Thursday, March 31, 2016
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Eric Robert Nolan- Three Poems
"The Writer"
At night he dreamt of birds, thousands of them,
imprisoned in his house.
Ravens screamed in the attic.
Sparrows panicked in the hall.
He sat at his desk. A Jay pecked
Frantically at his shirt sleeve.
The basement door revealed
Torrents of finches, erupting in the dark
A loud gray storm
Of beaks and tiny claws.
Seagulls suffered in the cupboards.
Parakeets in the rafters, trapped,
Raged in Etruscan.
He crossed the room.
Owls
Moaned under the floorboards.
Twelve red cardinals
Lined his kitchen shelves –
A discordant jury.
Peacocks plead in the oven.
In a jar of sugar
Titmice struggled for air.
At his desk were
Photographs, letters
Pens and a half dead Marten.
He reached for his old brown afghan but felt
Bone and feather
The heaving brown breast
Of a starving eagle.
Sometimes the scratch
Of pen against paper brought
Respite from birdsong:
Two less wings against the silence
One less voice in that
Troubled aviary.
A parrot perched
On his paper stacks.
“Remorse,” it offered feebly.
“Regret,” he answered back.
"The Secretary"
Skin and circuitry,
Metal and flesh.
Her dreams of childbirth were
Relentless, recurring.
Push, push, push
Said a midwife’s mechanical voice.
Fluorescent lights flickered,
Then murmured discordantly.
Coarse starched sheets
Scratched her knees.
Machines hummed in corners.
She pushed.
The product of her womb was hard —
Edges and angles
Against her inner thighs.
And at the end of that difficult birth, looking down,
She saw coils and coils of bright copper wire.
By day, she was a secretary.
People liked her. Not enough, though,
For Valentine’s, dates, anniversaries.
With furtive eyes, she observed
All those little moments
That enchant a common life.
So, she only worked.
Phone, file, phone.
Push, push, push.
At times, she imagined her womb
As a gestating clock.
Its meticulous gears
Marked the passage of time.
Batteries moved her limbs, her veins
Were wires in her skin.
She hid circuits
Behind her eyes.
Electricity riddled her brain –
Warm lightning.
Returning home one night,
She passed a factory on her right.
Its smokestacks vaulted up
Like turrets. The lights there
Were stacked stars.
Its fence hummed. The smokestacks
Exhaled rhythmically
Push, push, push.
A metal shed was there –
She imagined it had
A piston-beating heart
A muscled metronome –
Life in a bright steel box.
Arriving home, her spine
Tickled with current.
She reached her garage and parked. Blue sparks
Danced in her sinuses.
Push, push, push,
Said a mid-wife’s mechanical voice.
She pushed some oily rags
To seal the open spaces
Beneath her garage door.
In her brain,
Machines hummed in corners.
She pushed the car’s ignition.
The air there nourished her, then.
The carbon monoxide
Push, push, pushed her.
She shut her eyes.
Her gears slowed softly.
"The Bureaucrat"
Amity in his veins,
The gray, aging bureaucrat
Lit a cigarette.
He spied ice on a windowframe
How unlike its blue-cold form
Were the words of industry – warm.
Like sunlight on a monument,
The bright hues of a flag,
Warm – like the ringing endorsement
Of a product or a plan.
Like the gaily colored covers
Of an annual report.
Warm – like the newly dead.
© Eric Robert Nolan 2013
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Sudeep Adhikari- A Poem
Tao
of Noise
Infinity is no more
than a fraction
tripping on noise and relations
when some feedbacks loop in
to create the little recursion of "Know Yourself"
with some gizmos and blinks.
An identity of the opposites;
between single and the multiple
between absurd and the sublime
and between me and you
leaves no space
same shit, different orders.
with each poem
I try to be that infinity;
the scorching sound-grinds of Michael Gira,
the seething heat of Jung's Hell-fire
or that astral window into the Bardo-Land
of Dakinis, demi-gods and undead Buddhas;
M.C. Escher's impossible universes,
David Lynch's Earserheads
Dr. Dennis Upper's paper on
"The Unsuccessful Case of
self-treatment of
a Case of Writer's Block"
and Rauschenberg's white paintings.
