Thoughts on a Sweet Halloween
Having kept the best part for himself
As he selected organs for his monster
Dr. Frankenstein soon became a very
HUGE hit with the ladies.
Okay, great, stuck in a rut.
Same ol’ routine every time.
Bite the neck, suck the blood.
Say, I haven’t been a vampire
All that long. Suck the blood
But maybe, sometimes, I just
Wanna lick the cunt.
The knock. Who could it be?
Open the door to pure terror.
Monsters? Gangbangers?
Racist bastards? Satan?
Young children scarred for life.
Sweet Jesus, it’s politicians!
The local bully was impressed
That the kids readily gave up
The candy they’d gotten
From old Dan Irwin’s house.
Hopefully, Butch will enjoy it.
No one else cared for the
Candy wrappers filled with
Fresh Chihuahua turds.
MK Kuol
my cousin’s ill-timed passing
has taught me to cogitate,
even on happy moments,
on things solemn.
when,
over a decade later, we returned
to baping, our ancestral home, &
my over-the-moon father,
in the ancient rites of his fathers,
slaughtered the fattest of his bulls
& gathered our kinsmen to a feast
—a celebration our homecoming,
i couldn’t take my mind off
that star-crossed bull handpicked &
slain for indulgence’s sake
perhaps that is how my cousin died:
a god
straining hard to entertain his guests
handpicked & slain him…
James Burbank
LITTLE SHAVER
The greatest problem confronting humanity is the shaving dilemma. To shave or not to shave? I hear the rusted sound of razors scraping against skin. I am transformed, repelled, terrified. I sense inevitable nicks and cuts, awful puckering stuff to be applied to these cursed shaving wounds that makes them sting, these stigmata, the scream when you douse your proud flesh with after shave, or you slash your armpits, the water and shaving creme sprayed haphazard around your bathroom, your mirror fogged, stained with bloody fingerprints. Envision all the blades, single and multiple, the wet and dry electric shavers, the cologne, after shave, the healing compote. This is not your choice, but social conformity makes it so. Either Nair or hair, or the highway. The right choice, the only choice if you want to be a decent, upstanding human being is to endure the ritual of shaving despite your pain, despite your humiliation, despite your subjection to societal norms.
This social enforcement starts early. Uncle Morris, his breath smelling of tictacs and Old Milwaukee, his red and blue checkered double breasted suit looming , hovering, menacing, leaning in close to your face, his grin full of yellow teeth, he grabs your five-year-old cheeks and pinches hard while growling, “How’s the little shaver?” Then he pinches hard again to redden your cheeks, so they look blushed up healthy. You want to take a straight razor and filet Uncle Morris. Occam’s Razor, perhaps that says the simplest solution for a problem is the right answer.
Uncle Morris was never aware that the original Little Shaver was a pencil sharpener developed in the early 1900’s. He never knew that there were Little Shaver rag dolls in 1919, or fishing lures today called Little Shavers. Despite these facts of which Uncle Morris was ignorant, and whether little or big, shavers, and by extension shaving, is the most simple explanation for all the bad stuff we go through as humans, the simplest reason for the world’s problems, and so therefore the most likely root cause for the ultimate human catastrophe.
Think of all the suffering, the calamities occurring right now, the starvation, the loneliness, the disasters, the floods, the pestilence, the lies, the corruption, the complexity of world political disorder, the savage and twisted issues that vex even the most aware problem solvers, all because good people do bad things. They yearn to conform through shaving, and that’s the plain old reason for all the world’s intractable ills, easy peazy. According Occam’s damn razor, I have peeled away the onion-like layers of complexity that guard the truth. Shaving is the cause of it all.
David John Ward
Gathering
Watch now, I have gathered
all that is needed –
a bell, a box, a broken
clock, a handful
of seeds grown mildewed and gnarled,
a nail, a pocket filled
with silence, a rusted
chain to bind them all.
Follow, and watch again,
carefully as we make our way
down the path which winds
between bushes overhanging
and pale flowers’ curious breath.
Then we will bury everything
we gathered. In the dark soil,
rich with hidden joy.
Tamp down the earth, so
none will see we have visited,
that we were ever here
at all.
At Dusk
He can be found at dusk, walking the old by-ways,
tracing the lanes, his breath a mist,
his eyes dull but blazing, seeking the trails
of creatures who passed not yesterday, but before
there were walls, were fields, were signposts, barbed wire
or furrows, but just the tug, the flow,
the slope to the river, the grey horizon and beyond.
