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“up, up and awry”a poem . . . and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prom

 

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” Dalai Lama XIV, The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and About the Dalai Lama [recommended]

These are responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Swallowed Whole, December 5, in which I asked folks to write about values gone awry.  Kudos and thanks for coming out to play with such extraodinary grace: Gary W. Bowers, Irma Do, Deb y Felio (Debbie Felio), Jen E. Golden, Sonja Benskin Mesher, and Anjum Wasim Dar.

In addition to their words and illustrations, I’ve included links to blogs or websites where available. I hope you’ll visit these poets and get to know their work better. It is likely you can catch up with others via Facebook.

Enjoy! … and do come out to play tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are encouraged to participate: beginning, emerging and pro. You are also invited to submit poems in languages other than English if they include a translation into English. See you tomorrow! 🙂

up up and awry

when a man is hacked to pieces
while still alive and
the murder was suborned
by a royal
killer
and small fry are arrested
and the big shot walks
and another big shot says
in effect
attaboy
and the world takes five minutes’
notice
and shrugs–

decency has taken a powder
ethics is in A locked chest in the attic
and kindly is an uncomfortable party guest
who gets hints to leave
from the big boy host

© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One with Clay, Image and Text)

A Peaceful Goodbye

My eyes were parched, yet I kept them open, watching you as I did when you walked to the school bus. It seemed like such a long way for you to walk with your little legs. I told you not to look back, that looking back would make it harder, and I wanted us to have a “peaceful goodbye”. Peace was the September “virtue of the month” and it helped those first days when being apart wasn’t normal.

My throat closed up, as if I could cry, choking the words I wanted to call out – I love you! I’m proud of you! But you didn’t need to hear that – your humility and compassion allowed you to understand more than your 4 year old self should.

My heart slowed, a molasses drip, wondering what you were thinking as your tiny feet plodded on. Perseverance and courage might as well be etched on your retreating back. But the little wrinkles on your forehead would spell curiosity – we had that common. I wanted to help you, but you respectfully said you would go alone and that I should stay. I would have held you back, you honestly said. You knew I wouldn’t want that. Oh, how wise you had become!

My breath hitched and I was afraid – afraid you wouldn’t find the joy that I knew you deserved. But you didn’t look back and when you started to run – that’s when I knew:

You were going to where you truly belonged.

This short story is in response to Hélène Viallant’s “What do you see?” Picture prompt. There were so many ways to respond to this picture that Hélène posted – it could be scary or exciting or sad. It could have elements of science fiction or fantasy. Or a metaphor. My story is a little bit of all that. The back story could be that the world is coming to an end, the mother left behind to perish watching the sole survivor, her child, walking towards the unknown. Is it hopeful? Or ominous?

I also incorporated several virtues (or values) from Montessori education to fulfill Jamie Dedes’ Wednesday Writing Prompt request to “tell us about values gone awry”. My children attend a Montessori school and these virtues are lessons that are incorporated in the classroom and that I also try to utilize and exemplify at home. This whole child viewpoint of teaching is one of the reasons I love Montessori education.

While I’m not sure my story is one of values gone wrong, it does remind me of the saying “good guys finish last”. But do they really? If they believe their behavior, their sacrifice is for a noble cause, are they finishing last or being the first hero?

© 2018, Irma Do (I Do Run, And I do a few other things too …)

Dis=Gusto

What are the lessons mothers taught
when what they said was not for nought

“Family is important, Charlie” was Mrs Manson’s word

“You are what you eat,” is what Jeffrey Dahmer heard

“Find a nice girl,” Ted Bundy’s mom said,
“You’ve got the looks to knock ‘em dead.”

“Don’t play alone”, said Virginia to Billy
Play the her – monica, and watch your willy.”

“Work you body and open up more,”
Mrs.Weinstein said to Harvey as he went out the door

Mrs Crosby said,“Share your Jello, Bill,”
“And accept some help from oblivious Camille.”

“Don’t listen to others’ opinions,” Mary Anne told Donnie
“Your voice trumps them all even when you sound funny.”

So much wisdom distorted, misused
History is only very old news.

So mothers be careful, what comes from your mouth
You never know when it could all go south.

