iDrew: Three Poems

iName  

well i got a reply from this editor

asking how i do my name

i said

iDrew to co-ordinate with my titles

you know how we girls like

things to match

he replied

well miss iDrew

titles

is a bit of a funny little word

tit-les(s)

as you like playing around with words

now i’m wondering

how the fuck does he know

i’m so not blessed

in that department

and why are men so obsessed

but i’m thinking of making up

a new word for titles

clitles

it will be at the top of the page

yet i’m betting most he editors

still won’t find it

not even with a diagram

on the cuntents page

iAngel

with a tinsel halo

and a pair of little feather wings

butter wouldn’t melt

dressed in white

like a choir

we were singing naff pop songs

as loud as we could

snaking our way

along the high street

pretending we were dead good

lined up

on the guest list

we sounded like a latin prayer

mia donna christina

emma victoria alice emma

rachel drew hannah gemma

holly joanne holly may sophie

ami

but after the club shut

we were that dun in on holy water

hannah had a gutter wee

down the side street by monsoon      

donna caught a whiff of the body shop

threw up on their doorstep

she almost passed out outside waterstones

sat on the pavement taking deep breaths

legs wide open

joanne

for no apparent reason

tossed a burger

at the window of jane norman

holly had dun her first pill

was electric and sparklin’ and buzzin’

all loved-up with everyone

one of the emma’s gave it large

about some flash buff bloke

fingered for a phone number

and a bottle of doubleewekaydee blue

alice reckoned she’d given some lad

a shuffle in his pants

slut rachel fessed she went

so much further

than that

becci’s hen night was well wicked

shame becci vanished with the stripper

wasn’t around to witness

christina flashing her tits at some fit copper

even though we’d forgotten

most of the words       

we was still singing robbie’s angels

with our voices ever so saintly and sweet

that angelic

are we

iCunt

it’s not my pussy

if anything it’s a lion

even down to a little tiny

golden mane

it’s not my muff

or minge

and don’t call it a fanny

it’s not victorian

gash sounds like an injury

vagina is just

so text book medical

but there really is no need

to cradle it in a gusset

of fanciful euphemisms

my cunt is my cunt

beautiful and divine

glorious and heavenly 

and i so love my little cunt

for it gives me so much

pleasure and ecstasy

Writing under the name of iDrew to co-ordinate with her titles, Essex girl Drew has previously been published in various magazines such as: ‘The Delinquent’, ‘Battered Suitcase’, ‘All Things Girl’, and the ‘Read This Skin Deep Anthology’.  She enjoys shopping, boys and clubs but claims these are all merely research for her writing.   She is also one of the founding members of the Clueless Collective and can be found at:  www.cluelesscollective.co.uk

Michael D. Grover

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Confessions Of An american Outlaw #23

I realize where I am
Choices I've made
Artist over American
Poet over drone

It's not that I look down on them
I mourn the lost Poems
Eaten by that ugly monster of responsibility
Aborted, ripped out of their bodies
Kept in line by time
Watchdog time clock & security cameras
They killed the fucking Poems
They eat Poems
Breakfast, lunch, & dinner Poems

My father he wanted to be a Poet
Howled with Ginsberg in the sixties
Communist manifesto, & James Kavanagh
He asked me to hold them for him
He may need them back someday
Now they collect dust on my shelf
Because he had a family
Once I was gonna be a father
He screamed at me What are you doing
Because they sucked every Poem right out of him
Every Poem he would ever write
They took them armed in business suits
Hiding in boardrooms
They live off the anxiety of dead Poems
Unwritten

I do understand the choices I've made
& my present condition
I do understand I am not the first
& I wont be the last
To take a stand for what I am
Even if it might mean loosing everything
I do understand this is an eternal struggle
Playing out over and over
I do understand insanity is only
Getting beat down over and over

I forgive you
You can't help the psychosis that was given to you
You could not help the manipulation
Which was survival to you
You could not help it
But it's gone too far

I forgive you
Though you chose to run off with a needle
And my twenty bucks
Because you couldn't take the World
You were too beautiful for it
There were Poems inside you
That they killed like babies
But you couldn't take care of your own son
& I loved you because I saw Poems in you
I didn't realize they were dead Poems
& you were doin' that dance, that survival shuffle

I forgive you
Layin' in the bed
Sweaty in the summer
Reading about the beats all day
As outside
The sky grows dark & rumbles

Everyone is holy
But they won't be enlightened
They all have dead Poems inside of them
Everyone is drug down by the weight of now
& every moment they've lived before now
It accumulates on their backs
Like dead weight
& you can't even save yourself

For Politics

There are politics in everything
& nothing is fun anymore
Even where you live
Political

This craft that you love
Political

Even this Poem
Political

Before we knew
It used to be fun

When we laughed & played
When we were children

No cares
Then we started to see it
Lurking behind everything
They took it all away
One thing at a time
Politics behind everything
Politics behind politics
& we wished we didn't know
Because it killed the World
Politics

