::: A Taste of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 05.08.09 :::
"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history" Plato
Gas Mask Sitting Gauge (above) by K.R. Copeland/Jeff Crouch, our latest of over a dozen mad swirlin' resident artists being displayed in the Mad Gallery!
Hello our fellow mad ones. Wow, what a week it’s been! One of the most maddest Mad Swirl Open Mics in our history, tons of submissions filling our inboxes, brand new artists hanging in the gallery and lots’o’swirlin’ mad ideas and possibilities swimming in our heads. There’s more in store. Stay tuned!
But our true purpose today is to let you know what’s the MOST exciting happenin’ happening NOW and that is the Poetry Forum. The bar is a’risin’! These past several months have seen more and more mad ones coming our way. But don’t let us sway your view, check it out for yourself...
Welcome to our weekly taste of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum. Once again we have collected mad poetry from the maddest poets from all corners of this big & blue swirly marble and have showcased them here in the Forum just for you. The Poetry Forum is in flux, it’s a living and breathing, ever evolving and changing entity...so please come by and come by often for the latest swirling additions!
Life on Mars and Mimosas
Many people
often ponder the
question “Is there
life on Mars?”
And indeed,
that sort of question
can keep you
awake at night
scared that alien life forms
might be watching us
as we eat giant
spoonfuls of peanut
butter and watch
our HBO or Netflix
The greater question
"is there life on
Mars and do
these life forms enjoy
a good Mimosa
on Sunday morning?"
or Does the thought
of smoked salmon
turn their stomachs?
do they get stressed
out when someone
spells their name
wrong at the DMV?
as long
as they don’t go ‘postal’
they are fine with me
(from the book Heaven is a Giant Pawn Shop by Erbacce Press)
Melanie Browne
(2 poems added 05.08.09)
Acharit HaYamim
Says YHWH to the prophet, Go Daniel, for the things are closed up and sealed until the end time.
I.
This is not the end.
This is not the way it was supposed to end.
I am out of my mind with possibilities with futures with lives which I have only dreamed into being.
I am out of my mind with tent walls and tree shadows with spiders and their likeness with darkness in every corner but here.
I am out of my mind with here, with her, with whoever her is today. I am out of my mind with love.
Love, I am out of my mind. I have come for you at last. You are not a damsel after all and I am not a knight.
Love, you are siren and banshee, strychnine in this morning’s tea. You have come for me in Nebraska hotel rooms and Seattle apartments and beneath posters of Kerouac, you have come for me in the summer of ’95, have laid down for me and given me a son. Love, you have never come for me. You have left me each time not even a note on the dresser.
You brought me a drink once and forgot to charge me, Love. I had just taken the stage, so you left it where I was sitting.
You don’t return my phonecalls. I still owe you for the drink.
Love, I am out of my mind but it’s me not you.
Love, it is you.
II.
The covenant is broken, the curse is upon us.
This is not a global problem. This is you and me and the things we may or may not have said and the child we made and the shattering like a mirror and the disappearance of the image on the ground silver backing.
The curse is upon us, and the curse is us. This is the part about Daniel, the prophecy given but not explained. Go, Daniel, put these dreams away. I give you a vision of the end of days, but no key to explain it.
I have seen the end of days, and you are there, Love. You and I and the vessel you choose.
We are together, Love—you, me and the other. We are sagging and wrinkled and laughing. We are drinking the strychnine tea of the human body and watching with great interest our decline. We have come so far, only to see the prophecy was not a prophecy after all, but instead the natural state, our lives its disturbance.
Love, there is an obedience to you that is below the mortal span, and above it too. Love you are the mortal span, the natural state, the Messianic era. You teach us the Christ and the Phoenix so we can see destruction. You teach us rebirth.
I have laid you and confused you for the other, Love, the body is weak. I am naked now, alone in my bed, only pen and paper to cover me. I write your name on a fig leaf to hide my embarrassment.
Love, I use your name too much.
III.
Love, it is over.
I have come for you and you have come for me and we have come so far together, but now there is no body across from me. Love, I am alone. These are not the end of days, Love, these are the days you have given me. Love, you have given me nothing. Love, you have given me everything. Love, you have given your all to me and it is not enough. It is never enough. Love, you don’t stick to me like you should. Love, I am leaving. I am still alone. Love, I am dying. I have always been dying. It is the mortal condition.
Love, this is goodbye. Or not goodbye. Love, this is the end of days. Love, this is the beginning.
Love, this is the beginning.
Love, this is the beginning.
Love, this is the end.