© 2018, deb y felio (writer’s journey)

Spelling Bee…..

Please spell AWRY.
definition?
: not straight or neat
: not working correctly
: not happening in the expected way
: off the correct or expected course
: in a turned or twisted position or direction

AWRY:a sentence?
“If one or another part of this progression goes awry,
there are sufficient compensating processes
in the average social environment”.
“Because each assumption requires extra tests,
fewer assumptions mean a smaller probability
that the assumptions go awry.”
AWRY: A- W- R- I
WRONG! be seated.
Askew,
aslant,
atilt,
cockeyed,
oblique,
Off-kilter,
uneven.
Disordered,
distorted,
Contorted.
WRONG!

© 2018, Jen E. Goldie (Jen E. Goldie)

Change comes quickly

Sweet melodies,
Obsessive love,
Aspirations.
momentary
questions.

all around awry

warnings not taken
deaths, tragedies,
horrors, starvation
clouding our vision,

Peggy Lee singing,
“Is that all there is.”

thoughts
of love and war
cancelling each other
out,
regrets to late
to regret
no time to run.
Its done.

© 2018, Jen E. Goldie (Jen E. Goldie)

.moving on.

moving on from the last verse of girly looking

after girly, we stopped at the jeweller’s window.

the assistant, neat looked bore & very clean. the

rings were three thousands and more.

enough to take her home and more.

“yes sir you may buy the ring, for a
thousand pounds, or choose to save
her life”

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

.clogau.

so we panned the work, stitches.
while before they panned
for gold.

all much the same.

peoples’ values.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

.the prize.

the prize came as unexpected

a big building enough to house

the poor, the homeless the dis

possessed. it was tea and

i felt sick

i will rather give the money away

the added value of the food. ritz.

crackers. that bread can cost so much

spread with regular stuff cut thin

the waiter smiled ; i noted his shoes

an honest worker like me

alongside they enjoyed the moment

without the anxiety of my chest where

reparation fails. this is the promise

the outcome of a difficult day

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Manufactured Mankind or …

He asked, ‘What kind of man?
why of Mankind ‘ he said,

‘of patience bereft, of agitation disposed,
not so eloquent nor with knowledge
or apprehensive  of   consequences
No, he fears none but mosquitoes

No, he fears none, no one

what language, or words of wisdom ?
‘none,sire  but a stare baleful, of rage
a chaos in cape carries he, chosen
but outcast, a clever archimage,

No, he fears none, no one

manufactured, of  lustful desire,
embroidered with adventure
en-robed with possession
of dark deceit, half concealed

No he fears none, no one

mankind today, lost astray,
oblivious of truth, a symbol
of hate, a killer without motive,
a killer for cash and pay-

No he fears no one-

mankind today, siding with evil,
a terrorist, beguiler kidnapper
Oh, where is the mystagogue?
fettered in a dungeon, I may

I may write an apologue !

O mankind your spirit is good, turn,
a repentant forgiver grateful person,be
turn, turn, towards the right travelogue’
so that the Light of Truth ye may see

before it is too late, for you and me-

© 2018, poem in English and Urdu (below) and artwork below) Anjum Wasim Dar (Poetic Oceans)

manufactured mankind

ٰٓاج  کا  انسان ٓ

ٓاج  کا  انسان  کچھ  بھی در گزر  کرتا نہین  ھے
ٓاج کا  انسان  اللاہ سے نہین  مچھروں سے ڈرتا ھے

استاد  کی  زباں  پے وہ اقوال زرین نہین ھین
ٓاج کا  استاد کیا  لکھتا   ھے  کیا  پرکھتا  ھے

ٓاج    کا   انسان    پیار  کا    بھوکا    ھے
ھر نظر پر نظر  ھر  ھاتھ  پر ھاتھ  رکھتا ھے

ھر غریب بے کار  ھر امیر دوست  لگتا ھے
اج کا  انسان  کیا  اپناتا ھے  کیا  پرکھتا ھے

دوستی   نرمی    صبر    و   برداشت  کہاں
سب کو گرم غصے  کا  بخار  چڑھتا  ھے

ٓاج     کا     انسان     طیش     کا     سامان
ٓٓاج  کا  انساں   شیطان  کی ھمدردی کرتا ھے

