Poetry Reading: Dreams… by Buffy Sammons

Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the winning poet:

What is the theme of your poem?

Being ill and bedridden for so long, these are the dreams that I have and they get me away from my reality. It’s my bucket list and really it’s my way out sometimes.

What motivated you to write this poem?

To give others that are in similar situations reasons to find Solutions or places to dream about and that they sometimes do come true. I want people to know that they’re not alone and there are ways to take your mind elsewhere sometimes.

How long have you been writing poetry?

I actually just recently found out that I was writing poems in 1st grade. I’m not saying that they were good poems, but they did rhyme so I guess prose was always a love of mine.

If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?

All of my family and loved ones lost.

What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a professional actor?

I am a disabled bedridden nurse and I am just an amateur poet prose just struck me and gave me a reason to get up each day.

Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

I actually write a lot because it calms my mind and helps me to relax because I don’t sleep much and it eases my pain along with painting. Most of my poems come in the middle of the night.

What is your passion in life?

As someone who took care of and watched her family and friends pass away I am a 45 year old that never knew how to slow down and smell the roses I just want to try to be kind to one another and pay it forward to others in similar situations I’m trying to set up a foundation because art and any form really saved my life and gave me a reason to wake up and try each morning and as long as God blesses me to give me those daily breaths I will continue to use them to try to do something for others and hopefully get better in the process.

Poetry Reading: eVu TPS, by Lawrence Klein

Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the winning poet:

What is the theme of your poem?

Self-Regulation using Biofeedback

What motivated you to write this poem?

The eVu-TPS plugs you into your Smart Phone for Self-Control

How long have you been writing poetry?

Since 1972 – for 45 years

If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?

Shakespeare

What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a professional actor?

To give it broader exposure. All my poetry could be used as Songs, and eVu-TPS is being put to music now.

Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

In 1974 I co-Authored Mind Over Muscle – Biofeedback Peak Performance Training System with Major Nory Laderoute, former Athletic Director of the Canadian Armed Forces Combat Training Centre in Gagetown N.B.

· I am in the process of writing the History of Sport Psychology / Sport Psychophysiology

· I wrote a Children’s book but have been too busy to publish it.

What is your passion in life?

Skiing and Sport Psychology – I’m 52 years a Ski Coach and Instructor, and Manufacturing Medical Instrumentation for 43 years. My Family, 2 daughters and wife.

Poetry Reading: Time Passing So Quickly, by Kayla Krilove

Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the winning poet:

What is the theme of your poem?

The theme of this poem is Coming of Age. It includes aspects of childhood, and the mental and physical acceptance of becoming an adult.

What motivated you to write this poem?

I wrote this poem the last week of high school. I was inspired because I had attended the same school for thirteen years of my life and was now moving into a world very unknown to me, and very outside my social and academic bubble. I wanted to write a piece that many other young adults could relate to, and I read it in front of my entire school on the last day.

How long have you been writing poetry?

I have always been writing, ever since six or seven years old. I’ve been making movies and writing silly poems all my childhood but it wasn’t until Sophomore and Junior years of high school that I became more serious about it. I took a Creative Writing course that opened up a whole new level of poetry skills for me. Since then, I have been writing poetry for my own pleasure.

If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?

I would have dinner with Sylvia Plath!

What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a professional actor?

I see my poem relating to many people and would love for it to reach many more through this poetry submission.

Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

I write short stories, scripts, and poems.

What is your passion in life?

My passion is to give my best to all aspects of my life. I have multiple passions in my life, writing being one of them. Yet, I would say my ability to give my best version and attention to each one is most important to me.

Poetry Reading: ME, by Jim Durkey

Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the winning poet:

What is the theme of your poem?

— Honor the song in your heart.

What motivated you to write this poem?

— My granddaughter had a learning disability and was shunned by her classmates.

How long have you been writing poetry?

— Since high school.

If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?

— My mother.

What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a professional actor?

