Monthly Archives: May 2015

Poetry from Y.X. Xia

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Something About Love

The only thing is I can’t even see it on my phone. I tried to download the most recent version and it is not the same thing I found the day before. I go back on track and I love it, but on the other hand, it is not the best way before the years came to be a good little thing with more attention than I thought I could hygiene.

The following Poems were written with Apple’s Siri. Full details released later.

Dangers

I need to look it up

on the wheel again.

If you could logically

become whole people,

work hard with difficulty

of the harbinger come

and a little meat on what boo-hoo.

Why don’t you hold on?

It will kill the floor.

 

Hole in One

Your butt hole

to mislead you,

testify you,

or give it more question,

but on the whole

woke up hot:

it could walk

the Puppy.

 

Poetry and an essay from Andrea Carr

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Feelings
What’s wrong with you?
Something is… what more can you want.
Why, do you find a way to be a part of everything?
I let you run free whenever, you are welcomed guests being pleasant and courteous.
 Not enough time doing that. I guess, I didn’t expect the desperate neediness you possess. When I finally got in touch with you.
To be lurking constantly before, you find an opportunity to pounce on someone.
It is good being honest with you, to express you being here trying to get out. Acknowledged.
When I feel like it, okay.
Fyi:  it is not always good, sharing the meaning behind you.
So what should I do then, to remain nice and yet, tell the truth about, how I am feeling. Without, hurting the feelings of others.
You sure ask a lot of me.
And, you. You started this.
You keep introducing yourself to them.
I didn’t want half of them to meet you.
So, it’s my fault to have so many.
A typical, man’s answer.
I have no control over choosing when, or which one to let out. They have a bad habit of surfacing most often, when felt.
Just so you know, I don’t try to control what I feel.
Who does?
When, it’s too late.
I have to fight with the most stubborn one’s to wait, having half of a second before I speak.
We both know how successful I have been with that.
Because I act on them saying whatever they feel.
I thought I could do that with you.
So leave them alone. If you don’t like to meeting up to have a chat.
They don’t hate you, you know.
Funny, I don’t hear you complain when it’s passion doing the talking for me…
They probably don’t know what, I really would like to do with them sometimes. No one feels good, always.

 

Andrea N. Carr, author of Family Tree The Novel: Family Tree. 

https://about.me/andreancarr

http://www.amazon.com/Family-Tree-The-Novel-family/dp/1494322846

 

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Writing it down.

I have writing spells where, thats all I want to do sometimes. Especially when, I’m out of sorts I write for cathartic reasons. Otherwise, I need inspiration to write coming at the oddest of times from anything. I must act on it or it hurts. I feel something tragic has happened to me if, I can not express what I am feeling when needed with the written word.
I hate that feeling, so to I try and avoid it ever happening. I started carrying around something to write with most times. It can come off guard so, I use a napkin or anything, I can find to write on at the time.
My cell phone occasionally, comes in handy but, there is something about the written word with a pencil or pen I like most. I thought of a children’s book once when, I was walking my son to school. I had to run home. The whole thing comes to me at once, I don’t want to lose it if it is inspired. If it is longer than a short story it comes in waves each section of the story. I never know what, I will be writing about.
If I do it isn’t the same writing or as close to my liking. That is my biggest challenge, with writing now to find those sparks of inspiration on command. I can write on command but, not be inspired on command. If my environment is wrong I have to get away from it. I can’t be hindered for very long. I like to be alone most of the time, so I can think clearly.
Though I love people, dearly. I take them in doses, my friends are artists and compulsive freaks like me. (laughs) We get on each others nerves sometimes; we are cool though. We are all into our own things but, meet up and share our art forms. I feel frustrated with them because, things of mine need to be read; no instant gratification. I am the whiner in the bunch and want special attention though, deserving because of the nature of what I do. Who wants to come over and read when visiting you. I want everyone to do that, all I hear is “Do I have to read it now?” That is really how my poetry developed. (laughing out loud)
I figure, if I could discipline myself to read having ADD so can anyone else. I don’t understand people who don’t want to do it. I mean, how can you not? You learn things, what other way can be so intimate without having sex with everyone. Sharing thoughts and feeling with a story is grand it’s what life is about. How else can meaningful relationships happen, if we don’t share. (smiling)
I simply adore putting stories out but, fear sometimes, I will be dead before anyone really knows my name in literature. I want to see the impact my writing has on others. My writing is not superficial and has to be taken in and understood for what it is not what is wanted from it. Not with a legacy either, I can’t know about it then. I want to answer questions about it in case, you do not get it at first so, it’s understood properly.

