'The Cleansing'
Insomnia
will pass on
like a spirit
to the
underworld
Playing with
myself to
nullify the
absence
of touch
Using my arm
as an ashtray
wrapped up
in white sheets
that once held
your scent
now reek of
burning flesh
Playing fast
on this old
blue guitar
I'm three
songs away
from finishing
this set
Living my way
is a deserted
path of
identical
footsteps
After the
detoxification
of filthy
parasitic drugs
This little
departure
should be
easier than
a cam-girl
and clean
as a virgin
'F.D.A. Approved Poetry'
Publishing
a book is
more cost
efficient
than attaining
the chemicals
needed to
conceive it
My bank account
has been rendered
insufficient by
the time it took
to publish this
manuscript
I'm talking
cold sweats
in the summer
hot sweats
in the winter
An abundance
of time spent
waiting to get
wasted
A mind
on hiatus
when deprived
of the sustenance
Drugs sweat
and digital
keypads
went into
the making
of this poetry
My debut chapbook
that spanned
the time of
a life spent
for the better half
on a hedonistic journey
I was thinking
bigger than
my high
or stockpile
of orange bottles
Aiming for the sky
with the way
I was feeling
at the time
you couldn't
blame me
Facebook
has been
generous
by liking
the status
of my latest
release
These people
of digital entities
are always there
to hit the like button
as a courtesy
a cyber congratulations
That's great and all
but the last thing
I need is
a showmanship
of kindness
on my book entitled
F.D.A. Approved Poetry
that hasn't sold
more than five copies
'Orange Is The New White'
Orange
is the
new white
I'm much
obliged
to have
made your
acquaintance
I apply
pressure
turning
like a
democrat
White residue
on my hands
the stabilization
of shaky fingers
Three strikes
down the
hatch
Capitulation
It says
to take one
every four
to six hours
I'm lonely as is
and terrible at
following directions
Michael Marrotti is an author from Pittsburgh, using words instead of violence to mitigate the suffering of life in a callous world of redundancy. His primary goal is to help other people. He considers poetry to be a form of philanthropy. When he's not writing, he's volunteering at the Light Of Life homeless shelter on a weekly basis. If you appreciate the man's work, please check out his book, F.D.A. Approved Poetry, available at Amazon.
heart
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Caleb Puckett Ducks the Wide Grandpa Scythe, Taunts the Mute Idols, and Knows the Apollo Placebo
Unacknowledged Legislators
In both letter and spirit,
how close to peon poem
seems of late.
Why’s advice:
Go with peony, then.
Paeon as paean—
Apollo on all fours—
doctoring the gods,
a placebo winning the day.
Yes, but dirt stains
your fingers either way.
Broken Ballad
If stable,
speech lacks labor.
Once bonny,
I had thought on love,
become feeble in finding
the approximation of.
I understood need,
yet would not change
my fear of want,
wanting too much, dearest X.
Did believe. The steps.
Did harm. The ascension.
None turned nonetheless.
Fall deepened.
Alone, a banished man, I traveled
through the great green-wood
with brow beaten
to reclaim nature’s succor.
My causeway crumbling,
a mockery built of shining rock.
Go on to the gone side, gypsy lord,
I cried.
So courteous behind it all.
The intent crystalline in supposition.
She. Anointed.
She. In case appointed.
A baron’s day took me footman.
Pretty little brogues with money
twinkling, she danced for Johnny.
She, likewise, must go.
Testify. Her eye passes wonder
dead.
Hair feathered with ash.
The joy of counsel to part
ever again.
Averring peace
in the burning plain between.
The whole span of hope collapsed.
Strange, still
I must believe in moon talk, that love,
no matter its twisted manner, blame, pain,
comes end-wise for salve or salvation.
Beside time in the bedside kneel,
the rainfall runs to ague.
Odd flash of steel blade. Promises beyond.
A lowland day,
an empty castle
and my wanton
lady drowned at sea-strand,
tangled in broken mast.
Inquire, understand and yet—
a gold ring
sorry for its finger.
Alone at last grasp, she and I.
Laws of memory twine
secrets.
Darkened, sheets seem vines, anchors.
Prayers folded, shaped for windfall,
set for no man’s landfall.
A kiss captured for a moment’s glamor.
Good for once and only.
The art of haste.
Grief’s delighted maid
trampling the heather, rutting reunion’s field.
Cloak kept, will to sustain taken in spite.
Winter’s white blast sickens.
So now I switch a sexton’s head for a doctor’s,
dearest X.
Nineveh
Red moon city,
rat city,
city of reproaches
whispering mad omens
from solitary corner
to choked square.
Streets eat buildings
while buildings bite at the air.
The air is an armory waiting to blow.
The wind smelled of sugar, now sulfur.
The old carapace erodes.
Mute idols
and eyeless portraits dissolve
with fevered touches
as we seek vestiges of solace.
Behind the walls, the claws
of rats carve epitaphs
among heaps of black excrement.
Matchsticks for tinder,
promises to be kept,
we pace out the night captive
to the moon’s rasp.
Wrapped in sackcloth,
we repent of our injuries,
history, presence.
Too late to change the signs,
stay the wrath.
Red moon city,
rat city,
city bereft of stability.
The whole of tradition will collapse
with a single, distant gesture.
Our gates cannot be defended
against grave stars.
Look away, stranger.
Know us only by myth.
Pastoral
Grandma’s
peonies doze
offhand beyond
the nutritious grids.
Grandpa scythes wide.
The agent plays doctor,
sewing the Bard’s lips shut
as he says, “Bread’s the thing.”
Shirts on the line drip red with dusk.
Ask not what your country can/ did for art.
