The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 08.25.12
The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 08.25.12
“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” ~ James A. Michener
A Creak from the Closet Door (above) by featured artist, Edward Ödwitt, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see mo' fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we eschewed our staggering steroid youth, abandoned edicts and majority actions; we pricked fair youth in time, ticked the tock of justice, short of prime; we copped a captain's concupiscent capitulation, surrender serene; we transcended preconception to vanquish our diminutive demons; we pondered the perfection of partners' predilictions; we bumped a blue butt blemish, raw reminiscences wrenched the heart; lastly, we looped a lone legacy on nubile, near adult, still adolescent ability to adapt to what comes next. 'Nuff said? Oh, my head! ~ mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
A Composed Commodity
For Remington
We raise children, heads up, to fall
in love, but some raise the dead
who can’t tell difference between winks and blinks,
and catcalls to car crashes and ambulance whistles.
We raise the pleasant but pale into long loneliness,
delicately delighting damnation behind the blinds,
living below life’s limits. Maintaining mediocrity,
manly or womanly, chin highly.
Some raise children to hide in clouds from all below,
thinking shadows are those things that don’t follow:
Love can leave ourselves behind, capturing passion
doesn’t show on a slow-dried oil painting in sonnets.
It’s only gripped by holding hands, not by hiding who
you are from confrontation’s questions. Who made you?
What are you? You are the who sits in solitude and
practices acceptance with fists and fiction.
Alone, loving the love song we sing to ourselves
after accidentally hearing composed commodities
never to leave our heads after seconds of unchosen
musical interaction, until a flat EKG sings us off
to gnats up the nose, ant eggs in ears.
We dare to love the dandelions
that don’t roar, but their beauty destroys
concrete as teeth in thin antelope thighs.
We raise children to keep heads up, grazing,
living by ignoring the watering hole
so they do not look down into earth
and see themselves: what’s coming for them.
- Tyler Malone
(3 poems added 08.25.12)
editor's note: It's a case of "do what we say" not what we do, or don't do, in this case. What's coming, indeed? (Two more nuggets from Tyler on his page; a dog walk and genetic considerations - check'em out.) - mh
The boil
In parts, in a bleached mirror,
I hide behind the rusty patches
and realize
that life ain’t so beautiful
when relations rend.
I see my eyes disillusioned, my nose bashed,
my heart pierced, my mouth anemic.
Lines of painful sadness slither in my face –
I sniff
and remember
the wild blue of the blue mimosa
that bloomed in the front yard of my father’s house
years ago when I was a kid; now
the tree has long been gone. All I can see in its place
is a barren front. Splinters,
just a few splinters – if I may find of it.
Oh hell, how the fire of that cold winter
charred my interior!
True! I’ve got a boil on the butt.
- Haris Adhikari
(2 poems added 08.24.12)
editor's note: Think always of the bloom, give the boil the end of your attention. (Another from Haris on his page - a question of illness; "who has?", not "what is?" Check it out.) - mh
Cool Comfort
Not tepid,
Not cold,
More like that first breath
Of April air,
After a shut in Winter
That rattled the panes
And brought aches
With every scratch.
This is cool comfort,
You to me
No brain frozen delight,
No fetch the sweaters moment,
Just thee and me
Wrapped in a minute
No one else could deliver.
The young will fuss
Over marks and lines,
Bemoaning their lost perfections,
But I will be sassy nude with you,
Boldly sagging and bagging,
Knowing you love the imperfections
As much as I love
Your silvered treasures,
And the deep lines that show
When I give you forbidden delight
As only we know how.
- Lisa Shields
(added 08.23.12)
editor's note: Aged to perfection, this mutual confection. We learn to make sweet an' it just gets sweeter. Nice! - mh
Brown Study
Ok, let’s cut the crap!
No barman ever slung a drink down the bar at me,
No femme fatale ever struck a match off her shoe-
This is as glamorous as it gets.
Life never turned out how we expected it to
So we don’t expect anything more.
We pursue our dreams in our heads
Imagining what was while living the reality.
Filming scenes with our minds
Fading in and out
Tracking thoughts through jump cuts
Trying to reassemble the life we drink to forget
Until we no longer know who we are.
With no sense of self,
Fighting our reflections.
We’re our own worst enemy,
Fools to ourselves
Though wise enough to know it.
We flirt with life
But keep coming back to ourselves.
