Saturday, April 23, 2016
Friday, April 15, 2016
Alan Catlin- Three Poems
A Near Miss with Vincent's
Ear
I figured he
was
following a personal
torrent of
spring
into the bar, a
refugee
from a South
Eastern
Asia range war he
was
still fighting in his
mind
as if he had been
to
the real thing and
in
homage to his
ghost
buffalo soldier
bros,
he had donned
clean
camouflage
fatigues,
a red hair
covering
bandanna and a pair
of aviator glasses
con-
veniently missing
lens
for up close and
personal
seeing the nitty
gritty
of how his latest
scam
was coming
down,
"Check these
out.
This is the kind of
alcohol you should
be
stocking and
drinking.
All the celebs are
doing
it: Tom Jones, Barry
White
Otis Redding, Jim
Croce----"
"You forgot Ricky
Nelson."
"What?" "Never
mind.
Van Gogh Vodka, huh.
What is this?
Flavored
firewater to cut your
ears
off to?""It's what the
Brothers
drink, my man. I don't see
no brothers here, now, do
I?"
"You don't see anyone
here.
Especially with those glasses
on."
"Are you dissrespecting
me?"
"Don't see anyone
else
around to dissrespect so
it
must be
you."
"That's just what I
would
expect from someone
who
'wants to turn the
country
of Yugoslavia into
Otis
Redding'"
"The only country Otis is
turning into these days
is
Atlantis, ten thousand
leagues
under the dock of the
bay."
It was a crappy, mixed
metaphor,
but it seemed to strike a
lot
closer to home base on
Planet
Nine or wherever he
was,
than the Vincent's ear
one,
so I had to label it a
successful
one, as these things
go.
I didn't even have
to
explain to him how
much
better he would be able
to
read his brochures by
street
light, standing on the
double
yellow lines of Western
Avenue
then he could in here
as
I usually did, just
before
dialing
911.
The Other Side
of Nowhere New York
She spent her
time between
Long Island and
Paradise and
he divided his
between New York
and Never
Never Land, their
primary
functions in
life: clubbing, texting,
doping and
screwing, often all at
the same time,
like performers in
a new kind of
Wild Wild West Show
on the Lower
East Side of a depleted
ozone layer in
their brains curdling like
milk left in the
sun so long the smell
was just this
side of Johnny Rotten three
days dead and
unattended, a rankness
that went
unnoticed by everyone that
they came in
contact with, all suffering,
as they were,
from the same kind of disease
of inattention
and excess, all claiming
to know the real
story of what happened
with Syd and
Nancy, how the body double
died and the
happy couple escaped upstate
to do time in
the foothills of the Adirondacks
and the Twilight
Zone.
They Came
Back
The last few
people that came into
the bar were
like characters out of
a Hermann Broch
novel, Sleepwalkers
and circus acts,
side show performers
with their one
trick ponies, their novelty
tricks learned
at the feet of illustrated men,
bearded ladies,
ten penny geeks nothing
was too
degrading for. After awhile it
felt
as if someone
had isolated the bar and
the drinkers, by
drawing a kind of sheet
between them and
the outside world to
show movies on,
creating two dimensions
in one,
overlapping realities almost
indistinguishable, one from the other.
Wee Gee’s off
duty black and white
performers
sipping cocktails at the bar,
images
transposed on their faces of all
those people who
had died now inexplicably
revived, legions
of them parading in the street,
laconic, wan,
non-threatening but intent
on resuming
lives interrupted, lacking only
a vital
animation that made them human once.
Their failure to
interact, to readjust, finally
compelling them
to seek their own kind,
the people
sitting at the bar, drinking as
if there were no
yesterday, no tomorrow,
all of them
listening to music, in silence,
only they can
hear.
Bruce Mundhenke- A Poem
Bats Out of Hell
They came forth from a darkness
No mortal ever knew.
They brought with them
A full grown rage
More intense as it grew.
