Inside The Hearts' Walls

Hello all,

The deadline for the "Words and Pictures" photo/poem exhibit poetry submissions is Tuesday, March 1 before noon.

Here are the guidelines for submission:

1) Send me a word doc of your poem(s). Include 1) your name, 2) the title of your poem and 3) the photographer's initials and photo title (e.g. RB Confluence).

2) Attend our poetry club meeting on Tuesday, March 1 in the Hot Shot Cafe and bring a hard copy of your poems for submission so that we can read through our collection together and make final decisions on which poems to forward to Rich Bergeman.

If you're not able to attend, please please let me know asap. Also, it's essential that you send me your poem submissions by Monday afternoon, preferably right now so that I can be certain I can open and work with your documents.

3) Over the last month, several of you have passed poetry my way. Thank you! But please know that I'm starting from scratch here now as we go forward with our final submissions. Disregard anything you've sent me before. Start fresh.

Finally, I'd really appreciate hearing back from each one of you asap. Please let me know 1) if you plan to attend Tuesday's meeting and 2) how many poems you will be submitting.

Thanks so much for acting on this request. And thanks so much for your poetry and your passion!!!

Robin
Robin.Havenick@linnbenton.edu

I haven't been getting very many poetry submissions of late (probably due to all of our highly urgent projects, hopefully this will change in a week or two), so today I'm posting a couple of poems mostly unrelated to any actual "Club" activity.

Immediately below is something I rescued out of my ineptly-long-ignored spam-box, sent to me almost a month ago by a friend of the LBCC Poetry Club as a sort-of response to the waterfall painting poem posted several weeks back.  A bit further down is a cold-weather wish offered up by some random student.


Gravity
by Danny Earl Simmons

It is the exact same gravity
that mercilessly drags
the Niagara into a rumbling
sockdolager of a natural wonder
as puckishly pulls the pacifier
from my baby boy’s drowsy lips
the second we drift into sleep.
I liked gravity better on the honeymoon.

I cursed the snow
from the curved out well
of an ancient fir
having just landed
in the one tiny place
lacking enough snow
to cushion my fall

Angel of Harlem
ran through my head
while a ticklish thread of blood
ran down the back of it

How will this shade of red
look on my scarf?

And what’s Bono doing here
floating among all of these stars?

But survival has a way
of changing our outlook
and since a few years have passed
I want the heavens to open up
and send us the mother
of all snow days


~ J. D. Mackenzie
 
--------------------
 
A poem sent in by an LBCC student in the spirit of our winter weather.

Hey everyone, for those of you submitting a poem that you wish to read at the upcoming concert, those are due NOW.  Or potentially tomorrow would be acceptable as well.  In any case, send them ASAP to James Reddan, reddanj@linnbenton.edu

Slightly less, but still pretty urgent: Picture poems are due in less than a week. The deadline is Tuesday, March 1st, but at this point Robin would like you to send them to her as soon as possible as well. Send them to robin.havenick@linnbenton.edu as an attached Word document, formatted the way you want them to appear, presumably.

You lived so much of your life without telling anyone,
until one day when you couldn’t keep it in any longer,
and then your world turned upside down.
Oh well. Right side up is highly over-rated.

By rk

--------------------

Another poem on the "We live so much of our lives without telling anyone" prompt.  This one was also the club's submission to the Commuter this week.

I entered this world questioning, and wanting to know,
and met a bright auric fog, with a warm golden glow.
Each radiant dot a new thought, a new place to begin?
So much to absorb, I leapt, and dove in.

Now I wonder, 'who am I, to think myself so good,
if that's all I've been taught, and ever understood?'
When there's light all around, from the sky and the sea,
how can I tell, if any light, comes from me?

It floors me that Newton, so great among all those who search,
wrote that what wonders HE saw, was only thanks to the perch,
he found on the shoulders, of those giants before.
If that's so then, could any of us claim even a little bit more?

Could I write half as well, without all the great authors I've read?
Could I sing any songs, without others' songs in my head?
The light all around me, that dazzles and warms,
I see now, I think, its source and its forms.

A billion dim dots, make an awestriking whole,
each person not yet forgotten, beams rays on my soul.
Even those deep in the past, and lost to antiquity,
their lights still refract, in an anonymous ubiquity.

