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!