Best Shea Poems
you used to whisper to me
in stoop slang and bachata basslines,
kiss my cheek with corner store breath -
hot beef patties, papitas, a dollar Arizona.
you’d walk me past block parties
where the speakers cracked from joy,
and the aunties sang louder than the music.
your hands were rough -
but they knew my curves,
my story,
my roots.
but now,
your voice got quieter.
real estate signs stutter
where murals used to speak.
you wear button-ups now — ironed crisp,
smell like rosemary and rent hikes.
your laugh don’t echo
off bricks no more.
it gets lost
somewhere between the wine bar
and that dog park
you said wasn’t for us,
but now you walk through like you forgot.
when did you stop calling me “mami”?
start saying “ma’am”?
when did you trade timbs for toms,
cafecito for cold brew,
“you good?”
for
“you’re trespassing”?
i loved you when you were loud,
when you cursed and prayed in the same breath,
when your shoes had scuffs
and your hair still smelled like shea butter and sweat.
now you slicked it back — forgetful.
i see you in Whole Foods windows
with your new girls —
their yoga mats, their green juices,
their way of looking at me
like i don’t belong
in the place that built me.
you changed, Harlem,
and not in the way lovers grow —
but in the way dreams get flipped for profit.
still,
i walk your blocks like a jilted bride,
tracing memories
where laundromats used to hum
and grandma's gospel broke morning silence.
you once held me
like a secret.
now
you just walk by.
Flute is blown by the wind
Hollow sound long and thin
Picks up blowing, blowing all around
Flute now plays a higher sound
Fog or appartion slowly moves
On the cymbals really grooves
Soft and low is the sound
Gently, softly floats all around
Wind picks up, palm trees sass shea
Storm is surely on its way
Palm trees bend and begin to sway
Faster, harder symbols play
Bass drum adds its booms
As the storm really zooms
Violins warning of their doom
Sounds that are totally gloom
Storm is gone the flute's return
Soft and low hums surf's churn
Surf is calling with its sounds
Come, come dance around
(I challenge anyone to write their verison of sounds of the surf)
Let Not Your Soul Be Burdened
The soul is where the mind doth dwell,
Always somewhere
it's never in limbo -
Your soul is filled, never void.
So, think of life abundantly;
“May I enjoy you today"?
So, that you may live life rich and full,
Think of what good you can do for self
And be not dull. Think well of good health.
"May I enjoy you today"
For frogs, will croak and crickets
will chirp with the birds.
Your soul is wherever your mind doth dwell;
All good, or all bad. All in or All out.
"May I enjoy your company today"
Think of water when thirsty-
Think of Shea - Butter and oil
When your gears need oiling.
Life is a living well – live it well
Draw from your wealth of friends.
"Hopewell, you’ll enjoy my presence today"
Think of living life well, rebuke those
Who try to make life a living hell?
Practice the Art that has been bestowed
And do it well. Think of where
you want your soul to dwell.
"May I laugh with you today"
Speak gratuitously of life: Leave croaking to the frogs.
Allow Birds and crickets to their jobs.
Think of life fondly. As death, will speak for itself!
"May we celebrate life today"
Death is not a consequence, it is inevitable...
So, let not your heart be consumed of it
Be about the business of thinking life better
And living each day as it comes
Did we create fond memories today?
Now I see
that
World Series time
has arrived
Seems to me that something
is missing there
The NY Mets
aren't in it
As a fan from their inception
I remember Mr. Stengel and Art Shamsky(Another Jewish Ballplayer - great)
Kranepool - who never quite lived up to his potential
but made a stout try at first
Banner day - a lot of fun
Holding up a sparkle strewn "We love the Mets" sign
After Ebbets Field
After Shea Stadium
there is now Citifield
Where the New York Metropolitans will
will take over the green fields
Onward O Metropolitans
Your multitude of fans
await your entrance
As spring comes
around again
It brings the scent of flowers
and a thousand, thousand fans - a great multitude
Hoping and praying
for a victorious season
Sean Green - a Met who wrote a book on Zen
Ike Davis - traded (damn it) to Pittsburgh
As an aging Met fan and a somewhat observant Jew
I take pride in
their accomplishments
Played a little while in the LL
A catcher!
I have also attended Mets games
at the old Shea Stadium
Where we held up signs saying
"Joan Payson is a prostitute"
I now see how the troubled days of my youth started
But even on the worst days I still had my copy of
Frank Waldman's "Bonus Pitcher"
and was able to hear the announcer say
"Put it in the books"!
Joy rued another Friday night
of re-runs. What a sorry plight!
"No more!" she cried. "I'll head for town,
where I'll lose this pathetic frown."
