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.
writing
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
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 