Mayor Bill DeBlasio and I Meet Again

Just now, I overheard Mayor DeBalsio talking on a cell phone outside my window and so I went outside to greet him.  I asked him if he remembered me?  I am quite a vocal activist in my neighborhood and we have clashed on some issues to put it mildly.

He said "Yes."  We posed for this nice picture here.  While we disagree on development, I do like his work in public education and I told him so. I wonder if he thinks the Gowanus Canal is still "not very dirty"?

See http://pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2015/09/mayor-de-blasio-was-in-carroll-gardens.html

More Poems from B.E. Stock

As I mentioned last week LINK , it is my pleasure to feature a few poems written by my friend and creative colleague, B.E. Stock.  Enjoy!

T.S.

HALF

To silence the screaming

I must listen to it

Go down to the cave

Where it echoes in rage

There will be no answer

No restraint no there there

To change the face inside

I must gaze at the face

Answer its ugliness

Give it my wounded breast

Sometimes I turn away

Lacking the strength to bear it

But I always return

Disgusted with half

Of myself and my life

Each time we come closer

To the final union

+

THE MATRIARCH

She set the terms of everything that was done

In the house; he worked, came home, gave her his pay

Yet their romance was such a stormy one

Their children sometimes shuddered till the day.

Voices, potatoes, butter hit the wall

Until an eerie stillness from his end

Was finally met by sobs, and they would blend

To passionate caresses in the hall.

Later their son-in-law would dread the times

He drove them to the airport, when they quarreled

About the weather, clothing, cents and dimes,

Though solidly united as to morals.

No one was worried about her when he died.

She spent more time in church, seemed satisfied –

But, strange to say, was dead within a year,

Needing to fight, and finding no one near.

A Labor Day Treat: Poet B.E. Stock!

A Labor Day Treat!

It is my great pleasure to introduce you to friend and creative colleague, B.E. Stock, who I have known for many years.  I first met B.E.Stock at the Old Stone House in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where we both read our works at a reading for Brooklyn poets.  There, I purchased her book, Collected Poems, which I have enjoyed ever since.

B.E. Stock studied poetry and fiction writing at Bread Loaf, Sarah Lawrence College, the Brooklyn Poetry Circle with Alfred Dorn, The West Chester Form and Narrative Conference, and Colrain. She is widely published in magazines and websites such as Blue Unicorn. Orbis, The Lyric, Poetry Porch, Lalitamba, Utmost Christian Writers, and Catholic World, and has curated and featured in poetry readings in Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York.  B. E. Stock has self-published at various times since 1976, and her book and chapbooks are available. Please e-mail bestock@nyc.rr.com for details.

Two poems by B.E.Stock are below.  

I will feature two more tomorrow.  

T.S.

THE OTHER BRANCH

We heard in the night the winds of unprecedented hate

Howl through our continent, and, packing our hearts

With a few keepsakes, fled to another.

And during our struggle with indifference and greed,

Our cousins, lovers of hearth and home, who would not believe us,

Were slaughtered, dissected, driven to death in toil,

Cut away from sons and mothers, burned

In enormous furnaces, trucked into troughs of death.

And you ask, why have we become so hard,

Our faces etched with determination,

Our skin pale from endless ascetical rules?

Or else, sprawling in generous sarcasm,

Why do we spear the gentle pieties

You live by, pouring venom on your dreams?

Ours are dead, we left them behind,

And live now under a hot searchlight,

Rooting out denial, especially the kind

That enchanted us in what we thought was home.

DESTINY

I stood among the rock

Round, ugly and gray.

The day itself was gray.

The pines were full of rooks

Who screamed like burning souls.

But in my trembling hands

A heavy hammer lay,

And from the whole expanse

One ugly round I chose,

And smashed without delay.

Then, blinded by green light,

I knelt to pick up gems

Cradled there out of sight

For eons, until then.