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Out Loud
Selection of the Month
2012
Poem of
the Month (March)
"Dreams
and Other Realities"
by
Mike
Bayles
darkness of patches
speckles early light
horizon over sun
calls morning
promises and doubts
dreams and other realities
doubts and promises
morning calls
sun over horizon
light early speckles
patches of darkness
Poem of the Month (January)
"Ruling of
the heart"
by Sheri
Grutz
I’ve
made you a lightweight crown
with red glowing lights of cell towers
and stars at night. You don’t need
a chip in your head to communicate
with me. I’ve put you out of reach.
I’ve made you impossible as a kingdom
we call heaven. I’ve given you power
and authority. I’ve given you all the
serving of a century so that you would
never go hungry, never die of thirst.
There is a song that we sing in church,
“And they’ll know we are Christians
by our love, by our love...” I have
loved like the moon is locked around
your waist when you won the prize
fight of every poet, dreamtake of the
cup. I have loved with nothing but
a nickel for the organ to play by
itself and the little grooves on the paper
were a million strikes of 12 o’clock.
I have loved like the sun was a friend
and the green was a long talk about
Hemingway. I have loved the you that
never became a giant, never became an
enemy, never became a leaver. I have
loved the you that wasn’t, that isn’t,
that exists only because of folly. You
were always the image of the absolute
theory that I was one indefinite duration.
You were the image of my best dead air.
You were something timely and unsaid.
You were more often part of the love an
instant too late.
2011
Poem of the Month (December)
"Mina"
By Jason Cant
You can't tell me
Looking through my eyes
That you don't feel anything.
Who doesn't feel the
Pale waters of the ocean
Splash upon their
Face from time to time,
Ecstasy itself relative
To time.
Now tell me who speaks
Your language? Who's language?
Our language, which does not
Even have to rhyme with
Beat.
But you, beat princess
Are a world unto yourself.
When our worlds collide
The world doesn't have
A price, and what prevails
Are new civilizations,
Cut not by reason, but
Our own imaginative meanderings.
And you, nightingale meanderings.
And you, nightingale woman
And me this solitary thing
Are bound not by artistic impulse
But the meaning of our breath.
Poem of the Month (November)
"Cantico Del Boho"
By Jason Cant
The thought that a bohemian would
marry
And remain committed
To a single partner
Makes me laugh
The thought that a bohemian
The thought that a bohemian
The thought that a bohemian would
marry
And remain committed
To a single partner
Makes me laugh
Ellen Dycious, now lettest thou thy
hipster
Now letterst thou thy hipster
Reject Rimbaud, reject Shelly and
Keats
And spread your legs
For a trendy poseur
The thought that a bohemian
The thought that a bohemian
The thought that a bohemian would
marry
And remain committed to a single
partner
HA! HA!
Makes me laugh.
Reading of the Month (October)
"Ex-Communication 10/27/2011"
By T.R. McKay
Ann sat on
the park bench with her cell phone in her
hand. She wished she was Catholic. Then
she’d understand excommunication. That’s
what she needed. Phil said he’d be here at
ten o’clock.
Meeting at
the park was his idea. He couldn’t take
Josh for the weekend. He said the park
would be perfect. At the park, they could
play ball and get ice cream. After all,
Josh would be eligible for Little League
next year.
Ann glanced
at the clock on her phone. Ten
twenty-eight. To hell with Phil.
Excommunicate him. That’s what she needed.
Phil out of her life. She looked over at
Josh standing next to the backstop clutching
his
baseball glove. Ann started to punch Phil’s
number into her phone.
Poem
of the Month (August)
"Thoughts are a Pop Culture
A-Bomb 8/23/11"
By Derek A Fuller
My thoughts are
mine, and mine alone.
I might share them, but I’ll snatch them back.
Pick up my ball and go home.
See my thoughts are dangerous, not in the Sean Connery ,
Bond, James Bond sense though.
Sometimes they are a secret and as hard to crack as a
Mi6 agent.
