The Fuck

"procreation" deviant art by werol


The Fuck

The fuck isn’t going anywhere: it’s here to (sta)y
ins form in damp cloth revealing the presence
of m(old) spores

rivers dig deep in their concrete beds,
forgetting what it was
to meande(r)
ivers sit pristine and free of life or slud(g)e

oodbye to oxbows, goodbye to the surprise
of dis(cover)y
all surfaces with laminate,
scotch-guard the squirr(el)s

iminate difference from the world
and one will never have to
leave the m(all)
I’m saying is look around while we still have ey(es)

cape the culture of disdain: learn to en
joy the slight
inconveniences of liv(in)g
the real world, most of us (w)ould be dead

hat’s more
important
life or liv(in)g?
the strictest sense
we are
all of us
damne(d)

rag your heels in the dirt
anything to slow the blind char(ge)
rminate where you’re planted, yes
but some seeds have wings


By CL Bledsoe, Aug 03, 2009

Posted over on Decomp Magazine

The "Ring"

The "Ring"


Is over for this season.

Whew!

Valhalla is built.
The Builders are cheated.
The ring is cursed.
The Hero is inconceivably conceived.
The sword is made.
The Dragon is dead.
The Hero is screwed.
The Horse is fried.
The Gods are baked.
The Nixies have their gold again.
Valhalla is toast.
The hall is closed up.
The Musicians are on their way home.
If not there already

and I'm going to bed.

Doug Palmer August 2009

Posted over on his site Feel Free To Laugh

Ballard: There is a Church on Every Corner

Ballard:
There is a church on every corner!!!


OMG!!
Surely the world has been saved by now!
Surely the hungry have been fed.
Surely the poor have been aided.
Surely the sick have been healed.
Surely the evil have been shown the error of their ways
and welcomed back into the fold.
Surely the infirm, the dazed and confused,
the victims of hatred and intolerance have been tended to
and shown the mercy of a loving God.
Surely the screwballs have been given right handed threads
by now.

I'm alright, though, cause I'm an atheist.
God obviously wanted atheists because,
well...here we are!
The thing is, to "believe" is to stop thinking about.
So if you believe, it means you can stop thinking.
God doesn't want that.
So us atheists are the only true believers.


Doug Palmer August 2009

Posted over on his site Feel Free To Laugh

Dear Cow

Drawing by Gaetano Ruvio


Dear Cow,


I'm sorry I shot you with my second-hand
rifle when I was twelve. I hated you
because you were my father's,
and he'd cussed me
the night before. The rifle,
I hated the same.
He only gave it to me because he thought
I was a nancy-boy and didn't know
how to kill. I thought
he was right. My father said cows
have thick hides
and you were so far away.
I heard you moaning before
they found you, bleeding out.
It hurt me.
Not as much as I hurt you, I know.


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on Tipton Poetry

David

David

You sage on the mount,
you raw intellect running naked
on rural roads,
you poet-professor scholar
whose mind moves mysteriously
through our daze like heated
knitting needles puncturing bubbles,
misconceptions, misnomers,
misspellings, missteps,
you friend who hibernates,
who ruminates,
who cogitates with ferrous fists
35 miles deep in the wilderness
of your mind,
and mine;
you cinemaphile,
you poetry lover,
you student and teacher,
you antagonist masquerading
as protagonist,
you muckraker,
you progressive,
you server of sarcasm slathered
with acerbic jam,
you stranger, you confidant,
you counselor.....
thanks for the critique of my verse,
or non-verse perhaps,
married to a treatise on
metaphysics, love, and death.
I needed that.

Glenn Buttkus August 2009

To Wait, Or Not To Wait

My pal, David Gilmour sent me his response
after reading my poem, THE WAITING ROOM.
He is a wonderous intellect who never ceases
to surprise me with his insights, bitches,
and epiphanies. He will praise your work with
the one hand and bitch slap you with the other.
But his conversations will run late into the
night, and our mutual love of cinema keeps
us attached. On any given day, at any given
moment, just as I feel I understand this man,
this friend, he peels back another layer of
himself, and showers me with stardust and
molasses. One is never bored in his presence.
He spends much of his time at his cabin in
the mountains of Idaho these days. I miss
our get-togethers.

Glenn Buttkus

His response follows:

Glenn,

Susan and I read your "Waiting Room" poem, which
started out with a road-movie--a lot of Beat-
phrased on-the-road rushing. You still appear
to be in that Beatish groove. I imagine your
last road-trip vacation aroused some of the visions
you revisited in the poem. There are many, many
fine phrases as I read greedily non-stop, which
extemporaneously right feelings to them, as
though they came rushing forth at the speed of a
visionary mind. The business about ghosts and
UFOs doesn't really give me the willies or
turn me on any longer. In fact, spiritual poetry,
just as spiritual theorizing seems to be a waste
of time. The sanctimonious He-God who can't show
his benevolent power, forgiveness or his kindness
much in this world is the one god most of the planet
needs to get over worshipping. The world did it
before with Zeus and Baal, why not with this
impotent He-Fuck-Up? The idea of the sacred does
very much interest me; its necessity for most of
man&womankind is undeniable. Like the little
Anna of Spirit of Beehive, I'm a death-hound:
death does fascinate me, the thought of its wonderful
oblivion. I doubt I'll ever be a suicide since
I've yet to find the ditch of artistic madness
that seems to guide many artists and visionaries
into that resolution.

Don't take this wrong: I do like reading your
poems to get a better sense of your imaginative
life, for poets do reveal much through that
creative window. For another Beat impression
of Waiting--waiting for what?-- here's
Ferlinghetti's piece.

David Gilmour

I Am Waiting

deviant art by chonchu


I Am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting
for someone to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep through the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped’ onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide
to ‘be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life
to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty’s clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers
on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am waiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Dreaming a Flat Bridge Between Juarez and El Paso

Dreaming a Flat Bridge Between Juarez and El Paso


1.
I found this postcard tucked into our digital files
for David Romo's "Ringside Seat to a Revolution."
How charming and idyllic it is,
so much so it drips with the real blood of irony
in comparing to what we have now.
It's true, back in the day,
the bridge between El Paso and Juárez was flat,
and the Rio Bravo (aka, Rio Grande)
was a common resource, certainly not a fenced
and heavily guarded dividing line
between El Norte and El Sur.

Then in the early 60s the Kennedy Administration
brokered the Chamizal Treaty
which diverted the river into a concrete ditch.
It also moved the border at the downtown bridge
a hundred yards or so north,
over which some pendejo engineer designed,
and the feds built, a three story tall bridge.

It's meaning was simple--divide one city from the other.
These decisions, made in DC and DF,
radically altered not only the river,
but also south downtown El Paso,
especially around the Segundo Barrio
and Chihuahuita Barrio.
And over the years since the 60s
the culture and the politics of the two cities
has changed dramatically. It was slow change at first,
but then in the mid-90s to now,
the change became accelerated.

The border on the U.S. side has become a military camp
for a number of federal agencies,
each elbowing more and more space for themselves,
fewer and fewer people from the U.S. go back and forth
to enjoy families and friends and entertainment
to simply enjoy Mexico,
and illegal drugs and immigration have become
essential cash industries for the Mexican economy.

