Randall K. Rogers

Randall Rogers says: I am fifty-three, now from the town I went to high school in, that is Rapid City, South Dakota, where many Original Americans, mostly German and Scandinavians immigrant's descendants live.  I have spent the thirteen years from 2000 to 2013 in Cambodia and Thailand.  I just yesterday traded in my American made Stratocaster, the 60th anniversary issue, for an acoustic, mahogany bodied Taylor guitar.  It should be fun.  Last published in The Camel Saloon, and Dead Snakes, but I think some of my best stuff is in the Feb. 2010 archives of Ross the Russian sounding last name guy's Asphodel Madness, and in the archives and books of Scars.TV.  I was the editor of The Beatnik Cowboy from 2003 to 2008, it was an hard copy only publication that I put together from Pattaya, Thailand.  Usually little magazine editors like Joe Speer, David Pointer, Jonathan Penton, a rather famous old Beatnik gent-poet from San Francisco whose name escapes me now, and even Lyn Lifshin submitted to the Cowboy.  It was going well and I had the penultimate issue on my fine Dell newly bought computer when the Cambodian cops got me (I was charged with shooting at the too poor to purchase a uniform or gun cops, destruction of property, and ganja - my takedown was a wild two days or so) and the poor policemen stole my computer and much more like sheets, towels, and all the booze in the bar in the bar-hotel I was running.  Later I asked why they didn't steal the fine art I had up in the place, and the Cambodians replied "no need".  They even took my dapper, Cambodian tailor made clothes.  Must have had a "need" to style up.  I started writing at age five, and, believe it or not, I won a contest with my short story then and read my work over the radio.  Russel Struer of Camel Saloon brought me back into the US poetry fold in 2010 by publishing a lot of my stuff.  I was sort of making a small splash in Baltimore and England when I gave up writing and sending out from Cambodia due to lack of internet, computer, and crushing loss im my attempt at starting up and running a twelve room small property hotel and bar.  Old famous rockers, washed up, used to come ashore at our Native Khmer Hotel and the Jerry Garcia bar in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  And I did sort of well until I gave it up too as a professor of Sociology, working for among other academic joints the New School, the famous place in New York city, where I worked as an online or distance learning professor for eight years.  I am hoping to revive my poetry career.  I am so Teddy Roosevelt like dee-lighted you like and are going to publish my stuff!  Still a thrill for me!  Thank you exceedingly so very much!  Or, as they say in the eastern and Russian speaking part of Ukraine, where I taught Sociology for one year at Kharkiv National University, spaseeba bolshio or big thanks.

Is that fine enough for bio?

A Hairy Loss

I can't see for miles and miles,

anymore,

and I get freaked out

on details,

it is sort of like Kerouac said,

while trying to write "Memory Babe"

"The story is in the details,

and damn it I can't remember them."

And, commenting on Allen Ginsberg,

he declared Ginsberg was

little more than

"a hairy loss".

Oscar Wild

Geez, I started getting

right with me dying

alone and stinky 

unfound

in my early fifties.

And I watched older people

and saw how they reacted

when one of their group

died.

And I thought, wow, isn't

it great that studies have

shown when you're freaked

and freaking out you're

losing your mind, it is not a

prelude to actually,

spontaneously, losing

your mind.

On the contrary, one eases

into mindlessness, and no

no one became senile

ever panic attack freaked

out about their thoughtless

slide into the abyss.

Of Satan.

 

Mindful Numbness

Oh shit,

redirect,

stop the too much

detail-notice

minute differences

uber-real,

and nip in the

half sentence

the intrusive/automatic

thoughts or

internal dialogue,

that sooner

than later

usually

may spiral down

soar in mis-judgment

and bring you

to where all is nonsense

seems a pity

and you wonder

feeling this bad

every sleepless waking

hour of life and is

it worth it?  Appears, the

only way to stop

the most

horrible brain pain

is to act yourself

on yourself,

to ensure, Earthly

non existence.

