Tim W. Brown

Heart
is a Drum

Tim W. Brown

"I
want I want I want"
is
a refrain you will hear
if
you listen close enough.
Its
source is the heart:
a
beat is heard as blood
reverberates
in ears, pulse
is
felt inside the wrist.
It's
a two-step rhythm that
everyone,
even the unmusical,
has
a feel for, vibrations
propelling
us on a march
in
this parade called life.
It
echoes and resonates
through
the chest cavity,
attuning
the listener with
just
how big and hollow,
like
a bass drum, we are,
how
much we ache to fill
the
world with our noise.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season

Narges Rothermel

Don’t Give Up On Me

Narges Rothermel

 

I heard you say, I am not worthy of your time

I heard you say, “Wasting the space is a crime”

I heard you say, you are giving up on me

Don’t, I am on a crossroad of survival, you see

My father has not given up trying

My mother still hoping, she still is trying

The land I am born in struggling to open her heart

Acceptance by my countrymen is still, very hard

Not quite welcome at all desirable sites

Being different, repels so many God given rights

I’ve heard God created man in his image

I’ve heard a million forms of this message

Mom told me Jesus’ skin had a shade of brown

He became Jesus for every country and each town,

He became Jesus for every race, yellow red or brown

even for the ones with fair-skin and golden crown

Mom told me I’m also a child of God

when I’m among his other children, I hear the silent shout

Being poor and different makes me stand alone, and stand Out

Its odd that many still don’t see me as a child of The Only God

Like God’s other children I need to fit in. I need to survive

I too, yearn to exist. I too, need to dream I too, need to thrive

My dear teacher, I know you find it hard to cope

But you and this class are the only roads to my Hope

Invest in my future now, so you and your child

don’t have to face me when anger makes me wild

so, you don’t have to house me in windowless cells,

so you don’t have to buy iron-doors, alarms, and the bells

Perhaps spending some of your time, is the key

So, you don’t have to cage my child or me

in the other side of barbed-wire-fences

Please, try to see me with a pair of new lenses

My teacher, don’t condemn me and how I behave

Help me to be Brave in the Land of the Brave

Help me to feel Free in the Land of the Free

My dear teacher, Please, don’t Give Up On Me! 

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season  

 

Vicki Iorio

Brooklyn Invaded, 1969

 

When the astronauts took the moon

Nonna, broken by English,

heard the radio announcer say

the man in the moon landed in Brooklyn.

 

Windows were shut on that hot July day.

Hiding in the closet, Nonna breathed in

the musk of her dead husband

and said prayers for capture.

 

Granddaughter, dripping chlorine on the rug,

took Nonna's hand, sat her down on the ancient bed,

laughed piano keys and explained America.

 

Vicki Iorio

Roberta A. McQueen

Three Haiku:

CHERRY TREE BLOSSOMS

Daybreak
cherry blossoms
in the pouring rain

FOR THE BIRDS HAIKU

Nests destroyed outdoors
rare redheaded woodpecker
eats peanuts I throw

SPRING TIME HAIKU

paper napkin used
recycled from cherry tree
poetry blossoms

Roberta A. McQueen

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Kate Boning Dickson

Pointillism

Spring reveals itself

in tiny articulations

artistic renderings -

dandelion dots

stipples of raindrops

and pinpoint variations

on the theme of green.

From birds

little marbles of song

roll along the street

with confetti

in tender pinks and whites

and tassels of pre-leaves -

all those dappled remains

of the birthday parties of trees.

Kate Boning Dickson

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

 

Ron Scott

THE OLD MAN AND HIS CHAIR

 

The old man appears comfortable in his chair,

Fireplace aglow in the crowded parlor,

His demeanor simulating an almost sleep.

Removed from his reverie by the sound of his name.

He ascends the podium to mild applause.

 

Papers in hand, his props.

Stories told a hundred times

In poetry and prose

Submit to memory

Refusing to be contained.

 

Each rendition given new life.

Peaks and valleys

Released on new horizons.

Awaiting the canvass

About to be displayed.

 

Captain, he takes his passengers on a journey

To heights above the clouds

The air clean and inviting

Ripe for proclamations

About to flow.

 

That pleasure is fleeting and singular

Pain is indelible and shared by all.

That a closed door cannot prevent love from entering

Hate enters only by invitation.

That “over the top” has a place“under the table”

Final destination – “out the door.”

That quality of life is a perception not exclusive to the wealthy

Less than have a rightful claim.

That man who knows not himself

Has no home.

That to have loved and lost

Belongs to another poet.

That a little humor makes a rough road smoother

Than no humor at all.

 

With that, the old man relinquishes the floor

Measuring success by the nod of heads

Rather than obligatory applause.

He retreats to the comfort of his chair

Ready and willing for the next journey.

 

Ron Scott

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Patricia Mansfield Phelan

The Kite

I found it this noon:
a stranger to all who had missed
its sun-drenched sailing, then surrender,
a death marker dangling in the cold.

One sighting gave me back the toy:
the shape and the glory and the laughing
of the pure hour
before its breaking.