No my thoughts are of the Crane King, wax on wax off,
judo chop varity.
They are upfront and rarely pulled.
So that’s why I have to snatch them back.
So they don’t get me in trouble.
Then sometimes it’s fun to let them go and latch on for
the ride.
See ya Space Cowboy.
Poem
of the Month (July)
"Descension: The Journey to
Our Better Home"
By Jason Cant
When the green earth
Fades to a color opaque,
And the golden sun reveals itself as myth,
Then you speak the mystery,
The language of the dead.
And I am at home with the mystery,
What sings to us
In the dream of life.
The eternal, she is the ocean,
The dream of love that never was,
Never will be in the
Kingdom of our better home.
And a better home?
Death cannot have it any other way.
What the soil speaks of
Is the tragedy of an
Early grave, and the tears
That water the tree of life
A mysterious creator planted,
Then left behind,
With no knowledge of a greater god,
But the image of man
Descending with the sun,
As if it was never born.
Poem
of the Month (June)
"Randomly Held"
By Trinity Eiting
Am I a doll
then I should fix myself
accordingly
must I ask why?
Isn’t it inevitable
the poses, the stricture;
the frigid nature I possess
a crucible of folly
enrgeticness?
I can play house dutifully
or viciously,
how may you want it.
Of course it’s all abstracted
and fractured gathered like art.
You would need to pick up
each piece according to your own purpose
then send it back again into the vacuous void
or put Humpty Dumpty back together
for the first time.
But I’m not so sure it would work,
So for now we will keep our keepsakes
randomly held.
Congratulations
to Andrew Ziegler!
His poem "The Hug Drug" won the Poem of the Year for
2010!
Read his poem below:
Poem
of the Year (2010)
"The Hug Drug"
By Andrew Ziegler
Hugs are the gateway drugs
of love.
Sure, you'll start with a
slight taste of the soft embrace, but soon
you'll need two or three or
even four hugs to
equal the joy of just one
hug.
Indeed, after awhile,
only the pure stuff will hit
the spot. Which means that watered-down,
weak and awkward excuses for
hugs like
the side-ways scoop and hook
hug, the hasty hand shake turned thug-hug, or the
sneak attack ninja half-hug
will no longer fly,
won't get you high; no. To
satisfy,
it's got to be straight on
and pure and
those hugs inject so much
love drug
that you'll need
both arms outstretched to get the same narcotic effect.
Yeah it
feels good at first but
finding a dealer at any hour
of the night will
become an increasingly
Herculean effort. And I'm saying like
Zen riddles of one hand
clapping will be
easier to understand than
finding and wrapping your
self-same sore
arms around a good hug-drug dealer.
Especially
if you're like me and looking to
soothe your mind at odd
hours for fixes between
the lines of pages or on the
lines of my hands where
life is rumored to be
written. And I have spent
countless hours
contemplating the lines in my hands,
looking for ways to reshape
the patterns and curves that crease across my skin
because
I’m tired of feeling
helpless against this emotional addiction written along
my lines
and I’m
tired of wondering why I’m
attached to
frustratingly finite
feelings, fleeting, flaking, futilely failing, falling
away
freaking A! I just
wanted
a hug, but now I’m stuck
scrutinizing the lines in my
hand, searching for ways to
diminish this addiction, but
these lines won’t bend; I
can’t change the patterns of my skin.
Even though I’ve tried to
rewrite these lines a thousand times, especially when
I’ve
lost touch with the hug drug
dealers and instead switch to
a different source to get my
fix like switching to
burning spoons of rage to
inject into my veins or
switching to rolling my
joints and voice into strict silence where I’ll
inhale breathless and exhale
isolation or like
switching to trading in my
lips for a loveless kiss, but
nothing can bring bliss like
the hug drug.
I try to get clean, but that
just makes a mess, so
I guess the only steps left
will lead towards acceptance of this
hand-written addiction
to the love hug drug.
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