The Perspicacity of Rain

by Stew Jorgenson

 

 

I wanted to talk about falling Romans,

declining imperatives,

large scale ineptitudes,

the shortage of elevated thinking,

high tech window peeping.

I wanted to say all

there is to say about

ideological turpitude,

hemispheric pressure,

moral viscosity,

social insolvency,

oceanic perturbances,

historical sediment,

and carbonated skies.

I wanted to spill my guts

in a violent rage of

righteous recompense

for the lost city on a hill,

its fraudulent afflictions,

intemperate thresholds,

shrinking civil habitat,

sacred insanities,

institutional atrophy,

cruel impotence,

blame games,

and the gurgling grudge

of third degree spurns

refusing to heal.

I wanted to rant about

the pitiful plight of injustice,

give people a reason

to vent about nothing,

gripe about grievances,

tongue tied imprisonments,

intractable resentments,

crippling betrayals,

emotional lacerations,

and decry the ruination of love.

I wanted to say something

that would make the sun bleed,

and beg forgiveness for its

smug indifference to our needs

but I didn’t want to get sidetracked by

celestial politics,

the co-mingling of souls,

animal magnetism,

longitudinal shortcomings,

aeronautical proclivities,

or mathematical probabilities in

the dissemination of kindness.

I thought that might sound

a bit whacked,

giving credence to all sorts of

paranoid prognostications by

gentrified social engineers

with slide rules and zip ties,

so I backed off on that program.

I also wanted to put in a plug for

compassionate forbearance,

and call attention to the

imaginative logistics

of wearing other people’s shoes.

But most of all,

I just wanted to take pleasure in

the abiding conviction of words,

peel back a few layers of

caterwauling concerns,

and declare how hard it is

to stay grounded in dreamscapes,

while groping for sentient cohesion

 

in the tangled tribulations of life.

 

 

HEALING TIME

She could have said anything:
she had the right to: tears
framed her eyes that looked
at me with such hurt that I
had to look away: she shook
her head and the tears
silently fell and I waited
for her words and then
they came, she said, quietly,
‘Leave me alone’
and I wanted to hold her,
to ask for her forgiveness,
I wanted to confess, I
wanted too much:
‘Okay’ I whispered and
I packed in quietness and
left my house-keys on the
kitchen table and closed the
door behind as I stepped back
into another fuck-up of my
own making,
leaving behind a wound,
that time would turn away
from.

“Petri Dish World”

 

Living under a microscope

In a petri dish world

Full of human music blues and

Dirty Harry amoebas

That vengefully destroy

All rational thought

 

Spinning tales of the stoned

From can to can’t

And basket case lies

About reflections

Of a floating world

 

We’re all the stars

Of our own movies

Eating frustration sandwiches

Made of the great

American death rattle

That kill all the extras

With untold truths

 

Stuck here

Somewhere over the rainbow

In a mad scientist’s laboratory

The three futures

That could have been

Have come and gone

Down the guilt party waterslide

And Google is our new God

 

 

***

 

“BFFs”

 

God and Satan

Secretly get along

Playing back alley craps

Between Heaven and Hell

Gambling for souls

 

Together they’ve compiled

The greatest rock supergroup

Of all time

And throw wild parties

That all of our favorite

Dead poets attend

 

They even have matching tattoos

On their asses

Of good and evil owls

With the roles reversed

Just for fun

Satan’s has a halo

God’s has horns

Acquired after a long night

Of heavy drinking

 

Once they had a falling out

Over a woman because

God is love but

Satan did that thing she liked

With his tongue

Yet they follow the code

Bros before hoes

So they’re still tight

 

Currently they’re locked

In a game of chess

That’s lasted for eons

Taking breaks

Now and then

To throw their parties

And go on benders

They’ve even agreed

On their next tattoo

“God + Satan

Best Frenemies Forever”

 

©James Dennis Casey IV

 

I read

 

that Audi Murphy
gave all
his medals
from the
war to
kids in
his neighborhood

I understand
but having
kids of
my own
I will
leave mine
to them

as payment
for the
year they
lived without
me while
I was
in Afghanistan

and for
all the
years they
have lived
without me
since I
came home.

