abovegroundtesting
the magazine
December 2007                                                                                                                             issn 1488-0048


Welcome to the December issue, the month of Christmas, to celebrate the season of light and snow.  As I type these words the weather promises to be very interesting for the next 24 hours.     Still winter is approaching, when nature takes her leave and spends a few month asleep under the snow.  We wait with the season to change, although it may be one of the most joyous seasons of the year, because the cold is a time to celebrate life.  We are not slowed down but find a new way to express ourselves.

We huddle by the fire, watching the flames dance to a rhythm established by physics.

I want to invite you to listen to the December podcast.   The link is here.  You will listen to a wonderful singer giving her interpretation of a certain Christmas Carol "To save a Poor Sinner".  You may not be familiar with it, but I invite you to listen and enjoy it.  It is one I listen to both on the CD and on my computer.

But this issue has some wonderful poetry and there will be a number of announcements at the end, so keep going.

Poetry

ASYMMETRIC SNOWFLAKE

*Sugarplum visions winter wonderland idyll
	**Secret pitfalls good gravy cover-ups
		***Mashed potato transfigured burial mounds
			****Gnashing jagged teeth ground down
				*****
*First flaky crust tread carefully
	**Every telling bloody misstep shows
		***Thin ice meltdown tenuously refreezing
			****Makeshift rink skates need sharpening
				*****
*Intense silence unconscious being snowbound
	**Droopy pine boughs weighed down
		***Blanketed towering lean-to’s intimately huddle
			****Diffuse sunrays sifting prickly freefall
				*****
*Outdoors fun snow-bunny hop slopes
	**Majestic mountain takes downhill lead
		***Macabre dance of death slalom
			****Lonely corpses jumping to conclusions
				*****
*Haggard ghosts cleft chin stubble
	**Licking chops bearded icicles caress
		***Powder-puff frosting brows ruddy cheeks
			****Chapped lips glossy senses numbed
				*****
*Revival air exhaling visible breaths
	**Quintessential lifestyle reigniting spitfire core
		***Walking tall kneecaps bent skiing
			****Virgin Snow White signature run
				*****
*Crocus fooled into blossoming early
	**Fine-feathered migratory snowbirds return prematurely
		***Unanticipated blizzard knotty hideout shelter
			****Hoarfrost seedy miracles sprouting wings
				*****



PoeArtry by: Dr. Charles Frederickson



CHECKLIST FOR THE TREK TO SAFEWAY

1. Snow is always different. This morning
your walk’s slick with fresh powder
over layers of thaw and freeze.

2. Snow lies deep in blue shadow
under cedars; glassy under the trickle
of a hose left running.

3. Remark how idyllic, with all your neighbors
warm inside their walls.

4. Snow is always changing. See
how sun-slant ignites every crystal.
Close your eyes to the glare.

5. It’s a mile to Safeway, all downhill.
Recall tales of hypothermia and the cold
bride, Avalanche.

6. Reconsider gear: Electric socks.
Goggles against snow-blindness.

7. Try to remember each of the Eskimo
words for snow.

8. If your Safeway has a Starbucks,
order something hot and double chocolate.

9. Prepare for the long climb home.
Check the closeouts for balaclavas.

10. Your mantra, "snow is
the mutable word for change."


PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST WITH EGGNOG

You come out of the kitchen
with the mugs on a tray; not upright
balancing the offering on upturned
palms; nor curled in gift-wrap,
but as if roused from a nap.

So much to serve! Your hair
unruly poinsettia under the Santa-hat.
You stare out of empty sockets
as the wall-clock clicks backwards
and family begins to arrive.

The intimate dimmed lights. Just
listen how the wiring sparks,
the candles already in flame.
"Would you like an eggnog, Mother-
in-Law?"


UNDER SNOW

It’s been coming down since Saturday.
Our one-lane road is whited out;
somewhere, a powerline has snapped.
The phone, too, is dead.

This unseasonable winter storm
is news, but at dawn the radio alarm
was silent. I woke up anyway, wondering
about the world.

Have the polar icecaps melted,
seas rising, global warming shifting
our weather-patterns, the Earth’s crazy-
quilt coming apart at its seams?

No road, no phone, no power.
I pull my comforter closer,
ponder how long the firewood can last,
and propane in the tank

and canned goods in the pantry.
Snow blows past the window
on an easterly that shifts to west,
big flakes weighing down the willow

still clinging to a few November-
yellow leaves. Just watch
the snow come down, so beautifully
it blots us out.

Taylor Graham


Tiny Sparrow Feet

 

It's calm.

Too quiet.

My clear plastic bowl

serves as my bird feeder.

I don't hear the distant

scratching, shuffling

of tiny sparrow feet,

The wing dances, fluttering, of a hungry

mornings lack of the big band sounds.

