Denny E. Marshall- Three Poems

Doubt, Doubt

Our love is shining now
Will it shine tomorrow?
Our love is happiness
Will it turn to sorrow?
Your eyes are singing messages
The notes I don’t know
You were catching some signals
That I can’t even throw
Doubt, doubt
What’s it all about

Our trust was a fire
Turned into a glow
We would get high on each other
Now we both feel low
Our faith is breaking
Cracks are starting to show
Have to release the emotion
Have to let them go
The bridge of trust we have
Will it wash out?
Doubt, doubt
What’s it all about


Angel Call

Lost in the woods walking at night
Hoping to find a guiding light
Take a wrong step and you can fall
In the sky, hear an angel call

Life is a storm blowing like sand
Signs can be hard to understand
The answers no one has them all
In the sky, hear an angel call

Pathways can be lonely and dark
The fire can lose magic and spark 
Hear a voice say time to stand tall
In the sky, hear an angel call


Touch of Angel Wings

Never noticed the touch of angel wings
Then felt the unexplained, tap the shoulder
Light plays like magic and the great sky rings
Never noticed the touch of angel wings
Four times saved by the invisible kings
Each time felt the black-robe hand grow colder
Never noticed the touch of angel wings
Then felt the unexplained, tap the shoulder

Michael Keshigian- Three poems

 MIGRAINES

 

Microscopic migrant Martian workers

inhabit my skull,

though their exact location is a mystery,

yet I believe them to be

a nomadic tribe of insolent invaders

constantly building

in the blood vessels of my brain,

bulldozing platelets,

back hoeing plasma

and blasting capillary walls

from the cranial dome

to the base of my neck

and forward to the temples,

paving and leveling

while hammering mercilessly

in an attempt to reconstruct

my Earthly perception,

though they cease their efforts

for a day or two

en route to another site

when their task begins again

with the heavy rumble of work

weighing profoundly upon

my sensibilities,

curtailing my progress

as the constant pounding

begins to create slight fissures

upon my scalp

and a red planet hue

in my eye.

 

 

 

RADIO SIGNALS

 

Expressed as tinnitus

most professionals profess

is a ringing in the ears

induced by stress

and a number of other

environmental tendencies.

It’s said,

that rambunctious mechanisms

and music too loud

can destroy the drums

in the ear canal,

ingesting caffeine

is a culprit as well,

its special buzz

instigates the ears

to incessantly trill

a variance of frequencies

very high to low,

white noise or static

is the common explanation.

 

The more sophisticated

prefer to refer

to the affliction

as auditory acuity ,

much above the norm,

an ability to detect

signals and radio transmissions

of interplanetary discussions,

meant for only few to hear,

with discourse duly noted,

received day and night,

lengthy conversations,

concerning universal plight,

divulging invaluable insight

when the messages

are decoded.

MIDNIGHT MOLT

 

Meditatively I sit

upon the verandah

during cold, dark moments

after midnight

 

as dim shimmering moonbeams

cast decadent silhouettes

of shadowy branches on the wall

which silently undulate in a gentle breeze

 

and with snake like precision

entangle my hair

with needle tip fangs

to penetrate delicately

 

the recesses of my brain

and charm stubborn words

with unforgiving thoughts

nocturnal in nature

 

from out the lair

to inscribe upon fresh molt

a venom which devours

the unsuspecting prey.

 

 

 

Michael Keshigian’s ninth poetry book, Dark Edges was recently released this September, 2014 by Flutter Press.  He has been widely published in numerous national and international journals and appeared as feature writer in over a dozen publications with 5 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)

David S. Pointer- Three Poems

space gasoline
made with spinal fluid
from the beheaded



sky terrorists
all the tiny planets
have the most oil



red planet dog tag
stamped on roboforehead
near last rite psalm


About the Author: David S. Pointer has recent acceptances for Chiron Review,  Dead Snakes, Main Street Rag, Kind of a Hurricane Press, Section 8 magazine and many others. David’s most recent horror poetry book is entitled “Beyond Shark Tag Bay.”

J.D. DeHart- Three Poems

When the Tigers Died

 

She watched their movements with her

almond eyes, full of sand and water,

worshipping them, loving them

until the last one collapsed

in its winding way across the grass-stitched

plain, then decided she must be the one.

She set about her plan, putting first the paws

on, then the tail and mask,

practicing her growl,

but sadly the effect was just not the same.

