Bree- Three Poems

holy bones

there is a heaviness about bones.

i do not bring myself to pick up the
deer skull even if it was washed clean by
the snow, and the waters coming
from the drain in the ditch.i am not ready.

im not scared but bones are holy.

i am a big girl. i pick up my own,

still it might help if you stood
up on the street when i pick
up a skull for the first time.

for now i take half a spine. a big leg bone.

part of a jaw with teeth.

Always On the Outs

Cardinal lands to rest on a bough

two inches below an already-sat robin.

What? i think, They dont care about personal
space? Breathing room?

Still there, the odd couple, even after as long as it took
me to clumsily type these miniature keys.

And there yet!

Of course, little birds have lionshares

of space in which to breathe.

Outdoors eternally!

What a lark!

C L A S T L E S S

the Sun is a great fucking teacher. he should get a raise.
lifts the dress of any woman files by, the paperwork
he keeps or shreds
accordingly and on time, keeps like the shed
where the shadow of a figure
has been drawn by wind and time
into the final frame
before that door, put there almost as if by the farmer,
as a scarecrow scares people,
not critters,
keeps time like a shadow, never raises
his voice and birds pick up
after his such trace despair—
why, he leaves trace enough
for the birds only,
which means he leaves none.
it is clastless how he vastly and at once retains me,
like a wall of bells ringing
held to the metronome
of dripping leaves.

Shadwell Smith- Two Poems

Roy Lichtenstein's 'Thinking of Him' (1963)

This was Hollywood hung in primary colors.

Daddy's little princess turned out with the trash

by a fast young man who could wear a suit

and shoot the breeze from the wheel of a Pontiac Bonneville.

Your baby doesn't love you anymore.

Candy waits for Brad to call, her thoughts full

of his blue serge suit and player's jaw.

A cheated sweetheart not quite pretty or complete;

her yellow hair throws curves as she cries silver.

You won't be seeing rainbows anymore.

A thin faced New Yorker stands in front of her

neurosis stretched across his canvas sheet;

and Roy declares in hard black lines

a scene with dots that replicate a moment -

It's over.

It's over.

It's over.

London Grip New Poetry, Autumn Edition 2013

The Lady in the Lake

She arrived at the expected time

on friendly terms with drink

and cigarettes.

Her face seduced

and garbled hair unwound

to pull me in.

Tragic and romantic frail

Millais's Ophelia

gone blonde down in Hollywood.

Becalmed.

Gazing out

behind a glass.

Shadwell is a school teacher who lives in a small town called Dunstable, about thirty miles to the north of London. His poems have appeared in a number online magazines and he sometimes appears in pubs, clubs and coffee shops reading them.

 

Kurt Nimmo- Three Poems

trouble

the girl
with hair piled up on her head
went outside with the manager.
her boyfriend sat across
from me sucking on a soda
through a blue straw. I nursed a coffee.
DQ at three o’clock in the afternoon.
the manager was not pleasant,
her face round and angry. the girl
said something and then the manager
said something and the boyfriend sucked
on his soda through a blue straw.
he thought the whole thing was funny
and grinned with a mouthful
of crooked teeth.
I nursed the coffee. the girl
with hair piled up on her head
said something more and the manager
slid an envelope across
the table between them. the girl
took the envelope and held it at an angle
in her hand,
the nails painted pepto bismol pink.
she stood and the manager stood
and whatever it
was about was over.
the girl
walked out. her face
held no expression. the envelope
was in her left hand. then the
manager came out
and said to the boyfriend
sucking soda through a blue straw,
don’t come on the property
no more. the boyfriend smiled
with his crooked teeth
and then he went out too.
the boy and girl climbed in a
dented brown car
and drove across the lot. the girl put
a cigarette in her mouth and lit it
with a neon green lighter.
they drove down to the street and disappeared.
I nursed the coffee. afternoon sun
touched the limbs of a large oak tree
outside the window.

