Sophia
Reality has an identity
A union of opposites
That
Echoes
Through time
In sin waves
A mathematical symphony
Of metaphysical truth
Keith Dodson
Waffle House
Lee Greenwood sings
“I’m proud to be an American,”
Waffle House filled
with patriotism
two months after 9-11
images still way too fresh
the flames
the disbelief
the collapse of what we thought
we knew.
The juke box transports
home and hope this morning
guitar riffs
sizzling bacon
sausage patties and home fries
hot coffee hot grits and hot waffles
everywhere.
The silver-haired cook
who’d seen
a few battles of his own
sings along
waves his steel spatula
punctuates the air
the song
the morning--
dancing like a boxer
after a victorious bout
he raises both arms
throws his head back
and finishes with Lee:
“God bless
the USA!”
Brad Rose
Not Bad at All
I take back everything I said about those giant jellyfish. These days, a lot of things happen fast, but slow, so like a freak accident, it’s hard to know whether you’re awash in the bubbly hubbub or merely inundated by a hoodoo brouhaha. Normally, I like to eliminate all my unnecessary synapses, and trim down to bantamweight. Well, that explains a lot, said Comrade Milktoast, whose sole claim to fame is a reasonably sized collection of dayglo mood rings and a couple of Stalinist houseplants. After the police arrived with their pesky batons, I explained that we were using only the good bacteria, and that there was nothing to worry about. Except perhaps, for the experimental, woolly bully chili cheese dogs. Let me be the judge of that, said the cop with the two, gold front teeth, as he grabbed one of the tube steaks out of my three-fingered hand and took a slobbery bite. Not bad, he smiled. Not bad at all.
Ken Rutkowski
Sushant Thapa
Touches of Expression
I think it’s marvelous
to pause between the readings.
Like the gaps between your touch
the memory figures out the shore,
and our embraces in the bed
finds a reading table instead.
I celebrate the celibacy,
the rarefaction between you and me
is so literary,
lost between the fingers.
This poem on the other hand
is against celibacy,
I think physical relation
is also literary,
once brought in
the touches of expression.
Brooks Lindberg
heavy cream:
you can substitute the
heavy cream
in a béchamel
but it's not the same
like a dream from youth
richer, fuller, harder to justify—
lap it up while you can
Robin Shepard
The Trouble with Men and Monsters
Hard not to love the creepy, uncanny and scary,
the spin tingling and disturbing weirdness
that raises hair and unsettles the nerves,
darkness that drifts under the chamber
door, howling under a wounded moon,
half-human wails of nameless nightmares,
organ music of a hundred missing souls,
butler who locks the lost travelers inside
a room of old smoke and dusty tapestries.
In their cold and drafty laboratories, madmen
mix volatile chemicals in boiling beakers
of luminescent liquid. Lightning caught in coils
of tension arc through the dark ether of night.
The hunchback assistant cries out, Master,
you promised me a new arm! For the love of all
that is holy and good! A lobster’s claw droops
from his shoulder. His left eye opens in an empty
socket. The scientist keeps his girlfriend
in the dark, but she’s annoyed by his inattention,
harboring suspicions about his solitary pursuits.
So, she goes downstairs. Don’t open that door!
I try to warn her. But that’s the trouble with men
playing God, creating the monsters they become,
ignoring women who love them for cellars
of high stone walls, conducting symphonies
of flesh on full moon nights, conceiving damaged
humanity and a new kind of beauty. For this,
women suffer for love and the madness
of genius, even as it manifests itself in men
and monsters, and the faint cry of creation.
Or Die Trying
Always the weather. The seasons sliding off
the table, leaving crumbs
for the dog. The whole of it passing away,
receding like water,
then turning toward the land and the blue hat
it wears in summer.
I consider my prospects. Always something
to complain about, living
like an earthquake, dying like the unfurling
hand of a newborn rose.
What more to come of it? The air is yellow.
The grass is yellow.
My words are yellow, though the syntax I use
is blue. My blood is thick
with envy, riding through elastic tubes tied
off at the ends. I look out
my window, see it approach. It knows my name,
knows I’m a coward.
My blood is thickly luxurious, will take
a long time to drain.
Parousia
After the arrival of the lawless
breed, ancient unholy ones,
empty eyed and silent, seducing
the daughters of men, we forgave
the devil and forgot the details.
Emperors of dark places, gods
come down from ships of clouds
to deliver us from all goodness,
these giants among us, Nephilim,
fallen angels living among sinners,
dancing in flames. We wait weary
and awake, gazing beyond
the window pane, candle calling
back night. Return of one god
or many, it doesn’t matter.
We shall greet them with praise
and honor, our daughters throwing
flowers in their path, rolling their hips
and sighing as the sun sings.
William Longman
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
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.
The Beatnik Cowboy 