Collaboration
I woke this morning in the dark with a face
in mind: a senior citizen wanted to reach out
and, I suspect, apologize for a wrong done
some sixty-five years ago. Sorry, no thanks.
I too have been tempted to reach out, even
atone. “Let sleeping dogs lie, let the dead
bury …” I think there’s an animal buried
in my back yard. There’s grass and then
an area, a sandy rise, like a pitcher’s mound,
and, here and there, patches of black plastic,
like those thick trash bags, little triangles of
black plastic sticking up. Part of me wants
to start digging, but I might have to call
the city health department or animal control.
What if it’s a person, a human corpse?
I doubt that. I woke with that boyish face
and a thought of buried things. Some people
have gardens. My friend Bob’s sister scattered
his ashes in her garden. Some people have
watch collections, others coin collections.
My DVD collection I got rid of. I replaced it
with, I’m proud to say, being somewhat tech-
challenged, digital movies! This morning
I thought Ray, I should go to Amazon for Ray.
The click of a button. Taylor Hackford’s film
starring Jamie Fox as the great Ray Charles.
In one scene Ray’s sitting at the piano and
the guy who plays the great Ahmet Ertegun
comes up to him. “Hey, Ray, I got this song …”
Ahmet sits at the piano, in a little whiny voice
sings “You can talk about the pit, barbecue.”
Suddenly Ray’s banging away at the piano,
singing, screeching, shouting, the camera’s
whirling, the moviegoers in the theater, ones
not dead from the neck down, at the edge
of musical greatness, are out of their chairs
at “Now this band’s going to play from nine
to one.” The camera’s whirling, “the house
is rocking.” Jamie Fox nails “Mess Around.”
When The Buffalo Springfield sang, “Hello,
Mr. Soul, I stopped by to think up a reason”
they were singing about the great Ahmet
Ertegun, the son of a Turkish ambassador.
I love that part in Ray, where, at the piano
he kind of mumbles, then Ray takes it, letting
us know it’s great to be alive, not ignoring
the buried things. Keep them in perspective.
life
Alan Catlin
Mister Lucky
When he was in Nam
got transferred
from Danang to some
dinky dao airport down South
in east jesus on the coast
of nowhere.
He was short, but, pissed,
thinking they needed an
air ground controller there,
like Custer needed more Indians,
and he was stuck all by his
lonesome with a bunch of strange
hand jobs he didn't know from shit.
Two weeks later,
he was sucking in the smoke
of many dreams,
trying hard not to cry, or
be as paranoid as he felt,
trying hard to feel lucky,
being the only guy in his
former unit left alive after
that base at Danang got overrun,
and some serious shit hit the fan,
"Jesus, fuck, Man, shit……"
was all he could think to say since
he heard the news, and he felt as if
he'd been fucked royal up the ass
in the jungle by Sir Charles himself.
Hadn't slept in four days,
'cause every time he shut his eyes
the screams of the dying men he knew
at that base, woke him up into this
place that was so much worse than
bad dreams.
Guys who saw how he was sd.,
"He was a walking Section 8
waiting to happen. As good as dead
as far as the army was concerned."
"He was better off dead.
At least then it would all be over
and he wouldn't have to think about it
anymore.”
Unknown Soldier
He was born on the Fourth of July
beaten at student demonstrations
in Madison
Chicago
Columbia
He was shot at by national guard
troops at Kent State
arrested and confined in solitary
after Jackson State
Bitten by police dogs at civil rights
marches in Alabama
Mississippi
Georgia
He was Vietnam Veteran for Peace
at anti-war marches
well into the 70’s
Was tear gassed
billy clubbed
pepper sprayed
But he never gave up
and he came back
and you can see him marching now
He is your father,
brother
uncle
cousin
on crutches
with prosthetic limbs
riding in a wheelchair
Follow him and
shake his hand
if he has one
Flashback
"I beat the bottle but
I can't beat the war"
after an acrylic on canvas
by Ron Mann
30 years after
the fact a lawnmower
two yards over
backfires and just
like that I'm back
in-country sucking
in lawn chemicals
instead of air,
all that fertilizer
for a mind on a
perpetual edge
recalling an agent
orange dawn that
colors all the jungle
a dark unnatural
light like the hand
of death pressing down
the sharp, bladed
grass next to a
recently roto-tilled
garden plot, that
graveyard for lost
crops, plowed under
plants, dead soldiers
composted a dark, rich
loam thick with earth
worms fattened on
the rotting skins
of the dead
Reagan Shin
Kintsugi: Gilded Clay
Crash. Smash. Flash.
