Submission Sixty-Six

"The Hand that Speaks Images" ~ Anonymous

Submission Sixty-Five

Saw a lovely lady at a bus stop with this backpack and requested to take a photo.
She agreed and thus,submitted it to my project.



HAVE HOPE

Smile Dolls!

Take a moment to listen to your favorite song many times and dance!

Submission Sixty-Four

Call Me A Leaf

Every fall I take notice of the leaves. They become so vibrant just before they take the flight on the blustering wind express. Eventually they become settled in and wither or whirl away.

I look at life just as I look at a leaf. Look closely at their veins. They have so many paths and patterns, like our many journeys they connect to others. But all the lines eventually come to an end. In the end there is splendid color in the preparation to “fall”. I believe our spirits do the same.

Recently I’ve noticed the imprint of fallen leaves on the cement paths of downtown. Shadows, so beautiful, where they were alone or were connected, then whirled away by a blower or breeze. Even after the leaf was gone the shadow remained.

Spring comes again for another chance at life, just like our journey if you believe in such things.

Enjoy this beautiful time, be peaceful in your winter slumber and look forward to awakening in the spring, anew!

~Submitted and Written By: Josie Leahy-Brooks

Submission Sixty-Three

He sees me still

Circumstances keep us apart
Me in the hospital
Greeting new faces every twelve hours
for six days
Him home sick unable to come.

Fate would have it
day thirteen comes while I am away
He isn't there to see me
on the Most Dreaded Day.

I leave this place
a woman changed, different though the same

Anticipating his arrival
I forget myself
I shop for dinner amongst strangers
that won't know the difference
nor care.

Driving home though
my breath begins to catch in my throat
panic and fear strangling me
What if this changes everything?
What happens if he looks at me
and can't see ME any more?

Dried tears on my lashes
I turn to greet him at the door
His hair is gone too and he sees me still
and he holds me tight
while we cry together.

Cindy Scillo
December 5, 2009
Day 15 after my first round of chemo

Submission Sixty-Two

Photo By: Josh Hagan

Mightier II - early 2009

The written word,
As in the pen,
Is mightier than the sword.
It is sharp, concise, and to the point.
It is blunt and harsh.
Words can wound even the toughest,
Can pierce the heart.
All of which a sword is capable.
Malicious and cruel.
But words are mightier.
They can heal the stabbed heart,
Amend.
Words can patch up the evil wrought.
And in that sense,
Let the pen
Be mightier than the sword.

Submission, Poem, & Modeling By: Briauna M. Graeber

This model often writes poems and then has photographers focus on her poem to be the theme of the photo shoot. Some of the photos that have come from this are just amazing. It creates a visual to go with words. They walk hand and hand to create something beautiful and truly unique.

Submission Sixty-One

I was born ugly. The soot and dew of a wash away city like Seattle-

stained my forhead.

Years would come and go



in and out, the doors revolving like a bandsaw alphabet

it was hard to hold on,



i did not speak the same language as the others,

my mouth was broke as porcelain



i spoke deft kitchen table philosophy



the kind spoken with father after he's got a few glasses in

I asked questions-

questions about

oceans, phylums, genus's,

about movies, about

sunken eyes, do they disinigrate like shipwrecks?



we spoke in incomplete's,

in predicates, I stuttered

I rapture dyslexic

Homonym prophetic selective

etiquette, where stars dad come from?

where did the teachers lose me?



clearly my kitchen talk

philosophy was like looking at the alphabet barely

eaten and wasted, bloodied and

meat still at the bones



so they force fed me more

I entered rooms with no doors



with big clumsy computers yelling robotic english lessons at me

the teachers stood behind,

the world stood behind me,

with gun and stop watch

as i typed the sentences

"Marie walks to the park, with her dog

Marie wlaks to teh prk--her dog with

////////////////////////

Marie ash walked, her dog with park

Marie

Marie has

Marie dgo park and walked

Marie

park

--and what they didn't know

was that when i went home

to schizophrenic times tables

that spoke backwards and with a hiss

and i read their books

practiced their equations

Dug a grave with the syllables

-I spoke pretty for a society of ghosts

I held that pen in my mouth like Hamlet held Yorick

Am I Am I am I am I am I am I am I?

i spoke like a gun contemplating its bullets birth

the ears bless(ed) and will be, I told my father we are

what we are what we are

I said I am I am

i told everyone who would listen

I am! I not them? REad, yes, write, math arithmetic

But no one ever asked me

the right questions

I made sure to ask my father

all of them

why

why this earth? my mouht?

this school? this empty notebook? what happens to the words when in the air?

are they lost before crash landing on another's ear?

