Robert Demaree- Three Poems

Birds of a Feather

This side of the pond

A metal blue heron stands

Beside a real one.

Facial Hair

What’s the difference

Between having a short beard

And just not shaving?

Winter 2015

Yellow on snowfall

Dogs in little pink sweaters

Nature’s persistence

Robert Demaree is the author of three book-length collections of poems, including After Labor Day, published in April 2014 by Beech River Books.  In 2013 his poems received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the  Burlington Writers Club He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, where he lives four months of the year. His poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.blogspot.com 

Noel Negele- Three Poems

An Unresting Gamble.

Jimmy was the straw dog of my childhood

A dog I loved dearly-

A menacing Rottweiler who didn’t care much for any human fondling

Used to walk around with a bored look on his face

And enjoyed licking his balls and scratching the back of his ears

Where lice made their nests

His bark resembled a wolf’s howl

Sort of

Since it always dragged more than the usual

Ending up to a muffled low tone that lasted

Just before yawning

Showing teeth and red tongue with eyes closed

We were really small in comparison

To this dog

( Being children and all )

But we were not afraid

Since he always pretended we weren’t there

Besides the times we threw stones at him

Selfishly annoyed by his indifference-

But we loved him nonetheless-

And I always used to follow this dog to gypsy camps

Where he brought other dogs down

And the gypsies would go after jimmy with sticks and stones

At which point I would defend him as much as possible

But the result would always be the same:

Both of us running away

One afternoon

As lovely and mundane as

All afternoons are when you are a child

Jimmy staggered into the neighborhood

With five holes and an eye carved out, hanging from the socket

Like an egg cracked open-

And he fell close to us

-      As we were playing football-

Exhaling heavily

Each time also making a rattling and weeping sound

His nose filled with blood that along with snot

Bulged into pink puffs around the nostrils and mouth

We stood there, all of us

Terrified, mouths open

Some of us already crying

( Including yours truly )

As he was lying there

All the tragedy in display for us-

Jimmy stretching his legs spasmodically

Unwilling to die-

And to think that dogs die alone

This dog wanted company

Or help

But none of us moved

He was helpless and so were we

Trying to endure the martyrdom

Of death devouring the little life

That was left in him.

Then

Out of nowhere

Lorry, a gypsy everyone hated

Came with his truck

Got out and approached the dog

Kneeled before him

Took him in his arms

The dog’s blood dripping from his elbows

And he went in the truck-

Jimmy on his lap

With his tongue hanging out-

And drove off like a madman.

After a few weeks Jimmy was back

All bones, limping and ugly as all hell

But alive

As alive as each step we take towards the bathroom in the morning

As alive as you reading this-

Maybe a little more

But Jimmy had changed

He was afraid

Of people he didn’t know

Of loud noises

And of other dogs he once used to bring down

With little effort- dogs lurking for revenge

And his bark now had a permanent weeping sound in it.

He didn’t run anymore

And for the most part

He would curl to a round thing

Close to us and watch us play

And when we would sit next to him while we talked

There was this magnificence that I felt

( as I would talk with my friends

With my hand over Jimmy

Feeling his fast heart beats against my palm)

That I can't describe,

As if the dog was teaching us something

With his silence and his unspoken affection

Something I couldn’t understand then

Jimmy was a good lesson in humanity-

He was the perfect outcome

Of a gamble between good and evil

And another thing he told us is

That even though evil didn’t win that time

It didn’t exactly lose either

But then again

Neither did goodness

What matters in the end

Is where you put your faith in.

Getting Closer.

Devoured by the night

( the sun always climbs over the sky uninvited)

with that heart beating against the chest like a stubborn animal

with those veins like rusty pipes of anguish

with that loneliness residing inside

sliding through the bars and the hookers and the depth

of the large gigantic titanic overweight worthlessness that is you

in essence beaming your nothingness

in a world already overfilled with it,

with the littlest of those scattering moments of contentment

like small delicate ripples

on a calm sea.

The Days

Every day is a second chance

a second chance wasted

sometimes its not only sadness

one learns how to live with it

and still have some good times

some times its desperation

along with anguish 

and they become one

and shift their weight against you

and sometimes you endure

and sometimes you collapse

crumble

and turn to the bottle

the pills, the powder

anything...

