Michael Lee Johnson and the Nuclei Redemption of Sugar Rats, a Salmon Vodka Drunk, Pickpockets and Knit Sweaters

Cheaters

I am tired of cheaters

online, weary eyed crossword

players complicated moves

drift dancers, lies, laid soft peddle

dark closet dreamers.

Old Hens 

Why do old hen's cry-

socialize in familiar doctor offices safe

the smell and the scent of times unchanged.

Magazines folder pages back to comfort.

Seek nuclei redemption in prayer books of the New Testament.

I find them there beside me in seated chairs, and wheelchairs,

moving on, why do old hen's cry?

South Chicago Night 

Night is drifters,

sugar rats, streetwalkers,

pickpockets, pimps,

insects, Lake Michigan perch,

neon tubes blinking,

half the local street

lights bulbs burned out.

No One Cares

No one cares

I set in my 2001 Chevy S10 truck

drunk on smoked salmon vodka,

writing poems on Subway sandwich napkins.

No one cares my life is a carburetor

full of fumes, filters, caskets, crickets.

Memories:  Tasha Tudor

The heart of this land is within the person living there.

The cattle grazing near the riverbank, gardens manicured

with manure, cats sucking milk from any nipple, and those corgi dogs.

Mice loved life beneath her steps where she walked.

Sheep baskets full wool to wheel and knit sweaters handmade.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois.  He has been published in more than 875 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites.    Author's website http://poetryman.mysite.com/  He has over 76 poetry videos on YouTube:   https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos   Email:  promomanusa@gmail.com

Matthew Borczon Protests That We Are More Than Ten Pages

End of shift

The Afghan
soldier was
shot in
the chest
and thigh
mostly I
just held
his arms
down while
they put
in a
central line
and the
Lieutenant
hung bag
after bag
of blood
there were
6 people
working on
him and
he seemed
stable as
we sent
him into
the OR

that night
lieutenant
told me
he had
died on
the operating
table we
could not
keep enough
blood in
him he
said just
before walking
away funny
I really
thought he
was going
to be
OK he
said over
his shoulder
I thought
so too

but back
then I
think I
thought  the
same thing
about the
Lieutenant
and me.



Human resources

Spent 7
days in
HR working
on files
and charts
I thought
it would
be a
nice change
of pace
from the
ward and
the blood
and bandages
just a
long row
of cabinets
and I
only worked
day shift
that week
but after
the 31st
death certificate
I filed
into skinny
folders
I knew
for certain
that death
was everywhere
here and
it reduced
everyone’s  life
to 10
pages or
less.


Post deployment

I
stripped
and cleaned
both my
rifle and
9mm and
gave back
my body
armor and
two full
sea bags
felt a
hundred pounds
lighter for
awhile as
I walked
around Norfolk
trying to
feel like
a civilian again

I remember
really enjoying
those first
few weeks
back home
before the
weight
of everything
I could
not give
back from
the war
hit me
and I
crushed
everyone
those I
loved and
those I
barely knew.


Matthew Borczon is a nurse and Navy Corpsman from Erie Pa. He served in the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan from 2010-2011, he writes about his experiences on Camp Bastion and about the difficulties he has had since coming home. 

Stephen Bett Puns Buddha Love, The Locked Drawer of Spiritual Fatigue, Agoraphobia, and Learning Emptiness

Back Principles (14) : Keats & Rilke coming up again (& damned Spicer, too)

Who sees into me
… has mine heart?


Too easily tossed
(on a heap, on
a mound)


This inning is
future time
(grace time …?)


I would take
a pitcher
of you


Drink it, bat it
out of here
−−whatever
it takes


I lose myself
completely, am
struck dumb
in your
buddha
love


Where is my
ground, where
is my Heysus
spinning to
now


This (heady) gain
is nerve loss
(also)


It is mystery
one enters
−−terrified
(& possibly
alive …)
Witless &
spooked,
& unafraid
to say so
(god help
me)


Look in mine
eyes & give
me your
strength,
I have none
that doesn’t
shake the bases
loose in the
night


Look in mine
eyes, I have
forgotten how
to see
 
Back Principles (34) : spiritual fatigue

This is surely
spiritual fatigue
(on the loose)
(at loose ends)


Backed into a corner
(loosely speaking)