Andrea N. Carr

 

Writeup of UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory’s Dr. Peggy Hellweg’s talk at Oakland, California’s Chabot Space and Science Center

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Dr. Peggy Hellweg

Dr. Peggy Hellweg

No, Dr. Peggy Hellweg of UC Berkeley’s Seismological Laboratory can’t predict the Bay Area’s next major earthquake. However, she did go over why scientists think the Hayward fault could get shaken up pretty soon. That was part of her talk during March’s enrichment lecture for Chabot volunteers and their guests.
Earthquakes occur when the edges of the major tectonic plates that make up the earth’s crust stick, rub or break off against each other. There are three different types of tectonic plate boundaries: transform, where the plates are moving past each other horizontally, convergent, where they move towards each other, and divergent, where the plates are moving apart. Most of California’s faults, including the large San Andreas fault, are transform faults. The North American plate, where our continent resides, is moving slowly westward, while the Pacific plate, adjacent to the west, is moving slowly eastward.
Until about 30 million years ago, the land that is now California was within a subduction zone, where part of one plate moves underneath another and becomes buried. The present-day San Andreas fault system formed from the tension created as the North American plate moved northwest.
Geologists figured out that continents moved over time by observing changes in the magnetic fields of rocks. When rocks heated above a certain temperature cool, they take on the magnetic field orientation present around them, which depends on where they are located in relation to the Earth’s magnetic poles. So when some rocks in a certain area have a different orientation from nearby rocky matter, we can infer that they have moved in from elsewhere. Researchers estimate that the earth’s tectonic plates move at about five centimeters per year.

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Poetry from Elle Pryor

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Next Door to the Brewery

 

Often on leaden days, eddies of air

sift hop vapours into this tight room.

It sooths the scald of my dark patch,

settles in the glasses of public houses.

Bitterness is absorbed by harried bodies

tracing their lifelines on grain tables

branded with Olympian rings.

 

The brewery creates a space, dapples black

the nesting ground of watching seagulls,

hiding human calls with their screams.

A flurry of malted smoke smothers

the possibility of new Subtopian plans.

Wind tours the cracks of winding pipes,

playing jazz symphonies at dawn.

 

The first to fourth of factory favours.

Others are the illumination of gardens

by a lone spotlight through the dark,

disused warehouses that shelter pigeons

and monolith weathered steel towers

lying flush against the dithers of tricks

and the furtive scurries of prostitutes.

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Prose sketches from Michael Robinson

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City Sounds

 My foster father moved to his own rhythm, tapping down the street. In the quietness of my memory I wonder what inspired him to have such a rich soul, but soul was a movement in the neighborhood.   It was the Motown Sounds that awaken my love of life: Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, and the Temptations along with James Brown the godfather of soul all were alive with soul. The essence of the black moment outside of the anger and riots, enjoy the beat and move your hips to the sound. While maybe people rioted it was the music that many more enjoyed. It was a special night when I saw the godfather on stage. Sweat pouring down his face and as he was escorted off stage he would reappear and be escorted off again only to reappear. It was truly a show of wonder. There was no energy left after watching any of those who performed to sounds of soul in the inner- city. The streets are free of violence and I listen to sounds and I dance.

 

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Poetry from Merrell Miles

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Dirty Desperation 
I carefully grab a fork from the yellow-stained sink,

dip it under the rushing chlorine-saturated water,
which scalds my hand, hot like a nice shower.
I plop the filthy fork into the naturally white (but now
a nice shade of secondhand) and red checkered dish
rag, scrubbing away toxic gunk that grew around its
edges in the sink while I ignored the souring dishes
for a couple of weeks. The gross pieces
make my stomach shift and shake like a child’s leg
under a mouse.
Here I stand, washing dishes at midnight,
and wishing that I could do the same with life.

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Short Fiction from Doug Hawley

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PRODIGAL FATHER

Duke’s Story – Part One – I was drinking Black Butte Porter at my favorite bar after a miserable day at work. I’m the actuary at an insurance company that is losing money and possibly having its rating lowered. I tried to tell the president that we need to raise rates, but the marketing head was fighting me all the way. The bad news at work led down a dark hallway into everything else I hated about my life. Here I was in my fifties with few friends, little family left and not much to show for all the years. Wife Sally was about my only joy. The more I drank, the more I started to slide towards depression.

I had had my head down concentrating on my beer and was surprised to see a guy looking at me. Even stranger, he looked a lot like my late father had when he was in his thirties. Dad had done weightlifting in his youth and was totally studly before becoming obese. Except for eye color and his prematurely graying wavy hair, he could have been my father fifty years ago.

I left when I got to the staggering stage. I saw the guy from the bar following me and I worried about him being a mugger. In my state, I couldn’t put up much of a fight. I was surprised that he just gave me a note: “Duke, this is your son Walter. Please don’t contact me. Janine”

My knees buckled and I started to hit the pavement.

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