Nathan J.D.L. Rowark- A Poem

Head Turner

Three, two, one... I saw his head come off before my knife was done.

Silly civilians with their tricky lives, complicating the simplicities I partake for fun.

Why struggle so for a life that had ended way before I'd come anywhere near it?

His head rolls in the dust, and to my mind seems to explode into flames by the ferocity of my act.

Real head turner, I am; and jerker.

I'd take the whole thing with me if he still had mind to lose, but now it's just baggage and I don't have a compartment to store it.

Just the memory I'll take with me then, the rush, and the wind rushing my hair into droplet strands to dance before my face for me, his body strutting the funky chicken before collapsing at my feet... alone.

Poor Smokey Joe!

Hell, we've all been there or are going.

Alone is Hell, but entertaining company's worse.

I find Ketchup-like-claret ruins your appetite when dispensed from the gullet of one of your own dinner guests; the geezer of such mixed emotions rude and unsanitary.

But I'm used to entertaining myself now, I've become beyond inept at it.

Wish their expressions didn't bounce though; I never have enough time to get to know them.

Then again, I wish their stupid, balding faces didn't stare back at me with such looks of hatred and surprise when detaching like they do.

I'm complaining again, aren't I. Seriously though, victims, when I'm the one left behind with the mess and the questions?

I wonder what their last thoughts were... perhaps only one, a word, a mental image.

Did this one get to see the tunnel because I can see his; straight down it to his stomach.

I wonder if your last thought was of that half digested steak you wished you'd never eaten.

Last day on Earth and you were plagued by bellyache, and that bellyaching couldn't have ceased until you met me.

I had to chop your head off, just so you would shut up.

Still, no shame in separation.

We are all just pieces in the end, of other people, mostly, body parts all our lives, an arm here, a handshake there, my father's neuroses in the corner; mine once I lent him my ear.

But I severed all those ties long ago; and him.

Now, on my own, I just turn heads (but I think I'll have the next one clean this one up for me).

Nathan J.D.L. Rowark is a poet and horror novelist from London, England.

His works include over fifty poems and stories published in various e-zines, anthologies, and magazines since his return as a storyteller in 2010.

He is the founder of Horrified Press (horrifiedpress.wordpress.com), and hopes to help publicise some of the great new stars working in modern horror today.

Paul Tristram- A Poem

I Wish To Bring Autumn Back Into Your Hair

I wish to bring Autumn back into your hair

and passion into your eyes,

melt that wall of ice around your heart

with miles and miles of smiles.

To hear you giggle while speaking

and blushing with overflowing emotions,

watch the seeds of happiness

explode into flowery blossoms over your face.

Your shadow rush to keep up with you

as you step back into your groove

and you once again see that beautiful woman

inside of yourself who is ready to be set free

and to finally love again.

Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories and sketches 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.

David S. Pointer- A Poem

Other Voices

-Dedicated to Ray Manzarek
in Memoriam

At 9, I was like a
cadaver dog sniffing
at a lizard doorstop
when Jim Morrison
died then Manzarek
sang Tight Rope Ride
a scorching single and
it lifted me out of the
grief over losing a
rock star hero, now
as I listen to their post
Morrison albums at
Ray Manzerak’s death
I realize that a storm
damaged door with
beveled stain glass at
architectural salvage
is still a hell of a door



Bio: David S. Pointer is the author of “Oncoming Crime Facts,” The Psychobilly Princess,” and other poetry collections. Recently, he attended the Janet Kuypers/Scars Publications and C Ra McGuirt tag team poetry reading in Nashville and had a great time.

Tom Hatch- A Poem

My Village Wine Store

A Slim Bottle of Wine

Beauty comes in all sizes 

Her fineness fingering

A bottle of Sauvignon Blanc

A smile showing a Pino Noir 

Her hair flows over 

The wine racks at the end of my day

A chuckle a laugh 

On a ladder retrieving

A Remy Martin

Tilted head looking

Lashes a hole in her

Jeans smooth flesh

Above both knees

White wine

Accommodating 

My dreaming thoughts

As I carry my bag of

Wine across

The parking lot

To my car listening

To some band

That is so vintage

The young wine never knew existed

All I can say is she

Is a slim bottle of fine wine

Or when she gets crazy 

Vodka on the rocks

Over jewels I imagine

 

 

 

Tom paid his dues in the SoHo art scene way back when. He was awarded two NEA grants for sculpture back then. And taught at various colleges and universities in the NYC metro area in art (including Princeton and U of Penn. in Philly). He feels like a regular at The Camel Saloon and BoySlut. He has published at The Mind[less] Muse, Jellyfish Whispers, Napalm and Novocain, Dead Snakes and Pyrokinection among others. He has recently had a poem nominated for The Best on The Net. He lives in CT with a few farms up and down the road works in Manhattan. His train ride to and from NYC is his solace, study and den where it all begins and ends.