meanwhile
on the other side of the world
fighter jets from one country
dropped thousand pound bombs
on the cities of another country.

people died.


angry

all the time.
he would storm home from work
stinking of beer and perspiration
and would rant
reducing all of us to the size of small insects
scurrying to stay out
from under his size tens.

mother frozen
inside her self. she became
small and unobtrusive. for the children
the world was on fire. flames licked the future
and scorched probability a charred black.

anger
defined him.
anger defines me.

you like to think it is genetic
a scarlet curse passed through blood
during the first trimester. hatred cells absorbed
through the placenta. hiding behind
the furnace in the basement
with the lights off.

above your head
the monster. he would die
his heart a clogged red-black vessel.

you
would not
pay respect.


departure

look, he said,
we would like you to leave.
take all your stuff, bundle it with kite string,
and get the fuck out. seriously,
we don’t care where
you go so long as it is far, far away,
maybe Kampala or Ikh Bogd Uul, anywhere
but here. we’re tired of looking at you,
we’re tired of your voice, your sad sack face,
your clothes, your scuffed shoes,
sock with holes, the way you incessantly
complain about everything.
you think you’re God’s gift to the word,
and it’s tedious, intolerable.
some of the people around here
are afraid of you, they think you will
become violent, they see it in your eyes.
most of the time you refuse to make eye contact
and when you do it is scary,
unnerving. some of us think you
have Asperger’s, you’re asocial, even anti-social,
we think you should see
a head doctor, you should be
in a state institution, restrained, on medication.
you’ve worn out your welcome.
there’s the door, don’t let it hit your ass
on the way out. here’s a bus ticket, train fare,
cab fare. just get the hell out, we’re sick
and tired of your bullshit.

he smiled at the reflection of himself
in the mirror and then walked out.

it was a
beautiful sunny day.
he stood for a second on the curb
and allowed sun to touch his face.

then walked down the street
and out of there.

Wolfgang Carstens & Janne Karlsson- Cartoon

"Wolfgang Carstens and Janne Karlsson are two crazy sons-of-bitches who never quit. Their most recent piece of printed madness, The Stench of Failure, is available at amazon or Epic Rites Press."

Paul Tristram- Three Poems

A Wise Man Moves On…Always.

Why pussyfoot all around the damned houses,
arguing with people too stupid or selfish
to be fair about things and see common sense?
Dealing with bruised egos and pathetic,
ludicrous insecurities (get a fucking grip!)
of people upset by your threatening ‘Shine.’
It’s absolutely their problem and not yours!
Don’t waste your time fighting pond life,
there’s fresh air outside just a-waiting for you.
Off you go with that smile upon your cheeky face,
you won again, outfoxed them by not tarnishing
your beautiful mind with their lower-level filth.

© Paul Tristram 2015

With A Knife In Your Hand/The Devil’s Gun At Your Back

With bloody hands you carve, chop and change history
for the people you claim to love and care about.
Rejection in life is as certain as death,
It’s a painful trial that everyone goes through,
just like children growing teeth and adults losing them.
You don’t force people to love you with clubs and blades,
that’s not respect your asking for it’s ‘Fear.’
The only thing that you control in this life is ‘You’
your ‘Emotions’, ‘Temper’, and most importantly ‘Actions’
and I’m sorry to have to tell you this but you failed
big time and learnt absolutely nothing along the way, fool.

