::: A Taste of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum 12.04.09 :::
“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.” Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Untitled (above) by Dallas photographer extraordinaire Brian Guilliaux, one of over 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...
3 times
I made her happy today
yet I know nothing of love
is love a conjunction a cataract a corollary
a crease
a circumference
if a conjunction, where does it join, what joins, what fastenments required
is it an illusion fueled by convention, by want ... an evolution refining
could it be storytelling ... a specialized fiction
a leap of faith
or
a frisky fetish event, an entertainment
is it a failing an achievement
a trophy
a form of self-abuse
is it a salutation, a sunrise, or an
err
a forfeiture
an inseam
a surcease an eruption a cavalry a stampede a mustang bathing in a pond of absinthe
a wreck a reconstitution an obeisance
a dramatic supersession
a pair of wet galoshes
a gulag
7 days in a week
times 3
I’ll go with that
- Heller Levinson
(1 poem added 11.04.09)
•••••••••••
apology
sorry for the slow reply
I’ve been sick again,
spitting air,
haunting town without a face
(this face no longer valid)
hungry words flock
to define me:
'cut-price', 'reheated', 'uneven'…
so uneven I’ve been cutting
around the gardens rather than through,
fear fresh breath of pines
will make me retch
watched by a list of eyes,
tailed by some voodoo priest
giving off his dark light
no call for music,
food
mostly hide tight
up in this one-window bedsit
flicking switches
experimenting with the light
gazing down
at the playhard kids
rewiring themselves,
scalping tickets to fastland
they’re ready
to ambush me with scissors,
milk the meds out
although wait for it, the icing:
my phone is dead
(I killed it)
but enough of me,
how are you?
please accept this
small peace offering:
a freshly picked posey
of eyelashes
- Stu Hatton
(added 12.03.09)
•••••••••••
Madonna
As she lays there, sprawled out naked on the bed snoring like a muffler, I can't help thinking back to when I found her body exciting. Her breasts, once like suns, perfect circles of resurrection, are now just two lumps of fat crossing the line onto my side of the bed. Her gum wrapper was perfumed like blushing orchids ready to blossom. It tempted my eyes, was host for my eager hands, but now it's an affront to my senses. We used to fantasize about bringing lovers into our pillowed-alter, but now she is absent in my dreams. She has become an empty Hallelujah. Something I kiss in the morning.
- Glenn Lyvers
(added 12.02.09)
•••••••••••
The Wind Blew Away the Young
(Dedicated to the memory of Kurt Vonnegut)
Down the fallen flamed millenniums
The endless, obscene burnings
Of the innocent, the kind, the young;
Into the carnaged abyss of the sinking goddess' son
Emperor Hirohito, the Incarnate daemon struts,
Safe and secure (with his war-lording generals)
In their godless ease, this son not dying until
Later in a cancerous hell of '89, long after
The 300,000 'children' of Nanking bled
Through eternity in the burning breeze--
The helled wind blew away the young sons;
As did General LeMay in the nighttime hail marying
Of incendiary clusters, magnesium so white and cancered,
The napalm carpet-bombing of half a million civilians
Into twisting, torched fiery sacrifices,
Far more Molochian than any other war officer,
Burning excess in 6 'Baalful' hours than any ever,
From the glowing end of his clenched cigar,
The devil's phallus, loaded awards, medaled to his grill
Piled high the burned flesh of the armless ones--
The helled wind blew away the young sons,
Including "Little Boy" who fire-wiped the eyes
Of the thousands of children, dropping them
Like small millstones to Gehenna’s depth
Until their irises hissed, melted, and ran down
Their flamed faces next to where their immaculate
Mothers’ flesh encrusted the fired town walls thanks
To Officer Tibbets the superfortress flyer out of the Pit
Stating, “Hell yeah, I’d do it again," the infernal total war lie,
Loaded with cigars in shirt pockets and plane holds
Out-Heroding Judah's king, but Rachel weeps--
The helled wind blew away the young sons.
Yet now the Yanks castigate Palestine's killers
When they suicide bomb a dozen or more citizens
Who have blatantly stolen their life and land,
But every killer’s a terrorist in sheepskin,
Vile the heart of the accusers who excuse
The slaughter of the civilians without arms--
The helled wind blew away the young sons.