And so how do we reverse this insanity?
How do we make our bridge flat again?

First thought, best thought:
Rewrite the U.S. drug laws;
remove the capitalistic incentive
from the sale of marijuana, heroin and cocaine;
and treat addiction as a sickness, not as a crime.
But you say this to the bureaucrats in D.C.,
they just talk gobbley-gook,
then they turn around and show you their fat asses.

I'm a poet and I should be able to say this better,
but, damnit, as I write this, it's Friday afternoon,
and I'm tired of the insanity I see.

Insanity like a three-story bridge
that should be a flat bridge.

Bobby Byrd August 2009

Thanks to Roberto Camp who a long time ago
explained to me that the building of that monstrosity
of a bridge was a tipping point in the history
of these two sister cities.


2.
I found this postcard tucked into our digital files for David Romo's Ringside Seat to a Revolution. How charming and idyllic it is, so much so it drips with the real blood of irony in comparing to what we have now. It's true, back in the day, the bridge between El Paso and Juárez was flat [*see note], and the Rio Bravo (aka, Rio Grande) was a common resource, certainly not a fenced and heavily guarded dividing line between El Norte and El Sur. Then in the early 60s the Kennedy Administration brokered the Chamizal Treaty which diverted the river into a concrete ditch. It also moved the border at the downtown bridge a hundred yards or so north, over which some pendejo engineer designed, and the feds built, a three story tall bridge. It's meaning was simple--divide one city from the other. These decisions, made in DC and DF, radically altered not only the river, but also south downtown El Paso, especially around the Segundo Barrio and Chihuahuita Barrio. And over the years since the 60s the culture and the politics of the two cities has changed dramatically. It was slow change at first, but then in the mid-90s to now, the change became accelerated. The border on the U.S. side has become a military camp for a number of federal agencies, each elbowing more and more space for themselves, fewer and fewer people from the U.S. go back and forth to enjoy families and friends and entertainment to simply enjoy Mexico, and illegal drugs and immigration have become essential cash industries for the Mexican economy. And so how do we reverse this insanity? How do we make our bridge flat again?

First thought, best thought: Rewrite the U.S. drug laws; remove the capitalistic incentive from the sale of marijuana, heroin and cocaine; and treat addiction as a sickness, not as a crime. But you say this to the bureaucrats in D.C., they just talk gobbley-gook, then they turn around and show you their fat asses. I'm a poet and I should be able to say this better, but, damnit, as I write this, it's Friday afternoon, and I'm tired of the insanity I see.

Insanity like a three-story bridge that should be a flat bridge.

[**NOTE: Thanks to Roberto Camp who a long time ago explained to me that the building of that monstrosity of a bridge was a tipping point in the history of these two sister cities.]

Posted over on Bobby Byrd's site White Panties and Dead Friends
1. Line breaks by Glenn Buttkus, who finds poetry in everything Bobby writes, utters, or thinks.
2. Bobby's prose piece posted over on his site.

****Addendum: My response to this was posted over on Bobby's blog:

Let us all dream of flat bridges, all together,
and to the end of the cartel nightmare.
For as horrendous as it is,
as lethal and destructive as it is,
it too shall pass into the pale pages of the past--
and we will sit on benches as older men,
pushing the bloodshed and drug wars into a numb niche,
and only dream of the laughter, the flowers, the music,
and the joyous throng who will flow
over the flat bridge again.

Glenn

Despair

Despair

So much gloom and doubt in our poetry--
flowers wilting on the table,
the self regarding itself in a watery mirror.

Dead leaves cover the ground,
the wind moans in the chimney,
and the tendrils of the yew tree
inch toward the coffin.

I wonder what the ancient Chinese poets
would make of all this,
these shadows and empty cupboards?

Today with the sun blazing in the trees,
my thoughts turn to the great
tenth-century celebrator of experience,

Wa-Hoo, whose delight in the smallest things
could hardly be restrained,
and to his joyous counterpart
in the western provinves,
Yee-Hah.


Billy Collins

Winged Ventricle

"Looopy Heart" painting by Rick Mobbs

**Yes, the painting has returned to this site yet again, but this time it has a poem by me, rather than Rick. Enjoy.---Glenn


Winged Ventricle

Pious pigeons gather gregariously
on rooftops, on wires, on parapets—
where no finches
or wild parakeets were allowed;
on alert,
watching for hawks and crows.
Squinting hard at them, one
marvels at their acooostics,
embracing the kaleidoscopic
lid light show,
as the city’s great buildings,
tall and dense,
standing shoulder to shoulder
like brick toadstools
in a giant’s meadow
become
infinite castle towers in
a real fairy tale,
where the Magi stands every midday
in the center of the chest
of the King’s garden,
dispensing wisdom,
performing slight-of-hand,
spilling his tiny version
of the Truth, sprinkling it
like spice on his piece
of the great puzzle;
and beside him, astride him,
the Jester jingling as he joyfully
handed out
those heart-shaped balloons
of many colors,
on dyed strings of varying lengths,
several of which had the Infant
we seek
dangling from them,
flying freely over the treetops,
unnoticed by everyone
except for that barefooted woman
on Broadway
pushing her bright red wheelbarrow
with her crippled Jack Russell
named Joseph
riding proudly in it,
barking the prayer
for the living
as they fearlessly
forged straight into their foray
of the ferns; both looking up
in time to witness the wonder
of that babe tangled
in three heart balloons,
red-white-and blue, rising slowly,
propelled by laughter, by giggles,
by one arm flapping,
sailing straight up
like an arrow from man’s bow,
up into God’s awaiting hands,
deep into the labyrinth of Love.

Glenn Buttkus August 2009

Lion's Mane

Photo by Scott Boyd


Lion's Mane


The Lion’s Mane jellyfish
are always so fascinating to me
so I can’t help but share
this one with you.

It’s roughly 18 inches wide,
and in the process of ending its life,
which spans only about a year.
I hope it was a pleasant one
filled with everything that a jelly
might desire.
Did it float around to wonderful places
with comfy temperatures?
Get enough sex?
Eat out at some great spots,
enjoying the background music
of the passing Orcas’ latest hits?
I hope so.

I often see them washed up along the beach
here where I walk by the house,
and I love to kneel and study them closely.
Tempting as it is to touch
their soft, gel-like skin, I resist.
Even in this weakened state,
they can offer quite a zippy sting
that is officially referred to as,
“seldom fatal.”
I don’t care for those two words
next to each other.

In life these jellies are magnificent
and graceful creatures;
in death, they remain beautiful
as the sunlight reflects deep oranges
and maroons from their weakening bell.
Unnaturally upturned edges plead to the sky,
as the rocks below coax them gently
to the shore with each wave.
It’s inspiring to witness a creature
that’s as gorgeous in death
as it is in life.