 

Sketches, panels and planets

new gods and forever people

oh, where have the humans landed

in a tidal wave of inhumanity

screaming “cosmic retribution!”, frogs from the sky

lightening zapped by hovering squids from another planet,

each being a universe in the pocket careening into a nihilistic void

bursting into new directions in the quasars of minds yet to be born,

the infinite crisis of anti-life equation is not not learning- we don’t know how to live

but how we are not allowed to live, rebels of delusion,

mirroring counter-revolutionary tactics,

the constellations come together,

Orion with his belt makes a club of mars,

Jupiter splits apart, innards of creme corn

and interstellar strippers made of jello and (here all thought it was gas)

existence, exit stance,

another wave of reality

forget the fourth and fifth worlds,

demand to break the wall

between self and source, they say mathematics is the language,

words are treason, but the mystery is breathing,

the philosophy is marvel in the elseworlds of confinement,

the miracle to concede defeat in the land of unliving

an embracement of tomorrow’s glory

when moment is what you are without meaning,

true being, serenity of the soul, there’s your earthen saga

and heroic myth of the ages recycling into another dawn tinged transmigration

of starved stardust exploding angels and the nine fingers of nirvana,

but what about the thumb?

up my dead wandering desolate ass, wrestling a stranger in town – the valley of bones

where giant men in unstable molecular suits are testament highways

warnings to lovers of all ages

gracing the wild and crazy eternity.

 

MURMUR

There is an echo
That resonates
Throughout her soul
A light
Where all darkness
Disappears

Her smile
A mere second
Which lasts
An eternity

A Wardrobe Malfunction

Anne Fall

 

Generally false,

I find your societal distinctions

reek of sentiment and disbelief

in the worth of the rest of humanity.

Despite that, I like listening to you talk

about this and that.

Almost like, you know where it’s all at.

 

Then, you show through

like a little slip of a nip in the embarrassing dress

of a woman whose breasts

have seen better men than the applications

she’s currently taking.

 

Drink this, and you’ll feel better, I tell you,

and you do.

Oh, you do.

 

Our Sex Is Our

 

death. Important decision

for my wife and I.

 

We live with the urge to do it.

Day in day out.

 

Thirty five years married.

It has to be mutual.

 

First time sex is last time alive.

We must decide before

 

We are too weak

and other devices needed.

 

Sex is euthanasia, you see.

We agree when enough is enough.

 

I was born from my dead mam.

So, hopefully my wife will become

 

pregnant after we die.

 

Children in the Sky (V2)

By Michael Lee Johnson

 

There is a full moon,

distant in this sky tonight,

 

Gray planets planted

on an aging white, face.

 

Children, living and dead,

love the moon with small hearts.

 

Those in heaven already take gold thread,

drop the moon down for us all to see.

 

Those alive with us, look out their

bedroom windows tonight,

we smile, then prayers, then sleep.

 

The birds in the tree

they laid in the park like a sneak preview of being resurrected from their caskets but I didn’t want to tell them that the sun looked too old on their heads. I would’ve walked up to every father and said  I didn’t sleep with your daughter. Even if it was a lie. I just wanted to say how are you, thank you for keeping my childhood on your spice rack. I’m sorry I don’t want to leave but all we ever wanted from the beginning was to kiss goodbye. I’m sorry I’m already gone. Did the mortician do your lipstick? I’m glad you’re at peace with how you’re dead. R.I.P.

and I spent the night on the other side of your roads
when the deer were dying and dark
I wanted you to come out from your statue houses in khaki shorts
to let me into your imaginary guest rooms
but you were in the dust of your welcome mats
and I couldn’t get past your smiles
I wanted to die by the stones in the mulch of your gardens
and on your daughter’s dining carts in their television worlds