::: A Taste of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum 11.27.09 :::
“A lot of people thought this dream must be madness, but we are not crazy.” Gloria Trevi
Regina (above) by L.A. painter Rob Tokarz, the latest addition to the 20 plus resident artists currently being displayed in Mad Swirl's color-filled Mad Gallery.
In case you missed it, here's a taste of the yummy poetry we featured this week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum...
LITTLE MONKEY POEM
I carry it in my pocket.
A little monkey poem on
a string. I take it out now
and then and drop it like
a yo-yo. The little monkey
poem dances like a do-do.
Sometimes I cut the string
and the little monkey poem
goes ape on the town. It
gets in all sorts of trouble.
I need to bail it out of jail.
Should I leave it at the zoo?
I don’t know what to do with
it. I feel responsible for what
it does sometimes. The little
monkey poem usually gets
out of line. I think I have
to give it away to someone.
- Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
(3 poems added 11.27.09)
•••••••••••
Strings in your Eyes
They always leave
and you're usually on empty,
they never stay even if you're open
until there is nothing to give them,
but the broken glass inside your thighs
and the tired strings falling from your eyes.
If you sold out when I suggested
you would be on full now
and not jaded outside Los Angeles
with nothing to count on but the tracks inside your shoes
and the light bulbs in his basement.
But this is the way it goes when
no one ever reaches the edge of the abyss
they get lost somewhere outside deer park
and fall prey to the antelopes and their mesmerizing dances.
If I ate last time then there would be no need for us.
but once again I crave the bulging deception of your arms.
two more and a tarantula could have us both
for dinner.
- Chloe Viner
(added 11.26.09)
•••••••••••
SPELUNKING
Her heart is quick
with the black void
that resides between stars.
Even though her beauty blinds you,
your love cannot save her
from the emptiness
and the galaxy sized journey
that, at the speed of light,
takes a million years.
Her silence is absolute
in the vacuum of space
and on the barstool next to yours.
She watches the bar-tide mirror
for empty stares, but the other patrons
see only the bottom of their beers.
She closes her ears to the restless din inside
and focuses on the unspoken desire
of the public room’s unaware sybils.
An hour before the bar-time Lotharios
hit the red shift, the blue shift
she removes herself from their gravity,
from this lit space where everyone sees
only the shell, but not the ghost inside
or the depths of heaven.
On her way out, she leans into you,
whispers in your ear, Close your eyes
to see the way out from this midnight cave.
- Kenneth P. Gurney
(3 poems added 11.25.09)
•••••••••••
Jon and Kate plus 8 is Garbage and They Make Me Want to Vomit
Drugs give us an escape hatch into a world of nothingness.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Seducing the mind with the taste of sweet elation
into something that wasn't, isn't and never will be.
making our lives a false sense of actuality.
It controls us. Uses us. Abuses us and confuses us.
We can't even rationally see reality.
I'm not talking about marijuana, cocaine, or meth-amphetamines
or caffine, barbituates, alcohol, or nicotine.
By devouring this drug at an alarming rate
we misplace our leverages
and shrug off our advantages.
This drug is free and available to all
in fact if you don't ingest it you might get called an odd ball.
Everyone does it, and the problem is only getting bigger
with the commercialization of our nation,
we have our materialistic fingers on the trigger.
Turn off the television.
The pushers aren't ghetto gangsters or thugs
they are church going white guys who buy expensive persian rugs.
The millions of people that starve each year
is similiar to the bonuses
that the blue-collar killers on Wallsteet cheer.
The pushers don't live in crack houses and on the streets
they live behind masks and are fancy on their feet.
Turn off the television, and turn on the mind.
For a an ounce of fun we pay the ultimate price
when we rewind Janet's boob shot, not once, not twice, but thrice.
We clamor to the set to see what's next
cause we like to watch a gruesome trainwreck.
It makes us crazy and affects our decision making.
making us think that everything is just there for the taking.
Nebulous at best, we shuffle to to the mall to buy more stuff.
because they've told us that to be happy we need more fluff.
They've talked us into thinking we have to work hard from nine to five
so we can buy what they tell us to buy,
and continue to materialistically strive.
We've pushed loved ones away and hurt them so
so we could pull up a chair and catch up on our tivo.
"I'm so down about today and can't take much more
I'm so tired now and fuck my chores.