Alex Shapiro August 2009

Posted as prose over on her site Notes From the Kelp

Randy Describes Eternity to My Little Brother

Randy Describes Eternity to My Little Brother


R: Okay, so there's this bird.
MLB: What kind of bird?
R: I don't know. A bird. A raven.
MLB: What's a raven?
R: Sort of like a blackbird but bigger.
MLB: Blackbirds are bad. They eat crops. In school, Mrs. Thermon told us blackbirds are pests. They eat crops and they sit on power lines and go number 2 on your car.
R: All birds do that.
MLB: But blackbirds--
R: All birds do that. Besides, it's not a blackbird. It's just like a blackbird. Only bigger. Okay?
MLB: . . .
R: So anyway, the bird, the raven flies to this mountain every century.
MLB: You don't have to yell at me.
R: What?
MLB: Mommy says it's not polite to yell. Every time she yells, I get ice cream.
R: What? I didn't yell.
MLB: Yes you did.
R: No I didn't.
MLB: You're yelling now.
R: . . .
MLB: . . .
R: Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell.
MLB: That's okay.
R: Good. So, anyway it takes the bird a century to get there, to the mountain—
MLB: Is it flying Northwest Air?
R: What?
MLB: They're really slow. When we went to see Grampa last July, we had to stand in line for like three hours to get through security--
R: No, see--
MLB: And when we got to the front of the line, they said we'd missed the flight, and they had to reschedule us for later so we had to wait another couple hours. And Mommy yelled at the security guy and they almost escorted her out of the building.
R: Well travel can go like that nowadays.
MLB: I got ice cream.
R: Good for you.
MLB: Ever since Daddy moved back to Detroit, I get ice cream.
R: . . .
MLB: When somebody yells at me, or when I have to hear somebody yell.
R: Well, different people have different parenting techniques.
MLB: Like you just yelled at me. That would be an example of when I might get ice cream.
R: I apologized for that already. Look, are you going to listen to this or not?
MLB: It's just that you're a little loud.
R: . . .
MLB: At Brewsters, if you go when it's raining they give you a free scoop.
R: . . .
MLB: It's really good.
R: It's not raining.
MLB: They have ice cream all the time, but when it's raining, it's free. One scoop. But that's all Mommy let's me have anyway. We always go when it's raining.
R: I'll keep that in mind. So this bird—
MLB: The raven.
R: Yes. That's very good. The raven flies to the mountain and it takes it a century—
MLB: It only took us five hours. But that's still a long time. Mommy cried in the bathroom. She didn't think I knew, but I could tell. Her makeup around her eyes ran.
R: Yeah, well a century is even longer than five hours. So when it gets to the mountain, it sharpens it's beak.
MLB: Why?
R: Oh, so it can eat things. Nuts and things. Easier. More easily. A beak is sort of like a pair of scissors. And it has to keep them sharp—
MLB: Mrs. Thermon says the only thing sharp scissors cut is you, so we—
R: You use safety scissors. I know, but the raven, it's like Mrs. Thermon. It can use big people scissors. It has to cut through roots and stuff. So it can eat.
MLB: . . .
R: So anyway, the raven sharpens its beak, and then it turns around and flies home. Which takes another century.
MLB: It should use a cup.
R: What?
MLB: A cup. To sharpen its beak. Daddy always used to sharpen the knives on cups, back when he still loved Mommy.
R: . . .
MLB: On the bottom. Or a saucer.
R: Well, it doesn't have any cups. Some people are less fortunate than you. They don't have cups. Or saucers. They're poor.
MLB: Like the people that shop at Kmart?
R: Yes. The raven shops at Kmart. Okay, so the raven goes to the mountain. Takes it a century. It sharpens it's beak, then it flies home. Another century. Okay? So when it has done this so many times that it has worn the mountain down flat, that's eternity.
MLB: How big is the mountain?
R: Really big. Like the Himalayas.
MLB: Grampa lives in the mountains. In Denver.
R: Yeah, okay, like those mountains.
MLB: Grampa smells. One night, he came into my bedroom and was calling me Margaret. That was Gramma's name before she died.
R: Okay . . .
MLB: He kept saying it over and over. Margaret. Margaret. Then he got into bed with me and went to sleep. He was really loud. He snored. I couldn't sleep so I went in Mommy's room and slept in her bed with her.
R: Fascinating.
MLB: Then, when we got up in the morning, we found him in my bed and he'd wet the bed.
R: . . .
MLB: So if I had been in the bed, still, he'd have gotten it all over me.
R: You're very lucky.
MLB: I know.
R: So, do you understand what I'm saying? About the raven and the mountain, how it wears down the mountain, and when it's all gone, that's eternity?
MLB: No.
R: Okay. You understand the bird? That there's this bird?'
MLB: Yeah.
R: And it flies to this mountain and it takes the bird a century to get there. That's one hundred years. That's like your grampa's entire life and your mommy's entire life added together. It's a long time. So it takes the bird a really long time to get to the mountain. Understand?
MLB: Yeah, I guess.
R: Good. So it sharpens it's beak, which only wears a little bitty bit of the mountain away. Then it flies home. Which takes another century. And when it has done this so many times that the mountain has been worn away, that's eternity. Understand?
MLB: . . .
R: Well? Do you understand?
MLB: You're going to yell at me again.
R: No, I'm not. I just want you to understand.
MLB: You're going to yell and I won't even get ice cream. You already yelled and I didn't get any.
R: No, I won't--
MLB: I'm supposed to get ice cream. Mommy always gets me ice cream when she slips.
R: I won't yell at you.
MLB: Promise?
R: Yes. I promise.
MLB: Well, the thing is . . .
R: Yes?
MLB: Blackbirds don't live that long.
R: . . .
MLB: Mrs. Thermon said they only live fifteen to twenty years. So how could it take a hundred years to get there and a hundred to get back?
R: It was a raven.
MLB: Still. That's like a blackbird, you said.
R: . . .
MLB: You're going to yell at me aren't you?
R: . . .
MLB: I mean, maybe it's this family of ravens that fly to the mountain?
R: Maybe. Yes, that's it. It's a family.
MLB: Except they'd have to stop to nest.
R: . . .
MLB: One time Mommy found a nest of wrens in her hibiscus. She had this hibiscus hanging over the front door, outside, on the porch. And some wrens nested in it. So she had to stop watering the hibiscus because it was scaring the momma bird away.
R: . . .
MLB: Grampa said that's good luck. When a bird nests at your house.
R: . . .
MLB: The eggs had little speckles in them. There were four of them and all four hatched and flew away.
R: That's nice.
MLB: Then Mommy got really sad and said that some day I'll fly away, and she had to go to the bathroom again and when she came out her makeup was messed up around her eyes.
R: Huh.
MLB: Cause she was crying.
R: . . .
MLB: . . .
R: . . .
MLB:
R: Hey, it's raining. You want some ice cream?
MLB: Okay.
R: Get your coat.


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on his site Murder Your Darlings

Cortney noted: I'd forgotten about this...originally published in Opium

Seduction @ gmail.com

Seduction@gmail.com

Friend Rick Mobbs must feel that I am just another old duffer, who is a techno-wimp, who doesn't embrace most of the wizardry available, and he must think that because I still use Yahoo.com for my email that makes me out of step, like when I went out last year and bought $300 worth of Scoth VHS tapes so that I can keep using the older technology to tape TV series shows, or the year before when I went out and bought (2) new VCRs to store in my furnace room to back up my old one, to keep my habitual behavior on an even keel. Now, I ask you, do I sound like the kind of fellow who would abandon an old cyber friend like Yahoo for some offer from Google?
I know it's not hip, more clunky than cool, but there it is; I am.