Caleb Puckett lives in Kansas. His books include Tales from the Hinterland, Market Street Exit and Fate Lines/ Desire Lines. Along with writing, Puckett edits the literary journal Futures Trading.
In both letter and spirit,
how close to peon poem
seems of late.
Why’s advice:
Go with peony, then.
Paeon as paean—
Apollo on all fours—
doctoring the gods,
a placebo winning the day.
Yes, but dirt stains
your fingers either way.
Broken Ballad
If stable,
speech lacks labor.
Once bonny,
I had thought on love,
become feeble in finding
the approximation of.
I understood need,
yet would not change
my fear of want,
wanting too much, dearest X.
Did believe. The steps.
Did harm. The ascension.
None turned nonetheless.
Fall deepened.
Alone, a banished man, I traveled
through the great green-wood
with brow beaten
to reclaim nature’s succor.
My causeway crumbling,
a mockery built of shining rock.
Go on to the gone side, gypsy lord,
I cried.
So courteous behind it all.
The intent crystalline in supposition.
She. Anointed.
She. In case appointed.
A baron’s day took me footman.
Pretty little brogues with money
twinkling, she danced for Johnny.
She, likewise, must go.
Testify. Her eye passes wonder
dead.
Hair feathered with ash.
The joy of counsel to part
ever again.
Averring peace
in the burning plain between.
The whole span of hope collapsed.
Strange, still
I must believe in moon talk, that love,
no matter its twisted manner, blame, pain,
comes end-wise for salve or salvation.
Beside time in the bedside kneel,
the rainfall runs to ague.
Odd flash of steel blade. Promises beyond.
A lowland day,
an empty castle
and my wanton
lady drowned at sea-strand,
tangled in broken mast.
Inquire, understand and yet—
a gold ring
sorry for its finger.
Alone at last grasp, she and I.
Laws of memory twine
secrets.
Darkened, sheets seem vines, anchors.
Prayers folded, shaped for windfall,
set for no man’s landfall.
A kiss captured for a moment’s glamor.
Good for once and only.
The art of haste.
Grief’s delighted maid
trampling the heather, rutting reunion’s field.
Cloak kept, will to sustain taken in spite.
Winter’s white blast sickens.
So now I switch a sexton’s head for a doctor’s,
dearest X.
Nineveh
Red moon city,
rat city,
city of reproaches
whispering mad omens
from solitary corner
to choked square.
Streets eat buildings
while buildings bite at the air.
The air is an armory waiting to blow.
The wind smelled of sugar, now sulfur.
The old carapace erodes.
Mute idols
and eyeless portraits dissolve
with fevered touches
as we seek vestiges of solace.
Behind the walls, the claws
of rats carve epitaphs
among heaps of black excrement.
Matchsticks for tinder,
promises to be kept,
we pace out the night captive
to the moon’s rasp.
Wrapped in sackcloth,
we repent of our injuries,
history, presence.
Too late to change the signs,
stay the wrath.
Red moon city,
rat city,
city bereft of stability.
The whole of tradition will collapse
with a single, distant gesture.
Our gates cannot be defended
against grave stars.
Look away, stranger.
Know us only by myth.
Pastoral
Grandma’s
peonies doze
offhand beyond
the nutritious grids.
Grandpa scythes wide.
The agent plays doctor,
sewing the Bard’s lips shut
as he says, “Bread’s the thing.”
Shirts on the line drip red with dusk.
Ask not what your country can/ did for art.
Caleb Puckett lives in Kansas. His books include Tales from the Hinterland, Market Street Exit and Fate Lines/ Desire Lines. Along with writing, Puckett edits the literary journal Futures Trading.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Thomas Zimmerman and Cleopatra's Dung Beetle, Fogged Bourgeois Mirrors, and a Radioactive Sexual Road-trip
Double Burn
1
I’ll burn the work. It’s just no good. “It creeps
me out to hear you talk like this”: your life
is drinking. I am deep in toxins. Sleep’s
a promontory gleaming, moon-steeled knife
to slice the seared but bloody muscle of
a dream. The smoke cleaves like a helmet, like
a halo. Tomb and womb. Aroma? Love
and loss, as usual. My muse won’t pysch
me out this time. The weak, the bad—I’ll cut.
And then the luck. Hemp strands of muddled lit.
I’ll braid it like a rope to hang us all.
The buzz? It’s ditch-weed bad. Time was, my gut
preached patience. Now, it screams, “What is this shit?!”
The dawn breaks chill and raw. Like spring. Or fall.
2
“Male secrecy and women’s need to know:
Remember Bluebeard.” So you say. I see
at least three meanings there. Who cares? Spring snow
and bitter blossoms. Burn that journal, free
the energy. Like masturbation? Worse.
In front of me, a half-full pint of stout,
and Monk is on the stereo, his curse
like mine, but darker, deeper. Primed, he’ll shout
his demons down, let Coltrane raise them up
again. Past lives come spooling out, from dung
beetle to Cleopatra. If I cup
a breast, I might remember verses sung
on burnished barges, drunk enough on life
to hail my exiled muse, make her my wife.
Fog
You rub the window clear, scratch your balls.
Coffee’s on. The sky can’t get off
the ground.
Maybe you’ve made a baby: one star swimmer
is all it takes.
Where’s the ibuprofen?
Where’s the calamine? Where’s that gal
of mine?
Asleep. Or lolling. Your bourgeois ease.
Your imported cheese.
Your newly manifested
wheeze. If you don’t try to help others, maybe
you will die.
Gauze blocks your thoughts. Painful,
all that thinking. High-school humping, that’s
the thing.
Crass new term: fuck buddy. You heard
your old friend John has one. Beautiful wife
left him. There’s another term: comfort
women. Bad history there, before your time.
