Scott Thomas Outlar- Two Poems

 

A River Between Us

  

Bleed into me

Bleed upon me

Bleed for me

Bleed with me

Bleed heaven down to earth

Bleed fire up from hell

Bleed the sorrow out

Bleed the heart dry

Bleed this love to death

Bleed this vein wide open

Bleed your lies

Bleed your fake smile

Bleed that serpent’s fangs

Bleed this wine

Bleed the glass

Bleed the bottle

Bleed our kiss

Bleed this bite

Bleed your lips

Bleed our sex

Bleed your rag

Bleed your anger

Bleed your frustration

Bleed my ears

Bleed my soul

Bleed my entrapment

Bleed my slavery

Bleed my grave

Bleed my tears

Bleed your apple

Bleed your temptation

Bleed your sin

Bleed it all again

Garden Games 

Just…being…pushed

to the edge

and then cracking

Just…being…lost

in the high

of the venom

Just…being…stormed

at the gates

near to heaven

Just…being…wronged

all over

again

Just…wanting…more

than has

been given

Just…taking…all

that is fair

within reach

Just…being…god

all alone

for a moment

Just…coming…down

to laugh

at the fall

Scott Thomas Outlar dwells in spaces of simplicity, spending the hours sleeping, eating, reading, researching, walking, listening to music, thinking about various things, trying to figure it all out, realizing there are no answers, continuing anyways to ask more questions, listening to music, gazing at stars, drinking cheap wine, and writing prose-fusion poetry, essays and fiction dedicated to the Phoenix Generation.  Scott can be reached at 17Numa@gmail.com.

 

Richard Schnap- A Poem

WHEN THE LIGHT FADES

I have known men
That life has turned
Into naked shadows

Like sidewalk beggars
With voices that echo
From somewhere far away

They wander alone
Down empty highways
To find themselves

As they feel the touch
Of a cold wind’s caress
Like the kiss of a ghost

But in the merciful night
When no one’s around
They can forget their wounds

As they fall into sleep
To harbor sweet dreams
Of being children again

Paul Tristram- Three Poems

A Little Ode To Destruction

The dogs got a-hold of him
in the undergrowth
at the other side of the field,
upon the edge of woodland.
Stinking of petrol
whilst laughing and crying
at exactly the same time.
They let the hounds play
with him for a minute or two,
then threw him forcefully
into the back of the van.
He twisted his neck
in exertion and excitement
trying to savour each fleeting,
last glimpse of the flames
leaping lovingly out
through the upper windows
and exploding rooftop
of the derelict mental hospital
disappearing behind
and to the left.
As the van pulled out
of the muddy lane
and onto the open road
leaving the Fire Brigade
to fight his
‘Little Ode To Destruction’
It had been a good run,
he thought wickedly
to himself with delight.
13 in all and each more
magnificent than the last one.
He felt a glow of pride inside
as he reached down
to his grubby wet right sock,
removed 2 cello-taped matches,
expertly struck and set alight
to his fuel soaked trouser cuffs.

© Paul Tristram 2014

January’s Anger

She sat in the wooden shelter
overlooking Gyllyngvase Beach
in the Winter’s late afternoon.
Young and only in her thirties
but wearing a scarf around her head
like ‘old ladies do’ to protect
their freshly ‘just done’ hair
on their walks to bingo.
Yet, she was doing the opposite
……….hiding……….
Make-up thick and brilliant,
avert your ‘curious eyes’ strong,
oblong, sharp angled pretty face
both intelligent and scared.
She hummed snippets of song tunes
to herself as the cold rain lashed
against her in cruel, accusing bursts
whispering long lost fragments
of distant past conversations
“We’re all cracked plates and all that!”
After exactly 3 hours of condemning
herself to merciless element battering
she wandered slowly home
still miles and miles lost inside.
To stand steaming wet in the kitchen
peeling a pear, sobbing, transfixed
and chanting the word ‘Escape’
Endlessly, Tirelessly and Remorselessly.