Glenn

Rick wrote on his invitation:

gmail just suggested I invite you to use gmail.

But they're happy with what they have, I said.

You don't know that, said gmail.

Well, they probably are or they would be using gmail already. Maybe
they don't like google, did you ever think of that? I said.

Why wouldn't they like us? asked gmail.

I don't know. My friend Pat says you're evil, I said.

Strong words. Did she say why? asked gmail.

Uh, I forgot to ask, I said.

You really should had asked, said gmail.

I guess you're right, I admitted, thinking, crap, I do that all the
time. I should have asked. Just because she runs the Peace and Justice
Center here doesn't mean she always knows what she's talking about.

Right, said gmail.

Hey! I was thinking that! Are you listening to my thoughts? Maybe you
are evil, I said.

You were moving your lips, said gmail. You shouldn't move your lips if
you don't want me to know what you're thinking.

Oh, I said.

Here's a reason they should use gmail, said gmail. At least from time
to time. Google Talk Video. It let's you see your friends when you
talk to them. They don't even have to use the mail program if they
don't want to. And they can block the calls and so on. But every now
and then they should call home. And its f

Okay, I said. I'll tell them.

gmail just suggested I invite you to use gmail.

But they're happy with what they have, I said.

You don't know that, said gmail.

Well, they probably are or they would be using gmail already. Maybe
they don't like google, did you ever think of that? I said.

Why wouldn't they like us? asked gmail.

I don't know. My friend Pat says you're evil, I said.

Strong words. Did she say why? asked gmail.

Uh, I forgot to ask, I said.

You really should had asked, said gmail.

I guess you're right, I admitted, thinking, crap, I do that all the
time. I should have asked. Just because she runs the Peace and Justice
Center here doesn't mean she always knows what she's talking about.

Right, said gmail.

Hey! I was thinking that! Are you listening to my thoughts? Maybe you
are evil, I said.

You were moving your lips, said gmail. You shouldn't move your lips if
you don't want me to know what you're thinking.

Oh, I said.

Here's a reason they should use gmail, said gmail. At least from time
to time. Google Talk Video. It let's you see your friends when you
talk to them. They don't even have to use the mail program if they
don't want to. And they can block the calls and so on. But every now
and then they should call home. And it's free.

Okay, I said. I'll tell them.

Poet's Dialogue

Poet's Dialogue

I try and stay in touch with Cortney Bledsoe these days over on his blog Murder Your Darlings . He had announced the upcoming publishing of his new poetry collection, RICELAND.

I wrote to him, saying,"Wow, you are like a poster child for HOW TO BE PUBLISHED ON LINE. Over the last several years, as you were completing your Master's, and now as a teacher, you seem to have the process wired about how to submit to chapbooks and ezines and get wonderful results. I guess it is also important to note that your work speaks for itself; that you are one hell of good poet to begin with. Looking back over the 120 of your poems and stories I have collected on line and posted on my site, it is still amazing to track the different phases and interests you have pursued."

Cortney responded with these words of wisdom:
"Getting published is all about hard work and taking your ego out of the equation. Editors are people with their own tastes. Do the research, see what they like, see if you like them, and if your work is similar enough, they'll probably publish you. Unfortunately, there's also some luck in there--timing is important, and other factors. There's a story that Ray Bradbury had over 500 rejections before he was published. There's another story that Truman Capote never had a rejection in his life. Both of these could easily be true, but they don't really reflect on the talent of the writers so much as the fickleness of the industry.

It's easier to submit work online because the turn-around time is usually quicker, and it's less expensive to e-mail than to snail-mail, but the principles are the same. I have forthcoming work online and in print. I can't say I really prefer the one to the other.

When I first started sending work out as an undergrad., it took over a year before I saw any results. I "carpet-bombed" which just means I wasted a lot of stamps sending work to every market I could find. Imagine going up to complete strangers and asking them to buy something from you. Maybe one will, but most won't. Now, I target things more. I have developed relationships with publishers. I still send work out to journals I haven't appeared in before, but it's less of a crap shoot. Still, it's taken years of work, and the most impressive publications I've had have been maybe fourth tier. And I still get a lot of rejections. When I was starting out, I might get 20 rejections for something before it was picked up, especially fiction. Now, I often place a piece on the first try because I know what particular editors like, but sometimes it takes 5 or 6 rejections before someone picks it up. Of course, I'm a better writer now, as well."

Thank you, C.L. Bledsoe, for your generosity of spirit, and your willingness to share, to teach, to be accessible to inquiring minds.

Glenn Buttkus

Keepers of the Evergreens

Painting by Rick Mobbs


Keepers of the Evergreens


The keepers of the evergrees

doyen, duyan, dogun, dees,

pitched a frighted battlefrees

and smacktossed Lesley.

Ser she bauble, ser she fried,

Ser she mackentoshed

(she lied.)

Ser she mint un Wilber frowed her

Eft er ober issen olster.

(Smashed begonias, il ber datsun issen tolder!)

MAKEN, MAKEN, MEKAN… SMOLDER!

SMOLDER FRIKON, SMOLDER DAKEN, SMOLDER BOSH

AN SMOLDER FREKON!

Is ma el tom dick and Jason

bitte ta doty, MAKK do trisson.

BOSH?

Si. Bosh ed dism tody. Mary frankensense… smell ‘em!

Smell ‘em. Mary, smell ‘em!

(Translation through line 14)

The keepers of the evergreens,
old women, frightful, hair in patches,
half undressed, in tattered slinkies
(pale blue, mauve, olive green and violet)
bound to softest, whitest, oldest flesh
with ties of braided nylon.

The sharpest of them, breasts crossed
and pressed by blue acrylic, arms akimbo,
hands on hips had spent the morning
sweeping from beneath the trees
the fragments of the moon
that overnight had lodged there.
Painstaking work when every shadow
tries to hide a bit of her.

Who could blame the last that tried
for giving up?
It had seen the others crucified,
lashed and torn from root-sides,
hollows. All the grateful places
that the sun provides were brushed
and scourged,
her strokes were sandstorms, locusts,
desert frosts.
The last remains of cried-out moon
drops would spring to life again
at first touch of salt water.
But dust must call for rain, first,
then roll the long way oceanward.

Rick Mobbs

Posted over on his site Mine Enemy Grows Older

Rick made some comments about this particular painting, that he had just sold, endeavoring to remember what had been written about it as an image prompt:
"so I dug to see what ekphrasis pieces people might have written about the painting. The painting to me was a constellation of images and I couldn’t remember, really, what might have been written. I hoped I would find something.

This poem came from a nonsense/sound poem I wrote for fun. The “translation” was something I did to squeeze a little more fun from it.

In my mind the poem and the painting fit somehow. Maybe because the painting reminded me of children’s book illustrations I grew up with. Sometimes I’ll look at a painting and wonder, where on earth did that come from? Then I’ll open some old children’s book, one of the Childcraft series from the ‘50’s, say, and see a border illustration around a page and think, hmmm, that’s where they come from.