Kislay Chauhan- Three Poems

" A Sinner Shine " ----( Shine ~ Spirit )----
 
A shine in bitter black paper of dried roses
In blue skies and in black blue shaded stars
Suffers behind a sin, that did for sufferers
A shine before death, realizing stars in eyes
Or after lost of love, inside those lonely rooms
It screams, scratching walls exposing wounds
In foggy mornings, weeps on grassy grounds

Silly influence of losing hands of self colors
Embarrassing rocks corners, sandy shutters
Strange immunity from love, following dark
That my spirit, tedium in gardens sits alone
Like a baptized life on shore of forgetful days
Wins for death and breath secures the ways
That shine, my spirit worn-out and torn a bit

While blinking eyes, dimming gestures of faces
Wanting salvation, yet far from that white skies
Creeps here and there, in mud and buggy floor
In fallen leaves, dents and drains, in silent shore
Far end, luring a sin, interior full hesitations rise
Craving churches, temples or sound of holy Azaan*
Or looks for a place far from unreal world zone

Valleys blank, cheerless river without a mirror
bunches of trees have leaning eyes in liquor
Diminished smiles and showers of silver rays
Cross grey lands where people don’t know God
On bald branches birds chirping for food of shine
The shine of a spirit, needful for life and this love
So the universe, follows God and world on move

*[ Azaan : - Muslim call to prayer ]



" Emptiness "

Some words uttering in sighs
In autumn leaves with lies
The drizzles in the clouds
Heart opens its wounds

The scenario, a curvy vision
In eyes, in tearful season
Distance and dream play there
Desire sits lonely where

The time follows every second
You were unknown in reckoned
Ever in evening looking sunset
Night comes with moon upset

Whole night with twinkling star
You came near and went afar
There sustains the wait in soul
You turned my life, turned it whole

I called you amid valley of dreams
You were not there only screams
Long seconds, long years it seems
Love reckons love, Hate only trims

And the water bubble bursts in air
No one can repair, this hurt’s unfair
Below heart, every prayer lost a will
Once who ever loved, was now to kill



" A Sermon "

In the last way, last chance
A will to live little more
To owe more, hope more
Under roof of destiny, dreams
Near hands, chain of chants
Few narrations, little estimations
And empty silent eyes
Look, for the rest time
To end a begin and start an end
Purple papers spread on horizon
That last evening, last sermon
Written in page, I kept in pocket
A dream in pocket with a hope
To live little more…
To shine more, desire more
Near shore of success, sail more
With wave of world, walk more
The passage of tender prayers
Wishes, wills holding breath
For me, for you and for dream
On restless mind, nervous heart
In sorrows, a word, to cry more
Pursue the last word
A word which became my world
Written in page, I kept in pocket
A dream in pocket with a hope
To live little more…

Kislay Chauhan, a computer engineer and a young writer from a little town of India, has written four poetry books. His poems have been published in many journals, reviews and magazines. 

Denis Robillard- A Poem

Another  Hate Poem

 For a young man beaten during a hate crime in  downtown Windsor, Ontario.

Ladies and gentlemen how do you begin to hate a person?

Face to face when all you see  is the hue of their skin and nothing else?

How do you hate the pulchritude of eyes?

The subtle variation of  hair, sinew and bones

when the color of the heart remains hidden from view?

How do you begin to hate the words that they say?

Atoms  of ideas finding their own way

into the air or the blankness of a page.

Variegated idioms, phrases, metaphors they create for  us.

When innocent babbles were first mouthed from the nursery

surely later they were not meant for the ovens of Hitler`s hate

that some still like to fuel.

Tell me, how do you construct a plan for hate here?

