,
who’s turning in her amniotic bed,
to come to rest. She settles down to nada.
She opens first her mouth and then her father’s:
Here, I saw her breathe; here, she stopped my breath.

*Russian, "No faults to find with the humanette"

I’m going to fly off some day
To Mars

Watch the horizon amongst copper dust and ancient rock

Then maybe I’ll fly off again
Explore a new planet

Leave the solar system
Never to be seen again

They may call me a lost astronaut
Somewhere up in space; unknown

But I’m home right here
Among the stars

My life is an error, so lovely,
The present is always Saturday
My heart is at the sunny beach
I imagine a foggy river in winter
I am in bed, in a tree
Reading a book and snoring the night away

Don't ask me to explain Passover or Easter or Ramadan;
or how George Floyd's family will ever forgive anyone.

Don't ask me how broken bones knit back together; or why a caterpillar melts into a goopy soup then emerges from the cocoon a butterly;
or what is holy.

Give these questions to the scientists and scholars and those with vast vocabularies and faith.

Give me, instead, a course in ordinary miracles:
A flock of birds in the neighbor's tree to awake the morning darkness with wordless hymns of dawn;
And breath after breath filling and leaving my lungs, effortlessly.
Then let me witness the moment the butterfly's wings finish drying, before they stretch full length and attempt flying.

Afer I learn to trust in these small things,
Let me sleep through a dreamless night;
Let me praise ordinary mysteries--pens with ink; the simple spelling of j-o-y and l-o-v-e;
Let me start at the beginning, again, with hands open and able to carry these wishes and hopes without worry for what slips through my fingers like sand.

I'll leave them where they fall
because this is the only miracle I know:
You do not have to carry it all.

There is a place of naught
In the dry valley
Where the air smells of rot;
Where the lepers flee.
Father told me that
It's no place for me
But I look down there at
That old leper-tree.
There's a pulpy amber drum,
Red,
That seems to glare at us from
The leper trail's end.
It sloughs from the
Old and scaly bark,
And when it stares back at me
I see countless darkened hearts.

Orange and beautiful
standing open to the sun.
Their petals dance in the light.
At the end of the day
they close their petals
and say good night.

I am from the cold mornings of the first frost,
Where all the seasons feel like winter.
I’m from hundreds of elk crossing over the hills
Every morning at dawn,
Leaving their tiny footprints in the freshly fallen snow.

I’m from passing moose on the front lawns on the way to school
And half days so we can get out early to ski
I’m from the shuffling noise of ski boots inside the gondolas
And the hours upon hours of ski school lessons.

I’m from that feeling of cold toes and fingers,
The relief of taking off my ski boots at a rest stop
To ease my aching feet,
The hot cocoa slowly reviving me and warming up my insides.

I am from risking the blistering cold on your fingers
To sneak some gummy worms and marshmallows on the chairlift.
From giggling with my friends going up
As we tried to slide the snow off our skis,

Clanging them together hoping they wouldn’t fall off.
I’m from getting home and going out the back to the hot tub,
The sensation of being warm
But with the cold air and snowflakes blowing all around.
I’m from the coffee shop at the end of the street every day after school,
The feeling of the hot toasted bagel against the cool cream cheese.

I’m from Utah,
I’m from what makes all these things home.

Gratitude, such a small thing, yet so powerful.
Be thankful for what you have and why you have it,
be thankful for who you meet and why you met them,
and be thankful for who you are and what makes you YOU!
Gratitude doesn't have to be hard, just give a little thanks to those
who helped you to get where you are now, and those who will help
you get further along.

We speak—hard white seeds,
little waxing moons
that slip

into turned soil
like polished stones
into a child’s pocket.

Pot bean,
succotash,
soup.

Our farmer
sowed us on
the coastal plain,

stood at the rumps
of his three bays
that ploughed the fields,

obedient troika
even his young sons
could drive.

The fields, cupped
on three sides
by mountains,

on the fourth—open
to the loamy ocean
with its tides of till and sow.

Buttery, earthy,
100 years ago
from this unlikely place

we fed most
of the world.
People were crazy for us.

Black tiles, and if I look long enough I can make them swim,
A game between me, myself,
And black tiles on the bathroom floor,
The only game to play when doubled over crying
Trying not to hurt so much,
Trying not to hate so much, but not that kind of hurt, not only.
My stomach contorting into new shapes,
I used to beg to die, beg God to die before I knew what
Either of those words meant
(Always one for melodrama.)
It used to scare her, what to do when
Waiting isn't painless.
I don't have that hurt anymore, not much anymore, but
I still shout that same sentiment.
Things stay the same, even if they change, even as they change
Nothing has truly changed.
Doubled over crying,
Arms, fingers like taut strings, trying to pull myself back into recognizable shapes,
Tears on black tiles on the bathroom floor,
Black tiles swimming.
Head banging,
I wanted her to notice me.
Pity is a thing one has to earn.
Sitting on a windowsill and thinking about concrete,
To young to operate outside of the allowed.
Secrets behind desks, screaming in pencil,
Erasable.
Nothing I've said has ever been true.
A home never to be lived in, towers
The neighbor cut the wires with safety scissors and
Gonna conjure up this time.
Nothing I've said has ever not been lies.
Every corner holds something for her, and it comes back to this, every time.
Before this I hadn't known her voice
And I said her name,
Tried to call her off and she didn't hear me,
Her eyes were filled with red and hate and hurt,
I need to be called off.
Cutting comments, I always know just what to say.
The sweet aftertaste of a fight I didn't want to win.
Someone was always going to get hurt.
Acid stains on black tiles,
Black tiles on the bathroom floor,
Tear stains in the grout between the tiles on the bathroom floor,
Memorizing the patterns of the tiles on the floor.
Someone was always going to get hurt.

My book is a world.
It has description which takes up my brain.
Turns it into a world into a graveyard into space?
It could be a real one it could be a fake. My book is a world it is a place.
Where I can be me and meet the characters face to face.
I can join the characters for adventure or live in sorrow and pain, my book is a world and helps describes what I am feeling.
My book is a world, happy, sad or scared I can have an adventure or simply be impaired.
Every day when I read whether I learn or I feel, I read to be me and not be ordeal.
My book is a world the world simply unfolds into a place around me a story is told.