Against the rising demonic sun ship and plane
Medal of Honor winners Gilmore and Doss
Fought with courage, the former in his deadly sub
The latter with his Bible and bandages, all alone
Rescuing 69 wounded, abandoned Americans
Off a sheer cliff under relentless machine-gun fire
Without killing a Nippon's son or child or babe--
The helled wind blew away the young sons.
Vonnegut, the third of these valorous ones
Warrior of honor who sought the right,
Before he died recently as it always goes
When he cursed the obscenity of total war
For its helled wind blows away the young,
The old, the sincere, the loving, the kind,
The patient and the wise as did it once
When the world was cruelly young,
Descending into the helled wind--
Killing an only beloved dear son.
*Howard Gilmore, sub commander who, when wounded while in up in the conning tower by a Japanese arms ship, told his crew to close the hatch and take her down. He died bleeding in the salt sea so that many Americans including his crew could live free.
Desmond Doss refused a war deferment, yet refused to pick up a rifle, and later rescued the commanding officer who had tried to kick him out of the army. Later when Doss was wounded, he saw another soldier more wounded than him and insisted the stretcher-bearers set him down and take the other soldier. He spent two years in the hospital after the war ended. The soldiers who had ridiculed him later searched the battlefield for his lost Bible. He came to save lives not to kill the innocent or even the guilty.
(U.S. News and World Report)
- Daniel E. Wilcox
(2 poems added 12.01.09)
•••••••••••
caint find the car
I'm just sittin at the bar
cause i cannot find the car
did i even drive it here?
bartender please another beer
well maybe i drove the truck
yeah i think i'll go and look
to see if it is there
bartender please another beer...
Well i was in a hurry
to get to the grocery
to buy the things you'd sent me there to buy
but they were divested
of all the things that you requested
and so i was a headed to the other spot
but when i got outside
into the parking lot
our little car was there
but now it's not.
well i'm guessin it was tookin
so i got the cops a lookin
and though a rather shookin
it was then that i had this thought occur to me
well if i was that little car
where in the world would i be
so i headed hurriedly
to the bar to go and see
if our little car had made it there.
but gosh darned my luck
it really isn't fair
of course the car it wasn't there
and then i was just standin there
worried and wonderin hard on what to do.
and though it was just at first
i drank a beer to quench my thirst
i believe it was to calm my fears
that i drank the next two beers
cause i was just sittin there
too scared to try or even dare
call you up to tell you what was what.
and so i looked
high and wide
but our little car
i ne'er did find
and though the cops
looked all around
our little car
they never found
it was getting late
they had given up...
but then i bet you caint guess what...
well it was then that Johnny noticed
the Chevy truck that he had sold us
was just sittin there in the grocery parking lot.
well lo and behold em
our car it was not stolen
in fact it was the truck
i'd driven there.
bartender please another beer
and so the cops they had
their little laugh
and bought me another draft
and then theys told me
eyes too drunk to drive
and just as sure as i have
never lied
i'd knowed you'd want me
home alive
and so it was
just to be safe
that it was
that little waif
of a cocktail waitress drove me here.
bartender please another beer.
Well, thanks for lettin me try it
but do you think my wife will buy it?
please tell me now
truly
be sincere...
and hell
i'll buy you another beer...
- Jesse Doughty
(added 11.30.09)
•••••••••••
Ode to an Organizer
Shiny new rivets
adorned the rusted grain silo
like a diamond necklace
around the neck of a proud
but infirm lady
with gout, colitis and hearing loss
celebrating her 100th birthday
amongst loved ones.
But like the senior,
primed with lipstick, hair dye and a pretty dress
nothing could change the reality:
like any old woman,
the wheat collector’s best days
had passed
decades earlier.
Did anyone care?
Not the owner.
Not the foreman.
Not the wholesaler.
No love was lost
on the dirt poor factory workers
in the Southwest High Plains of New Mexico
except for one man -
Jack Johnson.
But neither the safety expert
and the recently formed
union membership realized
the day Jack climbed the stairs
to the top of the heap
to check the beauty
of the beast
would be remembered so vividly,
told and retold
from father to son,
for years to come.
Swinging on the second floor
above a metal grate,
a slender piece of metal, bent, twisted,
signed, Do Not Open While Smoking,
blew in the breeze
like a checker flag on a final lap,
near the shaky ladder
and equally unstable
oxidized steel platform.
