A Room With A View
February 2015
#074
Cincuenta Años Pasado M.S.
Como una gran estrella que brilla
a las siete semillas en su pueblo de nacimiento de Omaha
Vivió su tiempo en Lansing, Michigan, con su familia
en el aire con sangre y fuego de los Ku Klux Klanes
a la muerte de su padre y la opresión de su madre
del estado del exilio de todos a una vez
en Boston y en Harlem cada uno vive dos vidas
y voló de Hatlem hasta Boston perdido por las calles
de la ciudad que él adoptó
en el nombre de los quien están enterrado
en la carcel y en el silencio de diez años
como la canción de Billie Holiday “Strange Fruit”
se hablan confundido y bárbaro
en una sola gota el que lo sabe que están bajo de enfermedad
se salvan con un mensaje de la verdad
hasta cuando él se econtró libre con un viento sin paredes
él habló y la gente creen en un nuevo amor
en Detroit y Chicago y Boston y Harlem
como la primera vez que él habló en frente de la reunion
de la 115 y la Avenida Lenox
cerca de la bodega de Guillermo mi primo
con una sonrisa sangre que vive en mis penas
siempre la verdad
detrás de los cuartos cerrados y secretos
donde justicia es prohibida
nada puede matar
cincuenta años pasado
Malcolm Shabazz vive y presente
Fifty Years Since M.S.
As a shining star
to the seven seeds in his hometown of Omaha
He spent his time in Lansing, Michigan, with his family
in the air with blood and fire of the Ku Klux Klans
the death of his father and the oppression of his mother
in the state of exile of all at once
in Boston and Harlem each has two lives
from Hatlem he flew to Boston
lost in the streets
in the city he adopted
in the name of whom are buried
in jail and silence of ten years
as Billie Holiday’s song "Strange Fruit"
spoken confused and barbarous
in a single drop they who know they are diseased
are saved with a message of truth
until he found himself free with a wind without walls
he spoke and people believe in a new love
in Detroit and Chicago and Boston and Harlem
like the first time he spoke in front of the meeting
at 115th and Lenox Avenue
near the store of my cousin Guillermo
with a smile of blood that lives in my sorrows
always the truth
behind the closed and secret doors
where justice is prohibited
nothing can kill fifty years that have passed
Malcolm Shabazz lives and is presente
© 2/21/15 Carlos Raúl Dufflar
The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective
A Cinema-Graphic For Viola Desmond
In the tracks of the Underground Railroad
When must justice make the call?
Sister Viola Desmond in the cinema
In a drama not on the screen
But in a stage with a message:
Truth expresses, not conceals
The ugliness
How can one space
Be a place so earth-shattering?
© Ángel L. Martínez 16 feb 15
The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective
A Room With A View
My cell had a barred window (of course)
and a limited view of the sky
After a while
I didn’t look at the sky too often
it set me thinking about freedom
which is not wise in prison
( better to accept each day on its own singular merits)
I read a lot
and eventually arrived at The Lord of the Rings
Nowhere better to read such a book
It offered me a panoramic view
of magic and majesty
and worlds beyond the imagining
in the midst of a drab grey soul-numbing uniformity
Three of us read the book in shifts (we only had one copy)
We loved it and lived it
I fell in love with Goldberry
Tom Bombadil was my hero
(He could make the Ring disappear)
The bars on the window no longer mattered
Our limited view of the sky was unimportant
We had our room with a view
and it was beautiful
and we were free men for a thousand pages
Roy Birch
Stevenage Survivors
A Room With An Aerial View
Don't tell Velux or they'll think I like them and I don't, just the changing cloud formations that slip over my head. Sometimes I think of them as speech bubbles with something significant within, sometimes when the ego is more excessive, like Prospero, I think I can keep my Arial on a string, but then I look up and it's changed again.
Bruce Barnes
A Room With A View
Annie Aston gazed out of the window of her bedroom. Of all the rooms in Annie’s home, the House of Aston, her bedroom was the only one with a rear window and it was the largest of all the windows. Annie often stared out of this window and there she would usually see the vast, sweeping expanse of the Lancashire countryside that surrounded the House of Aston. She would also see the family garden with its massive hedge maze and endless topiary and beyond that, the small cottage where the Aston family’s nearest neighbours lived.
Annie’s room was more like an isolated study room where she was often sent as punishment for not concentrating on her endless home schooling or using her hereditary psychic abilities while no one was looking or something her younger siblings Betty and Chester had done because she had not kept a close enough eye on them. Every corner of the room was littered with books and bookcases and it was as maroon all over as the rest of the House of Aston was.
As Annie looked at the view, she could see from a distance her neighbours’ two children, a boy and a girl playing with their pet dog. She sighed deeply, longing for a friend, at least one who shared her psychic abilities and her Asperger’s Syndrome, any person who would understand straight away that she was no ordinary little girl of 8. Little did Annie know, come evening, her wish might be granted!
