The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 05.12.12
“'And now,' cried Max, 'let the wild rumpus start!'” Maurice Sendak
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we read a recipe for random raconteurs; we knocked angst from near-death experience; we drifted in dream-state wonder, a door ahead, a key to find; we fondled fey fruit to find failed offspring; we encountered coffin cyber-communication, kept incommunicado; we redefined four apocalyptic equestrians, left blank the undefined epithet for an age; finally, we dropped the divine pharmacopeia in the dust-bin, 'cuz crap is ever destined for destruction. Wow, feels like we done somethin', don't it? - mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
The Drugs Don't Work
Don't.
Sleep when exhaustion
spreads its arms to strangle you,
rage at the constant sway of worlds,
of words, letters sharpened, whetted
to a deadly edge, they will not hurt you.
Grief rises in the empty well,
and you piling stones,
making molehill mountains.
Pull bricks from the walls,
the gaping absence becomes footholds.
Climb stones, expose your feet,
cling with long nails of your toes,
they are not stigmata,
just another cross you have to bear.
Use it to hold your weight,
it's all it's meant to do.
Mass opiate, they smoke it
on the way to church on Sunday,
Monday, any day will do.
A speaker tells you how to live
while hidden 'neath the pulpit,
a dirty soapbox carries him away.
Dream as the bells beckon,
your vision has more truth
than any laws made up by hypocrites.
Pundits smile in squares, rectangles,
getting larger with technology,
smaller with implants, you forget
and it sounds like your conscious.
There is no arbitrator, Jane was murdered
the day they found her making sense,
now the Cochlear whispering in your ear
says "KILL, KILL", you will return a hero,
they'll throw pills from the balconies,
leaving marks upon your skin
looking strangely like rough groups of sixes.
Sixes are lucky numbers, the double
trinity of hallucinogens you would not take.
When parades are over the chosen illegals
will sweep them up, into gutters
where the rats will drink the water.
But you, you take your liquids from a virgin bottle,
knowing always that the drugs don't work.
© 2012
- Rose Morales
(2 poems added 05.12.12)
editor's note: This one can be tough to kick; the high is overpowering, laced with incense and dogma. Equate your awaiting the hammer fall to withdrawal symptoms. Once you're clear, you're clear; no back-sliding into this "righteousness." (Another one from Rose on her page - how to lose weight until invisible.) - mh
Four Shetland Pony Dark-Riders in a Polo Match with Croquet Hammers:
They wanted to put him in a tuxedo but he slew his would-be suitors in cold blood and ate cole slaw. His barking laugh naturally attracted wild packs of dogmatics. To define is to negate unless you express to create. There are those who create; there are those who destroy; there are those who create to destroy; and there are those who destroy to create. Let's blow up the sidewalk to remove ourselves from the beaten path of the pathologically irrational escapists drowning in their own creative juice-box projectile vomit thru a mega-phone in this raquetball court Age of Plexi-Aquarium we call ______. [What did we say it was, again?]
- Quasimofo Snyder
(added 05.11.12)
editor's note: Whatever we call it, we can buy our apocalyptic hip-boots at the concession stand located just inside the park entrance. Supplies are limited. Buy now! - mh
A Day in the Life
I send my emails from a candy coffin eight feet underground where the battery of my laptop lasts forever.
The butterscotch shroud I’m wrapped in is getting harder, but it keeps me warm.
This week I’ve attempted to connect with several people who failed to respond.
Perhaps they too write in their own candy coffins.
Relationships are often buried in the bittersweet busyness of life.
Speaking of coffins, I passed by a casket store
And spotted an 18 Gauge Steel beauty with wood inserts for forty percent off
The sign over the coffin read–All Sales Final.
Well, yeah...
The dead don’t get refunds.
And even the living don’t always get credit
- Phil Ginsburg
(added 05.10.12)
editor's note: No refund, no credit? No problem - when life (or death) is sweet! - mh
Peacock at a Funeral
The body mimics,
spreads less watchful postures.
Forgetful nerves
racked with night moths
blinded by false echoes.
Dreadful finger-nailed organs
smile secret triumphs,
like a peacock
among the horror struck.