You hear the water running, go back upstairs.
She’s in the shower. You grab your razor. Pause.
The mirror’s fogged.
Peach Fuzz
The harvest moon, my dear, is God’s ass when
we’re coming down from high or buzz with three-
day stubble. Call it love. Reactors’ glow:
your breasts. And I’m a toxic spill. But will
it last? You used to tell me I was closed,
my poetry was constipated: dry-
turd verse. I’ve tried so hard to loosen up,
bolts moaning, hinges whinging. Yes, it’s just
a vision that we’re whole. You’ve got a hole:
thank God for that. Let’s get back in the car
and gobble up more miles. “Play anything
but Dylan . . . . I was joking.” So you say.
We’re crossing borders that the money’s made:
past truck stops, peep shows, toll gates, cop blockades.
Our ever-reimagined love-song, “Life
Is Just a Slow Slow Death,” still radiates
above the interstate, breaks over us in waves.
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His poems have appeared recently in Dime Show Review, The Drunken Llama, and Sick Lit. Tom's website: http://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/
1
I’ll burn the work. It’s just no good. “It creeps
me out to hear you talk like this”: your life
is drinking. I am deep in toxins. Sleep’s
a promontory gleaming, moon-steeled knife
to slice the seared but bloody muscle of
a dream. The smoke cleaves like a helmet, like
a halo. Tomb and womb. Aroma? Love
and loss, as usual. My muse won’t pysch
me out this time. The weak, the bad—I’ll cut.
And then the luck. Hemp strands of muddled lit.
I’ll braid it like a rope to hang us all.
The buzz? It’s ditch-weed bad. Time was, my gut
preached patience. Now, it screams, “What is this shit?!”
The dawn breaks chill and raw. Like spring. Or fall.
2
“Male secrecy and women’s need to know:
Remember Bluebeard.” So you say. I see
at least three meanings there. Who cares? Spring snow
and bitter blossoms. Burn that journal, free
the energy. Like masturbation? Worse.
In front of me, a half-full pint of stout,
and Monk is on the stereo, his curse
like mine, but darker, deeper. Primed, he’ll shout
his demons down, let Coltrane raise them up
again. Past lives come spooling out, from dung
beetle to Cleopatra. If I cup
a breast, I might remember verses sung
on burnished barges, drunk enough on life
to hail my exiled muse, make her my wife.
Fog
You rub the window clear, scratch your balls.
Coffee’s on. The sky can’t get off
the ground.
Maybe you’ve made a baby: one star swimmer
is all it takes.
Where’s the ibuprofen?
Where’s the calamine? Where’s that gal
of mine?
Asleep. Or lolling. Your bourgeois ease.
Your imported cheese.
Your newly manifested
wheeze. If you don’t try to help others, maybe
you will die.
Gauze blocks your thoughts. Painful,
all that thinking. High-school humping, that’s
the thing.
Crass new term: fuck buddy. You heard
your old friend John has one. Beautiful wife
left him. There’s another term: comfort
women. Bad history there, before your time.
You hear the water running, go back upstairs.
She’s in the shower. You grab your razor. Pause.
The mirror’s fogged.
Peach Fuzz
The harvest moon, my dear, is God’s ass when
we’re coming down from high or buzz with three-
day stubble. Call it love. Reactors’ glow:
your breasts. And I’m a toxic spill. But will
it last? You used to tell me I was closed,
my poetry was constipated: dry-
turd verse. I’ve tried so hard to loosen up,
bolts moaning, hinges whinging. Yes, it’s just
a vision that we’re whole. You’ve got a hole:
thank God for that. Let’s get back in the car
and gobble up more miles. “Play anything
but Dylan . . . . I was joking.” So you say.
We’re crossing borders that the money’s made:
past truck stops, peep shows, toll gates, cop blockades.
Our ever-reimagined love-song, “Life
Is Just a Slow Slow Death,” still radiates
above the interstate, breaks over us in waves.
Thomas Zimmerman teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits two literary magazines at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His poems have appeared recently in Dime Show Review, The Drunken Llama, and Sick Lit. Tom's website: http://thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Catfish McDaris Chronicles Inappropriate Gherkin Use, Route 66, a Komodo Dragon, Balzac, Mayhem in an Albuquerque Valley, and Prickly Pear Tuna
The Pamplona Blues
Sometimes you feel like you’ve
entered the Twilight Zone, I was in
this supermarket and I saw a
stone fox in the condiment aisle
She opened a bottle of catsup
and chugged it down, then
moved down to the pickles and
raised her brown leather skirt
and pulled her panties to
One side and started shoving
gherkins up her vagina, she
was moaning and groaning
Then she turned and looked at me
and said, “I bet you think I’m a sour puss”
I left my basket and ran like
the bulls of Pamplona were after me.
Cocaine, Lizards and Balzac
Years heaped like golden maple leaves in
Quebec or snowflakes on a Tucumcari
coyote moon night on Route 66
Sometimes the heart is nothing more than
a clock measuring your minutes’ while
ticking and pumping in your chest
Life, death, earth, moon, sun all move in
circles, wise people live in circles, right
angles make you a square and box
you in like cattle not free buffalo
If you run a race against death, it always
gets a head start, unless you’re on the train
to nowhere or unless you can stab a flying
mosquito with an ice
pick
When you sleep with a shotgun and machete
and wake with a bloody dog’s head and you
own no dog and your cocaine has been
snorted
And your bald-headed girlfriend you took fishing
with the long blonde hair that got
caught in the propeller is pointing a 357
At your huevos while holding your Komodo
dragon, Booboo and your copy of La
Comedie humaine by Honore de Balzac, it’s
time to quit this nightmare and make some strong black
coffee.
