To view all the poems, click on the picture and scroll through
Poetry, Pages 6, 13, 15
Part of the article “The Spirit of Street Youth” By Jim Theofelis, Page 6
The author of this poems is not identified. The article is about the celebration on October 19, 1994 called “Celebration of the Spirit of Street Youth” coordinated by YouthCare’s Orion Center program, part of Homeless Children’s Awareness week, sponsored by Seattle-King County Coalition for the Homeless.
There are no Birthday party games
No little children to laugh or rhyme
The wading pool is empty: I feel so bloody lame
As I wait for sleep to whisper my forgotten name
It’s after nine and closing time
At the city park; in the middle of dark
I’m scared to be alone
But hope to God I am
I nestle in the Rhododendron bushes that tonight I call home
I wonder when I traded bedtime television
For candy-flavored wine
It’s after nine and closing time
At the city park; in the middle of dark
I know some day I’ll have my turn
To show the world that I can fly
For now I fight just not to burn
The Eagle knows we both could die
It’s after nine and closing time
At the city park in the middle of dark
Page 13
Untitled
by Max Chandler
the posing fishes know what circuses are really for
they are constructing steel factories to get them into space
the seagulls are rearranging fermat’s theorem
the sheep are resting and reading the new york times
everything is becoming not what is was
everything is turning into stars into the ocean
the universe is becoming a burning blue light
you are becoming an ice cream cone
the fish are becoming bricks
impossible light shine on me daily
they are changing me into the stone
i’m changing into a nail file
i’m slowly becoming a telephone pole
and a lacquered loaf of french bread
at the same time
i’m changing you into a jar of corn kernels
into the waxy effigy of jesus christ
i’m sprinkling candy on your feet and
telling you what will become of it
(fin)
****************************************************
Page 15
From “For Strong Women,” by Marge Piercy
In the article: In the Spirit of Margaret by Michele Marchand and Margaret King, SWAC
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but strong as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightening from a cloud.
Lightening stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.