"bergen" poems
Quincy Valero
Everybody’s best friend
Jet black hair
Shiny brown eyes
A boyish smirk
Standing six foot something
Coming out of catholic school agnostic
Attending state college
Every word that came out of his mouth was a riot
A funny story of a bad situation he was in that he can laugh at now
An awkward moment with a girl he tried to get in bed
God awful train rides with a clueless conductor
Quincy Valero
A wanna-be Casanova
The irish-italian self-proclaimed “Don Juan of Dumont”
Roaring down the suburb streets in his bright yellow mustang
From Bergen county to Trenton
Edgewater to Ewing
Bumping R&B; from the 90's
A main girl
A side chick
And a few back pocket broads
Leading them on
To where?
I’m not even sure he knows
Quincy Valero
My best friend since I’ve been here in Purgatory
My lifelong cellmate
My hetero life mate
My brother of second thought
Our token white boy
He’s had his ups
Wild ragers until day break
A four way with me and two girls in my four door sedan
He’s had is downs
Falsely charged with domestic abuse
Community service, endless court room hearings, suspensions and a whole bunch of nonsense
Quincy Valero
The quintessential example of the modern day male
Stays up all night
Sleeps all day
Opportunistic
Egotistical
Miserly
*****
And hungry
Always aching to put in his two cents
And leaving everyone in a howl of laughter
An Adderall popping
Seasoned drinker
A professional *** smoker, coached by yours truly
Fast talking baritone voice
With a half serious tone
Yes, Quincy Valero
The tight plain white t-shirt wearing
Chino sporting
Nostalgic, slightly racist, sexist, anti-semitic
Bust usually honest, friendly and apologetic
Good hearted dude we all love to hate
And hate to love
Bed-headed
Pajama bottom ***
Talking about his Svedka regrets
And we laugh and laugh and the stupidest things
Then remember events that seem so long ago
And then make plans for tomorrow
Yeah, one of my best friends
My oldest friend
That’s Mr. Quincy Valero
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014 at 11:56 AM UTC
in our
besieged republic
snipers are
popping up
everywhere
taking ***
shots
ending lives
with a well placed
head shot
active shooters
star in
world premier
events
jokers
rise like
dark knights
casting large
looming shadows
on real 3D cinemax
multiplexed screens
sprinkling overpriced
buckets of popcorn
with generous
dollops of blood
others
head back to
school
still ******
about missing
recess and
excessive
sentences
to detention
halls where
bullies tortured
scrawny inmates
with wedgies
and painful
***** twisters
they’ve
come back
to even the score
leaving
bullet hole
pockmarks on
Sharpie smudged
smart boards
declaring endless
summer vacations
for classrooms
of children
who don’t
give wedgies
and only dream
of soft *****
these
urban guerillas
are now working
to liberate airports
from the tyranny
of TSA agents
fulfilling
PATRIOT ACT
duties for
10 bucks
an hour
and
last night
the latest
active shooter
showed up at
the Garden
State Plaza,
-my hometown
mall of america-
mumbling about his
Grand Theft Auto
score, strung out
and crashing
from an unfilled
pharma addiction
script
he grew
up as a
Highwayman
in Teaneck
a former
classmate
working
at Nordstroms
said he was
a really good kid
he was,
one of the good ones,
he could have shot
some people
but the only
person he
shot in the head
was himself
legions of
police officers
surrounding the mall
stood down
grateful for overtime
milling about
in the flashing
red strobes
inhaling the heady
blue fumes
rising to commend
Bergen County
Blue Laws and
next Sunday’s
time and a half
active shooter
training day
Jimi Hendrix:
Machine Gun
Oakland
11/5/13
jbm
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 1:12 PM UTC
(Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas.
I was a plaything, a rat's neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff.
Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon.
Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky,
A night harbor, blue dusk mountain shoulders against a night sky,
And a circle of lights blinking: Ninety thousand people here.
Among the Wednesday night thousands in goloshes and coats slickered for rain,
I learned how hungry I was for streets and people.
I would rather be water than anything else.
I saw a drive of salt fog and mist in the North Atlantic and an iceberg dusky as a cloud in the gray of morning.
And I saw the dream pools of fjords in Norway ... and the scarf of dancing water on the rocks and over the edges of mountain shelves.
Bury me in a mountain graveyard in Norway.
Three tongues of water sing around it with snow from the mountains.
Bury me in the North Atlantic.
A fog there from Iceland will be a murmur in gray over me and a long deep wind sob always.
Bury me in an Illinois cornfield.
The blizzards loosen their pipe ***** voluntaries in winter stubble and the spring rains and the fall rains bring letters from the sea.