Magdalena
Scarfing vagabond goulash
from Mexican sombrero
hub caps stolen from a
turquoise low rider short
in the valley of Albuquerque
Spanish yucca roots, flowers,
stems, and blanco corn tortillas
prickly pear tuna, serrano, pob-
lano, Copper Canyon sotol
Slow your cinnamon roll, mama
cooch, no need to gank the skank
let’s booty call tango fandango
Roots of the desert dagger are
full of saponins, a toxin that can
be used to stun fish without injury.
War Everyday Everywhere
Dedicated to the Australian movie Rabbit Proof Fence about atrocities perpetuated on the Aborigines and the Canadian folks that said America was lucky they let us land our aircraft there after the 9/11 tragedy.
People hate Americans,
they hate McDonald’s,
they hate Kentucky Fried Chicken,
they hate Mickey Mouse,
they really hate our drones and nukes
But when they get in trouble
or need money, they all yell
for Uncle Sugar to come running,
they don’t worry about teeth getting
rotten and falling out or calluses on
their knees from begging for a handout
All the hawks and doves,
left wingers, right wingers, and righteous,
religion, oil, land, water, pride, and egos
Blood is always thinner than money,
gold is forever heavier than love
Some Americans go hungry,
we cry for our brave soldiers,
that die fighting other countries battles,
killing terrorists around the world
Don’t point your fingers and blame us
for your problems or for the freedom we’ve
created, don’t expect us to fill your stomachs
Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He’s been active in the small press world for 25 years. He’s working in a wig shop in a high crime area of Milwaukee. His newest book is:
www.amazon.com/Sleeping-With-Fish-Catfish-McDaris/dp/0692671323
Sometimes you feel like you’ve
entered the Twilight Zone, I was in
this supermarket and I saw a
stone fox in the condiment aisle
She opened a bottle of catsup
and chugged it down, then
moved down to the pickles and
raised her brown leather skirt
and pulled her panties to
One side and started shoving
gherkins up her vagina, she
was moaning and groaning
Then she turned and looked at me
and said, “I bet you think I’m a sour puss”
I left my basket and ran like
the bulls of Pamplona were after me.
Cocaine, Lizards and Balzac
Years heaped like golden maple leaves in
Quebec or snowflakes on a Tucumcari
coyote moon night on Route 66
Sometimes the heart is nothing more than
a clock measuring your minutes’ while
ticking and pumping in your chest
Life, death, earth, moon, sun all move in
circles, wise people live in circles, right
angles make you a square and box
you in like cattle not free buffalo
If you run a race against death, it always
gets a head start, unless you’re on the train
to nowhere or unless you can stab a flying
mosquito with an ice
pick
When you sleep with a shotgun and machete
and wake with a bloody dog’s head and you
own no dog and your cocaine has been
snorted
And your bald-headed girlfriend you took fishing
with the long blonde hair that got
caught in the propeller is pointing a 357
At your huevos while holding your Komodo
dragon, Booboo and your copy of La
Comedie humaine by Honore de Balzac, it’s
time to quit this nightmare and make some strong black
coffee.
Magdalena
Scarfing vagabond goulash
from Mexican sombrero
hub caps stolen from a
turquoise low rider short
in the valley of Albuquerque
Spanish yucca roots, flowers,
stems, and blanco corn tortillas
prickly pear tuna, serrano, pob-
lano, Copper Canyon sotol
Slow your cinnamon roll, mama
cooch, no need to gank the skank
let’s booty call tango fandango
Roots of the desert dagger are
full of saponins, a toxin that can
be used to stun fish without injury.
War Everyday Everywhere
Dedicated to the Australian movie Rabbit Proof Fence about atrocities perpetuated on the Aborigines and the Canadian folks that said America was lucky they let us land our aircraft there after the 9/11 tragedy.
People hate Americans,
they hate McDonald’s,
they hate Kentucky Fried Chicken,
they hate Mickey Mouse,
they really hate our drones and nukes
But when they get in trouble
or need money, they all yell
for Uncle Sugar to come running,
they don’t worry about teeth getting
rotten and falling out or calluses on
their knees from begging for a handout
All the hawks and doves,
left wingers, right wingers, and righteous,
religion, oil, land, water, pride, and egos
Blood is always thinner than money,
gold is forever heavier than love
Some Americans go hungry,
we cry for our brave soldiers,
that die fighting other countries battles,
killing terrorists around the world
Don’t point your fingers and blame us
for your problems or for the freedom we’ve
created, don’t expect us to fill your stomachs
Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He’s been active in the small press world for 25 years. He’s working in a wig shop in a high crime area of Milwaukee. His newest book is:
www.amazon.com/Sleeping-With-Fish-Catfish-McDaris/dp/0692671323
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Felino A. Soriano Achieves Momentum in Morning Expanse Littered with Postcard Sketches Syllabled with Erased Cliches for a Tranquilized Anthem
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-two)
I see what the wonder
is
—is the wonder what
sees in the wander
of the watching… we
again
have been here before,
the same tree swayed
toward we in the
hour’s music—
strong
hold the rhythm
was, and is… the
silence explains
what absence is—
heavy, a worded
need the bark’s rough
-ness feels like the hand
of my leaving—
absent
stress the confines
of it, the break
from hope noted
of it… on return
a
morning expanse
finds in movement
the truth of it,
a death perceives
movement
as
cultural sleek
forward engage
-ment, a slur
when
light is the clarity
of intrinsic trust,
posture of this
light imbues the
absence
waiting within
the body and
branding it
alive
alive as more fractured
than more so fraction
of what we eventually
inherit,
a
comatose sleep lures
and indents this
music’s longhand
drawn
hour… positioned
near where we go
in toward, a faucet
turns on
announcing
motive and the dance of it
leaves the body
bare
but unbroken—
sustained devotion to life’s
qualitative
understanding
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-three)
_______________
Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.
