Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Three Poems

the vast seas

of far Kleptonia

earthlings as bait

on trolling lines

I

go

where my

ship takes me

said just before he

forgets to secure his lifeline

my green antennae waving

hello in the air, my green antennae -

and your green antennae, too!

ayaz daryl nielsen, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/125+ issues), homes for poems include Lilliput Review, SCIFAIKUEST, Dead Snakes, Shamrock, Kind of a Hurricane, and!  online at  bear creek haiku  poetry, poems and info

Denny E. Marshall- Art

                                                               The Orphan

Jeffrey Park- Three Poems

BURNING

The thing was burning on the rocky mountainside.
The flames and the smoke had drawn us up
the slope to be witnesses to the conflagration,
to stand in the shifting light until our hands

and faces were blackened and blistered by the heat,
to watch it slowly collapse in on itself,
to listen to its warbling, otherworldly death cries,
to be ready to tell people afterwards that there was

a great sharp-smelling burning up on the mountain
where there had been nothing before but stone and scrub,
that some strange alien thing had appeared on this day,
burning, as if that was what it had come for.



FLOATING CRAPS

You go about your mundane
existences, and we observe you

though we have no optical organs –
listen to your thoughts, speech, howls

though we have no auditory nerves –
cherish, pity, despise you

though we have neither emotions
nor empathy nor sense of curiosity.

You are not aware, do not dream of us,
which is all to the good.

Your minds would shut down.

We take you, your little organic lives,
and we shake and rattle you,

and blow on you – gently, in a purely
hypothetical way – just for luck,

and cast you onto a closed timelike surface

just to see if we can make infinity
the hard way.



GIANT STEPS

While you struggle to drag
yourself up out of gravity’s slime
I stride across solar systems,
my feet tearing filmy atmospheres,
comets tangled in my hair.
I draw a fierce lungful of vacuum,
endlessly calculating,
gathering myself for a leap,
fighting to find a precarious balance
as galaxies tilt and reel
and dark matter rings like a bell.

 

 

 

Bio: Jeffrey lives in Goettingen, Germany where he is Lecturer for Scientific English at the Georg-August-Universitaet. Links to his writing can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com 

 

Denny E. Marshall- Art

                                                              Victim's Road

Alan Catlin- Three Poems

In another life

after this one

he might have a

calling as a

stand-up comic

in the manner of

Lenny Bruce using

that nasally

inflected voice,

that unmistakable

from the borough

ascent to emphasize

caustic points,

barbs that touched

the quick of the

human condition,

though in this life

he was stuck in

a perpetual monologue

without purpose or

meaningful direction

other than the usual

paranoid delusions

about alien implants

in his penis and

extra voice boxes

in his throat like

the one that is

expounding now about

the latest invasion of

seeing eye dogs for

the blind being

escapees from landing

crafts, sending silent

coded messages like-

Take Me to Your Leader-

or else something only

he can hear which takes

on new meaning as

the regular blind couple

and their dogs take their

seats just up the aisle,

giving instructions to

the bus driver about

where to stop that

must have sounded like

a live documentary

scripting of a War of

the Worlds he was an

unwilling participant in.

Mars 21-12

I was down in the City on a job

and decided to check out this place

everyone was talking about: Mars 21-12.

It's either a sign of the times for a

New Millennium or an alien invasion;

the prices they get for stuff made me

think it wasn't an alien invasion:

ten bucks for a cheeseburger,

eighteen ninety-five for a Caesar Salad,

eight bucks for a Heineken.

I was afraid to find out what they

were getting for a good Imported beer. 

I guess they had to pay for all

the overhead that went into getting

the place up to grade somehow;

all those greeters dressed up like

Ziggy Stardust on a bad hair day,

gay waiters who thought they were

Iggy Pop when he could go shirtless

and have gotten his glitter on his eye

shadow and not be embarrassed

that his shadow and lip gloss clashed.

Maybe, that's why he had such an attitude:

no one told him about his color co-ordination

until he was on the floor and by then it

was too late. All I could think of saying was:

Ain't Life a Bitch…but it would be lost on him.

It was pretty easy to see though, once your

eyes got adjusted to the black lighting,

that the place had been a disco re-decorated

to fit the outer space theme. I could imagine

the spinning lunar orbs as flashing strobes

high lighting every move John Ravolta

made on the spray painted dance floor

where all  the mushroom pods masquerading

as table tops were now.  One thing never

changes though, The Men's Room.

It was something out of the dark ages,

one of those trough things no one would

question if you put up one of those historical

signs above it that said:

George Washington Pissed Here.

Still, it was kind of weird taking a piss

next to some guy who looked like the

David Bowie space creature without

his human disguise on, from A Man Who

Fell to Earth.  I could easily see the owners

going Big Time with the idea for this place:

Mars 21-12-The Restaurant, The Movie,

The Cheeseburger, but they won't get me

to go for it again. I've already paid my dues,

Big Time.

                                       for "Whitey"

 

 

 

Planet Weird

could have been the sure

fire best selling logo/catch

phrase for his new line of

Spring fashions. He was

the poster child for mean

& lean, cool & collected

behind stylin' wraparounds,

women's underwear headgear,

black torso fitting muscle

shirt, black leather jacket

& all the gold this side of

Fort Knox to complete

the ensemble.  Orders himself

a nice Tanqueray & Cranberry

with two cherries & two orange

slices, “For my health food

know what I mean? “Covers

his glass with a paper napkin,

forming a kind of tent he can

stick a straw through & drink

trying to avoid white germs &

such, one presumes, though I

must admit to a moment of

curiosity about the roll of

quarters he needs with his

change, smiling like some kind

of Samuel L Jackson badass

Shaft clone. I thought about

sharing one of my once upon

a time cop stories, about using

rolled coins for a weapon, my

friend was of the opinion that

dimes do the job better, as long

as you don't make the mistake

of putting your thumb inside

the fist, that was a surefire way

to a fractured finger, but I thought

better of it. Maybe he was just

going to use the coins in a

Laundromat but somehow I couldn't

complete that picture with him in it.

