The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 04.02.11
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Emily Dickinson
Umbrageous (above) by featured artist, Kiki Curry, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery.
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we considered the implications of perpetual hunting rights, let go some black thoughts to hold on to everything else, perused a piglet's forty steps to physical fitness, regurgitated psychoanalyzed relationship dynamics onto parking lot pavement, pampered our Peter Pan complex with a plea for the perfect fit, soothed our salacious libidos in cosmic coital quantum's crook, lastly linking life's liberty to the proximity of place to put our precious bodily fluids.
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
•••••••••••
Hurry-up and Pee
is something I've thought of a million times
well, maybe only a half million
in so many different situations.
"Take this into the bathroom, sir,
and fill it to the thin blue line" said the uncaring technician
while I pray the poppy seed muffin from last night's dessert
doesn't disqualify me from another job
- even though it's only an online teaching gig.
"The cops are comin '- finish already!"
whispers my fifteen year old drinking buddy
as we piss in the park woods, like all bears would,
after downing a half case of beer.
"And there it goes - another towering homerun for Gonzales!"
shouts the broadcaster through the radio speaker mounted above my head
as I struggle to wiggle any drops out
in a standing room only stadium men's room.
"I can't stay in this position forever, darlin'",
purrs the kitty in the cozy bed
as I rush to little boy's room
to alleviate fluid build-up
of the uncomfortable kind
for the more kindly type.
And right now
as I frenetically type away
I need to finish this
before I . . . oh shit
never mind.
- Joseph D. DiLella
(1 poem added 04.02.11)
editor's note: Ultimately, our journey through life is just a series of anxious hops from one place to pee to the next place. Gotta go now... (Thanks a lot, Joseph!) - mh
•••••••••••
Centuries Lost
Pull me into the warmth of your arms where
I will be sequestered from life's frantic realities.
Soothe my soul with your breath upon my
open lips, tuck me within for but a moment,
protected from the sun's ever-consuming rays.
I am tired of free falling.
Hold me gently against your chest,
just let me lay and wearily rest
on the sand, the ever shifting sand.
Let me absorb the misplaced energy of
centuries spent as I inhale the vibration of you,
as spans of life times mingle and twist and
twine into and out of clandestine eras that
entangle in quantum's junction.
The knowledge that this…
is where I am to be,
as only a soul travelling aimlessly would perceive.
I have paid but one colossal fee ~
of centuries mislaid of you without me.
- Paula Dawn Lietz
(1 poem added 04.01.11)
editor's note: Where better to be in these cold cosmos than quantum's junction? I see Gaia, behind the galaxy, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! - mh
•••••••••••
When I Grow Up
I want to be a ballerina,
I want to be a secret agent
I want to be superman and wear my undies on the outside.
My 9-year-old self thought my 19 year old self
would be all of those things and more.
I want to be a healer
so when I touch a blind man’s fingertips
he sees my soul.
I want to smell like oranges
so tangerine and carmine explode
in his mind like fireworks illuminating darkness,
the friction between our fingertips
will ignite transient electricity
pulsing through our grip.
I want to be a gardener,
days of digging up dirt so
I may cradle
the seeds that grow smiles
on the faces of mothers
whose daughters pluck them daisies.
And when those daughters have daughters
they will lay daisies that
I have cradled
across their grandmothers’ graves.
And their tears will water the seeds
I have cradled
I have buried
for their grandmothers.
When I grow up
I want to be a dandelion
so people will pick me.
I want to be as beautiful as Helen
send a thousand ships across the sea,
I want to be as beautiful as Medusa
so you cannot look at me.
Yet I remain
the me that I am.
I am a lost toy on the island of misfits
I am a lost boy headed to the second star
Van Gogh never dreamed to paint.
I am the words you can’t seem to find
at the sight of something so lovely;
a sunset, ripples in bath water coming from your beating heart,
a note your lover left on the pillow.
I am a sock lost the wash
I am that song you can’t remember the name of
even though you know all the notes.
When I grow up
I want to be
Cinderella’s slipper
so I may have a place in the world where I fit
perfectly.
