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Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Matthew Borczon Looses His Bleeding Fingers Across the Parchment of Afghanistan Unleashed Like the Dog of His Poems

the dog

the dog
broke
its leash
and was
dragging
it behind
him as
he ran
up on
Nick who
used that
chain to
choke the
dog dead
and then
threw it
onto the
owner's porch
screaming threats
but Nick
is still
not ready
to go
to the
VA or
to talk
about
the war.


bad habits


thinking
about the
war as
I bite
my nails
too close
and watch
the blood
pool in
my nail
bed I
have chewed
them all
down to
open sores
that hurt
with everything
I pick up


with everything
I can't
put down.


civilian casualty


as a
younger man
my sense
of drama
might have
led me
to make
her much
more personal
give her
a name
convince
myself I
heard her
soft voice
call to
her father
but at
45 I
did the
only thing
I could
I pushed
her outside
my consciousness
outside memory
not even
one line
in my
diary
outside of
my life
in the
hospital and
my head
for the
whole time
I was in
Afghanistan
some nights
I still
hear her
ghost begging
me to
finally let
her in.

Matthew Borczon is the author of four books of poetry A Clock of Human Bones by the Yellow Chair review press, Battle Lines by Epic Rites press, Ghost Train by Weasel Press and Sleepless nights and Ghost Soldiers by Grey Boarders press. He has a chapbook coming out through Epic Rites before the end of this year as well. He is a nurse and Navy Sailor from Erie, Pa. He tries not to let PTSD rule too much of his life

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Rus Khomutoff In the Thralldom Sullied By Quantum Catharsis

Splash Bombs 

to Michel Majerus


Horns of dilemma, the shadow’s brighter heritage
going beyond the symptoms
quartered revelator of the frayed edge
a week of redolent memory
beset by both the future
and the past
thralldom mastication



The Shallow Between
to Nick Land

Pathos of distance expecting itself
fake eternities of stationary descent
tailored hallucinations that surrender
to the serpentine ensemble of all possibility
hiatuses sullied by memory
ecstasy of the everyday




Catharsis daily


Lions and shadows
labyrinthine emergence
voice in the chasm
obliteration of the possible at all costs
unbegotten and immortal
words that belong to a quantum realm
catharsis daily

My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am a neo surrealist poet in Brooklyn,NY. My poetry has been featured in Uut Poetry, Erbacce, Fifth day journal and Burning house press. Last year I self published an ebook called Immaculate Days. I am also on twitter @rusdaboss

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Peter Jacob Streitz Pushes Bukowski and Shakespeare Through the Bibliotheque Aerial Reconnaissance

BUKOWSKI


That shitfaced
Pig
Nah, macho man
Loving
The limbs
Of ladies
Or the fattest
Asses
With smallish
Breast
And suckable
Nips
Like the quim colored lips
Of dead
Soldiers
Where beer
Flows
In winy utterances
Mixing sex
With fucking
Then love
Or appreciation
Of mirrors
Healing acne
With wisdom
Or cocktails
That pussy foot
From sacks
To racetracks
And back
To paddocks
Of saddles
And whips
Plus horns
And leads
With harnesses
That mount
And cinch
The saddlebags
In stirrups
Of lust
As fleshy bits
Rope heartache
To the rhyming
Of losers
And winners
Who’re eternally
Trumped
For never
Having placed
The bet
—that women who blush—
Train their flanks
To lap
The track
Where mares
And stallions
Collide
In a world
Of wonder
And words
Wasted
Unless the final
Thrust
Is
Human nature
And
Human nature
Is
the last word
Of his story.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE DARK

The tweeker’s
Boggy, alcoholic eyes
Bulged unblinkingly
Within inches of mine
Setting the stage
For mere players
In this mosh pit
At the intersection of ol’Frisco
And modernity
While the watery whirl
Of rush hour washed‘round
And Dino denied I’ve come—
To that very corner
Everyday
For the past twenty years
Awaiting my love’s return
from work
But on this day
Where the subway
emerges
And the street cars clank
Like two ships
Passing in the night
I unknowingly missed her
As she unknowingly missed me
But Dino didn’t miss a beat
Manically orating his resurrection
As a bookseller
And one who
Only reads the law
And fuck that storytelling
Crap
With his countenance
Increasingly inscribed
In an ominous glaze
And his lids hoisted
At half-mast
He pulled back the curtain
For the briefest moment
To inquire
Do you read?
What?
There was no answer
Other than His . . .
—Shakespeare—
Leading to
his sidewalk bibliothèque
Where ten tomes of prose
Sat dog-eared and dirty
Along with a soiled sleeping mat
And a rat
Disguised as a pet
Entrapped beneath
A milk crate
—Much Ado About Nothing—
Was crammed into my hand
While two bucks
departed this fool
And his wad of money
Filled Dino’s head
With sugar plums of theft
Or thirst for some complicity
Whose outright criminality
Got quenched with past drinks
And blackouts
At whore houses
In Alaska
And racist chases
In Texas by Rangers
Who took exception
To the pilfering
Of black velvet
Bedspreads—
when shit and damn
My cell phone vibrated
And a distraught
Wifely voice
Rung down the curtain
On two role players
In another performance
Of their life.


WINGED RATS


Bullshit
Unless you consider
They eat the same crap
But you’d be wrong
These low flying
Aviators
Of the cityscape
Got zip codes
And statues
And ordnances as white
As the driven snow.
In some hoods
They’re the only fauna
That doesn’t attack
And kill
As ordered
Or destroy the trees
With piss and shit
And forget the grass.
Instead, these citizens
Of aerial reconnaissance
Clean-up after bums
And partygoers
Doing such civic duties
As eating
the rice and beans
Regurgitated
By soup kitchen
Devotees
Or their counterparts
Boogieing in
From bedroom
Communities
Leaving their suburban
Blight
For clean-up
By those living
Aloft
On the ledge
With only one way
To fall
Pilotless
And no safety net
Dying alone
Earthbound
In their mourning suits
Having seen it all
On the hardest streets
. . . yet nothing . . .
Of remembrance
Not even the homage
Of never more.



Peter Jacob Streitz was born an iconoclastic hick in upstate New York. Raised by a single mom after his dad flew the coop instead of flying The Hump--over the Burma Road in World War Two--where he won the Distinguish Flying Cross by losing both the Japs and his mind. His inevitable departure didn’t affect Peter—as he morphed into an All-American boy and athlete who was awarded a four year, full-boat scholarship to Alfred University (which he rejected) before counter-culturing his way towards the only degree ever given by Boston University in Alternative Education.