By Michael C. Bungay
Stevenage Survivors
A Room With A View
(To All The People In My Life)
I have always dreamed of living in a small isolated cottage by the western shore, with a view across the endless ocean, watching the glories of the sun setting each day and the vastness of the sky – clouds and blue, storm and waves, seabirds, seasons, boats and rain.
And I would never tire of this view – never miss the roads and pavements, houses, buses, street lights and all the people.
And years would pass and I would become fluid like the sea and light as sky and cloud and stars – dancing a song with no words.
Till one day it would be time to go – to gather all this sea and sky, this room with a view, into my heart and to return to the life that I have undertaken, chosen to live – here with you.
Lucia Birch January 2015
Stevenage Survivors
A Room With A View
This room has a door which opens two ways - one into the world and one into my mind. I never know, until I walk through it, which way it will lead me. The view is much the same, no matter where the door is - but it all works very differently. The world side is logical, cause and effect. The mind side is magical. Words create openings and spaces where there was nothing before.
I think of a word and it is repeated back to me - through the TV, a book or a song. I see connections and links, every experience leading to this moment, this realisation. My thoughts lead to realisations. They make things real.
The world door opens into world made real by my mind. I think threrfore I am. And therefore you are too. And him. And her. And them.
As fast as I can think, things change. The sky, always the sky, but never the same. Colours, shapes, stories, poems, songs, stars. Dancing in patterns as we revolve within, dizzy with the magnificence, the splendour, the mysteries unfolding.
Like a box of tissues, one pulls free another, and another, until all the sheets are gone.
And I see now why, as a child, I was lessened by my lessons. They took away the mystery and the knowledge I already had. Replaced them with facts and data, assertions and assumptions that were not my own and, it turns out, were not even correct.
Now I'm hearing how everything has changed. Quantum Physics has bent our worldview backwards, inside out. Our expectations shape our actualities, not the other way round. I find that my room, with a view of both my mind and the world is getting smaller. Soon, very soon, they will touch - and what will happen then?
Ashley Jordan
GROW
A Mirror
I am a mirror
hanging on the wall,
facing a window
on the west side
of the house,
in the room
on the second floor.
I reflect four seasons,
changing colors of the sky
and during the night
I absorb a night
and stars looking
into the window.
I also see the most
of the room,
where I am
hanging out.
I can't see a carpet
and running feet
in dirty shoes,
but I hear voices.
One is scolding:
“Why you didn't change
your shoes downstairs?
You brought all mud
into your bedroom.”
And a guilty one:
“I'll change
and vacuum the floor, mom.”
I also can see a child
sleeping under a blanket
on the bed in the night.
I don't look his way,
so I will not bring
some of my memories
into his dreams.
I rather look into the sky,
quietly, motionlessly,
steadily.
I just reflect.
I am the mirror.
Copyright © Marie Neumann January, 2015
POW!
A Room With A View
In my living room looking out my window watching the different birds fly by. Watching them eat and peck the food hanging from the tree.
And look at some of my horrible twiggy trees, thinking 'can't wait to get rid of them' make the garden look neat and maintainance. A very, very lot of tidy up, shape up, so tatty with the look of drab. Can't wait put my own colourful plants in where I vision had thought I plant some sunflower seeds have some sunflowers growing near back of my fence.
Cleo White
Stevenage Survivors
View From The Window
The road is bumpy, long and wide,
The sunset is pink, red and orange.
Through the window,
I am mesmerized at the purple, lilac and amesyth trees that stretch to meet the skies.
The people who have been in my life
flitter in and out my mind like a snap shot.
So many faces that I seem to have forgotten,
Childhood ,school and mummy friends.
Poignant memories of times long ago.
Some friends that have stayed a while and then somehow get lost.
Places I have visited and found joy,
Like first time I felt the clear turquoise sea of Crete lap gently over my feet.
I am searching deep and holding on to all of my life's experiences as I look at the view from the window.
I think of the sun warm on my skin,
the wind blowing in my hair.
How heavy rain drops splash off my skin and when as a child the
snowflakes that floated delicately from the sky and melted on the tip of my tongue. Fireworks exploding into the dark night.
Footprints that I have made in the sand.
The smooth silky touch of a rose petal between my fingers,
I am blessed with my view from my window.
Sue Rabbett
GROW
Love Is An Alphabet
Awakening to the sun’s weak rays; only just managing to filter through the voile curtain, draped gypsy style, covering the expanse of cheap double glazing – Leah let the music wash over her.
‘Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone...’ Choking back the lump forming in her dry throat, Leah scolded herself; it’s only a song, with words written by someone who didn’t even know her. Didn’t know how longingly, she had, as a young girl, stared through a single pane of glass, as the cycle of the moon, rotated with the passing into womanhood. Echoing the dulcet tone..