Every day is a second chance

a chance effortlessly wasted

and the pussy can save a lot

but not everything

and writing can cleanse most things

but not everything

and alcohol and all the rest can make you forget

but a few things never leave you

those few you so desperately want to forget...

Everyday is a second chance

it remains to be seen

if tomorrow

will add to the waste.

Keith Wesley Combs- A Poem

one of the angels.

she sits alone

at the end

of the bar

drawing angels

in her notebook

while

the bartender

cleans his glasses

as the Hispanic

hustler

tries to make

every man

that comes

in the door

his next trick.

she sits alone

talking to no one

but herself.

staring at the paper

looking up

only to take

a hit

off her beer.

she sits alone

at the end

of the bar

drawing and talking

to angels.

in her own world.

she may be

the loneliest

or the most sensible

of us all.

 

 

 

I am a union painter who likes to write poetry and short stories in my spare time. I write about my life, life in general, my travels on the road. My work has been published in Main Street Rag, Pearl, Carcinogenic Poetry, Black Book Press, Atlantic Pacific Press, Record Magazine, and many more with more to come soon.

Adreyo Sen- Two Poems

The Fallen

Years ago, I fell.

When I woke up, I was in a deep pit

and all of me hurt.

I cried for help, but no one could hear me.

For days, I cried.

And then, I began to climb.

And every small foothold made me happy.

I am still in the pit.

Perhaps I'll be there all my life.

But I can feel the sun on my cheeks

and thus it dries no tears.

And even though I am as small

as my most petty weakness 

and thus very small indeed 

and the rocks that surround me are tall and steep,

I know they are made by the same hands

that once eased me to sleep.

Eternal Children

We are as we were

when we were children.

Our long days are ended with a kiss.

Linda M. Crate- Three Poems

queen 

 

you shot arrows through my heart

lies masquerading as truths,

but i am not as foolish

as you;

i did not fall for the content within,

and i snapped your arrows

in half before pulling the offending adam out

because i am stronger than you'll

ever know—

i sat in a broken coronation hall for far too long

even if i can't be your monarch

doesn't mean i am not a

queen,

and maybe one day you will find me at the end

of every tiara you break and wonder why

you ever tried to strip me of my

title.

 

 

stained glass pieces

 

you are the king of spades

shredding hearts 

to oblivion's light and insisting

that you are doing this

in the name of good,

and we both know all you're

doing is lying

to me to her and to yourself;

you fancy yourself an honest king

but you are the monster that

lurks in the shadows

waiting all too patiently to rip others

to pieces so they can be broken

as your shattered heart

whose stained glass pieces are so good

at cutting and shredding but in all

their destruction cannot heal you.

are you still distant? 

 

when she grips your hand

i wonder

are you there with her,

or are you in

a completely different universe

pushing her away

like you did me?

are you attentive to her needs or are

yours the only ones that 

dominate?

i wish i could go back in time

take back the first time we kissed and put

another girl in my place

because honestly it wouldn't have mattered to you

she'd just be another heart to shatter

and you'd have done it unapologetic,

but i could never hurt 

someone the way you did me;

and so i take this little broken heart of mine

shine brighter than you could ever imagine with strength

in me that you never knew.

 

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

Partially Obstructed

 

Settling in center rear of the second-run

movie theater as house lights dim,

rows ahead and behind clear, no partial

views, meddlesome commentators, moronic

super-sizers, soda slurpers, ice chewers,

Macadamia nut fanciers, clear sailing through

trailers until Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his traded-

to-the-Lakers Afro days sits down directly in

front and all of his teammates six foot nine

and above with him, even Sven Natar from

his UCLA days along for the flicks, so we

decide to move but our row is blocked by

the first seven footer to play on an NBA court,

Walter Dukes and with him, his NFL counterpart,

Ernie Ladd "Bigger that Dad" the first seven

foot, 300 pounder in his league and I think,

"This can't be.  These guys are like long dead."

