ORGANIZER: Katheryn Holmes
CONTACT: klholmes41@yahoo.com
DESCRIPTION:
100thousand Poets for Change-Pensacola is ready to go! We will be holding our event at 11:30 a.m. September 24th on Palafox Place at the top of the Artel Gallery steps (corner of Government and Palafox). We have a banner, sound, t-shirts, and video lined up. Bring it on
Committee formed and to meet! We are moving ahead….
The train has left the station and is rolling down the track! Pensacola poets are in solidarity with their fellow writers around the world today and on September 24th!
Poets are ‘the unseen legilators of the world.’ And we are all over the world.
The P’cola Poets are being graciously sponsored by the Artel Gallery and the West Florida Literary Federation. Thanks, guys!
We have our place and video set. T-shirts on the way. Still needing audio equipment.
I want a t-shirt!!!
I’ll save one for you. What is your size? Email an address to send it to you.
T-shirt on the way, Michael; hope it fits. If it doesn’t, just email and I will send a larger version to you.
I am so sorry I missed the deadline for submitting to the anthology! In all the hub-bub I overlooked it and just now found out about it. If it isn’t too late after all, I do have a special piece to submit.
Ryn
Sign me up!
Done, Andrea.
100thousand Poets for Change-Pensacola is ready to go! We will be holding our event at 11:30 a.m. September 24th on Palafox Place at the top of the Artel Gallery steps (corner of Government and Palafox). We have a banner, sound, t-shirts, and video lined up. Bring it on…. Ryn
For the archives:
Voices
Silenced no more,
The sword no match for pen and tongue
We bring messages to the future
Bravely and with hope
Expectant of life to come,
We gift those waiting
To receive these words
Laying claim to lives lived,
Left behind like droppings
Or a pheromonal scent
Identifying our passage
And marking the boundaries of existence
Beyond our spawning here and there,
We give a shout-out ahead
As we drive the engine of art
To say hello across time,
Poetic words arising bravely
Out of the scattered dust
Of once living hearts and bones.
Showing we were here
Artfully lived
With deep passion and whimsy,
As our time fades
We know the best rewards
Have been awareness
And the simple and sublime feeling of it,
Pleasure and pain
Love
Or the trembling as it fell away
Claimed by death or other desires,
We may be the last
Yet cling to those like us
Who remain as anchorages on a rocky shore,
Fighting the tide pulling us out
To that place we must all visit,
When we call out
Some say no
Others say nothing and turn away
In willful ignorance of voices given wing,
Gifting them with song
To play on ear and heart,
Yet boldly we shall say
We were once here
We came after the others
And before you.
©2010 K. Holmes
Blood
Fist
Flesh
Fist
Flesh
Fist
Flesh and blood
Red
Lines trace their way
From broken nose
To split lip as
Ruby
Tracks fall
On breast to
Puddle then drop
Crimson
Snakes down a leg
Mapping
The shattered and torn
Scarlet
Woman waiting
For the next
Fist
Flesh
Fist.
©K. Holmes, 2009
For 9/11
They died with their boots on
transcendent
benevolently viewed by the divine
it’s the American way, you see:
the revolutionaries who dared to wrench the country
from the hands of those stealing its wealth came first,
then sheriffs in the old west fought the black hats
taking a bullet in order to bring six-gun civility out to the frontier,
doughboys slogged through rain-soaked trenches filled with deathly gases
close enough to look right into the eyes of the Kaiser’s boys,
brave G.I. Joes and Janes far from home
with bazooka-sent missiles raining death over head
were over there beating back the jack-booted darkness
inflicted upon our European cousins and forcing it to acknowledge
the light of humanity once again rising,
the honest blue-jacketed blue-steeled protectors daring uncertain outcomes
to bring safety to the innocent and seeing all as valued
respect meted out equally to the citizens in their town,
reluctant warriors who went anyway
into those sweaty steaming Asian jungles
some drugged into confusion while trying to sort out
who was who in an invisible enemy
then coming home ptsd-maimed,
NYC’s finest gone into history
their steel-toed boots burned and buried beneath twisted steel
as flesh melted and dna merged for all time with cement
in that September graveyard,
the best of our youth in the prime of beauty and health sacrificed
with their futures given over to the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan
their lives squandered by rich old men safely at ease
in leather chairs and paneled rooms;
standing firm against chaos
American brothers and sisters greeted death
momentarily floating within and without their bodies
consciousnesses elevated and honed to such a clarity
as they had never before known
everything risked against impossible odds for us,
all of them were our own
all taken too soon.
©2011 Ryn
Wearing White
Capless and without haloes
An endless procession
Of fallen angels gather
To gleam and shimmer in robed innocence
Shining
In their virginal white
Like the palest of complexions
Or new snow drifting,
Those underpaid madonnas with a guiding light
Banish the gloom
Of a seemingly eternal nighttime,
Such merciful visions of paradise made manifest
Are meant to comfort the dying
And ease bodies racked with pain,
Welcome all that an ailing
Body can produce without flinching,
The raven-haired Snow Whites
Sans dwarves open their spirits wide
At times closing down
Yet smiling still,
In cycles eternal
Always some amble away
To be replaced by others arriving
Ready to go on again
With broken backs and broken hearts,
Mother lover sister daughter-
Nurse.
©2011 Ryn Holmes
Can hardly wait to share my poem!
Can you eat this poem
you hungry children whose
black and white images
flash on the local news
in my hometown
– in Pensacola – in Brownsville
where I can drive my air-conditioned car
in twenty minutes?
You innocents
would you laugh and play and read
if you didn’t have that monster gnawing,
clawing in your bellies?
Your hollow eyes and blank expression
wrenches my gut
as I dine on rib-eye
and sip merlot.
Perhaps I’ll fill
a grocery cart with food
and roll it through those streets
searching for you.
But what happens next week
when I and the groceries are gone?
How many mouths can this poem feed?
Andrea Walker
August 24, 2011
We had a wonderful sunny day for our event after a couple of worrisome rainy ones. The poets graced the community with their words spotlighting their chosen social issues and were quite powerful! A feeling of comaraderie infused the atmosphere, promoting a bonding among the poets. Now, on to 100TPC 2012!
wow! And thank you for the t-shirt!!!! Love to you all!
More pix from our event:
Another installment from P’cola on September 24th.
Scenes from our event location in Pensacola.