3.4k
Won boxing matches with Lewis , Lasky, Corn Griffin, Swiderski,
Then many more titles with Griffiths, Farr, Stillman, and Levandowski,
Jackson, Caggiano, Darnell and Dobson
Something he could tell his grandson
His greatest match of all was the title he earned against Max Baer
The fight was the ultimate win at Gardens of Madison Square
A very passionate man for his wife and children he went to great lengths
To keep his family together during the depression, even in times of brink
Served honorably in WWII as a 1st Lieutenant
Owned a surplus supplier of marine equipment
Helped to construct the bridge Verrazano
It was the proud city’s beautiful Picasso
Gone is Jim Braddock, a movie about him, CINDERELLA MAN to be sure he’s not forgotten
His Granddaughter Rosemarie Dewitt played his neighbor Sara Wilson, who was downtrodden
Copyright 2014
All Rights Reserved
Biopoem
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 11:00 PM UTC
The year was nineteen forty six, the memories still raw,
Europe’s Jews were still encamped as they had been before.
True, they now had food to eat and decent clothes to wear,
But in that Displaced Persons camp, little else to spare.
When Lilly told her fiancé about her dream one night;
her standing beneath the chuppah in a flowing gown of white,
Ludwig promised Lilly that her vision would come true,
but in a displaced person’s camp that might be hard to do.
A former Luftwaffe pilot proved an angel in disguise;
Ludwig traded, for his parachute, some coffee and supplies.
Miriam, the seamstress, swore to do her best
to fashion the silk parachute into a wedding dress.
Some miles from Bergen Belsen lies the little town of Celle
Its desecrated synagogue would serve the couple well.
They made an Aron Kodesh from a kitchen cabinet
A Rabbi, flown from England, would officiate their fete.
Lilly’s gown was beautiful, the bride felt like a Queen
Within the battered synagogue, her wedding matched her dream.
Miriam’s creation would be worn by many more;
Girls from camp made brides in white that year after the war.
The Gown’s in a museum now, the bride now old and gray.
She lives nearby in Brooklyn in a house down by the bay.
Her lovely great granddaughter, her loving heart’s delight,
now has the dream of being wed in a gown of flowing white.
Dec 14, 2014
Dec 14, 2014 at 10:46 AM UTC
three of four funerals
gun collection, gun
long narrow boxes in the trunk of my first car
Dad’s dad, Bergen-Belsen, babbling
Dad’s mom, floorboards
Mom’s dad, collectibles
Mom’s mom, alcoholic
obituaries, guns, boxes, garages
adults, guns, St. Peter, Joni
Dad’s dad, lessons, dreams
Dad’s mom, cabbage recipe
Mom’s dad, extra hugs
Mom’s mom, low blows
memories, value, months
A pawn shop good rate
moral boundaries:
kids on the street, no parents
Aug 30, 2012
Aug 30, 2012 at 5:26 PM UTC
***** Jersey
You are unworthy
From the infamous Jersey shore
To the depths of Bergen county
You hound me
Thank god sandy got rid of that cesspool by the way
Anyone ever hear of Lodi?
No?, ok... Moving on,
New Jersey, the ideal place for parents who have small children
Once they are teenagers
They will rip their parents apart for condemning them to a suburban hellhole
For sentencing them to an infernal purgatory, where if you have no car, you are stuck at home, and unless you walk to a bus stop and take the bus somewhere else, you have no job
So you find your best friend...
Marijuana
And then you start selling it and you now have a job
Drug dealer.
Find a pill counter who works at Walgreens pharmacy and you have now
expanded your market
Oh ***** Jerz, for grey-ish skies
For sewage waves of stain,
for unemployed and worker slaves,
all for minimum wage.
Dec 10, 2012
Dec 10, 2012 at 10:15 AM UTC
How alike--both born in Bergen County
among mansions and stone-lined yards,
but my childhood had been framed with lace,
yours a light bulb broken before tasting electricity.
My mother called me your “moral compass.”
My sister said I kept you from disappearing--
as if you were born from leftover ashes
smearing the stone hearth black
as the nights we’d lie awake and you’d
asked me what color to repaint your bedroom
and how to talk to that boy from your class.
You insisted I spend every night at your house.
Sometimes, we’d race our fourwheelers wild,
I always lost, far behind you--and further still
when you found that skin-and-bone crowd with
vomit-stained clothes, their teeth and eyes
yellow as their cigarette-tarred fingertips
and when they stumbled near, I smelled
breath foul as the stench of a mouse
dead in my car’s engine--slowly burning out.
