::: A Taste of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 07.31.09 :::

Jello Mirror (above) by the artistic dynamic duo K.R. Copeland & Jeff Crouch, just one example of over 20 artists currently showcased in Mad Swirl's Mad Gallery.

“A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.” Edmond de Goncourt

Hello our fellow mad ones and welcome back to our weekly taste of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum. As you may (or may not?) know, we have collected mad poetry from the maddest poets from all corners of this big & blue swirly marble and have showcased them here in our Poetry Forum just for you.

The Forum is in flux, it’s a living and breathing, ever evolving and changing entity...so please, please and please, come by and come by often to join in on the poetic conversations!

Here’s some of what’s been bouncing around lately…

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story teller

i lost track of the reasons
too long ago
to honestly list grievances.
i find myself where i am
and i don’t know how i got here.

i went out on a limb
and it snapped in pieces
and shattered my dreams.
now lies riddled in my past
and i leave it holy.

so many cigarettes smoked from
hotel room balconies
all alone.

spoons and blunts
like ghosts in my past.
does any of this really matter?
do yesterdays mean anything
more than time has passed?
and if what i think
i may have seen is true
will i be at peace when
the time comes
or will i long for a second chance
to finally and definitely make things right?

after all that has happened
should i think like this?

am i too old to think these thoughts?

searching for meaning is so cliché.

seeking peace of mind is so 2003.

now we pretend we have it
until we forget we don’t.

we live these lies
until they become reality
and the consequences take life
and strangle the possibilities
of what we could have been.
who have we become
and where did we leave
the us we once were?

if i could change the now
i don’t know if i would.
but i can't so the question is futile.
a wasted thought process
used to kill time.
i'm hungry for innocents,
i'm fiending for the feeling
of having nothing to lose
and nothing to prove.

slick sleeved
and scared out of my mind
at that seattle holiday inn.
a broke airman
unsure of what lies around the bend.
i was so happy and sure of myself.
3 flights and 2 time zones later
here i am.

i smoke newports like
the filters hold answers
to these questions.
like the fiber glass
could give me peace.

as i age
and this cigarette
is smoked down to air,
mr. clock still spins
if time is an illusion
then i'll be damned
if that ain't the best damn
magic trick i've ever seen.

in the auto-biography
that i call my 11 some odd years of writing,
there are huge holes in the story...
holes the size of trust...
trust that you will realize the truth.
and that truth is that
i can't put into words
9/10th's of my experiences

a camera's film couldn't contain
the scenes i've witnessed
and morgan freemen himself
couldn't bring enough omnipotence
in his voice to narrate my yesterdays

i dream in flashes and feelings,
snapshots and extremes
i wear the snapshots
like cinderblock sneakers
as they drag me down
below the surface...

beyond the mask i wear,
past the "real me"
i played off to that pretty little thing
to make her think i was deep...

but not unstable...

and there i lie
wrapped in my insecurities like wool
using my hate for the little things
and love for everything as a pillow
in a mind better suited for a bulldozer...
ready to tear down
this pile of bricks i call life
it's not prone to building...
wrecking balls can't create...
they only know how to destroy

you can curl up with me there...
where scars mean more
then a healed wound
we can spoon
and whisper sweet depressing nothings to each other
about how nothing is gonna work out...
and if this ain't rock bottom
i don’t know if i want to live long enough to see it

and countless don’t you hate it when’s
or don’t you hate people who's
or don’t you hate...me

but i've learned long ago
how to hide these slippery slopes
how to think my way out
of that watery grave of self loathing

and if i know anything
i know that
though you might think i'd be happier
getting it all off my chest
that passing cancer
for the sole reason
of splitting the damage
will never end well
you don’t want to hear my thoughts...
you want to hear your thoughts
spoken thru me
so i do that for you
its what i do...

i write about myself
and i tell you your story

Vincent Olson

(3 poems added 07.31.09)

Room 816, Bed 2

If it’s not your heart it’s your guts
he explained all white jacket all narcotic halo
all soft and tolerable

I counted the skyscraper pens in his pocket
remarked he might need a protector someday

He glanced up from his PDA hybrid strangely furrowed
as if I meant bodyguard or Jesus or something
so I adjusted my bed up slow mechanical agony and patience
slurring NO NO for your jacket the ink in your fourteen pens
laughing deep and exasperated and hoping the crotchety Czech nurse
would swoop around the periwinkle/ cobalt curtain with more dope

Smirking he brought me back around to where he seriously needed me:

In order to heal the hole in the gut
the sanctity of the heart must to be monitored and managed
a fine artful balance of anticoagulation and antibiotics

I could only think what’s the difference between acting
with your heart or your gut anyways

Shawn R. Misener

(2 poems added 07.30.09)

WHEN HE IS RIGHT

When he is right
you could not have
a better son.
He helps me with
his father, who
is old and frail.
He helps me in
the kitchen, with
the dishes and
preparing meals.
With my age I
cannot do too
much anymore
and I rely
on him to help
with things around
the house. I don’t
know what happened
to him. He was
fine and then he
was not. I think
he stopped taking
his medicine.
Someone he cared
about just died.
His girlfriend broke
up with him. I
don’t know what caused
him to lose his
senses. Since he
has been in the
hospital, he
seems much better.
He is the same
son that was kind
and helpful in
the house. When do
you think I could
take him home? If
he has to stay
longer, I will
abide by your
decision. But
he wants to come
home and I have
no problem with
taking him home.

