Monthly Archives: March 2015

Member Monday: Gardens Driven by Dale Angel

Welcome back to Member Monday.  It’s a pleasure to feature a piece by the always hilarious Dale Angel.

Gardens Driven

by Dale Angel

I have been accused of being obsessive…me! I’m sensible…I think?
In my opinion one of the most beautiful of God’s gifts is a compost pile. It quietly invites all kinds of beneficial life that are producers, do you know how hard it is to find producers? And they work in harmony. Lower uneducated forms of life do better at this than we do, and add creating something like a divine product that is welcome to all circles, including the very highest of society. When it is very good, like good wine, people will stand in line to get some. It’s Gardens Driven.
When my family wants to come and clean up my yard, a family affair, we disagree. It’s not trash, its like a pregnancy building a future life. So…it’s not always in pristine beauty-who is? The future will reveal all the potential hopes.
I know, I carry every leaf and twig to it, my family says it’s almost a religious experience to watch me feed it, carry water and food scraps. I’m obsessive. Nothing leaves my kitchen without a hope, coffee grounds and orange peels have a useful future life. I know it’s not beauty to every eye at this time. Give it time to flower.
Why can’t I just buy a sack of fertilizer and sprinkle it and remove the eye sore?
Because the last enriched sack of their prescribed precious compost killed my Coconut Thyme in a few hours!
It’s not openly discussed but in garden circles and Universities the new herbicides/pesticides are contaminated with some new unheard of by-product that kills plant life and the earth on contact for up to two years. It’s almost like a new weapon the powers that be are covertly trying to figure out how it works. Could it be an Agent Orange product leaking?
I promised to hide it, but where? I guess I could quit the worm bin. It is cranky during the heat and it is getting hotter. They are such uncomplaining little creatures and ask for so little and are so generous. I suppose I could pile it in that corner. I like worms, to throw them out of their house is as bad as throwing people out of their homes, it’s cruel.
I can’t watch a compost pile being desecrated, piling it in the garbage can and carried away leaving a clean raked area. I have friends who don’t allow a stray leaf to land in their yard, it makes me unsettled. They indicate my yard would be as beautiful as their yard, if I’d clean up the mess…bring me the smelling salts!
I may be sicker than I think, is obsessiveness kin to Alzheimer’s?
A Note from the Webmaster: If you’re a Writers Forum member in good standing and would like to be featured on Member Monday, please send your submission to writersforumwebmaster@gmail.com. Submissions should be 75-750 words, appropriate for all ages and error free. Please include a short bio, a headshot and any related links. The author retains all rights and gives permission to Writers Forum to publish their submission on the website and/or in the newsletter. Thank you!

Member Monday: All the Forever We Had by Linda Boyden

Welcome back to Member Monday.  It’s a pleasure to feature a poem by poet, storyteller and children’s author, Linda Boyden.  You can purchase a hardback copy of Linda’s newest picture book Boy and Poi Poi Puppy at All About Books.  Welcome, Linda!

All the Forever We Had

By Linda Boyden ©2014

All the forever we had,

four days,

three nights,

a speck of time

but with enough joy

to last an eternity

apart.

 

Joined at the heart,

time and space

could not separate us.

We wait for Time to

loop us together,

cradle us again.

 

Until then

we stay apart,

forever lovers,

heart-in-heart

against the dark.

A Note from the Webmaster: If you’re a Writers Forum member in good standing and would like to be featured on Member Monday, please send your submission to writersforumwebmaster@gmail.com. Submissions should be 75-750 words, appropriate for all ages and error free. Please include a short bio, a headshot and any related links. The author retains all rights and gives permission to Writers Forum to publish their submission on the website and/or in the newsletter. Thank you!

A Message from the President: March, 2015

Oops. This is one of the months that I don’t have as much time as usual to write my President’s Message. Granted, February with twenty-eight days is an obvious short-writing month, but I usually recognize that early. But March is a sneaker.

Yep! I am whining about that one hour we skip. Note that I don’t get excited with the hour gained in the Fall.

The last few years the Spring Time Change has affected me. I have morning meetings that I kinda blow off during the winter because I am a slouch when it is not daylight when rising. The last few weeks I could almost get my butt up-and-about, but my mind plays mental tricks. Like in, don’t become a regular since after the time change I revert to the slouch role for a few more weeks until the sun catches up.

I am really good at reasoning.

It is interesting that Daylight Saving Time is mostly a Northern Hemisphere concoction. Another oddity is that Germany launched it first in 1916, yet it was another two years before the United States gave it a shot. And it didn’t stick, being repealed later nationwide with only a few major cities going against the grain.

But then forty days after Japan bombed Pearl,  we went overboard; not only did we bring it back, but we called it War Time all the time. For the duration of World War Two we never adjusted our clocks.

After the war, confusion reared its head when states could start-and-end DST at their whim. Congress was called in, and they established the Uniform Time Act. We have changed the start/stop times, but when states observe it, they all get up in the night on the same day.

Well, I got to practice getting up earlier, so have a writing-savings day.

Member Monday: Dylan Retrospective by Linda Boyden

Welcome back to Member Monday.  It’s a pleasure to feature a poem by poet, storyteller and children’s author, Linda Boyden.  You can purchase a hardback copy of Linda’s newest picture book Boy and Poi Poi Puppy at All About Books.  Welcome, Linda!

Dylan Retrospective
By Linda Boyden ©2014

What happened to the wild poets
the crazy word makers?
Red
White
Black

            Brown
Hell, get drunk enough and everyone’s Irish,
30 pints of Guinness reveals the truth.

Where are the crazy poets?
We were the wanderers,
the word listeners,
the rat-ta-tat-tat beat
filling our brains
guitars trilling
to Smoky Mountain blessings
thoughts blurred as snow fields.

We passed the bread basket,
played jug band music,
hoped to eat,
sometimes didn’t.
So we wrote
we hoped
we lived to write.
We sucked up coffee,
and often just sucked;
used hunger as the fuel

to wind up unforgettable.
Immorality is one letter shy of immortality, a few cigarettes

and beers from the gutter.
Stolen lyrics, forgotten lines,
who cared, who remembers?
We got our words out.
We got our worlds out.

Now who will catch the torch?
Who cares where the hungry poets spend the night?
Who knows how to feed one?
Do we? Does anyone?
When are you going to howl, America?
Or are you star-spangled to death,
a no-child-left-behind-single-file-parade
to acres of beige houses with white trim?

When will you howl, America?
Where are your crazy poets?

A Note from the Webmaster: If you’re a Writers Forum member in good standing and would like to be featured on Member Monday, please send your submission to writersforumwebmaster@gmail.com. Submissions should be 75-750 words, appropriate for all ages and error free. Please include a short bio, a headshot and any related links. The author retains all rights and gives permission to Writers Forum to publish their submission on the website and/or in the newsletter. Thank you!