Where all

the needless suffering

seems a colossal waste

and a pity

considering your

correct thought

non-rumination

very real philosophical and

problem solving

potential,

if you can ever get

over your present

condition.

Bet your bomb shelters

Marxist-Leninism

will rise again

in 2030 CE.

Adam Ward

 

Star-spangled cylinders

Let’s fight Western style:
dominance from a distance
missiles without empathy.

Gravity doesn’t look
to see if Newton is waiting
under the apple tree.

Star-spangled cylinders
don’t care if the streets
are filled with guns,

or women clutching hands
with a sugar-smiling child,
or a father buying toys.

I would like humans
with less discrimination,
and bullets to have more.

 

 

 

The simplest of things

 

Don’t build a palace with marble and gold.

Begin with the music that feathers the breeze,

or the bicycle-bell of a wine glass toast.

 

Knead clay made of warm days on the grass,

and the sun’s lemon-light massaging your face.

A clammy clench of hands on a picnic blanket.

 

Let the foundations sit upon Sunday lunches,

the crescendo of Christmas crackers,

the falling cadence of a goodnight kiss.

 

Decorate the hall with the smell of burnt toast,

paint the walls with rouge cheeked grandchildren

as they pour sand from their shoes.

 

Furnish the room with morning-breath snores,

the bubble wrap clatter of rain against the window,

and the sky spat lightning you watch from a veiled room.

 

Tile the kitchen with the sizzle of a camera flash,

laminate the floor with the glossy prints,

plaster the red-eye to your walls.

 

It’s not the ring on your finger that matters.

but the circular band that your lips make,

when you shape the words: I do.

 

You can read it for yourself: Adam Ward is one of the top poets publishing in the UK small press right now, and it's a pleasure to have him back on the top UK small press poetry site. (Well, if you don't speak up for yourself, who will?) Find Adam's page on Facebook if you want more delicately nuanced sensory thrills and wordery.

 

 

 

Bryn Fortey

Bryn Fortey has had a lifetime's involvement with words. One time editor of Bruce Hodder's favourite poetry magazine, OUTLAW, (it's true! Bruce),

a family tragedy forced him away from writing for a number of years before circumstances allowed him to return. The Alchemy Press

published MERRY-GO-ROUND, a mixed fiction and poetry collection of his work, in 2014.

 

ELVIS AND I

 

 

Cardiac arrhythmia

(Irregular heartbeat to you)

     Tick

Enlarged heart

(His by 50%, mine just a little)

     Tick

High blood pressure

     Tick

Short of breath

     Tick

But I was never the avatar of cool

Nor become a figure of bloated excess

(Well not to the same extent)

I have far outlived his forty-two years

A musical snob at first

I danced to his rhythms in secret

Before acknowledging his heritage

Janis Martin sang: 'My Boy Elvis'

But he belonged to the world

And tears were shed around the globe

On the day he died

The King of Rock and Roll

Fat with junk food and prescription drugs

Pyjama bottoms round his ankles

Dead on his toilet floor

With my list of medical 'ticks' in mind

I am in and out of my 'smallest room' real fast

Knowing that one day the strain

Might be too much for my heart as well

Bryn Fortey

THERE, THE SONGBIRD

I am the Captain

Of this vessel

I set the sail

And plot the course

You would lose

Should we wrestle

I am the master

Of brute force

The Sea

The shore

The orange skies

A songbird dies

For lack of grace

Space, the killer

Dark assassin

There the seat

The pilot sat in

There, the songbirds

Strangled face

Bryn Fortey 

 

 

 

Jono Bell

 

 

Pamphlet of lies

 

We've been here for ages

Working zero hours for minimum wages

Just too weary to turn the pages

To your pamphlet of lies

Saw you on a television debate

Telling us who to fear and hate

You covered everyone in my community

All the angels on my estate

We've been here for ages

Zero hours,minimum wages.

