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Steven Fried Jun 2013
My home
Earth, USA, Poconos, Camp Ramah, Boys Campus, Bunk 12, Third wooden step
There is a hornets nest underneath- harmlessly buzzing,
we are drunk on youth and invincible
Peace draws me back.

Leaning back on the fourth step, the wood digs into my elbows but
I don't care. I'm too content.
In front of me is a sprawling bright green hill of grass
plunging downward with a strip of gravel leading to the lake.

Feeling the aged, warm wood beneath my feet is
cozy. The gazebo is at the apex of the lush hill;
it's falling apart. Cobwebs cover it and the wood is flaking, but
no one said home was perfect.

I tilt my head upward briefly to feel the warmth of the sun and then scan
downward at the square pool surrounded by a romantic chain-link fence.
Past the pool is a run down boathouse.
My first kiss was there. I told her I had a "secret to tell her,” tilted her chin with my hand, and kissed her.

A serene manmade lake sits just below the boathouse.
The deep blue waters
and the bouncing "blob” own my attention.

A picturesque scene… the lake surrounded by a dense forest at the bottom
of a giant, beautiful hill which houses for just a brief period,
some of the best friends I’ve ever had,
is home to me.
It is serenity, it is comfort, it is love.

Home has no definition,
but the third wooden step, bunk 12, boys campus, Camp Ramah, USA, Earth, gazing in the hot summer sun over the most
beautiful piece of land I've ever laid my eyes upon
sure feels like home to me.
Steven Fried Oct 2013
how can we fly
with clipped wings
majestic creatures with unbridled souls
free range horses
only hindered by sadism and disunity
and violence in the air and on the streets
and mutilated limbs and cruelly mutilated hearts
lost loved ones and broken spirits
downtown junkies and washed out drop-outs
broken down cars and trailer homes on cinder blocks
large homes and broken wine glasses
splintering summer porches and decaying floor planks in the Poconos
how can we ride
with flat tires
Erika Castaldo Nov 2016
Right in the middle of the busiest area of the Poconos, the group of condos sit in a large circle. The sky is dark, for it has been hidden from all possible sunlight by the many awnings and porches that join the different housing units. On one side of the condos the neon lights from the bar next door shine through the children’s windows, but the more occupied side the parking lot is lined with fast food restaurants- clumped together and riotous with large families that frequent them, juggling their small children and many diaper bags; and noisy cars speeding past with loud engines, pungent, murky exhaust spewing out of the back and police sirens constantly blaring down the street. In the parking lot encircled by the condos the tenant kids run around full of light yet somehow full of darkness at the same time. The older kids come out of the small houses to sit on the sidewalk in the evening, and the cracked sidewalks are covered with the faded chalk drawings left there by the youngsters earlier in the day, and with the sheets of crumbled up paper containing poetry no one would ever read, and with the old needles and discarded blunts of their parents who had left them there over the course of the day.

There is one unit in particular, a unit with a broken door from the many men who had tried to force their way in, a unit with holes in every wall that were put there by flying fists and thrown objects that had missed their true target- the oldest daughter. In front of the many holes in the their smiles are fake and their hugs are forced.
Nat Lipstadt Sep 2017
no way you could know that
I have driven US 80, when
the Pennsylvania Turnpike
was considered a legitimate deathtrap,
and 80 was a god-send

shuttling back and forth tween
Cleveland (o/k/a The  Burning River City) and NYC,
in the crappiest weather man
could just about tolerate,
and 84 was just an
incomplete dream then,
so we one day,
could skip that idlewild,
Passaic, New Jersey,
back in '69

indeed the Pocono deer that
came through the windshield,
luckily, legs first,
after smashing the radiator,
that I dragged by hooves
to the side of the road,
still well recall, for that
was the first time I touched a
living thing dying in my hands

when I broke my arm in
Tannersville one summer night,
they drove me to the big city,
Scranton,
woo hoo,
cause the break was bad ,
they need to operate,
so they left me there,
w/o any anesthetic,
in the hallway(!) till morn
and a "see ya later kid,"
how they did things in a tough place
known as central Penna.,
which now I think of
semi-fondly as the place where
a piece of me was left buried
and I am still alive to swell tell

but people were tougher back then,
even me, a city 13 year old boy,
cause I had dreams of  girls,
wonderful girls, who had powers in their bodies
that could do things to me in the Poconos forests,
that were unthinkable (for them) after crossing
over the Hudson River,
and that was plenty
anesthetizing

