The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 07.28.12
“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.” Marcel Duchamp
Digital illustration by Johnny O
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we pitted poet against plugged poem propogated by purloined pen; we wielded a word, defined not by origin but by outcome; we sought a sobering sojourn, sullied our sinless selves; we nipped lost love nostalgia in the bud, bloomed color for its own sake; we bent some blues licks into lithe lusty living; we considered cloyed fantasy fulfillment, opted instead for caffeine reality; lastly, we discarded random dance damage to encourage expressive abandon. ~ mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
EXIGENCIES
Rootless
from frozen solitude
echoes stir
a downed
enfant terrible
as a ballerina
with a vast leap
in less
than lyrical poise
circles round
an unmade day bed
admiting us
to the nursery room
with the sofa rug
of twin swans
drenched
by the newly watered
Iris vase
multiplying confusion
along the fish tank
a breath away
in a possible whirling
dance macabre
of a future Salome.
- B.Z. Niditch
(1 poem added 07.28.12)
editor's note: No time for mad-scrambled policing to restore the upset and broken, when you're creating new decorations with your dance. Innocent abandon is hard to come by... (BZ joins our crazy congress of Contributing Poets with this poem. See more of his work on his new page.) - mh
Coffee Cart Girl
Gracefully effete she struggles with morning orders.
Dry lips say hello; she replies never looking up from the darkness of the coffee pot.
This is ritual each day; I speak, she responds without hearing.
I ascend the grand stairway leaving the rickety cart and the magnificent foyer behind.
But she never leaves me, she haunts my dreams
Intrusive thoughts invade waking life.
Her inner warmth radiates through sultry strands of auburn hair.
Greedy green eyes peruse each inch and follow her every move.
And yet this evocative spectre remains a mystery to me.
I long to feel her silky touch
I pine for her gentle kiss
I yearn to hear her speak my name
Yet...
I am unable to say more than hello.
I am unable to know her.
For to discover the truth would leave me dreadfully dreamless.
I would be lost without my Coffee Cart Girl.
- Ian Everett
(added 07.27.12)
editor's note: His daily dilemma; to endure unrequited and deprived or indulge desire and be "dreadfully dreamless." Choices, choices... - mh
Blues Harp
More like a cross between a saxophone
and a five-alarm fire
than a Hohner harmonica
small enough to fit in the palm of her hand
or breast pocket. He was thinking
the fact that she even had breasts
was almost completely beside the point.
Almost. For he had never
heard anyone, much less a woman,
play harp like that. It was
powerful, intelligent, sexy,
downright athletic the way she ran
her tongue up and down it, sucking and blowing
into the bullet mike, Chicago-style,
trading licks with the rhythm guitarist
center-stage, bending the notes into
shapes that conjured up for him the beautiful
catastrophes of train wrecks. He wanted
to get her alone after the set, out behind
the club, and in the darkness whip out his
own harmonica, and play a long train with her,
show her his rhythms by starting out slow,
then building speed underneath her
while she whistled and steamed and moaned
on top, letting her juggle the high notes
like so many birds in the hand, so many
waves upon waves, while he chugged along
steady and low, running like clockwork, letting her
lead, letting her go, letting her, letting her, letting her.
- Paul Hostovsky
(2 poems added 07.26.12)
editor's note: Blew it from blues to blue. Ooohhhh, yesss!!! (Another nice little slice of Americana from Paul on his page, check it out.) - mh
later than before
In disassembling love,
I begin with sleep.
Dreams go elsewhere, nowhere, elsewhere,
and I wake into a reality that seems quietly
to have been without my other....
for some time, at least.
A binge of old movies helps the hallucination,
bringing on old faces and apparently new loves
to disquiet what was never perfect, really,
in the face of what is made to seem ideal.
Pictures turned, mutual friends most often ignored,
and familiar places left to themselves,
love nearly pulls itself to slow pieces
that perhaps can't disappear, but do tire.
