MARTHA MESHBERG

Me and Vicki  (A monologue)

We were two of those kids that were

what our folks called: ‘tom boys’.

We climbed a lot of trees, and

jumped off a lot of roofs and stole

a few more hens eggs

than we'd like to admit...

We still remember the incredible

ecstatic thrill

(and awesome guilt)

of smashing all them hens eggs

down the side of Isaiah Crippens

brand new tin shed.

Man, those eggs, they'd splat everywhere-

and then they'd ooze

down the side of the shed

all yellow and mucus-like, with chips

and specks- all dripping, gooey, sticky and wet

And wow: how

                 absolutely "fossilized"

                 those eggs became when they dried!

It was just

so coolly disgusting!

And we'd belly laugh loudly,

rolling around on the ground, throwin'

and smashin' them eggs again and again.

But what made it totally "the best" was:

they were Isaiah Crippens's eggs!

(Vickie would raid the coop

while I coolly kept watch...oooo, tsk,tsk,tsk.)

So, we kept this up for a week or two-

always drawn to that dastardly frolic

until one day, in the middle of our reverie,

Mr. Isaiah Crippens himself, made a

surprise appearance on the scene!

He was like a red hot poker

as he came charging our way

and we lit the hell outta there

barely escaping, by the seat of our pants,

scrambling ‘neath the rickety ‘ole fence.

He waved his arms and ranted and yelled,

Swearin’ he was calling the police

to have us put in jail!

Geeze...we ran faster than jack rabbits,

until we fell, scared, exhausted and spent

into the hay loft of Vicki's barn.

We hid out for hours... 'til way past dark...

then parted ways

(with our "stories" straight)

and crept quietly home.

We got through the night

and never did become ‘captives’

of the police.

(Darn good we made our selves scarce.)

Next day, we decided that: after all,

what we were up to, was really wrong.

It was stealin' and wastin’

perfectly good eggs.

‘N besides there were kids in the world

who had nothin' to eat!

So, we humbly apologized

to Mr. Isaiah Crippens

and mercifully paid for the loss

of them eggs

by cleaning Mr. Isaiah Crippens hen house

for two whole months!

We was really sorry for what we done

and went to church

and did a whole lot of prayin'

Well, I guess

we've been forgiven...

it's been all these years

and we ain't NEVER

stole nobody's eggs

er nothin'

EVER AGAIN!

Martha Meshberg

Copyright ©2002

ED WQODS

Family Name

I fell from grace
a few times
and paid dearly
this is why I lead a path
straight and narrow
as if parents watch over me
not that they demanded
a good citizen
or example child
it was the embarrassment
of our family name
that would send a solid sting
my way to pay attention
to household details

Art Waves with Martinus Geleynse

The podcast of the interview is now online at:

 http://archive.org/details/MartinusGeleynseArtWaves175

There is also a brief 'about' section on Urbanicity's website at http://urbanicity.ca/story/


Martinus is one of the bright lights of Hamilton who strives to bring awareness of Hamilton with its many varied faces. Bernadette Rule, the host of Arts Waves, is a well known poet and teacher, originally from Kentucky but residing in Hamilton, Ontario.

Have a listen and enjoy!

ED WOODS

Coordination


through a hospital window
a parade of jets
coming home
for the night
hours per day
to and from
departure or arrival
far and close
mother lays still
grasping every breath
to last
one more hour
time will be soon
for her departure
to far above the jets
where angels land
coordination
gets each flight
safely home

MARTY BEERS MESHBERG

Flawed, But Undying... If you place your trust in my hands freeing yourself of any responsibility, sad experience tells me, you'll most likely fall- as I watch to see how hard you land...   If you set me on a pedestal holding my principles and ideals up as a holy test I should never fail, realistic experience tells me, you'll most likely watch me fall flat on my "can" 'cause it's "human", I am...   If you accept me as all that I am I'll be your flawed, but undying friend...   For, if you'd love me, honest experience tells me you'd witness both the light of the sun and the dark side of the moon as the dual nature and  myriad universe that I am.   Martha Meshberg Copyright ©2002

 

Martha (Beers) Meshberg

My artistic expression is motivated by my deep love of nature and it's infinite beauty. As well, my devotion to the writings of The Báb, Bahá 'u' lláh, 'Abdu'l-Bahá and the many Holy Texts of the world, inspire and deepen my work.

I am a singer, painter, poet and musician.

 
In my earlier years, (1958-1972 ) I performed professionally with The "Beers Family " Traditional Singers and am now the last surviving member of the Beers Family.

I was a partner in the/Husband/Wife team (Eric and Martha Nagler from the 1970's -'77 and performed solo through the mid 1980s. I have traveled world wide on Cultural Exchange Tours, Concert Stage, Television & Radio and at Music Festivals, Schools and Universities throughout the United States, Canada, India, South America and the Caribbean Islands.

Personal Highlights: CarnegieHall, Lincoln Centre, The White House
I have recorded with Columbia Masterworks, Folk Legacy, Biograph, Philo, and Fox Hollow Productions.

Though I no longer perform, The music and many memories of the rich rewards of travel through-out the world among many cultures, is one of the motivating factors of my art and poetry. I am currently preparing a volume of poetry for publication.

 
Editor's Note: Marty currently resides in Toronto, Ontario with her husband.

ALBERT MAGSUCI

Night Spirit

 

Here amid the trees

light and shadow

bathe the night.