And then I see Wilt "The Stilt", and Dave D

from the Knicks, the bartender's son, and George

Mikan and Walter Bond, definitely not to be

confused with Ward Bond the actor, no this

is the baseball player, all six foot eight of him

in playing shape from back in the days when anyone

over five eight was considered a giant and now,

I'm like really worried, as all of these guys are way

dead too and I wonder if maybe this is the wrong theater,

that the Marx Brothers Retrospective we'd been

dying to see is actually a Karl Marx Retrospective

and the Main Attraction is neither Horse Feathers

nor Monkey Business but colorized versions of

Battleship Potemkin, followed by colorized

copies of Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible

Parts 1 And 2 and I'm thinking, "How could they do

this to Eisenstein and someone says, "They colorized

Casablanca, didn't they?" "Did they ever!" I think,

"Not that you'd ever catch me watching something

like that in this life." And everyone around us starts

laughing as if I actually said something funny and

I know now, we are in the wrong theater for sure

but we are way beyond too late to leave.

 

 

 

White Evil

 

Ouzo, Tequila, Bailey's Irish Creme

 

If Death were

a man wheedling

a bartender for

a complimentary beer

and pocket change

for cab fare to

the Greyhound Station,

more than likely closed

this near Last Call,

he would be this

mostly blind man

sighting the industrial

wall clock with

a retractable magnifying

lens with his good eye,

the all white one

rolling nearly loose

detached in its' socket

as his high pitched,

pleading voice suggests,

"Just one more.

Come on, you know

you can do it.

Another one won't kill

you.  I'll go away if

you do." And it seems

almost plausible that he might,

as the beer flows his way

and his metal guiding

stick rhythmically taps

against the brass foot

rail, a kind of artificial

heart beating, "This place

got a juke box? I know

there's one in here somewhere.

You got some quarters?

I need to hear some Mu-

Zic- before I go." and that too

sounds almost plausible,

the barman is so anxious

to have him gone, so desperate

anything could be plausible,

"What's your name?" the blind

man asks, his wide, featureless

eye so grotesque, so unnatural

it is impossible to look very

close, "I really have to know.

I need to write your name

in my book." And the barman

wonders: should I speak or not?

but it doesn't matter much either

way, he's doomed no matter what.

 

 

 

The Firebird

 

Pepper Vodka and Cranberry Juice

 

She was wearing

this amazing short

short skirt with a

low cut top to match

made from fabrics

so way beyond loud

it made you wonder

if she was cheerleading

for some spectator

sport organized in

another dimension

parallel to ours

and she was  so

bubbling over, effervescent

trying to make whatever

it was she wanted

understood, she spoke

in a tongue not readily

recognizable as something

that was spoken here

on earth, her efforts

made more complicated

by her warp hyper speed

buzzing and The Boss

screaming something

about being born in the USA

as if that were a big deal

in the background, so I

try hand gestures to help

out, pointing at items

behind the bar asking her

to select but it doesn't

work out, becoming more

and more like some colorful,

futile game of charades

conducted by two inmates

of a locked-in ward.

Bud Faust- Three Poems

Snakes

Snakes in my head
and I’m getting dizzy.

Snakes in my head
with caffeine and bad skin.

Snakes in my head
and I guess I’m getting
used to it.

Somewhere
someone is leaving
without saying goodbye.

Somewhere
an angel smiles
in her sleep
as the city lights grow dim.

Doesn’t everyone
want to watch the girls
eat each other?

Doesn’t anyone
sleep with the radio on
anymore?

Doesn’t it feel good
to feel everything
and imagine it’s nothing?

Doesn’t it?


Looking for Atlantis

Everything is broken
and well beyond repair –
the car,
my shoestring (finally),
all of the plastic forks
in the kitchen drawer.

Everything we create
is disposable,
most notably ourselves.
Every step in the
wrong direction,
further away from
the shoreline,
further into the
thickening weeds.

All afternoon I studied maps,
looking for Atlantis
in piles of prehistoric dirt.
Anything not so damned
ordinary would be nice –
a siren screaming at
the windows,
a meteor shower
through the roof,
a neighbor cursing
at his dog
in a foreign language.

Bent,
but mostly broken.

I’ve got a pack of smokes
and a roll of duct tape.
We’ll hold her together
as long as we can.
Someone get word
to the captain.

We’re going down.


Or something like that

With my luck,
she said,
I’ll probably leave you,
you’ll start working out again
and lose a bunch of weight,
finally find a decent job
and start making a
shitload of money,

or something like that.