Our sanguinity dishevelled by cynicism,
Optimistic about how bad our luck is.
We’re such sensitive souls,
Over-emotionally stoic,
Ardently subdued,
Like cats curled up to the bar
Resting our eyes on our elbows,
Banging on about the barmaid everyone’s banging;
Mad Martha with her cigarette dribbling down her lips,
Her tanned fingers against her enervated flesh
As she goes out for a breather,
And we haul our abdomens after her
Like dead weight,
Hoping to get into her-
Our visceral conscience
Slumped at the end of our wits.
If you could hear me speak I’d sound like Clint Eastwood,
Talking through my teeth,
Sick of this half-arsed approach to life.
Not living life to the full
Like those who’re full of shit,
Eating in posh restaurants
Ordering bites by the plateful,
Trying to discover the sense of taste they’ve lost
While searching for something that’s right under their nose,
Fulfilling their emptiness with themselves-
Not starving,
Only hungry for something better.
Not realising that everything tastes better when you’re hungry.
With us there’s no pretension,
No falsehood,
Booze brings out the best in us,
It cuts the crap,
What you hear is what you get.
We like to get to point and be blunt about it,
Too eager to judge others for our own faults,
Having succumbed to a life behind bars,
Feeling smug about our damnation,
Begrudging the lives we wouldn’t have any other way.
- Anthony Ward
(1 poem added 08.22.12)
editor's note: Not bedazzled by the glamor, just content to hammer'em back. That's truth serum in that glass! - mh
Words of the Soul
how do you write your soul
in one of these?
spell it out real nice
with pretty A-B-C's
rhyme it with all your know-how might
beg and plead
oh god, please! please,
don't leave
fuck it
let's talk straight
I'll be captain frank and you can be my first mate
I sit in the corner of a dark lit room
pen to paper, head to hands
divining opaque memories of a little bit of you
not so much of them
writing fragmented lines
with half-assed rhymes
and soulful lamentations begging
oh god, please! please,
just don't leave...
such is my bitter and tormented soul
on paper for all to behold
words are all I have anymore
- S.E. Hart
(added 08.21.12)
editor's note: Let your angst outweigh your rhyme. Captain's orders! - mh
POCKET WATCH
You may have your fancy Seiko with its digital readout,
I do not envy you. Rolex, you say.
No thank you, mere symbols of achievement do not concern me.
Money; it is nice to have.
But for the things you can do with it
Not the idle fondling of a madman,
Unused and collecting dust.
Swiss time, precision, seventeen jewels
The folly of mortal men.
Shining gold and Roman numerals
Hand wound, handmade
Intertwined by chains of twisted gold
Binding you with no escape
Serenade of old and new,
The past in reverence
Mass production, low cost, high volume,
Built in obsolescence. Hi tech, high time
Look to the future.
Things in my past have slipped my grasp
I cannot retrieve them
Time has locked them away from me.
Time is not my friend, nor my enemy
What I have done and who I have known
Define me.
My future is what I make of it
My life of my own design.
A family heirloom?
Hardly.
It is the object itself
The memories within.
- Michael P. Martin
(added 08.20.12)
editor's note: A fine timepiece to capture some fine pieces of time. Which captures whom? - mh
Three yards of loam
Doesn’t seem like a lot of labor:
2 hours collecting and burning sticks
and branches and twigs,
some cutting with the chainsaw.
Then 2 more hours shoveling and raking,
raking and shoveling 3 yards of loam,
spreading it all around
where the old apple tree used to be.
But I guess it really is a lot of labor
because I’ve strained a muscle
in my upper back
that stings with every breath I take,
and my lower back and hips
still have burning pain and fatigue
and it’s 2 days later!
Muscles take longer to recover as you get older,
you get sore easier,
remain sore longer. But apparently,
I haven’t yet got the picture.
I still think I’m 24, have the stamina
and strength of my youth.
But I hope now I’ve finally learned my lesson,
this painful lesson of going easier on myself,
so I won’t be so sore and sensitive,
throbbing and burning with pain.
Hopefully I’ve learned finally,
to act my age – but I doubt it.
What man, what true man, can submit,
can agree, to go gentle
into that dark night?
- Michael Estabrook
(1 poem added 08.19.12)
editor's note: When not gentle in the day; damn sure, not so in the night. (Let's welcome Michael to our crazy confab of Contributing Poets. Check his new poetry page.) - 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...
