My niece may not have watched one single frame of Julie Andrew’s “The Sound of Music”. But she knows contemporary music, and she has helped me to appreciate some of her favorite things. I believe that the young can learn from us, and we can also learn from the younger.
Hieros Gamos 2012
By Mel Brake
She reunited with her lover
He has been away from home
For millennia
She waited alone
In the isolated cold and space
But she did not want the children
To think about their father
She as both mother and father
The duties and responsibilities
Were left to her
How could she denied them
Angelic faces that recalled
Her lover and husband
She went to her empty bedchamber
Every night with thoughts of him
On darken nights
None to warm her
She had her suitors
Men both great and small
Passerby and casuals
They would hang their members
On the walls of her home
Like Winter Solstice stockings
She would cut them down
One by one
Hurt by their pride
But nonetheless for the wear
More than 26,000 years
Preceded her longing
For her lover
Her patience greater than Job
Her steadfastness out last the face of the Sphinx
But on the fifteen day of December
Her lover returned back home
From a dangerous odyssey
Through comets
Quasars and black holes
And light years of distant
Galaxies
She had listened to more than a 1,000 tales
End of time stories that heralded his coming
But when she saw his divine countenance
She laughed uncontrollably
He was really home this time and
For good
She rushed into his arms
Then gently caressed his face
And kissed his tendered but broken lips
Followed by their children
Who embraced him around his legs
Venus Mars and Mercury
Raised their light quotients
In accordion
As the children lay in bed
Sleeping with crescent moon shaped
Smiles
She entered their bedchamber
With him by her side
She was now with her lover
Her lover was now with her
She was now the moon
Her lover was now the sun
And with this great solar return
She fertilized the sun
The earth and the moon
And with this great celebration story
She brought life forth to
Saturn
Jupiter
Uranus and Pluto
And the nearby Pleiades constellation
And with this galactic marriage
And sacred union
There was love and joy
And with this Hieros Gamos
And the triangulation
Of the Milky Way’s core
There was love and joy
The seeding and initiation
Of a new and great beginning
An event horizon
Let us begin
Pressbox (Press Release) – According to Master Astrologer Celeste Teal on May 20, 2012, the stars will align over the Middle East during a solar eclipse to signify a major event. But the real action will occur in the Philadelphia suburb when award winning Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Iain Haley Pollock, and NYC renowned anthropologist, professor and poet Renato Rosaldo present a stellar poetry workshop and book signing.
About the presenters:
Jeffrey Ethan Lee’s poetry book, identity papers (Ghost Road Press, 2006) was a 2007 Colorado Book Award finalist [http://www.identitypapers.org]. His first full-length poetry book, invisible sister (Many Mountains Moving Press, 2004) was praised in American Book Review, North American Review, Rain Taxi Review etc. Lee won the 2002 Sow’s Ear Poetry Chapbook prize ($1,000) for The Sylf (2003), created identity papers for Drimala Records, published Strangers in a Homeland (chapbook with Ashland Poetry Press, 2001). He also published hundreds of poems, stories and essays in Many Mountains Moving, North American Review, African American Review, American Poetry Review, Xconnect, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Crosscurrents, Green Mountain Review, Washington Square, & Other Voices. He also won the first Tupelo Press award for literary fiction in 2001 for a novel, The Autobiography of Somebody Else. He has a Ph.D. in British Romanticism and an MFA from NYU. His new blog link is here.
Renato Rosaldo, a Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, is one of the world’s leading anthropologists. He has done field research among the Ilongots of northern Luzon, Philippines, and he is the author of Ilongot Headhunting: 1883-1974: A Study in Society and History (1980). He is also the author of Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (1989). He is also the editor of Creativity/Anthropology (with Smadar Lavie and Kirin Narayan) (1993), Anthropology of Globlization (with Jon Inda) (2001), and Cultural Citizenship in Island Southeast Asia: National and Beloning in the Hinterlands (2003), among other books. He has been conducting research on cultural citizenship in San Jose, California since 1989, and contributed the introduction and an article to Latino Cultural Citizens: Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights (1997). He is also a poet who graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in 1971. He is emeritus professor at Stanford University. He teaches at New York University, and is a New York Institute for the Humanities Fellow. His poetry appeared in Bilingual Review, Many Mountains Moving, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Texas Observer. He won the 2004 American Book Award.