It was right then
I knew for sure
there was no hope at all
for any of us crooked creatures,
crumbling cross-legged at
our imaginary altars,
begging for providence
undeserved and impossible,
thirteen thousand years into the ether
in an instant,
birds circling above, pissing
everywhere like rain,

but it doesn’t make a
damned bit of difference because
nothing’s going to grow
down here anyway.

She’d swallowed
a lot of things,
but she’d never be able
to swallow that.

Paul Tristram- Three Poems

Shame-Facing

I witnessed her open up that coffin-shaped box
buried deep within her heart
and let all of that shit and misery out
in one Gigantic flood of despair.
Briefly compose herself with shudders and tears
then suck strength, bravery and self-esteem
back up into its spring-cleaned place.
As frail and fragile as she was in stature,
I shook my head in admiration and respect
for I was now in the presence of a Warrior Soul.

© Paul Tristram 2014



Old Swansea Town

Another late afternoon and early evening in Abertawe.
The prison stands on Oystermouth Road
like broken teeth in the front of a scowling mouth.
Cobbled, Constitutional Hill, almost vertical
and an adventure playground for the drunks
trying to climb home to womanless rented rooms
with chip-fat gloom and out of date library books.
‘Scrubbers Laundromat’ at the bottom
where I used to bum cigarettes off the working girls
brave enough to face the South Wales winds
in short sleeved tops and mini skirts
back when I was seventeen years old and lost myself.
The Battlegrounds of The Kingsway every Friday
and Saturday night, my God, I’ve seen it all
a dozen times or more upon that lit up stretch of madness.
Carlton Terrace, where I once lived in an attic,
Dai and Pie’s Tattoos up on top of the cold High Street,
The Quadrant and cockles from the indoor Market,
Castle Gardens the way they were before the concrete.
She lives and breathes aloud, that ‘Hard As Nails’ Town
and cwtches her battered head into the arm and shoulder
of the ‘impossible to drink in one go’ Mumbles Mile
as the Pier reaches out across the water, forever.

© Paul Tristram 2015



The Pissed Misanthropist

He had the Christian name of a Bible Baptist,
was one of the two Tramps living in our Town.
When he was younger he was on his way
to becoming a professional football player
but instead, had some sort of devastating breakdown
and could not seem to ever fight his way back.
The ‘Men In White Coats’ would lock him up
every few months or so and you wouldn’t really
notice the disappearance until he returned.
Then, all of a sudden, there he would be in the park
in the middle of the afternoon on Giro Day
with 10 Regal King Size, a flagon of Strongbow
and a cheap plastic football, drunkenly foot-shuffling.
You rarely heard him talk, Tourette a bit only,
he’d just kick that ball across to any kid passing
hoping that they would kick it back and fore with him.
People always said he was mad (I’m still on the fence
with this one?) for sleeping rough down The Melyn,
what with all the crime, drugs and gang activity
but we all looked out for him, we slapped these two
Port Talbot boys around once when we caught them
hitting him with sticks as he slept on a wooden bench.
I use to find it fascinating to watch him ‘hunting’
he would wait a few doors down from the chip shop
for teenagers to come out with their meals open
and steaming salt and vinegar into the Winter air,
then he’d barge straight into them with a “Sorry!”
then walk around the block to return and pick it all up
off the dirty pavement like a King eating venison.
Every Saturday, he’d go up to Woolworths in Town
and take a football out of the basket in the middle
of the shop and start kicking it up and down the aisles.
While they were throwing him out 5 minutes later,
the glue sniffers would be loading up their pockets
with solvents and freezer bags…an unknowing decoy.
I saw him walk into a café on Windsor Road one morning
with a raw half chicken in his hand, no wrapping
just the chicken and beg the owner to cook it, claiming
“I only want the bad half of it you can sell the rest?”
We were all playing the Space Invader machines
after a night of magic mushroom madness and shouting
“Cook the bloody thing for him, mun, c’mon!”
The Park Keeper of Victoria Gardens came up to us
laughing another morning and told us that he’d opened
the Public Toilets at 6am and by 7am they had to call
the Fire Brigade because Matey had staggered in there
drunk and got his cock stuck in the drain grating
in the middle of the floor, he claimed that he was pissing
in the urinal and staggered backwards four steps,
pissing over himself and turned around while falling,
Wham…Stuck…they had to cut him out of there.
I only ever spoke more than two words to him once
and that was the evening before I went to prison
for the first time, I was sat in a warm laundrette
with a girlfriend drinking cider when in he came
out of the rain, he looked cagey at first but then asked
“Who’s ‘Top of the Pops’ this week, then?”
and offered us both a cigarette which we refused
(I remember it well, they were long, thin ‘More’
liquorice cigarettes, women used to smoke them!)
I gave him half of one of my flagons of cider
and talk soon turned ‘round to prison, he said
“You’ll be alright boy, I can tell, just take no shit
off of no one. They’ve got a TV and a pool table
in the ‘Young Offenders Unit’ happy days!
The biggest problem you’ll have is that you’re locked
up 24/7 with other people, it’s enough to drive you nuts
if your not nuts already, God forgive me but I hate
other people and the more of them the worse it gets!”
Anyway, I was alright and a few years later I Gypsied
away on my Travels but I was back there a couple
of years ago and he came up in the pub conversation.
Some of the people had clubbed together and bought
him a wooden garden shed and stuck it on the marsh
down by the side of Neath River away from people.
He was happy living there alone for a few months
until Guy Fawkes Night came around and some idiot
school kids went down there and burnt it to the ground
whilst he was drunkenly and peacefully sleeping inside.