- Sarah Anne Stinnett
(added 03.31.11)
editor's note: Yes, let's grow up to be all of these things, while never growing up to lose our child-like desires and dreams.) - mh
•••••••••••
A Freud Kind Of Day
I’m at the Jack In The Box next to the auto mechanic
drinking a vanilla milkshake while reading a book
that my drunk poet buddy threw me,
examining cultural history in the context of
a radical reinterpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis.
It made me think of last night, coming out of
the Ozzy Rabbit Lodge, a local bar where they have
a mural of Ruby Shooting Oswald, on the wall.
I was vomiting in the parking lot, just below
the sign reading "smile you’re on camera."
It could have been the $1.25 PBR beer special
or perhaps the phone call with a friend
who said; “Faith in anything is meaningless,
we are all just a bunch of goofy monkeys
who only evolved intellect because it was sexy.”
It made me think of my beloved, before she left.
We had gotten so close and familiar that
when we were drunk and she decided that
I needed to vomit, she would hold me down
and stick her finger down my throat until I did.
Which is a pretty odd thing to see, yourself
vomiting on the hand of the woman you love,
particularly an Anal Retentive Germophobe.
The third time she did this was by a swimming pool
drinking till 6am with my poet buddy.
The same night he threw me the book, as he
watched us, shaking his head, a little weirded out.
He later suggested some type of Oedipal Mother
archetype control dominance dynamic.
The other friend suggested a more straight up
sexual reverse penetration/ejaculation
play rape reenactment dynamic.
Either way, admittedly, I did get off on it
in some vague not quite explainable way.
As I’m finishing the milkshake, the thought
occurs to me, that when my mad love returns,
beyond simply seeing a therapist together,
it might behoove me to read up on and study,
hell, even become and expert on,
Freudian Psychoanalytical concepts.
I think we've really got something there.
Outside the Jack In The Box I vomited
about half the vanilla milkshake
onto the pavement while some Ginger kid
on a motorcycle, looked at me strangely.
Leaned over forward, clearing my throat,
spitting like that, made me cry just a little bit.
It reminded me of her.
(08/2010)
- Paul Sexton
(2 poems added 03.30.11)
editor's note: A radical reinterpretation of Freud through Shakespearean tragi-comic parking lot character confession and gastrointestinal divination. (See another, heartfelt and bitter-sweet, from our worldly poet on his page.) - mh
•••••••••••
Off the Balcony, Bacon!
After working hours, is happy hour. Friends meet for cheap,
Carbohydrated drinks.
Instead she clocked out and came dressed in grey cotton, to sweat in
an apartment garage: Converted to a gym, padded with dumbbells.
I enjoy the view from my monthly lent balcony, and see
the trainer, my neighbor, command “Shoulders to knees!”
A barbarically behemoth body rolls, the piglet gives a grunt,
it runs up three stories (forty steps) and knocks at my door.
The trainer gets the straining belly rolling,
bulging, abs deep under her gargantuan bulb.
Ecstatically coaching a glacier into a sprint
or Jupiter to spin faster. Both could be easier.
Popping down three stories (forty steps), around
parked Mercedes’ and unlocked Mazdas, steam and smell from
my bag of popcorn pushes the sow back down
before she can sit-up—“Shoulders to knees!”—to number three.
- Tyler Malone
(1 poem added 03.29.11)
editor's note: Once again, our Peeping-Ty divulges what he sees from his vantage - larger than life and in smellivision. Oink! - mh
•••••••••••
Holding on
So it occurs to me that we are all holding on to one thing
or another: Standing on the pier’s tip, my palms gripped
firm around the railings, holding on.
The south wind terrifies me with its cry and carry on.
Black thoughts plague me and I contemplate launching myself
over the edge - though the moon looks so stunning tonight I
cannot - it appears to provide a great white corridor across
the ocean which I can access, and can also slide down. It
predicts new journeys, intriguing experiences? It highlights
an animated sea: a great piece of bubbling earth with waves
connected to it - cormorants, eiders, seagulls hanging on.
Sleep and shine on moon! And the stars extend forever and
to wherever and in pairs and eventually ignite my passion
for life anyway (the stars that I presumed dead, and that
remove themselves so quickly from the sky and my dreams).
And I have the most perfect, perfect conversation and
understanding with them.
