The Lonely Ones
The lonely ones
keeping the city sane.
Their auras soothe
all the hate and pain.
We just have to concentrate
and feel with our hearts...
Joining the lonely ones,
making a huge crowd.
Keeping the city sane.
Nicholas Viglietti
Thin On the Ground
Don’t speak,
They don’t want to hear.
Never share,
They’ll never care.
Don’t waste your breath –
You ain’t got much to spare.
Screw the reasons,
They ain’t got guts.
Screw their worries,
The jealous
Will just call brave,
Nuts.
Nobody will admit it,
But we’re all headed down,
On the same
Nowhere lanes.
Don’t quit-on yourself, though.
Don’t do like everybody else,
Be brave,
Go for broke.
It’s the only way
A long shot
Can cope.
Thin on the ground,
Nobody wins,
There’s no fangs of meat to fear,
Stay crazy between the ears,
Brazen belly of hope.
Stan Wierzbicki
October in the Edgware Earth
After Jack Kerouac’s “October in the Railroad Earth”
There’s a big road in London called the Edgware Road, back of the Marble Arch station, where me and all my neighbours live in a building that falls apart called Dudley Court, with leaks, and creaks, and drills all year round, where people come to buy drugs, where Airbnb guests scream Mate, the lift’s not workin’! while the concierge mumbles Short-term lettings are illegal in these premises, but hands them keys anyway — the road is loud and proud, its rickshaws booming with sound, and motorcycles revving out into the night! — there’s foot traffic, and maybe trafficked feet — ‘merican tourists clickity-clacking their suitcases from the Hilton up the street to see Sabrina Carpenter sing in the Park, gazing at bars with shisha smelling like ice candy burning on the stove and at pawnshops with ol’ rimless spectacles and snus and flags o’ Palestine paled from rain and hopelessness while bootleg Labubus and cabbages next door blacken from exhaust and exhaustion… Madman, madman — people say — coulda lived anywhere in ol’ Great Britain, but to me, this here is Great where people dance and pray, though soon there’ll come an end to our sadness and our gladness and though I know my neighbours will be kicked out before me (I can try to butter the right biscuits), we will all have to fall eventually and burn again through this October Earth…
Edward Johnson
VOLUNTARY REDUNDANCY
I dream of curry. Not Steph,
Thai green, Indian red.
You are mouthing a word,
Referee or refugee when
I awake above the cloud line
Thick cirrus nestled in the valley,
The sky a circus blue
Like the fixtures in my grandparents’
Bathroom, the shag on their toilet seat,
Every other tiny floor tile.
That room always smelled
Like toothpaste and recent use—
Cold, crisp, fluorescent, human.
Generations feed one another.
We toss some things, carry others,
Pretend what’s left is uniquely ours.
Now I lie here in this cabin
Three hundred miles from decent curry
Mt. Gardner above my toes,
The pixels of the universe
Like fireflies gossiping,
An entropy so pure
The mind makes patterns
Where none exist.
Scott C. Holstad
Celebrate the Ends
She said to me,
“God, you’re so hard to
live with. Why do you
always make it so
difficult for people?
I mean, you’re always
so damn serious. Why don’t
you chill the hell out? You
intimidate people, and I don’t
think it’s a coincidence. You
also embarrass people. Why?
What’s your damn problem?”
I looked up at her and laughed.
“What’s it matter? Nothing
matters – you, me, them.”
She screamed and shouted,
“God, I can’t take this shit
anymore!”
After stomping away, she
slammed the door behind her.
I gazed after her, thinking
about the way her haunches
wiggled when she walked
and I felt strangely alone.
It was a good feeling.
Brooks Lindberg
Write what you know:
Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809).
Alles ist das, was du daraus machst, auch du selbst.
—Joseph Goebbels, Michael: ein Deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblättern (1929).
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
—Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (1957).
Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Don't leave your torso.
Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Write what you know
with piss on the snow.
Write what you know.
Stale tobacco.
Pistachio.
That one talk show.
Sweet potatoe.
Negative cash flow.
Cheap ass merlot.
Cigarette glow.
Right what I know—
I dunno. I dunno.
I dunno what I know.
Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Hell if I know.
Seeds must crack to grow.
Four Things Writing Needs
For me, memory is only one half of writing. Invention is the second and lightning the third. A fourth might be innumeracy.
Richard LeDue
“Old Courage”
There was an old bravery
in my younger days,
when beer,
hidden in a paper coffee cup,
tasted like courage
instead of yellow flowers
commemorating the inevitability of death,
and I was content with my hangovers
being just another punchline
in a joke I thought would always be
funny, until I realized laughter dies
the same as the rest of us.
