Category Archives: Favorites of Local Leaders

For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly
Yosimar Reyes

This poem reminds me of the five years I spent at MACLA as Executive Director. It was my joy and privilege to work everyday to bring the very best in contemporary Latino art to the community along with amazing youth programs such as the South Bay Slam Poetry League. The League produced excellent poets such as Yosimar Reyes. The strength and power of this poem inspires me to continue to work in the arts to create a better day for future generations.

Tamara Alvarado
Arts administrator, San Jose

For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly

For colored boys who speak softly,
I would build a stage on top of the world
Give them a microphone and let them free flow
Because they too have something to say
And this is more than rainbows coloring our face

This is broken spirits speaking for a better day
So in the tenderness of our words we carry blades
To cut ourselves free from gender roles
Build a life free from social norms
Redefine humanity and sexuality through our own terms…

 For colored boys who speak softly
I would sacrifice my tongue
Make an offering to the Gods
Pray to them to wash my mouth clean
‘Cause boys like us
Should never taste cum
And men should never lie with men
Because this is a crime punishable by death
And it is in this very same dark silence that many of us rest
Left bruised and dead

For those who speak softly
I would crucify myself like Christ
Let my blood purify and sanctify these words
Create a doctrine and go knocking door to door
Letting the people know
That the messiahs are here
That we are all messengers
Although, we embody the word queer

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The Lanyard
Billy Collins

It’s May and so we all celebrate and honor our mothers for at least one day of the year. So a favorite Billy Collins poem, “The Lanyard,”  seems an appropriate selection. I love that his use of humor and irony keeps the message of love from lapsing into a cliché. No matter how heartfelt our intentions, our gestures of gratitude to our mothers are inadequate by comparison to their gift to us.

Clark Kepler
Owner, Kepler’s Books
(Note from PL: A privately owned bookstore….GO!)

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Billy Collins

Borderlands/La Frontera
Gloria Anzaldúa

Many residents of the Bay Area stand with their feet in two cultures.  They are immigrants or the children of immigrants.  I fall into this latter camp.  For some of us, it is hard to express our cultural duality – especially, to people who have not lived through constant questioning about their ethnic identity from both their former countrymen and their new neighbors.  This causes many to feel lost and ungrounded.  Gloria Anzaldúa was an advocate, a passionate writer and someone who, through poetry, brought to life this fence that so many straddle.  May it will help others embrace their crossroads.

Sid Espinosa
Mayor, City of Palo Alto

Borderlands/La Frontera

To live in the borderlands means you

are neither hispana india negra española
ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed
caught in the crossfire between camps
while carrying all five races on your back
not knowing which side to turn to, run from;

To live in the Borderlands means knowing

that the india in you, betrayed for 500 years,
is no longer speaking to you,
that mexicanas call you rajetas,
that denying the Anglo inside you
is as bad as having denied the Indian or Black;

Cuando vives en la frontera

people walk through you, wind steals your voice,
you’re a burra, buey, scapegoat
forerunner of a new race,
half and half–both woman and man, neither–
a new gender;

To live in the Borderlands means to

put chile in the borscht
eat whole wheat tortillas,
speak Tex-Mex with a Brooklyn accent;
be stopped by la migra at the border check points;

Living in the Borderlands means you fight hard to

resist the gold elixir beckoning from the bottle,
the pull of the gun barrel,
the rope crushing the hollow of your throat;

In the Borderlands

you are the battleground
where enemies are kin to each other;
you are at home, a stranger,
the border disputes have been settled
the volley of shots have shattered the truce
you are wounded, lost in action
dead, fighting back;

To live in the Borderlands means

the mill with the razor white teeth wants to shred off
your olive-red skin, crush out the kernel, your heart
pound you pinch you roll you out
smelling like white bread but dead;

To survive in the Borderlands

you must live sin fronteras
be a crossroads.

Gloria Anzaldúa, from Borderlands/La Frontera

Wee Hughie
Elizabeth Shane

“Wee Hughie” is a very moving short poem about a Mother losing her last child to his first day at school. I think any parent but particularly mothers find it very reminiscent of that day. I’m originally British and my family has English, Scottish & Irish roots, so evocative poems like this always take one back to older, simpler times.

