The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 09.25.10
“You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” William S. Burroughs
Our True Nature (above) by painter Ellen McMahill, 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 a taste of the poetry we featured this week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum...
•••••••••••
No Looking Back
Take a real good look at me,
Wonder, and judge, and assume,
Figuring me out isn’t that easy,
I have battle scars, and wounds.
Try and see right through me,
There is nothing I have to prove,
You don’t know who I am,
But I definitely do.
I am a sister, and a daughter,
A partner, and a friend,
I have a path I am following,
And only I choose where it ends.
I will get out of here,
I will stay on track,
And when I get where I am going,
There will be no looking back.
Ashley Brianne Combs
(1 poems added 09.25.10)
editor's note: Agreed! Looking back while moving forward is an accident waiting to happen. My friends with children have the perfect adage for encouraging them to watch where they're going, "Eyes, nose and toes!" Right on! - mh
•••••••••••
Spring Cleaning
Maybe I should pick up all the scraps of people that make me and shove them into my pockets... dust out all the corners and empty all the drawers in my brain and take the clutter and clutch it tight to my chest. His blue eyes his thin hands his broad shoulders. Snatch up every sentence and stuff it into my bag. Look at you looking at me thinking about you framed in a picture clamped into my left hand. Stack up those books and tuck them under my right arm. Wrap that street around my waist, carry that spring breeze inside my lungs; braid that warm sun into my hair. Pour that river down my throat.
And then I’ll walk to your place, with the weight of these people and these cities and this misplaced affection slowing me down, but I’ll get there, and I’ll stand on your doorstep with my arms full and my pockets full and my body full and my brain empty because I just dumped it out. Here I am and here is everything and here’s a clean slate.
Jen Monte
(1 poem added 09.24.10)
editor's note: Then comes one to squeak chalk on her dusted heart, hoping to spend a cozy Winter, making another mess of clutter, cramming sweet cravings into overflowing drawers. Mostly looking to throw out the dustpan. - mh
•••••••••••
Hasta La Primavera
Ugly are the winter buildings covered in underwear.
Beneath, rats squeal and scurry
by the roaches which line the sewer walls
above shit filled water splashing over dams
of rotted refuse, plastic planes and broken glass.
Here, at the end of the world
is a gallery of spring painted in bright lines of blue.
Their swirls of new life snake around the rusted pipes
and ascend from the mountain tops of trash.
They draw strength from the discarded and grow in the glow of darkness.
Here, buried in bacteria is la primavera.
One day it will seize and free the city
and lead the people to the sun of summer.
Its shoots will broaden the vision of the streets
and shower gifts upon the forgotten.
Its blossom will flower in the squalid cracks
and replace our tired aesthetics with the glorious concepts of the new.
Hasta la primavera, para siempre.
J. H. Martin
(added 09.23.10)
editor's note: From the dregs of our collapse will come a new creation. Let's strive to survive with the cockroaches. Para siempre, indeed! - mh
•••••••••••
A Complaint Against My Lover
I can’t handle your love anymore
I cannot
Capsized in your laughter
The narcissist slept in its
Mephitic grave
On Friday the 13th
The bonybabes
Mesmerized it to be their
Masochist
I can’t handle your love anymore
I cannot
Last Halloween
The masochist revealed that
He had discovered ambrosia
“I shall make love with bonybabes
Ad infinitum
For they are meretricious”
I can’t handle your love anymore
I cannot
Last Christmas
The masochist
Turned victorious and revealed that
He was a sadist
No one got the jargon, his catharsis
I can’t handle your love anymore
I cannot
I’m jejune
I cannot handle your love anymore
I cannot
I only crave for more
Arun Budhathoki
(1 poem added 09.22.10)
editor's note: Run for your dictionaries, Mad Ones! I did! When better educated, I was overcome with death-smell, pain-loving, pain-inflicting, hypnotized, prostitute, junk-food love. I would complain, too, Arun! (But... I do have a thing for those bonybabes.) Nice one! - mh
•••••••••••
A Broken Muse.
A pitch-black vase
on a stone white floor,
lies in shattered pieces, out of place,
and the rose is no more.
The falling water drips
like a slowing heartbeat,
to a flowing river that slips
through each petal, each piece.
The dying rose, bruised,
and wilting as well,
was once a poet's muse,
and now here, fading, it dwells.
But yet, a shattered vase
and a dead red rose,
with it's sweet petals that fade,
and a small river that sadly flows,
All of these, just as they are,
they're all muses in themselves,
once representing heaven afar,
they now remind the mind of hell.