Regardless of the peril,
Jack
the man
of conscience,
the man
of morality,
the man
of selfless dedication
to those under his leadership,
ignored any and all warning signs
and continued his ascent
on the day laborers rested.
The morning
Jack Johnson finally rested
in peace
his widow sobbed,
his children wept,
and his men cast suspicion
on the union buster
standing across the street
who leaned against
his brand new red truck
who crushed a butt,
a Marlboro,
under the heel
of his polished cowboy boots.
across from the local cemetery gate.
The story goes
as the union leader inspected
the cleanliness
of the air ducts
for a dangerous build-up
of filth and fine particles
in the concrete granary cylinder
an explosion
and subsequent mushroom cloud
looked and felt like
Fat Boy dropped from a U.S. bomber
on Nagasaki, leaving nothing behind
but Jack’s local badge number – 777.
The police chief claimed
Jack must have been careless
by smoking
and lit the spark
that ignited the blaze
creating a crater
the size of the dark side
of the moon.
Everyone at Willy’s Bar
cried in the small town that night
- except the owner
who cashed in
on a million dollar
insurance coverage
the very next week
of a business gone awry.
Johnson’s men
to this day
hail Jack,
the fallen,
as the saint
who inspected dangerous conditions
so many had complained of
so many had feared
would take their lives one day.
In fact, each night
before their monthly meetings,
men sing about the legend
who gave up smokes
five months before
and the devil
who snuck up behind him
and knocked the hero unconscious
before scampering down the silo ladder
like a rat running along top
a rope of a ship
docked to a pier.
Tears are always shed
when the song ends
with the murderer
running to his Bronco,
shooting from a great distance
only a sharpshooter
like he could do
to trigger the spark
that left only the soul
of a great man
and a bit of a Marlboro
cigarette butt in the dust...
- Joseph D. DiLella
(3 poems added 11.29.09)
•••••••••••
Force
I dreaded this defeat
Yet I still let you in
I let you knock me off my feet
I let you beat me once again
I hold no regrets
Absolutely no remorse
We all play by our own sets
No one loses by force
- Sayre
(added 11.28.09)
•••••••••••
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!
Swirlingly Yours,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
“The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason.” Hermann Broch
Untitled (above) by Dallas photographer extraordinaire Brian Guilliaux, one of over 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...
3 times
I made her happy today
yet I know nothing of love
is love a conjunction a cataract a corollary
a crease
a circumference
if a conjunction, where does it join, what joins, what fastenments required
is it an illusion fueled by convention, by want ... an evolution refining
could it be storytelling ... a specialized fiction
a leap of faith
or
a frisky fetish event, an entertainment
is it a failing an achievement
a trophy
a form of self-abuse
is it a salutation, a sunrise, or an
err
a forfeiture
an inseam
a surcease an eruption a cavalry a stampede a mustang bathing in a pond of absinthe
a wreck a reconstitution an obeisance
a dramatic supersession
a pair of wet galoshes
a gulag
7 days in a week
times 3
I’ll go with that
- Heller Levinson
(1 poem added 11.04.09)
•••••••••••
apology
sorry for the slow reply
I’ve been sick again,
spitting air,
haunting town without a face
(this face no longer valid)
hungry words flock
to define me:
'cut-price', 'reheated', 'uneven'…
so uneven I’ve been cutting
around the gardens rather than through,
fear fresh breath of pines
will make me retch
watched by a list of eyes,
tailed by some voodoo priest
giving off his dark light
no call for music,
food
mostly hide tight
up in this one-window bedsit
flicking switches
experimenting with the light
gazing down
at the playhard kids
rewiring themselves,
scalping tickets to fastland
they’re ready
to ambush me with scissors,
milk the meds out
although wait for it, the icing:
my phone is dead
(I killed it)
but enough of me,
how are you?
please accept this
small peace offering:
a freshly picked posey
of eyelashes
- Stu Hatton
(added 12.03.09)
•••••••••••
Madonna
As she lays there, sprawled out naked on the bed snoring like a muffler, I can't help thinking back to when I found her body exciting. Her breasts, once like suns, perfect circles of resurrection, are now just two lumps of fat crossing the line onto my side of the bed. Her gum wrapper was perfumed like blushing orchids ready to blossom. It tempted my eyes, was host for my eager hands, but now it's an affront to my senses. We used to fantasize about bringing lovers into our pillowed-alter, but now she is absent in my dreams. She has become an empty Hallelujah. Something I kiss in the morning.