The shatter of poetry splinters like my life,
fragments spilling across the floor.
What I have lost,
I’ve learned to gain.
The damage within me,
liquid gold poured into my bones
to fuse the cracks
that have formed.
It is my job to rise,
repair my own damages,
to make myself beautiful,
and forget the brokenness within.
Why am I so prone to shatter?
Why must I be both the potter and the pottery?
Kintsugi repairs,
but how many times
can I be fixed,
before I am nothing but dust?
I can be repaired,
but why should I?
Is it my responsibility,
or that of my creator who destroyed me?
Although kintsugi is art,
pretty, shiny, and lovely,
the pottery will never
be fully whole again.
There is beauty in brokenness,
but at what cost?
If you wanted gold,
then why would you
sculpt me
out of clay?
The shine is pretty,
beautiful yes,
but it is unnatural,
nonetheless.
I used to believe
that if I repaired myself,
I would become
more perfect than before.
You wanted a vase made of gold,
and I could never be that.
No matter how hard I try,
there is no way to turn
clay to complete gold,
despite the fusion attempts.
Sink or Swim
The ocean is calm tonight.
It’s always the calmest before the storm.
People see the sea
and look at the ripples of water,
assuming that it must be peaceful
because calm is comfortable.
But I have learned
that water is fickle and serenity
is nothing more than a warning:
brace for impact.
Being born in a hurricane
teaches you a language
spoken only to those
tempest-tossed through waves.
Inside the hurricane
is the eye of the storm.
That peace can only mean one thing.
This isn’t over; it’s just begun.
Oceans are unforgiving,
even in its kindest calm.
It will drag you down,
and suck you in forever.
A tourist may think
that the sea is gentle,
but a sailor like myself
knows better than to trust the waves.
Sink or swim
but never drown,
in the hidden waves
or the cruel tides.
In the water is where
I have learned to survive.
Judge Santiago Burdon
It Could Be Worse It Could Be Raining
Up, out of bed 3 pm Saturday San Jose Costa Fucking Rica, I can smell the rain with a mixture of car exhaust and diesel fuel, gray skies gray world, just the Gods reminding me what a hangover looks like, the storm has already saturated the city, flooding streets and low lying areas, the smell triggers my olfactory memory machine to recall fond thoughts of Mexico City, resulting in a smile that occupies what feels like my entire face, replaced quickly with a grimace from the pain of this cancer eating away at me like alligators gnawing from the inside out.
The Gods, hilarious bastards yuckin' it up at the joke they have perpetrated, I could have contracted Lung Cancer, I've smoked everything that can catch fire, Liver Cancer, the fish drink like me. Quote from a past love Christina. I drink like a fish I once stated, "No Santi the fish drink like you", Cancer of my blood, I've shot and tried to shoot everything that would dissolve in water, even cough syrup with codeine as well, Stomach Cancer no, never been a big eater, the thing I enjoy most Sex, so I get diagnosed with Prostate Cancer.
Those of you thinking Karma, kiss my ass, you people piss me off more than christians, as though there is some cosmic cloud waiting to rain down retribution for malicious acts I may have performed during my present or past life, now I am really agitating myself, past lives what a myth, Karma was created to pacify the Egos of those who are not willing to fight back.
Bad luck the culprit maybe, luck doesn't exist good or bad, it's just the consequence to an unforeseen event, nothing more, there are those that need to believe in some mystic force, an omnipotent deity controlling their destiny, you think I'm coming off a bit self righteous do you, demonstrating my best character flaw.
I was scheduled for an IMRT treatment and Doctor's appointment this morning at 10:30. I'm now a no-show and will once again be lectured on my apathetic attitude concerning the disease. It's not that I'm indifferent or have succumbed to the consequences of the Cancer, sometimes I just don't feel like fighting an enemy I'm unable to see. Also I'm thinking quite possibly if I ignore that it exists maybe it might just go away. Another pathetic attempt to fool myself. Even though it always ends with the same disastrous results. I know better.
Andrea calls often to check up on my condition and has accompanied me on a few IMRT sessions at the hospital but didn't like seeing me in that way so she stopped coming.
Usually she calls shortly after I've injected a massive dose of morphine and I'm too high to carry on an intelligible conversation, when I do attempt to speak I drift back and forth from English to Spanish then French causing her to laugh, her voice temporarily slaps me back into cognizance, screaming:
" Español Bigotes! Porfa Espanol"
We’ve been sort of together for a couple of years. Sort of is because she enjoys her employment as a prostitute. And I don't want her to be with me if she's not ready. I once asked her to dedicate five years of her exclusive affection to me in return for a sizable inheritance, assuring her I wouldn't live that long, she declined graciously with a passionate kiss, her hands cradling my face.