Blatant, rubbing your nose in it
Politics

Crowd reacts like well trained dogs
Politics
It's all breaking down
Politics
None of these systems have ever worked
Politics
Breeding corruption
Politics
Where you work
Politics
Where you live
Politics
What's your party
Politics
If I could live without them
Politics
Mediocre & safe
Politics
All about money
Politics
People in positions of power
Politics
It's who you know
Politics

Politics has nothing
To do with art
With this Poem
Yet it still persist
Like a thorn in the foot
Politics

For Time

Think of what it's taken from you
Wasted days
Wasted nights
Wasted years
Wasted Poems
Poems that were aborted
Poems you scribbled down
Quick on break
Born in captivity
Time wasted
Time is money
It's not your time
It's their time
Clock & it's flat white face
Mechanical hands
Always movin'
Time is mechanical
Clock waits for you to punch in
Punch out
So you can rest & do it again
It's overwhelming

Now you've got
Too much on your hands
Too much idle time
& it seems you get
Nothing done
& you've got no resources
To do anything
If you wanted to
Movies in the library are free
You go every Wednesday
But you've watched so many
That it's hard find them anymore
Each week you come back with less
This week it's down to three
Clock watches you watch them
Flat black face
Red digital numbers
No arms or legs
Mechanically ticking away
Wasting away your life
It watches you as you sleep
Wake up
It knows what time it is
No alarms to go off
Only function time
& you barely look at it
Mechanically moving on
Springs forward
Falls back
Never sleeps or takes a break
Time

Food Stamp Day

I get a little crazy on food stamp day
When yesterday I was hungrier than I remember
When the employment rate doesn't look better
When the news still tries to feed you optimism
When your bank account is way in the red
When you get so poor there's nothing to do
When you've always got friends no matter what you do
When you took them with you today tonight you all eat good

I get a little crazy on food stamp day
Spent about half of it on luxury stuff
Perhaps that's why you'll be starving by the end of the month
Tonight you're gonna eat like the president does
& that's all that matters right now
There are pistachios, & cashews
Humus, pita chips carrot juice
Veggie burgers, & veggies
Pierogies, garlic, & sour cream
Waffles, butter, & syrup
Chocolate chunk cookies

I get a little crazy on food stamp day
& become a shopaholic
I shop till I drop
Heart & mind race down kroger isles
& the body follows
& I'm sure by next month I'll be hungry
Because I get a little crazy on food stamp day

Michael D. Grover is a Florida born poet. As a wanderer he's traveled and lived all over the country. He currently lives in Toledo, Ohio.
His poetry has been published all over the literary underground. Michael currently is a resident artist at
the Collingwood Art Center in Toledo. He hosts a monthly reading with John Dorsey at a local coffee shop.
He runs the Covert Press. His newest chapbook is titled "Confessions Of An american Outlaw". Michael is the current head poetry editor at www.redfez.net.

Hands Off, Ye Ten Percenters

Readers of BEATNIK might be interested to see this post at the Allen Ginsberg blog about a new, and I feel obliged to say, utterly stupid project by a "comedy" blogger in which On The Road is paraphrased into allegedly modern, and allegedly funny (actually it's rather racist), street talk. Kerouac's own image accompanies it with a sideways baseball cap photoshopped onto his head. Seems a ludicrously inappropriate and insulting thing to do to a serious writer, especially one who drank himself to death in part because of the mockery his life's work was subjected to after the release of On The Road. Peter Hale at the Ginsberg blog thinks it's funny, but I'm inclined to believe the folks at the Ginsberg Estate would.

What next, Gregory Corso in an advert for McDonald's?

Gerry Nicosia has been right from the start, y'all.

http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/on-brod-every-sentence-of-jack-kerouacs.html

RUSSELL STREUR: TWO POEMS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Numbers Game

I used to be somebody.

Had the figures to prove it.

Five nine six four on red

That’s Mister to you

Confirmation one F E and eight and eight and G

EMC zero zero four zero four three in LA

Eight two zero seven in gold

Get out of my way

Nine two double three to clear

And bigger numbers too

Ten pass to the Euro set

Channels on the satellite

Back door code

To the Diamond Lounge

Pins and passwords everywhere

Dot com planets at my fingertips.

Cashed in all my chips

On a Degas whim one day

For a place in the woods

And a river bed.

Now I’m off the screens

In a green ballet

Out of the loop

Up the creek

Without a mouse

I’m the man without a number

On the Quay D`Orsay

No more front row seats

No more safety net

No more cable TV

I’m disconnected

I’ve lost my place in line:

Add it up Bobby:

I get treated like I’m nobody now

Like I am just

Another name.

Thrill Ride 

(Greetings from the Mouse)

Caution:

This amusement ride involves

High speeds

Sudden drops

Sharp turns

And unexpected stops

In underground torture cells.

True believers

                        Move forward now.