We got some angry sisters here

Who wanna make a mess of you

 

Fools will vote for liars

Jokers govern and lead

Crack the whip on so called austerity

Only the poor and disabled bleed

And if you dare come to my estate

 With all your fake airs and graces

We got people at the food bank here

Wanna make a mess of you

We've been here for ages

Zero hours,minimum wages.

And we will burn all the pages

To your pamphlet of lies

 

 

Ignorance,fear and bigotry

Dance to your propaganda tune

But you see we are many

Community won't fade away it's stronger than you.

We've been here for ages

Zero hours,minimum wages.

And we will burn all the pages

To your pamphlet of lies

 

 

Jono Bell is the Jono in Jono & The Uke Dealers. He also plays in the 2 Tone Ska Band. This is a song the Dealers are working on which stands up exceptionally well as a poem.

Andrew Darlington

EROTIC GHOSTS OF HEBDEN BRIDGE:

DIMENSIONAL ABSTRACTIONS

WHILE OBSERVING GANYMEDE

            

too old, too sick, too tired for poems

done with poems, until returning here,

where we were the bright and burning wind

bled and howling through Hebden Bridge

in spliced silver apocalypse frame after frame

with machine whirr and click whirr and click,

and now they start up again, can’t staunch

these ghosts caught and stuck in flickering

projector images/ ...when we matched breath,

exhaling into frosty-crystalline sunset over

hacked and gouged ripple-skied motorway/

by the underpass/flyover chrome-grille

concrete monolith of spiral M62 crawl

stooped and crawling, screaming ‘BASTARD’

at anonymous steel projectiles, our laughter

lost and rolling in shattered syllables all along

the verge/ ...and did we lie inert and not move

and breathe again as if it were our first breath

and at the same time our last breath, recalling

a bright and burning wind over Hebden Bridge

and ripple-skied motorway monolith of stoop

and crawl, and smile and think ‘this is good’,

I don’t ask for my head to be stuffed

with these burning visions, but they’re here,

is a sleeping madman still crazy…?

too old, too sick, too tired for poems

trying to turn your mind to other things,

and these ghosts return…

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NO MATCH FOR NATURAL STUPIDITY!!!

Check out my website ‘EIGHT MILES HIGHER’ – ‘The Blogspot for People Who Don’t Like Blogspots’ – latest postings include ‘Music From Sheffield: The Box’ interviews/history, Kurt Vonnegut 1983 interview, full Bill Nelson interview-live/album review-discog retrospective with rare archive art, ‘The Lost Worlds Of Arthur Conan Doyle: His SF, Fantasy & Horror’, Neil Sedaka Live, Elvis: My Visit To Graceland & Sun Studios with photos, ‘Rogue Moon’ by Algis Budrys – history & analysis, Cassandra Complex 1988 interview, and more… monthly updates at http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.com

 

 

Andrew Darlington

Email: andydarlington@talktalk.net

Twitter: @darlingtonandy

Website: www.andrewdarlington.blogspot.com

Adam Ward

The Piano

 

It’s as if my fingers had forgotten the piano,

or maybe my eyes drifted from the keys

to the ivory of her smile once too often.

Maybe the beer had slowed my knuckles,

and the turquoise sponge of her eyes

drifted to my hands to watch me play,

but the nerves rose through my chest

and gave up music, or hope perhaps.

 

As I played for the hollow home

somewhere beyond the rolling cloth

the creased quilt, dotted with sheep

bleating new accents in every field

she sat quietly, tongue small and thick

resting on a scarlet glistening pillow.

Her eyes stroked between my face,

my hands, and back and back.

 

But I shook the notes away,

each cadence a memory discarded,

an inhibition lost, an epitaph.

Every bar was a coda waiting.

Each coda could not begin a new refrain

for there was no melody for here and now

without a scale of guilt.  And those chords

would only accompany me to the gallows.

 

Yes the songs would end

the hammer ceased beating the strings

and her hands brushed mine

like a cotton bow upon airy skin.

