Month: February 2015

The Mural’s Secrets – A Poem Of Hollywood From Ron Olsen

by

The Mural's Secrets - A Poem Of Hollywood From Ron Olsen

(The “You Are The Star” mural at Hollywood and Wilcox, Hollywood, CA. USA –
painted by Thomas Suriya   photo: flickr)

The Mural’s Secrets
by Ron Olsen

If you look deeply enough
Far Inside
With courage, daring and flare
Beyond the troubles of everyday life
The issues of mundane care
There you will see
Looking back at you
Dietrich, Monroe and Gable
Issuing the simple demand
“Carry on if you can
Join us if you are able”

“Would you act?
Would you act?
Would you dare to join us and act?”

“Have you the courage for it?
To bare your soul and act?
Have you the magic to show your true self
Will you join us and seal the pact?”

As soon as they appeared
They drifted away
Fading to black upstage right
Leaving me there
Forlorn and bereft
Confused and alone in the night

And then from the darkness a voice in my ear
So close that it gave me a fright

“I’m neither your daughter
Your sister
Or dad
I’m neither your mother, too”

“I’m the essence of all
That drives the stage
Brave Ulysses
And William’s brew”

From downstage center
The little tramp appeared
Looking humble in all his might
Warning me time was ticking away
 That my power would soon take flight

“Join us if you dare” he taunted me
“If you have the courage and peak
Cast the one that you are aside
And become the other you seek”

“If you can’t do that
Then go away
 You’ll not join us here on the wall
Just go away and remember the day
When you dreamed of having it all”

© 2015 Ron Olsen – all rights reserved

 

malibu

Ron Olsen is an LA-based retired journalist who writes essays and an occasional poem.  More of his poetry can be found here.

 

 


 

Rhenium poem from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#75, Re) from the Chicago poet Janet Kuypers

by

Rhenium,

Janet Kuypers

from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#75, Re)
(started 8/7/14, written 8/8/14, finished 8/9/14)

Okay, so I’ve been researching
these elements in the Periodic Table,
and when I got to Rhenium
(named for the Rhine river, by the way),
I was kind of stumped.
What comes to your head
when you hear the word “Rhenium”?
Other than the fact that
“Rhenium” was an LP from Parliment
released in nineteen seventy,
I was stumped.

But hey, this element was named after the Rhine river
stretching through Europe,
but in ancient Greek Times,
they thought of the Rhine
as the outermost border
of civilization and reason,
beyond which were mythical creatures.
No lie.

But I don’t know if that mythical nature
of the unknown is what drove scientists
to search for this element,
and to learn everything they could
about what was otherwise unknown to them…

I mean, Mendeleev, the “creator”
as we know it of the Periodic Table,
postulated this element’s existence,
but it wasn’t found in his lifetime…
and it was later predicted
by an English physicist in 1913,
but it still hadn’t been discovered.

But people in different countries
claimed the discovery
through X-ray analysis,
but after a ton of dispute
this elusive element was finally found,
and as all scientists like to think,
this discovery has to mean something,
I mean, we have to use this discovery
for ssomething, so people
will appreciate our precious work!

Well they found out that Rhenium
(now that airplanes were being used more and more
by both vacationers and business travelers)
can be used with super alloys
to make jet engine parts
(well, I guess that’s cool
for the jet-setters out there…)
but, after people figured out
that putting lead in high-performance fuel
might not be good for the environment
(okay, or for people),
they found that Rhenium
could be a catalyst
for making lead-free
high-octane gasoline.

Since we now have means to travel faster and farther
(thanks to Rhenium in part, by the way),
we might not think of the Rhine as the edge of our existence
with anything beyond it being so mysterious.
But when it comes to Rhenium,
it’s one of the rarest elements in Earth’s crust
(I wonder if that’s why it took so long to discover it.)
Because of it’s radioactivity,
it’s used in the treatment of liver cancer
(and maybe pancreatic cancer too),
but with the skyrocketing price of this rare element,
scientists still worry about the potential toxicity of Rhenium.
So, maybe like the mythical creatures
beyond the Rhine the Greeks foretold,
maybe, after discovering Rhenium,
maybe we should be looking
at both the bad — and the good —
that can come out of the rare,
but radical,
and remarkable Rhenium.

TO THE ABORTION | Joan Pond

by

to the abortion
Pam and I sat in front, clutching cups of coffee.
Steam fogged the glass
as I followed Bryant’s Pass
and we crossed the double kerthump of track,
headed toward Bridgeport.
We stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts
and saw the dude in the cowboy hat and string tie.
The restaurant, with its lights and white walls
was sterile as a Hopper.
And the man in the hat sat facing the street,
balancing his face in his hands,
staring into the night.
I turned at the light and followed the signs.
Two blocks to Stillman Medical.
One Block to Stillman.
Take a right at Stillman.
Strange, for a clinic to advertise
as an amusement park.
It was though we were driving
to South of the Border.

Nathaniel Mackey Poetry

by

Nathaniel Mackey Poetry
Nathaniel Mackey

Nathaniel is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University

Here is a find! From the University of Pennsylvania, Mp3 readings by Mackey Penn Sound. include the excellent recordings from Song of the Andoumboulou

Nathaniel Mackey has won Yale’s 2015 Bollingen Prize for Poetry. Past winners includes Marianne Moore, ee e cummings, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens.

[tubepress mode=”tag” tagValue=”nathaniel mackey reads” resultsPerPage=”24″ resultCountCap=”96″ orderBy=”relevance” perPageSort=”relevance” ]