Birds
the poem
in that literary magazine
such pretty words
it’s an exquisitely feathered
brilliantly colored
miniature songbird
admiring itself
between nervous head flicks
in the small plastic mirror
hanging in its cage
the poem
I just wrote
a large black raven
twitching carrion
in its indigo beak
death and eternity
in its cold eye
crow-hopping
unsteadily away
after having slammed
mid-flight
into the window glass
Death Row
we’re all on death row
the end of each day
another temporary stay of execution
but what will you do tomorrow?
will you sit in your death row cell
consumed with dread fixation on
the ticking clock?
will your death be quick
the snap of a light switch
then darkness?
or will it be a gradual dimming
a slow tearing away
of everything you are
as you spin on a spit
over the fire of dementia?
will you try to drown out
this inevitable cadence
in a room littered
with empty bottles
needles
a bent spoon
scattered pill bottles
all illuminated by a flickering tv screen?
will your fleeting solace
be shattered by the harsh early morning light
of awareness
that you’ve actually moved the clock hands
ahead not backwards?
or is death your intimate friend
the certainty of extinction
a context
the compulsion
the focus
the electrical current
to do what needs to be done?
in the short light
of this winter’s day
do you push for
the extreme life
the ever-present ticking down of the clock
taken as a beat
for dancing wildly
ecstatically?
do you burn with a ferocity
that illuminates
and warms
those around you?
we’re all on death row
the end of each day
another temporary stay of execution
but what will you do tomorrow?
Transmogrification
a gentle flickering of fluorescent lights
subtly animates
the hospital crash cart
a pulsing dance
of crumpled bloody wipes
and expended tubes
the only movement
in the vacated room
the accompaniment of steady beeps
and strident alarms
now silent
a bed sheet drawn up
to cover her face
yet
she still sees
briefly regards all this
in confusion
then is seized
by a great ripping apart
forcefully
and irresistibly
yanked upward
and outward
into a painfully bright
new daylight
wings suddenly stabilize
newfound flight
through strange new skies
amidst a frantically wheeling
flock
Author: The Beatnik Cowboy
Austin Autry
Who Else
I walk and and walk with my jail cell of a mind never escaping always turning to dead end roads then a u turn to kick up the dust in my white Chevy Dream
O holy holy is the American night where I have a companion that I consider brotherhood
Speaking passionately about visions and aspirations and coagulations
Calculating every turn that has gotten us to this purple moonlight of abandonment.
We kick up our feet on the dashboard which holds our priceless possessions of beer and chewing gum
We talk about woman, Manhattan, and teeth
What it means to be a fly on the lamp of despair and how it feels to be the hummingbird sucking the nectar of a ripe daisy
Bare chested and naked minds we roam the dark blanket of the night to see what we can offer it
Youth
I look into the corridor of my youth
We turned the summer months into dreams
At last the harvest has been grown
We had our baskets piled high with its fruits
The aching sobs of elder minds fell flat on our ears
Until we were alone
That is why we were never alone
We played our youthful songs into the sky
Musicians with broken instruments
Kneading loaves of love into every soft bread
The fusion of wonder and carelessness that caused our eyes to sparkle
Now, bereaving, of a world we no longer are apart
The Ancient Streets
Let us take a walk down the ancient streets
The crowded streets where the blue mist sprinkles on the faces of ghostly citizens
Let's have coffee at a restless diner where old men wear caps and talk about wars that have passed
Let us jump from block to the other with our light sparrows feet
Passing by the echoes of laughter that fills the halls of brick layered pubs
The sound of a golden trumpet begins to play from a holy window
and we begin to dance
The tree's and the wind dance together with us like bride and groom
The moonlight shining and we wear it like a halos
God's forgotten angels
The soft fog rubs its face upon the window panes to join the evening and the wind allows it
Gentle raindrops of red wine begin to settle into our body as we continue our walk
Walter yells from his corner home "you haven't visited me enough, I don't beg or bite" I comfort him with an embrace
The Hudson looks like the Pacific,
Water flowing in every direction like the thoughts in my puzzle of a mind
No pieces seem to fit
A mind that can take in everything but can't seem to give anything
Besides this
A poem
For those who are searching
Jay Passer
Acclimation
attack chihuahua! ankle high,
I spasm to the glee of the babushka
late afternoon, wan, unsubscribing
from life insurance scams
enough isn't enough, so I return to self
discontent as ritual privilege
eaten up like dog food
set out for raccoons.
*
I Could Die Right Now Knowing
I share a donut with a crow
at 7 a.m.
while most people asleep
or hell-bent
on annoying each other
could care less.
as traffic helicopters report:
exhaust fumes suffocate:
a shot of this or that
of rapid-fire deployment:
or submerged in bathwater,
checkin' out:
I don't stoop to envy the infant
unconscious of the inevitable.
I leave the crows
to hold council
even if they are
secretly in league
with owls.
Taryn Allen
Wait and See
The rain falls like a returning memory
A grey-scale wash
For nostalgia’s faux-glimmering
A revelation (that)
The streets were always this way
Only the shadows, the blackly-tattooed wounds
Of experience have changed
Grown deeper
It’s a long fall to the bottom now
Through a cavity run jagged
But the abyssal-depth remains the same
A street-watcher shivers in the dampness of their clothes
The same damp which accompanies each downpour
Another, their eyes sealed firmly shut
Grits their teeth against their chattering
And claims things didn’t used to be this way
Ian Copestick
My Old Mate Mick
Tonight I'm thinking
of my old mate Mick.
