Back in October, not yet sick of the election press, it dawned upon some in the WG that we were writers and might want to rewrite history if we were elected. Here is some of our creativity…
Short and Direct / By Patty Smith
Colin Powell and Martin Luther King were my inspiration. I would make this an equal society. Thank you for electing me. Let’s get to work.
Patty Smith is a long time vendor who has been with WG since the beginning, appearing when not doing school work and helping create exercises. We are sure that the standing crowds in likely freezing weather would appreciate a quick speech…
If Cara Were President / By Cara J. Schmidt
The desk chair in the Oval Office may still be warm. The carpet may still smell of beer and Texas BBQ. The security guards may still have a pit of fear in the bottom of their stomachs that any day their post could be bombed by the newest enemy. But believe me, this is a new White House.
The old stench is going to be wiped clean with a fresh face, my face. I will work to repair our country, our image, and the world in that order. I’ll be a president who works for you all the time.
Cara has been volunteering with WG for about nine months, bringing food and good cheer to the community during her lunch break.
Inaugural Speech / By Reginald Black
My fellow Americans, I am pleased you chose me as your president. Currently our nation is facing trouble, but together we can make a difference. First, we must become energy independent. Second, we must improve our standing with the world. We do this by opening up dialogue with the world, but first and foremost we must address the problems here at home. In the nation’s capitol alone a third of the population is struggling to make ends meet. I plan to evoke new housing support for those who cannot live otherwise. I will require that all hotels, no matter how prestigious they are, to house at least six homeless people a night. With changes like this we will be able to move forward from the neglect and discrimination of the past. I thank you all for your votes. With your wings I will be able to make our county soar.
Reggie absconded with the Poetry After Party when Michelle left for Spanish immersion. See also his “Drive” poetry prompt and Reggie’s Reflections series.
Thankful / By Jerry W.
In the current economic times, I am thankful to still have housing and my disability renewed despite a stressful year-long review. This writer’s group has helped me through several holidays last year and winter. Printing the sunset Photo Finish helped get through a difficult time by seeing some beauty and accomplishing something.
While I don’t always get along with everyone all the time, I can usually calm down, recenter and reconnect.
Learning to run a drop-in writer’s group with people coming and going, talking and interrupting has been a challenge, but also a growth experience. And for the company, I usually bring food to share and it means not isolating, which can be deadly with depression and other stuff.
Improving my writing, learning some production, taking a first photo assignment that went to the front page and coincidentally the auction photos and Carrie Fisher’s “Wishful Drinking” running at the same time.
There are difficult times coming up for states and localities and I’d really like to see Obama and Fenty turn around the trend of just closing a 300-person shelter and DMH autocratically privatizing Mental Health Centers without considering the relationships formed. That would make a lot of people thankful and may keep some alive to see the holidays and survive to spring.
Jerry, a formerly homeless disabled person, volunteers with WG by playing the role of a Jewish Mother and enforces unreasonable deadlines with guilt for editing and laying out the WG page. When not dreaming up bio blurbs, he hopes to escape on a bike to far away warm and sunny places.
“Drive” / By David Hammond
I drive a stick shift
that is old enough to vote for change
or join the Marine Corps
and go to Fallujah.
The gaskets are crumbling,
and the trunk leaks, a little,
but she still starts fine,
and the times that she hasn’t
were all in good places
and were all in warm weather –
not raining, not snowing.
And since May she’s been parked
on the banks of the river
behind my friend’s place up there in New England.
And I’m hopeful the freshet might solve my dilemma,
might make the decision about my old car
(which runs fine but is old enough that sometimes I worry)
by floating her off to the sea, like a raft
or a sailboat, slow-spinning, and not hardly bubbling,
so I think she could make it to Long Island Sound
where she’d sink, there to serve as a home for the fishes,
and then I could get one without such high mileage,
but the Spring, with its floods, is still five months from now,
so unless the world ends, or the oil runs out,
when I next take the train there,
I’ll drive.
Little Poems / By Jerry W.
Greed Corrupts
Some can take a mission,
And once was a friend,
But with the success,
It gets ugly,
for the purpose was friendly.
W’it
Cheesy poetry, if you please,
It’s better than sleeze,
Or was that a sneeze,
For we are on our knees,
Geez…
Jerry learns what he can from the Poetry 101: Poetry After Party.
Reggie’s Reflections: Messages / By Reginald Black
I was still without my one. It was crazy to see what was going on. I was a flirt all over the message board. I used my forum to greet people. I guess my plan was to find someone who I could hustle into letting me stay with them. I was at my lowest then. I despised waking up in the morning. Good thing was that I was working that paid fairly well. I kept to my mobile dating instead of trying to impress someone on the street. I was almost always online waiting for her to show. I told others yes when I shouldn’t have. But she was telling me no by ignoring me. I indulged myself more into being the dog sort of speak. But something happened that made me slow down. Someone was calling me. She had left messages, a blast from the past. Maybe this was my chance, I thought. I quickly returned her call. As the phone rang I wondered, when I first told her (the new but old her) she didn’t contact me this whole time I had been truthful with her also. She answered and we talked briefly. She seemed happy to know I was still around. But what did this mean? Was I to give up my first interest for one from my past, who acted as if I was the scum of the universe? Or was there a hidden message in the messages she left me? Though I was puzzled, I endeavored to find out if this was real–or was it all just one bad dream?
Reggie sells papers and camps out in Street Sense helping with layout of WG page and the new spin on Sara Jessica Parker ‘this side of the Anacostia. email: [email protected]