" Mi amor tu sabes no hay nada que pueda matarte. "My love you know there is nothing that can kill you. I think you will outlive me.” I had just celebrated my fifty-sixth birthday, that was eleven years ago when I made my request.
She has never asked me for anything except during moments of passion. I've attempted to convince her she does love me only she just doesn't know it. Evidently falling in love with a man like me is a risk she isn't willing to take.
I'm out of coffee, cigarettes and morphine, exiting my place with no umbrella, off to the Pulperia and Farmacia, the prostitutes flash their twenty dollar smiles and Los Bichos de Calle (street insects, bugs,addicts) are out early searching for Rocka Tocka (crack), the deluge increases its intensity, the sky crackles with lightning. It could be worse, it could be raining.
Preacher Allgood
from the smokes of long dead railroaders
sure her cat puked on the desk
my grandpa rescued from the train depot after the big fire in ‘36
sure she sold my rusted out MGB/GT
the one with the wire knock-off wheels
to an Okie while I was in rehab
and sure she spent the proceeds from that little swindle
on plane fare to Chicago to visit her mother
and sure I couldn’t get enough
of eyeballing that German/Mexican jalapeno ass
or the tamales she cooked in the big pot on my old Kenmore stove
but I wasn’t all that sorry
when she came to me on a snowy blustery evening
with big tears in her eyes and said
I’m going back to Billy
he got out of jail and he wants to have a baby
and you don’t want to have a baby
and you’re so drunk you can’t get it up most of the time
and I like you but I really want to have a baby
so I’m going back to Billy are you mad at me?
sure I wasn’t mad at her
sure I was relieved that I wouldn’t be cleaning any more cat puke
off the big slab of oak that I prized for its history and its connection
to my grandpa who began railroading
on the Kansas Southern in nineteen twenty-two
and who swallowed mustard gas in the war to end all war
and who kept a flask of “pain killer” out in his garage
along with his pea green 1950 Studebaker Champion
but I might have been a little bit mad about those tamales
because I’d never eaten homemade tamales
and unless you’ve eaten homemade tamales
stuffed with pork and homemade masa
wrapped in fresh corn husks and steamed in their own juices
or sat at a big desk that’s scarred by burns from the smokes of long dead railroaders
and waited for another poem to show up
you can’t possibly understand what this poem means
Adam J. Galanski-De León
COME SIT BY THE FIRESIDE
Rosehill Cemetery gates across the street
barroom, front patio, back patio, dining room
one bar back. Career alcoholics,
a sea of pony and half barrel kegs
lining the floors of the basement
change the sanke, wrench the nozzle, Co2 tanks
hissing beer pouring from brass taps
pint glasses sweating in the heat
bouncing, Latin Kings smashing bar stools
on my back, people stomping on heads
on the sidewalk
shot glasses thrown in my face, pint glasses
coworkers fucking each other in the bathroom
biker lady wielding a Billy club at my head
ex-girlfriend crashes my van out front
CPD extorts me for four hundred dollars
run to the 24-hour Jewel to grab cash from the ATM
homicide detectives next to drug dealers next to
Pakistani cab drivers and service industry regulars
and sex workers, cockroaches crawling out of our food
they are in my clothes, fall of the ceiling into my hair
I ladle one out of the ranch dressing, one crawls out of my salad
Juan fucks up and is attacked by a woman clicking a taser
Tommy scales the wall to break in and cooks himself breakfast
and is knocked out with a punch to the face
then scales the wall and does it again
my Tai boss takes me from my shift in the middle of the night
to bring me to her Lady Boy Show in a closed off
Tai restaurant in an empty neighborhood
people are slipping twenties into thongs while the
Lady boys dance seductively and sing karaoke
7 AM, we are shotgunning Strongbow in the parking lot while
cyclists go by to start their day
boxes fall over int the beer cooler, our glug wine container
is filled with trash, spit, and germs, and we microwave
it and serve it to customers
a terrible man asks me to phone him a cab to Rogers Park
I send him to 95th and Halsted, his wife is in the hospital dying
and he is here hitting on 21-year-old girls. Leaving,
a coyote follows me down the street by the train tracks
the street is covered in mist, unseen birds singing.
I walk a mile home
in silence.
