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Section D: .................................................................. October 15, 1996

Knoxville, TN

I'm 13 and live near Knoxville, Tennessee. I liked lamp shades my parents got when they bought new lamps. I had to think of what to use them for or my parents would throw them away. I glued the tops together. Then I cut a piece of cardboard the same size as the bottom. After that I covered the cardboard with a piece of newspaper. Finally I glued the cardboard to the bottom of the shades (the biggest opening is the bottom). Wala -- I have a sturdy table for my room. I also made chairs out of my newspaper collection. One chair is 11 pounds and the other is 13 pounds.

I also made art work. Our little keyboard wouldn't work no matter what we did. So I took it apart and put it on a board then put it on the wall. I make picture frames out of cardboard. It is fun and good for recycling. I decorate my room with my one of a kind work. No two pieces are alike.

George M Dabney

UNTITLED

Why is it that
I can race around
the world
running fast
and far
only when I slow down
does
the self catch up
and mock
where I have come from
chasing away
where I thought I was going


Why do all my fears
come out as regrets
while growth becomes
stagnant
petrified
planted
in clay dry soil
unable to move
to reach
to live?


Why do all my
choices
seem like mistakes
when Pain is supposed
to transform
and lift
from despair?


How do we change the
color
of the thought
that claims our feeling
as we dance
over and back
from the threshold
we thought
we'd crossed for good?

Ingrid Middleton
Imiddleton@aol.com

I have just got back some new work that I handed in for the proposal of the anthology I am working on. I thought you might like some.

PUSH

your words
like knives
in between my ribs
fold me from
the inside
outwards
i fall
a slow stretch
on my knees
to you my eyes
nothing more
than a space
between
two lids
broken

WHERE TO NOW?

today
i wanted
to die
again
to be
taken away
with
tired fingers
can no longer
hold the masks
and strings
against
my temples
can only rub
at my eyes
turning for
that silent
endless be.

Wednesday Geddes
eenderburyv@alpha1.curtin.edu.au (c/o Vincent Enderbury)

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Section C: .................................................................. September 16, 1996

UNTITLED

Scared of my own
psychology
and power


All things
fear
focus
that should be inside


and
isn't


but outward
instead
around
a
free
floating
A Lone Ness
that won't relinquish
its grip
on my soul


So I stay behind
again
afraid to cross
the border
the juncture
the edge


and vastness
approaches
so unlike
the threshold
once of light
and of hope.

The power I speak of is this direct communion with the Universe... sometimes it wants so much of me that I try to push it away... I don't want to do all these things at once and yet when I have no way to ground myself... I find myself in turmoil.

The way I write anything that means something to me evolves in this way... I see images... usually large, vast pictures of something in nature... sometimes simply darkness that comes alive when a star twinkles or a memory comes in... Being very visual, I struggle mostly with having so many of these occur at once that I hardly can manage them... so I (have) attempted to numb them altogether

Now, realizing... this no longer improves me or my prospects in life... I am trying to be responsible first... find a job... safety... and let creativity come in on particular intervals... or whenever I feel that vastness approaching... The fears are generally at night... and they involve many recreated aspects of my childhood... Nothing I can fix... so I simply accept it and try to get through as best as I can.

A LITTLE POEM FOR TODAY

I grew up
on the south side of town
growing a different garden
from those in the north
hoping my flowers
would still
look
the same


But the grass
sprung forth questions
weeds never the same
and my gardens grew
different
Sometimes
i still ask
but glad for the reason
why

Ingrid Middleton
Imiddleton@aol.com

I write with new poems...

SONG

When i hear that song
the one that starts
and turns
and turns
curling
standing
in the air
around
and over back
over back over
to the part where
i see you and i
starting
turning
and turning
curling
standing in the air
and over back
over back over
everyone feeling
something even if
it's nothing.

"A Thank You" was written about a person I know to whom I gave a present. I was proud of the achievements this friend has made lately, and wanted to let him know... I guess I was writing about the spaces in between what it is people say, and what it is they really want to, but for reasons don't.