It simmered for millennia
To perfect them for their time.
Energy unlimited,
Tireless in their cause,
They manifest onto the earth
To work their cruel dark will,
Punishing earth inhabitors,
As they torment, hurt, and kill.
John Pursch- A Poem
John
Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. Twice nominated for Best of the Net,
his work has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his
poetry, Intunesia, is available at http://www.lulu.com/
Admirable
Chesty Numbnuts
Admirable Chesty Numbnuts,
hermaphroditic sailor of the leavened seas, sashays through streams of finest
seasick youth, from bulkhead bilge to boatswain’s bilious bicuspid, lisping
nautical behind mildly concupiscent smile.
Eight bells are ringing, have rung, and
now go silent. Vibratory haze, electric fragment of salt-conditioned life,
immerses us in ambient noise, twelve feet above the rails. Rows of encapsulated
thunder rumble along, speckling deadwood rodeos with our favorite memories,
spilling lifeblood folios in headstrong impetus to varied circumstance unseen.
A dotted climb, parietal chain, holistic
blend of spurning taint to crested chasm, filling gaunt fishermen with webby
tracks of shipyard dusk and looted storefront glass. Sharks caress the ocean
floor with dorsal avenue invention, peaking often silent there beneath the
graying sea-green slide.
Slipping now before theatrics buried,
glimpsed unconscious bravely stumps for everyday impulsive drift of snowbound
bottled fiction, gated cataclysms, conchs in jubilee destruction, fine serrated
pension hearings, flickered fractal lecture notes, and keynote chapel
doorsteps.
Hatches open, closets ooze eternal
choices, belles resell in periodic gaze to casual gazebo trance to bus stop
bottom-numbing set to wicker basketball saloon to tourist dust frenetic whimsy,
bubbled into threaded skew.
Cushioned cashew sings along with
long-departed urchin feet, sipping cool unfrosted melodies in silent dignity of
golden sweat on sun-soaked isles of carousel erosion meat to tawny beachfront
bassinet in thunderhead exfoliation.
Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Three Poems
floral offerings
pallbearers at their places
one eye, still open
six feet under
in my final resting place
worms come a’knocking
beside a burrow
on a wooded bluff
beside the Mississippi
singing hymns of well-being
for that which lives therein
perhaps even a goddess,
yes, the goddess of
some small creatures
ayaz daryl nielsen, veteran, former hospice nurse, ex-roughneck (as on oil rigs) lives in Longmont, Colorado. Editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/130+ issues) with poetry published worldwide, he also is online at: bear creek haiku... poetry, poems and info
Monday, April 11, 2016
Stefanie Bennett- Two Poems
Stefanie Bennett has published several books of poetry & her
poems appear
in Shot Glass Journal, The Provo Canyon Review, Dead Snakes, Ink,
Sweat
& Tears, Pyrokinection & others. Of mixed ancestry
[Italian/Irish/Paugussett-
Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia. Stefanie’s latest
poetry
title “The Vanishing” was published by Walleah Press & is
available from
Walleah, Amazon & Fishpond Books.
REORIENTATION
On the day the sun cried
An epicurean
Semiquaver hung
Above
The good red earth,
The cornflower-blue
Horizon,
The jasmin’s diminutive
Austerity and
The vanquished
Comings and goings
Of providence...
Words, overheard – as
A crop
Of ashes fell...
“It’s the Bee’s Knees
Of B-grade movies
In toto with
VX re-routed
Drone
Escapees’
Hijacked
Hearts.”
Now, did you... do you
From behind
Our cautionary
Catchment
- See
What it is
I see?
WHAT IT TAKES
Back in the days
When ‘grief’
Was ‘good’
The dead-letter
Office
Was known
To rattle
Its
Chains...
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Tricia Marcella Cimera- A Poem
Possessed
It hits me hard
like a fist.
How you walk away
after you say
goodbye.
Suddenly
your step is quick
and light,
your feet rise
above the ground.