© Paul Tristram 2015



Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.

You can read his poems and stories here! http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/

B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

UPROOTED

Uprooted by first light
in the Green Mountains
by mushrooming
pockets of dreams
yet redeemed by sunshine
on blankets of snow
of stolen nights and dawns
wearing animal skins
amid a stunning sun
in a collapsing coat
and carefree hood,
trying my hand
at a play about Whitman
with blue-penciled verse
now featured in photos
taken by a distant mutineer
with his St. Bernard
and my recusant energy
cold shouldered for now
up for a ski jaunt.



LIVE CHAT

Bruised conversation
on a local T.V.talk show
of this poet years ago
on a stolen spring dawn
in his polished boots
among camera lights
a heavy silence
of reverie takes me over
mesmerized by camera
with Laddie his sheepdog
having his media debut,
I take out my early collection
of poems, "Freedom Trails"
about revolutionary Boston
and speak, sigh free
hopefully grounded
by questions and answer.



LIGHT IN THE DARKROOM

In a void
from cabin fever
unable to venture out
and seeing the green fir trees
among the shadow
of pure white drifts of snow
hiding my body
disclosing my eyes
like a forest brown bear
hibernating by a mirror
a poet in a faithful minimalism
of animal magnetism
trying to save the earth
and the overflowing oceans
from man's pollution
while hardly saving myself
from a child's confidential time
as my shadow stretches
for a once mile run,
it seems like a miracle
just to eye the sun
from my absent green eyes
against the seasonal pull
pleading for any harbinger
like a Canadian robin
on my dark corner sill
where a few geraniums
still survive
in my sound proof studio
aching for first light
of spring to take a picture
of bird watchers or ice fishermen
at the slippery edge of the dock.

Donal Mahoney- Three Poems

Waiting in Hospice

This time why
doesn’t matter
all that matters is

what and when
it’s finally over
he'll know

who was right
the last time
he saw them

at the wake
20 years ago
his big sister

the atheist
his little brother
the monk



The Canyon Dwellers

There’s this canyon
between two cliffs
and Tim Boyd has a foot
planted on each cliff.
He’s spread-eagled
but very steady.

He's been stretched
over the canyon since
he got back from Iraq.
After he took his position,
he thought someone
would eventually look up.

There are others
spread over the canyon
in front of Tim.
They’ve been there
since Viet Nam and
getting a bit wobbly.

In back of Tim
are the new arrivals
spread-eagled as well.
They’re fresh from
Afghanistan and they're
getting their feet set.

The rest of us below
have jobs and are busy
with families and lives.
When a canyon dweller falls
and makes a terrible mess,
we find the time to look up.



Swirls

Professor Burns is interested
in macro issues only,
no minutiae for him.