I'll just watch this reality show for now, and will only be a minute
get away from me junior, can't you see i'm busy and i mean it.
I know this will come at a cost
but get away from me cause I gotta watch Lost"
No time for our kids as we have to ingest our television prescription
being absent parents was never our intention.
but the pushers have figured out for us.
How nice of them.
We can watch it together as a family, and get entranced
on our new flat screen that is HD enhanced.
Turn off the television, and turn on life.
Who are we to judge the alcoholic
who sucks 24-7 on gin and tonic.
How can we look down on the junkie
sucking on the pipe over by the tree?
ESPN, gossip stations and Enterainment TV,
it mangles our thoughts and aborts our mental capability.
We push away truth. we skirt responsibilty
by making our heroes those on Grey's Anatomy.
It's all controlled by the money hungry corporatocracy
and not like it used to be
as they strategically put us in their sights
when we sit down to watch the news at night.
Turn off the television, and turn on the love.
We are addicted, we have a problem, and we need help.
Too many stations,
too many options.
24 hour news networks with nothing to report
so they manufacture fear to put in our hearts
with incessant, meaningless scrolling updates.
fear is their schtick.
hoping you'll stay tuned, stay in your seat,
but in the end, they will twist the facts, and say they didn't cheat.
we get disinformation from talking heads and clowns.
putting them on pedestal and in their lies we all drown.
Hoping the "he said, she said" will keep us distracted
Taking our minds off reality so with the hysteria we will become infected.
There's cars, and trucks, computers and erectile drugs
and a bear that can soften your clothes in the dryer by giving them hugs?
We can't see what's in front of our faces
sayin, "I got the new I-phone, and that's what the facts is."
They make sure we don't think for ourselves and reach our full potential
because selling 30 second spots is essential.
By putting perfidious messages in front of our faces
they've criss-crossed our overpriced, sweat-shop-made shoe laces.
We are obedient comsumers
and have become creations and instead of creators.
We wait for a clock to punch,
please middle-aged manager, tell me "When I can eat my lunch?"
Turn off the television, and turn on independence.
turn off the television to stop letting them tell what you need
and infecting you with their pernicous greed.
Turn off the television, wake up and smell the roses.
cause we don't need to be keeping up with the joneses.
Turn off the television and realize that's never too late
to tune out Jon and Kate plus eight.
- Randal Scott
(added 11.24.09)
•••••••••••
Silent Whispers in the Darkness
For Debbie, my dead lover, on the 5th year since her death.
Beyond reach soft whispers
Come and go delicately;
I still reach for you.
I find only emptiness.
Silently the dawn breaks
My bound heart.
I still search for you
only to find cheating shadows;
Fragments, memories, phantoms;
Those gentle words you left behind.
The day finds me sitting alone,
with your words to keep me company
Lingering over these words
Each single connotation
wraps me in silence.
Through words I look back
To remembered yesterdays.
Those fleeting fading days
we spent together
Appealing to your words
I trace each one
looking for other possibilities,
meanings that can slide under
this cruel measure of reason.
So my days are spent
Reflecting on each slippery connotation
looking for something solid
to fill my heart.
These fragments only bind
my grieving heart to this distant present.
Still I measure each word
you left behind
what else can I do?
Lingering in this shadowy place
I am a prisoner walking the yard:
each word a step
in this struggle to find meaning.
Experience remains a tapestry
woven from loss and gain.
I am torn between a head
that reasons
and a tattered heart that knows.
Left to trace borderlines
I weigh possibilities
one past against another
Looking for connections;
experience still remains
wrapped in silence;
I will not let this rocky world
shatter me.
But memory is more than words,
A sound touches my heart
I am filled with another time
Emotion, impressions, colors
Flood over me,
but the distant moment returns me to myself.
Silence whispers into the night,
as I toss and turn
seeking you in my dreams.
I long for your wildness
Just one delicate embrace;
To reach beyond
To touch velvet softly the darkness.
Silence still whispers at dawn light;
My heart hungers, a lonely sax;
Desire moves past my blood;
bare tenderness
Longs to be touched.
I whisper your name into the night
You cannot answer me;
I remain tangled in desire.