The Meat Locker

Janet Buck


The Meat Locker

Silk scarves of stockings
in my sister's open dresser drawers.
Crew-cut smiles, a turban
made of crowning jewels
like tourniquets that wrap an arm
and stop the fact of bleeding death.
Tabasco sauce in thinking streams
was never welcome on our plates.
Ice picks in the shape of tears
were never given things to strike.
Amputation's tournament
with stubborn's swords
and pity's mocking velvet throne.
Turtlenecks of jealous fire
and losing more than just a leg
have wrapped their warp
around my neck, torn my
gums with dental floss.

The sado-maso-urgency
of self-acceptance on the shelf.
Turpentine in crystal goblets,
my liquid did not suit your shape.
Booze became my parachute;
but drunk would never open much.
Mousetraps of a bathroom mirror
would clip the tail of growing up.
The scarlet sacred of your bones
like mutton on the sides of lamb
in leather-smelling locker rooms
that spelled my legend's slaughtered home.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

“On the page,” she says, “is where a letter drops to its knees. Catharsis, consciousness, and insight are braided threads of a trinity, a broomstick which encourages others to swat convoluted cobwebs in attics of their own lives. Writing is a private scream with a universal echo that emerges from humble accordions of inner-need. Publication's mop does messy floors, but art does act. It is here we learn what matters most. It is here we unseat demons, take cushions off emotion's couch, and sit before a roaring fire.”

December's Shade

December's Shade

Old age was a paper cut.
Death sat on a razor blade.
Sixty years of intimate.
Two circles made a single band.
December's shade pulled down in haste,
a Christmas fire this year is cold.
Your passing is a promenade
for seizures of my aching heart.
We weathered battle, peace as well.
A woman dies. A man remains.
The family tree is hollow now
without the ways you made it home:
nine-course meals with sips of wine;
warm that bit the chill in two--
our elbows frozen by the war.

My geriatric infancy at 87 tablets spent:
“I need you, need you, need you back.”
Cilantro in the soup of art.
When guns and tanks had stripped our land,
we swam the river in the night.
Fingers turned to cubes of ice.
Will would be our only pick.
Liberty's statue seemed too tall.
Refugees of heaven lost
in nothing but our muddy clothes.
No language, no villa,
no roses, no job. Just hope
like dusty spiderwebs between
an attic's cracking walls.

If cash is a climate of faith in sand,
we made clay from penniless.
The occupation stole our lives--
left us mere discarded crusts.
The tenderness of crisis breeds
a legend bearing fruit in pain.
Our journey bruised by German tanks
as pears that dot an orchard's skies.
Your ears were always ripe with sighs
that heard and felt the bruising rain.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

Bones and Borders

Bones & Borders

Yugoslavia: 1942.
A villa with its roses shot
like babies still in diaper shrouds.
Ice baths of a river's colon
could not stop the stand you swam.
Treading water in the Nile
with alligator penniless.
Your servants felled by rifle fire--
broken candles, bowling pins.
In the “land of the free”
you were pocket change,
but courage was your coat of arms.
Every gift you made or chose
had history woven it its seams.

You traded wealth for justice clouds.
Crossed the border in the night.
Sipping poor was broken glass.
Exchanging bricks for raw, raw clay.
The dribble of a legend flounders
held in hands you crossed for “right.”
Broken English on your tongue;
a heart intact in every way.
The vigil was embracing life--
you cupped its cheeks and held it close.
The “wrong” is how you suffered cold
from those who thought themselves above.
A Yugoslav--a dignitary in your land.
Here, you were a mailman
who brought the need for freedom home.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

White Linen

White Linen


The sheets were folded perfectly
like napkins on a table-top.
Pain would be another
absolutely uninvited guest.
One that stayed when all the smiles
turned and left. Absorbing strength.
Slicing courage to the quick.
Being there was oxygen that gave
her heart a way to breathe.
He knew he had to stay.

The cattle drive of helplessness.
Futile tongues that merely wagged
and couldn’t lick the ache away.
Joints like rusted engine parts
that only felt the twist and shout
of looking for the sun.
She seemed so far away at times.
Smothered by the truth of bones
that snapped like crayons just because.

Sharing pain is wearing it.
They didn’t have to speak.
Words were spray from gravel roads or
cotton balls to incubate the tender ears
from howling winds and knobs of fear
that rattled on misfortune’s door.
In his eyes she heard him scream:
“White linen should be clean
and fresh and new and bright.
Not the walls of prison cells
that staple wings of butterflies
to wrinkled pages of the night
and never let them soar.”


Artichokes All the years of pressure cookers
rocking on the stove.
My belly full of finding ways
to dance around your piercing eyes
that rested like a robin’s eggs
on fences leaning in the dawn.
Moments split like stale nuts
your daughters always gathered up
and tried so very hard to save.
The cookie dough we made from scratch
your mouth would burn when
something wasn’t done your way.

Anger wasn’t dialogue
or teeter totters working hard.
The back and forth of sanding down
the lonely nights we spent
together in our bed.
Back to very bitter back
like bookends on a naked shelf.
Nothing there to hold our dreams
like photos with a broken frame.

Artichokes and arguments.
Love and steaks were never right.
I trimmed the thorns and
cooked the leaves in bitter wine
until my life was mush.
And when the green of little girls
was hauled away like
wrecks of cars beside the road,
I threw the leaves in garbage cans.
I had to save my soul.


Mockingbirds The lullaby of tragedy.
The mockingbird of
letting all the anger out.
Mooning all the syllables
I thought I couldn’t wander near.
Scratches on a missing knee.
The cake I thought would never rise.
Without the stoic eggs I stored
in cartons of my soul.

Coffee mugs of all the times
you listened like the open sky.
Held the heavy lids
on coffins of my broken dreams
so I could look inside.
Let me kick a moment’s ice
across our kitchen floor.
Took the mop of loving arms
and laid it on my swollen eyes
like sympathetic bags of tea
and mats beside the shower door.

Knowing just how hard it was
to wipe the feet I didn’t have.
To take the hose of faith
and fill the bucket all alone.
Just how hard it had to be
without the muscles of your heart
to stir the sands of bitter words
and push them out to sea.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

Old Hurts

deviant art by hasimo


Old Hurts

This odyssey of ancient fallen Jerichos.
Your walls like a row of Dominos.
If I tap one and force this drive
into abyss, will it infect all thorns
you've pacified,
bring black lava up again?
Twist a jagged blade in thighs.
I imagine a trip through fields of corn,
cities swelling in their soot.
To meet scorched dream half-way.
Giving acid, rancid tears
a better, proper burial.
Games are smarter than our souls.
Ending them is easier than
writing all the rules again.
Cards and pawns, shining their swords
on bishops of death. Sitting as
all children do on pinched raw nerve,
assuming age has better hands
to strut in rained parades of time.