What was crying as love begins to live as nostalgia,
and the simple words that I began to say
in my dreams as a serum of forgetting have even
half begun to sound real.
Familiar face no longer expected, spirits of hands
no longer felt through absence,
love, to nostalgia, to memory, half-memory.
Love songs remind simply of forgetting,
and dreams turn to sleep from dissembling,
the full moon appearing as a full moon,
a flower looking full with only color for meaning,
my face content and bare in the mirror.
- Jennifer L. Collins
(added 07.25.12)
editor's note: The search for meaning is a long journey; first sought in love, finally found in color. Bloom, flower! - mh
A Portrait of Original Sin
Outside, barbed wire drips rain.
Inside, in a gray corridor
water trickles across the ceiling like a vein.
The condemned shuffles,
head down, manacled. From birth
he walked in the light of his father,
with the shadow of his father’s fathers;
Now, he walks past cells of solitary light.
The chamber awaits…
Bound upon the anti-throne
his arms are splayed, bare.
A tattoo of barbed wire twists
along his upper arm.
Lower is a portrait of his son,
a vein bulging across its forehead like a snake.
The spiral tube is drawn.
The death seed drips.
The lights flash off.
- Robert E. Petras
(1 poem added 07.24.12)
editor's note: Not a pretty picture. Not a simple subject; not so cut-and-dried nor easy as looking in the mirror on prom night. - mh
Chance of One
Just one word is what makes you feel,
Like an ascending lord,
Or swiftly spiraling outcast.
It can take you to the clouds,
Make the heart soar,
Turn a fantasy into actuality.
It can tear your wings,
Force your soul to wither,
Striking down the closely held dream.
One chance word,
Sends the mind into euphoria,
Or makes it go into a wrathful frenzy.
Unforeseeable,
Uncontrollable,
Only fate will decide the outcome.
- Donald Ishikawa
(added 07.23.12)
editor's note: We could help fate a bit; be more circumspect with our choices. Couldn't we? - mh
Quaking
I waited for a week for the pens to arrive
anticipating the fantastic poems I would write
because, really, the best poems I ever wrote
were done with black gel pens, 20 years ago.
Poems festered in my head, unborn, but waiting
for those pens to arrive. It would be a literary
hurricane at my desk when those pens showed up
all the poems in me, trying to get out.
Another week passed and the pens still hadn’t arrived
hundreds of poems pushed against me, single words,
whole phrases, I could picture myself writing
in the back yard under the tree
I could picture it perfectly, but not without the pens.
When week three had passed, I started to panic
could feel poems from the weeks before fading, replaced by inferior ones
I called up the vendor, who couldn’t understand my panic
said he’d send out a new shipment—
it’d be here in a week.
- Holly Day
(added 07.22.12)
editor's note: Considering the writing implement choices of some, e.g., the Marquis de Sade, I'd wait for the pens, too. (But, the recording app on that smartphone could help in the interim.) - 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...
Decipherin',
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Photo by Tyler Malone
P.S. Join Mad Swirl this 1st Wednesday (aka 08.01.12), starting at 8:00 sharp, when we will feature a dynamic duo of Dallas' slam poets Victory and Konnichiwa Zach! These two poets paired up together in one feature promises an action-packed swirling set! Get to the Lounge early to enjoy the show and stick around to get yourself one of the 17 spots on our list... first come, first on the list! Which means... get there early!
Come one, come all! Mad poets, musicians, actors, singers, circus freaks and Elvis impersonators... come-n-strut-yo-stuff. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl.
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
P.P.S. AND, as you may or may not know, every 1st WEDNESDAY we get all giddy with the swirlin' madness. Now we got even more reason to get all googily-eyed! Here is our list of featured poets for the rest of 2012. Ready? Drum roll please...
September 05: Danny Chibli
October 03: Joey & Darrell Cloudy
November 07: BA
December 05: Tamitha Curiel & Swirve
Mark your calendars... now!