Why would a loner feeling blue
take in a movie meant for two?
Before the show, she looked around.
The kissing lovers did abound.
The movie scenes were scorching hot.
She truly did enjoy them--not.
Then halfway through, a handsome guy
sat down beside her. My, oh, my!
Her rusty heart went pitty-pat.
For years she hadn't felt like that.
"I'm Shea," he said. "You like the show?"
"I'm Joy," she said. "Well, really--no."
It's been a year since she met Shea.
She never sees a lonely day.
The kissing scenes they love the best
take place in their own lovers' nest.
April 19, 2018, entered in Brian Strand's Late April Premiere Contest
Two National League teams departed New York City
when the Dodgers and Giants left the vicinity.
Both teams went to California out on the West Coast.
The Big Apple was without a National League host.
An expansion four years later brought another team.
Newspaper editor Joan Payson fulfilled a dream.
Again, New Yorkers could see a National League game.
A new team came to town, and the “Mets” was the team’s name.
With uniforms of Giants orange and Dodgers blue,
they took the Polo Grounds field in 1962.
Many New York baseball fans had shown their loyalty
despite the Mets’ new record for mediocrity.
Winning only forty games and finishing dead last,
the Mets were able to expunge the ghosts from the past.
Again having a team in each league was a reason
for joy and happiness in New York that first season.
They moved to Shea Stadium in 1964.
However, their losing ways continued a bit more.
The Mets’ performance each season did not look too fine.
They lost for seven straight years to 1969.
However, all the Mets fans would get a big surprise.
The team played quite well. The fans could not believe their eyes!
Just past mid-season, they were standing in second place.
The Mets won games, and were moving at a torrid pace.
They soon caught and passed the first-place team from Chicago.
The Mets stayed in first place with just a few weeks to go.
Their pitching staff had Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman,
they also had Gary Gentry and Nolan Ryan.
The Mets best hitters, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee,
were joined by Ed Charles, Donn Clendenon, and Art Shamsky.
Together, they all formed a winning combination.
A pennant and World Series win brought more elation!
Soul knowledge grown thru emotional searches
Eclipses vain ego perches attempts to take charge.
Living should be large from our soul’s core will,
Feeling joy thrill and pain spill, gilds soul’s sheaf.
Allow belief to trigger your spiritual agenda.
Cite déjà vu’s antenna as your eternal soul almanac
To map your experiences predetermined tract.
Ultimate feeling feedback pens your spiritual rondeau
And develops its flow to your truth knowledge area.
Live as the God of your criteria does to you reveal.
Increase your understanding, lest a dealing shanghai
Zealot such as fear, ego or greed tries to take your pizazz,
And stinking thinking unrhymes your soul’s stanza.
Take time to contemplate coolly and truly think about
Iambic thought perfection to sprout your spiritual illuminati.
Oblige the soul-memo heavenly angels constantly demo,
Nudging the human faithful to spirit freedom in Eden.
My love
Sweet lover
Can't wait anymore
My heart
Fragile heart
Is seeming to break
My flesh
My blood
I wish to hold dear
A girl
Small girl
Named Lyla Shea
I was born
in October of
1955
One could hear
the World Series
from the hospital room
The famous series where
the "Brooklyn Bums"
finally defeated
the incredible Yankee machine
This upcoming year
I intend to go
to some games
I may even go to a
minor league game
At Keyspan Park
the Brooklyn Cyclones
delight the crowds
My thoughts drift back to
Banner day at Shea
Had sparkles on my banner
My experience with playing the game
consists of a being a catcher
for a short while
in the little League
Never a great athlete
Yet an intense Mets fan
I view them as the descendants
of the Brooklyn Dodger and New York Yankees
Pass the Canyon of Heroes
on my way back from work at the
community college
where I hear they have a good
baseball team
Gotham needs its baseball teams
they are part of the glue which
hold it together
Part of the dreams of stick ball players
of those(including myself)
who went to the batting cages at Coney Island
Play ball, man
It has been home to baseball’s New York Mets.
For a time, it also housed football’s New York Jets.
This is a place practically any New Yorker knows.
It was part of the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows.
This has been a spawning ground of sports history and more.
It first opened its doors in 1964.
Look out in centerfield, and new construction you will see.
What is there is a rising new sports facility.
Citi Field, soon to be home for the Mets will look fine.
New Yorkers will see games there starting in 2009.
After 2008, Shea Stadium will be history.
However, it will stand in any Mets fan’s memory.
Stormy Dawn
She sang, dancing across the stormy dawn
capturing dreams along her way
she flew high filled with ...
promise.
She streaked unblemished, a flower in bloom
hidden in shadows unseen
she touched many a heart
that stormy dawn.
