Heaven is Portable E-Book

D.L. Lang

• Herausgeber: D.L. Lang
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Heaven is Portable: New and Collected Poems is D.L. Lang's 14th poetry book featuring poems on social justice, the global pandemic, Judaism, nature, and more. This volume contains dozens of poems previously published in anthologies worldwide and other brand new poems.

Leseprobe

Heaven is Portable

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New and Collected Poems

by D.L. Lang

Heaven is Portable

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New and Collected Poems

by D.L. Lang

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Copyright © 2022 Diana L. Lang

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at the email address below:

[email protected]

poetryebook.com

Paperback ISBN: 979-8516440311

Hardback ISBN: 9798481923772

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About the Author

Foreword

Performances and Other Acknowledgements

Reprint Acknowledgements

Self-Portrait

This Place

In Case You Forgot

Possibility

This Dance of Life

Alternative Outlook

Sandstorm

Heaven is Portable

Chasing Joy

Life’s Eternal Expedition

Starlight

Grains

These Wild Winds

Blossom

Marley

Each New Day

Knowing

Standing Before the Ocean

Living Waters

Returning

Goals for a New Year

Ready

Hanukkah Time

Hanukkah Shabbat

Kwanzaa Shabbat

Watch this Space

Sanctuary

Shabbat Feels

We Carry Them

Lettuce

Woman Rising

This Poem

Inside Us All

Tom

Weaver of Words

Edgar

Loss

Red Poet

Commonalities

Academic Angels

Jack Rabbit

Squirrel

Oh, ‘Possum!

Howie

Summer Garden

Chickadeean Rhythms

I Fly to You on a Song

The Magic of a Song

What is Yet to be Sung

Vinyl Visions

Camaraderie

Wind Chime Duet

The Hands We Hold

Duet

Hope Sings

Awe Births Hope

Garden of Awe

This Small World

This Cloud has no Corners

The Candle Floats Away

Uncomfortable Cloud

A Little Freedom

Galaxies of Melodic Light Drip Hope

Spring in Sonoma

Forming Temples in the Sky

Houck’s Hexadecagon

Road Trip

Roam

Learning to See

Handpan

Free to Fly

The Dance of the War Jets

Enid, Oklahoma

Oktoberfest

Ex-Hometown Hotel View

Brandywine

Southwest Serenade

Panhandling

The Highway

Pretzel

Under the Radar

Miseducation

This Storm

Deja Vu Dreamscape

Experience is the Polish of Life

In This Moment

Grief

To Remember

In Passing

Floatation

Pathways

A Hazy October

Limes

Your Birth Day

Whispers of Ignited Dreams

Growing

Roots

Forming Troubles into Puzzles

I am from the World

This Year of Our 20th Reunion

Where I Grew Up

Enid’s OK

This Land of Soul

Airplane Mode

Eternal Drifter

Naked Self

There are Seven Blessings at the End of the Rainbow

Quote from a Dream

My Rebellion Song

Forward!

Our Streets

Unboxing

Lest We Forget the Massacres

Black History Month

Tyranny or Humanity

Coup des Imbeciles

What Must Be Done

Justice is in the Streets

Birdsong

Where Were You the First Week of June?

Dear Vallejo

How Do You Sleep in a War Zone?

July 4th, 2020

False Advertising

Judgement

How Long?

Barriers to Justice

The Sad Truth About America

We the People

Everyone Deserves A Home

Cancel This!

Rockets of the Rich

You Worshippers of Greed

On the Eve of the Revolution

American Dream

Hell’s in Season

9/9/2020

A Complete Healing

Our Generation’s Dilemma is on Your Plate

Excerpts from a Redacted Life

Staying Afloat in a Wobbly Universe

Solo

Peace in this Place

Pieces

Couplets while We Uncouple

The Little Things

A Review of Eating In

Rebooting the Soul

Knowing Where to Look

Slow

A Mid-May Morning

An Introvert’s Operations Manual

Hart Island

Only Ghosts May Gather

Mandatory Solitude

We Long

Pandemic Mismanagement

Kissing Oceans

2020 Vision

About the Author

D.L. Lang served as Poet Laureate of Vallejo, California (2017-2019). She is the author of Tea & Sprockets, Abundant Sparks & Personal Archeology, Look Ma! No Hands!, Poet Loiterer, Id Biscuits, Barefoot in the Sanctuary, Armor Against The Dawn,Dragonfly Tomorrows & Dog-eared Yesterdays, Resting on My Laurels,The Cafe of Dreams,Midnight Strike, and This Festival of Dreams. She has also released a chapbook compilation entitled Wanderings, a Jewish poetry compilation entitled Paradise Collectors, and her debut spoken word album entitled Happy Accidents, and edited Voices, Verses & Visions of Vallejo.