Patricia Mansfield Phelan

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Barbara Novack

HUMAN FORM WITH LIGHT

We are
skin shell and bone
structured to articulate
and retain shape,
holding all the parts
in place;
this dwells in darkness
I cannot know.
And we are
sparks flying upward
synapses firing
electrons jumping,
and Edison creates incandescence
and Einstein’s e
flies light speed relatives
and we are
lanterns and lighthouses
and could be Christmas trees
if we but
allowed the joy.

Barbara Novack

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Peter Bové

My American Dream

 

I would like perfectly smooth hands and bright white teeth

Two girlfriends that don't know each other and a hat that looks right

None of these things do I currently possess

A lonely moment of realization told me so just the other day

But I'm working real hard to obtain them as we speak

Come to think of it, a dozen sunny days in a row

A white Cadillac, from the nineteen fifties or sixties

Whichever one is right

A Hi Def Entertainment Center

Some Native American stuff to be cool with

Like moccasins or something

A big swimming pool behind my big Stanford White house

Several Armani suits, a third girlfriend in another State

Wyoming maybe or L.A. and uh... some money to play with

...And a career in the movies

Yes, like Bogart or Ted Turner or Sly Stallone

Or even a new guy like Ben Affleck…

Somehow, I've got to get some of this stuff

I mean, things are not looking that great at the moment

Sometimes I think about my American Dream

Maybe soon...

Maybe sometime real soon

It will all make sense.

Peter Bové

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Roxanne Hoffman

HOW WE MEDITATE for Jack Kerouac Airborne bird(like)brain cloud dances erase, erase, erase f a d e o u t glide . hummingly inward ... J O Y kicking like Momma’s newborn: Ouch! Poof! peaceful quiet rain’s steady shh-ing … till temple-dwellers upstairs: upbeat voices warbling ... Welcome world! waking wiser x-factor? * Y O U * you, yourself, you're Zen ;-) Roxanne Hoffman The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Cliff Kretkowski

Before My Helpless Sight
“Our distant rest,” was Owens song,
as marching soldiers trudged along;
to the place of the scene of imagined hope – the possible
pause from the refrain of war.

Rest is distant and far for some
and can spoil the journey to where we long
for our deepest, remotest, broken hearts - where a silent
belief of what’s to come.

In the trenches of my desperate life
where “drowning” and “flound’ring” had become
my norm. I begged for rest and there to find - the dream
of where I knew I could lie.

Cliff Kretkowski

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

George Guida

White Vinyl Fence

I’m not thinking of Frost when he says from his yard, White vinyl fence:
one, two, three, four, five
sections. I’m hundreds of miles away, near the wife of country youth.
I’ll only see her
and those spaces again in the dreams beyond age. He has me by twenty
years, but I have no more
manly strength to tell him what I think of polyvinyl chloride, white.
His jowls are the face of the dog
I loved, the one who vomited through a snowy night before dying on cold
steel as I watched.
Surfaces shape our cares. How can I explain? standing in a berry patch
by rotting planks the dull shade
of home. He is right to believe the vinyl will last after children come
back to say our gardens
have gone to seed. Does he see in the depthless sum of colors there the
room they’ll plant him in?
Instead of a wife’s voice from a back porch, does he hear the broadcast
dinner tone and think,
while staring at vertical blinds, how desires always end in an argument
you lose?

George Guida

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Karen Jakubowski

Phenomenon of Wonder

We are born creatures of why

flush with heightened awareness

plump with inquisitiveness encased in new flesh.

In our nakedness we explore the world with instinct.

Our tiny hands reach,

learn to cling to the resonance of another

first grip around our guardian’s finger

flexing then tightening our grasp

never wanting to release the connection.

 

Our eyes meet their’s, hold the stare

we have yet to learn to turn away.

 

We memorize our mother’s milky scent

before our eyes adjust to more

than swirls of shape and shadow

before facial recognition comes into focus.

 

We are charmed by curiosity

welcome anything that we can scoop

and pull to our drool glistened lips

tasting life with the ripeness of early existence.

 

We are pure wonder

but then cognition occurs

and the walls begin to form.

 

Karen Jakubowski

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Patricia Carragon

Dance Before Dawn

It hurts
Lifting these legs
After that
Unexpected turn.
I can’t see minutes
Pirouette with time,
But life still flows
After the tempest.
My legs rise slowly
As moonlight disappears
Into the river,
Just before
Dawn crosses the sky.

Patricia Carragon 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Peter V. Dugan

On Pens and Needles

Between the body art and caffeine, poets

unveil a wired vat anthem of misnomer

ear candy epaulets filled with alien slang sarcasm,

a melodrama of cynicism and hedonism.

 

They wield their pens like rapiers in the hands

of swordsmen slashing and stabbing, hacking

and slicing through the jungle and jumble

resonant in the mediocrity of middle-class life.

 

They open woe, open wounds and peel away

the scabby scars of society.

 

At night, you can hear them howl, creating

a cacophony of natural and unnatural sounds

flowing into the jazz like euphony of existence,

with words that are raw, flawed and unpolished.

 

A primal scream, a rap on life, a static noise

that echoes eloquent, powerful words ready to burst

into a spectrum of colors, images and stories

painted in the pastels of nature and imagination. 

