Peter Marra: Four Poems

a tourist attraction

scant images without sound are

gently displayed

scant images without sound are

violently heard.

“please hold me”

she gasped.

it was straight into the wind

a beat a grasp for her heart.

she’ll be listening for a mental

contact that broke

the primary circuit.

watch and wait

until sensation falls down

flat on its face and

rolls over / gives in / a fake most demented

while kissing the rusted soft iron.

under her breath she spoke of the

the soft chill in her bones

the spots of infinity.

a chill that started to wane

then reversed polarity.

“the police are supposed to be kind”

make it stop. echoes of faces she no

longer recognized that accused her.

an obscure something

a digital porno voodoo heartbeat.

 

say hello to germ-day

torsos clinging to the spires

because the towers are weary 

behind the windows the wet frantic women dance

and heave and wave hello to me

they have moist foreheads, their flesh is

wired for sound and painted. watch the action

behind the leather-paned

windows. as they fall to the ground their

eyes roll and shoot the ceiling tiles.

i saw the faces cringing

twisting back and forth slowly hanging.

the hot wind slices the street in halves.

as she ran away she batted

her ultra-lashes against my skin.

she ran away to play

with perfect eunuchs in sections.

imperfect sensations.

i see she feels and

the sand is burning.

the sea is calm and the boardwalk buckles.

the televisions on their perches

watch mutely and the women crave;

left wanting the ash and sand

and the girls can’t help it.

pained.  their love felt like a ghost.

a seat to watch the action.

behind the leather-paned

windows they coil her entirely without

leaving the punishment.

it’s not my call, a twister burn

to produce long sparks. may i please?

my erotic thoughts came thick for

several minutes as i checked into the office.

i admired their eyes when closed.

he had these tesla coils under his coat

morality is simple: torn asunder,

being careful to be converted into a

black piece fucking machine

connect with real morality.

some might visualize better into artificiality

and extremity. they took her face.   

and we lived in a community of arbitrary laws

his wife a mere instrument of morality

protects life and property,

selling and buying.

say hello to germ-day.

 Tenebrae

one more time

before leaving;

it was a lesion.

a season from the past

confronted her yesterday

in the brilliant sunlight of morning.

it was the type of light that

slowly dances across a dusty table top

in the afternoon.

it’s a time when memories start to slowly regenerate

and the empty silhouettes grow cold.

a severed conscience

keeps a repetition reminding her she was

covered with humiliation.

it was after viewing the screen,

a silhouette of feelings:

the cold hands of the magi on her shoulders.

the stones on her neck

pulled us down

into the bog.

a suffocation dance

of exhilaration

of silent freedom.

 

unfinished jobs

the neon sign exploded its breasts over the city

glass and gas trickled down to the glistening cement.

a gun and razor

/shiny

fetish

things/

made it out

to the street and

hugged the

humid orbs

floating in the sky

red pulse.

(legs once felt

slow in jelly,

movie crawl attempt walking)

moving better now.

Cut/

Slash/

in the darkness/

and the blood figures

were laughing at me

we sucked on bullets,

cigarettes, and acid sludge coffee

smoke

sulfur

hurt

white nylon

remember 

seam up the back

black

lacquered

toenails

and a translucent face

droplets of blood on the upper thigh

stared at me;

and we were out of ideas

for sexy shockers

"I have shut it out, focus on sleeping,” she stated.

Joe Marchia: Four Poems

Break:

certain things break my heart

like strings and wires strained and pulled

and cut and torn and worn until

it cannot hold the beating beast

and cracks in two for every piece

it breaks apart no longer full.

Holy, Holy:

From the clouds

the storm will pour

the sound of silent

rain on roofs

In one holy eye

the droplets form

a perfect thought

and to my ears

The noise fills

me with so much love:

the drumming sound.

A Dream:

a dream it always

wraps itself around the eyes

when we are still

and silence sits

with company

and acquaints itself with waking words

We are just between the past

and future always moving,

even sleeping

even dreaming

even waking

ever moving.