Tramps gather underfoot: underneath the split planks
pissing each piece of faded silver away. Each sweaty,
casual silver coin, thumb-print-heavy copper coin,
equates to a label. The scene unfolds: I shift position
and lean over them, a spy (I am not interested in their
discussion only their hands, falling still and silent.)
Their palms gripped firm around swollen, green cider
bottles.
All of us holding on for a time.
- A. Swimmer
(1 poem added 03.28.11)
editor's note: Start with a let go, end with a hold on. Nice! Pass the bottle, please! - mh
•••••••••••
Bull, Sitting
“When the buffalo are gone,
we will hunt mice…”
when the mice are gone,
we will hunt land.
when the land is gone,
we will hunt coal.
when the coal is gone,
we will hunt oil.
when the oil is gone,
we will hunt Man.
when Man is gone,
we will hunt the buffalo
“..for we are hunters,
and we want our Freedom.”
- Brent Petroff
(added 03.27.11)
editor's note: Revisionist historians take heed! When only buffalo are left, there will be no one to clarify what really happened. But, no matter, there will be no one around to read that crap anyway. - 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...
Blown Away,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
•••••••••••
“Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
Is your i-mad-gination thirsty for some madness? Ours sure is. It seems like a whole month since the last time we swirled up some madness. Oh wait, it was! So, let's get our poetic and musical drink on, whaddya say?
On 04.06.11, starting at 8:00-ish, Mad Swirl will continue doing the open mic voodoo that what we do do! Join host Johnny O and co-host MH Clay, along with the musically magical trio Swirve and the usual unusual mad suspects as we do our darndest to both blow and open your minds. We will be callin' all you mystically mad poets, musicians, dancers, actors, singers, performers & any other miscellaneous mad ones in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to come & strut your mad stuff!
Come one, come all! Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to celebrate this open mic madness!
Interested in performing? Then show up the night of and get on the list!
Mad Swirl Open Mic: It's THE place to be on the first Wednesday of the month!
Where's this madness take place? Absinthe Lounge is at 1409 South Lamar Street, Dallas, TX 75215 (located in the SouthSide on Lamar building)
And please, by all means, FEEL FREE TO SPREAD THE WORD!
fo'mo'info' visit www.MadSwirl.com
Umbrageous (above) by featured artist, Kiki Curry, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery.
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we considered the implications of perpetual hunting rights, let go some black thoughts to hold on to everything else, perused a piglet's forty steps to physical fitness, regurgitated psychoanalyzed relationship dynamics onto parking lot pavement, pampered our Peter Pan complex with a plea for the perfect fit, soothed our salacious libidos in cosmic coital quantum's crook, lastly linking life's liberty to the proximity of place to put our precious bodily fluids.
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
•••••••••••
Hurry-up and Pee
is something I've thought of a million times
well, maybe only a half million
in so many different situations.
"Take this into the bathroom, sir,
and fill it to the thin blue line" said the uncaring technician
while I pray the poppy seed muffin from last night's dessert
doesn't disqualify me from another job
- even though it's only an online teaching gig.
"The cops are comin '- finish already!"
whispers my fifteen year old drinking buddy
as we piss in the park woods, like all bears would,
after downing a half case of beer.
"And there it goes - another towering homerun for Gonzales!"
shouts the broadcaster through the radio speaker mounted above my head
as I struggle to wiggle any drops out
in a standing room only stadium men's room.
"I can't stay in this position forever, darlin'",
purrs the kitty in the cozy bed
as I rush to little boy's room
to alleviate fluid build-up
of the uncomfortable kind
for the more kindly type.
And right now
as I frenetically type away
I need to finish this
before I . . . oh shit
never mind.
- Joseph D. DiLella
(1 poem added 04.02.11)
editor's note: Ultimately, our journey through life is just a series of anxious hops from one place to pee to the next place. Gotta go now... (Thanks a lot, Joseph!) - mh
•••••••••••
Centuries Lost
Pull me into the warmth of your arms where
I will be sequestered from life's frantic realities.
Soothe my soul with your breath upon my
open lips, tuck me within for but a moment,
protected from the sun's ever-consuming rays.
I am tired of free falling.
Hold me gently against your chest,
just let me lay and wearily rest
on the sand, the ever shifting sand.