—Gabriel García Márquez
Postcard sketches: land
-scape theme, myriad
sameness toward
a
moment-capture sequence,
an artistic hand
-eye collaboration, theory—
bene
-ficial scale the
early morning trumpet
expands and
awakens—
theme is totality, is
theme of language or
function of the mind’s
small
exploratory figments—
experimental forays
the body twists to
adhere in the swell
-ing
of removing past
participation, to envelop
what is new in these
rhythms
and acute paces
hands play in the
purge horns
throw
through the tunnel
of which light
pulses in the caus
-ational pause re
-begin pleasure
the
body finds in nearing
age of determined
splayed
circular
inheritance of the civilized
permission… we’ve walked
here and found what
here shows our
tired posture
…the
timid cycles
readying our
upward anthems,
voices
play the “cling”
and stays—
relevant
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-four)
We wait in our walking,
walk into what
wears this hour’s waiting
noise,
concurrences
of sound.
Syllabled
knowing,
with sound as knowing
an echo is resultant
stone-ripple
harmony.
Privilege. Alive
is the announcement
each morning
assembles
among tongue and
proof
the hour rotates
within choired
hands Song
rotates,
spins into splayed
ornaments this
flame
evokes
and
understands as
foundational
mirror
inversion looks
to impulse,
to interact
with
entering. Why the
oval resonates
on itself and
selves’ versions
the numerical
comprehend—
we’ve needed rest,
examine the good
honoring what has
held
us. The way
these colors
exist in opposite
blends from the eyes
erasing clichés,
a
downtown voice
pulses to live away
from what
finds
connection to bone—
a pivot exterior
to night’s
x-rayed
prose and
decomposing sections
of
reinterpreted
diametric
philosophies
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-five)
Blow with doing
so
as does the
trumpet’s
variants
below
premise: called
in all listeners,
mobile meeting (we keep moving)
textured talk the
language
rotates atop our
decisive tongues, petrichor,
comfort
finds our lyric, we
devote the body to
speaking certainties,
sporadic thinking
underlines
what our horns
compose, provide.
This
is the catapult
function we’ve
known about.
The
exterior stride hands
contain, lyrical mobility
we always confirmed. We
can piano here, should.
Praise
be to the whole of what
we’re going into, to-
ward; and thus
to splay is to behave
inward to the
space needing
no more optics
than
fade or asterisk
performs in
how the hands
hold
our language-
s. Tomorrow we
can envelop a
tranquilized anthem,
the mode of it steers
how the eye outlines,
understands.
Nothing
is neither whole nor
fractioned, the foray
to become is to hold
tacit reinventions
when
the body only
sees within
the
spectrum
of
its organic
insinuations.
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-six)
Tumult, we
praise around it, as is said
what we call
music the crow
renames water—
extract
in the pleasure
sequences each
mouth searches to-
ward, in the
hiring
of body to blend
hanker with
warmth of
finding surfaces.
Offered
what finds us (renaming)
what searches to offer
in the meaning
of it. Song
knows us, knows
of us; we’ve a buried
harp in the way
voices color the air’s between
gold, gold as does
the hand give into
affection’s role
to
invite. Sway, the
mission adheres
to the tongue of
what holds us…
from
when we begin, from mothers
holding the small
of cries, the smallness
reveals then too,
the deliberate need
to thread what is human
what
human holds to ident-
ify each portion of bone
naming our
momentum’s
intuitive meander.
The unsayable
says what died in voice. Paused
invention. The water
from
where the crow
names
its premise, we’ve pulled
the harp from where
our hands need flamed
succession,
we continue, we
perform courage into
what calls to
praise in the hearing
of
the halo awaiting—
our Song is our going home…
home as where the body
never bends to a
dissipating
motive
Felino A. Soriano’s poetry appears in CHURN, BlazeVOX, 3:AM Magazine, The National Poetry Review, Small Po[r]tions, and elsewhere. His books of poetry include Vocal Apparitions: New & Selected Poems: 2012 – 2016 (2016), sparse anatomies of single antecedents (2015), Of isolated limning (2014), Pathos|particular invocation (2013), Of language|s| the rain speaks (2012), Intentions of Aligned Demarcations (2011), In Praise of Absolute Interpretation (2010), Construed Implications (2009), and Among the Interrogated (2008). His collaborative collection Quintet Dialogues: translating introspection, which features visual art from David Allen Reed is forthcoming from Howling Dog Press.
He publishes the online journal Of/with, and is Multimedia Editor for Unlikely Stories Mark V, and is a contributing editor at Sugar Mule.
Visit Of the poetry this jazz portends for more information.
I see what the wonder
is
—is the wonder what
sees in the wander
of the watching… we
again
have been here before,
the same tree swayed
toward we in the
hour’s music—
strong
hold the rhythm
was, and is… the
silence explains
what absence is—
heavy, a worded
need the bark’s rough
-ness feels like the hand
of my leaving—
absent
stress the confines
of it, the break
from hope noted
of it… on return
a
morning expanse
finds in movement
the truth of it,
a death perceives
movement
as
cultural sleek
forward engage
-ment, a slur
when
light is the clarity
of intrinsic trust,
posture of this
light imbues the
absence
waiting within
the body and
branding it
alive
alive as more fractured
than more so fraction
of what we eventually
inherit,
a
comatose sleep lures
and indents this
music’s longhand
drawn
hour… positioned
near where we go
in toward, a faucet
turns on
announcing
motive and the dance of it
leaves the body
bare
but unbroken—
sustained devotion to life’s
qualitative
understanding
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-three)
_______________
Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.