Jim Coppoc
(3 poems added 05.07.09)
Just for today…
I.
tear-welling sting
inside
nicotine calm surrounds
my eyes
II.
Sunday was
longer than the
day you died
III.
sea air dances
on seagull wingtips
IV.
the rooster waits for me to finish
dreaming
V.
oboes sound
like a tired
lecture
VI.
metallic guitar
notes plucked
drift
VII.
she sees red
apples drop
she wants to fly
VIII.
oil-slick
algae bright
with sun
IX.
jaundiced
evening sun
feeble as a
knife-edge
X. (softshoe)
scratching scritching
leather on sand on concrete
delights the children of tourists
XI.
foggy silence
hovers between
pages of the musty
reference section
XII.
people in raincoats who don't care
wait for a bus to take them away
XIII.
sounds of morning
many
help spread the many
hues of day
XIV.
wanting more
wind giggles through
her hair
XV.
I step off
cold slate
platforms-
her eyes
XVI.
giving in
to curses,
invocations,
an obese freedom
XVII.
dressed in
a loose fitting
sky drips
from His hands
XVIII.
a polished
purple laugh
rings out
XIX.
a young girl
traced by the
sharpened morning sun-
arms limp.
XX.
she shakes dreams from her
hair (like) epileptic lighting
XXI.
he takes his gloves off
to shake with hands
moist with guilt
Jon Brodie
(3 poems added 05.06.09)
Not for Me
Not for me.
Don't unwind
the jack from the box
or make the sky come apart
for no good reason,
I am not a daffodil,
or a lion,
or a see-saw.
I am not a streetlight
traffic accident
or bus stop,
I cannot decompose
concrete, I cannot
recite the alphabet,
or drink whiskey,
I don't have
patience, I am not
worth doing,
not for me.
You can't say
that's not enough for me.
I am not too young
or too old;
I am not anything.
I am not a classroom
or a book,
I am not rainclouds,
raindrops, or sun.
I am not concise.
I am not baseball,
I am not a bicycle,
I am not binoculars,
a mountain range,
or a hole in the sky.
I am not
a strong military,
I am not a weak military,
I have no border
anywhere in this world,
I am not clothing.
I am not a car salesman
or a pellet pistol,
I am not a paper target.
I am not truth,
I am not untruth,
I am not here or there,
I have not ever,
nor have I not.
I am not a police
clash or a street
dancer. I don't ride
telephone poles
or make thunder,
I am not blind,
but I don't see.
Not me.
None of this for me
None of what is before me,
I am not the question
or the answer,
the solution
or the silence,
I am not a disco ball,
I don't have two left feet,
skin or teeth,
sunburns,
heartbeats,
eardrums,
I don't have any legs--
I don't have anywhere to go,
Nowhere not for me.
Chris Hamilton
(2 poems added 05.05.09)
yes, you.
before bed, as I lay
cloaked in dark
and the day becomes
less important,
I think of
a great
many things;
the cars I hear passing
and the faces of late night
travelers, splashed with
each others scattered
head-lights,
the cargo in graffiti-
smothered freight trains
that click clack and moan-
through night.
the people I love who
understand me enough
to love me,
the people I love who
understand me enough
to hate me.
my old sneakers
dangling from power-
lines in the slums of
Las Vegas,
Los Angeles,
and Hackensack.
the glimmer in that man's
eyes as he shot me five
times and the sound of
policemen splash-
stepping in my blood,
my manuscripts and selected
poems running through publishers'
paper-
shredders
as they sit legs crossed
sipping their coffee.
syringes and beer bottles
floating in the Hudson River,
bums at bonfires keeping warm
beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
the whores that just know
I'm somewhere writing about them,
Rilke, Neruda, Levy, Poe'
Whitman, Bukowski, Thompson
all in their caskets
and Salinger
shopping
for his.
crackheads in the laundry rooms
of project apartment buildings
scraping their pipes.
the fearful face of the boy
who stabbed me in the chest
and the way the world looked
through the sun-roof
of a honda civic as it flipped
into the drainage canal.
the look on my father's face
when I was 7 years old
and set his house on fire,
how king of the world cool
he looked sitting at the dinner-
table smoking and reading
the books I've grown to love,
and the look on my mother's
face when I was 10 years old
and set her house on fire.
my old elementary-
school teachers
the little girls
I learned about love with,
a few ex-girlfriends smoking
weed in nothing but my t-shirt.
my old apartments and who's
living in them now,
my old cars and who's
driving them now.
my brother and his wife
peacefully asleep,
my brother and his mistress
peacefully asleep,
my brother alone in bed
peacefully asleep.
the gods combing their
beards and smiling down
on me,
and my guardian angel
sitting some-where extremely
bored, begging me to
live recklessly again.
the gutters flowing
with rain I've danced in,
drinking buddies,
smoking buddies,
people I shot dope with,
cellmates, prison guards
and correctional officers,
cats and dogs
that were better friends
than human-
beings could
ever be,
the disoriented
birds who chirped
at night because
the lights were on,
and every once in a while
I think of you.
