love is just a word

Canalside Buffalo

On Think Twice Radio HERE

Below is live audio from Ismail and Company [R&B, blues, rock, funk, acoustic] and Tom Callahan, Marcia and Monte Jones [Traditional American folk and Celtic rock.]

1. Ismail & Company - "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" [with live tribal drumming] click here

2. Tom Callahan With Marcia & Monte Jones - "When I Paint My Masterpiece" click here

3. Tom Callahan With Marcia & Monte Jones - "Love Hurts" click here

4. Tom Callahan With Marcia & Monte Jones - "Linger" click here

5. Tom Callahan With Marcia & Monte Jones - "Crazy" click here

6. Tom Callahan With Marcia & Monte Jones - "The Weight" click here

Canalside Buffalo Memorial Day Weekend

photo © Canalside Buffalo 

 

Canalside is at the heart of Buffalo’s waterfront revitalization. It’s located in the city’s downtown corridor. 

Artwork by Creekside Art and Pottery

photo © Susan Marie

Every other Saturday there is live music and artisans coordinated by Julie Leatherbarrow and Kathleen Allyn Ashwill as part of Buffalo Saturday Artisan Market.

photo © Susan Marie

  photo © Susan Marie

Live video: 

* * *


All Music © Ismail & Company, Tom Callahan, Marcia & Monte Jones. 

All Songwriting © 

Norman Whitfield & Barret Strong [The Temptations]
Bob Dylan
Boudleaux Bryant [Everly Bros, Nazareth]
Dolores O'Riordan & Noel Hogan [The Cranberries]
Willie Nelson [Patsy Cline]
Robbie Robertson [The Band] 

How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life

Image © Jasmina Gorjanski

Writing is breath to me, blood pumping to sustain life. It is the air I breathe, the food that provides my body with strength, the desire and passion that keeps my soul alive. Writing is letting go and rebirth. It is a release. Writing is healing.

Writing is a positive force and I am grateful I am able to write without fear or ridicule of what anyone else perceives about the subject matter of my writing. In order to truly write, you must bare your soul to the world, allowing the public inside your heart, soul, mind and the most sacred parts of your being. 

This is brave. 

Every writer knows that all of their secrets, desires, dreams, loves and letting go, can be found in writing.

Various articles, books and so called “experts and critiques” of the writing world suggest volumes and advice that does not apply to everyday life. It may be helpful if enrolled in English Composition, however, a true writer simply writes. Get it all down first, free form flowing thought, emotion, anger, sadness, happiness, every emotion you feel, every thought you think. 

Editing is for later. 

If you cease to document those very first moments the need to write strikes, you will lose what is instinctual and natural as a writer.

Writing has assisted me in times of need. When I am sad, angry or hurt, writing is a release. When I am happy and grateful, it is a force of positive awareness.

As a journalist, writing has allowed me to connect to the entire world educating people on different cultures, politics, faith and tradition. Journalistic writing has ripped wide open the world of politics and human rights abuses. 

Writing connects us, as does all art. Humanity understands emotion. 

As a poet and spoken word poet, writing has provided me with featured reading engagements and numerous publications alongside writers I honor immensely. I write every day, on napkins, matchbook covers, scraps of paper, anything I can grab at the moment and with anything deemed a writing instrument. In this age of technology, I grab my cell phone and start recording my thoughts to later write them down.

Without the gift of writing in my life, to be able to speak clearly through the written word, and to have no fear of doing so, I never would have traveled paths unreachable to me from my home.   

I have met beautiful people in our world, connected with organizations, learned languages, helped people with events and causes and most importantly, touched people simply by letting them know that yes, I too, feel this way.

Writing is breath to me, blood pumping to sustain life. It is the air I breathe, the food that gives my body strength, the desire and passion that keeps my soul alive.

Writing is letting go and rebirth. It is a release. Writing is healing. 

* * * 

“I am participating in the Writing Contest: How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life. Hosted by Positive Writer.”