Strange Grey Eyes
You and your strange grey eyes,
misting as clouds, so lost
and so proud, staring at nothing
you see; to my mind
you were staring at me.
You and your strange grey eyes,
speaking in silence with
nothing to say, running towards me
then walking away, and back,
always back the next day.
You and your strange grey eyes,
so thin was the thread,
how strong were the ties
that drew me towards you,
so foolishly wise, though
we knew that we’d never know why.
Royal Rhodes
WOUNDS
The wrangler works against the world
or within it, at the prairie's edge
or middle that reveals itself.
It is at times an exercise in sound,
like the crying of lost cattle
or the beckoning of sweat to bugs.
The wounds words make in the wounded,
we are told, open up with light escaping,
or is it more like cut skin needing air?
Our ravaged bodies speak to each other
about the common pain wielded in words
that gallop ahead to interpret too much.
The phrase burned into our recollection
was that the truth was "out there",
that made us miss it finally in ourselves.
The body's sores come like pauses in music
to surprise our listening pursuit of meaning
that we are all heirs to one, continuing wound.
___________________________________________________
NIGHT WALTZ
The strange sob of a jackrabbit
that lingered too long on the wet stretch
on the rancher's acres,
the pine tassels skittering down
the pitch of a grooved metal roof,
from chimney to gutter,
the naked shadows in the empty chamber
of the wood stove, gasping for air
as embers sparked anew --
these were the notes of my dream music.
I had to relearn my limbs were instruments,
my head too top-heavy
with deep grief,
while across the dream stanzas
those I knew who died sang
that they dread the living.
As I passed from sleeping to waking,
I moved in a line dance and steps
of an unfinished waltz.
And in the borderline darkness
I put on my skin like a costume
and climbed onto my saddle,
before I rose to cross into a new world,
and the sky was as wide as.heaven.
But when I stopped to camp, there were no stars.
Richard LeDue
“The Whiskies of the Past”
Beethoven playing the opposite
of a lullaby at 7:37 AM,
while my coffee chases away the night
with its sensible eight hours of sleep
(still broken
as a drunkenly dropped glass),
putting to sleep the whiskies of the past,
when blacking out felt like a light bulb
in some great cartoon colored idea
I believed must be my own
original thought, only to wake up,
knowing if I had an artist’s pallet,
then my life would be painted
chromatic black.
Joseph Farley
Just The Facts Ma’am
If I said I loved you,
you’d probably smack my face.
If I said I needed you,
you’d kick me in the balls.
But if I told you truly
that your life is your own,
go where you will,
do what you want,
you’d probably stick around
and bother me
until one of us died
and left the other alone.
Wayne Russell
Terminus
That fading clock hung upon
the off-white wall, ticks sound
like a heartbeat, labored and
lonely.
The budgie in her guiled cage
stares blankly into her mirror,
bored or narcissistic? That is
the million-dollar question.
Pale green countertops are now
recovering from the lunch made
so hastily, life moves so quicky,
the workdays all blend into one.
Hours, days, months, years, spent
just waiting for that finial moment;
that terminus point, where the train
conductor bellows, please disembark.
Sushant Thapa
Washed Away
Like the last train
Like the first flight,
I want to leave
To go there,
Where the lost ones
Are found.
Let me know
The kisses of survival,
The metaphors of distances
That feels the absence of nearness.
Let me find you
In the last drag
Of your existential cigarette
At a bar where all the music
Rains like ashes.
Drinking Away
I want to drink away the pain,
This jail, I am living in.
Share a glass of company
Let loneliness be kicked in the face.
Flood is like wine
It keeps recollecting like a memory
Which is just one more occasion to drink.
Danielle Hubbard
Thought Police
Crosswalks. My cell phone.
My husband’s voice like Big Brother, receding.
This watch –watching, witching, winking.
My lover’s Rhumba, bringer of tripping hazards.
Thermostats. Autumn, falling into place.
Time – simultaneously a treadmill
and a rubber band. I think a lot about friends
in other cities. I think about Chardonnay.
I think about stationary bikes
and what new contortions I could do with dumbbells.
The new black flanks of the mountains.
My lingerie that still smells like smoke
after six washes. My hotel bed
and what comes next.
My mom, who died months ago
polices my thoughts benignly
but inextricably. The sky, unattainable.
The three Donkeymen of the Apocalypse.
This spatula, ready for splintering.
These traffic pylons.
