The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 06.12.10

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” John Lennon


Dream #1 (above) by our newest featured artist... mad poet now mad painter Sergio A. Ortiz , one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery.

Just in case you missed it, here's just a taste of the poetry we featured this week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum...

•••••••••••

Our last supper

when you take
hope off the table
and serve me
stone cold
reality
without
any side
wishes
while leaving
me thirsty
for more
and then
when you
go and
desert me
and tell me
to wake up
and smell
the coffee
you have
not sweetened
well then
you have
not fed
my body
nor my spirit
and you leave
me with
no choice
but to go
to Starbucks

Ivan Jenson

(2 poems added 06.12.10)

editor's note: It's good to know we can still count on our good ole' American Consumer Icons to fill the voids we have from unfulfilled relationships. I'll take a venti drip with no room, thanks! (Ivan has just joined out growing list of Contributing Poets. Check out his new page for some more great poetry.) - mh

•••••••••••

Crazy

"Am I going crazy?"
Footsteps echoing
Doors creaking
"Not yet"
Wheels rolling
Pages turning
Bags rustling
"Am I going crazy?"
"Not yet"

Creaking
Coughing
Clapping
Swooshing
"You going out?"
"Not yet"

The chatter in the distance
How I long to belong to that
Trash overflowing
Flip flops clicking
"Am I going crazy?"

Heather Lenoir

(added 06.11.10)

editor's note: All the noise we hear everyday, going out, going crazy. It's no wonder we're manic. Until they take out the trash, I think I'll stay in. - mh

•••••••••••

An Atheist facing Death

Shadows running from the scorching light
the world a lantern parade
we can only run in circles;
staying still
we evade the light

I long to express the intangible;
the unborn, the unmade, unsaid.
To form my heart into a womb
for the unborn;
a still point that transcends the space that enfolds it.

The whispers I wish to hear are yet to have been spoken, are silent,
beyond substance.
Such ecstatic sighs ? that remain just out of reach lingering in the wind,
howling screams unimagined, uncreated.

I hunger for the inexpressible;
to craft this silence into words.
To glimpse through the bars of this prison cell.
To speak the illusive and inexpressible.
To pin down these inner silences
That tear so at my being;
Locked in silence
Each of us must hold
This loneliness to our chest.

So I write, and my poised heart cries out,
as it strokes vague longings
intangible resolutions
that move through my experience of succession.
I look for another way
to hold reason and passion in tension.

To an outside that is beyond my grasp,
this outside that is inside me.
Inarticulate it moves beyond my grasp;
remaining beyond me;
Sitting outside me
There in the world
That beats inside my chest.

Unresolved contradictions crowd in upon me
as I look towards a dark horizon
where shadows juxtapose dissimilar images
erasing the known.

These images intertwine into frightening shapes
forming reflections that are not one but many;
tearing myself from myself
I know this pale future laughs at my futile attempts
To avoid knowledge too painful to face.

Searching the world for beautiful metaphors will always be a self-depleting process;
What I find there is only insubstantial shadows;
Words and images
merely a woolly rug to place around the self;
something to protect against a cold unbearable contingency.

Though is it because I search only for the how of? things?
Should I simply take delight in existence;
that something exists instead of nothing;
that the World is?
Love is the mystical made manifest.

And it is true at night in the darkness
under star light, and delicate moonlight
there are certainties;
encircling arms, embracing touch, the warmth of breath;
undeniable.

John Najjar

(3 poems added 06.10.10)

editor's note: These sound like the words of a fledgling god - straining to bring out "the world that beats inside my chest." Begs the question, "If g-d created life in the void, but there was no one to worship, would there be any life at all?" (Thanks to John Najjar, our poet friend from down-under! See two more new ones from John on his page.) - mh

•••••••••••

Just for the Hell of it: Will Angels Bear Witness and Watch over the Left Side of My Next Oil Change?

Inverted, reverse smiles, walked for miles on end, travelling towards the valley of the glass slipper pyramids..., spearmint unicorns danced and shined, like a laser in the rotting, dead, monster’s left eye..., we’re all tourists on the end of angry, cosmic, fists, waiting to smash this broken life and assign us the pain deserved..., candy canes, birthday wishes, and squished praise, grind between cosmic, gnashing, teeth..., helpless beasts yet to be re-leashed..., we’re spineless ignorants sewn to the only pine tree..., a bouquet of trapped shame wrapped in cellophane jealousy, we zealously prance and pray, while we spray the universe with sin..., most experience is a conical spider-web of embarrassment and regrets. I found a line of despair under a pair of laughing chairs next to my oversized chair, laughing and pointing at my futile declarations of misperceived confidence..., hope is a chemical symphony on a blade in a sea of grass, it’s gonna be our ass when the lawnmower comes...