Beauty bright, lighting paths darkened
she found the mighty wind
hidden deep, as she danced across dreams
untouched.
She flushed away doubts with wisdom
powdered fears with fragrance
from a new born existence found
that stormy dawn.
Power filling each pore, she flew high
making each drop a stream, a river
an ocean, that stormy dawn before
the rainbow appeared.
She streaked across the heavens
mingling with the raindrops, and
thunder, than peace became her
silent surrender that stormy
dawn.
Harriet Shea
(In 1964, Paul McCartney was staying at
57, Wimpole Street, the home of Jane Asher.
McCartney was allowed to use the basement
for writing (Margaret Asher, mother of Jane,
was a professor of music, and the room was
set up for rehearsal). He announced his
engagement to Jane on Christmas Day 1967,
but by then he had already been seeing Linda
Eastman for nine months. When Jane left for a
vacation in the summer of 1968, Paul invited
yet another woman to move into his home.
When Asher returned unexpectedly and found
McCartney and the woman in bed, the relationship
came to an abrupt end. Perhaps McCartney did it
to extricate himself from the Asher engagement.)
Yesterday
When I was younger,
so much younger than today,
I once had a girl
(it was the year before Shea).
She showed me her room:
“Isn’t it good?
Norwegian wood.”
She asked me to stay
and said I could sit anywhere,
so I went to the basement –
the piano was down there.
“I’ll tell you something
I think you’ll understand,”
said my best friend John:
“You’re gonna lose that girl.
It won’t be long.”
I’ve lost her now for sure.
I won’t see her no more.
But I couldn’t use a Sloane,
so why on earth should I moan?
I crawled off to sleep in the bath.
I went into a dream
of people and things
that went before …
I think I overstayed,
but that was yesterday.
I’ll buy you a diamond ring, my friend,
If it makes you feel alright
But I can’t help but think, my friend,
it’s been a hard day’s night.
The girl that’s driving me mad
is going away:
I’ll get my claws on Clancy
without the least delay.
You call it treason
when you come poking about,
but I’ve got a good reason
for taking the easy way out.
Destiny conspired and planned our intersection
So she came my way
And I crossed her path
Spontaneous love
Not hastened, not rushed
Her name, Peace
My sweet angel.
Down the “apian” way we walked the walk and did the talk.
The orchard sang melodious tunes to our hearts
And that glitter in her eyes that left me numb
Her glistening skin like an angel and
her mellow voice, soothing like shea in harmattan,
I had found the love of my life
Love baked in the sands of Keta
Sedimented by layers of sweetness
Today I sit along the streets of Keta
Hoping the tides will rise and take me to Tsiefe
My soul wanders in search of Peace
Alas! Life holds no substance for me
I grieve for every day of my life because there is no one like her
Memories of our encounter embrace my mind,
There I stood showing a glimpse of my white teeth
She looked into my warm smile
And saw the cold advantages
I was a fool for her love
Blinded by beauty I listened to the lies
that boldly walked out of her mouth
The inexperience of my youth got the better part of me
Yet I could not stop that feeling
Especially when I thought it was love
But my love was blind
And I could not see the pretty little follies
Loving you was pain I could not excuse
But of all pains, the greatest pain was to love,
but love you in vain.
Motherland
Journeying into the unknown
Journeying into a deep soil
Into a trunk, which has been uprooted and stripped of its branches
Removed from its natural soil and thrust in cold and bitter climate
Of an unknown land
Motherland
We have come
We have survived
We have come to embrace our motherland
Motherland
Forgive me if I don’t understand
Nor speak my mother tongue
For we have been away for too long
Forgive me if I don’t answer when you hail at my name
For the name mista smith gave me
Has a different tone, an unfamiliar beat
To the name you persistently call me with
Like a frightened mother who screams for her lost child
And only to hear the echoes of her own voice
We were stolen
Captured like hunted antelopes
Only this hunter had no love
We were herded of onto a boat
And shipped of to an unknown destination
A land that had no sunshine
A climate that was so cold it cracked my soft skin
And offered no shea butter to grease my cracked wounds
Motherland
Forgive us if we do not bear our tribal marks
Forgive me if my hips do not move ceremoniously to the drumbeat
For I’m of mixed breed
Part British and Part Spanish
I am a descendant of a slave girl
A property that mista smith could enjoy a t his own convenience
A property that he could explore
Benefits of hips, and my upright breast
And the rhythmic of my waist-beads
Motherland
RAPE
I heard you cry out
RAPE
I cried back
Motherland
I was your untouched child
But I became part of mista smith property
Part of his wealth and livestock
And a property cannot be raped
Motherland
Hush, do not weep
For we have survived, we have journeyed home