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Me outside my Kansas Eucalyptus apartment

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I enrolled in this class as a gift to myself. Everything from the poetic content, course work, and requirements, spoke to me as a process, a therapeutic experience, and most importantly, as a means to connect with other poets in a non-judgmental environment. I was surprised to discover that rather than looking deeper into my own psyche, I ended up relishing the world around me, from both a micro and macro level. On a micro-ish scale, I mostly read and wrote about San Francisco. Here is a Poem of the Week I shared early on in the class, when I was already lost in the SF Foggy clouds.

While taking Poetry for the People, I was inspired by the bravery of the poets we read about. Before this class, poetry to me had always been a very inward, personal discipline. We read poetry written by poets as a means of rebellion, revolution, resilience, human rights, and justice. We read poetry that freed the poets from incarceration, war, and grief.

I am most proud of my newfound understanding and appreciation of poetry. Now I see poetry as a vehicle or conduit for connecting and transmitting people, places, things, and ideas.

What was most challenging to me was the hybrid course model. I would have been able to engage more deeply with a 100% in-person class structure. Aside from that, what was most difficult for me was writing a response to the Podcast: "A Spoken Word Poet in Myanmar Speaks Out Against Hate and Injustice." For some reason I had a very hard time writing my responses. Every time I wrote a response I told myself it wasn't good enough or worthy of connecting to the hardship and isolation that Than Toe Aung experienced.

The next step in my journey as a poet for the people is to:

a) continue sharing my "pocket poems"

b) continue writing poetry

c) attend more poetry events

d) encourage my friends and family to write poetry and read poetry with me/together.

e) become a teaching assistant to P4P.

f) become just like beloved poet, Ladan Khoddam-Khorasani.

With love in poetry,

Alli D.

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Hello poetry pitching people!

This week I'm sharing a very beautiful (and kinda long) poem that makes me feel nostalgic and wistful over San Francisco. I have a beautiful view of the central mountains in the city at my bus stop, and sometimes I get super emotional when I see the fog rolling in. The photo attached was taken this evening. Incredible right? Damn I love this city.

Additionally, when I first read this poem I didn't realize who Emma Lazarus was, but when I looked her up I was surprised to know that she is quoted on the statue of Liberty for writing the poem with the words, "give me your tired, your poor / your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Interesting that these words seem irrelevant to many of those governing our country.

-Alli D.

Fog

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887)

Light silken curtain, colorless and soft,

Dreamlike before me floating! what abides

Behind thy pearly veil’s

Opaque, mysterious woof?

Where sleek red kine, and dappled, crunch daylong

Thick, luscious blades and purple clover-heads,

Nigh me I still can mark

Cool fields of beaded grass.

No more; for on the rim of the globed world

I seem to stand and stare at nothingness.

But songs of unseen birds

And tranquil roll of waves

Bring sweet assurance of continuous life

Beyond this silvery cloud. Fantastic dreams,

Of tissue subtler still

Than the wreathed fog, arise,

And cheat my brain with airy vanishings

And mystic glories of the world beyond.

A whole enchanted town

Thy baffling folds conceal—

An orient town, with slender-steepled mosques,

Turret from turret springing, dome from dome,

Fretted with burning stones,

And trellised with red gold.

Through spacious streets, where running waters flow,

Sun-screened by fruit-trees and the broad-leaved palm,

Past the gay-decked bazaars,

Walk turbaned, dark-eyed men.

Hark! you can hear the many murmuring tongues,

While loud the merchants vaunt their gorgeous wares.

The sultry air is spiced

With fragrance of rich gums,

And through the lattice high in yon dead wall,

See where, unveiled, an arch, young, dimpled face,

Flushed like a musky peach,

Peers down upon the mart!

From her dark, ringleted and bird-poised head

She hath cast back the milk-white silken veil:

’Midst the blank blackness there

She blossoms like a rose.

Beckons she not with those bright, full-orbed eyes,

And open arms that like twin moonbeams gleam?

Behold her smile on me

With honeyed, scarlet lips!

Divine Scheherazade! I am thine.

I come! I come!—Hark! from some far-off mosque

The shrill muezzin calls

The hour of silent prayer,

And from the lattice he hath scared by love.

The lattice vanisheth itself—the street,

The mart, the Orient town;

Only through still, soft air

That cry is yet prolonged. I wake to hear

The distant fog-horn peal: before mine eyes

Stands the white wall of mist,

Blending with vaporous skies.

