Dan Flore

El Diablo

El Diablo
sun rash going on now
dead blue dove day
at a mid tempo speed
Arizona desert
you can almost think,
life is common denominator of doom
tractor trailer loss of control on the road
carcass of armidillo
West Yaqui River Virus
dead rising from the waters
headphone wire, black snake in your ear
you’re writing mirages
in your notepads and sleep
El Diablo
the ancient perfume
you left in your parents’ bathroom
that tells you it’s dead
blood flower nectar squirt
on the side of a muted gold van
unloading giant desert radial tires
being surveilled for robbery
the paint peeling on the bodegas
looks like your skin
make a wish
into the dead pink
Madonna statue’s eyes.

Jonathan Beale

Bonfire nights

 

“…Gold as anything needed to be

to and to find its form

Somehow, somewhere but where?

The keys cross: to open to close

The bonfire sparkles as she dances:

As she spits, stares and lures

The light reflects upon the flesh

of the whole complexion of the night.

Here is where the men and the women

Find light in this lightless sanctuary

Their voices that become; poetic –

Poetry opposing the eyes attachment

….deep and dark the salted ambiance

Olive skinned red and green

The liquidity of the grape

Telling tales: telling – telling

The soul is here: alone

Against the night: the two become one”’

“I was there, was it a dream?

…or life or a dream of life

Romanticism and classicism are lost

They were not needed

as we did not need anything,

We are dancing with the flames

Long long into the night….”

 

The dawn drew up and away

from the nights fire dream state.

As we awoke in amnesia.

Smelling only cinders and ash.

Michael Marrotti

‘A Social Utopia’

They want free
universal
health care
as do I

An individual
bathroom
for everyone
even your pet

A viable wage
the eradication
of poverty

Smiles on
the faces of
all human beings

A social utopia
where everyone
is holding hands

Free drugs for all
and free eBooks
that collect
digital dust
on the internet

Since a world
free of suffering
makes for a
literary genre
that’s accustomed
to bad writing

© Michael Marrotti

Jared Bowns

“Don’t Make Me Wait”

I saw myself cast in the shadow of the train station dawn,

The light laughed as it passed me by,

How foolish a man to think that he deserves a wait,

That he deserves anything in this relative world of jelly beans and calamity,

Served with a side order of clandestine entropy,

All I know for certain is that the further I get home,

The more I learn about myself

Whoever the fuck that is

Paul Crompton

Bartender, just one more (Leonard Cohen love song for the road)

You whisper to me,
so the bartender can’t hear,
“I can feel
the bare bones of love
rattling through the ancient catacombs
of my soul”,
but you know,
as well as I do,
that holding out,
with all your might,
for a teenage feelin
you’ve no right to believe in,
will only drain
the colour from your face
faster than you suck at that glass.

You sigh, and look to the floor,
jam your hand
in your pocket
and cry to the bartender:
“One more!
just one more for the road,
and keep the change,
or least change
the jukebox
to a Leonard Cohen love song”.

 

Dr. Randall Rogers

Hello. I go back to work this Sunday. Could be a gas. I’m a cab driver. I work the streets…. With these words – ‘palabras’ in Spanish – this editor, a half-editor at that, attempts to greasily weasel into your soul. Don’t let him. Be vigilant. Join the “Not My Editor Movement” and goddammit free Snowden, now that Castro’s gone. My brother was a big one for offering, ‘free mustache growing lessons’. I almost got killed one time offering help for a struggling young man. I really thought the cracker was going to kick the shit out of me. And imagine, this far north! Huh! It was consolation, though, in that if the young man fought like the delicate blonde wisps on his chin were attempting to grow, well, out of pity I redoubled my efforts and told him with my help he’d be shaving in no time. The brute even tried to attack me! Imagine.

Pitchforks! Man, pitchforks!! Oh do I remember “Night Gallery”. The 1968-69 TV show. A restart up of “The Twilight Zone”. Rod Serling still smoking, introducing themed paintings from a spooky art gallery. He’s got longer hair but still is wincingly appropriate for his role; introducing the teleplay stories of fright. But rarely was their fright. In its stead there was humor. Humor of the best kind. Unintentional humor. From material methinks was supposed to resemble horror. For instance my favorite, the episode about the biker going to hell.

It starred John Austin, the Addams Family show Dad. And a bunch of old geezers. “Gomez Addams” ( the actor John Austin) played a hell bent for leather biker in a nondescript pre-departure area getting ready to jump into the chute and slide on down into hell. He’s freshly dead, and excited; he’s heading to hell. Wearing a long wig and hat, loaded down with chains, swastika jewelry and leather he is anticipatory. He wants it all, unadulterated. The fire, hot pokers in his eyes, meeting the Devil, the whole shebang. He goes down the chute and arrives in a retirement home with the residents dancing gently to old time music. He wants to see fire, gnashing of teeth and wanton death and destruction. He finds kind stooped older people, sweetly dancing. Moral of the story; when you desire something much, so much you are visibly excited, wantonly eager, things conspire against you to ensure your wish is not the Universe’ command. And you should always trans-value values (Nietzsche). In life, and even in death, the opposite is always true.