For in your book it all seems too easy to do.

Perhaps we can send hate over to the scientists

at the university in a tiny silver box.

Have them dismantle its architecture,

its wires and vacuum tubes.

Extract every micro syllable still left inside it.

Take tweezers to pull out the DNA samples.

Then bring it back here, stamped out

eradicated and put back into a hate mongers

reconstituted brain.

How do you torch a noun?

Set fire to verbs seemingly inviolately?

How do you demolish the tower of pronouns

for all the  Hers and I`s and He`s and Yous

Of the world who all believe

in their own special version of the truth?

Please tell me how to hate. I want to know.

Is it as easy as you make it seem?

Eric Robert Nolan- Two Poems

When I Meet the Devil

When I meet the Devil

I’ll kill him.

Not for his endless treachery, richly expressed

In perfectly worded, erudite, platinum-bright aphorisms.

Not for the endless lies that spiral from his quick lips

Like fine red ethereal thread, spooling at our feet

Like bloodshot spider-web.

Not for the false

Compliments that slide off his baroque tongue

Like newly minted coins of fool’s gold.

When I meet the devil,

I’ll kill him

Because God made him.

Lying Close

Lying with her,

Lying close,

Lying while her past escapes in silver whispers.

Lying with her,

Lying close,

Lying while the unspoken

Is a rough coal in my own throat.

Her soft voice

Is the cry of the single quail at dusk --

Easy and artless, unaware

It’s alone as night encroaches.

My silence

Fails to announce the purposeful, leaning

Turn of the falcon’s arc.

Lying with her,

Lying close,

Lying by omission.

BIO:  Eric Robert Nolan graduated from Mary Washington College in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology.  Before becoming a grant writer, he was a news reporter and editorial writer for the Culpeper Star Exponent in Culpeper, Virginia. His investigative work has also appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers and local magazines in Virginia, including The Free Lance – Star and The Daily Progress.

Eric’s poetry has been featured by Every Day Poets, Dagda Publishing, Dead Beats Literary Blog, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, and elsewhere.  His poetry will also be published by Illumen Magazine in its Spring 2014 issue.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan- A Poem

Outbreak

The pathogens are virulent

and determined,

can kill a man in twenty minutes

or less,

most women take longer

than that -

and the man in the elevator

will not speak to me

because he has groceries

and I have a beard -

the working man

and the other

brought together

once more -

and the silence between us

says words like bamboozled 

and fettuccini       

and I laugh;         

getting off            

a few floors before 

my clean cut friend

of the paper brown

tomatoes.



Bio:  Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a wheezing asthmatic who enjoys short walks on the beach.  He lives deep in the Canadian Shield with his toaster oven and his muse, believing himself to be eternally hungry as many his poems are about food.

Sy Roth- Two Poems

Names I Do Not Know

Feted with ghosts

haints that haunt me.

Wormhole borers everywhere.

I approach them tremulously,

this faux spiritual family resting uneasily on my desk.

Cardboard cutouts in black and white,

remnant of those who once had names

I do not know.

They sit stiffly for the picture.

The matriarch on my mother's side, in the center,

her name unspoken in our little house of secrets.

She has a skeletal look in the midst of the others

sitting next to the white-bearded patriarch.

Hollow cheeks could not hide

the missing teeth in her unsmiling face.

Her tiny nose disappears in the folds of her cheeks

tucked between the hillocks

hidden in the shadows of her face.

Cavernous hollows rest beneath her brows like black olives.

Tightly knitted rug of dark hair rests like a kippah on her head.

More diminutive than the others

she and the family of ghosts

appear lost in a voiceless abyss.

Invisible arms speak volumes

Their ghostly appendages never embraced me.

Their wry lips never whispered liebchen to me,

nor kissed away a hurt.

They do not speak to me on my desk

They bury thoughts

in the spectral picture

wordless yearning in their ghostly silence

and the question why

from the row of cousins who never were. 

Troglodyte Picnic

Deepest cave,

Dwelling place for mindless troglodytes.

Eyes shifting aimlessly to

the bones of men

and their splayed ideas.

Dissected dreams

Nature parsed on the etched walls

Where imagined stick figures

Shrouded in the recesses of their catacomb

Playfully butcher horned beasts,

Cavort with like-minded spirits

In the craggy niches

Burning the books of men.