‘Without a dream in my heart..’ Leah stayed one beat behind, her cognitive skills, a little slower now. Feeling for the volume switch, she allowed the song to rise, to lift her back, to the night she saw him across the dance floor. Gracefully the couples had swept between them and she had longed to join in, to feel the freedom of lifting feet, in pulsating abeyance to the singer, crooning his tune in time with the band
‘you knew just what I was there for...’ Heady from the two glasses of Champagne, she had found herself smiling openly at him, as he returned her gaze, through the moving bodies. Ill at ease, with the fabric of her frock, not falling below her knees, Leah recalled trying to pull it down against all its stiffened resistance. Just like her mother, the material hadn’t given an inch.
Keeping her wandering mind focused was challenging, but she must get to the end of the song, or else she may have lost him forever.
Leah once more let the only remaining clear memories engulf her frail mind.
‘May I have the pleasure of asking you to dance?’ Nervously, his tremulous voice had caused her to lift her eyes from the fixation of seeing her shapely calves encased only in sheer nylon. Oh, the temerity of saying yes ‘of course you may’ caused her heart to leap, even now – as the song continued
‘and then there suddenly appeared before me, the only one my arms will ever hold...’ Putting her slim hand into his, she had allowed him to lead her directly under the rotating glitter ball, its twinkling light illuminating dancing patches of fairy dust on the polished floor.
Quivering, at first, like two birds in new flight, they had let the music lead them, melting into the 4/4 time of the Foxtrot. Rotating together, two as one combined, eyes locked, her blue moon had turned to gold.
She remembered getting home late, her mother waiting for her, the hand across the face, not even in her grave; which would come soon enough; would she ever forget that - the sheer humiliation, and the hand that had shattered her beautiful evening.
Uselessly, she had pleaded, and locked in her room, the only moonlight, came through the unchanging single pane of glass. Vacant years followed, till her mother breathed her last, releasing her, but it was too late.
‘Without a dream in my heart – without a love of my own...’
“But I had a love once, real love” Leah’s broken voice cried at the radio. “Xavier, I want to dance, are you there?” Yellow sunlight, a mellow shade of gold fell upon the coverlet, embracing Leah’s cold face. Zephyr wind, warm from the west, carried his answer and putting her wrinkled hand into his, she allowed him to lead her directly under the rotating glitter ball.
Jan Hedger
GROW
Just A Thought
(Inspired by the view from my bedroom)
Look at a tree.
Now close your eyes;
Imagine it bare.
Which seems more real,
The tree you could see
Or the one that’s not there?
Using your mind
Fly in the sky.
Circle the earth.
Experience life
In millions of ways,
Enriching your days
With sights and with sounds
And with tastes that abound
In the world all around.
Move throughout time,
Go back and forth;
The future, the past,
The bad and the good.
Then change things, at last
To be as they should.
Travel in space.
Be one with the sun.
See every place
In the vast universe
But then ensure
That your flight’s not a curse.
For although it is sad
You must come back to earth
Or you’ll drive yourself mad.
Andrew Diamond
Goodmayes Writers
Perspectives
(Written while looking out of a window in Scotland)
I write of life as I observe,
As things appear to me.
Others see them differently,
It’s my reality!
To some the cup’s half empty,
To some the cup’s half full;
But that is how it’s meant to be,
Perceptions cause diversity,
And that’s why you will always see
Some push while others pull.
Andrew Diamond
Goodmayes Writers
Colours
We see blue when at peace and red when we’re riled,
Yellow in sunshine and green in the wild,
Black in depression, white when we’re pure
And shades of grey when we’re feeling unsure.
The colours we feel and the colours we see
Are the same for all of humanity
And despite the shade of a person’s skin
The colour’s the same when you look within.
Although it’s not entirely true
That we all see as others do.
The rainbow, displayed to all mankind,
Looks different if you’re colour blind.
So think about it!
Andrew Diamond
Goodmayes Writers
The Window
And a room that has a view light
Looking out below from a room window
In a cafe in soho square London
I seen them sealing dealing a score
A man with a view up here so high
Further on in a red coat she asks something
Passers by they shake their head
On a train at clapham junction had
A window seat sat in the view on the
A busy platform unknown a mouse
In this room down in this basement
Looking up through the window
Can hear footstep on the pavement
Can hear a dog barking somewhere
Cars whizzing by cursing swearing
The wind curls a broken melody
Along Stroud green Hanley road
A room with a view I see across
Watching over viewing inside
I seem to dream of greenery sea
And a room that has a view bright
John Joseph Sheehy
Stevenage Survivors
Down The Holloway Road
I love this view from this cafe
That's down the highbury end
Of holloway road north seven n7
Apple crumble is custard is the
Most I eat there
the view out the door
Such a lot passing bye
The cafe is called
“the hope cafe”
of good food
I go there mostly for the view that's passing bye
Shelters sheperds pie rubbhard cheery
The crusty roll buttered filled turnips
But the view out the door is busy outside
The police in their uniforms have a break from highbury magestrate courts
They blend in so well
they eat up their fill
not bothered to view
Who's buzzing or busted
Down holloway road
John Joseph Sheehy
Stevenage Survivors