Elusive gossamer, impervious

Even to the mighty sun-god’s keen red shafts!

With what a jealous art

Thy secret thou dost guard!

Well do I know deep in thine inmost folds,

Within an opal hollow, there abides

The lady of the mist,

The Undine of the air—

A slender, winged, ethereal, lily form,

Dove-eyed, with fair, free-floating, pearl-wreathed hair,

In waving raiment swathed

Of changing, irised hues.

Where her feet, rosy as a shell, have grazed

The freshened grass, a richer emerald glows:

Into each flower-cup

Her cool dews she distills.

She knows the tops of jagged mountain-peaks,

She knows the green soft hollows of their sides,

And unafraid she floats

O’er the vast-circled seas.

She loves to bask within the moon’s wan beams,

Lying, night-long, upon the moist, dark earth,

And leave her seeded pearls

With morning on the grass.

Ah! that athwart these dim, gray outer courts

Of her fantastic palace I might pass,

And reach the inmost shrine

Of her chaste solitude,

And feel her cool and dewy fingers press

My mortal-fevered brow, while in my heart

She poured with tender love

Her healing Lethe-balm!

See! the close curtain moves, the spell dissolves!

Slowly it lifts: the dazzling sunshine streams

Upon a newborn world and laughing summer seas.

And laughing summer seas.

Swift, snowy-breasted sandbirds twittering glance

Through crystal air. On the horizon’s marge,

Like a huge purple wraith,

The dusky fog retreats.

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I come from a home surrounded by poetry, a place with lots of blue, lots of animals, lots of magic, lots of whimsical, lots of love.

I come from a home with lots of writers, readers, communicators, although I never believed I was one. Not very good anyway.

I come from a place of mental illness, and codependence, of vitamins and pills, therapy and grief.

I come from a world that is virtual, artificial, seemingly intelligent? At least our drugs are better now, but do we know how to use them?

I come as hope. A hope for a girl, a v-back, a hope for comfort and sobriety, something precious to rely on. A Christmas Eve gift in a place very orange and brown, longing for blue and green, and not so homesick.

I come to the earth. With lots of rocks and stones worried and blessed by water. Worried by my pocket and fingers and spirit. Sharing these stones, to help others ground. Especially if it's shaped like a heart.

Love More! Love others! love self!

I come from a place of then, here, overlap, hers, theirs, fullness, illness, confusion.

At first, I came from a place of joy and love. Especially laughter. Of pine trees, rich wind, and sand. Sand from a Great lake.

At the end, I'm going to a place unknown. With such high hopes. My therapist would say, why hope? It's just you and your truth. But I do hope.

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Como Tú, comment'allez vous?

Like you. How are you? How are you going?

I am going beyond blue January. To the sweet smells of California Days. To the California Collective -

of

Humanity, Humility.

Struggle and cuddle; my beloved.

But NEVER have we seen a place, in the United States

with so many billionaires! Who also like the little things, like coffe and croissants, but don't like the little things.

Like people, like place in their traces, tent cities only erases.

Like blood and guns that flow and strike unanimously

like keys on an ergonomic board.

Across the world, IRT.

A digital landscape like never before.

But is the coffee and croissant able to be "liked" by everyone? With everyone?

Comment allez-vous? Como Tú? Like me, like you.

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I forgive you, illness.

I forgive you, for inviting the world to blame us. For the mental, physical, and emotionally unwell.

I forgive you, illness, because you did not write the DSM 5, all knowing, all controlling, of race and sex and money and thoughts.

I forgive you for being my best, often secret, friend.. and worst, if everyone knew, enemy.

I forgive you for being an uninvited guest, handed down the tree, with shaking hands, by my mom.

I forgive you, illness, for signing me up for a big warning stamp in my medical file.

I forgive you, for enabling the government, to house and unhouse you, medicate and lock you up against you unverified will.

Illness, I embrace you. I shake your hand and give you a hug that I desperately need.

Husssssssh illness, hold me tight then let me unhinge. I am not alone. and we have mutual, aid.

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Let the snow kiss you

Let the snow wrap a white blanket over the earth

Let the snow wake you, and also say goodnight

The snow makes round angels flap and puppies play

The snow makes kids stay home from school! and leaves puddles on the floor by the door.

The snow dances with the wind,

nudges you closer to your friend.

And I love the snow.

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Cool, clean, green, scene.