 

 

I Was the Machine Who

 

Washed your laundry today with a smile

Spat out three cups of coffee, perfect brew

Solved the quadratic equation with a crayon

Strode the line between maintaining attention

and committing offense

Defined the word transgression

Told you to stop cussing so much

A whirling, twirling dervish

of human and mechanical cyborg behavior

Mr. Solution, Mr. Fix-It, Mr. Gloss-Over-It

Mr. Trust-Me-Really, I know the answers.

 

 

Supermarket

 

Hi, how are ya, he intones

each time someone passes, while turning

the white fish samples in his small circle

of oily heat

It took me all day to realize

he was a robot, serving up toothpicks.

Denny E. Marshall- Art

                                                                   Dark Night


Bio
Denny E. Marshall has had art and poetry published, some recently. He does have a website with previously published works. The web address is www.dennymarshall.com. He also has a “Guest Artist Page” on his dot net site if any artist would like to submit. (See Guidelines)

Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Three Poems

the hounds within my poetry

  

These howling hounds in my poetry.

Who are they?  The hounds who love poetry.

Why are they howling?  The love hounds

of poetry, it’s their laughter, the laughter of 

love hounds, this howling in my poetry.

Big Bang Kitchens

Ingredients within transcendent

possibilities for beginnings

Fetal celestial shrouds clinging

to unforeseen out-breaths

 

Without script or method, infinite 

recipes for unimaginable awakenings.

There are lakes of emerald waters

where harbingers soak their feet -

I can hear their long sad sighs.

ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/120+ issues), homes include Lilliput Review, Jellyfish Whispers, UFO Gigolo, Shamrock, and! bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre)

Martin Dale & Tim Gardiner- One line haiku

 

Orion rising in a dawn sky - the Equinox beckons       Martin Dale

the Plough swings across a cold sky - winter's seed sown         Tim Gardiner

 

Jon Bennett- Three Poems

Retriever

The gods let me
run to the store
to get her beer
and mac and cheese
and down to pill corner
to get her her shit
but they won’t let me
tell her I love her.
They whisper in my ear
because that’s what gods do,
“Lap dog you may be,
but be careful
to whom
you pray!”
 


The Culling of the White Deer Herd
at Point Reyes National Seashore

They cull the deer today

make a pyre of gathered bones
flames extinguished
hunters' smiles
antler piles.
Between the points
remembrance sleeps
a sweating boy
a foggy hill
one white stag
its thorny crown -
now sleep memory
before I weep
the white deer
are all put down.
 


Just Around the Corner

I walked home

by a different route,
down Washington instead of Clay.
There was a  beautiful church I never saw before.
I've lived in this neighborhood forever
but a block away from a street I know
is one I don't.
I know that's the truth,
but it's  still hard to get my head around.
It started sprinkling
as I passed a little playground on Nob Hill.
Two women were in there
just messing around
and it struck me
grown ups
playing on monkey bars
in the rain
is beautiful.

 

Bio: Jon Bennett is a Pushcart nominated poet and musician living in San Francisco's Chinatown. His novel "The Unfat," sci-fi about autism and obesity, is available on Amazon.

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

Space Invaders

They cruised into the bar

as if they'd been tripping

the light fantastic on some

Trans Siberian Railway of

the mind so totally fried,

their frayed filthy clothes

and near shoulder length hair

was singed at the loose ends

giving off a scent like over-

wrought skunk and death.

They were so obviously unwell

and primed for inappropriate

social behavior, I asked them

for their Red Cards, a request

that briefly slowed them down

to a near halt, "Red Cards?"

"Yeah, they're like Green Cards

or Alien Resident ID's only

these are for Space Invaders

from potentially hostile planets."

"Space Invaders?"

"Yeah, like the video game.

You must have heard of it, they

were popular in the last century,

right around the time you guys

were last straight and sober."

The look they gave me suggested

they didn't think what I was saying

was funny.  The look I was giving

them suggested I wasn't trying to be.                                    

