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drain by lady k

MY DADDY HAD SO MUCH MATH

my daddy had so much math
my daddy's math mouth went working
my daddy pulled down a star in numbers
my daddy's equations gave birth
heavenly object of mirth!
manmade more like and watchful
my daddy sent an eye to the heavens
a watchdog of commerce a watchdog of commerce
my hands worry our partisan split
like beads in the soup we cannot swallow
our family in small glass orbits
together alone in chairs

my father's mind running in fields, though
my father's legs running for twenty six miles
we have the same far flung horse in our eye

Cathleen Daly

AT THE LIMITS OF VISION*

The past is blurred, made small and indistinct by tremendous distance
In my journal I had written I will never forget that day
How could I forget if I dumped her, or she me?
The past, they say, is a distant country
a place we left, never to return
And I, another person
that was then
this is
now
I
next
but soon
all my hopes
I know I can change
I know I will make her love me
And some day we will look back at this
I will read my journal of now, and not remember
Infinity rushes slowly toward us, huge and unimaginable
the future is blurred, made small and indistinct by tremendous distance

Geoffrey Landis

* This will be published soon in Landis's upcoming collection Iron Angels.

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HOW CAN I TELL

The drops from the shower are real
 They cleanse my outside
The sounds of the mantra are real
 They cleanse my inside
So clean, in and out
 Yet is the soul roasting in my chest real too?

The doctor said
 After over a year, I don’t need those little pills
  Happy pills, I called them
Manufactured in state of the art, sterile, white, clean rooms,
by Saran wrapped people
white hair nets and powder blue booties,
resembling machines more than human
programmed normality, inhuman,
dictated by sales margins.
 
Stuffed with a few decades
of research and
millions of tax dollars
funneled thru NIH grants
Refined, white, smooth,
stamped FL (For Love?) 
Pop a pill a day
kept depression away
  That was months ago

I have these other pills.
Given not by a doctor
[with an alphabet after his name,]
but by a simple Asian man,
fat and jovial with inner peace.

Rough, burnished brown buttons
tiny compared to the doctor’s
He placed in my hands.
They were born from makers wearing cloth shields
of maroon/saffron patchwork
like rags stitched together by dignity,
bald with Lex Luthor cunning but right motivation
rolled spices in trancelike single minded concentration
adding all the compassion of the universe
distilled into 6 tiny syllables
chanted over 100 million times
[even a few thousand from the Dalai Lama.]

OM MANI PADME HUM

These other pills, the guru laughingly calls magic
tho I’m not laughing.

Packed with wisdom of the ages
they purify,
rectify
majestify

But I don’t take them too often
  They are too rare for me.

These two twins of different mothers
East and West
White and Brown
smooth and rough
Manufactured and crafted,
act on brain and mind.
 
Must choose with mind
 muddled by brain chemical imbalance
 or Karmic purification
Like grasping at branches hanging over a bog
Some hold my weight,
others snap at the lightest touch,
and others
are tricks of moonglow,
playing on swamp gas.

Which, the fulfillment of my warmest wish?
Which, the weapon to wipe out the weeping?
Which?

Steve Goldberg

OUT AND IN AUDIBLE

Every act of creation
is an erasure
an abrasion
an anaphylactic
shock and awe
hack job
a pleasure
wrought of leisure
and an irrepressible
need to blather on
both with and without
words.

Every devastation is
an act of creation
is an act
of transfusion
and a letting of blood
rich jewel confusion
a measure
of destruction
in the symphony
of what is becoming
a disillusion
of what is not
a twat shot full of love
a love of splatter
a shortage
and abundance
of what we call sanctity
and insanity
in and out
of fertile matter.

Every creation is
an act of destruction
and reproduction
a deconstruction
of yesterday
but a recreation
of tomorrow
an ablation
sullied only by illusion
a transmission
in search of substantiation
contracted
into transubstantiation
expanding like
an outstanding ovation
both with and without
reason
a scene
both with and without
cohesion
both in and out
of season
both over
and under heard.

Jesus Crisis

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photo by lady k

THE
DEATH
OF SEX

I.

In the space
of two days
I have had
more sex
than
in the
last three
months.