The devil-self charms.
In the dark,
eating disappointments,
the sly dead coconut tree
grows failures.
- Whitney Reinhard
(added 05.09.12)
editor's note: When what you produce is in high demand, what you eat can come from anywhere. The cycle is hidden in the brand. - mh
Dreams
I had that dream again last night
The floating bubbles dream,
with people inside.
It’s a beautiful sunny day,
wispy clouds are floating among the bubble people.
We're standing there
My companion and I,
marveling at the lightly floating clear bubbles
and the changing faces of people as they float past us.
We’re filled with wonder and excitement.
Then suddenly.
The reality.
We're not in a bubble!
We're on the ground!
We want to be in a bubble too!
The bubble people look so happy!
Do you buy one!?
Do you have to go to school to learn to float one!?
Do you earn one in some special way of living,
kinda’ like going to heaven if you do all the right things?
Why are some bubbles huge and some so tiny?
My companion and I, in this dream state of being, ask between us without speaking a word.
I think; how is it…in dream worlds…the voice isn't always needed?
Flowing in this world of dream
My companion and I are suddenly sitting in a dark theater
A movie is playing
Music is flowing through our ghost like figures.
In waves,
it fills our souls.
Scenes flicker in black and white across a screen that’s not a screen at all.
A voice softly repeats a phrase.
It’s a secret message.
It’s encrypted.
We think: how will we ever learn the key to the encryption?
Music flows in waves again.
A voice softly repeats a phrase
We want to leave this dark theater…
My companion and I.
We want to be like the bubble people,
but the voice won’t let us leave the darkness.
We haven’t solved the riddle.
Our ghost like figures struggle,
in an effortless battle to exit.
And the voice softly repeats a phrase.
We hold hands,
my companion and I.
We turn looking into our ghost like eyes
And search for the key to this mystery.
And the voice softly repeats a phrase.
That voice.
My companion thinks.
I know that voice.
It’s your voice.
Just keep holding my hand He thinks.
Together we can find the key.
In silence we wait.
And the voice softly repeats a phrase.
“Don’t you know? It’s all about love”.
At the knowing
of the phrase
of the softly repeating voice
My love and I
in our ghost like figures
begin to float.
- Denise Lumley
(1 poem added 05.08.12)
editor's note: Dream state, awake state; in either state, our pursuits are the same. We possess lighter-than-air existence in the gaze of a loved one's eyes, hear it in a loved one's voice. - mh
Off Road
Last night my car
drove off a cliff
and plunged hundreds of feet
towards the active ocean below
I don't remember hitting the water
or the steering-wheel
or drowning
which seem sort of inevitable
after this initial event
But I do remember the day
looking lovely
a sunny, bright afternoon
and the water was a sweet blue
with white ripples and waves
(Though it had been an icy morning
just moments before the car left the road
and the middle of the night just moments before that)
It was an exceedingly pleasant day to die
but I didn't
And I remember wondering what my family was going to do
my wife
and two daughters
as I fell
for an awfully long time
through the soft sky
towards the prettiest stretch of ocean
And I was sad for them
because I know what it's like
when someone disappears
suddenly
forever
But I wasn't sad for me
just curious
Forever falling through the blue afternoon sky
toward the ocean
on that icy morning
in the middle of the night
- Richard F. Yates
(1 poem added 05.07.12)
editor's note: On our way to the Great Beyond, I always knew there would be blue sky, regardless of the time of day, or the weather. - mh
Connotations, Preparing Dinner
Finger food feather potion and
a constant friend is she. Or any
social critique of shaman knees
cooked in an organic tomato
sauce of Western clothing for
just about anybody's pinprick.
Or try conjuring twins in the
sealed envelope of Chinese
characters written on a cow.
A flea market comb of honey
scraped. Or the rumor that
Confucius was a vegetarian.
All I know is that you can't sing
the national anthem using ordinary
nail clippings or expect animals
to think in pictures when there's
no camera. And always remember
that chopsticks are a blunt ending.
- Maurice Oliver
(1 poem added 05.06.12)
editor's note: Choose one from column A and two from column B - from the menu in your mind. - 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...