Now last time I spoke of the nano-generator building from nothing up. Stacking atoms and molecules until the item is completed by smart computer programmed building atoms. The nano-bot plucks atoms out of the air or a solution to build, from a single atom up, stacking various molecules until the item – say a food item, a house, an auto, huge mile long nuclear craft built in space – achieves proper form and function. And scarcity and power differentials based on material wealth vanish. A status based society thereby ensues, based not on money capital but cultural capital. Yet, possibly, the theorists tell us, a far different scenario ensues. In the alternative scenario the nano-generator does not transform atoms into useful stacked molecules (a molecule is atoms combined in a certain manner) but rather, the atoms are combined in an amorphous mass defined as the “gray goo”. This transformation starts and cannot be stopped. The process does not build but dismantles already existing molecules into a structure-less mess of in-completion. All life, including humans, becomes reduced to a simple molecular or single cell structure incapable of supporting life as we know it now. It is the ultimate nightmare scenario and all semblance of Earth as it is vanishes as a sort of useless molecular stew dismantles and converts the planet and perhaps the chain reaction engulfs and changes the entire Universe until another order-er or natural selection again occurs. This is why Israeli scientists wrote me requesting copies of my article. I believe they were most interested in the part where I spoke of weaponizing this possibly new method of construction. The operative line in my paper was when I spoke of computerizing atoms, setting them a-drift in the air and programming them to dismantle humans from the inside out. Of converting human molecules into some form of a deathly gray-goo. And sending them with the breeze over to Palestine! Yikes!!

But no matter, continue writing up until the point of your dismantling and you’ll be fine. Like Orwell propped up in his death bed typing getting it down until the end. If you engage in such scribe activity, the day of your death will surely be “a night to remember”. So keep those poems coming, cherish yourself and others, stay health and most important of all, keep writing.

 

Ciao,

Randall

12/9/2016

 

Ross Vassilev

little Eichmanns

 

for Ward Churchill

 

getting fired for telling the truth

is nothing to be ashamed of

 

maybe it’s for the best

 

maybe the little Eichmanns

reflected on

the evils of their ways

while praying to their

blond, blue-eyed Jesus

on that fateful day

 

or maybe they didn’t

 

at any rate

 

America’s vengeance

for 3,000

translated into

1 million dead in Iraq and

a somewhat smaller total

in Afghanistan

 

it depends on how exactly

you figure the numbers,

I guess

 

whether you include

“collateral damage”

and deaths from starvation

in the final sums

of the Empire’s reckoning

 

anyway

who’s counting?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Marrotti

‘Testament To Bad Writing’

This poem
is a testament
to bad writing

It’s here for your
entertainment
like a hitchhiker
to Ted Bundy

I conceived it
in the bathroom
after a hearty
meal at
McDonald’s

I wiped only twice
leaving remnants
of feces attached
to my ass
for the sole purpose
of inspiration

Behold here it is

What should have
been properly
disposed of
in the bathroom
is now a piece
of poetry

© Michael Marrotti

Paul Tristram

Inside Her Nervous Breakdown

Is as fragile and transparent
as broken eggshell
held up to candle flame.
Yet, it holds her weight, perfectly,
as she daily climbs its wailing walls.
With a spinning weathercock
inside her twisting cranium
banging brashly against
the battered old hamster wheel
speeding everywhere and nowhere
at exactly the same time.
Heart, a nut and bolt,
forever tightening with the tension.
Skinless and taut as bowstrings,
her nerves and emotions
twang and pang
like whip cracks from a sadist.
Nowhere to hide when un-vocal,
masks are useless in solitude.
She gripes and claws her way
through mirrored memories,
seeking a calm and logic never there.
Conscience a dizzying merry-go-round,
un-moralled from the safety bar,
she trapezes wildly
the sickening vertigo of lost chances.
Blind to the bold EXIT door,
she fumbles and stumbles
in the wrong direction from ESCAPE.

© Paul Tristram 2016

Gary Huggins

I Am Not Suicidal

 

I am not suicidal,

although in dank pub toilets

I hold two fingers to my temple

the shape of a gun.

 

I am not suicidal,

although a stair top clothes hanger

blows on the breeze,

as romantic as the wild rose.

 

I am not suicidal,

although a free fall from a free way bridge,

tantalizes like the destination

of each passing soul below.

 

I am not suicidal,

although the feel of smoke

wrapping its vines around my lungs

I crave for and accommodate often.

 

I am not suicidal,

although I’d happily sip poison from a capsule,

a modern Romeo,

if you were to lay still my Juliet.

 

14/09/16

A pub in Brighton.