So he asks students
on the first day of class why
water swirls counterclockwise

when you flush a toilet
anywhere in America
and to determine as well

by midterm if the water swirls
clockwise elsewhere in the world.
Or if the counterclockwise swirl

is uniform all over the planet.
Extra credit will be given
to the student who proves

the counterclockwise swirl is
a conspiracy of plumbers.
The final exam, he says, is

an essay question asking if ISIS
will reverse the swirl clockwise
when it takes over the world.



Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. 

John Swain- Three Poems

A Throwing Veil

After fishing the beach

the eagle turns to light

behind the pines

like a bright sun to the west

chased by crows.

I put my face

to the darkening waves

beginning to rain

in consummation.

I see you naked,

the black mist lifts

a fragrant throwing veil.

The Angle of List

Thunderhead storm winds build in the evening

as the sea of lightning shakes a gull bone rattle,

the waves break in white spray trailing.

Ring of vision

with the grey sky and waves prostrate

as the osprey cries your brother of the Atlantic.

I dissolve in the salt like the pillar of a woman

seeing angels

swim with the ships ripping their sails.

Origin of our source this dark migration route

extends the horizon

from body to body, face to face, hand in hand.

Then the severing overwhelms

the myth of contentment, the myth of oneness,

and we continue the angle of list.

Sea Island

The sea island bells

for the fog in the harbor

dredged onto barges.

Caroline, your twin,

Susannah has gone

back to the mountains.

I loved in a misuse,

I took my confession

from the ghost on the water.

A still quiets the bells

like a name vanishes

with the childless.

Black oaks hold

the world submerged

in the grey dawn.

John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Red Paint Hill published his collection, Ring the Sycamore Sky.  

Stefanie Bennett- Three Poems

HARD WORK 

The last conversation
I had
With a fossil
Escapes me –.

It’s either or
Neither
Of us
Being known

To the other
That
Counts as
A bit

Of a bother.



SCOPE 

Late in the day,
And slightly
Humped over

My shoulder
Suggests
... If I am

Of whale descent

Words
Are
Water –.



SEMINAL BELIEF

Inside nothing and beyond
The brink
                 I find
An unpaid
Promissory note
That said

You’d return around
The time
The rains
                Came:

They’re here...

Matt Margo- Two Poems

bombshell vocations

at the nightclub dances
the prettiest matter
across a summit of storms

a modish windmill at the diehard café
taming waves and riding tight corners
in an underground room
on a wordless night still transient

like ghost hands over heavens
hammering out an age
of permanence or fence
sustained in isolation

let me push this trial and at once
kowtow to these arabian cascades
and sidewalk muses
for their large-scale wisdom
told after the heavy rains

against a backdrop
the monuments glisten
with light spring rain

the hands rise over a snowstorm
loftily living and blooming
safe from harm in a simplified city
rasping into a saw-like slip

of vintage wear and leisure time
cloaked in ameliorated cleanliness
they echo oral accounts of love said aloud
forbidding any unexpected fish farm frost

yapping about quick friendship
and the slow dark moon
vultures speak in heated murmurs
their lowly souls with salty patches
into slow synthetic synthesis

the old adage is nothing more
than a true hope shudder
bluish flags treading water

bliss is not fixed in passing canisters
of gin or the sap of the sin
that came to humanity
in punctured lines

chiming of different times
at a monday morning’s rally
the comedians and magicians
come together in search of footprints

as they move on
they recite their own songs
clacking and passing jars
to make ready
for the revolution of thorns


do-it-yourself make-a-wish foundation

to whom it may not concern:
it concerns me
and that is that
if your hand is as big as your face
it means that you have cancer
and if you ask me to marry you
then the answer is yes
yes i am an ugly human being
yes i do have a heart

Both poems published in Metazen November 2012



Matt Margo is the author of the poetry chapbook what i would say (Peanut Gallery Press, 2014) and the book-length poem When Empurpled: An Elegy (Pteron Press, 2013) as well as the editor of the online poetry magazine Zoomoozophone Review and the literary blog experiential-experimental-literature.

Adreyo Sen- A Poem

On a Rainy Day

On days when the sky is a wall of rain,
you find the nearest window seat
to curl up on.