—Gabriel García Márquez
Postcard sketches: land
-scape theme, myriad
sameness toward
a
moment-capture sequence,
an artistic hand
-eye collaboration, theory—
bene
-ficial scale the
early morning trumpet
expands and
awakens—
theme is totality, is
theme of language or
function of the mind’s
small
exploratory figments—
experimental forays
the body twists to
adhere in the swell
-ing
of removing past
participation, to envelop
what is new in these
rhythms
and acute paces
hands play in the
purge horns
throw
through the tunnel
of which light
pulses in the caus
-ational pause re
-begin pleasure
the
body finds in nearing
age of determined
splayed
circular
inheritance of the civilized
permission… we’ve walked
here and found what
here shows our
tired posture
…the
timid cycles
readying our
upward anthems,
voices
play the “cling”
and stays—
relevant
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-four)
We wait in our walking,
walk into what
wears this hour’s waiting
noise,
concurrences
of sound.
Syllabled
knowing,
with sound as knowing
an echo is resultant
stone-ripple
harmony.
Privilege. Alive
is the announcement
each morning
assembles
among tongue and
proof
the hour rotates
within choired
hands Song
rotates,
spins into splayed
ornaments this
flame
evokes
and
understands as
foundational
mirror
inversion looks
to impulse,
to interact
with
entering. Why the
oval resonates
on itself and
selves’ versions
the numerical
comprehend—
we’ve needed rest,
examine the good
honoring what has
held
us. The way
these colors
exist in opposite
blends from the eyes
erasing clichés,
a
downtown voice
pulses to live away
from what
finds
connection to bone—
a pivot exterior
to night’s
x-rayed
prose and
decomposing sections
of
reinterpreted
diametric
philosophies
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-five)
Blow with doing
so
as does the
trumpet’s
variants
below
premise: called
in all listeners,
mobile meeting (we keep moving)
textured talk the
language
rotates atop our
decisive tongues, petrichor,
comfort
finds our lyric, we
devote the body to
speaking certainties,
sporadic thinking
underlines
what our horns
compose, provide.
This
is the catapult
function we’ve
known about.
The
exterior stride hands
contain, lyrical mobility
we always confirmed. We
can piano here, should.
Praise
be to the whole of what
we’re going into, to-
ward; and thus
to splay is to behave
inward to the
space needing
no more optics
than
fade or asterisk
performs in
how the hands
hold
our language-
s. Tomorrow we
can envelop a
tranquilized anthem,
the mode of it steers
how the eye outlines,
understands.
Nothing
is neither whole nor
fractioned, the foray
to become is to hold
tacit reinventions
when
the body only
sees within
the
spectrum
of
its organic
insinuations.
Of this Momentum Song (thirty-six)
Tumult, we
praise around it, as is said
what we call
music the crow
renames water—
extract
in the pleasure
sequences each
mouth searches to-
ward, in the
hiring
of body to blend
hanker with
warmth of
finding surfaces.
Offered
what finds us (renaming)
what searches to offer
in the meaning
of it. Song
knows us, knows
of us; we’ve a buried
harp in the way
voices color the air’s between
gold, gold as does
the hand give into
affection’s role
to
invite. Sway, the
mission adheres
to the tongue of
what holds us…
from
when we begin, from mothers
holding the small
of cries, the smallness
reveals then too,
the deliberate need
to thread what is human
what
human holds to ident-
ify each portion of bone
naming our
momentum’s
intuitive meander.
The unsayable
says what died in voice. Paused
invention. The water
from
where the crow
names
its premise, we’ve pulled
the harp from where
our hands need flamed
succession,
we continue, we
perform courage into
what calls to
praise in the hearing
of
the halo awaiting—
our Song is our going home…
home as where the body
never bends to a
dissipating
motive
Felino A. Soriano’s poetry appears in CHURN, BlazeVOX, 3:AM Magazine, The National Poetry Review, Small Po[r]tions, and elsewhere. His books of poetry include Vocal Apparitions: New & Selected Poems: 2012 – 2016 (2016), sparse anatomies of single antecedents (2015), Of isolated limning (2014), Pathos|particular invocation (2013), Of language|s| the rain speaks (2012), Intentions of Aligned Demarcations (2011), In Praise of Absolute Interpretation (2010), Construed Implications (2009), and Among the Interrogated (2008). His collaborative collection Quintet Dialogues: translating introspection, which features visual art from David Allen Reed is forthcoming from Howling Dog Press.
He publishes the online journal Of/with, and is Multimedia Editor for Unlikely Stories Mark V, and is a contributing editor at Sugar Mule.
Visit Of the poetry this jazz portends for more information.
Saturday, November 19, 2016
A.S. Coomer Reverberates, Looping the Eavesdropped Barstool Amidst Dew-Soaked Heatherdowns
Hootie’s Cave
There’s a cave
just up the road
from the house
where I grew up.
I used to go there
with my family
when I was a kid.
There are rocks
the size of cars
partially blocking
its entrance.
Rocks hard enough
to break yourself against.
Rocks beaten, slowly,
by time and wind and rain
into little grains that mushed
under the soles
of my dirty shoes.
I used to climb over the rocks,
drop just inside the opening
of the cave
and call out.
It didn’t matter what.
Not words or names or commands.
Just noise. Just the sound of being.
Just something to send out and hear echo
back a fraction of a second later,
already in the past, already over.
These days I’m sure I’m still stuck
just inside the mouth of a neighbor’s rockhouse,
spinning circles, splashing off spraypainted walls,
--in motion but trapped--
in that time loop reverberation.
Another Three Lonely Ones
“I don’t have a problem, Chelsea.”
