Tuesday @ Two

The coalition Command Staff planning antiterrorist activities after hearing of WMDs in Pollock Pines

For 10 years a group of local poets and camp followers have been meeting in Pollock Pines at 2:00 PM on Tuesdays to read poetry of their own and from the masters both live and dead. Starting at the Pony Espresso coffee house, then moving as it came and went, the group has been called the pony poets, pepperoni poets, and poets in exile. All the while they have been the Tuesday @ Two poets. Five years ago, the group adopted the practice of having a table-top exercise in poetry at the end of each session.

Judy usually plans the process which may be to write on a given subject, about a given object, or a take-off on a phrase from another poem. The most popular exercise which forces one's ability to think out-of-the-box is the WordCan. Judy brings a coffee can filled with random words or phrases; each member draws one word or phrase, sight unseen; the 4, 5, 6, or so words are then used by all the poets in a "poem" written in the next 15 minutes. Some have risen to great heights of imagination; some less so. We recommend you try it. Each week, we will try to give you examples of some of our work. We hope you find it fun. If you wish, you can try our words. Write your poem. Then scroll down to see how it compares with ours.

On December 28, 2004 we drew four words from the wordcan. They were chipped statue, mingle, unscrew, and brass. Check us out below.

                                           Mingle the Sundered

         Do you ever feel like
your life is like a
                       1000 piece puzzle
        that is scattered in the
                      wind?
       How about a brass drawer pull
                   unscrewed from the
                               cherry wood facing?
Or a chipped statue of
              Adonis in Old Arcata
                      park?
Don’t worry, life is like
              passing clouds upon
              which sits the puzzle
                      master with a screwdriver
                                   and chisel.

Jean Salfen                                              Dec. 28, 2004

D. 14,

Burials

Boxes and boxes of relics
dug from the ancient disasters.
Tiny brass horses
that held their prance for centuries
under meters of hardened lava.
Chipped statues of gods and goddesses
that lay mingled
with the bones and bracelets.
Boxes and boxes catalogued
in the museum basement
waiting
for the daylight
of a dry curiosity,
for the vault to be opened,
for the lid to be unscrewed.

Taylor Graham Dec. 28, 2004

Past Caring

Through with Xmas for yet another year
and I’m some glad.
No more Xmas lights to screw and unscrew
from cheap sockets made in Taiwan,
never meant for much handling.
I put away the chipped statues of the Nativity,
a shepherd missing the top of his crook,
the wise man whose camel
has been glued together in several places,
thrown into one large box.
They mingle with brassy looking garland
and cheap glass balls so old
the color is fading into another year.

Mary Field Dec. 28, 2004

A Sticky Business

He said “You might try some glue.
Or simply have it cast in brass.
For even if you mingle with the very few,
a chipped statue lacks some class.

“To have an ornament you unscrew,
on the other hand, is rather crass.”
Sorry, I will take a different view.
Take it or leave it, you smart ass.

Hatch Graham Dec. 28, 2004