Eric Hamilton
(2 poems added 05.04.09)
Biography
And so we see man
Fill the sky with trash
Touch clouds
Uproot earth
Inhale
Exhale
Exhale
Tainted lungs
Concrete veins
Badged immunities
Immune disorder
Retaliation
Elimination
Retaliation
Swallow life
Smoke culture
Breathe deep
Laugh hard
Live
Laugh
Love
Sing old songs
Give dad wisdom
Meet a walrus
Speak with a mouse
Learn
Give
Grow
Paul E. Loher
(added 05.03.09)
Pimpin’ my Muse
Sittin’
and sippin’
Black Tazo Tea latte
in the outdoor Internet café
the one in the bad part of town
I give ‘em all
that come hither look
through my laptop screen
but sell myself
only to the wealthy,
the prestigious ones
who beg for my
pithy assets.
“I don’t come
cheap, friend,
but if you raise your
offer
we could make it
work.”
Deal done
contract signed
the message disappears
into cyber space
a binding oath
with subliminal repercussions.
Perhaps as long as months
or as short as a few days,
digitized or in pulp,
I get all tingly
inside anticipatin’.
Adrenaline pumps,
heart beats
fast
faster still
until the public
finally sees me
. . . naked . . .
in prose.
Then . . . the moment passes.
I return to my lair,
hunched over
like Rodin’s The Thinker,
light-up a cool menthol
and start anew
to sooth
the savage
in each of us
or excite
the dullest
of the bunch.
Okay, I admit it.
I am . . . a whore.
I am . . . a writer.
Joseph D. DiLella
(2 poems added 05.02.09)
Huh? Right? We told you so. This poetic place is a'hoppin'! Now with over 100 poets (and growing everyday), Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum is truly a poetic voice to be reckoned with. Check it out...right...NOW! You won't regret it. We promise.
Let these mad ones know what you think! Show these poets some love right here.
To view the entire Poetry Forum archive please click here.
Gas Mask Sitting Gauge (above) by K.R. Copeland/Jeff Crouch, our latest of over a dozen mad swirlin' resident artists being displayed in the Mad Gallery!
Hello our fellow mad ones. Wow, what a week it’s been! One of the most maddest Mad Swirl Open Mics in our history, tons of submissions filling our inboxes, brand new artists hanging in the gallery and lots’o’swirlin’ mad ideas and possibilities swimming in our heads. There’s more in store. Stay tuned!
But our true purpose today is to let you know what’s the MOST exciting happenin’ happening NOW and that is the Poetry Forum. The bar is a’risin’! These past several months have seen more and more mad ones coming our way. But don’t let us sway your view, check it out for yourself...
Welcome to our weekly taste of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum. Once again we have collected mad poetry from the maddest poets from all corners of this big & blue swirly marble and have showcased them here in the Forum just for you. The Poetry Forum is in flux, it’s a living and breathing, ever evolving and changing entity...so please come by and come by often for the latest swirling additions!
Life on Mars and Mimosas
Many people
often ponder the
question “Is there
life on Mars?”
And indeed,
that sort of question
can keep you
awake at night
scared that alien life forms
might be watching us
as we eat giant
spoonfuls of peanut
butter and watch
our HBO or Netflix
The greater question
"is there life on
Mars and do
these life forms enjoy
a good Mimosa
on Sunday morning?"
or Does the thought
of smoked salmon
turn their stomachs?
do they get stressed
out when someone
spells their name
wrong at the DMV?
as long
as they don’t go ‘postal’
they are fine with me
(from the book Heaven is a Giant Pawn Shop by Erbacce Press)
Melanie Browne
(2 poems added 05.08.09)
Acharit HaYamim
Says YHWH to the prophet, Go Daniel, for the things are closed up and sealed until the end time.
I.
This is not the end.
This is not the way it was supposed to end.
I am out of my mind with possibilities with futures with lives which I have only dreamed into being.
I am out of my mind with tent walls and tree shadows with spiders and their likeness with darkness in every corner but here.
I am out of my mind with here, with her, with whoever her is today. I am out of my mind with love.
Love, I am out of my mind. I have come for you at last. You are not a damsel after all and I am not a knight.