Anubis:

My life creeps like a shadow

on a funeral pyre.

Dancing, howling

'til Anubis awakes

and lays me down

gentle in gold.

He asks if the dead tire.

Bio:
Joe Marchia has been published in Instigatorzine, The Beatnik and Milk and Sugar Lit.

Kevin Ridgeway: Two Poems

“Rainbows”

Surprisingly, rainbows do not gush out of my ass
or any other orifice of my body
while I ride my unicorn Pony Girl to candy-coated Heaven
I smell like cigarettes and ride the decaying
public buses that usher out their very own shitty rainbow of
pollutants and I pop my lithium like candy corn so that
I don’t actually see unicorns strolling in the back alleys of
The local AA Social Club

Maybe it will pour down rain and wash my sins away
and a rainbow will shine brightly in the sky while
a Goodyear Blimp cuts across it,
magically giving my morning coffee a hint of pumpkin spice
and breaking my smoking habit for good
good sport I am I’ll have started a fitness program
for pre-teens who believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster

No, rainbows do not gush out of my ass
or any other orifice of my body
while I tiptoe through the tulips
or in my case the thorn bushes
I prefer stargazing on LSD
and miniature people collecting.



"The Dance Craze Pandemic!"

The great modern day pop
weasel mans the studio consoles
that control the world
and roars into his microphone
completing another item
of rotgut music warfare
he lives in the Top Ten
he manipulates the sonic
airwaves and spins them
on his rotating nuclear bombs

The apocalypse is near!
the apocalypse was near
in 1972 and again in 2000
and three times
a holy fuck charm again
in 2004,
for crissakes you dropout!

lawmakers, businessman, physicians,
housewives, teenagers and jihadists alike
are dancing the crazed new
whitewashed urban gigolo
dance in spells of ecstasy
mice following murderous
kazoos polished by drum
and bass

The new craze erases!
their problems evaporated
for two minutes and thirty seconds
while the world around them
deteriorates from inoperable
global carcinogenic
cosmic space fuck
world wide smoking stew
everyone was dancing and
no one was minding the
store no was minding their mints
and toxic oral fumes
like biased ideas
staining undiscerning
cookie cutter
minds in the ether
of living rooms
across ticky-tacky
purgatories
sandwiched between
strip malls and
endless nowhere
pavement teeth


The new dance craze
is war and starvation
manipulation, greed
and crumb bum
stifled civil liberties
Sport Utility Vehicles
zipping by anonymously
bumping the hit song
of the day sending
shockwaves into the
atmosphere

LATE BREAKING NEWS!

The Earth was found dead on
the floor of its galactic bathroom
by its close adversaries
the Sun and the Moon
Venus and Mars cleared
all of the prescription bottles
and draped the Earth in
its favorite rhinestone studded cape
the cause of death was
termed acute global culture shock


Where’s the Gods?
they’re dancing in the
next foggy
discoteque dimension
over our planet’s grave
Twistin’ the Void
Away!


Quick Bio:  Kevin Ridgeway lives in a shady bungalow in sunny Southern California with his girlfriend, one-eyed cat and stolen library books.  His work has been published in The Left Coast Review, InSomnis Veritas, and he has work forthcoming in issue 30 of Breadcrumb Scabs and Larks Fiction Magazine. 

Colin Shaddick

Sleeping With Grandma (Micro-Pofiction)

If someone had told me,

long, long ago

when I was beatnik-young;

with a head stuffed

full of lofty ideas

and a dog-eared copy

of The Dharma Bums

sticking out

of my corduroy jacket pocket –

that in the blink

of a metaphorical eye,

I’d be going to bed

with a grandmother

night after night,

l’d have been horror-struck

to say the least ...

I would have told them straight

that I’d rather be hung.

I’d have told them

that us jeaned-up

and sandaled poets,

us Monk inspired musicians,

us adventurers

and free-thinkers:

the enlightened ones who’d follow

a winding road to anywhere

just to gain

a little more understanding,

would always attract young

and feisty women

to our beds at night –

and would go crazy

with all the demanding.

