October 2019 Voicing Art Poetry Reading + Poems

[inspired by the entire exhibit]

This is not my poem.
It is the poem of a man
who left it by the side of the road.
Tucked into the band of his hat
dusted and crushed,
clutched in the fist of his sweated hand
as he sought to gain entry
across a border he didn’t know existed
into a land neither known.
He walked and walked,
across dusty miles of empty desert,
tin cans tumbling across the sand
into sea of electric blue.
But the sea was inaccessible to him,
its cooling waters slipped away
whenever he sought to draw near.
The whales sang that
he did not know the code.
He had not guarded the right memories,
and forgot who he was,
where he came from.
He trudged on,
his shoulders drooping with each step
and his tongue as paper
in the husk of his mouth,
husk of the maize he thinks he used to shuck
for a shadow he thinks might have existed,
but as he grabs at the straw of the memory
– which might have been a right one –
it drifted apart,
and thus he faded away,
sinking by slow degree into
the sands of the Baja
– the below place –
because he forgot the land of women
and the song they used to sing
to raise the sun up into the sky
each day
with the gold of the maize
lovingly caressed and pressed
into manna between hands
that had felt everything
for others.
This is not my poem.
It is the poem of a man
who left it by the side of the road.
Tucked into the band of his hat
dusted and crushed,
clutched in the fist of his sweated hand.

ABOUT JC

Founder of The Poartry Project, poet, visual artist, cartographer of the unseen, builder of loving worlds through loving words
poartry.org

“The symbol is the enemy of the reality, and the reality is ever one’s true guide, true friend, true companion, and true self.”

– Irving Fiske

Its tough to smear reality
but we do it every day when what we happen to see becomes
— what does that happen to say ?  

For I have never truly heard
any statue or flag communicate
a single phrase or a single
word that was not born innate 

Symbols are false they overreach
administration is divine see them as
they are — sans speech
stop searching for the rhyme 

ABOUT JIMMY TEE

Jimmy Tee is a poet from Milton, Vermont
jmmytee300@yahoo.com
jimmyteeblog.wordpress.com

[for June]

No one saw her fly out of her body
Fire lit the sky, a torrent of sparks rippled out from her
like raindrops falling. 

In them, did I detect regret? I don’t know –
All one could see was an explosion of grief and anger
and the false god of pride, making a claim for her sorrow.
That small self-absorption built a feverish lie
from a small indiscretion and made it all powerful.
Consuming. Unforgiving.
So much so that she could not escape its hold.
She tried to find a stoop, a step, a place to land.
Did not see the cool water of the moving stream, so near her,
forgiveness and redemption lying there.
The fire of a thousand heartbreaks claimed her instead. 

A broken heart has no home.
She left by the back door and was gone.

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

So this is where it ends
in the waning days of summer,
crickets whirring,
sun smoldering,
moths and whippoorwills
skittering in the fractious light
of passing traffic.
Headlights momentarily freeze-frame
the raucous ballet
that is this highway,
where drivers,
full of itch and impatience,
cell phones
and radios at the ready,
try to hold dominion over all
behind the wheels of cars
and their ever distracted, imperfect minds.
Nature intervenes,
and serves up a porcupine,
raccoon, or skunk
sent to wander
onto the carpet
of this reckless road
where it most assuredly
meets its end.
This day, a young deer is the casualty,
Fresh kill. Warm to the touch.
Its carcass lies aslant,
head lolling to one side,
body bloated and broken,
glazed with flies already.
and for this animal I feel sadness.
It has somehow managed to
straddle the steel guardrail,
and is pinioned to the metal
like a christian sacrifice.
The wind kicks up the animal’s
soft fur, still billowing
like dandelion seed on a breeze,
falling back into stillness
only when the cars
have gone by.
No one passes
without noticing.
Perhaps it is the way
the deer delicately fingers the easement
with its front left hoof
seeming to reach forward
to what would have lay ahead
in the hollow
of the darkened hill.
This deer would not settle
for the slight ravine,
a deep cradle
at the side of the road.
But, here the animal dropped
like a busted open feather pillow,
hind quarters across the guardrail,
head and legs splayed out beneath it
at an awkward angle.
I mark the land and holy sky,
here, the deer
laid its body down,
on the most coveted spot
on the road,
the soft shoulder —
good enough for any creature’s
final resting place,
with a name that sounds
too good to be true.
I drive past,
and wonder how it knew.