A THANK YOU

Last night when
you stepped into
the space between us
i felt the sting
of perfunctory
on my cheek
from your lips
without concern,
that indifferent
routine of others
of any and all
except of you and i
but you did it
anyway

Wednesday Geddes
eenderburyv@alpha1.curtin.edu.au (c/o Vincent Enderbury)

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Section B: .................................................................. August 16, 1996

Perth, Australia

IN OTHER WAYS

i went to visit
to see that you
were still real
and driving home
i remembered that
again i forgot
to say all of
those words that
your eyes seem to
silence... to tell you
all that is within me
when i am you
is so good
that i forget

Wednesday Geddes
eenderburyv@alpha1.curtin.edu.au (c/o Vincent Enderbury)

I'd like to share my thougts ( for they are more thought than poetry) with all that will read it...
I hope you do enjoy!

THREE DAYS

Yesterday was spontanious and misguided
by lures of evil and disturbed lusts,
Yet completed with the desire to commence new projects,
only to wish for, an hour in the sun.


Today can only stimulate melancholy;
the expectations to grieve can be so abundant,
that in turn being swallowed by the moaning,
is... inevitable.


Tomorrow brings hope and the revitlalization
of... spirit.
Withdrawl of all harm and threat.
though only knowledge of a paradox
reoccurs continually and leaves a last simplistic thought,


----- ----- ----- ----- where will I be tomorrow?

Brenna Levin-Moscovitch
njl@netcom.ca

Does this rate at 10?

ANOTHER VIEW

blue and white waves
tumble forth full-form
worthy of Olympic Gold
reward for centuries
of unfailing practice


No need to travel
to Atlanta site
to view the push
towards precision
as athletes strive
almost beyond endurance
to performs feats that stretch
to depths of pain


Just watching
willows bow in
sturdy breeze
... noticing
wind-sculpted cypress
point the way
... glimpsing
a fluorescent hummingbird
balance on pale air
... satisfies the need to
witness perfection


I award a full ten
to a deer nuzzling
her velvet fawn...
a perfect score to
the strong crescendo
of a red-orange sunset
... find quiet melodies
that arise to honor the day
as potent as an Olympic Anthem

Illia Thompson
IRTHOMP@aol.com

Santa Cruz, CA

SEEDS TRAVELING IN THE WIND

I am a seed.
I travel with the wind
aimlessly, forlorn
it matters not where
I land.
I belong to the
universe
therefore, I'm never lost,
never, not at home.
I sprout and resprout.
You can find me in the
narrows, or on a butte,
in the city, on the prairie.
I am everywhere, always.
I land softly and settle
into the earth, into you,
to sprout new life...

UNTITLED

Listen, not with the ears.
Listen intently,
not with the eyes,
listen with the soul.
Let the messages sink in.

LEAF SPINNING

Saw a leaf spinning
around and round
a pentagon,
a bright-orangish-yellow,
brittle cadaver.
Time passes, leaves
die, too.

A POEM

A poem
lingers off of my tongue
it's a luscious one
dripping, moist
sounds waiting to
burst forth, buds
hoping to sprout
a reaching for the light
another moment of birth
My life does this often
a metamorphic cataclysmic
epiphany... I love the way
that they shoot across my sky.

Joel M. Olinger
JoelJumpin@aol.com

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Section A: .................................................................. July 16, 1996

Sweden

(Reference: Thoughts on Creativity #23) Yes, I am also positive to what we can do with the Internet. It is more a question of connecting human resources than spreading recipes of carbombs, or satanic verses as the opposers of this "new" MEDIA of communication try to convince the souls that have not yet been informed.

Art in Cyberspace can be a step to beautiful matters that I believe are somewhat more greater than we can imagine. In the present the future will be what we make of it!!

Oscar Noslund
publik@msb.malmo.se (Publik-public user)

SUBITO

Tense the little muscles that
pour over shedding locks of
undisturbed hair and
pure and bright are the
vast energies that rise
to a setting sun
at days start,
at days end.


Burnt magenta
drawn like lips in silence.
Wilderness, desert, depth,
a whole canvas of world shed to
an eternity and coined
to a calendar finishing month.


And cold,
cold the sharp porcelain of Winter
bluff and crags of
unfinished... months


Months
before Springs' navel rings to count its
rinse of tears on stone and
marauding ephesias twitch indolence in the
eyes of sudden..Life


Life,
fierce your almost
tangible bliss of
soft,
softly spoken words.