I walk tentatively to my patio window,

spy the balcony with detective sensitive eyes.

I witness three newly hatched

toddler sparrows, curved nails, mounted

deep, in their mother's dead, decaying back.

Their childish beaks bent over elongated,

delicately, into golden chips, and dusted yellow corn.

The Christians Arrived


 

Salvation Army and

the Christians arrived today,

Christmas, like every other Sunday morning

feed the homeless, chasing the rats from the bathroom,

basement, kicking the dead flies out of the corner spots

where the cat used to lounge-

clean the toilet bowl, a form of revival and resurrection.

I privately pastor to these desires though I myself am homeless.

I forgot what it's like to be a poet of the cloth,

savior in street clothing with a warm home to blend into.

I watch them clamp the New Testament in one hand,

And pull a cancer stick out of the pocket with the other.

It's all a matter of praising the Lord.

Everything is nonsense when you're in a place where you don't belong.

Even praying to Jesus from a dirty dusted pillow seems strange and bewildering.

Someday I will walk from this place and offer spare meals by myself to others;

feed the party in between the theology, the bingo of sins and salvation.

I forgot the taste of a Stromboli Sandwich with a 6 pack of Budweiser

with or without the Chicago Bears--it would make every Sunday a Salvation

Army holiday.

Today is a fairy creating miracles from the dust of the floor

multiplying fish and chips, baked ham, ribs with sauce Chi-Town type,

dark color of greens and veggies tip me to the Christian

clock on the wall peeking down on lost and unsaved.

I feel like a fragment.

A birth date the way again to begin, fragmented.

Pinto beans mixed with graffiti fingers,

Christians arrived on Christmas day-

they always do every Sunday morning.

I pastor to these desires.

It's all a matter of praising the Lord.

The Christians arrived today.

In the Garden Where the Flowers Grow


 

 

I'm going to take Islam where their God has not been before-

to the garden of  Jesus, olive oil presses, Gethsemane--

trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables didn't poison anyone there.

Passion was sweat on the ground and brow.

There weren't darts of hate, misconception or terrorism;

children on their knees five times a day brainwashed to hate.

Christ didn't lead them astray nor make them pagan pink.

There is no God apart from Allah, and Mohammed is the Prophet,

but it's Jesus who makes the garden grow with or without water.

Then and now the apples grow in my garden of forgiveness.

Figs trees grow far away where I can't reach them but believe in them.

Like the Tamarisk tree, Christ is a source of honey,

manna and wafer, a taste so sweet in the desert so dry.

You don't have to be a scholar to write poetry, religion, or understand

the Eucharist; but you need to be a real saint to know the difference.

Islam, is Judas Iscariot among your converts nose pointed toward

Mecca today?

I'm going to take Islam where their God has not been before-

to the garden where the flowers grow.

Mr. Michael Lee Johnson lives in Itasca, IL.  after spending 10 years in Edmonton, Alberta Canada during the Vietnam War era. He is a freelance writer, and poet.    He has been published in USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Scotland, Turkey, Fuji, Nigeria, Algeria, Africa, India, United Kingdom, Republic of Sierra Leone, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Michael Lee Johnson is a member of Poets & Writers, Inc and Directory of American Poets & Fictions Writers: http://www.pw.org/.   He is a member of The Illinois Authors Directory. Illinois Center for the Book:  http://www.illinoiscenterforthebook.org/directory.html

He has published 145 poems in 2007 to date.  He is the author of: The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom. http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-46091-7.  The book is also listed at Amazon.com, & Barnes & Noble.  Book review:  http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1777

Visit his website at: http://poetryman.mysite.com/.   He is now the publisher, editor of Poetic Legacy,   http://www.poetriclegacy.mysite.com/ ; and Birds By My Window: Willow Tree Poems  at, http://birdsbywindow.blogspot.com/.  Both publications are now open for submissions.   Mp3 Audio files available on request for any of the poems.

Special Note:  Presently looking for an e-book, chapbook or poetry book publisher for a joint venture of poems by Michael Lee Johnson, United States, free verse; and Phillip Ellis, Australian poet, traditional verse. Manuscript can be made available on request .



"An expensive lifestyle is one where ... happiness is sacrificed for money, serenity for ambition and contentment for the pursuit of things."_Michael Levy.
 
Wisdom of Le Mer 
 
Men in deck-chairs, sat on the beach,
each a world leader, in politics and religion,
one exclaimed…
The roar of the ocean, blocked out his intercourse,
not to be rude… all approvingly nodded their heads in agreement,
each in turn, expressed their extreme, dogmatic viewpoints,
only to be drowned-out, by the thunder of the waves,
After a two hour debate,
unified, all jubilantly shook hands,
harmoniously hugged each other, 
Agreeing…
it was the most successful meeting ever held.
 