All are empty and full
Noisy and pop
at the same time.
with each bottle of time,
cocktailed with wine
I realize that chaos
is the very fabric of my existence
and is the "Mother of all things"
as Lao Tzu once said thousands of years ago;
"Before Heaven and earth, there was something nebulous
Eternal and alone, silent and void
the mother of all things
I don't know its name
I call it Tao".
(First appeared online on The Peregrine Muse, Feb 2016)
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Joan McNerney- Three Poems
Shhhhh...
There is a
witch living
on the corner
where the four
roads meet.
Her eye is
evil, her
nose crooked.
She lays down
the tarot
pattern
with wrinkled
hands.
Asks "do you wish
tea of wormwood
or henbane?"
She will enchant
your mind now
into fields of
wild roses.
I planted my garden
on the wrong side
of moon forgetting
tides of ocean
lunar wax wane
only madness
was cultivated
there underground
tubular roots
corpulent veins
flowers called
despair gave off
a single fruit...
I ate it
my laughter
becoming harsh
my eyes grew
oblique.
Methuselah Speaks
Living in shadows I scarcely stir.
Each motion brings pain with fear
of falling, breaking brittle bones
or bruising my spider web skin.
I see so little. Sunlight blinds my
rheumy eyes. Night dims my world
leaving just vague outlines.
Food is stale, bitter. Thirst savage.
No liquids quench me. My bodily
functions often fail befouling me.
All these years weigh down my soul.
Hearing faded, everything in whispers.
My breath is raspy, without strength.
My mind dull with defeat. I count only
my losses and remember nothing
but the dead. My memory is pain.
I cannot celebrate births. My great
grandchildren died so long ago.
Why must I always wait here?
God, have you forgotten me?
Joan
McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such
as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Camel Saloon, Blueline,
Poppy Road Review, Spectrum, three Bright Hills Press Anthologies and
several Kind of A Hurricane Publications. She has been nominated three
times for Best of the Net.
Rebecca Cowgill- Three UFO Haiku
the alien and me
share a handshake
ending our negotiations
New Year's Eve
spaceships invade
the black night sky
phoning for an ambulance
an alien found unconscious
in a crashed spaceship
Bio:
Rebecca Cowgill's small poems can be found in Poems and Poetry, The Poet Community and Dead Snakes.
Alan Catlin- Three Poems
They are outfitting
the loons better
wherever that is,
I thought as he made
his way to the end
of the bar, sat down
and began a casual
conversation with an
alien presence in
another dimension.
I ordinarily don’t like
to interrupt private
conversations but
it is my job to ask
people what they
want to drink.
He treated my inquiry
as the worst kind of
felonious assault,
began deep breathing,
inhaling, as if he were
trying to suck the air
out of my lungs.
I watched for awhile
wondering how long
he could go on in this
manner, thinking, maybe
forever the way he was
working the air, so I
said, “There’s a ten dollar
cover charge for the air.
Pay up or leave.”
That brought him back
to earth and fast.
Abducted
He had the air
of someone not long
for this world or
someone not long in it,
take your pick.
Was wisp thin,
anemia pale,
scarecrow tall
and able to repel
creatures simply
opening his mouth
as if to speak.
Uttered sounds so
guttural and confused,
something inside of
him must have been
congenitally deformed
or deliberately altered
to prevent his telling
where he had been
taken and how he
got back.
Could
have been a star at
Alien Abduction
conventions if he
could have spoken
clearly of his ordeal
but this was not to be.
Better luck next time
is all you can think
to say.
Putting a New Face on the Homeless
Outside mall by
exit lights, homeless
man stands dressed in
second hand rags and
an ET rubber mask.
Holds a Homemade sign
that says, ”Need Cash
To Phone
Home”
You had to give him
extra credit for ingenuity
as you fumble for loose
bills, change.
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