Iain Haley Pollock’s first collection of poetry, Spit Back a Boy (U. of Georgia Press, 2011), won the 2010 Cave Canem Prize. Previously, his work had appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Callaloo. Pollock lives in Philadelphia and teaches English at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy and poetry at the Solstice MFA Program of Pine Manor College.
About the workshop:
The workshop will occur on the 3rd floor at Tyme Gallery–the gallery will be closed–and begin PROMPTLY at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, May 20. Light refreshments–drinks, snacks, etc–will be on hand for the workshop.
The poetry workshop is charging a fee of $25.00.
You must submit a $25 fee to secure a spot in the workshop (10 seats go fast!!). There are two scholarships available for youth 18yrs and younger. Payment will be received at the door, so late comers need not worry. But call first, we might be out of room!!
To remit payment, please call Edna (Tyme Gallery) at 610-853-1215, or send Edna an email (madametyme@tymegallery.com) with (toakman@arcadia.edu) as a cc. You cannot RSVP for the workshop without advanced payment, and you must cc Tamara Oakman, or check APIARY’s website to get full workshop instructions.
The performance, Q & A, and book signing begins at 2:30 p.m., and is FREE and OPEN to the public–but $5 donations (from those not participating in the workshop).
For full info: www.apiarymagazine.com.
Tyme Gallery is located at 17 West Eagle Road, Havertown, PA 19083.
**A CARPOOL will leave from Center City at noon on May 20. If people are interested in the carpool they must email: toakman@arcadia.edu by May 15 at midnight.
About the Organizers:
This event is brought to you by a wonderful collaboration between APIARY Magazine, Many Mountains Moving, Mel’s Poetry Works, and Tyme Gallery.
For full info: www.apiarymagazine.com
My Deer Boy
Written by Mel Brake
Like a white tail deer
My boy is a target
Now that he has come of age
He is not that cute little black boy
Who sings in church, “ I have climbed on the rough side of the mountain”
He is open season
My boy does not know this
From his point of view
He feels the power in his sinewy legs
He grew facial fair and strings of curls on chin
His face is angular and his body is tight
His voice has deepened and his teeth are white
He is attractive
But rifles are aimed at his head for the kill
When he roams away from his home
The deer hunters are in waiting
In hospitals
In the courts
In the streets
In policing
Like a blackened outline in a shooting range
He is sport
Decoys are deployed
To entice him to fall into traps
Sex drugs easy money
Don’t want to lose my boy
Don’t want to see him shot down
Don’t want him dead
From his point of view
He does not give a damn
About the world and the world does not give a damn about my dear boy
The Son’s Prayer
Written by Mel Brake
Bless me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Bless me with peace
Give me the strength Mother Goddess
From above and below
The strength to carry out your will
Bless me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Bless me with love
Give me courage Mother Goddess
From above and below
The courage to do what is right
Bless me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Bless me with comfort
Honor me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Honor me with thy presence
Bless me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Bless me with faith
Give me the vision Mother Goddess
From above and below
The vision to march into hell if necessary
Bless me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Bless me with your archangels
Give me the succor Mother Goddess
From above and below
The succor to move forward when my hand and feet are bounded
Bless me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Bless me with patience
Give me the patience Mother Goddess
From above and below
The patience to stay encouraged when all around me is falling
Bless me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Bless me to walk my path in your name
Give me the honor Mother Goddess
From above and below
The honor to do your will
Bless me Mother Goddess
From above and below
Bless me with peace
Much like the scientific discovery of a 30,000 year seed that was planted and secreted in Serbian permafrost and revived only a few days ago.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2103936/Ancient-plant-brought-life-buried-squirrels-Siberian-permafrost-30-000-years-ago.html
Jean Galliano has written a story, “Angel’s Eye”.
Her covers depicts a woman who was beholden in a tree,
and rose up like a 30,000 year old seed from the ground. Jean Galliano wrote “Angel’s Eye” 30 years ago but recently she received a message from a psychic that poems and stories she was looking for was stored in a white box. The white box was resting under her computer desk for all those years but she did not know it.
href=”http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1902506983/angels-eye/widget/card.html”>http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1902506983/angels-eye/widget/card.html