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

Clams are not born with shells
The clam herself is a soft,
Fleshy mound that secretes
A sticky liquid
That reacts with the environment
And forms a hard, distinct shell

The clams march,
Moving forward
Clapping hands together in solidarity
The clams march on

Clams are soft
When they are young,
Exposed to the elements
They form a pearl inside them
Round, hard coveted spheres 

Yet men take rough hands
Against the clam’s outer cover
And pull with fingers deep in tender pink
Until she is pried open
Pearl exposed 

They take pearl to teeth,
Testing her worth
And if she is not just right,
Throw her back into the sea
Broken; without a shell 

And yet the moon
Moves the waves
Just as the clams continue,
Marching on

ABOUT JENN TRAVERS

Jenn Travers is currently a senior at the University of Vermont, where she studies English and theatre. She started writing poetry last spring. Her work has been exhibited in UVM’s Ekphrastic Poetry Reading at the Fleming Museum in April 2018, Wild Burlington for Art Hop at Artsriot in September 2018, and will be featured in Laurel Moon’s upcoming publication. She has recently returned from studying abroad at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.  

  BLUE AND GREEN MOVE FAST
     RED YELLOW AND INDIGO SLOW           
     ORANGE AND VIOLET RARELY MOVE                                          

              TOP SUBJECTS:                                  

       MOUNTAINS (SEE CAMEL’S HUMP),
       LAKES (SUNSETS, SINGLE BOATS)
       FIELDS (BALED HAY)
       BARNS (ABANDONED),                                   
       WILDLIFE (UNPOSED)                                   
       CHILDREN (SEE ICE CREAM)                       
       NO COWS (OVERDONE)                                 
       CHAMPY (CARTOON ONLY)                         
       AVOID MINIMALISM
       3 ADIRONDACK CHAIRS (NOT ONE)

        KEEP DAY JOB

ABOUT MCCLAIN JEFFREY MOREDOCK

In 80 years I have worked as a farmhand, lifeguard, folk-singer, surveyor, minister, chaplain, a teacher, coach, head of school, and chief operating officer.

Over a span 50 plus years, I’ve written numerous articles, many sermons, a collection of short stories, a novella, many songs, and over 100 poems.

As a cancer survivor, I treat each new day as a gift, and welcome the offering of what William Saroyan called “the human comedy.”  My family and my faith are inseparable, and like Miguel de Unamuno, I believe in God as I believe in my friends. 

PUBLICATIONS

Poems From Essex & Elsewhere

Nine Holes, Nine Lives-The Front Nine (e-book)

Zebras in the Lake (self-published)

Real fake News (available on request)
mcmoredock@gmail.com www.mjmoredock.com

[inspired by the entire exhibit]

Mama swell,
wrap us in your
shawl of stars. 

Papa earth,
plant our feet in
solid ground. 

Sister stream,
sweep us in the
slip of your stones. 

Brother fire,
forge us in the
light of your flickering face. 

The embers’
trace across
the sky. 

Burning blaze
of remembered
nights. 

Embroidered in
silvered trails
of galaxy pavanes. 

Etching our
history along
the vault of time. 

Arching our breath
through the hearths
of heavenly halls.