Let me absorb the misplaced energy of
centuries spent as I inhale the vibration of you,
as spans of life times mingle and twist and
twine into and out of clandestine eras that
entangle in quantum's junction.
The knowledge that this…
is where I am to be,
as only a soul travelling aimlessly would perceive.
I have paid but one colossal fee ~
of centuries mislaid of you without me.
- Paula Dawn Lietz
(1 poem added 04.01.11)
editor's note: Where better to be in these cold cosmos than quantum's junction? I see Gaia, behind the galaxy, K-I-S-S-I-N-G! - mh
•••••••••••
When I Grow Up
I want to be a ballerina,
I want to be a secret agent
I want to be superman and wear my undies on the outside.
My 9-year-old self thought my 19 year old self
would be all of those things and more.
I want to be a healer
so when I touch a blind man’s fingertips
he sees my soul.
I want to smell like oranges
so tangerine and carmine explode
in his mind like fireworks illuminating darkness,
the friction between our fingertips
will ignite transient electricity
pulsing through our grip.
I want to be a gardener,
days of digging up dirt so
I may cradle
the seeds that grow smiles
on the faces of mothers
whose daughters pluck them daisies.
And when those daughters have daughters
they will lay daisies that
I have cradled
across their grandmothers’ graves.
And their tears will water the seeds
I have cradled
I have buried
for their grandmothers.
When I grow up
I want to be a dandelion
so people will pick me.
I want to be as beautiful as Helen
send a thousand ships across the sea,
I want to be as beautiful as Medusa
so you cannot look at me.
Yet I remain
the me that I am.
I am a lost toy on the island of misfits
I am a lost boy headed to the second star
Van Gogh never dreamed to paint.
I am the words you can’t seem to find
at the sight of something so lovely;
a sunset, ripples in bath water coming from your beating heart,
a note your lover left on the pillow.
I am a sock lost the wash
I am that song you can’t remember the name of
even though you know all the notes.
When I grow up
I want to be
Cinderella’s slipper
so I may have a place in the world where I fit
perfectly.
- Sarah Anne Stinnett
(added 03.31.11)
editor's note: Yes, let's grow up to be all of these things, while never growing up to lose our child-like desires and dreams.) - mh
•••••••••••
A Freud Kind Of Day
I’m at the Jack In The Box next to the auto mechanic
drinking a vanilla milkshake while reading a book
that my drunk poet buddy threw me,
examining cultural history in the context of
a radical reinterpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis.
It made me think of last night, coming out of
the Ozzy Rabbit Lodge, a local bar where they have
a mural of Ruby Shooting Oswald, on the wall.
I was vomiting in the parking lot, just below
the sign reading "smile you’re on camera."
It could have been the $1.25 PBR beer special
or perhaps the phone call with a friend
who said; “Faith in anything is meaningless,
we are all just a bunch of goofy monkeys
who only evolved intellect because it was sexy.”
It made me think of my beloved, before she left.
We had gotten so close and familiar that
when we were drunk and she decided that
I needed to vomit, she would hold me down
and stick her finger down my throat until I did.
Which is a pretty odd thing to see, yourself
vomiting on the hand of the woman you love,
particularly an Anal Retentive Germophobe.
The third time she did this was by a swimming pool
drinking till 6am with my poet buddy.
The same night he threw me the book, as he
watched us, shaking his head, a little weirded out.
He later suggested some type of Oedipal Mother
archetype control dominance dynamic.
The other friend suggested a more straight up
sexual reverse penetration/ejaculation
play rape reenactment dynamic.
Either way, admittedly, I did get off on it
in some vague not quite explainable way.
As I’m finishing the milkshake, the thought
occurs to me, that when my mad love returns,
beyond simply seeing a therapist together,
it might behoove me to read up on and study,
hell, even become and expert on,
Freudian Psychoanalytical concepts.
I think we've really got something there.
Outside the Jack In The Box I vomited
about half the vanilla milkshake
onto the pavement while some Ginger kid
on a motorcycle, looked at me strangely.
Leaned over forward, clearing my throat,
spitting like that, made me cry just a little bit.
It reminded me of her.
(08/2010)
- Paul Sexton
(2 poems added 03.30.11)
editor's note: A radical reinterpretation of Freud through Shakespearean tragi-comic parking lot character confession and gastrointestinal divination. (See another, heartfelt and bitter-sweet, from our worldly poet on his page.) - mh
•••••••••••
Off the Balcony, Bacon!