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 3:54 PM UTC
~
*Bring your whirlwinds with you;
in the snow angel summer
bring Margot the sun.
In the hour of red glare
a rush to pick slowberries
before getting caught up in the silk.
Prisms, mirrors, lenses!
strategies for combatting visibility:
keep your eyes closed,
face away from the window.
The myriad threads of people in hiding,
they eat their own web each day,
and yet something always shines
in the heart's secret annex.
Men and women are
separated from each other,
the girls are on a train
to the Bergen-Belsen,
"white founts falling
in the courts of the sun."
Margot now cries quietly;
so silently she weeps over
sunshine and hate.*
~
Jan 4, 2024
Jan 4, 2024 at 3:41 PM UTC
Easter Monday (2015)
The silence
It was the silence
As we entered the gates of hell.
Then…
The bird song,
It was the bird song
That chorused our way
To the well
Of tears at the wall
Of many tongues
That speak to the silence still,
Of the voices that cried
For the people who died
The void only time will fill.
The sun
It was the sun
Shining on the wooden cross.
And…
The sky
It was the sky
So blue, and flecked with the floss
Of clouds so white
So pure in light
That the wall of the well of tears
Transfigured the sin
We heap on Him
Whose loss for many
Is the only way
To feel the void time fills.
The woodpecker drummed a beat
On the trunks
Of the trees so parallel still.
A whisper of wind
That rebounds the sound
Of innumerable roll calls
Of the thousands who now
Lie deep in the cradles of mounds
Stone faced, inscribed Toten
With the number interred within
Verboten… now
But why not then?
In that world of men
And women, when humanity’s meaning
Was turned on end.
And a godless creed
That shadowed the world with grief
Which now for many,
Is beyond belief.
The stillness
It was the stillness
That gave silence the space to breathe,
To remember the times, the godless times
That now are so hard to believe.
But silence and stillness envelope the House
A silent place to be
To hear the past that shows the present
The prayers for a future that sees
What could be,
What can be
But will we
Learn, the history from then to now
To forge that future for future’s sake
And answer the question…
How?
David Applin
… late afternoon and evening of Easter Monday 6th April 2015 following a visit to Bergen-Belsen earlier in the day, completed 7th-9th April.
15th April 2015 … 70 years after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British Army.
David Applin (Copyright 2015)
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 5:32 AM UTC
After “lo fatal”
When I read you first I was living in Bergen.
Pretending at translation
and going up scree, clutching at conifers
in a painted flaxen sun.
I'd imagined you’d given up on being Modernista
to settle for a quaint shack—
for the hardness of the carved fjord.
Now if you were to arrive in the wild
where I have kept this place
strangely similar by the pine, blue herons,
Mount Ozzard over the dandelions,
how would you come walking down the road?
Would deer pause to smell your tracks
or the cedar cutter look up as he heard you pass,
or these coal-black snags
which guard the lot’s entrance
and haven't swayed in so long
groan?
Dichoso el árbol, que es apenas sensitivo.
Happy is the tree, you said. Scarcely sentient.
Ruben Dario: what is the tree
which rushes through this poem?
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 11:33 PM UTC
De spelonken van jouw bestaan zijn meer dan alleen diep, mijn lief. Ondoorgrondbaar, niet vindbaar, met zoveel omwegen wegleidend van her hart.
Soms vraag ik me af hoeveel tijd je aan het graven hebt besteed.
Soms ga ik het gevecht aan, neem ik een schep mee naar je toe. Dan delf ik in je bestaan, delf ik naar je hart. Maar dan verleid jij tot een herberekende route of uitweg. Af en toe spring ik in het diepe en vind ik een robijn, maar ook die zal niet lang van mij zijn.
Je hebt gezorgd voor een hele hoop spelonken, vergetelheidsrivieren, bergen en dalen en grotten bovendien.
Meestal wil ik ze doorgronden, maar soms?
Soms hou ook ik het voor gezien.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 4:17 PM UTC
Sterne sonder Zahl aus der Nacht aller Zeiten
in einem klaren Ozean bewegt ihr euch
wenn ich euch mit menschlichem Zeitempfinden betrachte
seid ihr im Rhythmus der Jahreszeiten ewig
doch wenn ich in längeren zeitlichen Dimensionen an euch
denke so weiss ich euch sterblich.
Die entfernte Stadt löscht ihre Lichter
in der dichten Nacht erscheint ihr mal zögernd,
mal überzeugt über den Bergen wohlgesinnt.
In eurer Herrlichkeit findet mein Herz seine Ruh.