Rumpusin' Wildly,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we read a recipe for random raconteurs; we knocked angst from near-death experience; we drifted in dream-state wonder, a door ahead, a key to find; we fondled fey fruit to find failed offspring; we encountered coffin cyber-communication, kept incommunicado; we redefined four apocalyptic equestrians, left blank the undefined epithet for an age; finally, we dropped the divine pharmacopeia in the dust-bin, 'cuz crap is ever destined for destruction. Wow, feels like we done somethin', don't it? - mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
The Drugs Don't Work
Don't.
Sleep when exhaustion
spreads its arms to strangle you,
rage at the constant sway of worlds,
of words, letters sharpened, whetted
to a deadly edge, they will not hurt you.
Grief rises in the empty well,
and you piling stones,
making molehill mountains.
Pull bricks from the walls,
the gaping absence becomes footholds.
Climb stones, expose your feet,
cling with long nails of your toes,
they are not stigmata,
just another cross you have to bear.
Use it to hold your weight,
it's all it's meant to do.
Mass opiate, they smoke it
on the way to church on Sunday,
Monday, any day will do.
A speaker tells you how to live
while hidden 'neath the pulpit,
a dirty soapbox carries him away.
Dream as the bells beckon,
your vision has more truth
than any laws made up by hypocrites.
Pundits smile in squares, rectangles,
getting larger with technology,
smaller with implants, you forget
and it sounds like your conscious.
There is no arbitrator, Jane was murdered
the day they found her making sense,
now the Cochlear whispering in your ear
says "KILL, KILL", you will return a hero,
they'll throw pills from the balconies,
leaving marks upon your skin
looking strangely like rough groups of sixes.
Sixes are lucky numbers, the double
trinity of hallucinogens you would not take.
When parades are over the chosen illegals
will sweep them up, into gutters
where the rats will drink the water.
But you, you take your liquids from a virgin bottle,
knowing always that the drugs don't work.
© 2012
- Rose Morales
(2 poems added 05.12.12)
editor's note: This one can be tough to kick; the high is overpowering, laced with incense and dogma. Equate your awaiting the hammer fall to withdrawal symptoms. Once you're clear, you're clear; no back-sliding into this "righteousness." (Another one from Rose on her page - how to lose weight until invisible.) - mh
Four Shetland Pony Dark-Riders in a Polo Match with Croquet Hammers:
They wanted to put him in a tuxedo but he slew his would-be suitors in cold blood and ate cole slaw. His barking laugh naturally attracted wild packs of dogmatics. To define is to negate unless you express to create. There are those who create; there are those who destroy; there are those who create to destroy; and there are those who destroy to create. Let's blow up the sidewalk to remove ourselves from the beaten path of the pathologically irrational escapists drowning in their own creative juice-box projectile vomit thru a mega-phone in this raquetball court Age of Plexi-Aquarium we call ______. [What did we say it was, again?]
- Quasimofo Snyder
(added 05.11.12)
editor's note: Whatever we call it, we can buy our apocalyptic hip-boots at the concession stand located just inside the park entrance. Supplies are limited. Buy now! - mh
A Day in the Life
I send my emails from a candy coffin eight feet underground where the battery of my laptop lasts forever.
The butterscotch shroud I’m wrapped in is getting harder, but it keeps me warm.
This week I’ve attempted to connect with several people who failed to respond.
Perhaps they too write in their own candy coffins.
Relationships are often buried in the bittersweet busyness of life.
Speaking of coffins, I passed by a casket store
And spotted an 18 Gauge Steel beauty with wood inserts for forty percent off
The sign over the coffin read–All Sales Final.
Well, yeah...
The dead don’t get refunds.
And even the living don’t always get credit
- Phil Ginsburg
(added 05.10.12)
editor's note: No refund, no credit? No problem - when life (or death) is sweet! - mh
Peacock at a Funeral
The body mimics,
spreads less watchful postures.
Forgetful nerves
racked with night moths
blinded by false echoes.
Dreadful finger-nailed organs
smile secret triumphs,
like a peacock
among the horror struck.
The devil-self charms.