Ishmael returning now to face
and bind these ring-less folders
of mistakes;
old hurts like whores to pay and jump.
Our pounding tires,
paddles at a mortal auction,
raising hands in gesturing:
"I lived a gutsy horoscope.
There are no other ways to sing."
Agony's portfolio
was rubber-banded all these years.
I worry that its leather cover,
all its cracks, will start to bleed.
But you have holey jeans to patch,
burning belts to put away.
Miles will be a bar of soap;
love will grow another inch.
I will help you wash your back,
whipped by couldn't(s) of this world.
A cleaner moon will guide us home.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

Prongs and Jewels

Prongs & Jewels

We are at that age where
champagne flutes our bodies were
are slivered glass and gray remains.
Years have stolen sonnets some,
left us in a smarter class,
blackboards grazed by fingernails.
A pier we hope will grow some moss
and blanket every pebble lodged.
This lunch about a woman's death,
how Cancer ate her organs
in a carnivorous swirl,
but a musical score stayed scribbled
there which drew you to the mass
and match of winded candles flickering.
How crazy illness made her hands,
grabbing every dress and shoe,
each skirt and sock, a layer's fading memory
to try on once before she died.
A polyester cotton gin on closet floors,
a weak mutation of this dark you had
the strength to chisel
with a warm embrace.
Just knowing you were there at night
was moving heavy furniture.

This lunch about your love for her
that puts your tears in slot machines;
all that flowed through rivers
of elastic arms stretched to meet
a bloated waist of
someone else's suffering.
Fluffing pillows, punching them
behind her back, pretending you
weren't losing steam like irons
God unplugs from walls.
That all your cords were working ones.
Lining up necessities -- these ducks
this day of pain would shoot.
Returning hope to mantles falling
in the fire;
their dust a measure of the sea.
You have lost a lot of weight
but do not know
dimensions of a scurvy heart.
Lesser women would have picked a silk
excusing scarf or two,
sported plastic jewelry,
ignoring sapphires of the bleak
that lend white moons their ivory.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Poetry Magazine

This Impotence

This Impotence

"Green leaves on a dead tree is
our epitaph--green leaves, dear reader,
on a dead tree."

Cyril Connolly (1903–74)

Sober thresholds seem like threats.
Their doors (your eyes) with closing lids.
Just once I want to stand
on tables of old grief.
Watch masks slide off like running mice.

Take ashes from my mother's urn--
stir them in a coffee cup.
You'll claim I've poisoned leaving rites.
That's all we know for camels' humps,
this hoarding of the brutal sadness
slicing suns behind your back.

Pain oxidized and left a mark.
Liquor always scrubbed our hands.
We knew no other way to bathe.
I've learned from tea bags
of your eyes
that dry is light, more portable
than lunch pails of wet honesty
with ugly worms in apple cores.

You'll tell me you are over her--
you have no dreams of
brushing toes beneath
white whipping cream of sheets,
no memory of apron strings
and negligees like nooses
hugging twitching necks.

You'll say she didn't rule your heart,
sanctify your happiness.
And I will flip the batter's dime,
swallow edges of the burn,
pick at conches of your ears
until I hear the parting lips
of Arnold's melancholy sea.


Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Poetry Magazine

Chatting Over Tragedy

Chatting Over Tragedy

I am stripped down to shorts
over metal parts,
honing my will for motion's charge.
It's no damn waltz; I'm laughable.
The gym is empty but for us
and so you curl the trillion dollar
question mark:
"Is that an artificial limb?"
I could be bugs against the glass.
Pummeled by this little death.
A body's paste accumulates.
Sweat makes rivers of my arms.
Trails of tendons form a pit.

I lift my lids,
break the coiled concentrate
that takes my bones on paths of dream.
Out comes your apology
before my mouth has time to shape
inviting smiles that open
hopeful parachutes:
"I know a man who's lost both legs;
he's 51 and lying in an ICU;
he will not speak, he will not eat;
he will not dicker with the dawn."
We chatter over tragedy.
I read you menus of my own.
Telling seems to lighten them.
Perhaps there's water in this well,
even if it's coffee rings
on normal tables
basking in their luxuries.

Pain can be a fence in mud.
Chance is a cornered bird
in rooms we never knew were there.
He'll need a shoulder for these wounds
that took a batch of cashmere flesh,
scorched it slabs of blackened toast.
You tell me stories of gangrene
and diabetic loneliness.
I scribble digits of my phone
as if that number might be clues
or corners of a puzzle's square.
I see his crutches near the bed
like noble firs he's jealous of.

He's half way over continents
in Illinois;
I've been inside his pillow case,
juggling his jail cells,
frail in his severance
and salty frown, scraps of doves
that smash against a speeding car.
Courage is a chunk of stew surrounded by
stringy stalks of green
but wilted celery.
That night of black obsidian,
a common crow I know as well
as letters of an alphabet.
That marbling, this ray of light,
seems so sparse it
it might be vapor from a cloud.


Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Poetry Magazine

Cool Sin

Cool Sin

He rolled a tattered old davenport
off a bridge to the creek bed's core.
Leveled it with washed up logs,
made soft cushions from the clouds.
Poured a whiskey, set up camp
on mossy rocks to watch the fish,
their passing fins reflecting stars
like jewels in unsettled prongs.
His skin a heap of muslin shirred,
sweat the scent of summer rain.
Dogwood blossoms floated down-
their ivory fists so lightly clenched
they could be open envelopes.

Wind tickled like a paintbrush
skimming rising grass, cares so few
he'd count them on a thumb-less hand.
He listened to the belching frogs,
currents foaming fruited wish.
All the roads just bobbins
spinning feeble threads.
People were just dirty diapers
messing up the ambience --
the only corner of this quilt
batting of his mind despised.
Evening seemed a cool sin
to drag through forests of a lung.
Nothing but the moon for glare.
Sense of power -- brief, cirrose.


Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Poetry Magazine

The Cop's Wife

The Cop's Wife

A victim of raw witnessing,
she saw too much. Heard too much.
Living like a waiting log
so near the quick serrated edge.
Always on the lip of lightening
waiting for the strike of death.
Tender jingles of the phone
were buttons on electric chairs,
rivers rising all around.
She'd iron navy uniforms.
Steam would hiss like cornered cats.
A poster child of urban sewers
rumbling through the fetid mud.
An agonizing ritual of
shut the drapes. Chain the door.
Check the locks and check again,
as tongues return to rotted teeth.
Erase a mind of high-speed chase
where trees have turned to tumbleweeds.

At 2 a.m., his shift was done.
A key would turn and she would
melt in gratitude,
slip her thigh between
sharp scissors of his grief.
Rise another wending day,
crack an egg in skillets
of her torrid fear.
The chance to love, a prisoner
of chancre and their impotence.
She owned that brand
of pounding heart that
pumped like riggers drill for oil,
hoping wet will meet their hands.
Hers a coy and secret strength
too frail to be spoken of.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Poetry Magazine

Sealing Wax

Janet Buck


Sealing Wax

Age-old old age.
Its prediction coming true
like a generic horoscope
stretched to fit all carnal fire.
Pin pain stabbing the only ankle
I've been left. My knee,
an also widowed one--
so I press up-hill as salmon do
to lay their eggs.
The eagle of will is a myth,
but I study it nevertheless
for they say it has enormous wings
that shock you when you
get up close.