I would have been wrong –

He or she would have been right.

I am, these days,

sleeping with a Gran.

And do you know...

It feels quite natural

and I don’t feel like a pervert

for owning up to it.

It is, after all,

part of the bigger plan.

All the fears I once had

have now moved out:

there’s no false teeth

grinning menacingly from a jar,

no heavy cotton nightdress

to get your nails hooked up in,

no maze of deep creases

to get me confused...

No bits that unscrew;

no curlers,

no profound,

or even selective deafness –

Nothing out of the ordinary

to make me bemused.

No obstinacy.

No hoists or slings

to get things to the right height

and no unattractive chrome commode

parked menacingly close:

there to remind one of the possibility

of leakage,

if one had to walk

across the bedroom to the toilet,

(once imagined to take place

half-way through the act of lovemaking) –

No, nothing remotely like it.

Nothing that is displeasing

to the thought processes, or eye.

My mate has not been so lucky

with his partner, though.

He told me she’s lost

her sense of direction

and will sometimes get herself

into some quite embarrassing situations,

and that she’s also lost it

with regard to any notion

of appropriate time or place.

That’s why she has no contact

with many of her close relatives.

Very few come and show their face.

They once went

on an organised bus trip,

and they’d hardly travelled half a mile

when she accidentally dropped

her bag of bacon sandwiches.

They were seated

at the front end of the bus.

They were perched,

like a couple of budgies,

on the long seat that faces

the other passengers;

the seat that everyone

tries to avoid like the plague –

especially if you’re wearing

an uncomfortable truss.

Apparently, she had insisted that she knew

a quick way to the bus station.

She had run on ahead and quickly

got lost, and as a consequence

they were late in getting to the bus

and had to take the only seating left.

The embarrassing seat that faces

the rest of the peering passengers –

They felt totally bereft.

The neatly wrapped slices of bread

ended up between my mate’s feet.

His partner, without too much thought,

immediately bent forward to retrieve it –

Well, it must have been the sudden rush of blood,

because it was at this particular point

that she obviously became totally confused.

My mate was heard to shout something like,

‘What the hell are you doing, Jean?’

Because in a flash,

she was grabbing frantically

at the front his trousers and ‘talking dirty’:

something that he’d encouraged her to do,

when they first met

and were pushing thirty.

After he’d poured

his Thermos of tea over her head

to save further humiliation,

she came to her senses once again

and picked up her sandwiches.

She sat there as bold as you like

asking what the rest of the passengers

were laughing at –

Well, the driver asked them to get off

at the next service station

and they were told not to attempt to use

his bus company in the future.

She now takes trips in her brain;

much like my mate did, back in the 60s.

‘She can be gone for hours’, he said.

Isn’t it funny how situations can change?

He said she’d never smoke anything,

back then, but now,

after a fresh bacon sandwich

and a helping hand to the seat

next to the old Dansette record player,

she’ll be on a trip in no time:

carried along by psychedelic sound waves.

‘Well, it isn’t so bad’, he said.

‘At least it gives me the opportunity

to play my old vinyl again’.

I suppose every cloud has its silver lining.

Ashok Rajamani: Two Poems

SHOULD THE BEDWETTER SING, IF THE BEDWETTER COULD

 

for the bedwetter singy
the steamed
fucking songs
and chordsy
his fucking throat
was it weekly
no he said screwing himself
to wretch music
would be too much
like cumming cummy goo
but it was the music
it was always about the music

 

DRINK HIS FLESH

 

sister jaleesa

bride of christ

 

you kiss his

cross you drink

his flesh and eat

his blood

 

sister jaleesa

like veronica wipe his

 

head

and know your

life is love his love

 

is marriage

until death

peter no mistress

he betrays and you

three times feel death

 

more death

til death

do

you

part

 

  

Ashok Rajamani is a nationally recognized poet in Poets & Writers Literary Organization's Directory of American Poets.  His memoir, BRAIN KARMA, will be published by Algonquin Books in Fall 2012. To discover his world, please go to www.ashokrajamani.com.