Treasure

December 2020

#139

Treasure

Wherein does treasure lie?
Is it in what we can see what we can hold or what we value?

Are gold doubloons and silver pieces buried in wooden chests really where the value of treasure truly rests?

Can memories of people, places and times
Of concerts, parties, first dances and rhymes
Really be worth all the gold in the world
That magical first kiss from a boy or a girl…

Antony May 10/12/20
Shorelink Writers/ G.R.O.W.

 

El Invierno Es Verano

Hoy es el día cuando el sol brilla y es caliente como el verano
En frente del montículo de Quinnipiac
Tesoro
Y sobre la historia vieja que lo esconden
En la puertas de la vida porque la Madre de la Tierra vive y del todo el mar y el río
Hoy estoy celebrando el cumpleaños que el ritmo es más rico
Cantó Miguelito Cuní
El Conjunto Chapputtin el son montuno
Sentimiento y alegría
Celebrando sus cien años
Grande de la música popular cubana las cosas que yo amo y que lo bueno que se tiene este poema

Winter Is Summer

Today is the day when the sun is shining
and hot like summer
In front of the Quinnipiac mound
treasure
And about the old story that has been hidden
At the gates of life because
the Mother of the Earth lives
and of all the sea and the river
Today I'm celebrating the birthday
that the rhythm is richer
Miguelito Cuní sang
El Conjunto Chapputtin the son montuno
Feeling and joy
Celebrating its hundred years
This Great of Cuban popular music
the things that I love
and the good that is in this poem

© Carlos Raúl Dufflar Noviembre 27, 2020
The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective

 

Adjunct acrostic

Adjuncts
Denied
Justice
Unite
Now against
Contingented
Travesty

© Ángel L. Martínez 1 Jan 21
The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective

 

The Lesson In Key(s) - Tune 1

The rough-and-smooth rock-jazz was turning in an ending rage of cacophony as drums drowned into a swirling morass of piercing guitars and overdriven bass.

Sandi, over in the next room, listening, always enjoyed the last-note noise. It was a ritual for her brother Roberto and his buddies. It was a miracle that anybody cared outside of the small room they occupied for songs and improvisations.

If the neighbors complained, the usual response was to turn their radios louder. After the Chaos, no one could admit but if you were hip, you knew it was coming, one advantage is that once again you could hear New York salsa on New York so-called “Latin” radio.

Sandi and Roberto’s grandparents reminded that how once you couldn’t hear Spanish Harlem Orchestra in their own city unless you saw them in concert.

Now, anyone can have a radio show, it seems. Even Sandi was asked because, they figured, if her brother had musical talent, so would she. But Roberto’s guitar never interested her much. Neither did his old friend Feli’s drum “kit” that couldn’t even fit in that small room. One wonders if she still has them - she had left years ago.

Two days later, she ventured by a free store, although the “free” part was redundant for at least as long as she’s been alive.

A strange sight caught Sandi’s eye: amid copper pots and a cracked wooden pilón y maceta, there sat a scratched yet sturdy black accordion. She stood staring - almost hearing the bellows slowly erupt in sound to the keys, sounding like a favorite key of Roberto’s.

© Ángel L. Martínez 2019 - 26 d 2020
The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective

 

The Lesson In Key(s) [Tune 2]

Sandi shuffled her way to the heap. Of all things free to take, in all the free stores all over what remained of the city, here was the treasure.

She carefully picked up the instrument, realized she had to sit down to truly marvel at it, and presssrd her first key.

Nothing. The she remembered she had to squeeze it for a sound.

She was a bit taken aback as that happened.

© Ángel L. Martínez 26-31 d 2020
The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective

 

To Treasure And Celebrate Hank Adams

The eagle flies within our surroundings
The leaves have fallen off the tree branch
And the solstice has finally arrived
With Saturn and Jupiter dancing in between
Fron the heart of Puget Sound
A leader rose from the people in the
Pacific Northwest
It is only natural that the elders will pass down the history of the treaty rights that was never kept
Hank Adams saw the sources of the light
When the sunrise of the
Northwestern Coast Fishing War
Opened the Indigenous Treaty Rights
To fish in their homeland
It was a struggle in which
He was shot many times
and arrested many times
With Dick Gregory who was arrested
Marching with solidarity
With the Indian Treaty Fishing Rights
It was a vision that stayed with him all his life
When Dr Martin Luther King
noticed the change of time
Not just for human rights but for ending poverty, for justice, for housing, for jobs, for education and bilingual education, and ending the War in Vietnam
And for the Indigenous Fishing Rights
And ending hunger on the poor
Dr MLK and the Poor People’s Campaign gathering in March of 1968
He invited Hank Adams to the National Steering Committee with Afro-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Indigenous, Poor Whites
and solidarity with the poor people
A city of hope
So when Dr Martin Luther King
was brutally assasinated
The new president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Ralph Abernathy to keep the dream alive
And the PPC would march to Washington, DC,
National Mall and create Resurrection City
Hank Adams and Chief Big Snake,
With the Seattle Indian Trail Caravan
Hank stayed until they
destroyed Resurrection City
He stayed an activist, teaching history, activism and saving Mother Earth which time is so short
Today I celebrate 52 years after the
Poor People’s Campaign when he became an ancestor
To honor an unsung hero

© Carlos Raúl Dufflar 12/21/2020
The Bread is Rising Poetry Collective