© Paul Tristram 2014

Heart Smashed Black/Blood Red Dynamite

She wobbled unsteadily at the end of the bar
still wearing Saturday Night’s war paint
on a bleak and unforgiving Wednesday afternoon.
All…Eyes…Feelings…and…Intensity!
Wincing another neat whisky down
like she was double-daring suicide to show its face.
The sickly, sweet aroma of debauchery,
vulnerableness and desperate longing
which she cast off with each careless shrug
was amongst many other curious things
intriguingly intoxicating and euphoric.
She thoughtlessly looked my way
and made it worse, I mean better, No I mean both!
In an almost half barbaric growing yelp
I ordered a tray of 13 straight up  Old No. 7’s,
banged the first one home to roost
and traipsed my inebriated swagger on over.
Introduced myself with lies and cigarettes
and promised her nothing but company
upon the morrow’s battlefield of shame and uncertainty.
She bade me to a shadowy, alcove table
where we sealed the agreement with a sloppy kiss,
instantaneously becoming 24 hour ‘Partners In Grime.’

© Paul Tristram 2014



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/

 

Tim Gardiner- A Poem

Death Row

Shovelling canine shit from kennels by day

by night watching thousands frittered away.

In the back room of the lair pre-show

wails of spindly greyhounds on death row.

Picking you up from the sandpit’s bend

knowing your shattered leg will never mend.

A lethal injection delivered by solemn vets

dead eyes rolled open in sunken sockets.

The final twitch of those brittle legs

suggests that life is not extinguished yet.

But you shall never see another ‘hare’

that imposter on the running wire.

Or hear the finishing line’s raucous din

from ghouls who have bet on your ‘win.’

 

 

Pijush Kanti Deb- A Poem

Me And My Demon
             
Me and the demon in me-
the childhood friends,
wrap everyone
that comes closer to us
with an ensnaring story of
‘’Eldorado’’- the golden dreamland.
I relate
and all become paralyzed
on my hanging and swinging bad,
I welcome my demon-
waiting eagerly in me,
I relate and he kisses,
I dance and he sucks.
The story reaches its climax
when the stony listeners are dropped
out of my bad-
bloodless and useless
for another inevitable devilish cycle
for the two successful pair
in observing the law of nature
showing my upside down thumb
to all synthetic moralities of life.

Donal Mahoney- Three Poems

Leprechauns in Pop's Fedora

For years leprechauns lived 

under Pop’s fedora.

They danced jigs on his head

when he wore it

and hid in his ears

when he took it off

to scratch his head 

then jumped back up 

to dance a few reels

when he took it off 

for another good scratch.

Leprechauns dancing 

confused my mother.

She thought Pops

had ringworm or lice

and should see a doctor.

The attendant said no 

ringworm or lice but said 

Pop might look odd 

wearing a hat in his coffin.

Thoughts While Waiting in the ER

You thought you knew her.

She thought she knew you.

Neither was true

but this happens at times

at Happy Hour on Fridays

after a long week of work.

The rapport was strong.

Amazing, you thought.

She might be someone

you’d see more than once.

She had a nice apartment

or maybe it was a condo

a big double bed

with a canopy yet.

You slept soundly until

the key in the door

and from the other pillow

you heard a whisper,

“He’s not expected

until late next week.”

In the Mood

We're going dancing, my wife and I, 

to a Charity Ball high in the sky where

Glenn Miller's band has been playing 

since 1944, the year his plane got lost 

over the English Channel.

No wreckage was ever found,

not a single body.

Glenn Miller was going to France 

to play for American troops 

during World War II.

Government records say 

he's still "missing in action."

Maybe so, but I hate to go dancing, 

even with music by Glenn Miller.

So I told my wife I'll go if she

can find a dress as red

as the one she wore in 1956 

when Father Hennessy said,  

"This is a prom. Not burlesque."

A slip of a girl back then,

she made things worse 

with black seamed nylons.

All the rage back then, the nylons  

disturbed the padre.