ABOUT JC

Founder of The Poartry Project, poet, visual artist, cartographer of the unseen, builder of loving worlds through loving words
poartry.org

When the rain comes, bringing fresh
agualluvia for the garden, I wait in anticipation.
Soon the wind will follow and kick up her skirts
spraying cool water through the pantalla
onto the porch where I sit, listening and counting cars
in the distant passing traffic. I know their number
by the swooshing sound made as tires grip wet pavement
and the autos scurry along the road
on this wet day, hurrying to their destination,
to beat the storm that has already startled them.
My porch becomes a cantina,
a taverna de bocados,
where my head is filled with heaping mouthfuls of sound
and my own heightened sensory acuity.
Water, wind, and the fertile green
of summer lies just outside the screened window
on this summer stage. The world is lit up like a premiere,
while I sit in obscura,
eager to watch the pageant of the season
continue all around me, illuminated —
as I wait for the rain to make its last curtain call,
expecting a standing ovation,
surely knowing it will receive one.

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

there is no destination,
there is only the long journey on
this train, with one purpose,
to carry the rider wherever she wants to be taken,
across plains, through mountain passes,
skirting cities, beyond curious cows grazing
in fields she might have called home, if,
there had been someone waiting on a porch,
or out behind the shed stacking wood,
stacking hearts, in neat little rows
with worn leather gloves,
soft from years of work and care, one chunk after the other,
cross-hatched in lines, so sure, so reliable,
poplar, ash, maple, pine, whatever one could find
on land that skirts the rails, cut itself by tracks
and passengers blurring by, always in a hurry,
there on the blue train,
on the rail that never stops
but marks the iron, rattling the ties, and always the steam,
shushing to escape the sonorous clacking.
It brings comfort to the riders with its monotony,
the sameness, expected, assured,
until the solitary figure appears
against the backdrop of evergreens,
and breaks the ripple of color waving by
with his steady, purposeful rhythm,
the pulse point, swinging low in a rhythm all his own
against the dark blue of the thicket,
Ax in hand, he has come to clear the rambling brush
as much as he has need to cut wood for winter,
the long single night of winter, its quiet, the impending loneliness.
Steady like the train he is, pausing to wipe his brow,
to squint the salt from his eyes, he looks up, just as she,
the lone rider with an eye to the window
raises her head too, and fixes a bead on the blue mountains,
the grazing sheep, sweeping like small tufts of clouds

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

When I was a child
My father would put me to bed
Tucking blanket up around my shoulders,
snug against my legs and feet.
He would sit there next to me
in the closing light of day
And sing.
It was our ritual.
It was the ritual for all my brothers
And my sister, each of us with a song of our own
only our father could sing.
Dad had picked one out from his memory
for his five children, and gifted
the songs as ours alone.
My eldest brother’s song was Roly Poly.
Although he wasn’t fat, nor do I recall
if he liked corn and taters,
he did like the song and Dad singing it.
The Streets of Laredo was a good cowboy song
for my next brother. Knowing he’d done wrong
left us all a little trepidatious,
and somewhat in awe of our brother.
My sister’s song was Puff the Magic Dragon.
I don’t think Dad got the double meaning of it.
To him, Puff was a mythical beast who carried
his youngest daughter off to a sleepy, enchanted land
where the dragons are nice
and little Jackie Paper loves him.
Every night, each of us got those special few minutes
with our father.
And when it was my turn,
I felt the warm embrace of his voice,
the constancy of his presence.
My song was Jamaica Farewell.
I remember Harry Belafonte on the cover
of an RCA album in a deep green
button down shirt. He was handsome.
And his voice was beautiful.
But it wasn’t as beautiful as my Dad’s
who began softly singing,
Down the way where the nights are gay
And the sun shines daily on the mountain top,
I would get a little wistful
when he got to the part about
leaving a little girl in Kingston Town.
I couldn’t imagine my father ever leaving me
anywhere, or going away.
So when I think of those children
stuck in cement pens,
caged like stock animals,
I think about how no one is there to sing to them
or ease their fears
about the strangeness of where they are.
I think about them falling asleep
wondering where their mothers and fathers
disappeared to and why have they not yet come to
bring them home?
No one sings there.
Fathers won’t be back for many a day.
Hearts are down
Heads are turning around
And children fall asleep
soothed by the sounds of their own weeping.