Her poetry has also been published in numerous anthologies worldwide. Lang has been a featured act at demonstrations, fairs, and poetry shows around California, performing hundreds of times since 2015. Her writings are a blend of memory, history, imagination, reality, politics, and spirituality. She has won 36 ribbons for poetry from area county fairs. Her poems have been transformed into songs, Jewish liturgy, and used as a means to advocate for peace and justice.

She can be found online at poetryebook.com

Foreword

Heaven is Portable contains poems primarily written between May 2020 and December 2021. I’ve also included the poem “Watch this Space” from 2017, and a handful from 2019 that weren’t freed up for publication in This Festival of Dreams.

The book title came to me whilst sitting at the Townhouse a few years ago listening to live music. The title poem “Heaven is Portable” was inspired by outdoor Shabbat services at my synagogue once the pandemic restrictions eased. I was lying on the amphitheater looking up at the sky, and noticed a hummingbird was singing alongside the congregation.

This book also serves as a time capsule. I attended many masked, peaceful protests and marches throughout June 2020 against police brutality, inspiring “Dear Vallejo,” “Where Were You on the First Week of June?” “Justice is in the Streets,” “How do You Sleep in a War Zone?” and “Barriers to Justice.”

To a certain extent “On the Eve of the Revolution” was inspired by the summer 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and those who took advantage of the situation to engage in destruction. Unlike the other protest poems listed above which bear witness, this one is more of a work of fiction which was later tweaked to fit the anarchist revolutionary theme of the anthology, The Alien Buddha Wears a Black Bandanna. I’ve attended many protests and engaged in civil disobedience, but I’ve never personally been part of the run around and break shit crowd, though I can empathize with their anger at an unjust system. I do support revolutionary change, but there are acts I’d never personally commit. That said, I will not judge the methods by which the oppressed in this or any other country fight for their liberation.

Other poems reflect living in the era of the pandemic such as “Pandemic Mismanagement” and “Only Ghosts May Gather,” and the turbulence of living under the looming specter of modern fascism as captured in “Tyranny or Humanity” and “Coup des Imbeciles.” “Hell’s in Season” and “9/9/2020” reflect how the annual California fire season wreaks havoc.

During this time I travelled twice to Oklahoma, so there are handful of poems inspired by that. Having grown a lot in this time, I see the place I grew up in with new eyes. I alternate between romanticizing and realism in my travel poems.

“Forming Temples in the Sky” was inspired by a visit to the Grand Canyon, “Houck’s Hexadecagon” was inspired by visiting the ruins of the Pancake House at Fort Courage in Houck, Arizona, and “Road Trip” encompasses the journey through California and Arizona.

I needed a challenge since I wasn’t being regularly asked to write occasional poems during the pandemic, so I used themed anthologies as prompts to keep me writing new material. In some cases these anthologies stretched me to write about new subject matter I hadn’t yet explored in previous works. I submitted to more publications in 2020 than I had in all other years combined. I’m now published in over a dozen different states, Canada, Australia, England, Israel, and Kenya.

Some poems are autobiographical inspired by real experiences or the news, some are complete fiction, and others still are a hybrid of both. Many were written specifically to cater to the themes of the anthologies in which they originally appeared.

This book took much longer to be published because I needed to wait for a few dozen anthologies to come out and abide by various contracts which limited how soon I could reprint the poems. As a result this book is a tad longer than my more recent volumes.

I hope you enjoy the poems, and please leave me a review if you do.

