Colleen Juri has A Lesson to Be Learned

Navigating childhood is a challenge at the best of times.

Who would have known?
No one could have seen what I was hiding
Everyday.
I sift through every drawer in the house.
No clean underwear to be found.
Mom is sick and I cannot bother her.
I do what I must do, chin up, I go to school.

Table Prayer for the Christmas Season

A Christmas get together among friends in Naples, California.

The Christmas season is a time for family and friends to get together. A time for joy, reflection, love and food. Over the years we have shared poems, carols, songs and memories. This Christmas we give thanks at the dinner table.

Library Way: John Milton and Areopagitica

Censorship interferes with the pursuit of truth.

Areopagitica is a polemic on the right to freedom of speech and expression by an impassioned John Milton. It was distributed via pamphlet in 1644, in defiance of pre-publication censorship.

On the Eighth Day of...

Strawberry Fields forever.

I would write you a poem
As full of love as Frida for Diego
Souls entwined as John and Yoko
But all I have is a pen and a memory

Cap Sawade's 'The Fateful Day’ in Pearl Harbor

USS Arizona leaving Pearl Harbor, 1940. Tai Sing Loo photo.

‘Twas the day before that fateful day,
December Sixth I think they say.
When leave trucks passed Pearl Harbor clear
The service men perched in the rear.
No thought gave they, of things to come.
For them, that day, all work was done.
In waters quiet of Pearl Harbor Bay,

George Wither's A Christmas Carol Written Centuries Before Dickens

Let us all be merry.

So now is come our joyful feast,
  Let every man be jolly;
Each room with ivy leaves is dressed,
  And every post with holly.
    Though some churls at our mirth repine,
    Round your foreheads garlands twine,
    Drown sorrow in a cup of wine,
  And let us all be merry.

Liz Parkin Gets Personal with SELF

More fruit is the answer — make sangria!

Great expectations
Lead to Great disappointments
What in the Hell is the perfect mother anyway?
Is there a perfect child?
Prozacked, whacked, drooling in a corner
That IS someone’s child

First-Ever Costalegre Book Fair Announced for 2020

Authors wanted for Costalegre Book Fair...and crowds.

The Centro de Arte y Cultura (CENAC) Melaque is hosting the first-ever Costalegre Book Fair on January 27, 2020. We are looking for published book authors who are willing to speak about their craft, their inspiration and to speak of their output — their books. The afternoon-long event will be held at Las Cabanas #15 — the cafe at CENAC — from 11:00am to 5:00pm.

Charles Longstreet and a Rumination

Is happiness a quixotic quest?

Happiness and unhappiness
Are created by events
Occurring in the environment
Which surrounds us
Making them equal
In every way.

Ancient Custom Assures Safety of CEO

A short story by Jordan Crittenden.

By now it's an open secret that a major US corporation, ranked within the top 20 of the current Forbes 500, has taken a highly unusual step in the annals of corporate operations. The firm (which chooses to remain anonymous) has assigned an employee the task of tasting beforehand all food and drink to be ingested by the Chief Executive Officer to prevent any attempt to poison him.

Kahlil Gibran On Houses

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.

Then a mason came forth and said, Speak to us of Houses.
     And he answered and said:
     Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.
     For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
     Your house is your larger body.
     It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for a grove or hill-top?

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam

The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long. – Horace

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

Susan Lockhart and her Barra Daze

I "Heart" Barra!

Barra daze, Barra daze
Each new moon
A day is born
And across the sea you gaze

Sailboat — a Poem by Stacy Rae Lake

A sailboat's dream is to dream big.

An earth angel with cement wings and heavy feet

cries out far and deep inside for help

Her very core

now dry and alien

She is drifting lost with an ill fated humanity.

Émile Nelligan et la Beauté cruelle

Le 24 juin c'est La Fête Nationale du Quebec.

Certe, il ne faut avoir qu'un amour en ce monde,
Un amour, rien qu'un seul, tout fantasque soit-il;
Et moi qui le recherche ainsi, noble et subtil,
Voilà qu'il m'est à l'âme une entaille profonde.

Little Houses by Russell Rosander

Little houses...

We all live in little houses
without any trousers,
where all the walls are mirrors.
Where all of our senses
and all our defenses
reflect only our desires and our fears.

Lionel Johnson and The Precept of Silence

The precept of silence in a bottle of absinthe.

I Know you: solitary griefs
Desolate passions, aching hours!
I know you: tremulous beliefs,
Agonized hopes, and ashen flowers!

What It's All About: A Sailing Poem

Sailing is the noblest and the best-compensated of all the arts.

No, you cannot find the world of waters in a motor boat.
You cannot help but find it in a sailboat,
for that world of water and sky, wind and tide,
is not only about you but part of you as well.
It is your motor as well as your resistance —
your safeguard as well as your enemy.

Maxwell Bodenheim and the Vagabond Grown Old

But now I walk on, alone...

The dust of many roads has been my grey wine.
Surprised beech-trees have bowed
With me, to the plodding morning
Humming tunes frail as webs of dead perfume,

Un Tope en mi Vida

Tope: A Mexican speed bump.

I’m not looking for Disneyland
      Although I’d love to see my old friends again
I’m not looking to drink margaritas in Paradise
     Although I swear Chynna’s libations are heaven sent

Edgar Allan Poe Has A Dream Within A Dream

I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;

Eight Haikus from Kevin Rudd

A new day, a new coat. A purpose unveiled.

The breeze still calming
You could smell the air seaching
The rain would talk now

W.B. Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium

And therefore I have sailed the seas...

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
— Those dying generations — at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Of Philip Levine and The Water's Chant

A clear mountain stream in the High Sierras.

Seven years ago I went into
the High Sierras stunned by the desire
to die. For hours I stared into a clear
mountain stream that fell down
over speckled rocks, and then I
closed my eyes and prayed that when
I opened them I would be gone

Hannah Rodrigues On Keeping Warm in Winter

Baby, it's cold outside.

It all started
on the 11th of November...
when you have to keep warm
for the winter hibernation.