The cool wind blows

lends comfort
an air of quietness enhances my spirit
a dream-like trance touch my senses
my shadow dances
as I walk within the park.

This cold somber

December breeze
swirls around my ears
audibly in melodious harmony
the rustling leaves whisper
"Come, cease your dreams
for a moment of solitude".

Oh Night Spirit

ease my day's burden,
let me find peace
and be one with nature,
a night alone with thee.

 

Albert Magsuci

January 6,2013

MILTON ACORN

IN A SPRINGTIME INSTANT: The Selected Poems of Milton Acorn 1950 - 1986

Edited by James Deahl

Mosaic Press, Oakville, Ontario, 2012

248 pages $24.95

ISBN 0-88962-921-9

Toronto Star, Friday January 4, 2013

Milton Acorn’s poems find fresh audiences with new book

by Joe Fiorito

There is a new Milton on the shelves; it was launched recently at the Imperial, a modest bar tucked away in the corner at Dundas and Yonge.

But when I say Milton, I do not mean the one going on about his blindness. I mean Milton with the cigar and the growl, the chronic nosebleeds and the red worker politics; your Island poet, your people’s poet.

Acorn, Milton. The tough nut.

As for the Imperial, it is where the downtown guys bring their deep thirst late at night, and where Ryerson kids mourn or toast their future.

Now and then, you get poets.

The evening was lovely and chaotic. There was singing. There were skits, one of which involved an eyeball flung across the room.

There was a reading by the actor David Fox, who looks as unlike Milton as anyone can be, but he played Acorn on stage long ago, and he drew on that when he read.

Oh, how he read.

I mean that half the pub held students drinking deeply, and thinking less deeply, and they were also — Milton would have approved — looking for a little tenderness with the help of beer. They were rowdy. They didn’t care. Fox made them care. That’s art.

I had one or two coffee-house poetry flashbacks. I saw an old guy sleeping on a bench during the folk songs; a long time ago he would have been stoned. I think this guy was just old, cold and tired.

And then four bicycle cops marched in, one after another; bright yellow jackets, guns on their hips. They snaked through the room in single file, a kind of bike cop conga line. Who knows what they were looking for?

Maybe Milton.

I should say I met him once. He was a stalwart in the Canadian Liberation Movement when I was a new recruit. This was years ago, in Thunder Bay, and he was passing through.

The political philosophy of the CLM was so rigid it hurt. Our tactics included a naïve Canadian nationalism, to which I still cling.

I recall the sticker we used to slap on cars with America plates: “Yankee Go Home. We Don’t Like You The Way You Are.”

This was the time of the Vietnam War. I slapped a few stickers on cars myself. I blush to confess it now.

Anyway, Milton came to my place with some other cadres. He fell instantly for the girl I was seeing, and he saw my chessboard and he thought he would show off, and show me up at the same time.

I thrashed him.

Then I offered him some of my poems. He read them wordlessly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and growling all the while.

I was, in those days, writing sharp little imagist poems. He said nothing, and then he growled that the poems sounded like Black Mountain stuff — American, a CLM sin — and therefore no good.

I now see my mistake.

I should have shown him the poems first, and then beat him at chess. Not that it mattered. He didn’t stand a chance with my girl.

The book is called In A Springtime Instant. It is published by Mosaic Press, and it was edited by James Deahl, himself a poet to contend with.

Say what you will about Acorn — and you can always say he needed a bath — he was Whitmanesque. I bet that would have bugged him. Old Walt was American.

No matter.

Old Milt should be read.

DAVID HASKINS

I Do Remember Untersberg

　

The lack of anything discernible, the sudden erasure of definition, the immersion into grey-white nothingness, is fearful, claustrophobic. When there is nothing to negotiate, no ‘other’ to confront, one’s solitariness is terrifying. Like an untethered astronaut tumbling through space, one imagines one might be dead, or at least that if one were dead, it might be like this. One hears the faintest hush, not from afar like a distant cascade, but close, like a blanket against the skin, worming its way inside the ears, a wave of uncertainty – the sound cold makes.

Climbing inside a descending cloud

my feet chance upon a young girl’s face,
a plaque beside the forgotten place
where she slipped on loose gravel,
tumbled to her death so far below
they could not find her broken corpse
and when they did, could not protect
it from the kites and hawks
or retrieve it from untrusted scree.

Had she too been lost in a cloud

that day she aspired to a new view
over the top, a mountaineer’s dream,
when her boot dislodged the stones
that bounced and gathered speed
beside her, each a hidden marker
on the bread crumb trail to her death.

As though the mountain welcomed her

and would not send her back
into the world of lesser men.
I am on my knees
inches from her face.
The icy fog encases me like one of Franklin’s men
whose horrid grimace answered that pointless forage.

Once, on a summer slope ripe with saxifrage,

orchid, rock jasmine, edelweiss,
the trail rough cut through turf and shale,
the hot July sun scorching the safe ascent,
in my coltish nerve, I leaped across
the tedious switchback curves, straight for the top,
stumbling through hollows and outcrops
across meadow mined with treachery.

I heard the scrape of boot on stone

and knew not what I had begun.
The missile sprung unbounded
in an arc falling from my sight
skipping down upon a pasture, or a traveller
walking in the sweet morning‘s warmth.

I waited for blessed silence,

and took the certain path home
hoping not to be seen, or to find.
A mountain absorbs a man’s murderous folly,
and remains, as though nothing
will change, except the man.