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we pitted poet against plugged poem propogated by purloined pen; we wielded a word, defined not by origin but by outcome; we sought a sobering sojourn, sullied our sinless selves; we nipped lost love nostalgia in the bud, bloomed color for its own sake; we bent some blues licks into lithe lusty living; we considered cloyed fantasy fulfillment, opted instead for caffeine reality; lastly, we discarded random dance damage to encourage expressive abandon. ~ mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
EXIGENCIES
Rootless
from frozen solitude
echoes stir
a downed
enfant terrible
as a ballerina
with a vast leap
in less
than lyrical poise
circles round
an unmade day bed
admiting us
to the nursery room
with the sofa rug
of twin swans
drenched
by the newly watered
Iris vase
multiplying confusion
along the fish tank
a breath away
in a possible whirling
dance macabre
of a future Salome.
- B.Z. Niditch
(1 poem added 07.28.12)
editor's note: No time for mad-scrambled policing to restore the upset and broken, when you're creating new decorations with your dance. Innocent abandon is hard to come by... (BZ joins our crazy congress of Contributing Poets with this poem. See more of his work on his new page.) - mh
Coffee Cart Girl
Gracefully effete she struggles with morning orders.
Dry lips say hello; she replies never looking up from the darkness of the coffee pot.
This is ritual each day; I speak, she responds without hearing.
I ascend the grand stairway leaving the rickety cart and the magnificent foyer behind.
But she never leaves me, she haunts my dreams
Intrusive thoughts invade waking life.
Her inner warmth radiates through sultry strands of auburn hair.
Greedy green eyes peruse each inch and follow her every move.
And yet this evocative spectre remains a mystery to me.
I long to feel her silky touch
I pine for her gentle kiss
I yearn to hear her speak my name
Yet...
I am unable to say more than hello.
I am unable to know her.
For to discover the truth would leave me dreadfully dreamless.
I would be lost without my Coffee Cart Girl.
- Ian Everett
(added 07.27.12)
editor's note: His daily dilemma; to endure unrequited and deprived or indulge desire and be "dreadfully dreamless." Choices, choices... - mh
Blues Harp
More like a cross between a saxophone
and a five-alarm fire
than a Hohner harmonica
small enough to fit in the palm of her hand
or breast pocket. He was thinking
the fact that she even had breasts
was almost completely beside the point.
Almost. For he had never
heard anyone, much less a woman,
play harp like that. It was
powerful, intelligent, sexy,
downright athletic the way she ran
her tongue up and down it, sucking and blowing
into the bullet mike, Chicago-style,
trading licks with the rhythm guitarist
center-stage, bending the notes into
shapes that conjured up for him the beautiful
catastrophes of train wrecks. He wanted
to get her alone after the set, out behind
the club, and in the darkness whip out his
own harmonica, and play a long train with her,
show her his rhythms by starting out slow,
then building speed underneath her
while she whistled and steamed and moaned
on top, letting her juggle the high notes
like so many birds in the hand, so many
waves upon waves, while he chugged along
steady and low, running like clockwork, letting her
lead, letting her go, letting her, letting her, letting her.
- Paul Hostovsky
(2 poems added 07.26.12)
editor's note: Blew it from blues to blue. Ooohhhh, yesss!!! (Another nice little slice of Americana from Paul on his page, check it out.) - mh
later than before
In disassembling love,
I begin with sleep.
Dreams go elsewhere, nowhere, elsewhere,
and I wake into a reality that seems quietly
to have been without my other....
for some time, at least.
A binge of old movies helps the hallucination,
bringing on old faces and apparently new loves
to disquiet what was never perfect, really,
in the face of what is made to seem ideal.
Pictures turned, mutual friends most often ignored,
and familiar places left to themselves,
love nearly pulls itself to slow pieces
that perhaps can't disappear, but do tire.