I can no longer
masturbate
without thinking

about
how sex
changes
everything

about how she
wants me
more than
I want her

about how I
want someone
else
more than I
want her

but still
not more
than she
wants me.

about how
tonight
she will ask
me to call her
tomorrow.

about how
tomorrow
I will want
nothing to do
with her

or anyone
for that matter.

about how
this drives me
away from
people
after having
buried myself
in them

about having
to force myself
to remember-
to not care
for anyone
except
my own need
to get off.

I no longer
want
it when it
is hungry
and easy

when it
is the only
thing that
happens

II.

when I think
about it-
I think of
women-

overly
imperfect

with full
heads
giant bellies
tiny
tongues

I can never
get off
when they go
down

with tears
and
baroque
kabuki orgasm
then
wonderful
sleeping
silence.

with dead
drunk
loss of
consciousness
immediately
afterwards

followed later
that night
and far more
sober
with leaving the
room
once they
see my hairy
belly
and tits.

with long
discussions
about the
soul

followed by
crying

followed by
more fucking

followed by
marijuana,

more fucking,
water,
coffee
and then
pancakes-
only to end

after more
fucking

in a screaming
argument
in the early
morning rain
about who
loves
who

followed by
more fucking.

and with
nothing other
than the
need
to never be
alone.

III.

I dont think
I like it
anymore.

this thing
that happens
afterwards
to me

made up of
slow awkwardness
and a fear
that they
want things
I either dont
have

can't give

or have but
dont want to
give because

or have and
am afraid to
give because

Because I am
afraid to give
myself
to
them

real
imperfect
women.

IV.

I've heard
of this

the death
of want

when once
before
I asked
her
if she
liked sex

and she
said no

but she
gave anyway
and then
thanked
me.

The end
to the
want
for sex
that lives
as long
as my
memory

or how much
I want
to see you
again.

Nick Traenkner

TRAVEL IN PILLOWCASES

I’ve eaten purple recollections – of peach fields
and groped the brambles where fruit collections
travel in pillowcases, blind to passing memories
of larkspur and pussy willow and dandelion
cotton in the gentle, sunny breath.

Overseen cheap dissections of newsprint albums
with their pressed decaying flowers, section
by section, syrupy reminiscences,
water-damaged and sickly sweet instances
of ground-shorn decomposing treefruit 
decomposing in summer’s attic

like invisible, aging beasts tilling the soil
into sweet sweet wine or maybe at least
vinegar, poisoning the air we inhale
with the rotting, honest passage
from wet season to wet season;

(Or the unnatural preservation
of rotten, imposter specimen).

I confess I kissed your lungs
exhaling warm dust into the light and mist
into the bruised humidity the day wore limply
like a damp, silk camisole
between vinyl car seats and a spine.

I polished heart-shaped trinkets
and swallowed the dust from your lips;
your bitter, wine-blossomed, powder lips
and licked the moisture from your memoir
pages, so the ink all bled together.

Sticky thighs in rich corduroy. And
confectioners sugar on your breasts;
your tiny broken ribs in the bluegrass
as you dream of talking animals
and your hair brushed by the wind –
brushed by the salty, winter gasp of wind on ice;

but like molasses, like the deepest blue underwater light.
And you dream of talking animals who need not till the earth.

Undressing History; spying through the translucent gauze
of action and reaction that orders our bodies
can we alter the course from stone to pebble, from
puddle to sea – by digging? By dissecting? Will we
ever find gold in them hills or get her out of her underwear?

An archeologist is not the same thing as a robber baron
and neither are pathologists ruddy wind-worn sea captains.

These boots trollop elsewhereupon, for a dewy future
beyond darling dirt and sugar-sodden earth, beyond
sandy woodblock prints of pink foam horizons and
appleseeds’ venom and frigid blooms that press us on
and on, like fireworks sparkling into tomorrow.

In the perpetual arclight of the unseen ether, in
the relaxed dawn of our dead Atlantis parallax,
the saltwater we breathe in this peopled ocean seems
light as air.
But we tire –

Until we become scalpel-wielding students in a musty science class,
Or really, drowsy prospectors
scanning for pyrite in the clay and azure past,
once again

like teenagers
fumbling to unhook a bra.

Charles Spano 

BEAT

Can’t you feel the blood
flowing the rhythm of
wing beats the sigh of dew
dipped blossoms at dawn,

while the world swirls round
and round sailing through sprinkled
diamonds as dust explodes into
a view that was then and is now
still speeding forward.