Perhaps in those moments
you are thinking of a little house
and a little school
and a boy who loved to hold you
in his arms.

There are days when it rains
both here and where you are
and on those days you must
kiss the glass
as you used to kiss me.

For in those moments
when the rain curtains you and me,
there will be no glass between us,
no oceans raging and deep.

And you'll be warm
with all the love in my smile.

Noel Negele- Two Poems

Some More Bad Poetry.

We were on that Mercedes-Benz Sprinter truck again

All three of us, next to each other

The driver already on his third coffee

My brother leaning his bald head against the window

Trying to grasp some minutes of sleep

And behind his bald head

An ugly city gave away to viridity

 

I was on my fifth sober day

And it was the little things that broke me inside

Like say

The alarm clock at 6 in the morning,

The potholes in the streets,

the morning faces,

the beeping sound each time

I started the car in the morning

Indicating the perennial lack of petrol

or when we all loaded the equipment

on the truck

silently and synchronized

and it was the history of repetition that this fact

verified

that drove me mad

 

We went to a suburban nursery school on that day

Because the prime minister had a speech there

And we began to assemble the cameras

And the jimmy jib triangle crane

on their proper places

and it was a difficult task to keep yourself

from having a fit

when there’re so many kids around

and they had clowns too

and one of them had a fat gut

which made me feel good about myself

and realize

there’s always worse

 

But the kids were curious

About the cameras and the crane

About everything

And I had a bladder issue

And the coffee was awful

And I was trying to maintain a mental balance

In a sea of frenzy children

But the only way of managing

Was to push them away

Without manners:

“ Just fuck off to the clowns over there!”

 

At some point I went to the truck

To grab a piece of machinery

And while returning

I stopped in front of a closed door

And started smoking,

 

Half way on my cigarette

The door opened

And an ugly lady exited

Not quite closing the door behind her

Leaving a small gap

 

And through that small gap

I saw an impeccable flower

And it’s not a good thing

To see such a beautiful woman

Without being prepared

Because impulses begin to stem

And you’re suddenly

On the verge of doing something

really stupid that will get you in a lot of trouble

 

Of course she didn’t care to look at me twice

And of course I was thinking about her for weeks

Until the next equally indifferent flower

Would take her place in my mind

 

And when the prime minister came

And told all that bullshit they want to hear

All of them

Children and adults

And her

Looked at the prime minister

Actually listening

Actually expecting

And the only ones who didn’t care

Was me

And

That fat clown

 

And I could see it

In his face

 

He wanted a drink

As badly

As I did.

In The End Very Little To Nothing Is Left.

She showed me some letters I had once written to her

from years of which I remember nothing,

and I read those letters under her examining eyes

words of crying and groaning

loaded with what the writer once thought as essence

and I was amazed by the writer's certainty of his love

back when us seemed like an unbreachable fortress

back to now

where all the words of love seemed so terribly empty.

John Pursch- Three Poems

Boiled to Starlight

 

Hefty paparazzi double cork

caboodle canker sores

to postulate in tertiary eaves

till drooping dorsal enmity

revisits homespun tendencies

of paltry banter sidecar kicks

and studio retracement.

 

He slopped his shoveled platitudes

down someone else’s scuppered earwig

for enlightened changeling portents,

slipped to mundane café stools

of hardback tachyon survivors,

mauled by preferential drones.

 

She lagged at his piebald slouch,

bot peeler mentality,

simian caseload exigencies

of spurting chromatic thrusts,

and looped till perilously sure

of exhortation rights in lucid

ambit’s prehistoric flax;

 

all in perpetrated bowers

of harbored flea repugnance,

boiled to starlight pegs before

invigorated calves could crave

another mighty hit of ropey

umpteen schooner fizz.

 

Oars lift foghorn retinues

to ancient briny whistle-stops

of tourist grime embargo holes

and dime store truculence

for catered helicopter sheep.

 

We feel rotating thuds

of ammunition dawdle by,

plopping in timed faults of birdshot,

singing trafficked overload in keyed

occurrence amputation.

 

Emblematic Frost

 

Slim vertebrae chunk

transvestite auctions

into piecewise vertical boxcars,

raising furtive galoshes

from shin-deep crepe saddles.