ABOUT MARY L. COLLINS

Mary L. Collins is a writer/activist.  A Burlington native, Mary lives in Elmore, VT and works for the State of Vermont where she manages communications for Vermont’s Foster Care Services. Prior to that, Mary worked in marketing and communications for various non profit organizations, owned a production company, and spent many years in broadcasting. She is the founder of Lakota Tiny House Nation, a building project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in SD where she has been involved for over 15 years as an advocate for indigenous rights and cultural understanding. She is a recipient of recognition from the national organization, “Giving Tuesday” as a “Woman Who Cares”, and a published poet. She has one son, Will.

art fills the Earth’s deep caves
strangles dusty warehouses
every culture found on every shelf
in an immense pile of imagination
forged as divine madness
a compulsion to forever create 

paintings hang tilted in alleyways
sculptures lie in broken shapes of
melted stone and bronzed wood
the poet’s music overwhelms they
recite epics of ideals where none
exist but in mirrors

if we drop the symbols that confront
from every angle we find life as a
well developed myth interpretation
leads nowhere when style is
subjective to vacuum canvases only
extend to their frames 

ABOUT JIMMY TEE

Jimmy Tee is a poet from Milton, Vermont
jmmytee300@yahoo.com
jimmyteeblog.wordpress.com

I’d like to speak to Charlie
     but he’s on the phone
high dealing with Waldo
     from his easy chair at home 

Charlie needed money
     and Lynn ruled the throne
Charlie supplied the saccharine
     and two kids she called her own 

Waldo could be lazy
     due to low testosterone
he stayed eight miles high
     in a haze of hydrocone 

Charlie says to Waldo
     he could move eight pounds alone
Waldo sent a suitcase
     full of Mexican pone 

the coppers got word
     and they searched the zone
Charlie tried to stash it
     but he was accident prone 

Lynn about freaked
     out of the house he was thrown
she was a preachers daughter
     and she couldn’t condone

Charlie asked Waldo
     for an extended loan
but Waldo had a deadline
     that he couldn’t postpone 

Charlie hid his treasure
     underneath a stone
he sweated one night
     and his secret was blown 

the coppers all wearing
     badges of chrome
found the yellow suitcase
     and to the press it was shown 

with the loss of eight g’s
     Charlie had to atone
when the thought of Waldo hit him
     Charlie started to groan 

the lesson of the story
     Charlie reaped what he had sown
since they call it dope
     you think he might have known

ABOUT JIMMY TEE

Jimmy Tee is a poet from Milton, Vermont
jmmytee300@yahoo.com
jimmyteeblog.wordpress.com

[inspired by the entire exhibit]

This is not my poem.
It is the poem of a man
who left it by the side of the road.
Tucked into the band of his hat
dusted and crushed,
clutched in the fist of his sweated hand
as he sought to gain entry
across a border he didn’t know existed
into a land neither known.
He walked and walked,
across dusty miles of empty desert,
tin cans tumbling across the sand
into sea of electric blue.
But the sea was inaccessible to him,
its cooling waters slipped away
whenever he sought to draw near.
The whales sang that
he did not know the code.
He had not guarded the right memories,
and forgot who he was,
where he came from.
He trudged on,
his shoulders drooping with each step
and his tongue as paper
in the husk of his mouth,
husk of the maize he thinks he used to shuck
for a shadow he thinks might have existed,
but as he grabs at the straw of the memory
– which might have been a right one –
it drifted apart,
and thus he faded away,
sinking by slow degree into
the sands of the Baja
– the below place –
because he forgot the land of women
and the song they used to sing
to raise the sun up into the sky
each day
with the gold of the maize
lovingly caressed and pressed
into manna between hands
that had felt everything
for others.
This is not my poem.
It is the poem of a man
who left it by the side of the road.
Tucked into the band of his hat
dusted and crushed,
clutched in the fist of his sweated hand.

ABOUT JC

Founder of The Poartry Project, poet, visual artist, cartographer of the unseen, builder of loving worlds through loving words
poartry.org