OK LOVE

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Kosher

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Please create this business and succeed!
Both the restaurant chain and the prepared food.
To help fight global warming

( LOVE by fairscape)

I'm reading at PeaceSmiths in Amityville, Jan 4

PeaceSmiths

MONTHLY TOPICAL, A-TYPICAL FOLK MUSIC AND WHATEVER Coffeehouse
FRI. Jan. 4th 8:00PM

• Music by Heather Lev
• Poetry by Steven Schmidt
• OPEN TIME

First United Methodist Church
25 Broadway/rt110
(Southmost end near Merrick Rd/Montauk hwy)

$7 DONATION
SUGGESTED AT THE
DOOR COVERS PUNCH &
MUNCHIES
less if necessary, more if possible

PeaceSmiths...Community Organizing for Peace and Justice, Education, Activism, Culture, Mutual Help

More info: PeaceSmiths inc. Hotline: (631) 798-0778

Poets in Port, June 27, 2008

Poets in Port will feature Jay Jii at 7:30 pm on Friday, June 27, 2008 at Caffé Portofino, 249 Main St., Northport, opposite the theatre. There will also be an Open Reading — the audience is encouraged to bring their poems and participate. For more information, contact Steven Schmidt.

Jay Jii spent most of his developmental years growing up in East Northport, NY, studying as a musician, choosing classical guitar as his main instrument. From 1988 to 1991, Jay attended Five Towns College where he received an associate's degree in jazz/commercial music. Today, Jay works out of his home studio, "The Avatar Lounge". He plays a wide variety of musical instruments and has written and recorded hundreds of compositions. Solar Tapestry (Trafford Publishing, 2006) represents his debut as a literary writer. Jay hosts poetry readings at the Solar Café in Brentwood on the first and third Tuesdays of each month at 7:30pm. Jay Jii's mission as a musician and author is clear: "My aim is always to innovate and challenge. If I merely amuse, I have failed..."

Jay's poems can be seen on his Myspace blog, http://www.myspace.com/jayjii .

Resonance of Past Promises

My thoughts had always drifted
On a tortured sparrow's wings
Set aloft a dreamless world of alabaster
I wished for just one chance
To replace fear with fantasy
And with every autumn leaf that fell
I waited for my prayers to be answered

You came to me
On a sea of butterscotch dandelions
Bearing a velvet kiss
On painted lips
And beneath your veil of violet smoke
The worn edges of my dusty faith
Burst with fresh golden springs

The world that had once been stony
Glowed in an emerald lattice of dreams
All fears spooned out
And replaced with trust
My thoughts reached as high as heaven
I found an answer to a prayer
In you

Poets In Port, August 22, 2008

Poets in Port will feature Tony Policano at 7:30 pm on Friday, August 22, 2008 at Caffé Portofino, 249 Main St., Northport, opposite the theatre. There will also be an Open Reading — the audience is encouraged to bring their poems and participate. For more information, contact Steven Schmidt.

Tony participates in the Long Island Poetry Collective peer workshop. He lives in Oyster Bay.
Tony Policano can be seen reading "Finishing a Poem" at Poetry VLog.

"Some reasons I write poetry; to free the dove in the hat of springtime, to slow the global warming of my soul, to play in the mud any time i need, for the (lol) money, so i can drink like a barfly at the mouth of the Colorado river, to walk the talk while sitting down, to deconstruct the theory of negativity, to get away with something no one could care less about, to begin to hear myself again loud and clear, to start caring less about the things that matter less, to wash my conscience in night dreams, to meet friends who also believe in the sacredness of everything, because i know that FOX News is neither balanced nor fair, because i tried not writing for a long time and i felt like my self-portrait was being erased, and because Jack Kerouac was and will always be king of the beats"

Exile

(el destierro es redondo - Pablo Neruda)

whenever i open that door these days
feel for the light switch in the dark
like a tarantula on the wall
my fingers know darkness

my lungs inhale like a forbidden attic
breathing through a broken window
summer humidity, dusty air

for now i am done
looking for what i could never find
walk the stairs back down again

exile creaking

one step holds the full half weight
of who i wanted to become
the other could splinter instantly
into my blinking eye

exile creaking

one step follows another
mocking secrets of the kingdom
that i thought would be mine

shut the light  -  push the door closed
i don’t want to take inventory anymore
i don’t want to see all the things that remain
when i am not here to breath through them.

Tony Policano, March 2007.

Poets in Port, October 31, 2008

Poets in Port will feature Ginger and John Williams at 7:30 pm on Friday, October 31, 2008 at Caffé Portofino, 249 Main St., Northport, opposite the theatre. There will also be an Open Reading — the audience is encouraged to bring their poems and music and participate. For more information, contact Steven Schmidt.

Ginger Williams has been active in the Long Island poetry community since 1992. She received a BS in Philosophy from Connecticut College and a MS in Counseling/Special Education from Fordham/Long Island Universities. Since retiring as a teacher of Special Needs Students in the Three Village School District, she continues to teach poetry in the schools as well as The Mills Pond House, The Walt Whitman Birthplace and other venues. She has led the UU Free Writers' Group since 2000. She co-hosts poetry readings the second Monday of each month at Cool Beanz in St. James. She was a winner in the 2005 & 2006 Performance Poets Association contests. Her poetry is informed by the practice of yoga, canoeing, watercolors, and walking by the sea. She lives in Setauket, New York with her poet-historian husband, John Williams.

She is the author of Restringing the Beads, Quaker Path Press, 2007.

John A. Williams grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and was educated at the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley. As a member of the History Department at SUNY Stony Brook from 1968 to 2004, he taught courses on the history of India, South Africa, and other regions of the British Empire. His book, Classroom in Conflict (SUNY Press 1994) discusses the problems of teaching controversial subjects. The book utilizes poetry as well as historical literature in presenting its arguments. He has studied poetry writing at the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire and with Elaine Preston in Huntington, Long Island. He lives in Setauket, New York, with his wife Ginger and their two Shih Tzu dogs.

A Poet Named Williams

A poet named Williams, who does not use his middle 
name, has no prescription pad for writing short poems, 
because he is not a physician. He once owned a red wheel 
barrow for carting fifty pound bags of topsoil to the 
perennial garden, but it rusted out and the axle broke. His 
encounters with white chickens have been limited since 
childhood. By the time he sees them they are un-feathered, 
headless and oven-ready. He garnishes them with 
rosemary. So much depends upon the pop-up timer.

Disturbance

The neighbor’s Beagle bays loudly, protesting my presence as I 
pass by on my walk.  His baying splashes into the morning, 
rippling outward.  The sudden noise upsets the Airedale a block 
to the west.  Quickly, the two German Shepherds down by the 
Post Office prick their ears and scramble to their feet to voice 
their outraged objections.  Guard dogs, strays, mincing leashed 
and coddled pets, each in turn comments on the situation.  Along 
the streets of St. James, Smithtown, Kings Park, westward the 
length of Long Island the message is passed along.  In late 
morning, housewives in Huntington, clicking cups on saucers, 
step to the door to hush their dogs, lest neighbors might 
complain.  Woodbury horseback riders steady jumpy mounts; 
through populous western Nassau County the stream of sound 
widens, entering New York City at three o’clock.  After supper 
nervous Manhattan apartment owners squint through their 
peepholes to see what is going on.