In the dark,
eating disappointments,
the sly dead coconut tree
grows failures.
- Whitney Reinhard
(added 05.09.12)
editor's note: When what you produce is in high demand, what you eat can come from anywhere. The cycle is hidden in the brand. - mh
Dreams
I had that dream again last night
The floating bubbles dream,
with people inside.
It’s a beautiful sunny day,
wispy clouds are floating among the bubble people.
We're standing there
My companion and I,
marveling at the lightly floating clear bubbles
and the changing faces of people as they float past us.
We’re filled with wonder and excitement.
Then suddenly.
The reality.
We're not in a bubble!
We're on the ground!
We want to be in a bubble too!
The bubble people look so happy!
Do you buy one!?
Do you have to go to school to learn to float one!?
Do you earn one in some special way of living,
kinda’ like going to heaven if you do all the right things?
Why are some bubbles huge and some so tiny?
My companion and I, in this dream state of being, ask between us without speaking a word.
I think; how is it…in dream worlds…the voice isn't always needed?
Flowing in this world of dream
My companion and I are suddenly sitting in a dark theater
A movie is playing
Music is flowing through our ghost like figures.
In waves,
it fills our souls.
Scenes flicker in black and white across a screen that’s not a screen at all.
A voice softly repeats a phrase.
It’s a secret message.
It’s encrypted.
We think: how will we ever learn the key to the encryption?
Music flows in waves again.
A voice softly repeats a phrase
We want to leave this dark theater…
My companion and I.
We want to be like the bubble people,
but the voice won’t let us leave the darkness.
We haven’t solved the riddle.
Our ghost like figures struggle,
in an effortless battle to exit.
And the voice softly repeats a phrase.
We hold hands,
my companion and I.
We turn looking into our ghost like eyes
And search for the key to this mystery.
And the voice softly repeats a phrase.
That voice.
My companion thinks.
I know that voice.
It’s your voice.
Just keep holding my hand He thinks.
Together we can find the key.
In silence we wait.
And the voice softly repeats a phrase.
“Don’t you know? It’s all about love”.
At the knowing
of the phrase
of the softly repeating voice
My love and I
in our ghost like figures
begin to float.
- Denise Lumley
(1 poem added 05.08.12)
editor's note: Dream state, awake state; in either state, our pursuits are the same. We possess lighter-than-air existence in the gaze of a loved one's eyes, hear it in a loved one's voice. - mh
Off Road
Last night my car
drove off a cliff
and plunged hundreds of feet
towards the active ocean below
I don't remember hitting the water
or the steering-wheel
or drowning
which seem sort of inevitable
after this initial event
But I do remember the day
looking lovely
a sunny, bright afternoon
and the water was a sweet blue
with white ripples and waves
(Though it had been an icy morning
just moments before the car left the road
and the middle of the night just moments before that)
It was an exceedingly pleasant day to die
but I didn't
And I remember wondering what my family was going to do
my wife
and two daughters
as I fell
for an awfully long time
through the soft sky
towards the prettiest stretch of ocean
And I was sad for them
because I know what it's like
when someone disappears
suddenly
forever
But I wasn't sad for me
just curious
Forever falling through the blue afternoon sky
toward the ocean
on that icy morning
in the middle of the night
- Richard F. Yates
(1 poem added 05.07.12)
editor's note: On our way to the Great Beyond, I always knew there would be blue sky, regardless of the time of day, or the weather. - mh
Connotations, Preparing Dinner
Finger food feather potion and
a constant friend is she. Or any
social critique of shaman knees
cooked in an organic tomato
sauce of Western clothing for
just about anybody's pinprick.
Or try conjuring twins in the
sealed envelope of Chinese
characters written on a cow.
A flea market comb of honey
scraped. Or the rumor that
Confucius was a vegetarian.
All I know is that you can't sing
the national anthem using ordinary
nail clippings or expect animals
to think in pictures when there's
no camera. And always remember
that chopsticks are a blunt ending.
- Maurice Oliver
(1 poem added 05.06.12)
editor's note: Choose one from column A and two from column B - from the menu in your mind. - 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...
Rumpusin' Wildly,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
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