Jerry Waller is a lifelong resident of the Valley, young/old, rich/poor, a semi-retired lifelong learner, an artist in search of a medium.
Springfield City Library
Open Mic Poets
2006 - 07
Bizz Zoc7
Mark Garoppolo
Elizabeth Land
Jerry Waller
Marcia Tate
Ronald L Coolbeth
Stephen
Gary Lindow
sympetalous
William Small
Robin Coolbeth
DIED at THIRTEEN
What’s this preacher talking about…died at thirteen
57 years short of the expected life of, a white man,
53 years short of a brown man…
Died at thirteen
How much life’ been taken away from me
Died at thirteen
So some badass nigga might, do life instead a me…
Love, life, pain joy
Felt in the broken rim of a bicycle
The chain my friend couldn’t fix, but I knew how…
So many voices cry out for a stop to the killing,
Why couldn’t the voices stop mine,
Stop his…Stop hers…Stop theirs…
Died at thirteen
Haven’t even learned to love what I lived for,
Sweet Momma, feeling the pains of my birth
Between the pains of my death…
Died at thirteen…
Stillborn, would have been easier for sweet Momma to bear
Thirteen-year hole, torn in her soul,
Sweet mothers, you’re not alone in this pain…
Each snowflake, each raindrop, every grain of sand
Carries our spirits, searching to find what we hope will be change…
Its getting crowded here and we all look the same,
Died at thirteen
Won’t ever die…again…
Presently, Bizz Zoc7 is promoting the latest installment of his “Life in Progress” works titled Ak-UhH-DEM-iCk. He has had his works published worldwide, from NEWSWEEK to CAFE NOIR. One of the founding members of the critically acclaimed Performance Troupe “VOICES of a BEIGE to BLUE NATION,” Bizz Zoc7 has appeared at the SXSW Music Conference, Philadelphia Music Conference, LOLLAPALOOZA, and the 1998 NATIONAL POETRY SLAM CHAMPIONSHIPS. BIZZs' stage credits include CAFE ROCK, MISS EVERS BOYS, and CLUB XII. Film/Video credits include Blackbursts; YOUNG BLACK AND MALCOLM, and The American Film/Video Institute's ALLEGATIONS.
THE JANITOR
While Businessmen talk endlessly,
The Janitor meets my every need.
A broken chair; a broken heart
Both can be repaired by his kind touch.
His worth is without question,
His knowledge absolute.
Few may descend to his workshop,
Where mysteries and delights await.
But for me the steam pipes clang their welcome.
The warm damp air caresses my face,
Sanctuary from a conflicted world.
How fortunate am I to be allied with such strength,
Finding love with...the Janitor.
Robin works at UMASS in Amherst. She has been writing odds and ends since childhood. Some of her interests besides writing are theater, traveling and nature walks. In her "free time" she writes and produces shows for community cable access television.
Morning after a Poetry Reading
There were poets here last night -
Here, in this old Massachusetts city -
Bellowing, whispering, chanting or singing:
Each wrapped in a blanket of their own making -
Sharing the warmth of its art:
As I did a decade ago.
(You see it all became the never-ending....
The never ending living!)
But: Last night there were poets here:
At this very spot.
The air was charged with the fragrance of ideas,
Fraught with beauty and terror,
Brave with vulnerable honesty:
I used to do that,
And people liked it when I did.
It was me once,
And me was here last night -
Here - with poets.
Thanks to them -
Thanks to them please,
For here on this bench on this bright early summer morning
My Exorcisms can finally begin.
Moved up to Springfield 8 years ago from CT- 1997 was a pivotal year- since then a lot of life got in the way of living- But a sense of humor became the most important way of learning lessons. I like dark humor, satire, and brutal honesty. I like finding the absurd in the simple and the simple in the complex. Have been published, except for a 9 year lapse been writing since I was 8 years old.
To my Fifth Grade Class
Announcements went home: Poetry Reading on Friday!
Refreshments will be served.
Are you ready, class? Are you ready to open your soul?
That’s what poetry is really about.
Did you know that?
Did I forget to cover that?
Will you get that one correct on the test?
Poetry Unit:
Sonnets and Haikus,
Lines memorized, beats counted.
Famous poets, some really good ones,
fit on the graphic organizer, perched
for the readied research project.
When I have words filling up my belly,
When my jaw gets tight and the air
Gives the smell of the next season,
When love starts to confuse me,
I remember where I
Put my pen, scrape those words onto the page.
