Friday, August 26, 2011

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.


Sunday, August 21, 2011

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.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

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. 

Monday, August 08, 2011

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.

Friday, August 05, 2011

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.