After working hours, is happy hour. Friends meet for cheap,
Carbohydrated drinks.
Instead she clocked out and came dressed in grey cotton, to sweat in
an apartment garage: Converted to a gym, padded with dumbbells.
I enjoy the view from my monthly lent balcony, and see
the trainer, my neighbor, command “Shoulders to knees!”
A barbarically behemoth body rolls, the piglet gives a grunt,
it runs up three stories (forty steps) and knocks at my door.
The trainer gets the straining belly rolling,
bulging, abs deep under her gargantuan bulb.
Ecstatically coaching a glacier into a sprint
or Jupiter to spin faster. Both could be easier.
Popping down three stories (forty steps), around
parked Mercedes’ and unlocked Mazdas, steam and smell from
my bag of popcorn pushes the sow back down
before she can sit-up—“Shoulders to knees!”—to number three.
- Tyler Malone
(1 poem added 03.29.11)
editor's note: Once again, our Peeping-Ty divulges what he sees from his vantage - larger than life and in smellivision. Oink! - mh
•••••••••••
Holding on
So it occurs to me that we are all holding on to one thing
or another: Standing on the pier’s tip, my palms gripped
firm around the railings, holding on.
The south wind terrifies me with its cry and carry on.
Black thoughts plague me and I contemplate launching myself
over the edge - though the moon looks so stunning tonight I
cannot - it appears to provide a great white corridor across
the ocean which I can access, and can also slide down. It
predicts new journeys, intriguing experiences? It highlights
an animated sea: a great piece of bubbling earth with waves
connected to it - cormorants, eiders, seagulls hanging on.
Sleep and shine on moon! And the stars extend forever and
to wherever and in pairs and eventually ignite my passion
for life anyway (the stars that I presumed dead, and that
remove themselves so quickly from the sky and my dreams).
And I have the most perfect, perfect conversation and
understanding with them.
Tramps gather underfoot: underneath the split planks
pissing each piece of faded silver away. Each sweaty,
casual silver coin, thumb-print-heavy copper coin,
equates to a label. The scene unfolds: I shift position
and lean over them, a spy (I am not interested in their
discussion only their hands, falling still and silent.)
Their palms gripped firm around swollen, green cider
bottles.
All of us holding on for a time.
- A. Swimmer
(1 poem added 03.28.11)
editor's note: Start with a let go, end with a hold on. Nice! Pass the bottle, please! - mh
•••••••••••
Bull, Sitting
“When the buffalo are gone,
we will hunt mice…”
when the mice are gone,
we will hunt land.
when the land is gone,
we will hunt coal.
when the coal is gone,
we will hunt oil.
when the oil is gone,
we will hunt Man.
when Man is gone,
we will hunt the buffalo
“..for we are hunters,
and we want our Freedom.”
- Brent Petroff
(added 03.27.11)
editor's note: Revisionist historians take heed! When only buffalo are left, there will be no one to clarify what really happened. But, no matter, there will be no one around to read that crap anyway. - 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...
Blown Away,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
•••••••••••
“Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
Is your i-mad-gination thirsty for some madness? Ours sure is. It seems like a whole month since the last time we swirled up some madness. Oh wait, it was! So, let's get our poetic and musical drink on, whaddya say?
On 04.06.11, starting at 8:00-ish, Mad Swirl will continue doing the open mic voodoo that what we do do! Join host Johnny O and co-host MH Clay, along with the musically magical trio Swirve and the usual unusual mad suspects as we do our darndest to both blow and open your minds. We will be callin' all you mystically mad poets, musicians, dancers, actors, singers, performers & any other miscellaneous mad ones in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to come & strut your mad stuff!
Come one, come all! Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to celebrate this open mic madness!
Interested in performing? Then show up the night of and get on the list!
Mad Swirl Open Mic: It's THE place to be on the first Wednesday of the month!
Where's this madness take place? Absinthe Lounge is at 1409 South Lamar Street, Dallas, TX 75215 (located in the SouthSide on Lamar building)
And please, by all means, FEEL FREE TO SPREAD THE WORD!
fo'mo'info' visit www.MadSwirl.com
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