See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-how-writing-has-positively-influenced-my-life/#sthash.4M17uaK9.dpuf

“I am participating in the Writing Contest: How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life. Hosted by Positive Writer.” - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-how-writing-has-positively-influenced-my-life/#sthash.4M17uaK9.dpuf

“I am participating in the Writing Contest: How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life. Hosted by Positive Writer.” - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-how-writing-has-positively-influenced-my-life/#sthash.4M17uaK9.dpuf

“I am participating in the Writing Contest: How Writing Has Positively Influenced My Life. Hosted by Positive Writer.” - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-how-writing-has-positively-influenced-my-life/#sthash.4M17uaK9.dpuf

Blinding Six Senses

First published On Social Justice Poetry

This entire piece was written free-form online by five authors, Bhakti Williams Brown, Susan Marie, Dian Isis, Elissa Feit and Albert Brown in Buffalo, New York: 

Only this sun star heart realm

it's tears bless us over a glittering ageless age

like diamonds buried deep within the windows of the skull

Composite wealth shitting

on aspirations of blessed moonlight's rage

and the body of Nuit blanketing the night sky

Veils slipping over the crust of dusk

screeching in dire sweet death

let us burn paper

that suffocates the voices

of the tired and hungry

Dear SisterMoonChild,

we cannot fail your selfless sweet shelter

before the coming of day

the black sun of Khepera rising,

again

Let the deathly inhale toxins of past homes

but relieve in the bathing of moon,

while the privileged collect their sins and run,

shedding light on footpads

in silt and dirt

from the Potomac to the Euphrates

fearing beauty's judgements

fearing self,

the mirror, cracked and bleeding

self-loathing monuments

hope and tide from pull

and swing of moon, rise

slip and fade while cascading

over the empty temples gloom

the ebb and flow, in flux,

existence,

a conundrum to those still sleeping

a pun to this tired of breathing,

and bleeding

Eternity screams in the hearts of dusk to night

but love to dawn

in the peace of a new sun rising

The promise of a new beginning

- set us on fire -

free, thrushes’ birth

from my belly

into the velvet night

electrified

my ancestors cry with me,

my release,

embers of the campfire

calling me home

Money is a sharp knife

stuck deep in the heart

of the world's beautiful visions

innocence falls

rotting

in stinking chunks of violated flesh

from the bones of this dead philosophy

blinding six senses,

A most holy paradise exists,

here and now

Loving is a sharp knife

stuck deep in the heart

of the world's beautiful visions

parallel prying

into crates and carts

full of suffering tears

and heat fissions, fissures,

cutting like scissors into realities,

slither away

and let my mind enter and bleed

like yours to heed our stories,

thneed our minds,

peel our kindly vibes

that vibrations find

in prison and slums

hopping over life like bums,

in streets and alleys,

childish 'till 34,

crying bitch 'till many more

Every generation of promising youth

are offered in ritual sacrifice

to the cold fears

of their parent's impenetrable

prisons of complacency,

years of tears and moonlight

cut the slimy existence of the perfect leaders,

but we purr,

hoping for more

than stealers

Like Black Death, the Great Hunger,

every burning of innocent souls,

how many more tears shed in vain,

in life,

in death,

rebirth

The mighty Phoenix shall rise,

eternal

running away with our attention and meaning,

but feel her moonlight princess kneeling

over our crippled body

wingspan picking us off to heaven,

rapturously kinship with her

upwards

We can't run, 

so let us fly

She is love, precious Mother

she bats her eyelashes dim and spider-like

watching us as we slumber

off into the moonlight of dusk and sky

Slaves controlling one another in white efficiency

breeding ever new forms of domestication for lazy minds

Freedom is just another logo

sold in their suburban malls

but we all see,

we all pray to someway,

but you can't sway with parking lots or street tar

only the guitars in the solo

of perpetual undead

Let us fly as great blue herons,

upon the lofty wings of owls,

upon backs of eagles scrying thunder,

let us become one

with antiquated raiment

Kill the last green growing tree

and celebrate its commodity,

by eating plastic cake

in uniformity

Defillibrated laments,

don’t bend in our tents

of nighttime

blindness is in fashion,

dollar signs as eyes

minds only know passion

because deep thoughts now a lie

thinking thought is death

to the dead

to the living

to the spirit

Charon awaits,

skeletal teeth, rotted and grinning

blinking not fed up of led and shillings in soul pit,

baron stakes, mental feeds,

spotted and continuing

continuing to open the doors of nighttime rituals

barons orders to steal our princess,

leaking incest,

like sweat

in the sauna of a new day

Take away spots and acne of online needs

the feeds refreshing and beheading our human taint

a night illuminated by the glow of black fire blazing

The night is wise,

she embraces the secrets

of our psychotic midnight ramblings

the keeper of all truths

the great poet and poetess

the most holy heart

All of our vain egos gush with excited offerings

while the Earth dies and we adore ourselves

It would be

our vain egos,

but it’s ours,

which means

it

is

not

just

ego.

© Bhakti Williams Brown, Susan Marie, Dian Isis, Elissa Feit and Albert Brown 2015