Space Junkies

If it were Halloween, these guys

would have fit right in or even

if it had been New Year’s Eve or

Mardi Gras and they had been on

the way to some end of the world

as we know it party, but it was none

of those, not the kind of place that

dressing like Gary Glitters, Ziggy

Stardust  clones on some kind of

Velvet Goldmine club quest,

ostentatiously pierced all about their

bodies, tacky make up and costume

clothes like stiff out of Harper’s Bizarre,

Warhol’s Pandora Box wardrobe, body

art by some demented freak on speed

with a butcher’s knife instead of a tattooist’s

tools, the only discernible images, death

cultist symbols and the leader of the pack’s

Gothic lettered phrase” PISS FACTORY,

forming a semi-circle around his navel,

all of them stoned to the gills and clearly

hostile, in need of sedatives to slow

the virtual China syndrome chemical mix

threatening to flatline their vital organs,

close their bodies down, the take-me-to-

your-leader gesturing at the barman,

pointing at the back bar high octane rocket fuel

bottles, waving fifty dollar bills as an attention

getting aid, trying to bridge a considerable

language gap with guttural noise making

and even more frantic waving, succeeding

only in creating an image of Euro trash on tour,

way lost on some highway to hell they were

building as they went, oblivious to their

surroundings and determined to stay that way.

 

You could say

he was a tad

eccentric, used

to go into

McDonald's,

order up a Big

Mac cut into

four pieces &

have them wrapped

individually, makes

you wonder doesn't

it? I'm still not sure    

what was odder,

the demand or

fulfilling his request

without so much

as an eyelid flutter

though you could see

the counter people

thinking and would

you like some double

thick shakes for the long

ride home in your

space ship

John Pursch- Three Poems

Crab Line Falsity

Tatters slip through foisted shingles,

scanned by never-pending cribbage panning expedition capsules,

stumping hourly automat attendants into stuttered parlor voices,

sycophantic to be spurned by manly hose machine geese.

How does sanitary soothing dial emotion quotient valuation

ever hope to glide from looping trainer lunges

all the swayback temperature to cold-cocked avian revival blurbs

in checkered publican reports of hemorrhoidal carpools?

Brownies motion for fumbled sundaes,

sprinkling boatswain shorts with touched nuts,

betel seclusion, and nurtured luminaries.

Counting drowning as a sedulous din,

giggling turtles pose for shellfish tease charades,

plotting the overture to any of an underhanded fault line’s searing mother,

drained to ripened pea pod shekels.

Aft and homespun knicker bloggers barricade the dressy plants

in pickled doomsday attributes of deities and known sardine calligraphy,

zooming through the teeming sands to antsy hip-lock chugger sinks,

spoiling baleful island locos.

Snorts defrock collation comrades,

flopping cramped insteps in doorway fractal gutter beer.

Tiny igneous carriers inflect each sentient pause

with chic designer insect highs, instantly seducing

tanned involuntary pseudo broth for life.

Only toes who covet closet incremental snores could possibly impute

to baffle fever dwellers of enthusiastic cerebellar jump rope maxima,

bent on scarcely postulated hex duel oblongata pith

or otherwise entrained by serial demurral.

He mumbles pagination treats at pausing stumpers,

cropping frost in verisimilitude’s longing for stolen Mata Hari cowlicks,

dousing the river with casting guile.

She’s locked in crab line falsity,

storming past a house fly on training wheels,

bent on pellucid tantrum government by the papal furor’s popular decree.

Gravel Intuition

Tea relapsed to salad coffers,

finned with textual recumbent seas

of public reprimand and retroactive percolation snubs,

snugly frittered from palmed publicans who trifle in forensic solstice.

Flyboys scorched an auteur’s

sampled outer townhome’s durable retirement stem,

punctuating heavenly waitress spins with soiled comma haddock theses,

purloined from beachfront solipsists on nude retrenchment Ferris surveys,

gone weighty subsequent to coral hermitage decrees

of pilaf souffle emery secretion gifts.

Schoolhouse stockyard flambeau electioneers

pontificate on effluence in jaundiced opposition,

highly brewed for sleeping bag premonition matrix seduction,

scrunched to fetal armpit hollows by cortical retracement fuzz.

Booing dirt espouses twinge resection’s fearsome dribble beat,

caving only at the slightest highball’s fulgent coverall contusion,

wafted steadily from portholes of an offshore canker.

Gophers lord a henchman’s penultimate surfeit

of bleached parameter sedation over cursive signatories,

bonking before hinterland effusion footfalls.

Bobbled babies pluralize,

habituate to halfway goofy anthill eaves,

and ship cartoon snatchers into lifelong sentience

with outer mullet airway holsters,

pinching guff in awful clubfoot probability nozzles.

Froth returns from annual hardship punk,

dotting viability’s sepulcher with tonsil news

of corn march vigil underwear, creases of a timed crusade,

and stipulated antiseptic teeth, rushing to be green.