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

(1 poem added 07.29.09)

The Streets of Tehran

Reading the Chicago Tribune
in the tea shop, I consider
addressing the woman focused
on her computer at the table
beside mine; but her fangs show,
and I’ve had enough blood drawn
this week, leaving me dizzy.
Darjeeling festers in my cup.
I’ve tried to numb it with milk
but it prefers sugar although
I never use the nasty stuff.

The news reads like a Dickens novel
but I stall on the follow-up
feature story on a woman
murdered in the streets of Tehran
by “Revolutionary Guards”
unable to properly guard
a revolution. For two days now
I’ve stifled tears for this woman,
shot through the heart as her father
escorted her through a crowd.

The computer-user sighs
and jots a note on a yellow
legal pad. She looks so efficient.
I never take notes anymore
because I can’t read my writing,
but if I did I’d note that today,
the twenty-fourth of June, a tear
escaped my disdain of sentiment
and sweetened a cup of Darjeeling.

The computer woman looks up,
locking a febrile green gaze
on my lack of focus. We sway
together a moment in space,
the streets of Tehran raving
about us, then in mutual shame
return to separate places.

William Doreski

(3 poems added 07.28.09)

JACKSON SQUARE

My walking soul,
borne on the blood leather
of my shoes,
scratches its skin
on the red uneven bricks
below my curious walking.

The aroma of gardenias melts from trees
like icing on warm days running
thick and sweetly;
crooked fingered branches above
reach stiff like the dead without life.

A snappy stringed guitar speaks
a singing story with the voice
of a man whose hands
work the music.

Sunrise catches me walking about
in the company of humid air,
holding me tightly in a fat warmth
at Jackson Square.

Roger G. Singer

(added 07.27.09)

old pine

I looked straight up from my desk and saw
my grandfather and my sister outside the
door through the glass I could see that my
normally stoic grandfather was in tears I
stood up and left without a word I walked into
the office and I told them simply that I had
to leave I think they probably knew what
was really going on

I said nothing on the drive home except to
ask papa to pull into the pharmacy so I could
pick up a gift it was my mother’s birthday
and I wanted to do a little something to make
her smile and it did if only for a second or two
but the little shit like that can keep you going
every once in a while

walking in through the house my house or
rather my parent’s house it’s my sister’s house
now it was just then full of people I didn’t want
to hear see talk to know they even existed one
of them it turned out to be ma’s minister looked
at me and started to speak but I cut him off “fuck
your god” and continued in to the bedroom to see
my old man’s corpse

pop and I never got along and I didn’t care two
shits about him until that very moment I was just
sixteen and hadn’t lived long enough to know the
man and I realized it then as I left the room without
a word and walked about fifty yards through the
woods sat down against a fat old white pine rolled
myself a couple joints smoked them both and cried
for an hour or four

I wrote my first poem against that tree that day
and if that old pine were still alive today I think
it would come up right through the floor of my porch
right about where I sit and write and I wonder if
maybe that has something to do with why my eyes
sometimes well up when I do

Yossarian Hunter

(3 poems added 07.26.09)

Boxing

the empty can of fruit
cocktail signals round two
of Tuesday night box-cutter boxing
under the overpass
at Peak and Nash
the prize
TBD

Jeffrey Qualls

09.04.1974 - 07.11.2009

(1 poem added 07.25.09)

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Well there you have it in all it's glorious poetic madness! We told ya' so! And if you like this taste, Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum is chock full of all different varieties of poetic tastinesseses. We now have over 100 poets on our menu and that number grows everyday! Check it out. Go ahead. Yes, right...NOW! You won't regret it. We promise.

Your Curators,

Johnny O
Chief Mad Man

MH Clay
Poetry Editor


P.S. For you mad ones out there that live in the greater DFW area, Mad Swirl Open Mic is swirlin' it up and doing the poetic and musical open mic voodoo that what we do do on 08:05:09. Join us and Swirve as we kick-off the night with with a special opening set showcasing some of the poets and musicians from DFW Open Mics who will be bringing us the Mochalux Experience. Then it's on to open mic madness when we gather together all the mad ones! Be there or be...

"Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.” - R.D. Laing