Do i talk funny because my words are in fightdogs fightdogs

fightdogs I mean I mean I mean

why is the air heavy?

consuming?

Do words die?

Do words die?

Then where do they live?

.

~Andrew Pine

Inspiration from Others Work

Submission Sixty

It seems like I am getting very personal submissions. The realness and thankfulness that you all are expressing is more than I ever expected. Keep your beautiful wonderful submissions coming. You are all wonderful human beings that care so much about the people around you. Thank you!

Submission Sixty is from Jen Owen. I found her because of an organization that I am closely tied to. Poetrynight. She did this wonderful photo album about finding her strength from poetrynight and I friend requested her on Facebook because I knew the people in the photos. About a week later I found out that she was also one of my friends boyfriend's mothers. Then she located my project and submitted this:

I lost my mother in 2002 to her 4th battle with Cancer. She beat Breast cancer. She beat a brain tumor. She beat bladder and ovarian cancer...and I thought she would just keep living forever because she was so strong and had so much hope that she would be here to see my children have children. She called me one afternoon and I picked up the phone and I knew it was her because I just knew...and I knew why she was calling me. The cancer had spread through her whole body and when she got that news - all of her hope was extinguished with the words "You are going to die....this time."

I told her I loved her. I told her it was ok to stop fighting. I told her it was ok to die. And she stopped hoping to keep living long enough to see her great grandchildren and started hoping that I would continue hoping for things when she was gone. She switched her focus in the last few months of her life and started hoping that I would do something with the talents she helped create in me...art, photography and poetry as well as lessons of how to be a good mother when life didn't seem to ever throw you anything but crap. She started hoping that in watching my own mother and my best friend die a horrible painful cancer filled death - that I would grow stronger and learn how to see my struggles and pain - as gifts...and learn from them. She hoped I would pass on everything she had taught me growing up...to my children, so that when they grow up and have children of their own...part of her would still be undeniably present in the way they live their lives...and her original hope to be there with her Great Grandchildren (in heart) - would still be a reality.




I tried to think of one thing that gives me the most hope and had a really hard time until I remembered this poem I wrote about 4 years ago. The one thing that my Mother taught me growing up, was to be grateful for everything you have - even if its not what you originally wanted or hoped it to be...because there are some people that will never have even that much.




The one thing that gives me the most hope - is that Im working so hard to ensure that my own children grow up being grateful in this world that seems to force selfishness and self centeredness down their throats every chance it gets...by not giving them everything they want or ask for. Making them work for things. Save for things. Be thankful for second hand things instead of upset we couldn't get them brand new...happy about wearing thrift store clothing, playing with puzzles that have a piece or two missing because it used to belong to someone else that loved it once or being grateful about having an old rusty bike to ride instead of the $200 shiny new one they put on their birthday list...and sometimes they don't understand why I do these things and sometimes they get angry at me for refusing to give them what they want but when they are grown and stand before their own children who are asking for a new bike - when the neighbor offered up their child's old rusted one...I can only hope they say no to my grandchildren and pass down a little piece of my Mother to them...that is my hope. That she lives on through me, through my children...to stand face to face with her great grandchildren someday and speak her words of wisdom through the mouths of those she missed out on watching grow up..and that her greatest hope will be realized too.



UGLY BIKE

I want you to have an ugly bike.

One that you are ashamed of -
with rusted pedals and broken spokes
that will never make snapping noises
with playing cards woven between them
like the rest of the neighborhood kids.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

One that wobbles side to side
when you try to go faster -
like little old ladies in crosswalks,
arms full of groceries and arthritis
at busy intersections.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

One that throws you off
and gives you a forehead scab
when you push the brakes too hard,
like broken race horses
tired of being kicked in the side.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

A screaming banshee
when you turn bent handle bars.
I want it to wail and screech
a constant reminder to you
of how much it was loved - once.

Because I love you.

Because
I want you to know what it feels like
to be laughed at for things out of your control -
like kids that cant have bikes
....because their legs don’t work.

Because I want you to know
what its like to feel off balance -
like little boys in white walled rooms
that spend their days being held
over waste bins full of today’s
chemo reactions.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

Because I want you to learn
that ugly things can be beautiful,
and forgotten things
still have plenty of life in them -

Like car crash scarred cheekbones.
Like burn victim smiles,
and starving Vietnam Veterans stuck in
soiled sheets all day
while overweight nurses play cribbage
and order stuffed crust pizza
with three different dipping sauces.

I want you to have an ugly bike.

Because I want to see your eyes light up
when you get new plastic rainbow tassels
to hang from your rusty, bent handlebars
and watch you race off into the horizon
Grateful

Because I love you.

Photo and Poem Submitted by : Jen Owen - 2006