Love, you are siren and banshee, strychnine in this morning’s tea. You have come for me in Nebraska hotel rooms and Seattle apartments and beneath posters of Kerouac, you have come for me in the summer of ’95, have laid down for me and given me a son. Love, you have never come for me. You have left me each time not even a note on the dresser.
You brought me a drink once and forgot to charge me, Love. I had just taken the stage, so you left it where I was sitting.
You don’t return my phonecalls. I still owe you for the drink.
Love, I am out of my mind but it’s me not you.
Love, it is you.
II.
The covenant is broken, the curse is upon us.
This is not a global problem. This is you and me and the things we may or may not have said and the child we made and the shattering like a mirror and the disappearance of the image on the ground silver backing.
The curse is upon us, and the curse is us. This is the part about Daniel, the prophecy given but not explained. Go, Daniel, put these dreams away. I give you a vision of the end of days, but no key to explain it.
I have seen the end of days, and you are there, Love. You and I and the vessel you choose.
We are together, Love—you, me and the other. We are sagging and wrinkled and laughing. We are drinking the strychnine tea of the human body and watching with great interest our decline. We have come so far, only to see the prophecy was not a prophecy after all, but instead the natural state, our lives its disturbance.
Love, there is an obedience to you that is below the mortal span, and above it too. Love you are the mortal span, the natural state, the Messianic era. You teach us the Christ and the Phoenix so we can see destruction. You teach us rebirth.
I have laid you and confused you for the other, Love, the body is weak. I am naked now, alone in my bed, only pen and paper to cover me. I write your name on a fig leaf to hide my embarrassment.
Love, I use your name too much.
III.
Love, it is over.
I have come for you and you have come for me and we have come so far together, but now there is no body across from me. Love, I am alone. These are not the end of days, Love, these are the days you have given me. Love, you have given me nothing. Love, you have given me everything. Love, you have given your all to me and it is not enough. It is never enough. Love, you don’t stick to me like you should. Love, I am leaving. I am still alone. Love, I am dying. I have always been dying. It is the mortal condition.
Love, this is goodbye. Or not goodbye. Love, this is the end of days. Love, this is the beginning.
Love, this is the beginning.
Love, this is the beginning.
Love, this is the end.
Jim Coppoc
(3 poems added 05.07.09)
Just for today…
I.
tear-welling sting
inside
nicotine calm surrounds
my eyes
II.
Sunday was
longer than the
day you died
III.
sea air dances
on seagull wingtips
IV.
the rooster waits for me to finish
dreaming
V.
oboes sound
like a tired
lecture
VI.
metallic guitar
notes plucked
drift
VII.
she sees red
apples drop
she wants to fly
VIII.
oil-slick
algae bright
with sun
IX.
jaundiced
evening sun
feeble as a
knife-edge
X. (softshoe)
scratching scritching
leather on sand on concrete
delights the children of tourists
XI.
foggy silence
hovers between
pages of the musty
reference section
XII.
people in raincoats who don't care
wait for a bus to take them away
XIII.
sounds of morning
many
help spread the many
hues of day
XIV.
wanting more
wind giggles through
her hair
XV.
I step off
cold slate
platforms-
her eyes
XVI.
giving in
to curses,
invocations,
an obese freedom
XVII.
dressed in
a loose fitting
sky drips
from His hands
XVIII.
a polished
purple laugh
rings out
XIX.
a young girl
traced by the
sharpened morning sun-
arms limp.
XX.
she shakes dreams from her
hair (like) epileptic lighting
XXI.
he takes his gloves off
to shake with hands
moist with guilt
Jon Brodie
(3 poems added 05.06.09)
Not for Me
Not for me.
Don't unwind
the jack from the box
or make the sky come apart
for no good reason,
I am not a daffodil,
or a lion,
or a see-saw.
I am not a streetlight
traffic accident
or bus stop,
I cannot decompose
concrete, I cannot
recite the alphabet,
or drink whiskey,
I don't have
patience, I am not
worth doing,
not for me.
You can't say
that's not enough for me.
I am not too young
or too old;
I am not anything.
I am not a classroom
or a book,
I am not rainclouds,
raindrops, or sun.
I am not concise.
I am not baseball,
I am not a bicycle,
I am not binoculars,
a mountain range,
or a hole in the sky.
I am not
a strong military,
I am not a weak military,
I have no border
anywhere in this world,
I am not clothing.
I am not a car salesman
or a pellet pistol,
I am not a paper target.
I am not truth,
I am not untruth,
I am not here or there,
I have not ever,
nor have I not.
I am not a police
clash or a street
dancer. I don't ride
telephone poles
or make thunder,
I am not blind,
but I don't see.
