Category: Uncategorized

Poet Ed Ahern (DEEP WOODS)

Poet Kelly Loraine Stearns (RUST)

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

For my Granny, Charlotte (1932-2021)

A clear cup half-filled with water stood
on the table, glistening with anticipation.

Outside, light blue and purple bloomed from stems.
Charlotte’s careful eyes zoned in on the bush across
the street and waited for the right time to strike.
Early April breeze carried the lilac sweetness

through the town. She analyzed their cloy
smell, toes dug into her property line.
The bush clogged her eyes with nostalgia:
this one was smaller than the ones she had years before, that grew

as tall as her house. Those were poisoned by the Patuxent
River runoff, but these had an even stronger will than she did.
The creaky picnic table housed her tools—dirt caked
scissors and a bottle of Cherry Coke.

Veins collapsed with a snip; the wood had started to die,
but the flowers grew more vibrant against her transparent hands,
and rattled, anxious to find a new home.
“Granny, what are you doing?” A curious child called out.

“Taking your Lilacs!” She skirted back onto her property,
a caffeine skip in her step.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

How did I get here
In a place so barren
Barefoot, standing in coals
Wandering, while flesh burns
And denying it hurts
Dark love molded me unrecognizable
Clinging to the very thing that ails me
This relationship that wafts of rot
Molded at the core
How can it be
Turning from self in pain
Heart’s capacity to withstand the unbearable
And stay, still, stuck
A dead tree whose roots sink deep
Down, down into the abyss
To hell took a journey
Heat rising, like time ticking
I couldn’t feel the sting
Edges crisping slowly
Until I’m engulfed in flames
Red hot with anguish
I called it by another name
Not amour, or grit, or strength
All what’s soft withered away
Until the squeals halt to silence
And the last crackle pops
The final fleeting song
So just the shell is left
Shadow of a woman
Soot of grey and black
The ashes of hopes and dreams
Fall to my feet infront of me

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

Well, well, well, now whatever did I just see,
Chuggin’ along out on old Route Thirty-three?
A Panda Bear in a Honda – could it be?
And he was pushing a big, old, blue RV.

His paws on the steering wheel seemed out of place,
As did the fuzzy smile on his fuzzy face,
Beneath his Santa hat with a holly sprig,
Puttin’ along, pushing that RV so big.

I’d passed country mailboxes with wreaths bedecked,
That’s the seasonal joy I’d come to expect;
Not a Panda, with a red bow ’round his neck,
Helping a fellow traveler on his trek.

When I passed him by, I knew then what I saw;
A rolling prank by a gray-haired grand-pa-pa.
That Panda’s car wasn’t pushing, no, no, no!
His Honda was just a vehicle in tow.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

There are places beyond man’s illumination
when the campfire is embers and ashes,
when phones and flashlights rest in batteries,
when the moon has sunk or not yet risen,
when satellites and planes are delinquent.
In those rare, dark interludes one sees
the omnipresence of uncountable glows
and hears the whisperings of the stars.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

God took a wand
Dipped it into the life-giving liquid
And breathed this foam into
A giant bubble.
Surface tension growing and stretching
Clusters of bubbles forming within.
Stochastic processes
Vacuum fluctuations
Or genius planning?
It swelled and stretched
And undulated and dilated
Until it snapped
Scattering its contents forth,
Multiverses now nestled in hills and valleys
Of time and space
Twisting back upon themselves
Energies swirling ever faster.
Creating duplications of us!
Identical people, other people
Exactly like us down to the last cell!
Physical and mental copies
Thinking our thoughts
Moving in our bodies
Thinking they are us!
Living parallel existences
In parallel universes.
And thinking that they are us!
The multiverse
Really, waves in space.
Infinitely large
Replicating fractals
With more of us here
And more of us there.
The birth of our universe
Might have been less significant than we thought
Or much greater than we ever imagined.
All of our versions
In different manifestations,
Sometimes feeling alone and lonely,
Sometimes connected and loved.
Never imagining the possibilities
Of the bubble,
The multiverse,
The parallel me, us, we, and even you!
We ask ourselves now
(speaking, thinking simultaneously and not knowing it
yet truth prevails because it is)
Are we are part of a bigger … bath?
What about my “others”?
Would she (or they) be me
Or is she (or they) distinctly the same and different
At the same time?
Do I take myself seriously
When I know that I’m out there
Succeeding, perhaps, even as I fail here?
Is there a version of me that will survive
Whatever I do?
Is immortality out there
In the cradle of dreams and promises?
Did God create each of us
Reflecting, wobbling, floating, bobbing
Encased in iridescence—or not?
Heaven, a kingdom of magical orbs
Fragile, surviving, protected
Reflecting souls that are not dispensable
That are as unique as snowflakes?
The creator sighs, smiles, and …
Dips the wand once more.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I. Prairie Roots

Vast sky above, blue;
sea all around, green
waves of grass under wind,
the grown man stood
thinking of decades gone
when he was young
and another man who
stood here too.
Both linked by more
than one can say:
love and genes;
one paved the way
for generations
of the other’s life.
Immigrant here
and great grandson
on the same spot
of prairie land and love.

II. Challenge to….

A tiny house stands
old, weathered, abandoned
now – only evidence of life
and hope once here,
but life, and weather,
proved too hard.
The boast that trees
would bring rain
was not true.
Thousands of trees died trying.
Farmers moved on
to find rain
and new hopes
again and again.
Only a few could prosper
and stayed, but not farming.
We left
but for other reasons.

III Invisible Connections

The grandfather stood
where his great grandfather once
claimed land
over a century before,
though not a typical prairie tract
but on the edge
of a large shallow lake,
often dry.
The man cried,
the first to return
in all that time, but
now another link
to that man who
was special buddy
in his earliest years –
leaving behind his name,
his genes, and love
for his mother tongue.

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

i love you.
your orange hues amaze me.
Please. Don’t die.

i adore you.
God blessed you with speckles
of white in the rim of your wings.
Please. Don’t go.

Even though I laid eyes on you
for a mere second,
I was hypnotized by your beauty.
All butterflies are unique —
but you, darling, stand out amongst them all.

There will never be another like you.

Which is why
I would even beg to God,
who decides to give and take away,
to keep you for a little longer.
The ones who haven’t been born
need to see how beautiful you are.

So please…
I love you.
I adore you.
Please. Don’t die.

Please. Don’t go.

— Leslie Rwigyema