Don’t you want to say here I
am, aren’t we lucky to sweat
together,

man, the neutrino winds
blownin’ my hair back took
thousands of light years to get
here coolin’ my heated skin from
the echos of when the pulse was
electro-shocked into life,

and we stand here feeling the
reverberations in our toes
up our spine settling in our
hip bones sharing pollen

so more can
sail on this wave
before it crashes onto shore.

Steve Thomas

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santa rosa by smith

MURDER

At night, crows enter rooms
of sexually molested daughters.
Make fathers eat them.

Mary Weems

MURDER Appeared in "An Unmistakable Shade of Red and the Obama Chronicles" (Bottom Dog Press, 2008)

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I JUST WOKE UP...I HAD THIS DREAM...

There was this cat...it was laying sleeping on an armchair and for some reason I can't remember why ? I thought it was a good idea to cut the back legs and the back half of the cat's body off.  Anyway the cat was sleeping so it didn't feel a thing, for some reason I thought that this was the most efficient way to kill it. By chopping off its back legs in its sleep.

Then to my horror the cat woke up and it started limping across the floor screaming on its front legs with its intestines hanging out. And I thought oh fuck....its in agony, I gotta kill that cat. I gotta finish it off because trying to watch it stay alive with only half a body, was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen. So I cornered it in this little enclosed area, but the area had a lot of obstacles and things to hide under and even on two legs and half a body that cat could move..... I was about to dump a brick on its head and it looked straight up into my face and it opened its mouth and it screamed.

It was then that I realised THAT CAT WAS ME.

Wednesday Kennedy

AMERICAN HAIKU

He woke up so angry,
that he went outside
& strangled
a song bird.

J Williams

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clonazepam - photo by smith

DRUNK, GOING DOWN, LOOKING AT THE MOON
To my friends the Smiths, and Oaxaca

In the dim Oaxacan night’s light, I stumble, tumbling –
dropping  my cane, looking at the moon.

No harm, no fault.  The beer didn’t break, the pants never ripped.
 Two beers, a joint?  I was Li Po in that boat.

Looking, falling; he drowning, I bleeding a bit from the knee.
 Same moon, same fall, same drunk…

max

MOON HAIKU

The silence sizzles
As the moon hangs over mind
Hear inner hollow

The moon is okay
But not a moon-faced old man?
What does this honor?

smith

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height of summer - photo by jerie green

I HAVEN’T SEEN HER OR THAT DOG IN YEARS

we used to sit in the warm morning sun on a couch in winter with no clothes on eating slices of apple and farmers cheese the dog half asleep on the floor a brewed pot of tea a platter of fresh baked bread a pyramid of tangerines with no pits in them bitter to the taste with an inner sweetness and several sections of the sunday paper tossed every which way

like a pile of leaves blown from the tops of trees we used to sit there in the warm morning sun for hours doing nothing naked to the skin like unstained furniture brilliant and content as a couple of maples listening to the news that old wooden frame house of hers creaking in the winter sun, morning ticktocking across the window and the radio on the radio on

and sometimes we made love right there on the hardwood floor with the dust bunnies and the cobwebs and the potted plants from maine and it started out with cushions but before long the fashion section of the newspaper under her left shoulder and the sports section pressed against her butt and the dog didn't even raise an eyebrow or laugh

but now i'm standing in the back of a deli with a ten spot in my hand and nowhere particular to go there's rain in the forecast i haven't seen her or that dog in years

she was so very smart and beautiful too with her eyes and beautiful hair incredible smile made you feel smart to look in those eyes and sensitive as a clam or an oyster she was a shellfish in her tidal basin she knew how to hold her knowledge in she knew how to turn a grain of sand into a pearl

yes she was a precious thing she was a precious thing only a person who had figured out how to get inside her could get inside her

because you see you couldn't just possess her you couldn't just pry her open with the flat side of a knife you couldn't just smash her open on a rock you couldn't just turn her over like a flapjack or nuzzle her like the nose end of a curious dog

you couldn't just run her over with a ten ton truck

George Wallace

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OPEN YOUR EYES AND GIVE ME YOUR BIRDS

don't tell me please that i have
strangled those pretty
old birds that were free in
your eyes

those flirty birds
you were fixing for
christmas..

excuse me
they weren't so quiet
and terrific
or so free for your
rapid taking, i said

it's a free world
of birds for
all of us
now

step back in line
and get some
new birds
please

surprise your eyes
with new kinds
and besides
it's a dirty long road to
christmas from
here

now if you would
open those flirty purple
eyes and allow me
the birds i wish
to kill