What follows is a myriad of obligatory poetic acknowledgements to the people, organizations, and publishers who make any success I have at all possible.

peace and love,

D.L. Lang

Performances and Other Acknowledgements

“Uncomfortable Cloud,” “Chasing Joy,” “Life’s Eternal Expeditions,” “Starlight,” “Lettuce,” and “Grains” were written during the freewrite portion of Poetry by the Bay. “Black History Month” was also written for Poetry By the Bay based on a prompt by Jeremy Snyder.

“Squirrel” and “Lest We Forget the Massacres” were both inspired by artwork included in Arts Benicia’s Art of a Community by Cecile McNulty and Susan Lane, respectively, and I participated in the March 14, 2021 ekphrastic reading of the same name. Thank you to Susan Lane for publishing the poem on her website.

On March 6, 2021 I read “Coup des Imbeciles” for the Insurrection anthology launch via Zoom.

“Howie” was my entry into the 2021 Benicia Love Poetry Contest and inspired by the Anna’s hummingbirds that frequent my backyard feeder. I read this poem on April 11, 2021.

Thank you to Nina Serrano for broadcasting my poems on KPFA on January 5, 2021 and April 6, 2021. Thank you also to Nina for  being my beta reader and giving me honest feedback on this book.

My work was broadcast regularly on KZCT. Gratitude to DJ LALA who graciously allowed us to send in spoken word recordings for broadcast. I also was featured and interviewed on KZCT for the third time on November 5th, 2020, and joined my two fellow Vallejo poets laureate on December 3rd for another reading on OZCAT.

I joined Wednesday Night Poetry out of Arkansas via video on July 29 and August 12, 2020.

I read via zoom for a Virtual Bay Area Poets Laureate reading on May 2nd, 2020.  On June 2nd, 2020 I read during the Benicia First Tuesday Poets virtual open mic via Zoom which was later re-broadcast on OZCAT on June 11th, 2020.

Many thanks to the  2021 Solano County Virtual Fair for honoring my poems with the following awards:

“Road Trip” 1st Place in Poetry

“Ingredients” 2nd Place in Poetry

“Awe Births Hope” 3rd Place in Poetry

“Forming Temples in the Sky” Honorable Mention

My poem “Howie” won 4th place at the 2021 Marin Virtual Fair. “Oh, Possum!” and “Starlight” won an honorable mention.

In June 2020 I was a featured act for the 2020 Solano County Virtual Fair, reading 15 minutes of family friendly poetry about animals and more recent poetry from This Festival of Dreams. I had a 3 minute segment broadcast in the 2021 Solano Virtual Fair as well.

I read at Rodef Sholom’s virtual Beit Cafe on May 17th, June 7th, August 2nd, 2020, and February 28, 2021. I prayed with my poem “There Are Seven Blessings at the End of the Rainbow” as an alternative Aleinu prayer at Vallejo’s Congregation B’nai Israel via Zoom for Rainbow Shabbat, their first ever congregational celebration of LGBTQ+ pride held on June 12th, 2020.

I read a set of Jewish poetry primarily from Paradise Collectors for Hope in Deep December on December 13th, 2020. On April 8th, 2021 I read “We Carry Them” for the Jewish Democrats of Solano County’s Yom HaShoah event in Fairfield. I read “Hanukkah Shabbat” on December 12, 2021 for Radiant Memories, Lasting Hope. I wrote and performed “Kwanzaa Shabbat” for the Shabanza event on December 31st, 2021.

I wrote “Living Waters” after a group mikvah experience with my synagogue, and read it for s’lichot services on August 28, 2021. “Returning” was inspired by Rosh Hashana services and the taschlich hike, but written during the freewrite portion of Poetry by the Bay.

I wrote “Tom” for outgoing Benicia Poet Laureate Tom Stanton’s celebration on July 7th, 2020. “Weaver of Words” I wrote for Nina Serrano, my neighbor and friend. “Loss” I wrote after the passing of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Q.R. Hand. “Red Poet” I wrote in 2021 upon hearing of the passing of Jack Hirschman who I had the honor of meeting only once, but I’m a fan. Nina Serrano invited me to read it on her KPFA program.

I wrote “Inside Us All” for Benicia Poet Laureate Mary Susan Gast’s opening event Poetry....Where does it Come from? on September 13th, 2020.

