The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 11.26.11
“It doesn't matter what you believe just so long as you're sincere.” Charles Schulz
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we entered in famished feathers to eat fired crow that's best served cold; we slipped in the slew of homecoming, Kewpie-induced cow consternation just ahead of a storm; we deconstructed the grandiose deduction that originality resides within all, broke it down to disillusionment and deaf spite; we embraced the anxiety of souls adrift, drowning alone in such close proximity; we wallowed in whisky-drenched woe and retrospection, examined the trip-steps which led to our rejection; we looped into lapsed time, found our peace through fraternization with a "mild fantastic"; lastly, we gripped an intransigent truth, a god-borne, gut level gumption that injustice must ever be exposed by our spoken word. Feast and be thankful! - mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
A FORK IN THE ROAD
Don’t call this the end, my friend. It’s just a fork in the road.
I trudge to the left, into the unknown, inhaling faith, tasting
Fate on my parched lips. I enter a desert of unbearable
heat and sin.
I accept the natural flow of events and the inevitable passage
of time. But on this lonely road, I trudge through a
pitch-black darkness. All that is familiar is behind
me. Alone, I move ahead into the secret caverns of
my mind and spirit. In search of my higher self
and Hashem, my G-d, I travel across my private
wasteland.
My psychological-spiritual quest is mirrored by my
painful journey in the real world of human flesh and
ineffable sin.
I am a Jew. I accept G-d’s Will. Yet I believe it is G-d’s
intention that I protest against the evil of the world. I am
a Jew and an agent of ethical change. And when I see
injustice, I must speak out against it. I must fight for
the good. I believe this is Hashem’s command.
Now, I see another fork in the road. I turn left. And I travel
simultaneously across two realms-moving deeper into the
holy core of my being and outwardly, on the path of
social action in the real world. In the distance,
perhaps, is the Promised Land.
- Mel Waldman
(1 poem added 11.26.11)
editor's note: Don't have to carry a card, lift a label or stifle a stamp to speak out. So many forks require decision and forward movement, no matter the outcome - just keep speaking up to be heard in this darkness. We're all believers, called what you will. - mh
Salvation
How the out-world shines upon this lonely bar,
As I dwell here,
Drifting into the mild fantastic.
A recidivist recluse,
Preferring his own company,
The respiration of my tides
Bearing the vast consciousness of the somnambulant.
While my mind sanctifies the moment
With the inanimate right to breathe,
Sensing the instigation of lives foregone,
Returning to contiguous affairs of coeval enlightenment,
Rearing an examination of character
Amongst such dark interiors,
Becoming sufficiently acquainted with spirit.
Exhilarated by the sudden lapse of time
At the expense of indebted memories.
While the suns auriferous glaze gilds the sands,
Shaped by the ocean—like consciousness,
Reflected a thousand fold by the ebbing tides of night.
With reminiscences cleansed upon the shore
Marooned by this frivolous presence,
In a harmonious façade of contentment,
Braver than any emotion,
Conversing with ghosts,
Haunted by salvation
Within a world that’s dead.
- Anthony Ward
(added 11.25.11)
editor's note: Be absolved in whatever sanctuary claims your consciousness. Salvation comes through settling in with ghosts. - mh
You Will Be Alone With The Gods
Don’t worry about rejection, Taylor.
I have been rejected before,
But it isn’t the poetry that makes
The nights cold as winter under the sheets,
Or makes the girls with mouths like roses,
With bodies like sunset,
With bodies like thunder,
Stop knocking on your door.
Don’t worry, Taylor.
I have smoked twenty five cigarettes tonight,
And you saw all the beer.
The whiskey sets my soul furiously ablaze,
But it’s not the poetry that mutes the phone:
It’s the stale fluctuating factors,
It’s a text from an old lover,
It’s a broken shoelace,
It’s a hangnail,
It’s a psychologist scribbling on paper.
Meanwhile,
The phone has only rung once:
Wrong number.
- Robert D. Lyons
(added 11.24.11)
editor's note: Such is the lot of poets, or anyone, for that matter, who long for the lingering touch of that untouchable thing. Who you callin' "Taylor"? - mh
Islands
She feels awkward because she doesn’t talk
to other mothers in the playground.
She thinks they think she’s odd,
not the mothering kind.
It cuts, but she can’t tolerate the children’s cries
for the swings, roundabout, and slide.
She lets her husband get on with it,
and do what he has to do.
She wants a lover.
She’s a size 16 and used to be a 10.