What was crying as love begins to live as nostalgia,
and the simple words that I began to say
in my dreams as a serum of forgetting have even
half begun to sound real.
Familiar face no longer expected, spirits of hands
no longer felt through absence,
love, to nostalgia, to memory, half-memory.
Love songs remind simply of forgetting,
and dreams turn to sleep from dissembling,
the full moon appearing as a full moon,
a flower looking full with only color for meaning,
my face content and bare in the mirror.
- Jennifer L. Collins
(added 07.25.12)
editor's note: The search for meaning is a long journey; first sought in love, finally found in color. Bloom, flower! - mh
A Portrait of Original Sin
Outside, barbed wire drips rain.
Inside, in a gray corridor
water trickles across the ceiling like a vein.
The condemned shuffles,
head down, manacled. From birth
he walked in the light of his father,
with the shadow of his father’s fathers;
Now, he walks past cells of solitary light.
The chamber awaits…
Bound upon the anti-throne
his arms are splayed, bare.
A tattoo of barbed wire twists
along his upper arm.
Lower is a portrait of his son,
a vein bulging across its forehead like a snake.
The spiral tube is drawn.
The death seed drips.
The lights flash off.
- Robert E. Petras
(1 poem added 07.24.12)
editor's note: Not a pretty picture. Not a simple subject; not so cut-and-dried nor easy as looking in the mirror on prom night. - mh
Chance of One
Just one word is what makes you feel,
Like an ascending lord,
Or swiftly spiraling outcast.
It can take you to the clouds,
Make the heart soar,
Turn a fantasy into actuality.
It can tear your wings,
Force your soul to wither,
Striking down the closely held dream.
One chance word,
Sends the mind into euphoria,
Or makes it go into a wrathful frenzy.
Unforeseeable,
Uncontrollable,
Only fate will decide the outcome.
- Donald Ishikawa
(added 07.23.12)
editor's note: We could help fate a bit; be more circumspect with our choices. Couldn't we? - mh
Quaking
I waited for a week for the pens to arrive
anticipating the fantastic poems I would write
because, really, the best poems I ever wrote
were done with black gel pens, 20 years ago.
Poems festered in my head, unborn, but waiting
for those pens to arrive. It would be a literary
hurricane at my desk when those pens showed up
all the poems in me, trying to get out.
Another week passed and the pens still hadn’t arrived
hundreds of poems pushed against me, single words,
whole phrases, I could picture myself writing
in the back yard under the tree
I could picture it perfectly, but not without the pens.
When week three had passed, I started to panic
could feel poems from the weeks before fading, replaced by inferior ones
I called up the vendor, who couldn’t understand my panic
said he’d send out a new shipment—
it’d be here in a week.
- Holly Day
(added 07.22.12)
editor's note: Considering the writing implement choices of some, e.g., the Marquis de Sade, I'd wait for the pens, too. (But, the recording app on that smartphone could help in the interim.) - 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...
Decipherin',
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
P.S. Join Mad Swirl this 1st Wednesday (aka 08.01.12), starting at 8:00 sharp, when we will feature a dynamic duo of Dallas' slam poets Victory and Konnichiwa Zach! These two poets paired up together in one feature promises an action-packed swirling set! Get to the Lounge early to enjoy the show and stick around to get yourself one of the 17 spots on our list... first come, first on the list! Which means... get there early!
Come one, come all! Mad poets, musicians, actors, singers, circus freaks and Elvis impersonators... come-n-strut-yo-stuff. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl.
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
P.P.S. AND, as you may or may not know, every 1st WEDNESDAY we get all giddy with the swirlin' madness. Now we got even more reason to get all googily-eyed! Here is our list of featured poets for the rest of 2012. Ready? Drum roll please...
September 05: Danny Chibli
October 03: Joey & Darrell Cloudy
November 07: BA
December 05: Tamitha Curiel & Swirve
Mark your calendars... now!
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