so dem my bona fides,

and Now I Will Write
just another overdue thank you
for Balise, who writes
with a coolest heated blazing detachment,
and then at the very end,
IN ALL CAPS,
smacks you on the head
via the heart

writin'  
of
this n' that,
Mass and men,
worshipping a river called the Lackawanna,
the bleakness of a not quite grimy poverty,
(I worked in  Republic Steel warehouse)
that made grey a bright color,
and the sun was invisible from October to May,
in a world where people PROUDLY,
clung to their guns and religion,
(you arrogant out of touch Harvardian snob,
Mr. Obama prima donna),
you had to see it to believe it

of
herons and beer cans,
of parents and pain,
so exquisitely,
that I would gladly
drive to Tannersville again,
right now,
if I could, if I could,
yet learn that skill under her tutelage,
which by the by, is why some call me
still crazy, still crazy, after all those years,
crazy from a balise,
a wintry blizzard heating the readers eyes, and
who reads my footnotes
and thus
only this woman,
knows, better than she ever realized,
where his undulatin' poems come from...
Steven Fried Jul 2013
Earth, USA, Poconos, Camp Ramah, Boys Campus, Bunk 12, Third wooden step/
a hornets nest underneath- harmlessly buzzing,/
we are invincible/
peace draws
me back./

Leaning back on the fourth step, the wood digs into my elbows but/
I'm too content/
a sprawling bright green hill of grass/
plunges downward with a strip of gravel leading to the lake./

Feeling the aged, warm wood beneath my feet is/
cozy/
A gazebo is at the apex of the lush hill/
falling apart with cobwebs and flaking wood/
no one said home was perfect.

I tilt my head upward briefly to feel the warmth of the sun/
downward a square pool surrounded by a romantic chain-link fence./
a run down boathouse./
My first kiss./
I had a "secret to tell her."

A serene manmade lake sits just below the boathouse./
deep blue waters/
and the "blob” capture my attention.

The picturesque scene… the lake surrounded by a dense forest at the bottom/
the giant beautiful hill which houses for just a brief period,/
some of the best friends I’ve ever had/
is home to me./
It is serenity, it is comfort, it is love.

Home has no definition,/
but the third wooden step, bunk 12, boys campus, Camp Ramah, USA, Earth,/
gazing in the hot summer sun/
 over the most beautiful piece of land/
I've ever laid eyes upon/
sure feels like home to me.
WARNER BAXTER Jul 2015
I got my mind on my money and my money on my mind                          but no matter where I go I see them same old hoes

                                                                 BRING DA BEAT  
                                                               c’mon, c’mon, c’mon

                                                                     HERE WE GO

                                                                  YEA!   YEA!   YEA!
They be warin old clothes, exposin them busted *** toez
in fishnet pantyhose
They be standin in rowz, striking that silly old pose,
workin them same two Joes
So the rumor grows, and everybody knows, that her name is Rose,
we know Rose blows

                                            DOUBLE BUBBLE, BUBBLE TROUBLE,
                                                                 YEA !      YEA!      YEA!

She got fired from LoweZ, ’cause she stole a garden hose,
spent all the money at Moe’Z
Yea - Moe’Z ** clothes and fishnet hose, down at 52nd and StrowZ, traffic really slows when she bends to expose, she get dirt on them knees, when she blows

                                             DOUBLE BUBBLE, BUBBLE TROUBLE
                                                          YEA!       YEA!         YEA!

                                                        AND   THE   COP   SHOWZ

                                                      UP, UP, UP, EVER’BODY UP,
                                                                     C’MON UP  
                                                                     C’MON UP

                                                      YEA!            YEA!                YEA!

She putz the powder up her nose, didn’t pay the fine she owez,
gives a discount to the bros
Ever’body froze, then the streetlight glows, that’z the way it goes,
for all them bimboz
Same for the hoes, az it is for the bros, all the way from Melrose,
to the Chicagos
And it’s still the same for the Souix and them Navahos,

                                                             UH?  YEA!     UH?  YEA!

                    SHOUT OUT TO ALL MY PEEPZ IN THE POCONOS
                                                             YEA!        YEA!           YEA!