Not me.
None of this for me
None of what is before me,
I am not the question
or the answer,
the solution
or the silence,
I am not a disco ball,
I don't have two left feet,
skin or teeth,
sunburns,
heartbeats,
eardrums,
I don't have any legs--
I don't have anywhere to go,
Nowhere not for me.
Chris Hamilton
(2 poems added 05.05.09)
yes, you.
before bed, as I lay
cloaked in dark
and the day becomes
less important,
I think of
a great
many things;
the cars I hear passing
and the faces of late night
travelers, splashed with
each others scattered
head-lights,
the cargo in graffiti-
smothered freight trains
that click clack and moan-
through night.
the people I love who
understand me enough
to love me,
the people I love who
understand me enough
to hate me.
my old sneakers
dangling from power-
lines in the slums of
Las Vegas,
Los Angeles,
and Hackensack.
the glimmer in that man's
eyes as he shot me five
times and the sound of
policemen splash-
stepping in my blood,
my manuscripts and selected
poems running through publishers'
paper-
shredders
as they sit legs crossed
sipping their coffee.
syringes and beer bottles
floating in the Hudson River,
bums at bonfires keeping warm
beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
the whores that just know
I'm somewhere writing about them,
Rilke, Neruda, Levy, Poe'
Whitman, Bukowski, Thompson
all in their caskets
and Salinger
shopping
for his.
crackheads in the laundry rooms
of project apartment buildings
scraping their pipes.
the fearful face of the boy
who stabbed me in the chest
and the way the world looked
through the sun-roof
of a honda civic as it flipped
into the drainage canal.
the look on my father's face
when I was 7 years old
and set his house on fire,
how king of the world cool
he looked sitting at the dinner-
table smoking and reading
the books I've grown to love,
and the look on my mother's
face when I was 10 years old
and set her house on fire.
my old elementary-
school teachers
the little girls
I learned about love with,
a few ex-girlfriends smoking
weed in nothing but my t-shirt.
my old apartments and who's
living in them now,
my old cars and who's
driving them now.
my brother and his wife
peacefully asleep,
my brother and his mistress
peacefully asleep,
my brother alone in bed
peacefully asleep.
the gods combing their
beards and smiling down
on me,
and my guardian angel
sitting some-where extremely
bored, begging me to
live recklessly again.
the gutters flowing
with rain I've danced in,
drinking buddies,
smoking buddies,
people I shot dope with,
cellmates, prison guards
and correctional officers,
cats and dogs
that were better friends
than human-
beings could
ever be,
the disoriented
birds who chirped
at night because
the lights were on,
and every once in a while
I think of you.
Eric Hamilton
(2 poems added 05.04.09)
Biography
And so we see man
Fill the sky with trash
Touch clouds
Uproot earth
Inhale
Exhale
Exhale
Tainted lungs
Concrete veins
Badged immunities
Immune disorder
Retaliation
Elimination
Retaliation
Swallow life
Smoke culture
Breathe deep
Laugh hard
Live
Laugh
Love
Sing old songs
Give dad wisdom
Meet a walrus
Speak with a mouse
Learn
Give
Grow
Paul E. Loher
(added 05.03.09)
Pimpin’ my Muse
Sittin’
and sippin’
Black Tazo Tea latte
in the outdoor Internet café
the one in the bad part of town
I give ‘em all
that come hither look
through my laptop screen
but sell myself
only to the wealthy,
the prestigious ones
who beg for my
pithy assets.
“I don’t come
cheap, friend,
but if you raise your
offer
we could make it
work.”
Deal done
contract signed
the message disappears
into cyber space
a binding oath
with subliminal repercussions.
Perhaps as long as months
or as short as a few days,
digitized or in pulp,
I get all tingly
inside anticipatin’.
Adrenaline pumps,
heart beats
fast
faster still
until the public
finally sees me
. . . naked . . .
in prose.
Then . . . the moment passes.
I return to my lair,
hunched over
like Rodin’s The Thinker,
light-up a cool menthol
and start anew
to sooth
the savage
in each of us
or excite
the dullest
of the bunch.
Okay, I admit it.
I am . . . a whore.
I am . . . a writer.
Joseph D. DiLella
(2 poems added 05.02.09)
Huh? Right? We told you so. This poetic place is a'hoppin'! Now with over 100 poets (and growing everyday), Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum is truly a poetic voice to be reckoned with. Check it out...right...NOW! You won't regret it. We promise.
Let these mad ones know what you think! Show these poets some love right here.
To view the entire Poetry Forum archive please click here.
Comments