Inside The Hearts' Walls

Ages go and history flows
ever repeating and growing.
Common mores get wound up and disdain,
then relax, relearn to empathize
with a lyrical writer's life passion.

Could any sanity have expected,
predicted, or dreamed,
that in two-point-five thousand years
your ardor would not be forgotten?

Yet still in the heaps
of a library's deeps
a peruser will find
a sweetbitter mind,

How could writing so ancient
and yet so fervent be?
Neglected, eponymized Sappho,
would you have selected me?

By Turtle Shell

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One of 1-25-11's "selecting a reader" poems.

What if my reader couldn't read at all?
Someone less fortunate than you and I.
Whether they be a he or a she, it doesn't matter to me.
They'd look at the canvas that holds my thoughts.
They (my words) would be open to interpretation,
After all my reader can't read.
They'd be words of inspiration, an answer to prayer.
They'd be conversation on a rainy day.
They'd be the idea of 'nothing is impossible'.
And so my reader, the he or she, they'd learn to read.
And they'd find my poem was exactly what they need.

By Erin Merrell

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One of 1-25-11's "selecting a reader" poems.  This one was sent to The Commuter for publication.

Telephone Repairman
by Joseph Millar


All morning in the February light
he has been mending cable,
splicing the pairs of wires together
according to their colors,
white-blue to white-blue
violet-slate to violet-slate,
in the warehouse attic by the river.

When he is finished
the messages will flow along the line:
thank you for the gift,
please come to the baptism,
the bill is now past due :
voices that flicker and gleam back and forth
across the tracer-colored wires.

We live so much of our lives
without telling anyone,
going out before dawn,
working all day by ourselves,
shaking our heads in silence
at the news on the radio.
He thinks of the many signals
flying in the air around him
the syllables fluttering,
saying please love me,
from continent to continent
over the curve of the earth.

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The prompt for next week is: "We live so much of our lives without telling anyone".

Also, at next week's club meeting we will be viewing photos taken by students in the photography department (I think), and we will each get to choose one to write a poem on. After the club's loyal members show up to take their pick next Tuesday, I'll try to post the pictures or links to them online so that everyone else can pick at our scraps perhaps choose one to write about as well.

This was just submitted by a friend of the LBCC Poetry Club. A bit early, but hey, why not?

Selecting A Reader

She is as naked as I am
and passionate
about show don't tell.

For club members who wish to read a poem at the upcoming (Thursday, March 10, 2011 @ 7:30PM) choir concert, the due date for submission of your work is Tuesday, February 22.  Remember, we want one to one-and-a-half minutes long, and language suitable for general audiences.


I feel a little weird that the singers get have to sing songs written by others, but we poets are expected get to use our own original work at this event. It is of course a great honor and privilege, but I'm worrying about whether or not I'll be capable of writing anything worthy of reciting to a potentially sold-out auditorium. If I were allowed to just memorize and perform Annabel Lee (for example) I would at least know that I had material to share that's worthy of such attention. But will anything I've written or will write be worthy to take up the time of such a crowd? Oh well. It might be. I've still got time to work on it.

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will.

Ted Kooser

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The prompt for 1-25-11's club meeting is "selecting a reader".  If you could have exactly one person read your poetry, who would it be?

by Turtle Shell


In studying the difference
between solitude and loneliness
I'm wondering if grins
are interludes and only this.
I amble past people
a hedge 'round my soul,
brambles that creep 'till
I've edged down a hole.


Solitude is having the time and space to work on your project until you get it juuuuuust right.
Loneliness is wishing you had someone to show what a good job you did.

Solitude is being in a place where you could strip naked and no one but you would care.
Loneliness is wishing someone cared.

I've been studying the difference
between solitude and loneliness
a bit too much lately.
I wish I could stop.

White Towels


I have been studying the difference
between solitude and loneliness,
telling the story of my life
to the clean white towels taken warm from the dryer.
I carry them through the house
as though they were my children
asleep in my arms.

-Richard Jones

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This is our prompt for next week, January 18, 2011. Specifically:

"I have been studying the difference
between solitude and loneliness,"

Surprise Surprise


Rumble and tremor and then,
The concrete city falls.
A population over a million... decimated,
Ten percent die under broken, crushing walls.