© Paul Tristram 2015

Purge Vent Purge

Don’t you be holding all of that crap inside,
that shit be cancerous ‘Unleash The Kraken!’
Pour it into Art, pound it into punch bags.
Bitterness is negative and negativities’
your biggest enemy, it’s a killer of millions.
The daily people who try to hurt you
are just changing faces upon life’s assembly-line
of Bastards, there are new ones coming up-ahead.
Stop being so sensitive, don’t take it to heart,
they are victims of their own poisonous jealousy,
move on and spit the foul taste out behind you.
Dive into a bottle and resurface in 3 crates time,
do whatever you have to do to survive and stay alive.
Take time out for yourself, whenever you possibly can
and take stock of your self and your own situation,
if something or someone is becoming too troublesome
then leave it and walk away in the other direction.
There are people dying on hospital beds worldwide
giving the same advice over and over again.
“I shouldn’t have listened to them all, all they did
was put me down and control me, I should have
moved away and did what I wanted to do all along
but I wasn’t brave enough and now it’s too late!”
Don’t live in denial or regret, life is far too short
dissect yourself from anything that is hindering you.

© 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/

Michael Ceraolo- Two Mobservations

Mobservation #14

Though the day wasn't in the immediate future,

those in the know knew it would come one day:

                                                                       the day

when those too stupid to obey traffic laws on Earth

would be doing the same thing in space

with far greater consequences

Mobservation #15

Why did the human cross the road

when he or she didn't have to

is a poser for the whole solar system

never satisfactorily answered

 

Kelley White- Two Poems

Autobahn

 

That forest of gray matter fills the bowl of my brain. On windy days I try to climb my crackling neurons. That sugar buzz on my tongue, those tingling neon lights in your yellow eyes. Did you know the great birder worked from dead specimens? There are at least two towns named for him. I’ve been to the one in Pennsylvania, walked in those woods, how many years ago was it? After the divorce I think, with one, or maybe two children, or maybe I was still single--oh, my white matters shot all to hell.

 

He killed them with fine shot. Then used wires to prop them in a ‘natural’ position, unlike the common ornithologists of his day, who stuffed specimens into a rigid pose. Hoity-toity hoi polloi. Uncommon birds deserve uncommon poses. Watchers in the gallery, yessir, they grow ‘em just like that, hanging upside down from the branches in Australia. This is the  Fine Art of Extinction, the beauty of silent songbirds, I, trampling feathers into the mud of our spring.

 

Sparrow, you were the hawk. You’ll forget the eagle’s name but climb that shadowed mountain, para amanhã, your birdhouse opening its doors for the little owl. The birches tapping a lullaby for the cracking eggs.

 

 

 

 Uwind my clock

 

I don’t want to be alarmed

Switch off the light

Be prepared to be disarmed

Pull up the blankets

Slip in beside me close and warm

 ‘cause a clock’s not the sun

More like your heartbeat

            In my arms

Bradley Williams- Cartoon

                                            

                                       See more cartoons at http://machocomics.com

Douglas Polk- Two Poems

The Rant

 

the eternal dwells within,

ignore the soul,

and risk mortal sin,

hard to do,

in a culture of the exterior,

and the shallow,

brain flow captured for seconds at a time,

and decreasing daily,

eternity thought to be a myth,

while last night's fuck,

real and consequential,

wrong thought,

or no thought,

ignore the soul,

at your own peril.

 

 

The Courtship of Iran

 

Iran,

with nipple exposed,

sparks the interest of the American stud,

whispering sweet nothings in her ear,

the bra off,

panties down to the knees,

Iran gets religion,

panties pulled up quite suddenly,

America with a hard-on,

continues to plead,

the European nations,

voyeurs,

with cameras ready,

the talks continue,

the head pounds,

as America begs for penetration,

rubber employed,

talking,

talking,

talking,

wondering if Iran,

just a tease.

 

Tamara Turner- Poem & Photo

As with our Lives

 

The exact thoroughfare ends abrupt

Expanding into something else

We need not completely halt

Simply must adjust our manner

Course has changed and so must we

Signs of warning disguised within our sight

Now seems to matter naught

Perhaps not seamlessly though continuously

Connected transition made; stride adjusted

New pace of step commands acceptance

Alteration of trek unknown though may expect

Hope of partial shelter for some time

 

 

Tamara lives in sunny southern California.

She believes all life's sweetness has a hint of bitter poison.