It's World Mental Health Day. Please be considerate. Thank you.

 

Remembering Thomas Jefferson Byrd (1950-2020).

 

It's all about that work!!

                                   #laborday #gif #laborday2020 #workforce #giphy

Three of my poems have a new home.

I am happy to announce that my poems, "A Foul Mood," "Desperation" and "It's a Fight" have been selected to appear in an upcoming issue of the Unique Poetry Journal as well as published on its website. My thanks and appreciation to the editors for choosing my poems and congrats to those that were chosen as well. When I receive the date of my poems' publication, it will be posted here. In the meantime, if you are interested in viewing the said site please use the following link: https://uniquepoetry.com/ 

Rattle again!!!

On July the 5th, I made my way back to Rattle.com and the "Poets Respond Live" online call-in open mic via YouTube where I recited my poem, "Steal This House," which is a piece I submitted that was a reaction to Rudy Giuliani's unfounded screed on how Black Lives Matter and other organizations was going to remove people from their homes, nix the police and other nonsense that ridiculously asserted his overreactions that could prove dangerous as well as daft. Also, the poem is interspersed with various voices as responses after certain lines and merged with a personal family matter to express the overall triggered reason why the said poem was written. I begin at 32:20. Enjoy and thank you for listening. - Jarrod

                                           

Rattle Magazine open mic.

On Sunday 14 June, I got to participate in an online (call-in) open mic courtesy of Rattle Magazine with host and editor, Tim Green. It is part of the magazine's Poets Respond portion, whereby poets can write a poem influenced by an event in the news and submit it with hopes of publication. I submitted my poem, "The Dragons," that was triggered by a lawyer out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin that spat on a black teenager during a protest for the late George Floyd and Black Lives Matter. My poem wasn't chosen, but all those who submitted were offered a chance to call in and recite their writs, and so I did. The following YouTube link will take you there. I start at 33:02. Let me know what you think. Thanks. #poem #rattlemagazine #poetry #openmic #poetrycommunity

National Poetry Month (belated): The 3-poem challenge

In honor of National Poetry Month, I made a request to my Instagram fam to offer a word or phrase and I would compose a poem from them. Two words and an opening phrase were the only offers and I was happy to receive them. Please express your opinions about the poems and the physical versions of them are below this post for your viewing consumption. Thank you for your time: - Jarrod Fête (for Borka) All thoughts were on the lack of full spring during my great-nephew's first birthday. The early portion of the backyard where it was held was centered with a plastic table that could seat at least five, whose white had the personality of an outfit that demanded, "Look this way! Look this way!" but couldn't quite glean it. Although boiled wieners, barbequed chicken legs, wings, and a few other things were good and ready with high fructose juice no child should be drinking was ample alongside candy, they couldn't overtake the centerpiece of vanilla-chocolate cupcakes near the handmade b-boy poster on the tan shed. If there weren't enough decorations, the topiary heaven supplied what streamers, hearts, and teddy bear shapes needed out of imagination's box. The perfume of honeysuckle was absent, and there were only several little guests allowed at this six feet apart from a circumstance that could mishandle their health, but it was the coolness that should have moved before their shivers. All the babies will be drippy faucets from the nose later on, because winter wasn't fully dressed and couldn't stray from attention. © Copyright 2020 "Fête" Jarrod C. Lacy Metastasize (for Sam) Ours was made public, sudden, formed from rumor to realism out of wet markets. It will defeat the sundries of selfishness involved and accustomed to advantage. The nightmare switch wiped reality so crassly that imperceptible microbe burned relief short for the masses. An actual cancer: the populace is regrettably the answer, rather those whose appetites and wants to levitate and drop all series of severity for the problematic stunts that flaunt the routine speed for a reunion with so-called normalcy and the party. These inconsolable rejectionists who'd rather be running pus instead of healing in the sore is not troubled by the most human skin they could rudely rub worn. Nothing abling as trouble by an invisible freeze that can punch a crater in regularity will be inside them, and they'll probably shrug their shoulders at the thought of sludge drowning lungs. Ready the ice trucks, prepare some for Potter's, be stiff among a triage, and cremation will not debut any martyrs. © Copyright 2020 "Metastasize" Jarrod C. Lacy The Panacea (for Jennifer) Each day, during the quarantine of 2020, we baked cakes. Well, actually, mom did. Four as the closest count that I can give - and more like every other week. One strawberry, one lemon, one vanilla pound and one German chocolate were great representatives. Btw, mom's funny about her kitchen. It was good to have sweetness on the brain then on the buds. They helped us determine how each day was founded and how they got done. Lemon was the warmest and we wore shorts and thinner shirts and appreciated any remnant of a breeze that was a cool gauze for our knees. I practiced this one profusely. If we managed to find ourselves loitering on the front or side porch (the backyard in my case) and saw more of our neighbors out to risk the worst, current wave with most faces gagged by protection then this was definitely a German chocolate day. The nuance of bronze is so amazing. The silence was forced to reopen its code and establish being alone as another blank stage. This tabula rasa is truly vanilla and offered a creative age. Something new is always a developed flavor. Varied events, even if it's not wise to walk past the fence, tasted the sweetest: birds in concert, the wind as a friend, the sun was temperature perfection, and the clouds contorted trends. This is our inside game. Cake tastes that define aspects while we wait to venture further than we are again. © Copyright 2020 "The Panacea" Jarrod C. Lacy