Back me, back
me not …


My back is knotted


Lies bound in a
locked drawer


When it creaks open
pray for something
merciful


Pray there is
something
there


You will not
have my back
beyond this
point


It will be loose
at ease, or it
will be
broken
 
Back Principles (52) : agoraphobic 

Big spaces are
made of this


Phoenix to Yuma
−−terrifying


The christ to
the buddha …
terrifying too


Hold my back (pls)
the landscape
would break
it in halves


Agoraphobic,
big space


Holding emptiness
in my hands






Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet. His earlier work is known for its sassy, edgy, hip… caustic wit―indeed, for the askance look of the serious satirist… skewering what he calls the ‘vapid monoculture’ of our times. His more recent books have been called an incredible accomplishment for their authentic minimalist subtlety. Many are tightly sequenced book-length ‘serial’ poems, which allow for a rich echoing of cadence and image, building a wonderfully subtle, nuanced music. Bett follows in the avant tradition of Don Allen’s New American Poets. Hence the mandate for Simon Fraser University’s “Contemporary Literature Collection” to purchase and archive his “personal papers” for scholarly use. He is recently retired after a 31-year teaching career largely at Langara College in Vancouver, and now lives with his wife Katie in Victoria, BC.     www.stephenbett.com 

Vin Whitman Reveals the Centiperson, Screaming Birds, Leviathans, Orgasmic Blindspots, and the Asterisk as Crucifix

LIGHTNING/BUGS

 This was where we
 Spun our cocoons
 This was where we set the
 Seeds free
 Unaware of our
 Eight-armed enemy
 Invisible filaments drawn
 Asterisk or crucifix?

 Bumbling bee
 Desperate to worship
 W/ drunken lane changes
 Crashes the silken barricade
 And sobers into a hostage

 Butterfly army
 Sleeps through the storm
 As a leviathan would underwater

 Birds scream bloody terror at the
 Oncoming waterfall's windshield
 A weather phenomenon
 That spells hospital
 Or cemetery
 In violet text

 Doesn't even set
 The web askew

CENTIPERSON

 Do you roam yourself like a giant planet
 Discovering secret burial grounds,
 Orgasmic blindspots

 I do

 You could roam into the space
 Just above your skull and pull
 It down through the floor
 To excavate a comfort zone that's
 Become a claustrophobic

 Zoo

 Sheep and kangaroos
 Are people too
 I'm a scavenger of depth, not width
 Roaming a grave and salty
 Undertow

 Few

 Can stay on the surface
 Of their sunny dispositions
 Extreme evolution and
 Stunning photographs

 Ensue

 I could take no pictures of
 My journey
 I had to draw them slowly
 From memory

 Why only roam to your
 Outskirts of skin?
 Lose count of dimensions
 In your centipede of nerves

 THERMOGENIC

 The jaws of rejection
 In a classroom
 Full of meat

 Left out
 To thaw, or worse,
 Thrown to the ground
 Losing teeth

 Post traumatic
 Dents in their faces
 Their slivered cat-eyes
 Flat-lining

 The bias-cut of a few
 Prime numbers

 Taste of a loaded,
 Bulging society
 Passed down in generational sausage

 Links
 A condition that will worsen
 To our hands
 Still shaking
 Sweating
 Giving off heat

Vin Whitman writes in fearful imagery that can make him paranoid, but he's learned to thrive on it. He is working on the social skills needed to do social work. He reads with The Tea House poets in Florida.

Michael McInnis Speaks of the Crank Time of Einstein's Trains and the Effects of Light Pollution

Crank Time

There is no 4th
dimension

in crank time
traveling

faster than the
speed of

light no longer
held in

place by gravity
or dreams

of Einstein’s trains
lurching through

fallout shelters and
frigates

that sail too close
to the edge

while the earth keeps
accelerating

and wobbling ever
so slightly

centrifugal forces at
work while

tides churn and wash
as if all

the whales and sea
monsters swim

to one side of the
ocean at once



1962

All there at the
beginning

the inexorable
descent

into a kind of
madness as

if trading green
stamps

for furniture or a
crock pot

never used or that
display lamp

with the bulb that
flickered

and smoked the
pocket

calculator turned
upside down

always reading
7734

and outside the
plate glass

window a mackerel
sky showering

missiles and
rockets



People Living in Caves


people living in caves
return to the

surface crazy the sun
no longer

comforting the moon
no longer

holding any mystery
and the stars

they never recall the
stars as if

light pollution was all
that remained

Michael McInnis lives in Boston and spent six years in the Navy sailing across the Pacific and Indian Oceans to the Persian Gulf three times, chasing white whales and ending up only with madness. He has published poetry and short fiction in Literary Yard, 1947, Dead Snakes, Monkey Bicycle, Cream City Review, 5x5 Singles Club, Facets Magazine, Arshile, Nightmare of Reason, Oak Square, Quimby Quarterly and Version 90.