It seems a culture is built, a speck at a time,
added to through the ages, by lights of minds much like mine.
Philosophy and science, technology and art,
everything advances, by piece and by part.

And so it must be, that in our every endeavor,
the great things that we make, we make working together.
Thus all ambitions I plan, and any craft I might try,
like everyone else, I'll be aided, by the billion lights in the sky.

By Turtle Shell

--------------------

This is one of the poems written for submission to perhaps be read during the choir concert. Whether or not it will be one of the ones chosen has not yet been decided.

     *    Choir concert
               o    Feb 22: Deadline for poetry submissions
               o    March 10: Choir concert


     *    Unity Celebration / Black History Month
                o    February 22 @ 3:00: DAC please bring favorite poems in the
                      tradition, ones that celebrate our united "diversity", or any voice
                      that needs to be heard.
     *    Poetry/Photo Exhibition
                o    http://www.flickr.com/photos/59025797@N05/sets/72157625832662421/
                o    Now till Feb 22: select three photos from the above and write your
                      poems in response (no longer than 25 lines please).
                o    Now till Mar 1: because we won't have meeting opportunities to
                      gather and read the poems we're writing, please share them with
                      Robin by sending them as attached word docs:
                      robin.havenick@linnbenton.edu
                o    March 1: submission deadline and final group selection of the 15
                      poems for the exhibit

Next Tuesday's meeting will be in NSH-209 again.  Once again we have no prompt, but those who intend to submit a poem for reading at the choir concert should bring them to this meeting. Everyone else should probably be working on their picture-prompt poems.

Based on a nearly completely undemocratic decision-making process, I sent Things I've Learned From a Waterfall Painting as the Poetry Club's submission to the Commuter for the week.  You remember this poem, right?:

http://insidetheheartswalls.blogspot.com/2011/02/things-ive-learned-from-waterfall.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/59025797@N05/sets/72157625832662421/

We need to let Robin know our choices by Monday. Pick the three (or more) that you think you could write a poem on, and then send your choices in. If you don't know how to get in touch with Robin, send your choices to me and I'll pass them along.

The actual poems for these pictures apparently don't need to be written until March 1, although this is the only new prompt we have this week.

The club today voted to send Dan Simmon's poem as our submission to the Commuter this week.


Can You Tell?

by Danny Earl Simmons

I could tell you
but you
might have to kill
me
if I told you

I am one
flinch
after another
flinch
all day long

Why do I squint?

I am from space
I am from the between of things
jobs(I am)jobs
girlfriends(I am)girlfriends
apartments(I am)apartments
doctors(I am)doctors
rocks(I am)and hard places

I need
to tell
someone
I need
a gun.

So much of our lives we spend with
an internal monologue our only company
grinding at the loneliness inside.
But don't worry, it's not just you.
This is how everyone feels sometimes.

So you're not alone those hours every day,
when you're so very alone
and nobody cares.
We do care. We all know what it's like,
feeling lonely. We're just busy,
worrying about our own loneliness, just like you.

We're each all too familiar
with the dark pit of despair.
It'd be easy enough to climb out of,
if only someone out there, would lend you a hand up;
which they'd surely do,
if they'd ever just see you there in it.

Nobody's ever interested in you,
physically or intellectually,
it's what you want more than anything
what we all do,
but you're just another cog to them,
one more human obstacle
to be dealt with or avoided.

When you are stabbed again and again,
by the frustration and pain,
despair and hate,
We all know how that feels.

We all know the fantasies that bloom,
your mind shying away from the dangerously possible,
sliding to the bigger ideas, the better catharsis.
Dream of rending the planet,
ripping the whole thing to shreds with your hands,
tearing civilization till it pops at the seams,
smooshing all the little bits that fall off,
crushing everyone and everything,
and bringing an end to the worthless world that has no time or patience
for someone like you, and your pathetic loneliness.

The loathing and rage
shrieking and screaming inside
while outside you're ever more civil, more quiet and numb.
madness and chaos,
venom and bile,
fiery and fury,
fatigue, and exhaustion.

Don't worry, it isn't just you.
I feel that way too sometimes. We all do.
Even if you never tell anyone,
We all still understand.

By Turtle Shell

--------------------

One of 2-1-11's "We live so much of our lives without telling anyone." poems.