Muscles dragging
plastic parts.
Grinding and grinning
at gray curls dropping--
feathers into soupy sweat.
Giving up is sealing wax
on a letter I'm not
prepared to send.
I leave my dent in the wind
like the memory of grass.
This treadmill is a joke.
I pad its rubber like
I'm spanking myself
and ordering death
to go to its room.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

Plastic Over Sacchraine

Plastic Over Saccharine


A four-year-old kid plays hide 'n seek
with the back of his papa's Lazy-Boy.
Pressing his face to leather wall.
Scent of sunrise sews
its batting in a dream.
He jockies for attentiveness.
Praying he'll be light enough
to ride this horse to victory.

"Your Dad just likes his alcohol.
It isn't that he doesn't love you.
He works long hours
and needs his space."
She'd hang those words
like candy canes on Christmas trees.
Plastic over saccharine
fingers of his innocence
just weren't supposed to open up.

Beer breath for a goodnight kiss,
the only breeze his body knew.
Moods were always shifty moons.
The slap. The sting. The bruise.
The snore. A family full of scarlet cheeks
where roses of some need should bloom.
He wants to be that shiny can
on coasters near his father's lap.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

Oasis Is Forgiving This

Painting by Daniela Isache


Oasis is Forgiving This

The more you dig
through ashen years,
more your hair
turns shades to match--
the bigger the buried
past becomes.
This inky mirror
flashes things.
And you stare straight
in the bull's eye of a bruise,
shrinking from potential darts.

Across twelve states you hear
your father's voice.
And the sting returns
to haunt this home
the way a piece of soiled
lettuce spoils all
surrounding green.
Your ivory bottom,
its tiny pair of
innocent moons
sifting through words,
looking for snag,
for judgment hitch,
for snapping belts
of childhood.

Every mile ahead of us
will be a camel's desert walk
through pitchforked eyes
and swirling sand.
Oasis is forgiving this:
Rash as red as borscht
on linen tablecloths.
Blue black stripes
smiling like a swastika.

Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

A Boy, a Bottle, a Man

A Boy, a Bottle, a Man

A blank page of six-year old innocence
sits in the bed of a pick up truck,
watching the sun retreat
in a blaze of rusted fear.
"My father will be right back,"
he says to the cop,
shuffling his boots in prairie dust,
knowing both tact and tale
of paltry scene--
binding broken nursery rhymes:
a boy, a bottle, a man.

The bar stool is an altar
and he is the lamb, prepared
for Mother's rush of angry words,
spilling from soured expectation's breath.
She knows inside how his kiss will taste--
that he will forget the gallon of milk.
That she will forgive him,
bouncing on the mattress
in the center of the night,
its wires poking through first
her clothes and then her skin.

This pendulum of hope and not
swinging like bridge
above a rising river's foam
where the shore line is
made of thick brown glass
and all the rocks are cans of beer.
"My father will be right back."
His learned tongue recites this prayer--
lying to the smart spun nickel
of a swelling moon.

by Janet I. Buck

Posted over on Ariga

Parting Drapes

Parting Drapes


Parting Drapes
How did you survive the frost
knowing the book would close,
music would stop, a pulse would quit,
and you would be left in a room
surrounded by empty chairs?
Six long months with death for drapes
your hands were always drawing them.
Back and forth, the steel screeched
as if it were an oil rig
plumbing a desert for hope.
You messed with even valances,
tugging at puffs as if this skirt
could ever hang over the going bone.
Inviting in the hiding sun,
blue batiks of fading skies
becomes commitment's old career.
You sign forever in the sand;
someone kicks it in your eyes.

All palms are idle in the end,
tortilla husks that speak
of curdled, passing meals.
Little scraps of ivory moons
bequeathed to soil, then covered up.
Rage drops anchors in the mud
and dying sails the fitful sea,
testing every rope we own.
You kept his college photograph
in every room you wandered through
touched the glass as if to print it
with a wish.
Fed him ice chips, spoons of yogurt,
watched the drips deliver fluid
to the sand,
packed his watch and wedding ring
took it home and stored it there
where every clock had lost its dial.
Adoring him was not a chore
even when his face was ash.


Janet Buck


Posted over on Casa Poema

Confessions

deviant art


c o n f e s s i o n s….


There are alien bodies from Roswell, New Mexico lounging along the landing, staring vacantly into old wrist watches the size of 15 inch frying pans, petrified hippies from France mostly, passing through some kind of inner-pause, snorting in the vibrations from frayed black-light posters of food that line the walls. For some unexplained reason I start counting the steps as if they're one of your recipes. I remember I start counting at step number 1,962 and slowly work myself up to 2,003. Most of the steps are cursed with small puddles of sweat and blood on them. Each step appears to be carrying on a conversation with the next step. Their whispering intonations are windy and indistinct but I recognize in them your mellifluously deep, garbled voice. Sentences sweep by me like floating, heavenly noodles from outer space that take shape even as they're voiced, rising like ephemeral pastries out of some pornographic cook book spreading out and over the floors I climb past. With tears of pleasure in my eyes, I savor their encouraging remarks as I go:
*Warning! You have an imagination and don't mind using it. Curse the mad scientist who gave you birth. You don't suffer from insanity. You enjoy every minute of it. I refuse to star in your psychodrama. I'll bet you're fantasizing about me right now. I'll bet you played with dead things when you were a kid. Don't make me violate your probation.*

One of the doors on your floor is open. It is without an identifying number. The words *P.B.S., New York* are scribbled on it. There is a restaurant in there. The specialty of the house is *peaches and cream* served by a cheap queen dressed in someone else’s faded plum prom dress. He has a flower in his hair the same color as your armpits and legs. In his hands is a stamp which he determinedly, gleefully and with gusto slams down on paper after paper he removes from a three foot pile. The impression the stamp makes is in red ink and states unequivocally: *Cancel! Reject! Spoiled!*

I don't seem to be shocked. I take a seat and pick up a menu. I can't decide what to order but know I need to order for us both. I'm in the mood for something that will just as smoothly leave me as when I gulp it down. One of the items catches my attention. It reads: *Beautiful but lonely lady in her eighties. Willing to pay for and support all bad habits. Won't ask questions when you come home drunk. Available and waiting. Must relocate to L.A.*

Reacting instinctively, unable to stop myself, I decide I definitely want a dish of that! The decision is made easier by the other patrons around me. They are all dressed in leather. Some have black lipstick and flour makeup. Others wear leashes. They are all winking at me. They smile and nod. None of them appears to be over twenty years old. A banner is unfurled. I find myself in the center of a historic, epochal event. It is the revolutionary first meeting of the famously secretive Black Goth Gourmand Society. The organization is so secret that nobody knows about it but me. A particularly attractive, obese girl with a pasta inspired hairdo and large but vacant mesmerizing eyes the size of triple *A* eggs rises to address the gathering. She dribbles your white sauce from the corners of her lips as she speaks.

