"Your Service" by Cheryl A. Rice and "The Osterias Are Tipping Prosecco" by Ken Holland were awarded first and second place prizes respectively, in the 2017 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Contest sponsored through Albany Poets. Both Cheryl and Ken are long time CAPS members and supporters! Wooooo Hooooo!
Karen Corinne Herceg and Roberta Gould co-feature on 3/9/17 at 7:00 PM at ArtBar Gallery, 674 Broadway, Kingston, NY 12401 (845-338-2789) for WOMPS (Word of Mouth Poetry Series). Open mic sign up 6:30 PM.
On Saturday, March 11, CAPS hosts our first March Membership Marathon from 1-9pm @ The Roost, 69 Main Street, New Paltz.
Each featured member will read 15 minutes. Members participating include: John Martucci, Cheryl A. Rice, Greg Correll, Dayl Wise,
Alison Kofler-Wise, Leslie Gerber, Cassandra Clark, Irene O'Garden, Samuel Claiborne, Don Lev, Roberta Gould, Laurence Carr,
Pauline Uchmanowicz, and others. Hosted by Glenn Werner, Jim Eve, and yours truly.
There will be a membership drive with new membership benefits offered. A two poem/five minute open mic for members and
non-members will run throughout the day.
So let's make some noise! In solitude!
Calling All Poets, in association with Empowering Ellenville, presents our inaugural Open Mic Invitational
on Friday, March 10, from 7-10pm. Hosted by Mike Jurkovic, Glenn Werner, and Jim Eve, this event brings
CAPS to Ellenville and begins our regularly scheduled Second Friday reading series.
So come one, come all! Novice poet or open mic veteran. Bring your voice and a friend's voice. Bring your guitar
or percussion and help to celebrate CAPS continued mission of providing a free speech forum. Two poems/five minutes.
Let's hear what Ellenville and the surrounding communities has to say! Out Loud!
Light refreshments will be available. There is a suggested $2.00 donation.
Empowering Ellenville
159 Canal Street
Ellenville, NY
Here are the YouTube links for last night's reading.
See it all in full, living, democratic colour!
part 1: Anne Gorrick & Bill Seaton
part 2: open mic w/Greg Correll, Cheryl A. Rice, Tara Yetter, Glenn Werner, Jim Eve,
Hayden Wayne, Leslie Gerber, Kate Hymes, Christopher Wheeling and others
https://youtu.be/ld89OI1IMQY
Albany Poets presents . . .part 1 ....February 15, 2017
Freedom Isn't Free bumper sticker caught my eye.
I thought, that's true, and even though
Military Funerals Are Free,
Death Is Costly to the soldier,
his wife and child, mom and dad, friends and family.
I know the debt we owe to those who brave cross blood red seas,
leave their body parts in desert sands,
lose their minds from killing innocents
on the way to protect our enclaves, fresh cut lawns,
summer barbecues, big cars and little children.
Thank you is not enough.
But enough is enough.
Our sad little world needs to learn the lesson.
Killing to maintain freedom is never the answer.
It just leads to more killing and less freedom.
My stories are contrived from concealed figments of
imaginary pieces of the real estate of my mind
that stalk the subconscious synapses of paradox,
unfold layers of evocative reflections of experience,
journey through poignant particles of brainwaves that
peddle through the thick atmosphere to empty space,
seeking time bomb snippets set to detonate at moment's notice.
Minutes ago, words did not appear on this paper,
now language is squeezed n' transformed
into poetic birth of another doggerel.
If I were a woman, I would breast feed this infant
so that he/she would manifest to completion.
But, I am a man whose innate ability to nurture
lay in the soil over which I toil each spring
as I till, seed, water, weed, reap, sow my paradise.
In stillness, my lucid mind wanders inward,
convolutes, then circumvents reality,
logic disappears, reason reflects observation,
a flicker of perception is ignited,
lyrics pour from philosophical vessel
onto slippery roads I travel, paths once forsaken,
given up for dead, only to rise in the sunshine.
The sky is a cloudless incandescent blue.
The 80-degree temperature is the perfect palatial pallet.
The sultry wind crawls 5mph from the warm gulf waters.
Swan families are floating in file beneath the boat dock.
Married eagles are nesting in needles atop the pine trees,
Playful squirrels are fidgeting up bark of the palm trees.
Poking, peaking, long-beak White Ibis' aerate the lawn.
'scuse me for
outwardly processing but
I can't control myself
these days. There's too much
to masticate and castigate
not to. But I'm
low on patience
and need action. Abolition.
Absolution that this statecraft
between us, between the world
is more than funds and suppression.
More than archived warheads and
blanching at darker skin than cardboard.
I don't buy it.
It's not policy
it's theology.
And the faster we make
that distinction
the better. God can't lead us
all into battle
but each
will claim
his banner.
And you know the shit-storm
that shadows: tin cut messiahs
yell for blood
and everyone bleeds.
We all become bovine
and crave a good steak
w/our pillaged wine
and sterling spoons.
We feed their children ours
and that has got to stop.
'cos I won't spend
my golden years
mucking out
the shit of kings.
Bleaching their chambers
of virgin blood. Lighting their pyres
and burning my own.