- John Najjar
(1 poem added 11.23.09)
•••••••••••
reruns
woke up
in the truck again
outside
a friend’s house
hardly any improv left in me
another
two am
drunken
knife fight
with the girlfriend’s
doppelganger
typically happens
after we drain
three
or more
bottles of cabernet
when her shit faced epiphanies
about me
being like my father
materialize
like a patch of black ice
it’s a played out
clown show
know it pretty well
so
I do my best to
cue up the tears
at all
the wrong moments
and
nod off during gunfire
hence
86’d
and housed up
in a
GMC
as another morning
smiles
like a machete
- Ernie Culver
(added 11.22.09)
•••••••••••
I Think
I think, therefore I obsess.
I ruminate, I wander in my mind
with a lust for...
Never mind.
I think, therefore I judge, I muse
over things that should be taken
seriously.
Take myself too leniently.
I think, therefore I crave
I behave like my needs must be
met right away
Or I'll be upset and cry.
I think, therefore I lie.
The truth might accuse me, and
that could never be.
I think, therefore with care
Try to plan and figure out
All that is best for myself.
I think I think too much.
- Diane Boisvert
(added 11.21.09)
•••••••••••
The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We're swirling it here 24/7!
Your Mad Swirly Servants,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
“Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.” William Hazlitt
P.S. For our Big D Swirlers...
Mad Swirl kicks off each 1st Wednesday open mic night with a special opening "swirling it up" set that showcases a medley of featured mad ones.
0n 12.04.09, starting at 8:00, Mad Swirl will continue doing the poetic & musical open mic voodoo that what we do do. Join us in December when we feature the mad trio from Swirve! Dig the musical musings of Chris Curiel and Gerard Bendiks, along with poetic ponderings from Tamitha Curiel, Donna Renee Anderson and Tammy Gomez as as this swirvin' crew moves us and grooves us thru their feature set!
After we get our Swirve on, join host Johnny O and guest co-host Tamitha Curiel where they will be callin' all you mad poets, musicians, dancers, actors, singers, performers & any other miscellaneous mad ones in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to come & strut your mad stuff!
Where's all this madness take place? Why it takes place at Absinthe Lounge, located in the SouthSide on Lamar building.
1409 South Lamar Street • Dallas, TX 75215 (google map)
Swirve'n & Swirl'n It Up!
Regina (above) by L.A. painter Rob Tokarz, the latest addition to the 20 plus resident artists currently being displayed in Mad Swirl's color-filled Mad Gallery.
In case you missed it, here's a taste of the yummy poetry we featured this week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum...
LITTLE MONKEY POEM
I carry it in my pocket.
A little monkey poem on
a string. I take it out now
and then and drop it like
a yo-yo. The little monkey
poem dances like a do-do.
Sometimes I cut the string
and the little monkey poem
goes ape on the town. It
gets in all sorts of trouble.
I need to bail it out of jail.
Should I leave it at the zoo?
I don’t know what to do with
it. I feel responsible for what
it does sometimes. The little
monkey poem usually gets
out of line. I think I have
to give it away to someone.
- Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
(3 poems added 11.27.09)
•••••••••••
Strings in your Eyes
They always leave
and you're usually on empty,
they never stay even if you're open
until there is nothing to give them,
but the broken glass inside your thighs
and the tired strings falling from your eyes.
If you sold out when I suggested
you would be on full now
and not jaded outside Los Angeles
with nothing to count on but the tracks inside your shoes
and the light bulbs in his basement.
But this is the way it goes when
no one ever reaches the edge of the abyss
they get lost somewhere outside deer park
and fall prey to the antelopes and their mesmerizing dances.
If I ate last time then there would be no need for us.
but once again I crave the bulging deception of your arms.
two more and a tarantula could have us both
for dinner.
- Chloe Viner
(added 11.26.09)
•••••••••••
SPELUNKING
Her heart is quick
with the black void
that resides between stars.
Even though her beauty blinds you,
your love cannot save her
from the emptiness
and the galaxy sized journey
that, at the speed of light,
takes a million years.
Her silence is absolute
in the vacuum of space
and on the barstool next to yours.
She watches the bar-tide mirror
for empty stares, but the other patrons
see only the bottom of their beers.
She closes her ears to the restless din inside
and focuses on the unspoken desire
of the public room’s unaware sybils.