I overheard him from across the nearly empty,
noontime bar. Sun, weak as stale tea,
filtered in hazily through cracked blinds & dusty
windows.
The summer crowd had ceased thinning out
over a month ago. It had stopped entirely now.
“You said you did last night,” she persisted. “You said so
yourself.”
A stool creaked in their direction.
“I was drunk when I said that.”
An awkward pause stretched out like the endless horizon of
pale blue
--Lake Michigan not a stone’s throw from where I sat.
I could almost feel the little stings of pelting sand
off Sleeping Bear Dunes & the hanging mist
of the great lake’s spit haloed like a bad reputation not
readily dealt with.
The barkeep--quite suddenly--found something that required
his immediate attention in the dark recesses of what I
assumed was the kitchen.
The batwing doors beat an off-rhythm, doubling with each
swing
as the rusty hinge screamed and squawked,
piercing the stagnant air like a quietus keen,
stabbing it, shooting it through like the period, a black
hole slashing all,
serving as the end of sentence of whatever relationship had
just ended.
I took a long pull from the bottle of beer. Ice beneath my
fingers
slipped down the label and pooled on the waxed & shining
wood,
the only thing aside from the beer that looked well kept in
the place.
I peeled a corner of the label off the bottle & watched
the little icebergs
flow south as gravity steered us towards our eventual
endings,
collective and a part, together but alone, always alone
really.
“You know what?” her voice was triumphant
in her bitter disappointment & resentment now.
“You are the problem, Josh.”
I heard the door shut behind her,
the beaten bells clanging their discordant knell,
a beck & call as much for the barkeep as for us all.
as I finished what was going to be my last beer of the
afternoon.
The barkeep reemerged from the kitchen with a glass and a
rag.
He took a quick glance in the direction of The Problem Josh
then set down the glass in front of me.
It was chipped & battered. There’d been a logo on it
some years ago
but it was indecipherable now. A cryptic, vaguely female eye
peeking out
of a wash of faded colors & jangled letters.
“Thought you might like a glass.”
We both looked down at my empty bottle & waited.
Oh, the weight of the wait.
I hadn’t asked for a glass with any of the four previous
beers
nor had one been offered.
I smiled and slid another three lonely ones across the bar
just as the door closed a second time.
Little Platte Lake
There’s a thousand lives to live out here.
A thousand means of finding meaning.
I’ve stumbled onto one of them, I think.
Pine needles, knots of twining vine,
a vegetation nearly Northern Pacific in feeling;
the rain pattering sound on the dew-soaked heatherdowns
like gently muted toms or nearly forgotten, rustic spells.
Incantations of what you’ve lost but strive to find
but what can you retrieve from so much lost time?
I saw a mother and two cubs scamper across Saffron Road
in the post-rain haze of a late September day.
I’ve given myself over to substance use today:
intoxicated by a story I never lived, I translated it to
music,
spent the time after in a pot-filled gauze,
a claustrophobic morning of clouds and sky and lake,
losing sense of where the reflection ended and the real
began,
later a double IPA daze, watching the changing
leaves in the passing car’s suspended breeze
dance and twirl like the uncurling furls of the locks of
your sanguine curls.
You get a sense that the land here is waiting, patiently
biding its time,
the time just before the big white hands of winter sus out
the sun,
wrap the heavy blanketed cloak around the starving pines,
granting everything under
only
the chance to hide & wait & sleep.
A.S. Coomer is a native Kentuckian serving out a purgatorial
existence somewhere in the Midwest. His work has appeared in over thirty
publications. He’s got a handful of novels that need good homes. You can find
him at www.ascoomer.wordpress.com. He also runs a “record label” for poetry:
www.lostlonggoneforgottenrecords.wordpress.com.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Steven Porter Would Rather Be A Dinosauric Iconoclast Amongst Blasphemies of An Anti-Theists
"I'd Rather Be"
I'd rather be a scarecrow on a farm, licking crows'
wounds, inhabited by a murdered farmer's ghost,
than lick the Italian leather asshole of a college
graduate with an overpriced sheet of paper
firing an inflamed hubris into his ear.
I'd rather be a spider in the Amazon rainforest
weaving a gossamer trap in a moist, hollow log,
brawling with my fellow Arachnid neighbors than
be a flighless bird staring into the sun and weeping
because the sky disowned me eons ago.
I'd rather be the mouse than the snake.
I'd rather be the scorpion than the shoe.
I'd rather be smudged makeup on a woman's face.
I'd rather be sweat dripping off a man's earlobe than be a man.
I'd rather be the poem than the poet.
I'd rather be a cigarette butt, than a brand
new cigarette, because then at least it's all over.
I guess I'd rather be dark matter, pushing
the universe further and further away
from the human species.
"Pride of the Serpent"
My stomach growls, I haven't eaten
since the last Solar Eclipse.
I killed a rattlesnake today.
I shot it in the head with a
pistol I stole from a friend.
He lies on my table, decapitated,
stripped of his flesh and pride that
came with deceiving Adam and Eve.
I put his head in a jar with formaldehyde
borrowed from work.
Its expression captured in
a final moment of defense,
like photographs of American
Soldiers storming Iwo Jima,
planting the flag as bullets whizzed
past them and explosives detonated.
(He may have been a part of Medusa?)
A folic-token thwarting warriors with two fangs.
What I can't finish, I wrap in cellophane
and store in my refrigerator; this
miniature-morgue, now a grave
for a dinosauric iconoclast.
"Birthday at 95-Years"
Today is the 95th-birthday for
a tribe's eldest member.
An empty chair at the head of the table
creaks as hurried guests pass by to take
their own seats. A birthday cake awaits.