But without fire, torture, or pain,
or the absence of the Lord,
they represent its broken dreams,
and the lost soul that once flower'd.
They remind the poet also,
of the beauty and art of the abstract,
the dying petals between which life flows,
and the contrast of solid white and broken black.
Whatever the poet sees in the image,
one thing must never be confused,
that inspiration can be found in the perfect,
just as much or more as in a broken muse.
James "Bear" Rodehaver
(added 09.21.10)
editor's note: This is one of the many great poems in James Rodehaver's newly published Inverted Reflection. Click here to check out our review and a link to where you can get your own copy now. - mh
•••••••••••
Not about paradise
We are entitled to varnished dung.
Go ahead. Sculpt that guano Jesus
you’ve been dreaming up. Ofili
sacrificed so we could mold a heaven
of manure. The real fight’s not about
censorship, sanctity, ethnocentric
vision, aesthetics, or even Paradise
Lost—better to reign, right? It’s about
our limitless imagination in a distant
lakeside field where origami goslings
fertilize the floral pattern Fair Trade
coasters, crafted from old magazines,
who bow to the wind on bamboo
Chinese finger trap stems and catch
on their benefactors’ tethers, fishing
line tangled on the tire-tread ankles
of recycled mother geese, so when
they fly, they’re the most beautiful
papier-mâché kites you’ve ever seen.
Meaghan Russell
(added 09.20.10)
editor's note: Rethink the real fight, direct your energies elsewhere. Imagine that! - mh
•••••••••••
The Under the Bar Kitty
or What else but a meowing ode to Bukowski
Where else but in San Pedro
sitting where else but at a bar
I watch through what else
but the one and only window crack.
There’s this large what else
but dragonfly that buzzes around
what else but a pussy, cat tail that is.
It’s still very early in the morning
so it ain’t a hypnapompic hallucination.
The giant fly zaps the cat's
where else but her butt end
and when it leaps to kingdom come
my already sloshed girl friend
says that pussy must be into what else but
S&M and dominance.
St. Peter holds what else but a Vodka cock
tail that is and takes her what else but right
hand but it’s not what else you may think.
- Alex Nodopaka
(added 09.19.10)
editor's note: Hmmmm. Makes one reconsider the meaning of "cat call" and the origin of the cock... tail. Amen! - 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...
Authenticating,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Our True Nature (above) by painter Ellen McMahill, 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 a taste of the poetry we featured this week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum...
•••••••••••
No Looking Back
Take a real good look at me,
Wonder, and judge, and assume,
Figuring me out isn’t that easy,
I have battle scars, and wounds.
Try and see right through me,
There is nothing I have to prove,
You don’t know who I am,
But I definitely do.
I am a sister, and a daughter,
A partner, and a friend,
I have a path I am following,
And only I choose where it ends.
I will get out of here,
I will stay on track,
And when I get where I am going,
There will be no looking back.
Ashley Brianne Combs
(1 poems added 09.25.10)
editor's note: Agreed! Looking back while moving forward is an accident waiting to happen. My friends with children have the perfect adage for encouraging them to watch where they're going, "Eyes, nose and toes!" Right on! - mh
•••••••••••
Spring Cleaning
Maybe I should pick up all the scraps of people that make me and shove them into my pockets... dust out all the corners and empty all the drawers in my brain and take the clutter and clutch it tight to my chest. His blue eyes his thin hands his broad shoulders. Snatch up every sentence and stuff it into my bag. Look at you looking at me thinking about you framed in a picture clamped into my left hand. Stack up those books and tuck them under my right arm. Wrap that street around my waist, carry that spring breeze inside my lungs; braid that warm sun into my hair. Pour that river down my throat.
And then I’ll walk to your place, with the weight of these people and these cities and this misplaced affection slowing me down, but I’ll get there, and I’ll stand on your doorstep with my arms full and my pockets full and my body full and my brain empty because I just dumped it out. Here I am and here is everything and here’s a clean slate.
Jen Monte
(1 poem added 09.24.10)
editor's note: Then comes one to squeak chalk on her dusted heart, hoping to spend a cozy Winter, making another mess of clutter, cramming sweet cravings into overflowing drawers. Mostly looking to throw out the dustpan. - mh
•••••••••••
Hasta La Primavera
Ugly are the winter buildings covered in underwear.
Beneath, rats squeal and scurry
by the roaches which line the sewer walls
above shit filled water splashing over dams
of rotted refuse, plastic planes and broken glass.
Here, at the end of the world
is a gallery of spring painted in bright lines of blue.