— Perhaps someone listening to the poem may know of a young person who could benefit from reading it.

Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

— Screenplays and short stories.

What is your passion in life?

— To be able to spend more time writing.

Poetry: OLD ORDER by Rajnish Mishra

 Genre: Dark, Death, Fear, Friendship, Life, Love, Painful, Personality, Philosophical, Relationships, Sad, Society, Old and new.

 All old order is subject to decay,

they say and when fate summons,

old ways free fall. Heart-held loves,

friends, hatreds, foes, all, yes, all

give way to mighty time’s sway.

Indestructible, invincible,

grand youthful years, with each
passing year suffer wisdom’s

sedimentation, while marching on way,

time fills in fears, foreboding of future:

quite an accumulation! That knowledge

and fear lose all their power,
For lost is that fear –

a servant attentive.
For lost is that fear –

above head always hovering.
So, lost is the fear –

of not ever returning
As roots are cut now,

or withered; ineffective
pain.

Heart,

now hardened

is drained of that terror.

Short Bio:

Rajnish Mishra is a poet, writer, blogger and thinker. He has published seven books, six co-edited anthologies, twenty scholarly papers and poems in various journals, books and magazines. Few of his poems can be read at the following sites: https://www.poemhunter.com/, https://allpoetry.com, https://www.instagram.com/rajnishmishravns/, http://stanzaicstylings.blogspot.in,

His love for his city and his awareness of its effects on his psycho-social development led him to starting his own blog: rajnishmishravns.wordpress.com in 2011. The blog features both his academic writing and his writing on his city: the City of Light, Varanasi. Then, as he is a poet, and loves reading and talking about other people’s poems too, he started another blog: https://poetrypoeticspleasure.wordpress.com/. He runs an ezine: PPP Ezine to promote poetry and poets.

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Poetry: Addict by Himanshu Pandit

Genre:- Dark, Demons

 I now know the thrills…

I now know the meaning..

Of a weak will..

But the resistance has lost..

The weak will subdued by a farce..

A promise that was made..

No its not good,

It was fake..

I see myself in the mirror everytime..

Little by little getting lost…

In this self inflicted crime..

But where is the salvation, that i seek..

Where is the preacher,

That preached the promised land..

15 min. Of heaven and than..

Another day..

Of getting tormented in hell..

When this cycle will stop, You ask..

I don’t know..

But till then I hope to live..

So I can slit this demon throat..

While holding him by his wrist..

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Poetry: Brewstorm by Anmol Chitransh

Genre – heart break, heart ache, relationship, hurt.

Everyday there is a desire
When will my heart conspire
Against my belief
That love is not a relief

My medulla swore
To fill me with hate
To the core
Just for my sake

Heart is shattered enough
Cannot break me more
I will break down myself
Just embrace my core

Dont come so close
This soul is rusty and old
Not shallow and bold
Still naive and amateur

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Poetry: A Full Life of Narrow Streets by James Fitzpatrick

Genre: Romance, beauty, history, geography, love, wildlife, sad, Ireland, America, literature, books, defiance

 Beneath the broad columns of Herculean Pillar,
Weeps the springtime feather dance
Of freezing frothing blanket.
He lies on Irving’s rocks across the Henry,
Painting words of Freedom’s March across a furrowed brow,
Till tiredness creeps it’s feet on lonely eyes,
Counting mountains
As they frown down from above.

On the first crack of the distant Bell
A teary head raises from a bloody pillow,
And sings out the count, to defiant beats.
Flakes drift softly round a faraway moon,
As drizzle melts the lines of morning strollers,
With the hoofs their companions, embossed upon the heather.

His eyes close as he settles to dreams of futures possible,
Picturing rows of steaming turrets, sharpened blades
And crumbling fear, as they draw known faces on fancy paper.
He hears whispered talk of sagging brows and lobbing smiles,
Scribbling and Scripting our morning news where
New artisans paint Headlines in his head,
“Work, save, and Beg.
Make ends meet,
Work those streets,
Bare them writers, debaters,
Leaders, loiters,
Teeming with poor lice“.