Jef Graham,CEO
RGB Networks, Sunnyvale
Foxhound Master, Los Altos Hounds

Wee Hughie

He’s gone to school, wee Hughie,
An’ him not four,
Sure I saw the fright was in him
When he left the door.

But he took a hand o’ Denny,
An’ a hand o’ Dan,
Wi’ Joe’s owld coat upon him –
Och the poor wee man!

He cut the quarest figure,
More stout not thin:
An’ trotting right and steady
Wi’ his toes turned in.

I watched him to the corner
O’ the big turf stack,
An’ the more his feet went forrit,
Still his head turned back.

I followed to the turnin’
When they passed it by,
God help him he was cryin’,
An’, maybe, so was I.

Elizabeth Shane

The Hollow Men
T.S. Eliot

This is a culminating work of Eliot’s.  Given the challenges that face us today—limited resources, environmental concerns, and world events—I think this poem, while somewhat dark, brings the reader into a thought provoking place. I begin here with part V.  The most famous part of this poem is the ending.

Supervisor Liz Kniss, District 5
Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors

The Hollow Men

 V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
 
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
 
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot
excerpt from “The Hollow Men” 1925

Last night, as I was sleeping
Antonio Machado

Every stanza carries healing. I prefer the Spanish of “blessed illusion” to “marvelous error.” For me springs have always been a magical connection to the earth, through which life flows.

The golden bees transform my regrets.

We are reminded of what, in whatever form, each of us has in our hearts.

Paul Draper
CEO/Winemaker Ridge Vineyards

Last night, as I was sleeping

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Antonio Machado from Times Alone
Translated by Robert Bly

Song of the Powers
David Mason

Poetry is the sharing of self and common experience through the celebration of language.

Nancy Glaze, Executive Director
Arts Council Silicon Valley

Song of the Powers

Two Kinds of People
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I discovered this poem when I was in 8th or 9th grade, while working on an English project. When I came across this Ella Wheeler Wilcox poem in the library, it caused me to stop everything. I always felt that I was a doer—a problem solver—a man of action. After I read this poem several times, I realized that I was a lifter. And I was determined to never change from that and also do my part to help others lean less and lift more. I’m forever grateful to Ella Wheeler Wilcox for helping me understand who I really am and for the motivation her poem has brought me throughout my life.

Chuck Page
Vice Mayor, City of Saratoga

Two Kinds of People

There are two kinds of people on earth today;
Just two kinds of people, no more I say.

Not the sinner and the saint, for it’s well understood
The good are half bad and the bad are half good.

Not the rich and the poor, for to rate a man’s wealth,
You must first know the state of his conscience and health.

Not the humble and proud, for in life’s little span,
He who puts on vain airs, is not counted a man.

Not the happy and sad, for the swift flying years
Bring each man his laughter and each man his tears.

No; the two kinds of people on earth I mean
Are the people who lift and the people who lean.

Wherever you go you will find the earth’s masses
Are always divided in just these two classes

And oddly enough, you will find, too, I ween,
There’s only one lifter to twenty who lean.

In which class are you?  Are you easing the load
Of overtaxed lifters who toil down the road?

Or are you a leaner who lets others bear
Your portion of labor and worry and care?

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
1850–1919

Recipe For Happiness In Khabarovsky Or Anyplace
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I love the profound simplicity of Ferlinghetti’s “Recipe for Happiness…”   He, in very few words, creates a scene, a mood, a contentment that defines the essence of happiness and that resonates in me.  He validates MacLeish’s notion that “a poem should not mean but be.”  This poem is about “being” at its best and the reading of it is so evocative that it re-creates our own moments of happiness.

Bonnie Salera
English teacher, CUHSD, retired

Recipe For Happiness In Khabarovsky Or Anyplace

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand café in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you

One fine day

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from Endless Life: The Selected Poems

The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats

Like many people, I first learned “The Second Coming” in high school(thank you, Ms. Cecile Shea), but it has stuck with me in the two decades since. The imagery of many poems lies flat, waiting for the reader or listener to pick it up. But Yeats’ imagery in this poem stands up and demands attention. It is powerful stuff when you’re 17 years old, and it’s only become more vivid as I’ve gotten older.

Sal Pizarro
Around Town columnist
San Jose Mercury News

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)