A Paradigm of Holy Orders


Ceaseless movement in time and space,
bouncing out of the infinite,
limitless streams, shooting through
incessant parcels of time,
scope 'n range, absent of limitations,
multiple dimensions expand
within the principals of nature,
vanishing from sight one moment,
stimulating, the presence of the next,
infinite orchestrations enchanting mortality,
acts of unsurpassable ambrosial intelligence,
performing transcendent energies,
myriad of elegant transformations,
metamorphic exotic impacts,
conducing a medley of graceful maneuvers,
partnerships in humanities abundance network
transmit, from a paradigm of holy orders
 


Gyrations Of  The Universal Wheel


Mammoth supernovas spew storms of heavenly fire,
Celestial music simmers in a vacuum of mystical melodies,
Stratospheric fountains flare galactic gasses,
Mountains of nothingness erupt from voids of abundance.

Unfamiliar planets snowball from exotic dust,
Orbiting eccentric suns, appearing as monumental gods,
Pulsating forces dance to the gravitational beat of celestial violins,
Each note forms figments of heroic luminescent chaos.

Light spectrums expel voluminous electromagnetic wave bands,
Marching parades of exquisite grace, costumes of ultra-violet radiance,
Casts of a billion stars join the gyrations of the universal wheel,
Reeling in deep space, until the moment life is discovered.

An encore is requested by the standing ovulation of vibrating gravity,
A Sun is born awaiting children of earth to evolve,
Fed by a milky way, ascending from of a black hole,
A race of cosmic particles will develop as earthlings,
Viewed through time/space lens of astronomical candidates.
*****
Who Am I by Michael Levy

I am the taste in your dark silky chocolate,
the warmth in your smile
I am the music in your laughter,
the amazement in your eyes,
I am the star-light passion in your work,
the seasoning in your  touch,
I am the perfume in your ambiance,
the banquet in your thoughts,
I am the wonder in your speech,
the awe in every stride,
I am the love in your heart
the energy in your soul,
I am in the answers to all your questions,
the truth attached to each cell,
I am the delights of your life,
eternally bound as your bundle of joy.


Michael Levy, is the author of eight books, a mystical poet, inspirational philosopher and wellness/healthy living speaker. His latest books are \"The Joys of Live Alchemy\" and \"Worry Causes Wrinkles\" which help a person to change dark negative situations into beautiful, colorful, positive actions, that bring de-lights on the darkest of days.
http://www.pointoflife.com/


Trembling Memories  
  
  Trembling memories stand on the road
  Sometimes sinking down
  But rotten memories stand too tall
  Stubbing out of the ground

 

Put A Penny On Your Tongue

                 

Put a penny on your tongue

And try real hard

Not to swallow that coin

But failure pulls you on

Put a nickel in each cheek

And try really hard

To laugh or to speak  

But a dollar bill in wind

On the tip of your nose

Or behind

Then simply for a laugh

Take a walk into the back 

But don’t let you mom catch you

Or you’ll get a spank.

 


  The Peony Of Your Heart    
  
  The peony of your  heart sends waves
  Off and on to  other places
  Other sits and  other days
  The peony in your eyes  sends waves
  Takes mementoes to  gave surprise
  And sings a  complacent song
  To make the road  stay long
  The peony of your  heart sends words
  Of loving other  places
  Were we wish to  visit some week.


  Something Doesn't Seem Right   
 
  Something doesn't seem quite right
  Like stars dancing or laughing in the night
  Then when everything gets to be so nuts
  The timber ministers spill out their guts
  Something just doesn't seem so good
  Like cold macaroni and tinkling wood
  I am just happy and just so involved
  That everything not right will some day be  solved

G. David Schwartz - the former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue. Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Schwartz continues to write. His new book, Midrash and Working Out Of The Book is now in stores or can be ordered.

High Rise View
                            
Nan remembered (((}
the wall covered ))) >
in theatre posters   (
and dance dates (##)
not graffitti tags   (#)
and swear words (#)
or propped up by (#)
working girls.        K

Christopher Major


Some announcements for this issue:

Conscious Discussions Monthly Announcement 

* This monthly announcement is entirely optional and if you would like to be removed from the list, simply send a request and I'll make sure you are looked after right away. 


LOCATION: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/consciousdiscussions
Conscious Discussions Airs Live on Tuesdays & Thursdays at 10:00 PST - * archives are always available for you to access any time of the day ! 


CONSCIOUS DISCUSSIONS SCHEDULE FOR DECEMBER: * Topics this month include: Philanthropy, literacy, women in business, writing and community involvement.