But if my wife can find a bright red dress

and a pair of black seamed nylons,

I'll wear the old seersucker suit

I bought at Macy's for the prom. 

It goes real well with the "duck tie"

I found "on sale" for 50 cents  

at the Army Surplus store.

Father Hennessy loved that tie.

Even now I can hear him bellow,

"That tie's so wide the ducks 

will fly for 50 years to cross it."

How prescient the padre was. 

 

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Linda M. Crate- Three Poems

once friend

i'm sorry more than ever
now that i lost you
you were one of my favorite
weirdos,
and though there may be
other weirdos in my
life now
no one could ever take your place;
you are one of a kind,
a diamond a magic that cannot be
replicated
because you were so full of youness
and so much was in your
muchness—
i cry because i miss you
sincerely doubt
you feel the same and that is within your
rights because i know i hurt you;
and i am sorry more than ever
that you're gone,
because there's so many things i've wanted
to tell you and so many things i wanted to share—
but all is left of you
is the memories i have and all this
longing in my heart
that we were still friends.



forever gone

i remember once
walking into
that club with you
i lost my inhibitions and
got buried in the music
there were no suns or moons or stars
to reflect their light upon me
i apparently shone with
my own magic
burned with my own light
because you looked at me with awe,
and i don't remember particularly
being beautiful that night
just losing myself
in the music and you marveled at
how i did;
and i laughed insisting i like music—
i still do,
but whenever i listen to kate bush or dir en grey
or vnv nation i am reminded of you
who told me scars were beautiful
i have now learned that lesson,
and i can see the beauty of scars but it's a pity
i had to learn that lesson
when there's so many oceans between us
and likely you'll be forever gone
from me.



dizzying vertigo

it's always hard for me to let go
i think it's because i never
truly do
i always love
even when it cuts like a knife, even
when it's hard;
long after i've been forgotten,
and i don't know what to do with the shards
of friendships dead—
all i know for certain is i miss you
i felt like i was taken for
granted,
and i hurt you;
i hate being the monster that threw your
light into darkness
if only for a moment
because you were one of the few weirdos
that understood me and ever cared
when no one else stood by me
you did—
i hate that i just drove you away
maybe i'm a masochist
just opening up my own heart
so i can bleed
one more time the dizzying vertigo can
actually be beautiful.

Katherine Wilson- A Poem

“Love”

 Love is like a penitentiary

Prison walls to hold hostage

While the feast is scarce

It is the spice of life

The flavor is delicate and sweet

Yet the bitter blindfolded surrender may be ripped upon release

Love holds you steady but shifted, calm yet breaking

Keeps the body and mind in check and the heart in stitches

Contradictory messages to the head from the hands undeclared

While writing countless letters to the one who has denied it all

The unreturned calls

The pilling pen marks on my hands

Ink wasted

While in prison you only get one way out

Maybe that is how love should be

If you were not on the other end of the line I would not call

Let me out let me out

Trapped and confined I drown in love

I am here to stay

You are the convict making my own cell

Why am I trapped yet you are free

Love becomes the shackles on your legs yet light like air

You are the flame of the furnace in the hearth

Yet the wildfire wiping out the town

Engulfing entire escapades

Drowning decades of decisions

Capturing convicts

I am your convict trapped in a flame of leftover love

My prison is the scrap pile yet the pedestal is reserved for one.



Bio: Younger writer from North Carolina, her love of poetry from a young age has prompted her to write poetry in her free time hoping others would find the same kind of joy that she does.
 

David S. Pointer- A Poem

Corporate Agenda Tin Shields

Oppressor class college professors
were teaching students to celebrate
diversity everywhere except inside
working class, poor white economic
exclusion, Cindy was appalled and
told her older brother Bubbie what
was transpiring on Campuses then
Bubbie responded by purchasing six
more firearms, ammunition, plus
reloading equipment and range time
before turning on corporate radio
for his drive to work serving on
the thin blue line being told which
neighborhoods the dragons lived in
and whose military tanks would
keep tucking everyone in at night

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                                                               Stephen Jarrell Williams