You lift towards the
sky that
turns radiant blue
as you look up and
smile.
Then
objects begin to drop
through the air,
discarded
from your turned-out
pockets:
Some of my teeth
tipped with flecks
of your skin/
A smooth fat stone I polished
nightly, my love;
a paperweight
to hold you
down/
My fingernails; they
always
grow back/
And a blood-colored
beating thing
the size of a fist
that screams out
as it
falls
at my feet.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Sunil Sharma- A Poem
Embryos Geo-spatial
The night wanders solitary homeless unloved
Quietly waits for that warm hug
From the separated day, the other side,
Both pulled apart by the earth.
The darkness leaks out of her eyes, solid tears
Wind screams the barren terrain… like that mad woman
in
The famous attic.
The witching hour!
Dreaded!
Attending shades- cold moon- stars
Low whispers bubbling out of an abyss
Heard by a Dante-figure.
It passes but slowly, the terrible stretch.
The welcome chirpings from a waking sky
Morning is here!
Fading night/ incipient day
Thus, the duo meets twice a day:
In a rosy dawn and
Again---in a brief pale-faced dusk.
Both the hours limited, fragile
Like a rose in a vase in a museum.
The trysts--- containing a fusion
Of gloom and brilliance
Night and day embracing/dissolving
Re-forming
In those tiny minutes
That borderline
That vulnerable state of being/un-being.
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Scott Thomas Outlar- A Poem
Adorned
as an Angel/Betrayed with a Bite
Careful
with wishes…
make
them with wisdom
else
the genie let loose
from
the bottle
might
start sucking the juice
from
your veins
like
a snake in the grass…
waiting
to attack
fangs
laced with venom
of
betrayal
serve
as a knife
with
a craving for your side
Stabbed
by the woman
who
said she’d adore you forever
(till
death do us part)
Little
whispers in your ear
come
the evening
herald
the harbinger
for
her bloodlust once scorned
Adorned
with the lips of an angel
but
hidden underneath
are
the teeth
of
a vampire eager to feast
Careful
where you lay your head to rest…
there
are weapons in every word that she hisses
Bio:
Scott
Thomas Outlar spends the hours flowing and fluxing with the
ever-changing currents of the Tao River while laughing at and/or weeping
over life's existential nature. He hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com
where links to his published poetry, fiction, essays, and interviews
can be found. His most recent chapbook "Songs of a Dissident" was
released in 2015 through Transcendent Zero Press and is available on Amazon.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Douglas Polk- Three Poems
A Nightmare
words spoken,
absent of meaning,
questions asked,
only to entrap,
soul less,
heart less,
hypocrites,
and sluts,
lessons not taught to educate,
only to control,
and manipulate,
backdoors encripted,
to rip out the soul,
vulnerability,
and fear,
preached day after day,
society a cult,
lacking both sanity,
and reason,
truth,
once an open sore,
now pus filled,
and encrusted,
scab upon scab,
creating the hierarchy,
and the structure,
of the world today,
the present reality,
six degrees of separation,
from hell itself,
a place created by men,
not by Gods,
scared little men,
lacking both brains,
and vision,
consisting only of ego,
and greed,
from Adams to Obama,
traitors almost every one,
democracy once the reality,
soon to be a fairy tale,
told at bedtime,
so hopeless children,
can pretend to believe,
and attempt to dream,
but the nightmare already begun.
The Teenager
walking on eggs,
day after day,
unsure and unloved,
fear haunts her youthful eyes,
intent on being invisible,
she tries,
and tries,
while the old men laugh,
and shout her name.
An Attack
optic nerves revolt,
black spots,
fall like rain,
other senses heighten,
screams heard,
far,
far away,
her touch painful,
nerve endings howl,
the body under siege,
a massive storm,
of unkown origins,
stops as quickly as it began,
out of breath,
with head throbbing,
prayers said,
for sleep to come.