4th -  airs 10AM (PST) - Nancy Reid has traveled the world and has participated in numerous philanthropic efforts across the globe. Currently, she and her daughter Lisa run Free Spirit Promotions which publishes The Southwest Blend Magazine and numerous newsletters that educate and serve the south-western states of the US.

6th - airs 10AM (PST) - Author Judy Kriz has been a special education teacher for 18 years. She graduated with a B.S. in education and is the mother of three daughters. Her interests are working with children and being involved in tumbling and trampoline sports activities. She is here with us today to discuss her passions and efforts to help youth discover a love for reading.

11th - airs 10AM (PST) - Lizanne Eastwood is the Community Literacy Coordinator for the Grand Forks and West Boundary Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy. I am a big supporter what this organization does with its many literacy programs, and as a book reviewer, I donate as many books as I can to this very important organization. So I am very excited to have my friend Lizanne here today. She will tell us why literacy groups exist, what they do and how they help our communities prosper.

13th - airs 10AM (PST) - Donna-Maria Johnson is our guest today – She is a great example of modern women in business – and multi-tasking at it’s best! She works with beauty business owners, operates a blog, has a business, founded an organization known as Indie Sisters and also hosts a radio show. 

18th - airs 10AM (PST) - Author Anca Vlasopolos will be here to discuss her historical fiction novel "New Bedford Samuri", which was released in Sept 2007 through Twilight Times Books. The author chose to use this novel to share meditations on the environment. She has also penned a poetry collection, entitled Penguins in a Warming World, a police procedural entitled Missing Members and a memoir entitled No Return Address.

20th - airs 10AM (PST) - This is a perfect time of year to reflect on youth violence. Why does it occur in our communities? And What can we, as individuals, do to create a more loving, safe and peaceful place to raise our families? We will discuss this today with our guest, Patricia Bough, author of a wonderful book entitled “A Silent Scream” which is an emotional tale about her experience of loosing her son to violence. She will tell us about her experience and how violence affects those left behind.

25th - No Show due to Holiday Season.  - Happy Holidays, everyone!  :)

27th - airs 10AM (PST) - William Butler, who has been heavily involved with community causes including being a part of organizations that support his local libraries, the lions club, for alcohol and drug abuse and something called the ‘steppin up’ program. William will tell us a little about these organizations, why he’s given time to them and what is expected for the near future. William is also a published author – a father, husband and is currently employed through the school system in the field of Information Technology.


Feel free to drop in and listen to the live and archived shows anytime !  You are welcome to comment on or rate any show of your choice. Please keep the list of links on the Conscious Discussions home page in mind when considering your holiday shopping list!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/consciousdiscussions


 
Seeking poets who might have an extra copy of their chapbook or book they'd be willing to donate to a lucky student.  Each week, 
during my 8-week undergraduate poetry class, there will be a drawing tosee who wins the book a poet has been generous enough
to donate.  The winner will be responsible for reading your book, reviewing it, and selecting a favorite poemto read to the class the
 following week.  If you like,contact information and book price should be included so that others in the class can buy your book.  
Students will be STRONGLY encouraged to buy the books of poets who, after all, were kind enough to contribute a book to their 
education.  If you're willing, please send your book (autographed would be nice) and contact and price details to:

Jeff Winke
Upper Iowa University - Milwaukee Center
620 S 76th St.
Milwaukee, WI 53214
jeff_winke@yahoo.com
www.jeffwinke.com


I have mentioned the rebirth of avantgardetimes is coming March 1st.  Here's an announcement from the co-editor Charles 
Frederickson:

AvantGardeTimes represents the neo-progressive ARTiculate forefront of BRainbow XSpectrum visualization. Published every 3
 months, the inaugural issue, due out March 1st, features as its integrated theme: "Illusions- the Mirages of Hope." The editors 
intend to play with perceived expectations, broading perspectives through a Showcase of Optical Illusions, hoping
 to stimulate open minds to look at things in more than one way and tothink and then rethink again and again Looking for creative 
talents to contribute whatever - PoeArtry, poems, photographs and original artwork based on ILLUSIONS. 
Submissions lifeline:January 31st avantgardetimes@gmail.com

Consider submitting to this interesting ezine.

This concludes the December issue.  Please take advantage of the announcements of this issue.  Please enjoy the work that has been contributed.  I thank all who read and submit.  I hope you will consider submitting to future issues because it's going to keep going.   I want to remind you of the abovegroundtesting monthly wiki, this is another place where you can contribute your works and invite discussion.

If you go to the December page you will find a fascinating photograph and some wonderful works.  Consider joining for January
I wish you all the Merriest of Christmas and the best of the new year.

All work is copyright by the various authors.

If you have artwork, poetry, short stories, photographs, send your submissions to abovegroundtesting@yahoo.com


www.abovegroundtesting.com


This is issue 104, December 2007.