ODYSSEUS

Stave no piety, no rhythm, no rhyme,
(you are),


corrugated wet dream,
bittersweet anemone,
foreskins primped on battled sheepskin...
barish lover, soil and dream,
(you are),


scattered flesh-dark cilia,
cabals blood born breast on high ,
suckled Yahweh, Kalki, Gilgamesh.
(you are)


Sum the Nile with Nil,
eat up the years of
Season run-up ash,
exhume the beds of your
flower children, subaqueous
listeners, and
kiss and tell me!
where the wild-haired monoliths
tribute your fancy.
Plait no
locket, no pillar, no plaque
bronze nothing but
exhume, exhume, exhume...
(you are),
disarray, disarray, disarray...
(you are),


Philos, toxin, mender,
Heron's seminal embrace,
too much, enough, and never
(you are)
field broad opened spectrum
forest, desert, ocean, sky,
(you are)
forever what
a moment is to --
(you are --)
Time.

CAROUSEL

Tour of force is a breeze
lifting the gauze
of wound cooled by contraband.
And wars' never;
and peace never,
makes mirth or


sense the ground
rising up in jump
rope
rhythm,
bleating out these
mournful skies over
hop-scotch fields,
quilted daisies,
blown crazy eights.


And hope's never;
and dreams never...
Circummure poles,


spill out from tight
circling currents of
desperate mass.


Canvas of flesh,
sphere of illusion and
lilly and cholera and laughter and bedlam,
ever-thickening yoke
hold me.


And lifes' never;
and loves' never...

David Hunter Sutherland
3468441@mcimail.com

>> Director, The Creative Edge: The Way Of The Arts <<

This sounds like my kind of organization!

The Beauty of the World
which is so soon to perish
has two edges
one of laughter
one of anguish
cuting the heart asunder...

-- Virginia Woolf

Ingrid Maria Middleton
IMiddleton@aol.com

I live just across the bay from you. Though it has been a partly cloudy day on my end of the bay today my mind has been clear. Thanks for the Spring Newsletter. I just arrived back in town recently from four days of hot springs and four days in Yosemite as part of a writing retreat. I would like to send you a few of my most recent poems. If you want to print any of them you have my permission, if not, enjoy them anyway. They come from my soul, the fire that resides in me these days, and the grief that has traveled alongside me for a few decades.

BEGGARS IN THE NIGHT

Beggars arrived in the night, clothed in the shadows
They moved into the deep, unlit room, unchallenged
They grappled, in trance, midnight robbers
A young boy the victim this time


The night beggars reached to fondle
to rape, to molest, the trusting boy
and before the beggars departed, they,
forced a pact of silence -- no sharing


Alone again, the young boy lie still
frozen, in silence, in terror,
mixed feelings permeated his body
his soul was wounded, left askew


From that moment on the wounds
traveled with him -- the walls
protected the trama, incarcerated
the frozen moments -- stymed the boy


But at time passed the boy grew in,
many ways... he inflicted pain, and
he received it... but he continued to grow
To open his heart, his soul, his wounds


Days became years, his lifetime occurred,
the walls began to collapse, the pain
lessened, his sadness became grief, deep grief,
and his grief led him to battle; to liberation


After an ocean of tears, a few ponds of laughter
the boy became a man, and the wounds
became the canvas that he painted his masterpiece
upon, by sharing, by spending museful time alone


As his heart opened, the healing sprouted
his courage, his fire, his softness forced
the night beggars to ride off into the night
for he had a new life to live...

YO NO SOY YO!

I am not I
I walk beside myself
I walk with myself
I look over, I care for myself
The dark shadow has been with me for so long.
It has controlled me and others


I look over and I now see a friend
A person that feels the wind,
and at times is the wind.
The Tuolumne River that passes
is part of my arteries,
my pulse, it leads me to "Yo soy."


Yo no soy yo! No mas!
Mi vida es ahora! I choose to live,
to love, to be truth
If I don't live within, then
I live without
I choose to live.


The woods, the sun, the waterways
have always been my sanctuaries,
mi familia.
I hear you tree, you speak to me as I lean
against you, you speak of love, of perserverance,
of deep, deep patience


Thank you for reminding me of my place in
our world. Yo soy! It means to breathe,
to reach out, to share, to be vulnerable, trusting
The elements, the living organisms that
surround me now with such passion --
such reverence allow me to be, Yo soy!

REFLECTION

I am very much like you
You see, if you look deep
enough a mirror appears
a holographic image of
both of us; all of us.

Joel M. Olinger
JoelJumpin@aol.com

Thank you for your creative offerings!

I invite readers to share their own creative works with a few words about the context of their work for this new version of Letter Box. I look for work and comments I feel support understanding and encouragement of the creative process, and hence, the process of life.

The Editor

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