Begin again her mouth would urge

and whipping hair of flame just once

to rest upon the lagoon she’d draped

around her hidden curves.

 

As the bitter night closed the light

and my hands caught the wind

reaching for hers, subtly.

She shrunk back into whispering black,

her elven feet carrying her home.

Back up the hill I’d drag my shoes

through gravel, gate, and upstairs

 

to play piano perfectly alone

 

A Rutlanders Yarn

 

In some wez shis wiser na.

Sh’c’n tell th’Jewsh, Christians,

th’Indoos oo’s right’ an’

seddle th’score on those what lied.

 

Tho still an’ dumb, th’eyes a closed

wi’sheckin’ thumbs, c’n see wha’ man

‘as killed ‘is brother uva, fer centries

in livin’ breathin’ blin’ness.

 

Jus’ las’ week shwas ‘ottin’ soup

an’ serm’nisin’ ‘rithmetic and revlations

to yunguns oo’d not utter a word

whils’ Mam’d wield th’ladel

 

Mu’ely, an’ withou’ force she

gev um each day their delly bread

an’leddem no’ inta temptation.

We mathed’er words to full bolls.

 

When Dad cemmum frum wuck

th’dug, cherishin’ ‘is face wi’

baptisms a slick slobber

shwud thank th’Lord furriz return.

 

 Shid sen’ God wee us, dan th’jitty,

up each tree wid climb, uva each stile,

an’ anywur ‘cross th’Wellan’ Valley

wid yomp wi’spirit accussom t’ yunguns.

 

An’ one day sh’open’d twa man,

seein’ only a bet’n gosp’l in wunand,

not th’knife ‘e ‘ung cashwul-like

‘aside ‘is fawny jacke’ an’ nea’ trousers.

 

Goodwill twall men, sh’ad ‘im in

sheckin’ wee a fruzzen gale.  Hid accep’

th’good char, of a good woman, wee th’

good book on ‘er oak tebbel

 

Frit tho’ shid be, a’th’ final plunge

a’d no’ won’er tha’ a final preh would

‘scap ‘er lips, ta God ‘oo fersucker

a’tha’ mumment, in ‘er dires’ of need.

 

Na cotched in slumber, in wood an’ chapel,

‘ands ‘cross her motionless ‘eart she knows

an’ sees th’frui’ ova life whisper’d on knees.

Bu’ sh’speaks not til’th veil’s drawn

 

 

Adam Ward can be found on social media in the following places. Twitter - @WardyBoy82
FB Page - https://www.facebook.com/AdamWardWriter. I last found him in North Gate bus station in Northampton, where I twisted his arm to give these poems to Beatnik. I think they're extremely good, for whatever my opinion's worth ~ Bruce.

Essay: BY KEROUAC'S GRAVE

By Kerouac’s Grave

by Pat King

Sure, but I do realize that I’m quite the vain man, the pain-in-the-ass man. Dear friends, this is why I love looking at old pictures of myself, love showing them to other people. “Look, look, here I am! I’m real! Let me tell you a little about myself…” Most of the pictures are casual snapshots, taken either by my dad or mom. They’re nice enough things to look at and, in my dad’s case, done with a certain sense of aesthetics, since he was always an amateur photography enthusiast. However, among all the snapshots and pictures taken on vacations and holidays, there’s one picture that I particularly cherish. It just sums up a moment so completely. Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite picture.

Observe the photo’s composition: it’s framed deliberately, thoughtfully. It’s meant to evoke something very specific, perhaps something that the photographer only knew unconsciously, after all, she had only a moment to snap the thing. It’s clear that the photographer is trying to get at the real meat of the subject. The subject was my sad, dead-drunk face, my broken heart.

The photographer was Katie Jachowski. Later she would become Katie King, my beautiful wife. Maybe that’s part of the reason I’m so attached to the photo, because Katie took it. But Katie’s taken a lot of pictures in which I’ve been the subject. No, this picture is special. This one says so much.