                                                                         I’M OUT…
OUT  ROLLLLLLLLLLIN’  ON  THAT  8  MILE  ROOOOAAAAD
David Ehrgott Sep 2015
I've never been rear-ended
But boy does it sure feel like it
Wish I could say that straight-faced
But as a baby I was ss-*****
Now over fifty years
of living with this pain
And I can't shake it/make it go away
A life filled-up with rain
  

The ***** of ****** from Hawthorne
Made me look sorry for not marrying her
She may have been a Muenter
or maybe just related to it
You sorry girl, you're so pathetic
LOVE IS NOT POSSESSION
Now all those ***** hippie bands
Can be exposed as two-faced-too-fakes
  

It's a long goodbye
So please take the hint
The only thing I'm blowing
Is kisses in the wind
  

Politician's daughters lie
They steal inheritence
I've known this now for quite some time
And know that whales have ate it
When all the homes in California
fall into the ocean
I'll give that ***** a second chance
or just ignore that notion

Untill the crooked Big Jew Mob
return the Vatican
to the church it once belonged to
I won't believe in Him
Sometimes they are just as evil
as those killing in His name
I should have kept my mouth shut
They shot cancer in my coccyx

It's so long/goodbye
Would you take the hint
The only thing I'm blowing
Is kisses in the wind

To my dad in Colorado
Are you still making **** for kids
To my mother in the Poconos
Still ****** her grand kid's kids
If you ever find a mirror
Try to look into/inside it
It could scare the life right out of you
I hope, I wish, I pray for it

And those parasites in Florida
That make tapeworms look so innocent
I have my own kids/family now
Though I was brainwashed to forget them
My eldest daughter, Melanie
Has never been accepted
So why should I give gifts to yours
When they marry some old hothead

It's so long/goodbye
And please take the hint
The only thing I'm blowing
Is kisses in the wind

Jack and Joe sit on their porch
Make fun of people different
Amazingly how they can judge
While sitting on their pulgars
The stars have all been realigned
Like old chalk on a sidewalk
I can not help them anymore
This one last thing I do wish

Frost said eyes meet eyes
And I say lips meet lips
I truly hope to one day find
From ear to ear a happy smile
That isn't full of sh
t

It's a long goodbye
But do take the hint
The only thing I'm blowing
Is kisses in the wind

So use your demi-gods
But don't blame me for your sins
The only thing I've ever blown
Is kisses in the wind

It's so long/goodbye
And please take the hint
The only thing I'm blowing
Is kisses in the wind
The only thing I'm blowing
Is kisses in the wind
David Ehrgott Jan 2016
In just ten years
They built a new suburb
ONLY FIFTY MILES FROM HERE
It takes two hours
Except on friday nights
Then, it's three to get there
Where the bear and the deer
USED to walk in the woods
and the chipmunks would run scared
And the sweet smell of
Pine fur filled the air
And everything was nice there
Now the maple trees grow everywhere
It seems the deer don't eat here
And the bear crossed
The river called the Delaware
And the Poconos is the new burb
No more vacations
No more summers here
Just more suburban madness
preservationman Apr 2016
I appeared in numerous musical stage shows
My life was full of movement and not a steady slow
I am actually dancing and feel my flow
I performed at the Lily Langtry Dinner Theater at the RADISSON Valley Forge Entertainment Center, Mount Haven Resort, Milford, PA in the POCONOS and Gretna Theater Playhouse in Mount Gretna, PA in which I took part in 4 Acts of the “THE CHRISTMAS CAROL” and 3 ACTS of the “NUTCRACKER” and Off-Broadway in New York City Town Hall, “I NEED A MAN”, A Gospel Stage Musical Play
Show Biz in my blood
The enjoyment feeling like an overflowing flood
There was a time I was asked by one of the performers to be their baby, but not in the romantic way, the bottle and diaper bid
Much as I tried to duck and dodge, I just couldn’t be hid
It was delightful in seeing the audience laugh
My moment with the audience in see this baby dance
It was an opportunity and I took the chance
I played an Egyptian King
“It was the king having dancing girls dance for me being the thing”
I would sing to start
Then the Entire cast, “Ready set go and make their mark”
A past entertainment from been
It was a start from my when
Show business that came from then
But it all suddenly came to an end
There’s my entertainment class act
Now, what do you think of that?
Jordan Gee Jul 2022
late March, 2022

I found my heart inside a casket
hidden in a burial mound
like some ill begotten mongol khan which time forgot
fermenting on the furthest steppe
near the farthest rim
of outer darkness.
They call it a tumulus
a mound of earth and stone raised over a grave
or graves
I spent thirty some odd years
heaped on top of some thirty thousand thousand some odd incarnations
praying at the altar of the outer darkness-
and then…

I found my heart inside a casket
concealed inside of a pine wood cube - hammered shut with copper nails,
some made of scrap metal, various alloys
6 heaps of chain link
buried in the badlands
47 cents a pound
I pried open the lid with a twelve pound claw hammer
bad hands trying to catch a falling knife
copper penny nails
flying through the air
glinting off of the dakota winter sun
like copper drops of rain
or six heaps of chain link
or a thousand handfuls of cracked rice
heaved into the matrimony skies.
like a dowry full of penny nails.