An hour before the bar-time Lotharios
hit the red shift, the blue shift
she removes herself from their gravity,
from this lit space where everyone sees
only the shell, but not the ghost inside
or the depths of heaven.
On her way out, she leans into you,
whispers in your ear, Close your eyes
to see the way out from this midnight cave.
- Kenneth P. Gurney
(3 poems added 11.25.09)
•••••••••••
Jon and Kate plus 8 is Garbage and They Make Me Want to Vomit
Drugs give us an escape hatch into a world of nothingness.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Seducing the mind with the taste of sweet elation
into something that wasn't, isn't and never will be.
making our lives a false sense of actuality.
It controls us. Uses us. Abuses us and confuses us.
We can't even rationally see reality.
I'm not talking about marijuana, cocaine, or meth-amphetamines
or caffine, barbituates, alcohol, or nicotine.
By devouring this drug at an alarming rate
we misplace our leverages
and shrug off our advantages.
This drug is free and available to all
in fact if you don't ingest it you might get called an odd ball.
Everyone does it, and the problem is only getting bigger
with the commercialization of our nation,
we have our materialistic fingers on the trigger.
Turn off the television.
The pushers aren't ghetto gangsters or thugs
they are church going white guys who buy expensive persian rugs.
The millions of people that starve each year
is similiar to the bonuses
that the blue-collar killers on Wallsteet cheer.
The pushers don't live in crack houses and on the streets
they live behind masks and are fancy on their feet.
Turn off the television, and turn on the mind.
For a an ounce of fun we pay the ultimate price
when we rewind Janet's boob shot, not once, not twice, but thrice.
We clamor to the set to see what's next
cause we like to watch a gruesome trainwreck.
It makes us crazy and affects our decision making.
making us think that everything is just there for the taking.
Nebulous at best, we shuffle to to the mall to buy more stuff.
because they've told us that to be happy we need more fluff.
They've talked us into thinking we have to work hard from nine to five
so we can buy what they tell us to buy,
and continue to materialistically strive.
We've pushed loved ones away and hurt them so
so we could pull up a chair and catch up on our tivo.
"I'm so down about today and can't take much more
I'm so tired now and fuck my chores.
I'll just watch this reality show for now, and will only be a minute
get away from me junior, can't you see i'm busy and i mean it.
I know this will come at a cost
but get away from me cause I gotta watch Lost"
No time for our kids as we have to ingest our television prescription
being absent parents was never our intention.
but the pushers have figured out for us.
How nice of them.
We can watch it together as a family, and get entranced
on our new flat screen that is HD enhanced.
Turn off the television, and turn on life.
Who are we to judge the alcoholic
who sucks 24-7 on gin and tonic.
How can we look down on the junkie
sucking on the pipe over by the tree?
ESPN, gossip stations and Enterainment TV,
it mangles our thoughts and aborts our mental capability.
We push away truth. we skirt responsibilty
by making our heroes those on Grey's Anatomy.
It's all controlled by the money hungry corporatocracy
and not like it used to be
as they strategically put us in their sights
when we sit down to watch the news at night.
Turn off the television, and turn on the love.
We are addicted, we have a problem, and we need help.
Too many stations,
too many options.
24 hour news networks with nothing to report
so they manufacture fear to put in our hearts
with incessant, meaningless scrolling updates.
fear is their schtick.
hoping you'll stay tuned, stay in your seat,
but in the end, they will twist the facts, and say they didn't cheat.
we get disinformation from talking heads and clowns.
putting them on pedestal and in their lies we all drown.
Hoping the "he said, she said" will keep us distracted
Taking our minds off reality so with the hysteria we will become infected.
There's cars, and trucks, computers and erectile drugs
and a bear that can soften your clothes in the dryer by giving them hugs?
We can't see what's in front of our faces
sayin, "I got the new I-phone, and that's what the facts is."
They make sure we don't think for ourselves and reach our full potential
because selling 30 second spots is essential.
By putting perfidious messages in front of our faces
they've criss-crossed our overpriced, sweat-shop-made shoe laces.
We are obedient comsumers
and have become creations and instead of creators.
We wait for a clock to punch,
please middle-aged manager, tell me "When I can eat my lunch?"
Turn off the television, and turn on independence.
turn off the television to stop letting them tell what you need
and infecting you with their pernicous greed.