Their swirls of new life snake around the rusted pipes
and ascend from the mountain tops of trash.
They draw strength from the discarded and grow in the glow of darkness.
Here, buried in bacteria is la primavera.
One day it will seize and free the city
and lead the people to the sun of summer.
Its shoots will broaden the vision of the streets
and shower gifts upon the forgotten.
Its blossom will flower in the squalid cracks
and replace our tired aesthetics with the glorious concepts of the new.
Hasta la primavera, para siempre.
J. H. Martin
(added 09.23.10)
editor's note: From the dregs of our collapse will come a new creation. Let's strive to survive with the cockroaches. Para siempre, indeed! - mh
•••••••••••
A Complaint Against My Lover
I can’t handle your love anymore
I cannot
Capsized in your laughter
The narcissist slept in its
Mephitic grave
On Friday the 13th
The bonybabes
Mesmerized it to be their
Masochist
I can’t handle your love anymore
I cannot
Last Halloween
The masochist revealed that
He had discovered ambrosia
“I shall make love with bonybabes
Ad infinitum
For they are meretricious”
I can’t handle your love anymore
I cannot
Last Christmas
The masochist
Turned victorious and revealed that
He was a sadist
No one got the jargon, his catharsis
I can’t handle your love anymore
I cannot
I’m jejune
I cannot handle your love anymore
I cannot
I only crave for more
Arun Budhathoki
(1 poem added 09.22.10)
editor's note: Run for your dictionaries, Mad Ones! I did! When better educated, I was overcome with death-smell, pain-loving, pain-inflicting, hypnotized, prostitute, junk-food love. I would complain, too, Arun! (But... I do have a thing for those bonybabes.) Nice one! - mh
•••••••••••
A Broken Muse.
A pitch-black vase
on a stone white floor,
lies in shattered pieces, out of place,
and the rose is no more.
The falling water drips
like a slowing heartbeat,
to a flowing river that slips
through each petal, each piece.
The dying rose, bruised,
and wilting as well,
was once a poet's muse,
and now here, fading, it dwells.
But yet, a shattered vase
and a dead red rose,
with it's sweet petals that fade,
and a small river that sadly flows,
All of these, just as they are,
they're all muses in themselves,
once representing heaven afar,
they now remind the mind of hell.
But without fire, torture, or pain,
or the absence of the Lord,
they represent its broken dreams,
and the lost soul that once flower'd.
They remind the poet also,
of the beauty and art of the abstract,
the dying petals between which life flows,
and the contrast of solid white and broken black.
Whatever the poet sees in the image,
one thing must never be confused,
that inspiration can be found in the perfect,
just as much or more as in a broken muse.
James "Bear" Rodehaver
(added 09.21.10)
editor's note: This is one of the many great poems in James Rodehaver's newly published Inverted Reflection. Click here to check out our review and a link to where you can get your own copy now. - mh
•••••••••••
Not about paradise
We are entitled to varnished dung.
Go ahead. Sculpt that guano Jesus
you’ve been dreaming up. Ofili
sacrificed so we could mold a heaven
of manure. The real fight’s not about
censorship, sanctity, ethnocentric
vision, aesthetics, or even Paradise
Lost—better to reign, right? It’s about
our limitless imagination in a distant
lakeside field where origami goslings
fertilize the floral pattern Fair Trade
coasters, crafted from old magazines,
who bow to the wind on bamboo
Chinese finger trap stems and catch
on their benefactors’ tethers, fishing
line tangled on the tire-tread ankles
of recycled mother geese, so when
they fly, they’re the most beautiful
papier-mâché kites you’ve ever seen.
Meaghan Russell
(added 09.20.10)
editor's note: Rethink the real fight, direct your energies elsewhere. Imagine that! - mh
•••••••••••
The Under the Bar Kitty
or What else but a meowing ode to Bukowski
Where else but in San Pedro
sitting where else but at a bar
I watch through what else
but the one and only window crack.
There’s this large what else
but dragonfly that buzzes around
what else but a pussy, cat tail that is.
It’s still very early in the morning
so it ain’t a hypnapompic hallucination.
The giant fly zaps the cat's
where else but her butt end
and when it leaps to kingdom come
my already sloshed girl friend
says that pussy must be into what else but
S&M and dominance.
St. Peter holds what else but a Vodka cock
tail that is and takes her what else but right
hand but it’s not what else you may think.
- Alex Nodopaka
(added 09.19.10)
editor's note: Hmmmm. Makes one reconsider the meaning of "cat call" and the origin of the cock... tail. Amen! - 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...
Authenticating,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
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