She’s a facade, a housewife,
trapped in family bidding.
On Thursdays she goes to night-school.
She doesn’t actually like embroidery;
it’s independence.
The class has a male, but she wants
a MAN.
Her husband should know her,
but he’s too self-absorbed.
She’s him in a skirt.
He doesn’t talk to barbers,
and has to change them regularly.
He has poor sex, so he jacks off with magazines.
He’s 16 stone and out of shape. Who would he turn on?
He paints a glaze, and lives a robotic life.
He has one friend who never rings him up.
They drink.
It doesn’t register that with his wife,
they’re so fucking
alone.
(22/7/11)
- Michael Holme
(added 11.23.11)
editor's note: We hear, "No man is an island," ad nauseum. This one begs to differ; poetically, truthfully so. Bridges! Poets, all; conjure bridges! - mh
Music makes the people
I hate when people
go on and on
on Facebook
used to be Myspace
about how they love music
as if they’re unique
in their love for music
and the rest of us
don’t love music
Who doesn’t love music?
everyone I know listens to music
The only people
who I can think of
who might hate music
would be deaf people
out of spite
- Scott Jardany Lewis
(added 11.22.11)
editor's note: And then there's the other sensory-deprived folks who won't see the art-work, taste the haute cuisine, touch the sculpture nor feel the disappointment of all those critics who's aesthetic elitism will never appeal to them. - mh
COMING HOME
The cat has spit up its fur ball
and gone to the fair,
where the wheel is turning
and the Kewpie dolls stare.
Magnolias are in bloom.
But the sky is blackening,
blades of the windmill racing
toward the rain, and the owl’s
ruffled in its tawny coat.
It has arrived. It’s that time,
when the cows come home.
- William Page
(1 poem added 11.21.11)
editor's note: That dark Autumn sky is looming; gotta hurry while the barn door swings. Come on, Bossie! - mh
Journey of the Spirit
Having arrived
journey done
drifting on feathers
burnt through
a sputtering flame
licking its own wounds
after so many miles
millennia of appetite
and sky—
who would have thought
the earth would be so
cold?
- Neil Ellman
(1 poem added 11.20.11)
editor's note: A shivering soar and glide to roost, but not rest, on an empty stomach. Cold, indeed! - 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...
Believin' It,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we entered in famished feathers to eat fired crow that's best served cold; we slipped in the slew of homecoming, Kewpie-induced cow consternation just ahead of a storm; we deconstructed the grandiose deduction that originality resides within all, broke it down to disillusionment and deaf spite; we embraced the anxiety of souls adrift, drowning alone in such close proximity; we wallowed in whisky-drenched woe and retrospection, examined the trip-steps which led to our rejection; we looped into lapsed time, found our peace through fraternization with a "mild fantastic"; lastly, we gripped an intransigent truth, a god-borne, gut level gumption that injustice must ever be exposed by our spoken word. Feast and be thankful! - mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
A FORK IN THE ROAD
Don’t call this the end, my friend. It’s just a fork in the road.
I trudge to the left, into the unknown, inhaling faith, tasting
Fate on my parched lips. I enter a desert of unbearable
heat and sin.
I accept the natural flow of events and the inevitable passage
of time. But on this lonely road, I trudge through a
pitch-black darkness. All that is familiar is behind
me. Alone, I move ahead into the secret caverns of
my mind and spirit. In search of my higher self
and Hashem, my G-d, I travel across my private
wasteland.
My psychological-spiritual quest is mirrored by my
painful journey in the real world of human flesh and
ineffable sin.
I am a Jew. I accept G-d’s Will. Yet I believe it is G-d’s
intention that I protest against the evil of the world. I am
a Jew and an agent of ethical change. And when I see
injustice, I must speak out against it. I must fight for
the good. I believe this is Hashem’s command.
Now, I see another fork in the road. I turn left. And I travel
simultaneously across two realms-moving deeper into the
holy core of my being and outwardly, on the path of
social action in the real world. In the distance,
perhaps, is the Promised Land.
- Mel Waldman
(1 poem added 11.26.11)
editor's note: Don't have to carry a card, lift a label or stifle a stamp to speak out. So many forks require decision and forward movement, no matter the outcome - just keep speaking up to be heard in this darkness. We're all believers, called what you will. - mh
Salvation
How the out-world shines upon this lonely bar,
As I dwell here,
Drifting into the mild fantastic.