Isn't ground supposed to be solid?
Shouldn't home be a safe place to go?
Can you trust the ground again, or buildings,
When they've killed people you know?

We don't like to be surprised like this,
And so internalize the fear and pain and worse,
Awaiting the next one, expectation lays within,
A hard and heavy curse.

Was that shaking just now real,
Or was it only in my mind?
You keep a glass of water by your bed,
To know if you need to rush outside.

Many have trouble sleeping,
Some refuse to go inside.
But when Earth itself tries to kill us,
Where can we possibly hide?

If I ever left Corvallis


If I ever left you,
‘  I would never be the same,
   I would never quite recover,
   I might somehow lose my name.
   I could not forget your colors--
   Your soft and sporty gray,
    Or those cheesy chunky snowflakes,
    You bring out each Christmas Day,
    Or that pink you say is salmon,
    Or that gold you say is brown,
    You’re my gold and salmon heartbreak,
    I just can’t let you down.
    So many scents are my reminders,
    Of all the things we were,’
    Although when I try to bring to mind,
    They smudge and smooch and blur.
     The rubber tired pavement,
     The sweet fresh scent of lawn,
     The occasional whiff of sultry smoke,
      Oh, I’ll miss you when I’m gone!
       If I ever left you,
       I would never quite forget,
      The way you act on game day,
      Like you owe the crowds a debt.
       The rush the roar the shouting,
       Your orange and black and pride,
        I always groaned hrmmph outwardly,
        But I was proud of you inside,
        For all you are you’re not yet,
        But someday you’ll become,
        And grow and change and change and grow
        And somehow still seem young,
        So if ever again I hear that song,
        That one night became ours,
        When the old man with the violin,
        Played underneath the stars,
        If I hear that song some someday hour,
        On an old forgotten stair,
        Or an old forgotten park bench,
        It will haul me back right there,
        To all our times at schools and dances,
        And rainy old busstops,
        Or our red umbrella moments,
        On the way to coffee shops,
‘       But now that I am leaving you
        To help me dull the pain,
       I  pulled out  my friends sound advice,
        Saved for penniless days or rain
       That sometimes yeah you fall in love,
        Then go your separate ways,
   It hurts and aches but snap it heals,
    And you start fresh again one day.
   Yet maybe now even as I write this
     I finally see the light,
    Because I think inside,  wise as she was,,
    My friend must not be right ,
   So maybe instead I‘ll tell her so,
    That this isn’t what you thought,
     You made it sound so easy,
     But love is simply not….

         or…..
                     at least

                                    not when you’re in love with

                                                       a
                                                                    whole

                                                                                         entire

                                                                                                town.

(you’re my ebony orange darling and I just can’t let you down.)

"What will you do when you become a top executive in a large company?" my textbook asks me, deadpan.

The topic is Business Ethics.
The question is not entirely facetious,
And the presumption is enormous.

When I become a top executive in a large company...
Is that who I'll be?
Is that who I am?
I should know the answer to this, if anyone should.

Should I dream up an exciting future for myself,
Call it a goal, and in so doing, in that instant,
Resign myself to the sacrifice of all other conflicting dreams?

Am I arrogant enough to call my goals expectations?
No. I've made that mistake before.

So, who will I be? Who will I become?
Sometimes I have to be okay with the answer,
'I don't know.'

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By Turtle Shell

Our prompt for January 11's meeting is: "What happens next is a complete surprise"

Apparently it's from a famous poem that we're not allowed to know about yet. So write your poem before you google the prompt, lest your inspiration be tainted.

Edit: Okay, here's the poem:

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Lola Haskins - Dearborn North Apartments

Chicago, Illinois

Rows of rectangles rise, set into brick.
And in every rectangle, there is a lamp.
Why should there be a lamp in every window?
Because in all this wide city, there is not
enough light. Because the young in the world
are crazy for light and the old are afraid
it will leave them. Because whoever you are,
if you come home late but it looks like noon,
you won't tense at the click as you walk in
which is probably after all only the heat
coming on, or the floorboards settling.
So when you fling your coat to its peg in
the hall, and kick off your heels, and unzip
your black velvet at that odd vee'd angle as if
someone were twisting your arm from behind,
then reach inside the closet for a hanger,
just to the dark left where the dresses live,
what happens next is a complete surprise.