Observe my late-20’s hipster long hair and the hoodie I was wearing and the all-too-serious look about my face. I wasn’t happy.

The picture was taken on an unusually warm mid-October day in 2007, the final morning of an annual Jack Kerouac festival in Lowell, Massachusetts. The weekend had been a blur. We didn’t go to many events. Only one, actually. It was a Jazz brunch kind of thing that I have vague memories of. We wandered the city and drank whiskey in our hotel room. The whole thing had a tie-wearing, appeal-to-authority kind of vibe. We had more fun just doing our own thing. We did, however, make sure to visit the original On the Road manuscript. The teletype scroll was on display at a textile museum.

That whole trip had a kind of lost weekend feel.

I wonder whether that look in my eyes, the one that Katie captured so well in that picture, was the same one a literature professor saw when he said to me, “Just don’t end up like him,” meaning Kerouac, after I had casually mentioned my weekend plans to him: the drive from Baltimore to Lowell, the readings, how much I was looking forward to the whole thing.

End up like Kerouac?

Like drinking myself to death, living my last decade in isolation, shunning my friends and dying from cirrhosis of the liver? Nah, man, not me. I was 27 years old and never going to die. I liked excess, I liked extremes. So what if I had been drinking and overeating for the past decade? What the hell? This guy, this tie-wearing literary professor thought that I was romanticizing Kerouac’s life. I guess he figured I thought it  would be cool to die in physical and mental anguish, to have my body shut down. Get a life, man. Fucking asshole.

Well…

Maybe I was kind of on the way toward killing myself. It’s hard to say for sure, because by that time I didn’t really drink with any real frequency. I would binge, sure, but I would also go cold turkey for a few months at a time. But couple that with my out of control eating and it was obvious that a breakdown of some kind was coming.

It crept up slowly, but it seemed so sudden.

I was already overweight when the picture at Kerouac’s grave was taken, but I would keep gaining. Seven years later, I was 310 pounds. A hulking beast of a man who could barely walk without getting winded.

In late September 2014, I had just started a new supermarket job. I had only been there for a full day and a half day when the freakout happened. I’d been noticing that, for the past week or so, my vision had been getting bad. I used to have perfect 20/20 sight, but now I couldn’t see much past a few feet ahead of me. I thought maybe my eyes were sore or something. I didn’t know what was going on. I just figured it would get better on its own. But it didn’t get better. On that second day of work, I noticed that I couldn’t see a customer’s face across from the deli counter. I panicked and said that I needed to leave.

I went home. I told Katie what was happening and she came home early from work and took me to the emergency room. The nurse nearly gasped when she saw that my blood sugar was at 445, way over the normal 60 - 100 range. No good. Diabetes. Katie and I sat in the waiting room, silent, for about thirty minutes, until I was admitted.

Over the next four hours, I was given insulin. My sugar got down to about 140. After a long lecture on what I could eat (not much) and what I couldn’t (just about everything I liked), I was finally discharged. My vision had already started getting better before we left the hospital. It took a few days, but it finally returned to normal.

I was devastated. I took the next day off of work. I figured I was fucked. Surely I was going to get fired.

I lay in bed, self-pity washing over me. All I wanted was to sleep, to drift away…

Katie got home from work that afternoon and walked into our little apartment to find that I had locked myself in the bedroom. I didn’t really mean anything by it. I just wanted to be alone for a while. But I guess I did mean something by it. Katie, panicked and afraid, called my dad, who drove 45 minutes just to talk to me. I wouldn’t let him in either, so he talked to me through my locked door. As always, he was kind, gentle, his voice soothing. He did his best to talk me down from my freakout. Finally, after about an hour, he asked, “What’s next? What’s the next step?”

I said, “I’m going to work tomorrow.”

I knew I had to do it. It was a daunting step because of my embarrassment over being so new and already calling out -- a working class dilemma if there ever was one. But if I could just make it through the day, through the awkward motions of a new job and new people, then the worst of it would be over. Then I could really get going.