Eric J. Brinovec

(2 poems added 06.09.10)

editor's note: Here is an encouraging word from Eric B. for our life-long, landscaping endeavor: "Duck!" - mh

•••••••••••

EATING THE MESSAGE

Thornton raised budgies, minahs, cockatoos, canaries

a few rare birds, but his trade hung in homing pigeons.
Released from the fingertip of his windy, hill home
birds flew to Mexico, Brazil, Massachusetts, Skokie.
Most accurately managed to meet sky-high schedules,
some so strong they negotiated the static storms
while others found high mesa currents like the stones
in a zen garden: around then back to the track.

One pigeon, her feathers pink as early twilight,
developed a problem: She would fly halfway to
her destination, then somehow change her mind.

Standing around all these smelly birdcages as kids
we imagined Bessie heading up out of Guadalajara,
taking a right around Austin and then failing to come
straight in. Bessie, a real Injun scout, that bird:
drunk on firewater in a pea-sized brain heading out
over the high desert, probably near Albuquerque.
Sure. We called each other Bessie as our joke.

I wish she would make up her mind, Old Thornton
told us, shrugging his shoulders. She gets the call
then something goes wrong. Maybe she's thinking
'There's a shiny object!' or 'There's a traffic cone!'
and up and plain forgets about her homing-sense.

We'd laugh. Bessie often returned to Thornton
in a cage: UPS Ground would deliver her, delicate,
pinkish feathers creased, neck bleeding pus
the poor thing terrified, and her leg-tag? Halfway
chewed off. Found by some New Mexico child.

Think of the Monarch Butterflies, Thornton mused,
moving around an invisible mountain on instinct....
Yeah. Bessie'd be the one not to make it. Too busy
checking gnawing clues from deep in the sky:
houses, water towers, highway lane reflectors,
television antennae, bulldozer noise. Yes, Bessie
untouched by her primitive navigation, he'd joke;
Bessie hung on a cross of air, reading roadsigns.

Mr. Thornton later was imprisoned for trade in heroin.

Gordon Hilgers

(1 poem added 06.08.10)

editor's note: Without UPS, we have no clear definition of home, sweet home. No address, no destination? That's for the birds! We could all just take a flyer . . . Who you callin' "Bessie"? - mh

•••••••••••

Fridays

Treacherous gateway frenemies,
Fridays snigger behind pursed lips
At the boundless potential you
Think they promise.

“Scant hours of labor will lead
To the weekend! Every project,
Every needed pause to breathe,
Every playtime will be consummated,
Consumed upon the tables of your temporal repasts!

Hefty fistfuls of near-infinite hours
Will unfold, like so,
Will lounge and spread themselves before you
Like passels of sweet, creamy, easy girls who share your hobbies
But respect your usual yokes,
the burdens laid weekly across your shoulders,
And who just think you deserve some ‘me-time,’ some ‘us-time,’
Some timeless eons of bliss.
Why not?”

Is that what you think?

Fridays have connections and insights.
They spot the indelible stain on Saturday’s carpet
--Keep scrubbing, the company is coming--
And Sunday’s mounting dread at spilling sand.
And Monday’s return to form.

And Fridays laugh and wait for you to fall again.

In fact, Tuesday has already received the snarky email.

John Buckley

(added 06.07.10)

editor's note: Friday is promise; Monday is reproach - or - satisfaction. Depends on how well one runs up the sandhill. - mh

•••••••••••

mccarran pool

pink floyd stops
paints a picture of earthworms
in the earth
in dirt

the whole entire city smiles
because it knows
how to trick my eyes
inside any park

where creeks run dry
and puerto ricans sing
eww, eww, eww
ahh, ahh, ahh

all feeling is minor

Adam Moorad

(added 06.06.10)

editor's note: Sometimes a simple, trick picture is enough. "Presto" and we feel like singing with the earthworms and the Puerto Ricans, "eww, eww, eww." - mh

•••••••••••

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 year, every decade, 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'll be here...

Dreamin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

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