*Surprise! This isn't really a restaurant you know. This is the counseling center for the University, Depeche Mode. We're a representative sample of new wave, culinary mentals with appetites who can't say no. Consider yourself on trial for indiscriminate loitering and having nasty thoughts during seminars you attended (dealing with the most serious of topics concerning art and popped culture). I'm now going to tear off my clothes and fall on my back on this table. You may cover me with whipped cream. You can look but don't touch. You see I represent Art in America and this is all a fable.*

Her remarks were followed by the deafening sound of applause as the waiter moved to the center of the room. Removing from the underdeveloped pocket of his cleavage, a flashlight, he pointed it toward his face and turned it on. The room darkened until nothing was visible but his food stained smirk. His face rose from his body and began to float among the tables. The sound of laughter like boiling water filled the room as people began to slap at the apparition sending it sailing back and forth. Each time it was smacked it wobbled closer to me. I would like to sound profound by stating it reminded me of the face of Graham Kerr but truth and honesty are the taskmaster of all confession, and I must come clean, it was totally unfamiliar, with exception, it had the unmistakable eyebrows of a former girlfriend I once conned for fifty bucks by promising some special attentions I never delivered on. It wasn’t my fault. I'm only dishonest when it comes to important disclosure about myself that I keep from myself. Flustered and anxious, the contents of the head took shape. I related to him what I am now explaining to you.


Scott Malby

Posted over on Crossconnect

Gulf War II

January afternoon/Gulf War I

The saccharine sweetness
of a pink sky
at 4 pm on that day
turned me from my sidewalk
to retch in the hedge.

It was a candy, perhaps of cotton,
that had seemed so sweet,
so gentle. We´d known
only the fair, the clown,
not that it was a
prelude, an
early shade of red
sweet as a drop of
blood
licked from a hangnail,
an
addiction.

And the calm around filling my ears with
burning sticks,
the roaring calm
flaming in my ears, the
flames of us,
the flames and the screams of
all of us,
slowly, quietly, surely,
burning down our backs like the
lit fuse of a
codependent firecracker,
sizzling in our need, and
spineless in our desire,
to destroy each other,





Gulf War II

this same calm will be the song,
the moment of the undoing of it all,
when the Mother of a
True Victory
(a victory of creased kneebacks and unstopped ears
a triumph of learned ashes and burlap)
when that Mother, with Her holy tongue
will lick the white tombstones
just to soften what´s been turned to bone
just to get us all singing again.
Then, She´ll find the sidewalk crack and
step upon it, that Her
back might be broken and the
song released from our spines, that
the earth might shake and the rocks split, the
tomb break open and
the bodies of many people who
thought they were holy might go into the
city they thought was holy and
make it finally so, singing:

Deep the pull of it
Low the breath to it
Dark the start of it, always.
It is the hammering of words
to ring clean in the language of the heart.
What else is song

and how else,
America,
would you rather speak?


Joseph Byrd

Posted over on The Pedestal Magazine

The Day the City Fell

The Day the City Fell

From the porch of our house on the beach,
we could see the city fall.
I remember how my mother
dropped her coffee cup and gripped
the railing when our porch shook
and tilted with the bombs.
We could not hear
the screaming of the metal timbers or
the crunch of buildings crumpling.
We could just see the city,
its thin silver buildings squatting
in the faint haze across the bay,
and the gray cloud that rose up and
blotted out the sun. It was a toy city
like the ones I built in the sand
that my brother stomped.
"Mommy," I said, "Is the city going
to fall in the sea?" And in the slowly
rising water that came after,
they told us we must evacuate.
When the helicopter came to take us
away, as the swirling waves lapped
the white-painted porch steps,
we could not find my brother.
I cried because he was supposed to
take me sailing later, and the
black-gloved men would not let me
go back into the house to get my book.
At the Red Cross shelter we found
my brother, on a cot around the corner
with the huddled neighbors. I did not
recognize him in the scary rubber masks
they made us wear because of the diseases
in the air. I just wished I had my book,
because there were too many people
and the TV was too small and I had
already seen that movie.
The men at the door had guns and masks,
and my brother said, "They look like
stormtroopers from Star Wars."
I thought that was funny.
I laughed, but it wasn't like there
was a tidal wave or anything.
They should have let us go back
to our house. I guess they were afraid
a piece of the city might fall on us,
or something in the air might eat our skin.
I wanted to tell them that they were wrong,
that at our house the air was salty
and clean, and we had a Sunfish
with a yellow sail at our dock.
I wanted to tell them we had to go back,
because furniture and bookshelves are
not supposed to get wet. But the city fell
that day, and all my Nancy Drew books
that Grandma gave me got swallowed up.
I used to sculpt toy cities in the damp sand,
weaving little flags out of the
sharp yellow grass that grows on the dunes.
But when you see a real city fall
into the sea like that,
and imagine the pages of your books
waving wetly underwater where the fish
can't read them,
you do not want to build sand cities
anymore.


Sarah L. Tolcser

Posted over on The Pedestal Magazine

On the Way to Iraq Everywhere There Is Dancing

ON THE WAY TO IRAQ
EVERYWHERE THERE IS DANCING

We are mistaken,
mis-hear what appears
to be music. Without
credible cadence
perhaps it is desire
tapping us to attention.

It beckons and yet
the floor is vacant,
dancers wait against mirrored walls,
become one in held breaths;
heads bend over ribboned cards.

The bandleader enters.
We exhale.

It is not quite music.

He raises a baton, but not
a baton. There is no band.
The stick is aimed, fired and rings
out with a thunder at once familiar.

We smile and
in a crinkling rush
of taffeta and silk ,
we choose partners,
fill our dance cards,
hurry onto the ballroom floor
and step easily to the quadrille
as if yesterday had never passed.

Everywhere there is dancing.


Sunny Solomon

Posted over on The Pedestal Magazine

Pictures From Fallujah

Photo from the Lurie Studios


Pictures from Fallujah
after the first siege, April 2004

I.

This color
so ordinary
like
preschool children mixing
too many fingerpaints
smearing surfaces without permission

You won´t believe
this color unfolds like
overblown red roses
dying in the sun
like shingles wet with rain
or grey paint peeling to expose
the veined wood underneath

You won´t believe
the same soft pigment
would occupy or take refuge in
a burnished church door
a man´s sunburned skin
as he tears his shirt open
in front of crumbled concrete
fossils of his home

You won´t believe it is lighter than
his fingers

You won´t believe
how it hovers
beneath the crumpled shelf
behind the stove
This is not cinnamon
This is not cloves
This does not belong
in the kitchen

You won´t believe
how a man in white in Fallujah
turns his face away in the picture
walks through crushed debris
of his own ceiling away from
a color darker than sienna
soil that buries
125 dead in a
sports field
outside his door

no it´s
more like rust
imprints on your palms
this splattered wall
of dried human
blood


II.

silence deceives
caresses you in full noon sun
its knuckles brush your cheek
just seconds before the sound of

bootsteps or scatter shot
walls collapsing beneath their weight
capture your breath
pummel your stomach
wrench your spine

here inside this kitchen
silence colors everything
its grey shadow mutes
the edges of the dinner table
the slate floor
and porcelain jars

I turn when he murmurs
the price he has paid in blood
but now he folds inward like a cloud
drifts away past a stain near the doorway
which he will not describe nor name

here I have no child´s eyes
to photograph in wide eloquence
no madrigal of open wounds
black scars violating geometry

only these linen robes
that whisper from stooped shoulders
only grief walking barefoot
into the next room


Maurisa Thompson

Posted over on The Pedestal Magazine