- Glenn Lyvers
(added 12.02.09)
•••••••••••
The Wind Blew Away the Young
(Dedicated to the memory of Kurt Vonnegut)
Down the fallen flamed millenniums
The endless, obscene burnings
Of the innocent, the kind, the young;
Into the carnaged abyss of the sinking goddess' son
Emperor Hirohito, the Incarnate daemon struts,
Safe and secure (with his war-lording generals)
In their godless ease, this son not dying until
Later in a cancerous hell of '89, long after
The 300,000 'children' of Nanking bled
Through eternity in the burning breeze--
The helled wind blew away the young sons;
As did General LeMay in the nighttime hail marying
Of incendiary clusters, magnesium so white and cancered,
The napalm carpet-bombing of half a million civilians
Into twisting, torched fiery sacrifices,
Far more Molochian than any other war officer,
Burning excess in 6 'Baalful' hours than any ever,
From the glowing end of his clenched cigar,
The devil's phallus, loaded awards, medaled to his grill
Piled high the burned flesh of the armless ones--
The helled wind blew away the young sons,
Including "Little Boy" who fire-wiped the eyes
Of the thousands of children, dropping them
Like small millstones to Gehenna’s depth
Until their irises hissed, melted, and ran down
Their flamed faces next to where their immaculate
Mothers’ flesh encrusted the fired town walls thanks
To Officer Tibbets the superfortress flyer out of the Pit
Stating, “Hell yeah, I’d do it again," the infernal total war lie,
Loaded with cigars in shirt pockets and plane holds
Out-Heroding Judah's king, but Rachel weeps--
The helled wind blew away the young sons.
Yet now the Yanks castigate Palestine's killers
When they suicide bomb a dozen or more citizens
Who have blatantly stolen their life and land,
But every killer’s a terrorist in sheepskin,
Vile the heart of the accusers who excuse
The slaughter of the civilians without arms--
The helled wind blew away the young sons.
Against the rising demonic sun ship and plane
Medal of Honor winners Gilmore and Doss
Fought with courage, the former in his deadly sub
The latter with his Bible and bandages, all alone
Rescuing 69 wounded, abandoned Americans
Off a sheer cliff under relentless machine-gun fire
Without killing a Nippon's son or child or babe--
The helled wind blew away the young sons.
Vonnegut, the third of these valorous ones
Warrior of honor who sought the right,
Before he died recently as it always goes
When he cursed the obscenity of total war
For its helled wind blows away the young,
The old, the sincere, the loving, the kind,
The patient and the wise as did it once
When the world was cruelly young,
Descending into the helled wind--
Killing an only beloved dear son.
*Howard Gilmore, sub commander who, when wounded while in up in the conning tower by a Japanese arms ship, told his crew to close the hatch and take her down. He died bleeding in the salt sea so that many Americans including his crew could live free.
Desmond Doss refused a war deferment, yet refused to pick up a rifle, and later rescued the commanding officer who had tried to kick him out of the army. Later when Doss was wounded, he saw another soldier more wounded than him and insisted the stretcher-bearers set him down and take the other soldier. He spent two years in the hospital after the war ended. The soldiers who had ridiculed him later searched the battlefield for his lost Bible. He came to save lives not to kill the innocent or even the guilty.
(U.S. News and World Report)
- Daniel E. Wilcox
(2 poems added 12.01.09)
•••••••••••
caint find the car
I'm just sittin at the bar
cause i cannot find the car
did i even drive it here?
bartender please another beer
well maybe i drove the truck
yeah i think i'll go and look
to see if it is there
bartender please another beer...