I watched as he stood to finish off

his cocktail-framed against intense

late afternoon sun, complimenting

his already major aura/glow.

I thought he must have been team

leader for task force planet weird

scoping the joint for rest stop

possibilities. 

Mark Fleury- Two Poems

There’s Nowhere For The Color

There’s nowhere for the color

Of my subtle body’s skin

To go, and it can’t be replicated

On a flag or a veil.

But it can be bruised,

Like an ocean’s dusk 

Is that thin, and seen from

The gland, the third

Kaleidoscopic eye. Maybe loved ones 

Form a collage of photos on the wall 

Of your cubicle; maybe it’s the babies

Who drive your second sight;

A place for your inner voice to be held 

Like a child, winged and joyful. 

Service to our nation might leave you

Sleeping on concrete, until your white spaceship 

Takes you away. And even if things

Don’t seem to be in the right places,

Maybe your third eye becomes the ship:

You hold on tight as it flies

You over a parking lot of Christmas trees. 

It’s About to Rain

It’s about to rain in the backseat of my car.

The roof has become the sky and my eyelids 

Keep trying to blink through all of the sunrises

Of my past while I look through the rearview mirror

At the drenching ladder against the cliff’s edge.

Now that everything can happen in my car,

The very heart of separation from God,

Greased by lies, compresses my throat

That’s in the back of my spare-tired trunk,

So that all of the human voices

That lack rhythm can open and keep

The evolution of all vehicles into 

Solar Ships moving forward. 

The organ donation helicopters

All carry the heart of the Angel 

Aboard, finally, the One Solar Ship’s Pyramid.

The landing pads

On the tops of the hospitals, this diamond world, 

Spin with threadbare wind,

Revealing the valleys and mountains,

That weaves your eyebrows,

Threaded to their center

Off the ladder’s top.

Babies’ lives are saved there

From the bottoms of lakes,

Spared through a sand grain’s Doorway

Seen by a passing fish.

Scales fused to the glowing

Centers of the light bulbs 

That illuminate a raven trapped 

In the basement of an exhale. 

Mark Fleury lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He has recently had poems published in VEXT Magazine, Counterexample Poetics, Clockwise Cat, Of / With, Down in the Dirt, Altpoetics, and Experiential Experimental Literature. His most recent book of poems, The Precious Surreal Door Opened was published by The Medulla Review Publishing in 2014. Mark's first three books, published between 2010 and 2012 through Scars Publications and Design, are scheduled to be published in 2015 as a one book trilogy entitled Seeing Strangers. 

 

John Pursch- Three Poems

Tungsten Midriff

  

They swap oratory quarries,

spouting elephant delays till

dappled moonrise bends the sullen shills

in dishcloth travesties of spoon erasure,

shifting crescendos into sidecar snouts.

Revolutionaries style a shelf

from lettuce neckline voyages

before habitual informants

crop the whaler’s oily tease,

lining doormat bandwagons

for snaking sweet pea double cinders.

Our flavors cite looping centipede excursion drifts

of steaming snow in showered headline brazier tires,

billowed into foreign rubber stench

and undertow repudiation.

Miniscule kite fires chase a chowder piper band

from chambered ridge to sutured regatta stairs,

drowned to tungsten midriff scat’s

immutable predictor net.

Peduncular Pinocchio

Hairy aristocrats tremble

blinkered Morse code noise

in squeaky grommet alibis,

ruining her retrofit

of dowager revival.

Smaller loops release

six parachutes from

expurgated diction fairs,

padlocking peduncular Pinocchio

in gyrating gymnasium grails

till camels opt for grassy dolts

in overtaxed asylum pleas.

Coffers belch extreme police

in fuse resurgence,

sapping insipid oddities

for sacrificial hambone ballast.

Feebly shelled beanbag zealots

morph to reprobates of third-tier

stentorian gargoyle chard,

muffing the sodden keg hop

in satyr turf toe switchback toil,

respite all but carrying a teased

optometrist’s slender squid.

Cheeto Mink

Shouldering softly shorn

municipal bust lines,

crowds of swollen faces

trudge annually to silvered vents,

grating their sneezed whiz kids

into shiny trusted imitations

of slobbered lawman grease

and groveling coded escapades.

Virtuous espadrilles whine

to fifty copulating corn cob capitalists,

speeding into peddled sound

for gravy incantations

of mottled holographic smiles

and collocated denture talismans.

Purple majesties frown gracefully

at passing ossification monkeys,

questioning tarrying dignitaries

with right-handed aplomb.

He would’ve gotten up

for an altered cupola of tee-ball decoupage

and fulsome trim-time dipstick pet remorse,

but remoulade invaded enfilading vocal habits

at dicey bipedal mounds of looped stoolie minima,

arching for soldered gypsy teabag refuse,

shining in fettered car door grudges.

One could flounder in poured lobster

or androidal samovar seclusion mines

from noun discloser’s foveal finned petard

to octagonal leavings of Gung-Ho Cheeto Mink’s

dynastic plumb line rotary loan vine,

but Iditarod slush would still molt without

your consensual noggin’s necrophilic nod,

relapsing to slowed mulch or has-been gold

or teetering endgame ardor or conjoined twine. 

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.