A birthday cake laden with candles is
like a coffin built from cheap wood...
each has trouble carrying the weight of
nearly a century of suppressed despair.
The guest of honor takes his seat and hesitates to
blow out the burning candles, wax inundates the cake.
A hearse waits outside honking its horn.
"Confessions of an Anti-Theist"
This dream...snakes temporarily grow
arms, pluck out nuns' eyes and
tear their pious cemetery
garments from their flesh and
twist their areolas until they
screamed for God to come down
with lotion to lather their breasts.
Adam and Eve finger fuck in a cathedral
and pour holy water on each other's
genitals to wash off blood of the lamb.
Eve takes Adam's rib and deepthroats it.
Adam's petty, botanic cock can't do the job.
A whale nips Jonah's ass, but Jonah confesses
that he's already in a relationship with a plesiosaur
who promised to write his story and make it a Number
One bestseller on the Stars and Stripes Cro-Magnon hit list.
As Abraham leads his son Isaac to Moriah,
God descends with Satan and says "See, man,
I told you I could get him to murder his son."
"Alright, alright. I guess I owe you that 50 bucks
and the Southern Hemisphere?" responds Satan.
Abraham looks up at God and Satan and shouts,
"Hey! I didn't bring him here because you told me too,
I did it because that little bastard drank my last jug of wine!"
Steven Allan Porter was born February 5, 1992 in Coral Springs, FL to a Jewish mother and a German father. His influences include: Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Bob Kaufman, Steven Jesse Bernstein, Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Simic, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. His work has appeared in Red Fez, Degenerate Literature, Wildflower Muse, Dead Snakes, UFO Gigolo, Dali's LoveChild, Blue Mountain Review, Beatnik Cowboy, Rasputin: A Poetry Thread, Peeking Cat Poetry, Horror, Sleaze and Trash, The Basil O' Flaherty, Saudade Magazine, and Syzygy Poetry Journal. He currently resides in Chino, CA.
I'd rather be a scarecrow on a farm, licking crows'
wounds, inhabited by a murdered farmer's ghost,
than lick the Italian leather asshole of a college
graduate with an overpriced sheet of paper
firing an inflamed hubris into his ear.
I'd rather be a spider in the Amazon rainforest
weaving a gossamer trap in a moist, hollow log,
brawling with my fellow Arachnid neighbors than
be a flighless bird staring into the sun and weeping
because the sky disowned me eons ago.
I'd rather be the mouse than the snake.
I'd rather be the scorpion than the shoe.
I'd rather be smudged makeup on a woman's face.
I'd rather be sweat dripping off a man's earlobe than be a man.
I'd rather be the poem than the poet.
I'd rather be a cigarette butt, than a brand
new cigarette, because then at least it's all over.
I guess I'd rather be dark matter, pushing
the universe further and further away
from the human species.
"Pride of the Serpent"
My stomach growls, I haven't eaten
since the last Solar Eclipse.
I killed a rattlesnake today.
I shot it in the head with a
pistol I stole from a friend.
He lies on my table, decapitated,
stripped of his flesh and pride that
came with deceiving Adam and Eve.
I put his head in a jar with formaldehyde
borrowed from work.
Its expression captured in
a final moment of defense,
like photographs of American
Soldiers storming Iwo Jima,
planting the flag as bullets whizzed
past them and explosives detonated.
(He may have been a part of Medusa?)
A folic-token thwarting warriors with two fangs.
What I can't finish, I wrap in cellophane
and store in my refrigerator; this
miniature-morgue, now a grave
for a dinosauric iconoclast.
"Birthday at 95-Years"
Today is the 95th-birthday for
a tribe's eldest member.
An empty chair at the head of the table
creaks as hurried guests pass by to take
their own seats. A birthday cake awaits.
A birthday cake laden with candles is
like a coffin built from cheap wood...
each has trouble carrying the weight of
nearly a century of suppressed despair.
The guest of honor takes his seat and hesitates to
blow out the burning candles, wax inundates the cake.
A hearse waits outside honking its horn.
"Confessions of an Anti-Theist"
This dream...snakes temporarily grow
arms, pluck out nuns' eyes and
tear their pious cemetery
garments from their flesh and
twist their areolas until they
screamed for God to come down
with lotion to lather their breasts.
Adam and Eve finger fuck in a cathedral
and pour holy water on each other's
genitals to wash off blood of the lamb.
Eve takes Adam's rib and deepthroats it.
Adam's petty, botanic cock can't do the job.
A whale nips Jonah's ass, but Jonah confesses
that he's already in a relationship with a plesiosaur
who promised to write his story and make it a Number
One bestseller on the Stars and Stripes Cro-Magnon hit list.
As Abraham leads his son Isaac to Moriah,
God descends with Satan and says "See, man,
I told you I could get him to murder his son."
"Alright, alright. I guess I owe you that 50 bucks
and the Southern Hemisphere?" responds Satan.
Abraham looks up at God and Satan and shouts,
"Hey! I didn't bring him here because you told me too,
I did it because that little bastard drank my last jug of wine!"
Steven Allan Porter was born February 5, 1992 in Coral Springs, FL to a Jewish mother and a German father. His influences include: Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Bob Kaufman, Steven Jesse Bernstein, Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Simic, and Louis-Ferdinand Celine. His work has appeared in Red Fez, Degenerate Literature, Wildflower Muse, Dead Snakes, UFO Gigolo, Dali's LoveChild, Blue Mountain Review, Beatnik Cowboy, Rasputin: A Poetry Thread, Peeking Cat Poetry, Horror, Sleaze and Trash, The Basil O' Flaherty, Saudade Magazine, and Syzygy Poetry Journal. He currently resides in Chino, CA.
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