“Blood Memory”
I’ve always had this strange vision
of sitting at my kitchen table
at eight or nine AM
drinking rye on the rocks,
and I think this is blood memory
from a grandfather who drank
himself to death
before I was even born.
I guess some ghosts
don’t need rattling chains
or footless footsteps in an attic
to prove they exist.
John Jordan
no words
My uncle is telling me again
Neil Young was a genius
his empty rocks glass glinting
in the late summer air
smoke and skylight giving way
to the darkening season.
His Camel smolders by the fire pit,
the boombox mewling 70’s rock
and I have no words
but know not to look in his eyes
when he pauses to tap his watch,
a gift from my drunk grandfather
he says, a vintage Calatrava
which means nothing to me.
He lumps up from his chair
to piss in the bushes, passing
his palm through my hair,
a kindness I do not understand.
He returns for a moment, sits
to gather himself for bed, tells me
the bourbon hurts his heart
but it is what it is he whispers
by the dying firelight
better to burn out than to fade away.
Philip Ash
LIVESTREAM
Lumpinee Boxing Stadium,
Bangkok
Atomweight women’s kick-
boxing: no elbows
Crimson stains the canvas
from earlier bouts
L.A. Latina defends her belt,
a swift counterpuncher
Bad blood; neither extend
a glove to start each round
Tattooed Teutonic throws
more aggressive hooks
Both wear cornrows;
could be my daughters
Red flows from the German’s
nose – flash knockdown –
Latina rises slowly, loses
a split decision
Usually, I don’t like to see
women beat up
But I’m sure they had
the time of their lives
D.R. James
April Fool
Just because it’s linearly April the Second,
who’s the boss who says this punk-ass snow—
reduced now to an intermittent drizzle whizzing on the roof—
and this one-tone, tag-along slab of sleepy gray—
since the sun’s just up—
and this white elephant of an extra hour before barreling in to work,
and then the kids coming tonight from their mom’s
for Sorry—
or not,
as’ll happen—
who says it can’t all go perfectly
with this seasonal transition’s shy thunder
clearing its phlegmish voice
over all these leafless trees,
with this mismixed black-and-tan of mismatched Spring?
I’ve let myself grow fond of longing
for set pieces,
for still-lifes requiring
one from Column A,
another number I forget from Column B,
a soundtrack from, I’m only guessing,
Column C,
figuring it has to be this prissy mania
for the alphabetical.
Meanwhile, while the world gets away
with spinning its weighted wheel any which way
it wants, our singed hearts roulette
for whatever weather rolls in off a controlling coast.
But what of these self-tranquilized tendencies,
our domesticated blood?
Couldn’t we eat a rich lunch at ten,
decide on another at two,
boldly call it supper
and be ready for breakfast by five-fifty,
then call it a night
or, even better, a new day?
In any case, couldn’t we be more awake, more
Thoruvian, with “Rock Around the Clock”
our invocative alarum
not some old benedictive ex∙e∙unt?
(I’m beginning to sense some hostility.)
Which reminds me of the time my third good idea—
that one involving literature and the golden summer of ’77,
which we spent largely melting into a solitary beach
until our bones felt as though they’d bake along
and last forever together—
turned out to be just another in a long
but entertaining line
of nice-to-have-known-you usurpations (though by now
it’s taken the form of a couple
tortured
decades),
which was before poetry—
wide-wale cords
worn thin across her bony cheeks—
materialized from the dust, squatting
predictably over an opened road,
and smirked me into this other,
this more welcoming,
dementia.
Swimming
Apparently it has been said
that two lions guard
the door to Enlightenment. But
Paradox and Confusion, two
of the best friends a guy could hope
to leave behind,
seem more like two winos
blocking the door
to your apartment, trying
to avoid enlightenment,
though they don’t know it.
You could step over them
but you’d risk their awakening.
I wish I were an abstraction
in the form of a non-cognizant
but ferocious mammal. Not only
would I be warm-blooded
and highly respected and
sporting a non-thinning mane,
but I could save all the time
I now spend attempting
consciousness. It’s also been said
that I tend more toward
the cold-blooded (possibly
reaching luke-warm when sunshine
heats up the lagoon) and not
regularly regarded, since I’m off
swimming the world, looking
for the world in which I swim.
Which is funny if I think about it.
Which I can’t. I’m like
Prufrock in his flannel pants,
pushed around by a Symbolist,
three teeth cracked on peach pits,
love life always aground
around tea-time, sleeping
just out of earshot
so as not to drown.
The Beatnik Cowboy 