Maybe they rhyme.
Maybe those words are a dark cloak of secret memory.
When you unfold my poem, I am done with the hiding.
Poetry is the unveiling of life in death throes.
The black on white is the moment of your undeniable truth.
If you are lucky, it eases the moment
Of healing.
Are you ready?
Elizabeth Fouser is staying up way too late to send this off from her home in the Forest Park Neighborhood of Springfield.
Her three children are asleep upstairs finally. She will awake to light favorites much too early to get off to the job she loves: teaching young incarcerated youth the magic of the English language. Currently she is working on getting back into a regular writing group and finding reliable evening childcare in order to read at open mics. She loves words and respects their power.
Jerry Waller
Specter of Love
There are few who've not heard, and many who could recite it,
the chapters and verses of a love unrequited,
and for each of them who've sung the hymn,
but whose spirits remain undaunted,
by such melodies and lyrics,
some remain forever haunted.
Two Sets Of Beautiful Big Brown Eyes
Two sets of big brown beautiful eyes
> following my every move
> mimicking my every way
> feeling my every word
> relinquishing motion at my glare
> freezing in my stare
> Two sets of big brown beautiful eyes
> looking off in the distance
> following their every move
> mimicking their every way
> feeling their every word
> questioning their glare
> stopping in their stare
> Two sets of big brown beautiful eyes
> seeing their own way now.
Ronald L Coolbeth
Unfinished Business
Let no human eye see these grotesquely bleached bones that
was once me.
A man of flesh and blood was I.
Who was once filled with hope and longing , only to end up here under six feet layers of dark sod.
I was bid a fond farewell.
My lofty hopes and dreams simply fell by the wayside---alas never to be.
Time just wasn't on my side before I was called home.
They say life is unfair --well so is death!
If fairness really exisited on this earth than we would be allowed to realize our dreams
before we draw our final breath.
Ronald L Coolbeth was born in Lyndonville Vermont on 7/10/32. He studied art (oil painting) at age 9. He then changed to writing short stories and poetry starting as a teenager and continued until the present time. His poems have been published in various literary journals and newpapers. He is presently working
on a book of poetry.
I AM TABOO
I am this language I think I speak,
standing in the atrium of a spider’s heart.
I am anticipatory---
a zygote from a small god
stoppered in an expensive glass bottle at the top of a towering shelf.
I have the crooked throat of a key,
and exhale the dream of kites.
I am a verb without tense,
grace determined by wind,
a tooth that has snapped off.
Today is the third day I have been pulling a red string,
as from a Band-Aid, out of my navel.
I am no longer familiar, but not yet imaginary.
My breath----torch heavy,
my thoughts the cold flow of concrete,
I am indeed a monster made entirely of eyelash,
a penny that doesn’t know what it wants to be when it grows up.
This language I think I speak,
this time machine of smell,
has set me strange.
My world now furry and sweet.
My language, down on all fours, straddling expression.
I stand still because I will not tell a lie.
The pronoun turns bioluminescent.
Stephen Lindow earned his MFA in English at Umass-Amherst where he taught for four years. He is a poet, a baker, a candlestick maker and teaches English at Duggan Middle School. Stephen earned Third Place in the 2004 Springfield Library Poetry Contest.
the one who writes and does not write
what the reader reads and does not read
must be the one who hears but does not listen
to the one who's missin' and does not heed
the words one fears the truth it sears
even a heart so pure with a burnished brand
so that all can tell ain't no fire in hell
to match light of heaven in the palm of one's hand
just like the god within's one love you know so well
as the one who breathes and then does not breathe
or is the pause between the breathe-out and breathe-een
just a part of the whole re-spi-ritual scene?
seems only time it'll tell if you can understand
what's meant by the hourglass, the tiny grains of sand
drip as dry drops for the opportunities missed
so lost in the sauce of time's saharan abyss
but all it takes is one chance, a smart plan in this lotus heartland
where a lesson be taught and the wisdom be learned
that one less be one more in the soul progress earned
and what's burned in the heart's the fuel of forgiveness
'til court's adjourned and your part's the Fool Poor or if blessed
the sweet feel of the cosmic hand, the hourglass bein' overturned
Love Everyone
Our life is worth living. Our heart is worth giving.
Love everyone - - your mothers and daughters,
fathers and sons. We fight all the time and no
wonder we have so much crime. We should love one
another for we are sisters and brother, fathers and
mothers. For the cruelty of people who do not care,
we should give them a glare.