MarkYoung's Sine Waves Towards the Surface Tension and Basho Bored with the Heron

A Newly Discovered "Bashōic" Haiku

Looking for a wedge to force into the afternoon, sort of split it in two. Boredom creeping in. Too cold to go for a swim, & if I read or watch tv I'll just go to sleep in the chair. Driving's the answer, that old foot down flat to the floor routine, out & about, Steppenwolf forever.

Decide to take Bashō along for the ride – he hasn't been the same ever since he read William Gibson's last four books in the one sitting & realized the old Japan he knew & loved no longer existed. A little stir-crazy lately, so seeing bucolic might stop his melancholy.

We head south, following the backroads, or at least those that are sealed. Sine waves of fast-braking tyre rubber staining the bitumen. Pick up the vibe but don't try to add to it. Instead

stop somewhat sedately at the lagoon where the black swans are, get out, smoke a cigarette as we watch a couple of eagles ride the thermals above the water.

Lower down a heron stands on a fallen tree trunk until it gets bored by the lack of fish & flies away. Bashō watches it, flicks his dying cigarette towards where it was. Doesn't look at me. Says:

Fuck this nature shit!

Let's go home, watch anime

on cable tv.

urban transit

How to work out

what to in-

clude? The selection

wasn't yours

in the first place—just

things that happened

along a bus route

you just happened to

live on. Never

caught the bus. Some-

times heard it go

by, sometimes

watched it

disappearing into

the not-too-far

distance. Close enough

to see that there

was no-one

in the backseat

telling the driver to

wait, to let you catch

up, to let you get on.

A littoral translation

As if

frozen, that

moment when the

river is / between

the tides. Mud

meters out from

the mangroves. The

rocks exposed. A single

pelican near the other

bank, reluctant to

move, to relieve

the surface tension.

Mark Young is the editor of Otoliths, lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry for more than fifty-five years. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. A new collection of poems, Bandicoot habitat, has recently come out from gradient books of Finland.

James Diaz Brings Ferris Wheels, Thunderstorm Sex, Warehouse Eyes, and A Rust of Wounds

Toilet Romance

Gone
past the hills steel gray
ferris wheel
time when I was imbued with numb infinity
counting cars

since nowhere is still nowhere
I draw a map for you
consisting of my skin
and a collection of scars
this road is warped
I have dreamed of anatomy changing

nothing and no one
I am strapped to a bullet
pulled through a straw
into the record you keep
of time
and it's sleepy spiders
who love me like a god.


Tacky Stockings

one is for the strive
a person places
like bee stings
on horizon's cup

empty barricades
tooth alley
and I hate my streets
this urban over brick over ruined faces of devastated mornings

come through me
each parable
a burning turn
ferris wheels and thunderstorm sex in the back seat
I was pulled from Brooklyn
into New Jersey at 5 a. m.
blitzed out interstate
wrapped around stars
come to the point

I can't realize truth
from the distorted
elements
where time keeps building it's rust of wounds
to hound me down
for all of my artificial kisses.



Suicide As Travel


My death is like dark water
it toys with breaking points
asleep in the head
roach of severed dreams
I ahem in my suicide
after
always after
and flatter than a road
coughing
every lung is tied
to lampposts with cameras in their bones
dry and tired in the socket
where oceans grind their cocks
in a song
I licked
when I was sick
and radioactive
a bad omen
a month of pain
with warehouse eyes
life is good
when I'm stuffed in a car
with a candle light tail
that sheds its skin and shame
as it shoots for the most distant star
a bone in the asshole
which throws a fit
and is terrified of corners
where the staff can rape you
and eat your shoe laces
but they can't pin hope across your wrists
which are dying to be split
like the grin of a damaged God
for good
I am done
a tape loop
unspooled
with busted teeth drinking the wall
the truth is
you are only loved
when your nipples are as cold as gold
sleeping dog
yawn
for I am really ignorant
and know only how to do this one thing.



Bio: James Diaz lives in New York where he is currently trying to figure shit out. Other writings of his can be found in Cheap Pop Lit, Ditch, Pismire, Collective Exile and The Idiom.