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
Pawel Markiewicz
The mysteries of four seasons
the dreamed winter
the storks sitting meekly in Africa
the butterfly frozen in the marvelous pond
mice write a gorgeous myth
a rural boy longs for the moonglow
witch apollonianly bewitched
a stunning world
in a moony way
I am full of druidic wizardries
You are like a dragonfly
We are singing
the dream-like spring
the storks are coming home so tenderly
the butterfly awoken in glory but sitting
mice write ovidian songs
a rural girl yearns for afterglow
in addition hex enchanted
a dazzling world
in a starlit way
I am shrouded in this cool mystery
You are such a firefly
We are trilling
the dreamy summer
the storks are nesting mayhap peacefully
the butterfly flying over becharmed garden
mice write Dionysian ode
an auntie is bent upon blue hours
the enchantress is conjured
amusing world
in a starry way
I wrapped in plethora of sorcery
You are Dionysian spider
We are chanting
the dreamful autumn
the storks are going to fly off musing
the butterfly dreaming just before coming death
mice write Apollo’s hymn
an uncle muses about cool star
the sorceress enraptured
such a cute world
in a moonlit way
I stay under a spell of tenderness
You are like a charmful bee
We carolling
Randall K. Rogers
Evil, Old and Ugly
I first saw her in the elevator. It was just her and I. It was hard to believe my eyes. She might have been a good person, I don’t know. But it didn’t look like it. She had a glazed-over look. Her eyes were cloudy. She wore an unfocused blank stare.
What’s more, she was horribly old. Furthermore, sorry to say, she was hideously ugly. She looked like she’d die any moment or was already dead. I nodded hello but there was no recognition. She had an angry cast to her leathery, much wrinkled face. She stood there, hovering over her walker. I didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary, yet.
There was no question: she was beyond evil.
The next time I saw her it was again in the elevator. This time there were other people. When people got on, the expressions on their faces, shock. There she stood, blank milky stare, looking like the wickedest, darndest, most vile, harridan, dead-looking witch ever.
We were all scared. Some shuddered. Right out of a horror movie, she was. Frizzled long unruly hair. Some, I thought I did well, for one, tried not to have a conniption. A moment of shock, but standing there, as the elevator moved, some could not recover, could not stop their staring. Others came into the elevator, gasped in shock. Some threw their arms out, jumped a bit, maybe juggled whatever they held, eventually calmed down.
The lady stood there, hunched over her walker. She appeared blind but she wasn’t. She stared straight ahead and was silent. When it was her floor, she got off, walked with her walker like a perfectly ordinary old person. She liked our terror, we surmised. Just evil, she was. Probably a too real apparition. Somebody ought to do something. Out of the elevator she walked, smug-like, down the hall toward her room.
She wore old clothes. A nineteen twenties or thirties dress, lacey in design. I didn’t get a whiff of the old girl, but after she exited the elevator, one woman said, “Does she have any family?” The rest of us geezers didn’t know. “Never seen her before yesterday,” I said.
It was uncanny. If she tried to, she couldn’t have frightened us more. She was a vision of terror. Was she trying to appear like that? Dead, a cadaver? Nobody knew. Nobody knew where she came from. She was frightening. We all were old, dying was something that regularly happened at the home, weekly if not daily. Looking at her, it was hard.
She looked dead. Unkempt. Washed or not we didn’t care. She didn’t respond to anyone’s entreaties. She scared us, she reminded us of the dead we’d soon be. I mean, she was scary. One woman, “Is she gonna die?” she asked. Nobody knew what to say. She reminded us of our own short future. And, oh Lord, dead, we’ll look like that!
Yet she was alive. She should have been hidden. Or hidden herself. Her appearance was horrible, ugly, and deathly. She had to know her effect on people. “That’s why her family abandoned her here,” the people said.
Nobody liked her. We feared for our lives. She was too ugly, too hideous, to live. Was she the living dead? She looked it. She didn’t respond like a human. I thought about the crones of old. How often their surliness, bolstered by their old ugliness, nose warts, for example, their supposedly lascivious bewitching of young men, often sealed an old woman’s fate.
I thought, wow, that might happen here. History repeating. Naw….
Nobody saw her. After those few days on the elevator, she seemed to vanish. Nobody appeared to know where she had gone. We breathed a sigh of relief. No one could find her. That night, however, a spontaneous bonfire appeared in the landscaped back area behind the home. Flames leaped among the stacked wood. Woodsmoke smell, screaming, crackling and cackling, was heard all night long.
“Don’t rub it in,” scoffed a longtime resident, watching the old woman burn.
Previously published by Mad Swirl
The Beatnik Cowboy 