Gates are to the left

                                For those with heart conditions.

Persons prone to motion sickness

                                                      May board the special train.

We’ll get the rest of you later.

MADE IN AMERICA by Robert M. Zoschke

A somewhat belated review

Street Corner Press
corner of Armitage & Clybourn
Chicago
Illinois
60614
$14

     I like this book a lot because it sounds like no one but the author. Zoschke doesn't pose: when he's pissed off, he's pissed off ('Bored on the Fourth of July, 2008); when he's tender, he's tender ('a dog of a poem'); and he's great at painting the Wisconsin landscape he lives in with words ('Ides of March sarong'). How often do you get that sort of range.

     He's a poet of place without the sentimentality that usually involves. We know exactly where he is -- what it sounds and smells like, who lives there with him ('the swords are in little hands'; 'are you a...';'Listen') -- and we know how he got there ('Elegy for the Pistol', among others). You could make a movie out of that last poem, no problem. It's almost an elegy for a better, bygone America.

     Rob's a poet of ideas too, maybe without wanting to be: Lawrence Ferlinghetti is quoted at the start of the book as saying, 'I'd rather be writing love poems'. The very fine and scandalously unacknowledged Dave Church is remembered in 'when the pen is the needle and the paper is the spoon', which contrasts Church's remarkable poetry with that of an English professor taking a workshop in 'rotgut academician flatulence'. Why's Dave dying at the wheel of a taxi when a poet not fit to shine his shoes thrives and prospers? Anybody who has read Church or been to a university poetry workshop will know Zoschke is telling the truth.

     But the centrepiece of 'Made in America' is the love poem he would rather be writing. 'What Matters Most' tells beautifully and forcefully of the birth of Amelia and Hannah, Rob and partner Joie's two daughters. You're there in the delivery room with them experiencing every nerve-wracking, hair-raising, heart-wrenching, joyful moment of the double birth, and the description never slips into bad taste. What a generous and brave man he must be to share the most personal experience of his life like that; and what art, not to let it get awkward for one minute.

     An extensive collection of pictures of family and friends completes the book nicely: he's a proud man and why not? Too many poets in the small press and the mainstream hide behind postures, and self-conscious trickery. As a squeamish Buddhist I could have done without so many photos of dead fish, but it's a small price to pay for these treasures.

GERALD NICOSIA IN ENGLAND

Gerald Nicosia, poet and legendary biographer of Jack and Jan Kerouac, will be in England at the end of this month to talk on Jack and take part in a poetry reading.I quote Gerry himself:


My talk on Kerouac—called “The Writer Kerouac, the Mythological Kerouac, the Popular Kerouac, and the Real Kerouac”-- will be at the English Faculty lecture hall, 5PM, Friday October 22.  The address is 9 West Road, Cambridge.  For further information, contact Malcolm Guite at St. Mark’s Vicarage, Cambridge, 01223 694249.  The next night, Saturday October 23, at 8PM, I will give a poetry reading along with Malcolm Guite and Keith Dersley, to the accompaniment of a jazz group called RipRap.  This will take place at the Memorial (Unitarian) Church in Cambridge, Emmanuel Road, near the bus station, in central Cambridge.  Again, Malcolm Guite would be the person to give more specific details.


I'm sure anybody who's in Cambridge that weekend will be glad to support these events. It isn't every day a writer of Gerry's calibre makes it over here to good old Blighty.

Donal Mahoney: Four Poems

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Love Is Another Thing


Sitting at the table
spinning the creamer
running her fingers through sugar
the kids spilled at supper, Sue

suddenly says, “Don,
love is another thing.”
Since love is another thing
I have to go rent a room,

leave behind eight years,
five kids, the echoes of me
raging at noon on the phone,
raging at night, the mist

of whose fallout ate her skin,
ate her bones, left her a kitten
crying high in an oak
let me free, let me free

Spider

Warm, wet, wrapped
in each other’s
arms, legs

still for a moment,
we rest

a spider spent,
lost in its web


Bending, Grabbing, Sorting

Chinese Laundry, Chicago

In a storefront laundry
on North Clark Street
brown draperies release
this quiet man

who has my shirts.
He smiles and bows--
how carefully
he wraps them.

Before the draperies
fall back, I see,
for a moment,
in a circle swirling

almost out of sight
three kerchiefed women,
glistening black,
bending, grabbing, sorting.

Those Poems, That Fire

I stood in the alley, still
in pajamas, somebody’s shoes,
another man’s coat, my eyes
on the bronc of the hoses.
Squawed in the blankets of neighbors,
my wife and three children sipped
chocolate, stood orange and still.
Of the hundred or more I had stored
in a drawer, I could remember,
comma for comma, no more than four,
none of them final,
all of them fetal.


Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. A Pushcart nominee, he has had poems published by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), The Beanik (U.K), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), The Osprey Journal (Scotland), Pirene's Fountain (Australia) and other publications