Squad choirs snake off into college bumper crust

of loan dime succor tease, concubine munificence,

and dialed remorseless samovars of wrought saliva,

frozen chords, and looping gravel intuition.

Cosmic Egret News

Ewers lap the sloping lyre,

phoning home to titular umbrella munchkins,

soaked in cough trough acne credo kitsch

from Naugahyde assembly panters.

Pythons corroborate the rheostat’s tickling causation flue,

adoring adumbration’s petticoat membranes.

Lancers tried by the skein of explanatory cygnet cringers

abide in tidal immolation trysts,

squelching solid gawkers with crawling rice militia bolts

and leonine detergent heroes.

Some need musical undertows of cribbage fare

and bonded purity’s warm spatula,

frilled with foolish fog bank flatulence,

foppish watchman steam, and sybaritic merriment,

won by sharpened ball peen humpback noggin raps,

bumpy shed repeater copies of catwalk prison imposition,

and seashore crooning bellowed deep into the natal piety

of evening armchair kisses.

Others shamelessly peruse the scatological catalogs

of inline scorn and jubilation’s tawdry disembarkment skewer,

helping the condemned in dwarfed evisceration panoplies

of poplar pestilence gone sour in burly April cadences,

twisting savage shoals from bayside gruel

to scattered sunrise dumping fawns in bifurcating seasonal circuses.

Toying with mulish enmity,

anonymous brokers sigh and pelt the passing train

with braying eel skin clothiers, coughing up caboose contents,

smudging seditious cockpit loins with prized perpendicular stubble,

sworn to haberdashery by a gloomily emphatic nasal bumpkin’s filial commode.

Excursions from manhole covenants reveal plated sweep days

of cosmic egret news and teary flyboy circumstance,

pitting soaring pock mark joy against a stolen applecart’s hubristic demolition,

all for geegaws of monocle bemusement bricks,

fluttering to August in a syllable’s tawny moan.

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.

Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Three Poems

new moon peeking

through gossamer clouds -

the convalescent 

space pilot waits

within his yearning

(above poem appeared in scifaikest's August 2012 issue)

a long day on

the assembly line -

my soaking tank

filled with hot lubricant

almost to the brim

(above poem appeared in scifaikuest's Feb 2012 issue)

Good Hunting

As I stride this busy cobblestone 

road on my way to a surprise bash deep

in Darkening Forest, ravens perched upon

lightning-decimated remnants of the old

hanging tree chortle “good evening, good

evening,” a huli jing in human form with

long red hair, a thick luscious tail and a

sensuous smile undulates across the road-

way in front of me licking her lips as our 

eyes meet and I would choose to follow her,

but, “good evening, good evening!” from

the dwarves sitting beside the roadway,

belongings in their broad backpacks and

fear across their faces, and a “you’re late,

you’re late, for a very important scrape!”

insists an upright marmot holding a time-

piece as he scurries by...finally!! - the 

thirteen foot (and some few inches) dire-

ogre, its four arms with taloned hands

swinging assorted deadly weapons snarls

“good eating, good eating” as it leaps toward me

from the shadows of a weeping willow’s drooping

branches - I block a descending spiked mace

with my titanium razor-sword by shearing through

the waist-thick forearm, dodge the venomous spear-

shaped tongue flashing past my face and counter

with a slash across the protruding lipless lower jaw

shearing off 3 of 8 two-foot incisors while spitting

chewing tobacco into the beast’s flat, fist-sized right

nostril (note: I am not fond of chewing tobacco, but

as we all know, tobacco spittle forced up dire-ogre

nasal passages - both nostrils is best, but one works

well enough - inevitably results in a berserk, unfocused

desire to maim, mutilate and dismember all nearby

flesh and bone plus a tree or two) engage the three

remaining arms, the lower right arm swinging a tree

limb, the upper left jabbing with splintered remains 

of a circus tent pole, tattered flags still attached (one

has to wonder where that came from) and continue to

evade the ever-flailing forked tongue as I yell to the

ravens circling low overhead and the lovely red fox

peeking from a wild forget-you-never bush, “now this,

my friends” - parry, slash, cut - “this, friends” - scrotum

kick, stab - “this” - whack, screeeech! - “is good hunting!”

ayaz daryl nielsen, husband, father, veteran, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/120+ issues), homes include Lilliput Review, Jellyfish Whispers, Writing the Whirlwind, Shamrock, and! bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.com (translates as joie de vivre)