Speck of light tries to gain

Purchase in the darkness,

But darkness is preferred

in this condo for immobile feet,

granite block of ice for desiccated memories.

The ray uninteresting diversion

Knees-to-chin in the icy cold,

Troglodytes wait for humanity

Somewhere in the hidden niches.

He comes riding in and then canters out. Oftentimes, the head is bowed by reality; other times, he is proud to have said something noteworthy. cRetired after forty-two years as teacher/school administrator, he now resides in Mount Sinai, far from Moses and the tablets. This has led him to find words for solace.   He spends his time writing and playing his guitar. He has published in many online publications such as The Circle Review, Toucan, Wilderness Interface Zone, Red Ochre,  Bong is Bard, Danse Macabre, Mel BraKe Press, Larks Fiction Magazine, Exercise Bowler, Otoliths, BlogNostics, Every Day Poets, brief, One of his poems, Forsaken Man, was selected for Best of 2012 poems in Storm Cycle.  Twice selected Poet of the Month in Poetry Super Highway.  His work was also read at Palimpsest Poetry Festival in December 2012. He was named Poet of the Month for the month of February in BlogNostics. Included in Poised in Flight anthology published by Kind of Hurricane Press, March 2013.  A Murder of Crows named Poem of the Week in Toucan.

Rex Sexton- Three Poems

OUT OF THE PAST

Dark circles under bloodshot eyes,

creases running down the sides of

her mouth, face as pale as any

inmate in jail, those cascades of

golden hair that made men stop

and stare, tangled, unkempt.  She

looked burned out, spent.

“Lorraine,” I almost whispered.

Sensing me, maybe, she looked up

from her drink, saw my reflection

sitting beside her’s in the barroom

mirror just like old times.  She didn’t

blink.

I swallowed hard at the coincidence.

And then she closed her eyes.  This

blast from the past couldn’t last.  She

must have been thinking.  It was a trick

of  the eye, some other guy.

When she opened them I was gone.

I left a fifty next to her whiskey.

I had to pay for my own drunk when

she split on me.

Those cascades of golden hair which

made men stop and stare.

Too hard, too soft, too hot, too cold,

nothing was ever quite right for her.

Goldilocks we really rocked.  I’m

out of here. I wish you luck. 

TAPS

Crawl for cover,

feel death’s finger

slide up your spine

as bullets fly and your

buddies die.

Think of your mother,

brother, sister, father,

lover, your Uncle Sam

who got you into this

jam fighting for your life

in Vietnam.

Tell the rosary on the beads

of sweat that run down your

face, neck.  Turn a deaf ear

to the moans and groans all

around you that send shocks

through your bones.

Now you are alone, wasting

away in a back street cheap room,

shot to shit at sixy-six from all

the bad habits you picked up in

combat: drugging, boozing,

hiding from the enemy which

came to be reality. 

You survived the ambush that

day and many more that came

you way.

But they made you pay.

BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE

I slice through the rain, collar up,

head down, the Regal Street rooftops

blocking the brunt of the onslaught.

The game gets out of hand now and

then, doesn’t it, when you’re living

“free and mean” as they say in the Slam?

Working against time, hard and harder,

and never getting any smarter, you get

to wonder how many nuts you can crack

before they send you back.

The chain link fences, how hard to climb?

The blackened windows with electronic

alarms, the double bolted doors, are you

ready finally?

Look back at the child, hunched and

hungry, gawking at all those glittering

streets paved with money.

The night train has no destination.

I hopped it without hesitation.

Everyone on it heading the same way,

looking out the windows at the years that

disappear, no stops ‘til you get there,

end of the line nowhere.

Fireflies and stars, fields of flowers,

you miss them most when you’re

behind those bars.

Rex Sexton is a Surrealist painter exhibiting in Philadelphia and Chicago.  His short story “Holy Night” received the Editor’s Choice Award in the Eric Hoffer Award competition and was published in Best New Writing 2007.  Recent poems have been published in reviews such as Mobius, The Poetry Magazine, Waterways, Edgz, Ardent and Taproot, recent fiction in Saranac Review, The Long Story, Straylight, Left Curve, Children, Churches and Daddies, Art Times, and Foliate Oak.