 

They write for the outlaws, the outcasts and

the outlandish, while they sip coffee and ponder

poems not yet put to paper.

 

They know Jesus never rode a Harley, but it is

Walt Whitman who is tattooed by the poets

reading at the Skin Deep Ink and Cafe.

 

Peter V. Dugan

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Louisa Calio

Body of Joy

My body is

a living instrument

of the divine.

My body is the music

of angel choruses and choirs

chants by Krishna Das

the cords and strings of Liebert’s guitar

Pavarotti's arias,

My body is

la luna negra …

pure grace unfolding

a billion whirling dervishes

the universe of stars,

My body is

rhythmic swells and sways

tender to the touch

playful rainbows

cherubim who love too much,

My body is the pure bliss

of consciousness,

ecstatic love holding laughter,

moonbeams, sunshine, dolphin smiles,

And my face is a poem.

 

Louisa Calio

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Lloyd Abrams

upstaged in oceanside
a breezy muggy monday
the last night of the summer readings
at the oceanside gazebo

i usually bring my dog who’s almost twelve
perhaps jimmy doesn’t relate to poetry
but he loves the attention
especially the crumb cake
… at the fourth of july barbecue
jimmy’s in doggie nirvana

there’s an open read scheduled
on this late august evening
perhaps several scheduled readers had bailed out
i sign the sheet
slot number two is free

tony calls the first four of us up
tells us to read just one short piece
herb goes first
i’m next
as i fiddle with the microphone
jimmy steps off the platform
sniffs a rose bush
lifts his legs
starts piddling
and piddles
and piddles
and piddles some more
he takes the longest pee i can remember

when he’s done
when he’s finally done
i say thank you very muchget laughter and a round of applause

only then is it my turn
to read a poem entitledold fart
Lloyd Abrams

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Herb Siegel

FIVE CARD HOLD ‘EM
 (Hurricane Sandy, October-November 2012)
Bathed in the harsh night light,
streams on green table tops,
life’s chips stacked on station,
each pile from different pots.

“Sandy” with wind and brimstone,
stripped all of house and home,
displaced people, heat, gas,
her wrath a fury unknown.

Until a snow storm came
for added misery,
on our Election Day,
and anniversary (57^th).

Joan, Jon, Steph, and Dana
shone their light on other’s pain
with tender, loving care
sheltered from snow and rain.

The storm of the century
vs. care of family, friends,
and America to
survive assuredly.

Like a five-card hold ‘em game,
everybody’s all in.
Somber, anxious players.
The pot, we shared a win.

--Herb Siegel Dedicated to Joan, Jon, Steph, and Dana Mori

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Reed Farrel Coleman

The Sad Wife

A man stares at the face of his wife in a

photograph.

A man knows her somehow.

A man stares at the face of his watch

imagining gears, sprockets, a mainspring--

Somehow even ticking.

There are no mainsprings

behind the face of his wife

nor pictures ticking.

--Reed Farrel Coleman

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

J R Turek

Dragonfly on The Green

enticed by versified lines

you circle circle overhead

circle to absorb metaphors

natural as an August breeze

across Schoolhouse Green

 

hovering so low, I blink

against your blue black wings

that ruffle my hair at your passage

your stanza song hovers in my ear

plays replays plays like kids at recess

I went downtown to see Mr Brown

 

but you’re here on The Green

for poetry, the reader treats us to a sonnet

as sun floats lower in the sky, tiny ribbons

of light ignite your iridescence, liquid gold

veins on wings pulse an iambic beat,

your span wider than my hand, which

I hold out as a restful refuge for you

 

but you continue to circle free form

as free verse and I imagine you taking notes

as I do, my pen in hand, your song in my head

o beautiful you, wing’ed poetry

my muse on this dusklit evening

~ J R Turek

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Deborah Hauser

I Wanted the Moon

She set the glass of Tang down

in front of my brother,

wiped her hands on her apron.

I wanted Tang,

wanted to fly to the moon.

She set her fists on her hips,

sighed, shook her head.

I wanted Tang.

I wanted the moon.

She made me drink daisies instead.

Deborah Hauser

http://www.pulitzerremix.com/category/a-summons-to-memphis

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Barbara Reiher-Meyers

The Accident

 

I wanted my Mommy to come

and soothe away this dream
this crunch and thunk of ribs
and jarring bones.

I wanted to be in shock

because they say
it takes the pain away
but, no such luck

I stood upon the brakes until

they gave an angry sigh which said
I should have taken care
I cried, “Oh, God!, oh God!, oh,God!”

And He was there.

 

Barbara Reiher-Meyers

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Our First Poem-a-Day: Richard Vetere

In Reach

 

In reach was all that once was treasured

nameless in the fear least often measured

in that place of neither death, star or earth

where a life is valued more than it's worth.

 

Despite the years much is left unlearned

harbored in twilight only to be returned

to a murky dawn etched on a lonely face:

a tarnished remnant from an old embrace.

 

from The Other Colors in a Snow Storm by Richard Vetere (Bordighera Press 2012).

Richard Vetere

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!