Fucking hell, we had some fun .
Until it stopped being fun
He moved to the Highlands
of Scotland
to get clean.
Did it, too.
I remember him calling me
on my landline .
This was years before mobile
phone technology.
Saying
The nearest shop is
over five miles away.
What am I going to do ?
He did it
Julian Thumm
Some men deserve death
Who among us wonders
what we really deserved?
A boot on the throat
a whore’s spit in the eye
a therapist’s maternal hand
squeezing your balls
Gacy’s oedipal laugh &
a tender kiss on the forehead
the vicious hemorrhoids that bloody the bowl
the tent-life destitution
the septic glimmer of success
& the inevitability
of the colonoscopy microscope
that worm-fingers its way
to the fecal drenched
heart of the matter
the exposé that rushes one back
beneath the covers
a frightened child
cradled in the slick palms
of inescapable authority
our luscious, brutal just deserts
a flagellant’s fantasy
an undercover nightmare
a faint hope of judicial lucidity
built on the sands of self-perception
Alan Catlin
Post Card to Thompson June 22, 2019: Burt and Loni formally dressed
for a red-carpet affair
Every time I see a Reynolds movie I am
transported back to the graveyard shift in the Tavern.
On my break, at the door, sipping a pint of Bass Ale
or slamming the pint, depending on how the night,
before 2 AM had been. Amazing to me now how
many of those breaks ended up in bloodshed.
Out of staters can’t get their heads around
bars staying open to 4 AM as they can in NY.
You don’t need a stat sheet, crime cluster pattern
spread sheet, to know that most of the violence in
bars happen between 2 and 4 A.M. St Patrick’s Day
and New Year’s Eve don’t count.
After the game of the season is over, the only
choice for early morning viewing involves cable movie
channels where Burt was, and probably, still is king....
The only one of his movies I have actually, voluntarily
seen, is Deliverance. There are nights I could have used
his bow technique against LA (lower Albany) low life.
(The New York versions not the California Okies.) I’m not
vindictive, but more than one scumbag I can think of would
look better with an arrow through his neck. And not just
the guy who was arrested for murder the week after
I last served him in the tavern. He got a lifetime to think
about his misdeeds. Maybe that is worse than a pointed jugular
stick with feathers.
Alternatives to Reynolds movies, almost equally
as bad, were frequent features. Early Don Johnson movies,
A Boy and His Dog, comes to mind, or Claudia Jennings
full frontal feature with bank robberies, The Great Texas
Dynamite Chase...Amazing to me now how many Reynolds
flicks I’ve, more or less, seen. I’d watch Semi-Tough again
but the rest of them, not so much. Don’t get me started on
The Longest Yard ....
As for Loni, well, I’m not sure I would want to
see a full frontal of her give how much silicone she was
shot up with. What was she actually in, anyway?
My dreams of those endless nights seem like a perfect
version of hell. The further down the rungs you go, the more
Burt Reynolds movies there are. Who knew hell was a bar,
with wall-to-wall TVs in it? If you’d been stuck inside that
same bar with nine, full screen, never blinking TV’s, on 9-11
for nine hours you’d know exactly what I mean.
Mark Walsh
Cold as Irish Green
March is cold
Irish cold and green.
Lace curtains, stank
cabbage; hard sunlight, bitter wind.
Skeleton trees sunk in grass
Grass like greenyellow crayons.
March is a cold month
Cold as Kelly green
White sweaters, warm beer; dirty
snow, heavy rain.
It remains in the grooves of your soles
Like sandy sidewalk grit.
March is cold
Cold and Irish green
Guiness Stout, Blarney Stone; muddy
pools, curbstone rubble.
In Ireland they throw rocks
In Boston they toss back stout
And piss in the streets on St. Paddy's.
March is a month of cold
Kelly cold and green
Celtic cross, gin blossoms; rusted
metal, gutter rivulets.
Even the graveyard seems cozy
On the most Irish of AllIrish Eve.
The month of March is cold
As cold as Irish green.
Howie Good
Repair the World
We lie down together
and drift through streets
I’ve never seen before,
shoes hanging from power lines,
and when we’re done,
and the bed is as rubbished
as a rowdy dive bar,
it’s still only the afternoon,
and a kind of prisoner swap
has secretly taken place,
our pale winter bodies returning
believing in rumors of spring.
Alan Catlin
Last Night on the Town
The one who was
going to die was
propped against the bar
by an artificial
limb. It was strange
watching that last
act, especially since
he was buying all
the losers drinks,
leading a show which
would end up a black
suit affair; not that
any of these guys
knew what a suit was.
Most bar guys would be
bummed when he went
but I wasn't: I'd
been called Dr. Death
before. These things
always seem to happen
on my shift; after
awhile you almost
get used to it.
I thought I was nice
person once upon
a time, but looking
into the eyes of dead
people does things to
you, I’m warped now,
broken, and nothing is
going to change that.
The Beatnik Cowboy 