Upset now, he straightens, filled with sculpted fear,
And flagging hope,
Devouring ideals of painful labour,
Darkened evenings and prose.
The Narrow Alleys echo his comrades screams,
‘They are Flogging the undesirables‘.

Cries of the deserted ring out
As sweat now pores on dirtied boots.
On A One page of women Jubilant,
Black Coffins swim across the oceans, and the Singing corpses chant the Voters Slogan
‘The great appear great,
Only because we are on our Knees’

The Parisians have embraced the soul of his youth, stole his heart,
Hardened his resolve,
And emancipated the print of the newest chapters.
He’ll fall upon the lords great will,
The ‘Singers’ and ‘Wobblies’ will call and cheer,
While unrest leaves lanes of torn and listed books.

It’s a world only make believe could make so real.
Locked in, Locked out,
Fattened Guerrillas stalking shadows,
In concrete jungles of law and lands.
Their people Long since, Ner’ forgotten,
For He hears their whispers in his sleep.

This Farmers land, had workers lead their kin to the gates of Slaughter,
Then scavenged, begged and stowed to the cloudy Hill
Of Overlooking
To remorse or return, is a question beyond the door of the living.
He must Shed not for the defiant butcher,
But more for the life now gone,
Since sold to an aging critic.

He was Born in to the Poor mans world,
But now freed from it’s chains,
Must help make what‘s fallow ripen.
On the streets where rubble were once great walls,
Where mounted high, the heavenly stag did Breed,
In fields where blight had starved their plates,
He would toil and drive and Dig and Build.

That day, That day in May,
Upon a hazy heather pillow,
A life of history filled a lonely man.
As He lay and held the hand of glories past,
He raised a fist to salute the one which had just begun.
He shakes hands in his dreams with the men of the mist,
Along hills,
And at the edge of great towns.

James Fitzpatrick
Seamus Mac Giolla Phadraig

James Fitzpatrick is an Irish Poet based in Dublin.

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Watch the June 2017 Poetry Readings

Performed by Elizabeth Rose Morriss

Poetry Reading: WORDS by Lawrence Klein

Poetry Reading: ROGUE WAVE by Joanne Van Leerdam

Poetry Reading: RISE AND BE ONE WITH THE SHINE by Gloria D. Gonsalves

Poetry Reading: Heaven Cried Too by Ty Davis

Poetry Reading: CONGO, CONGO by Miroslav Atanasov

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Reading: Heaven Cried Too by Ty Davis

Poem performed by Elizabeth Rose Morriss

Get to know the poet:

What is the theme of your poem?

The theme of the poem is family/emotional.

What motivated you to write this poem?

The passing of my Grandmother in 2015. She passed a day after my birthday, February 26th. It rained that day and snowed a bit. Pretty much the whole week leading up to her funeral, the weather was like that. But the day of her funeral the sun was out. I guess she had a warm welcome that day.

How long have you been writing poetry?

This is really like the second poem I wrote. I not really a poet. I wrote a poem a little before that called “No More Mr. Nice Ty”, it was like the opening of a short script I wrote of the same title. I thought it was sorta wack though.

If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?

I’m not really trying to have dinner with a zombie, bro. I don’t know. Maybe the old Kanye.

What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a professional actor?

I got email out of the blue about submitting a poem. This was like the only poem I’ve really had. I’m writer battling writer’s block right now. Maybe my Grandma and my fam that I named in the poem knew I needed some inspiration and trying to align the universe up for me.

Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

Yeah, the short script I mentioned earlier. I’m working on a pilot and feature right now.

What is your passion in life?

Writing, storytelling , creating. Just being able to create characters and come up with storylines. It’s like having a whole universe in your head. Right now I’m just trying to figure how to get it out.