They call it "Mediterranean" air,

this "Bay Area" herbal, botanical, olfactory oasis.

Earthy and aromatic, with wafts of coastal sage, chipper juniper, and browning thyme.

And such juicy, crunchy, eucalyptus,

All-fashioned with a shot of Fernet-Branca to smooth over the digestion.

I saw the deep green grass shadows, shivering in the moisture of the evening fog.

That seeping green.. accenting the sepia tones of the cityscape.

Crown molding, ornate, lacey, creamy, delicate

with emboldened moss ever-reaching within the mist.

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“I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong.”

BREAKING NEWS: Letter sent to Florida's legislature, 20-year-old college student planned to protest 2023 bathroom law.

“I know that you know in your heart that it's wrong to arrest me and jail me for up to 60 days for using the bathroom.”

BREAKING NEWS: Capitol police arrest a 20-year-old, sent to detention facility, men's ward.

“I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too.”

BREAKING NEWS: 20-year-old protester includes photo of herself in letters to senators.

“I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are no different from you or anybody else.

BREAKING NEWS: 20-year-old college girl, arrested while visiting her grandparents in Florida over Spring Break.

“I know that you know in your heart that the same people that go to church with you, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, root for the same sports teams, watch the same movies, and pray to the same God as you cannot be all bad.”

BREAKING NEWS: Pre-print of 2050 American History textbook includes excerpt of 20-year-old student’s civil disobedience letter.

“I know that you know I have dignity.”

BREAKING NEWS: Florida’s 2023 Bathroom Bill Overturned.

“That's why I know you won't arrest me. Pray for me.”

BREAKING NEWS: America takes 25 years to wake up.

But will it?

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Life v. Choice

Do I have a choice to live?

Can I live without a choice?

Who can’t?

Treat v. Don’t

Should the doctor operate?

Do they fill the prescription?

Or report them?

Womb v. Court

Isn’t my uterus mine?

Aren’t those hands yours?

Signing a petition or a bill, to take it.

You Know Me

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This is a love letter, from one conflicted transplant to another.

I like to ride my bike home... there's a final push... one last hill...

Then blissful Kansas Street Eucalyptus greets me.

It's been waiting, swaying, sighing. It breathes me in (inhale) and I let go of the day (exhale)

It waves to me

rippling in the wind

like fans in the stand

doing "the wave". With

the blurr and purr of hwy 101

J break from the 18-wheeler

a car engine backfires and cop car whoops.

And the Kansas Eucalyptus is there to shild me. Wrap it's delicious, cool smell around me.

But love can be contrary.

An invasive species, brought from Tasmania.

Blue Gum

To hide the army bases and cannons.

To profit the miners, feed fires, make soaps, freshen showers,

turn tourists heads double-decked passing by Golden Gate Park.

Now so "iconic" to the Bay Area.

Oh to be "from" somewhere.

This is a love letter form one conflicted transplant to another.

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Poem by José Olivarez, shared by Cecilia Mclellan

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Mexican woman (illegal) and Mexican man (illegal)

Have a Mexican (illegal)-American (citizen).

is the baby more Mexican or American?

place the baby in the arms of the mother (illegal).

if the mother holds the baby (citizen)

too long, does the baby become illegal?

the baby is a boy (citizen). he goes to school (citizen).

his classmates are American (citizen). He is outcast (illegal).

his “hellos” are in the wrong language (illegal).

he takes the hyphen separating loneliness (Mexican)

from friendship (American) and jabs it at the culprit (illegal).

himself (illegal). his own traitorous tongue (illegal).

his name (illegal). his mom (illegal). his dad (illegal).

take a Mexican woman (illegal) and a Mexican man (illegal).

if they have a baby and the baby looks white enough to pass (citizen).

if the baby grows up singing Selena songs to his reflection (illegal).

if the baby hides from el cucuy and la migra (illegal).

if the baby (illegal) (citizen) grows up to speak broken Spanish (illegal)

and perfect English (citizen). if the boy’s nickname is Güerito (citizen).

if the boy attends college (citizen). if the boy only dates women (illegal)

of color (illegal). If the boy (illegal)

uses phrases like “women of color” (citizen).

if the boy (illegal) (citizen) writes (illegal) poems (illegal).

if the boy (citizen) (illegal) grows up (illegal) and can only write (illegal)

this story in English (citizen), does that make him more

American (citizen) or Mexican (illegal)?