Lovin' It,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” ~ James A. Michener
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we eschewed our staggering steroid youth, abandoned edicts and majority actions; we pricked fair youth in time, ticked the tock of justice, short of prime; we copped a captain's concupiscent capitulation, surrender serene; we transcended preconception to vanquish our diminutive demons; we pondered the perfection of partners' predilictions; we bumped a blue butt blemish, raw reminiscences wrenched the heart; lastly, we looped a lone legacy on nubile, near adult, still adolescent ability to adapt to what comes next. 'Nuff said? Oh, my head! ~ mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
A Composed Commodity
For Remington
We raise children, heads up, to fall
in love, but some raise the dead
who can’t tell difference between winks and blinks,
and catcalls to car crashes and ambulance whistles.
We raise the pleasant but pale into long loneliness,
delicately delighting damnation behind the blinds,
living below life’s limits. Maintaining mediocrity,
manly or womanly, chin highly.
Some raise children to hide in clouds from all below,
thinking shadows are those things that don’t follow:
Love can leave ourselves behind, capturing passion
doesn’t show on a slow-dried oil painting in sonnets.
It’s only gripped by holding hands, not by hiding who
you are from confrontation’s questions. Who made you?
What are you? You are the who sits in solitude and
practices acceptance with fists and fiction.
Alone, loving the love song we sing to ourselves
after accidentally hearing composed commodities
never to leave our heads after seconds of unchosen
musical interaction, until a flat EKG sings us off
to gnats up the nose, ant eggs in ears.
We dare to love the dandelions
that don’t roar, but their beauty destroys
concrete as teeth in thin antelope thighs.
We raise children to keep heads up, grazing,
living by ignoring the watering hole
so they do not look down into earth
and see themselves: what’s coming for them.
- Tyler Malone
(3 poems added 08.25.12)
editor's note: It's a case of "do what we say" not what we do, or don't do, in this case. What's coming, indeed? (Two more nuggets from Tyler on his page; a dog walk and genetic considerations - check'em out.) - mh
The boil
In parts, in a bleached mirror,
I hide behind the rusty patches
and realize
that life ain’t so beautiful
when relations rend.
I see my eyes disillusioned, my nose bashed,
my heart pierced, my mouth anemic.
Lines of painful sadness slither in my face –
I sniff
and remember
the wild blue of the blue mimosa
that bloomed in the front yard of my father’s house
years ago when I was a kid; now
the tree has long been gone. All I can see in its place
is a barren front. Splinters,
just a few splinters – if I may find of it.
Oh hell, how the fire of that cold winter
charred my interior!
True! I’ve got a boil on the butt.
- Haris Adhikari
(2 poems added 08.24.12)
editor's note: Think always of the bloom, give the boil the end of your attention. (Another from Haris on his page - a question of illness; "who has?", not "what is?" Check it out.) - mh
Cool Comfort
Not tepid,
Not cold,
More like that first breath
Of April air,
After a shut in Winter
That rattled the panes
And brought aches
With every scratch.
This is cool comfort,
You to me
No brain frozen delight,
No fetch the sweaters moment,
Just thee and me
Wrapped in a minute
No one else could deliver.
The young will fuss
Over marks and lines,
Bemoaning their lost perfections,
But I will be sassy nude with you,
Boldly sagging and bagging,
Knowing you love the imperfections
As much as I love
Your silvered treasures,
And the deep lines that show
When I give you forbidden delight
As only we know how.
- Lisa Shields
(added 08.23.12)
editor's note: Aged to perfection, this mutual confection. We learn to make sweet an' it just gets sweeter. Nice! - mh
Brown Study
Ok, let’s cut the crap!
No barman ever slung a drink down the bar at me,
No femme fatale ever struck a match off her shoe-
This is as glamorous as it gets.
Life never turned out how we expected it to
So we don’t expect anything more.
We pursue our dreams in our heads
Imagining what was while living the reality.
Filming scenes with our minds
Fading in and out
Tracking thoughts through jump cuts
Trying to reassemble the life we drink to forget
Until we no longer know who we are.
With no sense of self,
Fighting our reflections.
We’re our own worst enemy,
Fools to ourselves
Though wise enough to know it.
We flirt with life
But keep coming back to ourselves.
Our sanguinity dishevelled by cynicism,
Optimistic about how bad our luck is.