Andrew Boerum

EYES

blue windmills turning sunlight into bread
the murmuring turbines of you

the gills of the goldfish
in a porcelain tub

languid petals of unplugged fan
spiraling in the breeze

quick wink of the guillotine
flared skirt of mushroom

lightswitch squirting darkness
through the room

venus flytrap closing on
some hungry living thing

Mike Finley

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 shadow rabbit - steven b. smith

DON'T SHED ON ME
 
that’s him
(the man I'm stalking)
so hard, unyielding
no glasses, no goggles
he can look right straight in your naked eyes
and shoo you cold away
 
if he read my mind he'd know how it would could be
almost too perfect
that’s why I've activated my brain shield
I wouldn't want to have an unfair advantage
 
I'm trying to find the balance
walking serious along the edge
of an unseen precipice
an unknown breaking point
 
he didn't shoot the last one
by accident
impulse or whim
it was his sense of integrity
a stab of personal obligation
I understand
he now has
even more conviction
and a larger collection
of untraceable
weapons
 
I've had a hard time admitting it out loud
but I've been thinking it for a while-
 
the neighborhood is really going downhill
 
kimmydbones

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EASTSIDE / WESTSIDE

I have news from the front
the unseen battle rages on. 

You look at your neighbor
with a leery eye

and nothing really changes
as time goes by 

out on the streets
you just accept things
as they are. 

Trust is a hard word to speak
when you’re never spoken to

so watch your back
you never know
what’s coming up behind you. 

Eastside, Westside,
why don’t you get on the right side?

Eastside, Westside,
get on the right side.

Well, I don’t want to mislead you
in trying to cross that bridge

but anything is possible
if you truly want it to be. 

It’s a cold war out there

but it’s no longer
between the Soviets and the West 

it’s more like night and day
there’s no softer gray

it’s either or
it gets in the way. 

Maybe I’m just too hopeful
I see things
up in the sky. 

A zebra unicorn
with silver wings

flies high above the city
and sweetly sings 

but no one can hear it
no one can really see it. 

Eastside, Westside,
why don’t you get on the right side?
Eastside, Westside,
get on the right side 

and take the center lane
the middle of the road 

compromise
look into your eyes
and become energized. 

Middle of the road
it’s going to take you far

middle of the road
it’s going to take you far. 

And so I say to you
it’s a freeway out of here
it’s a freeway out of here. 

Eastside, Westside,
why don’t you get on the right side?

Eastside, Westside,
get on the right side 

Eastside, Westside,
let’s get on the right side

Eastside, Westside
it’s time to get on the right side.

Joe Balaz

BLISS OF THE SONGSTAR
 
bliss on all fours
in bliss the obsolete
moonlight, the vagrant
bliss of remedies, a
bliss of obscene proportions
the calipers of great
bliss, bliss aromas in
gargantuan kiln hearts
giant overlapping
bliss mantra
bliss united
bliss supreme
bliss aria
bliss open
bliss unconquerable
the day of the fire urns
lining the road of yer
commotion, bliss on the
way to trail spirals
over everything the bliss of thee

kuhar

FUCK THE MUSE

she’s just a fat-ass whore anyway
a fickle tantric partner
that just as soon go garage sale shopping
as write poetry
all she’s ever done is measure his poet’s worth
in dime store plastic Buddha’s
the only time she’d every really let him write
was if he’d finger her lips and made her come
then she’d return the favor
but she’d be gone as quick as that
Fuck she is just dangerously
unreliable. 

at 3:40 am. draped in a fevered stupor
he might want more but wouldn’t get it
she is toga trailer trash
thru and thru
she’d return now
only
by crawling back into his dreams
through the side door that opened onto Savannah Ave.
the one that ran down the near side of East Cleveland
down to the railroad tracks
eyes glazed & mind reeling
mark of Shiva on his forehead
maybe it isn’t the flu after all
likely just a scorpion bite
a prick
delivered on the backs of the
suburban patrol
Cleveland’s wide-eyed wonders
clueless riders on the ghost train to nowhere
they’d run the Blues out of town once before
no wonder they’re under suspicion
the gestures of holy men
are always under suspicion in East Cleveland
especially
seen cast in the street light glow of after hours
libation
I don’t think now it is the flu
just some leftover 20th century karma
wrapped up in an old copy of the Cleveland Press.

c.m. brooks

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