 

Pirouettes deploy

purloined measles

to comfort a barricaded hog,

spilling ordinary optics

across the grazing terrapin’s

statutory zeal.

 

Dacron toasters

cover embattled hostages

with celestial chemise,

touching on tresses

that shoulder cradles

for caterpillars.

 

Oomph begets

decanted mountains

in spewn syllabic syllabi,

morphing syncopated chattel’s

bumpy rationed symptoms,

spotting a disheveled turtle

crossing tunneled sequins.

 

Swallowing away,

footfalls plunge

against the gloaming triad,

plying semicolon flesh,

slurped aloft in tethered hands.

 

Subways whip the bylaw dusk

to Cornish bowler features,

shoveled into loosened

emblematic frost.

Smithereens of Aging

 

I hear bespectacled spackle merchants

singing on yodeling expeditions

for brotherly cloakroom autism,

counting down from pilloried nerds

in testy pestilence and stooping

sandwich tripwire moss sitars,

strung vibrantly to

schooner cabin ziggurats

in perspicacious whimsy.

 

She’s leafing carelessly along

an aisle of cheetah squares,

bling cones dangling for

trendy showpiece maple taps

beneath the blackened smithereens

of aging swirls in shallow core venison,

cruelly blogging circumstantially

in swine machinery’s cultish craze

confetti armadillo berth.

 

Hordes of pothole plungers

pilfer tarnation from scarab ants

in scruffy exhibitionist keyhole plaque,

ground delicately to

trusted meatball carrion whiz

by elven vase inhabitants

from drawing tomb synagogues

near sauteed Mylar breasts

of scaly votive Scotsmen.

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks. Check out his experimental lit-rap video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

Douglas Polk- Three Poems

Impeachment

Nixon cared for the country,
and resigned,
Clinton did not,
Impeachment,
now an empty bluff,
Obama willing to gamble America's future,
the same as Bush,
the second,
willingly squandered treasury and lives in the desert sand,
socialists in the senate,
and narcissists everywhere one looks,
the poor no longer people,
but political pawns,
health insurance no longer insurance,
but another ponzi scam,
banking and betting lives instead of money,
the government and insurance companies,
playing with house money,
while the rest of us,
play Russian roulette,
many praying for a bullet,
instead of a protracted death,
and an empty chamber,
payback a bitch,
as Valerie Jarrett said,
race issues erupt,
in this time of hate,
paint the skin either brown or black,
to hide the target,
on the white man's back,
police departments destroyed,
under the attorney general's watch,
threatened again and again,
by Holder's black skinned thugs,
intimidating the whiter races,
ironically Obama and Holder,
both raised away from the hood,
bilingual,
they learned how to talk,
both white,
and black,
liars in more than one language,
impeachment such a empty threat.

Racism in America

Ferguson only an excuse to stoke the rage,
change not truly wanted,
responsibilities could then be demanded,
respect the community,
and obey the law,
the anger misplaced,
blame assessed unjustly,
mainly out of need,
without the white racist,
one must look in the mirror,
and confront the answers lurking there,
much easier,
if Ferguson an excuse,
to stoke the rage.

Foreign Policy

beheadings and crucifixions,
the fires flame,
an orange morning sky,
the world burning,
no hoses in sight,
a dark age lurks,
the sands of the Mideast caked in blood.

Kira Gray- Two Poems

Beer Eyes

A man's man
my uncle John
worked construction
traveled state to state
wherever the work was
all week
pouring concrete
making roads, bridges, tunnels
Friday night he'd bring home the bacon
my aunt waiting hungrily
kids crying, food all gone
beer and cigarettes in short supply
They'd shop, then drink, then laugh
cigarettes glowing red in the dark
tell me stories all night
nights I wanted to last forever



X

I remember my last day
would've said I'm sorry
if I had the chance
I had no grudge
-me-
a sperm and egg
bolted together for 100 days
a usual day
floating in an amnio sea
then-pulsing blood
a stab-a shriek!
pain both hot and swift
then-nothing
my mother
she died too that day
now we'll never meet
never hear her say
I wrecked the family
not me, really
the "doctor"
with his pointed stick
dirty from death
my mother his victim
let me say it now
I am so sorry mama
for wanting to exist