STELLE
Stelle, innumeri dalla notte dei tempi
in un liquido oceano vi muovete
se con il mio tempo umano vi guardo
al ritmo delle stagioni eterne siete
ma se con altri e più lunghi tempi a voi
penso come cose mortali vi so.
Spegne la città lontana le sue luci
nella densa notte incerte qui e là sicure
sopra i monti benevole apparite.
Nella vostra gloria riposa l’animo mio.
Sep 6, 2020
Sep 6, 2020 at 5:17 AM UTC
Cultured from the same petri dish of indifference that provided the
Comfortable Wall
Of willful ignorance for Bergen-Belsen’s neighbors,
The nation tunes in to another weekend of football and half-truths.
I lead the charge.
Nov 23, 2013
Nov 23, 2013 at 12:08 AM UTC
Static crackling ecstatically; manic pop
Transistor hissing and spitting; sideboard atop
First when there’s nothing…
But a slow glowing dream…
Pirouette such as whirling dervish makes
Adolescent prancer twirls; leg warmer fakes
All alone I have cried…
Silent tears full of pride…
Breathless incantation; future forged in dance
Performance fascination; leap upon the chance
What a feeling...
Bein’s believing…
Neon flashes bedeck wrists and bonce
Peers laughter flash like fire; a ponce
Take your passion…
And make it happen…
The music shields, deflects. Antacid; taunts abate
Rhyhmic dreamer energized; blind to all the hate
Pictures come alive…
You can dance right through your life…
As Bergen-Belsen ghost yet still aware
Lost dreamer segues silently on fetid air
Bruised and battered, I couldn’t tell what I felt…
I am unrecognizable to myself…
Shuffling as garish Geisha; white but not with paint
Breathless as fifties bombshell; heaving sick and feint
At night I could hear the blood in my veins…
It was black and whispering as the rain…
With steel partner; straight firm and slim of hip
Rigid in rigor’d waltz; moving labouredly with drip
I walked the avenue, ‘til my legs felt like stone…
I heard the voices of friends, vanished and gone…
Faithless rusting engine combusts toxic blood
Failing sack of sinew lies where dancer stood
Night has fallen, I’m lyin’ awake…
I can feel myself fading away…
Monotone white noise; assuring beep
Dancer dreams in endless sleep
There was a time when men were kind…
There was a time when love was blind…
©pofacedpoetry (Billy Reynard-Bowness – 2018 – All rights reserved)
Acknowledgements:
1. Flashdance… what a Feeling (1983 – Giorgio Moroder, Keith Forsey & Irene Cara)
2. The Streets of Philadelphia (1993 – Bruce Springsteen)
3. I Dreamed a Dream (Les Miserables – Claude Michel Schonberg, Herbert Kretzmer & Alain Boubil)
Aug 24, 2018
Aug 24, 2018 at 8:28 AM UTC
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Bergen-Belsen,
Buchenwald, Chelmno, Dachau, Dora-Mittebau,
Flossenburg, Gross-Rosen, Janowska, Kaiserwald,
Majdanek, Mauthausen, Natzweller-Struthof,
Neuengamme, Oranienburg, Plaszow, Ravensbruck,
Sachenhausen, Sobibor, Terezin, Treblinka, Westerbork.
There were more than 15,000 of these death camps
spread over Nazi-occupied Europe. In addition to Jews,
other groups murdered were homosexuals, the physically
and mentally infirm, political and religious dissidents,
Gypsies, communists, socialists, Afro-Germans, Soviet
POWS, intelligentsia, beggars, alchoholics, prostitutes,
freemasons, and trade unionists.
It is estimated that between 15,000,000 to 20,000,000
human beings were murdered by Nazis during the
Holocaust. ****** assumed power in 1933, **** Trump
in 2017.
Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks
Nov 8, 2019
Nov 8, 2019 at 3:07 PM UTC
"In memory of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during the war 1939-1945
Therenstadt Stutthof Klooga Treblinka Buchenwald
Ponay Babi- Yar Transnistria Westerbork Ravensbruck
Bełżec Chełmno Lwów - Janowska
Bergen - Belsen Drancy Majdanek Dachau
Auschwitz - Oświęcim Mauthausen Sobibór
May the world never again witness such inhumanity of man against man"
Man is an excuse for a race. We put up signs of slaughter, memories of massacre, graves of gore, dreams of destruction, history of holocaust.
Six million.
A number so vast, we are unable to comprehend.
Six million:
slaughtered for no sin
rampaged for religion
killed for their kin
This is what we have come to. The ending of life.
s i x
m i l l i o n
l i v e s
May the world never again witness such inhumanity of man against man.
Aug 30, 2020
Aug 30, 2020 at 9:42 PM UTC