20 hours deep inside a drunk tank,
Columbia County Jail, Lake City, Fl -
somewhere near the Georgia border.
“I wouldn’ be doin’ that son, could be bad for your health!”
was the kind reply I was given by a guard
was the verbal response i heard
stretched out and tanned over a deep southern drawl;
a southern dialect only three degrees above pigeon english.
I had been pounding on the doors and the walls and the windows.
“LET ME THE **** OUT OF HERE!!!”
was the tune I played upon the flute and timbrel
was the serenade I sung for the unholy guards of the graveyard shift
I was standing there
praying there
pacing there
back and forth there
suicide watch
screaming there,
shivering in a turtle suit.

That was a long time ago.
The northern Florida Sun shown
white hot like molten iron alloys
hammered flat across an anvil
northern Florida sand
bakeoven hot beneath my bare feet
walking my shirtless sunburned skin to the state store
malt liquor
microwaved baking soda
30 milligrams of percocet
Wild Irish Rose
top ramen and eggs
breakfast lunch and dinner
every single night.
we were spinning and smoking so hard
we couldn't feel all the Wild Irish Thorns
cutting up our throats.

scared my dad so bad he took the next red eye down.
following morning he's walking right through the trailer door.
I was sitting there
on the couch there
with the dog there
in the dark there
10 hours deep inside an acid trip
he booked clear to the back
took a B-line for the family bible
he had given me to keep safe.
life uses many gears and levers to gauge the measure of a man.
Leather binding and the book of Leviticus all chewed half to hell.
The dog wasn’t to be blamed.
Six weeks this side of the dope sickness blues
and i’ve never seen such disappointment on a man’s face.
The grass outside the side window was covered in the morning dew;
glassy
like gray-blue ice
gleaming and
steaming in the
hot iron
northern Florida sun.

We buried our hearts in a pine wood box
beneath the basement of a rail station freight house
converted some time ago
into a single family home
nestled in the blue ridge
south of the Poconos
in the shadow of a slate hill
Slate belt, Eastern PA.
Sometimes it's easier that way
laying motionless in the dark.  
Where only the pulse
of the blood
in my neck
would betray the fact
that I wasn’t just a wax statue.  

By: Jordan Gee
preservationman Aug 2023
My memory lane
Entertainment in can’t complain
That would be lame
The Great White Way BROADWAY
My time at the Town Hall Theater on West 43rd Street in New York City
A City big and wide known as the Big Apple
The show was “I NEED A MAN’, a small role with a big cast playing a Date
Moment that took effect where time wasn’t wasted
It was as gospel play leading to spiritual
Nothing unusual
Showbiz seen through entertaining realize
Utter in the sound and it will be heard throughout the town
I hear voices chatter of words of who and how being heard
Care to dance or do you prefer to sit it out
The show must go on
The stage is where I belong
Life is never easy
Certainly not cheesy
Learned the Piano and ***** through a Professional Female Opera Singer and Male concert Pianist and Voice
Sometimes I cry and ask I want fame beyond my real name
Isn’t it rich
Be patient now
Through the light and dark, I have gone far
I know I was born to do this
Dancing is only part of the twist
Don’t stop me now or you will see my fist
Wait a minute, you told me you would give me that kiss
I guess it is a hit and miss
My memories in Pennsylvania came about through SHERATON HOTEL AND CONVENTION CENTER Lily Langtry Dinner Theater in Valley Forge, PA King of Prussia area
Juke Box Jubilee and Egyptian King
Ruling over colonies with dancing girls
The King was ready to be entertained
Appeared in “THE CHRISTMAS CAROL, THE NUTCRACKER and various other shows
One in particular being MOUNT HAVEN RESORT in Milford, PA in the. Heart of the Poconos
It was a musical moment of make believe delighting the audience
Some have said to me personally, “ I don’t know enough”
I call their bluff
All I can say is Spotlight, Dazzle, Music and audience applause
Showbiz best
Forever reminded
Uplifted and Determined
Encore being my finale
Showbiz friendly
My time being my fondest moments
Showbiz accomplished.

— The End —