ٓاج     کا     انسان     دھشت       گرد
ٓاج  کا  انسان   پیسے  کے  لیے   مرتا   ھے

اے    لوگو    دل  و روح  کے  اچھے  ھو   زرا
سوچو  سیدھی  راہ   تلاش  کرو  سیدھی راہ چلو

“Let us all strive for peace on Earth for all. Let us make a better world. Write to make peace prevail.”  Anjum Wasim Dar, Pakistani poet, writer, artist, educator, and parent.

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

 The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

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Dame Helen Mirren reads from Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

“I am a part of all that I have met.” Alfred Tennyson, The Complete Poetical Works of Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Text courtesy of Sparknotes

Illustration:  Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) englischer Schriftsteller. CDV-Foto 6,0 x 8,4 cm nach einem Gemälde von P.Krämer herausgegeben von Friedrich Bruckmann Verlag München Berlin. (public domain)

 

ABOUT

Testimonials

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

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CELEBRATING AMERICAN SHE-POETS (32): Linda Chown, “A Poem of How She Thought It Could Be” and other Poems

“Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.” Adrienne Rich, Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations

A Poem of How She Thought It Could Be

they thought it could be simple

in the beginning there was an in and an out

stiff byways, like zippers where there are too many

as in the names of those writers there

on the desk where they are swimming in paper

(too much paper leeches nubile thought, she thought)

 

when fish die they say the salt sinks, into a pile

there is a woman here with books she says

she knows their names what they meant

to say with the zippers and all that salt.  Maybe

 

Simon and Hagar once ate anchovies in a corner

where they thought it could be simple

simply to hold hands maybe to touch and lick the salt

just to suck the taste in, there without the words

 

like the silent gasp of new pilots at take off

or the pop young birds make in small circles

round and round spring as the air begins to putt

and pulse with Virginia bloom and the world views of  Ellen Glasgow

© 2018, Linda E. Chown

McCarthy’s Girl

On looking how she was. Staring
always, as though there were
depths and hollows to see through
somehow all into. Something to stay with her
little girl hands twisting and then the warts.
She would always try to pull
The world into her fingers.
To play the sounds closer.
She was just oblivious
To her difference.

But behind, they knew her
for the witch they thought they knew she was,
Jude, Commie, sick-to-stick-out little girl,
Pale-wincer-in-the-sun with that heavy coat.
Cassie and Lassie, those twins,
they knew fast just what to do.
lasso a tip of her hanging braid
and soak it slow and silent in the
ink-well behind. Well, she just kept her still.
Her long eyelids shuddering in her quiet.
Little girl on the edges, locked inside in.
No Howdy Doody times, no way to say it.
She just fought to gaze hard to look straight
beyond the puppet land of the 1950s.
She had to come home to hide
behind the tv and the cooking.

All the time life opened up for her
savage saddle markings.

originally published in The BeZine, September 2018

© 2018, Linda E. Chown

Coming Back: Franco not here no more, 1988

I go blind from then I go
here now so into Franco-free light
where I don’t know
how to turn my eyes,
<em>spent scars of second skin</em>,
years of no and fury,
now the clean air breaking in
to be real in this to breathe it
all in and then to die in Madrid.
Tempt it not—I surely do not
Not too. No Franco and his cops
Nor his tiny stamps, unwritten laws
And truncheons at the ready.

I did not come here to die
but to be home here
where I can get lost again free
in a landscape of
words drifting oh words!
Hombre que te pasa
la Republica Zaragoza libertad.

Find the bridge, the path,
to cross over to some-
where the verdict words cannot.
Qué bonitas son
Son las flores
No, not just pretty. Knot not.

When I go blind,
“good I cannot see them”
(as the words once were cords
even to touch their fury)
The pain of sound.
Clackety clack.
Let the air out
of this flat tire.