I read “Everyone Deserves a Home” at the October 25th and November 21st, 2020 online promotional events for Colossus: Home, and had a 12 minute feature on April 11th, 2021 with other poets laureate who had contributed sponsored by Poetry Flash.

I read via Zoom for Pt. Arena Third Thursday Poetry sponsored by Poets & Writers on May 20, 2021.

I featured with my fellow Vallejo poets laureate at Alibi Bookshop on September 5, 2021.

I wrote “These Wild Winds” for Unity Day 2021, but the festival was cancelled.

Reprint Acknowledgements

I was accepted and published by the following anthologies and many of these poems are reprinted in this volume. If you enjoy my poem on a certain subject, please consider purchasing these anthologies.

•  November 2017, Lupert, Rick, ed., “Watch This Space,” A Poet’s Siddur: Friday Evening: Liturgy Through the Eyes of Poets, Ain’t Got No Press, Van Nuys, California. ISBN 9780982058480

•  September 2018,  Neff, Kirsten, & Pellegrin, Jim, ed., “Is,” Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Vol. XXI, Littoral Press, Richmond, California. ISBN 9780988969421

•  August 2020, Biel, Sara, & Brundage, Karla, ed. “Everyone Deserves a Home.” Colossus: Home: An Anthology of Lives in and out of Place, Colossus Press, Oakland, California. ISBN 9781735252643

•  September 2020, Wallis, Alexander & Wild, Nicole, ed., “Knowing” Introspective, BloodRedStar Publications, Great Britain. ISBN 9798687549165

•  November 2020, Focks, Red, ed.,“On the Eve of the Revolution,” The Alien Buddha Wears A Black Bandanna, Alien Buddha Press, Spartanburg, South Carolina. ISBN 9798693006782

•  November 2020, Focks, Red, ed., “Hanukkah Time,” Happy Fukkadays 2 U from the Alien Buddha, Alien Buddha Press, Spartanburg, South Carolina. ISBN 9798696227269

•  November 2020, Okemwa, Christopher, ed., “Hart Island,” “Only Ghosts May Gather,” Musings During a Time of Pandemic: A World Anthology of Poems on COVID-19, Kistrech Theatre International, Kisii, Kenya. ISBN 9789966955951

•  November 2020, Musiyiwa, Ambrose, ed., “Dear Vallejo,” Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New World, Civic Leicester, Leicester, England. ISBN 9781916459359

•  December 2020, Martin, Robert, ed.,“Tyranny or Humanity,” Poems of Political Protest, City Limits Publishing, Nashville, Tennessee. ISBN 9781954403000

•  December 2020, Lufkin, Kas and Thornley, Katrina, ed., “Enid’s OK,” From the Soil: A Hometown Anthology, Exeter Publishing, Exeter, Rhode Island. ISBN 9798583850617

•  December 2020, Yilmaz, Hülya N., ed.,“Goals for a New Year,” Poetry: The Best of 2020, Inner Child Press International, State College, Pennsylvania. ISBN 9781952081378

•  December 2020, Simpson, Medinah and Seven, Seher, ed., “2020 Vision,” 2020: Our Voices, Align With Plants, Tempe, Arizona. ISBN 9781666236354

•  January 2021, Potter, Matt, ed., “Your Birth Day,” Birth, Lifespan, Vol. 1, Pure Slush Books, Sefton Park, Australia. ISBN 9781922427205

•  February 2021, Cline-Tardiff, Karen, ed., “Coup des Imbeciles,” Insurrection, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, Rockport, Texas. ISBN 9781734049558

•  February 2021, Edwards, Amanda and Small, Rachel, ed., “Solo,” Red Skies, Splintered Disorder Press, Ontario, Canada. ISBN 9798702942049

•  March 2021, Focks, Red, ed., “An Introvert’s Operations Manual,” The Alien Buddha Skips the Party, Alien Buddha Press, Spartanburg, South Carolina. ISBN 9798577062279

•  March 2021, Haugen, Hayley, “Experience is the Polish of Life,” Pandemic Evolution, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, Russell, Kentucky. ISBN 9781735400235

•  March 2021, Van Nelson, Kelly, ed., “This Small World,” Globalisation: The Sphere Keeps Spinning, Making Magic Happen Press, Perth, Australia. ISBN 9780645096613