A recidivist recluse,
Preferring his own company,
The respiration of my tides
Bearing the vast consciousness of the somnambulant.
While my mind sanctifies the moment
With the inanimate right to breathe,
Sensing the instigation of lives foregone,
Returning to contiguous affairs of coeval enlightenment,
Rearing an examination of character
Amongst such dark interiors,
Becoming sufficiently acquainted with spirit.
Exhilarated by the sudden lapse of time
At the expense of indebted memories.
While the suns auriferous glaze gilds the sands,
Shaped by the ocean—like consciousness,
Reflected a thousand fold by the ebbing tides of night.
With reminiscences cleansed upon the shore
Marooned by this frivolous presence,
In a harmonious façade of contentment,
Braver than any emotion,
Conversing with ghosts,
Haunted by salvation
Within a world that’s dead.
- Anthony Ward
(added 11.25.11)
editor's note: Be absolved in whatever sanctuary claims your consciousness. Salvation comes through settling in with ghosts. - mh
You Will Be Alone With The Gods
Don’t worry about rejection, Taylor.
I have been rejected before,
But it isn’t the poetry that makes
The nights cold as winter under the sheets,
Or makes the girls with mouths like roses,
With bodies like sunset,
With bodies like thunder,
Stop knocking on your door.
Don’t worry, Taylor.
I have smoked twenty five cigarettes tonight,
And you saw all the beer.
The whiskey sets my soul furiously ablaze,
But it’s not the poetry that mutes the phone:
It’s the stale fluctuating factors,
It’s a text from an old lover,
It’s a broken shoelace,
It’s a hangnail,
It’s a psychologist scribbling on paper.
Meanwhile,
The phone has only rung once:
Wrong number.
- Robert D. Lyons
(added 11.24.11)
editor's note: Such is the lot of poets, or anyone, for that matter, who long for the lingering touch of that untouchable thing. Who you callin' "Taylor"? - mh
Islands
She feels awkward because she doesn’t talk
to other mothers in the playground.
She thinks they think she’s odd,
not the mothering kind.
It cuts, but she can’t tolerate the children’s cries
for the swings, roundabout, and slide.
She lets her husband get on with it,
and do what he has to do.
She wants a lover.
She’s a size 16 and used to be a 10.
She’s a facade, a housewife,
trapped in family bidding.
On Thursdays she goes to night-school.
She doesn’t actually like embroidery;
it’s independence.
The class has a male, but she wants
a MAN.
Her husband should know her,
but he’s too self-absorbed.
She’s him in a skirt.
He doesn’t talk to barbers,
and has to change them regularly.
He has poor sex, so he jacks off with magazines.
He’s 16 stone and out of shape. Who would he turn on?
He paints a glaze, and lives a robotic life.
He has one friend who never rings him up.
They drink.
It doesn’t register that with his wife,
they’re so fucking
alone.
(22/7/11)
- Michael Holme
(added 11.23.11)
editor's note: We hear, "No man is an island," ad nauseum. This one begs to differ; poetically, truthfully so. Bridges! Poets, all; conjure bridges! - mh
Music makes the people
I hate when people
go on and on
on Facebook
used to be Myspace
about how they love music
as if they’re unique
in their love for music
and the rest of us
don’t love music
Who doesn’t love music?
everyone I know listens to music
The only people
who I can think of
who might hate music
would be deaf people
out of spite
- Scott Jardany Lewis
(added 11.22.11)
editor's note: And then there's the other sensory-deprived folks who won't see the art-work, taste the haute cuisine, touch the sculpture nor feel the disappointment of all those critics who's aesthetic elitism will never appeal to them. - mh
COMING HOME
The cat has spit up its fur ball
and gone to the fair,
where the wheel is turning
and the Kewpie dolls stare.
Magnolias are in bloom.
But the sky is blackening,
blades of the windmill racing
toward the rain, and the owl’s
ruffled in its tawny coat.
It has arrived. It’s that time,
when the cows come home.
- William Page
(1 poem added 11.21.11)
editor's note: That dark Autumn sky is looming; gotta hurry while the barn door swings. Come on, Bossie! - mh
Journey of the Spirit
Having arrived
journey done
drifting on feathers
burnt through
a sputtering flame
licking its own wounds
after so many miles
millennia of appetite
and sky—
who would have thought
the earth would be so
cold?
- Neil Ellman
(1 poem added 11.20.11)
editor's note: A shivering soar and glide to roost, but not rest, on an empty stomach. Cold, indeed! - 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...
Believin' It,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
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