Well i was in a hurry
to get to the grocery
to buy the things you'd sent me there to buy
but they were divested
of all the things that you requested
and so i was a headed to the other spot
but when i got outside
into the parking lot
our little car was there
but now it's not.
well i'm guessin it was tookin
so i got the cops a lookin
and though a rather shookin
it was then that i had this thought occur to me
well if i was that little car
where in the world would i be
so i headed hurriedly
to the bar to go and see
if our little car had made it there.
but gosh darned my luck
it really isn't fair
of course the car it wasn't there
and then i was just standin there
worried and wonderin hard on what to do.
and though it was just at first
i drank a beer to quench my thirst
i believe it was to calm my fears
that i drank the next two beers
cause i was just sittin there
too scared to try or even dare
call you up to tell you what was what.
and so i looked
high and wide
but our little car
i ne'er did find
and though the cops
looked all around
our little car
they never found
it was getting late
they had given up...
but then i bet you caint guess what...
well it was then that Johnny noticed
the Chevy truck that he had sold us
was just sittin there in the grocery parking lot.
well lo and behold em
our car it was not stolen
in fact it was the truck
i'd driven there.
bartender please another beer
and so the cops they had
their little laugh
and bought me another draft
and then theys told me
eyes too drunk to drive
and just as sure as i have
never lied
i'd knowed you'd want me
home alive
and so it was
just to be safe
that it was
that little waif
of a cocktail waitress drove me here.
bartender please another beer.
Well, thanks for lettin me try it
but do you think my wife will buy it?
please tell me now
truly
be sincere...
and hell
i'll buy you another beer...
- Jesse Doughty
(added 11.30.09)
•••••••••••
Ode to an Organizer
Shiny new rivets
adorned the rusted grain silo
like a diamond necklace
around the neck of a proud
but infirm lady
with gout, colitis and hearing loss
celebrating her 100th birthday
amongst loved ones.
But like the senior,
primed with lipstick, hair dye and a pretty dress
nothing could change the reality:
like any old woman,
the wheat collector’s best days
had passed
decades earlier.
Did anyone care?
Not the owner.
Not the foreman.
Not the wholesaler.
No love was lost
on the dirt poor factory workers
in the Southwest High Plains of New Mexico
except for one man -
Jack Johnson.
But neither the safety expert
and the recently formed
union membership realized
the day Jack climbed the stairs
to the top of the heap
to check the beauty
of the beast
would be remembered so vividly,
told and retold
from father to son,
for years to come.
Swinging on the second floor
above a metal grate,
a slender piece of metal, bent, twisted,
signed, Do Not Open While Smoking,
blew in the breeze
like a checker flag on a final lap,
near the shaky ladder
and equally unstable
oxidized steel platform.
Regardless of the peril,
Jack
the man
of conscience,
the man
of morality,
the man
of selfless dedication
to those under his leadership,
ignored any and all warning signs
and continued his ascent
on the day laborers rested.
The morning
Jack Johnson finally rested
in peace
his widow sobbed,
his children wept,
and his men cast suspicion
on the union buster
standing across the street
who leaned against
his brand new red truck
who crushed a butt,
a Marlboro,
under the heel
of his polished cowboy boots.
across from the local cemetery gate.
The story goes
as the union leader inspected
the cleanliness
of the air ducts
for a dangerous build-up
of filth and fine particles
in the concrete granary cylinder
an explosion
and subsequent mushroom cloud
looked and felt like
Fat Boy dropped from a U.S. bomber
on Nagasaki, leaving nothing behind
but Jack’s local badge number – 777.
The police chief claimed
Jack must have been careless
by smoking
and lit the spark
that ignited the blaze
creating a crater
the size of the dark side
of the moon.
Everyone at Willy’s Bar
cried in the small town that night
- except the owner
who cashed in
on a million dollar
insurance coverage
the very next week
of a business gone awry.
Johnson’s men
to this day
hail Jack,
the fallen,
as the saint
who inspected dangerous conditions
so many had complained of
so many had feared
would take their lives one day.
In fact, each night
before their monthly meetings,
men sing about the legend
who gave up smokes
five months before
and the devil
who snuck up behind him
and knocked the hero unconscious
before scampering down the silo ladder
like a rat running along top
a rope of a ship
docked to a pier.
Tears are always shed
when the song ends
with the murderer
running to his Bronco,
shooting from a great distance
only a sharpshooter
like he could do
to trigger the spark
that left only the soul
of a great man
and a bit of a Marlboro
cigarette butt in the dust...
- Joseph D. DiLella
(3 poems added 11.29.09)
•••••••••••
Force
I dreaded this defeat
Yet I still let you in
I let you knock me off my feet
I let you beat me once again
I hold no regrets
Absolutely no remorse
We all play by our own sets
No one loses by force
- Sayre
(added 11.28.09)
•••••••••••
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!
Swirlingly Yours,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
“The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason.” Hermann Broch
Comments