I’m breaking in
to be real again—
the Guadarrama mountain range
splendid low about the horizon
white-scarred muses
women scarring Fascism.
Late afternoon glory with them in Madrid.
The air so pure it stings to settle.

originally published in The BeZine, September 2018

© 2018, Linda E. Chown

What they said

At the beginning of before.
Here it is: are we in the right
spindle bobbing away?
Are you a fable resting in the sun and wanting?
Tell me how your dreams are.
Tell me what you might mean to yourself in their fury,

Now, skirts forever in a night wind
Yesterday spins yellows around tomorrow
Whatever did your mother tell you about
late at night when you put your book down
on the bed and she came in soundless
with a tight face to sit in the dark with you
while you wheezed and you waited.
Violence in the coal mines.

They always told me
La Pasionaría was brave
no pasarán, she said. With her vision
she was defending Madrid’s mountains
they told me and I heard her when
she spoke with that spike of passion
indomitable: she said no pasarán
and in the foothills there were cheers all dressed in black.

Your father I learned took a gun with him
there at the beginning of before
to protect himself at midnight
on the picket lines in the dark
to protect himself from hit men
who hated his vision out west
in the fog in those long flat parking lots .

Low in his left cheek a muscle quivered
within, at the end of a smile that wasn’t.
He took a gun and she went kitten silent on your bed.
The quiet of her heavy sitting
at the beginning of before
reminds me of an old dream,
her telling you of crossing the street
because of the scar on her skin
because she wanted to hide it from all eyes

Was this a mingled message
to fight with all the passion the rains pour
or to scurry away from feeling?
To hold the front line or to flee into a hole?
Camus who believed in solitude as his struggle
And Aragon whose masses were transcendental
Tell, tell me more please before the end is over.

Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, aka “La Pasionaria,” a Spanish Republican leader of the Spanish Civil War

originially published in The BeZine, September 2018

© 2018, Linda E. Chown

LInda E. Chown

LINDA E. CHOWN grew up in Berkeley, Ca. in the days of action. Civil Rights arrests at Sheraton Palace and Auto Row.  BA UC Berkeley Intellectual History; MA Creative Writing SFSU; PHd Comparative Literature University of Washington. Four books of poetry. Many poems published on line at Numero Cinq, Empty Mirror, The Bezine, Dura, Poet Head and others. Many articles on Oliver Sachs, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and many others. Twenty years in Spain with friends who lived through the worst of Franco. I was in Spain (Granada, Conil and Cádiz) during Franco’s rule, there the day of his death when people took to the streets in celebration. Interviewed nine major Spanish Women Novelists, including Ana María Matute and Carmen Laforet and Carmen Martín Gaite.

 

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

 The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

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ANNIVERSARY OF RAINER MARIE RILKE’S BIRTH; UPDATE ON DECEMBER COMPETITIONS

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin’s bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

Rainer Maria Rilke
1934 edition / public domain photograph

TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF RAINER MARIA RILKE Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist. “He is ‘widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets’. He wrote both verse and highly lyrical prose. Several critics have described Rilke’s work as inherently “mystical”. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes haunting images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude and profound anxiety. These deeply existential themes tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist writers.

“Rilke travelled extensively throughout Europe (including Russia, Spain, Germany, France and Italy), and in his later years settled in Switzerland—settings that were key to the genesis and inspiration for many of his poems. While Rilke is most known for his contributions to German literature, over 400 poems were originally written in French and dedicated to the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Among English-language readers, his best-known works include the poetry collections Duino Elegies (Duineser Elegien) and Sonnets to Orpheus (Die Sonette an Orpheus), the semi-autobiographical novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge), and a collection of ten letters that was published after his death under the title Letters to a Young Poet (Briefe an einen jungen Dichter). In the later 20th century, his work found new audiences through use by New Age theologians and self-help authors]and frequent quotations by television programs, books and motion pictures. In the United States, Rilke remains among the more popular, best-selling poets.” MORE Wikipedia

COMPETITIONS UPDATES:

MASTERS REVIEW: List of thirteen competitions that are open this month HERE.

GLIMMER TRAIN: Deadline for “Family Matters” contest – Glimmer Train’s last contest – is January 2, 2019. Details HERE.

WORTHY READ:

Does Great Writing Require Solitude?, Regan Penaluna, Guernica

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Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

 The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton