Slick Survival Kinda Style
None of us lie.
This world –
A mean motherfucker.
Brutal hurt,
Every day.
We spit truth,
Styled in the way we survive.
J.J. Campbell
and we all know what comes next
sometimes life happens way too fast
but most of the time, boredom is starting
to wrap the cord around your neck and
we all know what comes next
i've lived long enough to watch most
of my family die
all the pain, the suffering
what becomes of dreams crushed before
they ever get to be
keep your head down and carry on, never
talk back
all shitty advice from a man that never
wanted to be anything other than rich
without ever having to earn it
my father never loved me
and of course, that is why the page is
my fucking therapist
he went to vietnam to die
and i had to pay for his inability to die
in a war where all of his friends did
maybe that’s why i've had success
gambling
no one deserves that kind of shitty
luck
Howie Good
Metaphorically Speaking
I will chop down your weeds
and dig out your rocks and
stumps. I will turn your soil
and maintain your tractor.
I will muck your stalls and
abundantly fill your hayloft.
I will be your scarecrow.
Daniel S. Irwin
Words
People ask if my books sell.
Doesn't matter. If I wrote
For the money, I'd write novels.
That's where the money is
Other than in writing TV ads.
I'm just sharing some of my
Words with the world and not
Caring if anyone likes what I
Say or not. I'm not some fool
Looking for a pat on the head
Like a dog, maybe a nuts rub.
It's just me and what I come up
With. I even read my own stuff.
Every once in a while, just every
Once in a while, I read someone
Else's.
Zhu Xiao Di
The Sun Is Always There
The sun is always there
Although it is raining
Water is pouring and
A flood is forming
The sun is always there
Although clouds are gathering
Blue sky is quickly blocked
While sunlight is still in the air
The sun is always there
While you’re not looking
It warms your heart
With or without your noticing
The sun is always there
As long as you have faith
It will appear again
At the very moment you forget about it
Alan Catlin
The Local
Climbing the narrow walking path,
The Local points to where
the crop circle appeared last year,
says he met some Americans like us,
last year, who were here from Kansas,
who said they made the journey near
the Summer Solstice, like us, to be closer
to the UFO's that seem more frequent
in warmer weather.
His companion checks out the Neolithic
burial chamber we were climbing
to see, says, "It's walking into the woman's
vagina, that is, the mound opening.
Each of the interior cavities represents
different parts of her body: the arms, legs
and head." I was tempted to ask,
"What about the glass windows in
the antechambers? Are they mirrors to
the soul or what?"
But I bite my tongue.
Questions might spoil The Local's monologue
about Crop Circles, UFO Landings
International Conspiracies, Cover Ups,
and all that good stuff. He's into juicy
stuff like, "Silbury Hill is a landing area
for space ships & other UFO's.
Everyone around here knows that,
all this stuff about a shaft collapse
during the last monsoon is just government
nonsense." When he notices my hearing aid,
he knows I'm listening but he can't be sure
to what, or, whom I might represent
and backs away, tongue tied now,
fearing the worst.
Orman Day
In a Raspy Voice
origin of my blues poems in 2018
On a sultry day waiting in the Honda
while my Muse shops in Trader Joe’s,
hoping she doesn’t forget my soft licorice,
sweating cuz the air’s turned off
and she didn’t leave the keys, admiring a gal
bending over to shove grocery bags in her trunk,
suddenly my dry mouth dropped open,
out rushed a raspy voice I didn’t recognize,
“I got the blues.” A deep breath. “I got the blues.”
Over and over, I repeated the oracular words.
As Sonny Terry has crooned, I was a white boy
lost in the blues, though I was six decades away
from being a lean pimply kid, dateless,
singing loud and off-key in the church choir.
Needed to figure out what I was bluesy about.
Couldn’t duet with John Lee Hooker
cuz I don’t have the house rent blues,
or with Etta James misty about lost love,
or with Trixie Smith or Sonny Terry
cuz I no longer sprint beside lonesome tracks,
leap into the frigid box car of a lonesome freight.
Even beside Muddy Waters, I’d be nobody’s
Hoochie Coochie Man with mojo, a black cat bone,
making pretty women jump and shout.
Back in ’02 paddled a canoe with my friend Paige
the Big Muddy from St. Paul to New Orleans,
reminded of Leadbelly as we passed Angola Prison,
Son House as I climbed over a levee to fetch water,
Robert Johnson as we rambled through Rosedale,
Earl King as I glided at last into Audubon Park.
But now I’m a tourist, no longer a traveler
who lifts a thumb, waves a hand-drawn sign,
converses with drivers who want to laugh or confess.
B.B. King could sing the blues after paying his dues,
lying in a ghetto flat numb and dusted with rime,
turned away at the welfare office, staring in a mirror
at the lined, slackening truth wrought by Father Time.
Cataracts clouding my eyes, got mobility issues
so I shuffle to avoid tearing soft tissue.
Prick my figure every morn, swallow pills
I don’t wanna take, remember and rue
every time I try to snooze. Google ex-girlfriends,
sorrowful to find them dead. Sometimes dizzy
when I clamber outta my bed. Are these my dues?
Not sure how I’m gonna do it,
but I’ve gotta take a deep breath, bellow my blues.
Ro McKenzie
Mommy
Blood is thin against the water of your womb
I’m inside you, there, pressed against your bones
Umbilically dependent, nourished
Two cable conduits, telepathically twisted in each other
Your blood, my veins
My skin stretched over your connective tissue, muscles expanding beneath
Your lips closing over my teeth
Our tongue tucked inside
You open your mouth to speak and my voice comes out
Mike Lindseth
The Pilgrim
snow swirls among the browning grasses
the moans of the wind
are unanswerable
bent forward
sack over his shoulder
eyes fixed downwards
rapidly blinking against the wind
the thin layer of snow over the road
is as pristine as an abstraction
until he tracks through it
idealism got him started
the novelty of it kept him moving through the worst
now he is cold
the sack seems to be getting heavier
and there is only the black pleasure
of duty being done
totally devoid of extrinsic motivation
did this fate senselessly fall to him
or was he elected to it?
one foot in front of the other, he thinks
one foot in front of the other
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Minor Spirit
you knew instantly when you entered the clearing
the swollen silence
when you saw her
and you knew she was seeing you
amazed
your pupils reamed out
until the hanging dust was star-spangled
and the sun-dappled undergrowth was jewel-encrusted
"Who am I?"
you asked yourself then
"Who am I, forever?"
it all evaporated to the everyday
but sometimes you lose sight of a deer into the trees
and you remember
you see her looking back over her shoulder
---------------------------------------------------------------
A Dialogue about Snowdrifts
"bleak monuments
to the north wind's malice"
"crystal barrows
raised for high summer gods
who died drunk at harvest"
"it can all be said
in the tropes of stellar prophecy:
the millstone heavens grind away
each generation
tries to unlearn nihilism"
"I greedily drink the splendor
from these reservoirs of moonlight"
Scott W Schuler
Through The Altostratus
A pale and weakened light fights to be seen through the altostratus
It’s a few shades brighter out in the middle of the lake
Almost dog piss yellow near the distant horizon
That light rests on an endless bank of sea smoke laid out across the big lake
It would take a herring gull more than eighty flight miles to reach it and return
The diminished rays in its middle offer a brief sense of hope
Then fade back to gray and with them a pull back to melancholy
They leave a slight foreboding and a caution in their vacuum
This expanse of emptiness conjures a baritone choir of long dead mariners
A shanty from the lost Seamen of Superior moaning a dirge
More of a warning than the seduction call of their Siren sisters
An infinite army of continuous and tired waves storm the beach and then retreat as the pebbles and stones chase them back to the sea
Standing alone, silent and cold I study the colors like a painter and survey the sawtooth coast
A curious gull screeches hello and decides to join me
She lands near the shore, spreads out her wings and looks up to me just as a single glorious ray burns a far away hole through the cheesecloth sky
A million brilliant and blinding sparkles are coughed up by the lake and echoed by the wind with its efforts
I watch the sun continue to fight its way to the front of the line as it struggles to rip a hole across the vast cold rolled sky
Thanks to the suns exertion hope returns and the lake seems a bit kinder now
I can’t feel its warmth but I marvel at its radiance
Full of gratitude I take a mental Polaroid and wish the gull well as I move on to the possibilities
The Beatnik Cowboy 