And so I went to work. A couple of days later, I started to walk.

It was only a few blocks at first. I got winded easily. But I kept walking. Every day at first, then five days a week, pushing myself a little more each time. Months later, I started to jog. I still have to alternate between jogging and walking, but I’m getting there. I’m making progress. I’m going to make it.

By December 2014, I’d lost over 50 pounds. I was still about 260 pounds, quite a bear of a man, but getting smaller, getting healthier. I was also eating right. Meat and vegetables, bread every once in a while. No sugar. And I started meditating again, something I hadn’t done for months. All this is to say that, while these aren’t the happiest days of my life, they might end up being the most contented.

But, man, that picture. Sitting cross-legged at Kerouac’s grave didn’t mean much to me at the time, except maybe that I got a cool picture of myself out of it, a way of saying, “I was there.” But now I look at it and can’t help but see a kid. A kid pushing thirty who thought he knew his trajectory. I was trapped by a faulty sense of imagination. I’m 34 now, and far less sure of myself than I was back then. But what did being sure of myself ever get me?

Sometimes I can’t help but shake because of the immensity of it all.

 Thank you, Katie. I love you.  


Pat King is the author of the classic underground novel EXIT NOTHING. 

Review: MERRY-GO-ROUND by Bryn Fortey

The Alchemy Press, 2014

"Merry-Go-Round" has been available for a while now. It's a perfect gem of a book by a writer who I've only known, previously, for his poetry. According to the introduction by editor Johnny Mains, however, Bryn has been writing stories like those featured alongside the poetry here for years and years. Shows what an authority I am.

I know some of the poetry. So might you, if you read the little magazines, or if you saw me read them at a festival last summer. They're presented in six sections between the stories, and they explore some of Bryn's familiar themes--music and family in particular. His science fiction poetry is new to me. A taxi driver on Mars studies to keep his brain ticking over. The Siren Women of a distant planet slaughter their males by tearing their flesh with sharp teeth.

Clearly the self-deprecating Mr. Fortey has an imagination as wild as H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe. And they are the authors I kept thinking of as I read the stories. Not because Bryn is copying them, or even, necessarily, influenced by them; I'm not an expert in horror or science fiction, genres that most of the stories fall into, so if the author's style has precedents, I almost certainly don't know them. But the horror stories, especially "Shrewhampton North-East", which starts the collection, have an eerie mystery, and a perversity, that almost belongs in the Victorian periodicals. (When I say the stories are perverse, I mean that as a compliment.)

And like Wells, Bryn's science fiction takes us to places our own minds could not conceive of. He imagines technological advances that allow for the instantaneous transfer of human beings from one place to another, or from one time to another. Time travel, of course, is one of the most venerable tropes of science fiction, but Bryn handles it with real ingenuity. In "The Oscar Project" the protagonist journeys back to the days before Christ's execution--an interesting premise in itself for an author who has rejected religion, as Bryn seems to have done. I won't spoil your reading by telling you what happens, but the drama that unfolds is intensely gripping and beautifully described.

As I've already written, music is never far away when Bryn's around. It's something he and I have in common. Other stories in the collection concern his beloved jazz, a subject he writes about as well as anyone. I like most "The Pawn Shop Window", a melancholy tale about a trumpet player who lives in the Golden Age of jazz but never makes it. In some ways, at least for me, that one's about poets too: all the really wonderful men and women Bryn has known and I have known who lived hard lives trying to bring something to the world that the world didn't want. People in the small press whose stars were eclipsed by greater talents (like Louis Armstrong in the story), or lesser talents, like the poetasters whose academic connections got them mainstream publication and write-ups in the TLS.

You can probably still order copies of "Merry-Go-Round" online at www.alchemypress.co.uk. I think it's a very good book, and not just because of my long-standing friendship with the author. There's science fiction in here, for Heaven's sake. Anyone who can get me reading, and even enjoying, that has got to be worth a wider audience.