Turn off the television, wake up and smell the roses.
cause we don't need to be keeping up with the joneses.
Turn off the television and realize that's never too late
to tune out Jon and Kate plus eight.
- Randal Scott
(added 11.24.09)
•••••••••••
Silent Whispers in the Darkness
For Debbie, my dead lover, on the 5th year since her death.
Beyond reach soft whispers
Come and go delicately;
I still reach for you.
I find only emptiness.
Silently the dawn breaks
My bound heart.
I still search for you
only to find cheating shadows;
Fragments, memories, phantoms;
Those gentle words you left behind.
The day finds me sitting alone,
with your words to keep me company
Lingering over these words
Each single connotation
wraps me in silence.
Through words I look back
To remembered yesterdays.
Those fleeting fading days
we spent together
Appealing to your words
I trace each one
looking for other possibilities,
meanings that can slide under
this cruel measure of reason.
So my days are spent
Reflecting on each slippery connotation
looking for something solid
to fill my heart.
These fragments only bind
my grieving heart to this distant present.
Still I measure each word
you left behind
what else can I do?
Lingering in this shadowy place
I am a prisoner walking the yard:
each word a step
in this struggle to find meaning.
Experience remains a tapestry
woven from loss and gain.
I am torn between a head
that reasons
and a tattered heart that knows.
Left to trace borderlines
I weigh possibilities
one past against another
Looking for connections;
experience still remains
wrapped in silence;
I will not let this rocky world
shatter me.
But memory is more than words,
A sound touches my heart
I am filled with another time
Emotion, impressions, colors
Flood over me,
but the distant moment returns me to myself.
Silence whispers into the night,
as I toss and turn
seeking you in my dreams.
I long for your wildness
Just one delicate embrace;
To reach beyond
To touch velvet softly the darkness.
Silence still whispers at dawn light;
My heart hungers, a lonely sax;
Desire moves past my blood;
bare tenderness
Longs to be touched.
I whisper your name into the night
You cannot answer me;
I remain tangled in desire.
- John Najjar
(1 poem added 11.23.09)
•••••••••••
reruns
woke up
in the truck again
outside
a friend’s house
hardly any improv left in me
another
two am
drunken
knife fight
with the girlfriend’s
doppelganger
typically happens
after we drain
three
or more
bottles of cabernet
when her shit faced epiphanies
about me
being like my father
materialize
like a patch of black ice
it’s a played out
clown show
know it pretty well
so
I do my best to
cue up the tears
at all
the wrong moments
and
nod off during gunfire
hence
86’d
and housed up
in a
GMC
as another morning
smiles
like a machete
- Ernie Culver
(added 11.22.09)
•••••••••••
I Think
I think, therefore I obsess.
I ruminate, I wander in my mind
with a lust for...
Never mind.
I think, therefore I judge, I muse
over things that should be taken
seriously.
Take myself too leniently.
I think, therefore I crave
I behave like my needs must be
met right away
Or I'll be upset and cry.
I think, therefore I lie.
The truth might accuse me, and
that could never be.
I think, therefore with care
Try to plan and figure out
All that is best for myself.
I think I think too much.
- Diane Boisvert
(added 11.21.09)
•••••••••••
The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We're swirling it here 24/7!
Your Mad Swirly Servants,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
“Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.” William Hazlitt
P.S. For our Big D Swirlers...
Mad Swirl kicks off each 1st Wednesday open mic night with a special opening "swirling it up" set that showcases a medley of featured mad ones.
0n 12.04.09, starting at 8:00, Mad Swirl will continue doing the poetic & musical open mic voodoo that what we do do. Join us in December when we feature the mad trio from Swirve! Dig the musical musings of Chris Curiel and Gerard Bendiks, along with poetic ponderings from Tamitha Curiel, Donna Renee Anderson and Tammy Gomez as as this swirvin' crew moves us and grooves us thru their feature set!
After we get our Swirve on, join host Johnny O and guest co-host Tamitha Curiel where they will be callin' all you mad poets, musicians, dancers, actors, singers, performers & any other miscellaneous mad ones in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to come & strut your mad stuff!
Where's all this madness take place? Why it takes place at Absinthe Lounge, located in the SouthSide on Lamar building.
1409 South Lamar Street • Dallas, TX 75215 (google map)
Swirve'n & Swirl'n It Up!
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