We’re such sensitive souls,
Over-emotionally stoic,
Ardently subdued,
Like cats curled up to the bar
Resting our eyes on our elbows,
Banging on about the barmaid everyone’s banging;
Mad Martha with her cigarette dribbling down her lips,
Her tanned fingers against her enervated flesh
As she goes out for a breather,
And we haul our abdomens after her
Like dead weight,
Hoping to get into her-
Our visceral conscience
Slumped at the end of our wits.
If you could hear me speak I’d sound like Clint Eastwood,
Talking through my teeth,
Sick of this half-arsed approach to life.
Not living life to the full
Like those who’re full of shit,
Eating in posh restaurants
Ordering bites by the plateful,
Trying to discover the sense of taste they’ve lost
While searching for something that’s right under their nose,
Fulfilling their emptiness with themselves-
Not starving,
Only hungry for something better.
Not realising that everything tastes better when you’re hungry.
With us there’s no pretension,
No falsehood,
Booze brings out the best in us,
It cuts the crap,
What you hear is what you get.
We like to get to point and be blunt about it,
Too eager to judge others for our own faults,
Having succumbed to a life behind bars,
Feeling smug about our damnation,
Begrudging the lives we wouldn’t have any other way.
- Anthony Ward
(1 poem added 08.22.12)
editor's note: Not bedazzled by the glamor, just content to hammer'em back. That's truth serum in that glass! - mh
Words of the Soul
how do you write your soul
in one of these?
spell it out real nice
with pretty A-B-C's
rhyme it with all your know-how might
beg and plead
oh god, please! please,
don't leave
fuck it
let's talk straight
I'll be captain frank and you can be my first mate
I sit in the corner of a dark lit room
pen to paper, head to hands
divining opaque memories of a little bit of you
not so much of them
writing fragmented lines
with half-assed rhymes
and soulful lamentations begging
oh god, please! please,
just don't leave...
such is my bitter and tormented soul
on paper for all to behold
words are all I have anymore
- S.E. Hart
(added 08.21.12)
editor's note: Let your angst outweigh your rhyme. Captain's orders! - mh
POCKET WATCH
You may have your fancy Seiko with its digital readout,
I do not envy you. Rolex, you say.
No thank you, mere symbols of achievement do not concern me.
Money; it is nice to have.
But for the things you can do with it
Not the idle fondling of a madman,
Unused and collecting dust.
Swiss time, precision, seventeen jewels
The folly of mortal men.
Shining gold and Roman numerals
Hand wound, handmade
Intertwined by chains of twisted gold
Binding you with no escape
Serenade of old and new,
The past in reverence
Mass production, low cost, high volume,
Built in obsolescence. Hi tech, high time
Look to the future.
Things in my past have slipped my grasp
I cannot retrieve them
Time has locked them away from me.
Time is not my friend, nor my enemy
What I have done and who I have known
Define me.
My future is what I make of it
My life of my own design.
A family heirloom?
Hardly.
It is the object itself
The memories within.
- Michael P. Martin
(added 08.20.12)
editor's note: A fine timepiece to capture some fine pieces of time. Which captures whom? - mh
Three yards of loam
Doesn’t seem like a lot of labor:
2 hours collecting and burning sticks
and branches and twigs,
some cutting with the chainsaw.
Then 2 more hours shoveling and raking,
raking and shoveling 3 yards of loam,
spreading it all around
where the old apple tree used to be.
But I guess it really is a lot of labor
because I’ve strained a muscle
in my upper back
that stings with every breath I take,
and my lower back and hips
still have burning pain and fatigue
and it’s 2 days later!
Muscles take longer to recover as you get older,
you get sore easier,
remain sore longer. But apparently,
I haven’t yet got the picture.
I still think I’m 24, have the stamina
and strength of my youth.
But I hope now I’ve finally learned my lesson,
this painful lesson of going easier on myself,
so I won’t be so sore and sensitive,
throbbing and burning with pain.
Hopefully I’ve learned finally,
to act my age – but I doubt it.
What man, what true man, can submit,
can agree, to go gentle
into that dark night?
- Michael Estabrook
(1 poem added 08.19.12)
editor's note: When not gentle in the day; damn sure, not so in the night. (Let's welcome Michael to our crazy confab of Contributing Poets. Check his new poetry page.) - 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...
Lovin' It,
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Comments