The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 01.23.13
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, / angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...” ~ Allen Ginsberg
Angel of Madness (above) by this month's featured artist Eric Caulfield.
This month's featured artist, Eric Caulfield, brings us a refreshing and dreamy collection all the way from the Netherlands, where he's currently residing (and hopefully making more masterpieces). Eric's unique splashes of color allow the observer, be it yourself or your 83-year-old grandma, to feel like they're taking a trip - and not necessarily a fun one either. His paintings, done primarily through paint and oil pastels, are almost haunting in their imagery, but hey, we're not called Mad Swirl for nothing. We dig the madness Eric Caulfield brought us this month, and are excited to share it all with you right... now. - mo
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we saved a state of chance or fate, concluded with a two-line rhyme; we perused some poets from bamboo bookshelf to bier; we reveled rapturously in moon-wrought madness; we likened lyricisms to the poetry of pest control technicians; we countered a type 3 affliction with the truth of our addiction, love, our only antidote for ailment; we gave our ghosts a good run, indulged in "what if" just for fun; we felt love gone far away in a little one's DNA. Damn that double-helix! ~ mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
Residue
clutters your DNA
swirling with magical properties
making you, you, separate
but connected
to me
and her.
Clinging to you when available
squeezing me as tightly as you do
I say, "I love you," but why
do I think of HER
when the syllables escape
my lips as I kiss YOU?
Unexplained is explainable
even though I do not see her
in your face
I feel her
in my heart
through you.
- Joseph D. DiLella
(1 poem added 01.23.13)
editor's note: Sweet is this severe separation, a bitter twist on genetic memory. - mh
Shakespeare’s Ghosts
What if you belonged to another man,
were another man’s wife
and I fell in love with you anyway,
I couldn’t help myself and fell in love anyway
with your beauty and charm,
your elegance and grace,
but I couldn’t have you
because you belonged to him,
what would I do then?
What could I do then?
Would I go crazy,
loving you from afar,
pining away, pacing a rut
through my living room rug,
the thoughts of you throbbing
like heavy trains through
my brain, chewing at my heart
like jackals gnawing a wildebeest carcass,
the vision of your ethereal femininity
like diaphanous bats haunting my daydreams
and my long dark nights too,
like a ghost in Hamlet or MacBeth or Richard III?
Or would I fold my tent,
abandon my quest for you,
go off quietly into that not-so-good night?
Upon instantaneous reflection
the answer is all too clear to me –
I would have to pursue you with every ounce
of my pale pathetic being,
move mountains, conquer the heavens,
how could I do otherwise?
We have only one life and one true love
and they must come together in one place
in time like a tornado touching down
on a clear flat plain
in the lightning and the rain.
- Michael Estabrook
(1 poem added 01.23.13)
editor's note: What if, what could, what does, what not, what ever? Much better, what is. - mh
Type 3
I want to pour the cancer out of your veins
and seep it deep into my body
kiss you softly while you sleep
and weep next to your grave
I want to dance in your shadow as I
watch you seductively take off your clothes
I want to count every bite mark on my body to remember
all the times we called it "making love"
and
I want to be there when you find out the horrible truth
The truth being -
I have never loved anyone the way I love you
and yet still it will never be enough
- Eduardo Quinones
(added 01.17.13)
editor's note: Love may not cure all, but it makes a great placebo. Hippocrates couldn't prescribe better treatment. - mh
The rat catcher's brother
She was a talkative drunk
But, feeling stung by my cool conversation,
Baited the words of her terminal declaration,
You are a close relation of the pest control technician.
Insulting by implication my low caste clan.
Then I watched her stagger slightly as she walked away
Into the open doorway of the dingy pub,
That snapped and swallowed her from my sight
At half past one on a sun soaked Thursday afternoon.
I do not know why I thought
Of Shakespeare, holding the reins
Outside a theatre in the dirty London rain,
The nags missed him when he moved on.
And how we try to trap the elusive rat success
In the blunt jaws of our ability.
Poison the dark mice of distraction,
Humanely capture the thoughtless critics,
Then drown them in the old steel bucket.
My brother will surely understand.
- Danny McFadden
(added 01.16.13)
editor's note: Be not deterred by our low caste, poets all; ever in pursuit of that elusive rat success. Keep the bucket full! - mh
MAD MOONSCAPE
In this mad moonscape
I rise and fall…
Rapturous ripples
between green flanked thighs…
Past fishermens’ testosterone
with cans of orange crush
and thorns in their sides.
I frolic through flirty
parasol shading nubiles
and Lady Justine
clothed with
damson velvet gowns
of dragonflies.
My undulating spine
surges through
caressing fronds of
golden bracken
and wild blueberries.
Liquid lips licking
sloe gin and saxophone.
I comfort
tormented souls,
tossed into this
tourniquet of tears, that
sit on my tongue
like a crescent moon..
Lovers limb locked,
embedded as 1,000 year old
tree roots……
masquerades of ghostly Guineveres…
I flow into a framed
museum Monet..
My hair adorned with
pink water lilies…
I rise and fall
beneath eyes of
ephemeral, etched spirits
in this……
mad moonscape
- Linda Ibbotson
(added 01.15.13)
editor's note: This is moon-wrought madness, for sure; a ribald rollercoaster ride, a poet's parlor game. May I play?!? - mh
Late Arrival
He is the late comer. One leg above earth, devouring texts
we read in grade school.
While we watch with beer in hand, in the cover of night,
he catches up on his typing speed fiddling on keys.
His first Bukowski was picked off a pile of damp books under a
crumbling building in Monrovia;
Tranströmer and Sontag were in the autumn,
‘91 issue of Antaeus torn on all sides:
damp and moldy –
He stitched and set them on his bamboo bookshelf.
It stormed. The thatch roof leaked.
Both book and buyer, shivered before
the mad pour of July rain.
He put Antaeus outside to dry near the hen house where
his friend's corpse was later dumped for two days, embalmed
in fresh plantain leaves and ashes.
- Timothy Ogene
(added 01.14.13)
editor's note: Late come, well-read; something of substance to say at the funeral. - mh
SHAKESPEARE’S TRICK OF SALVATION
A deliberate misreading of Sonnet 124
if lust was simply but a child of state
then and now to be a bastard of the fate
that all destinies are met not good or bad
but in the joke so practically had
time for heart or merely time for hate
the common weeds are gathered with the sate
and by an accident were only meant
to be just a moment of discontent
in every single hour life is short
in every raining shower faith abort
and all alone each forced to perform the trick
that makes profession of faith a heretic
witness the fools of time who died confessing lives of crime
in the belief they are made clean to enter into love supreme
- satnrose
(1 poem added 01.13.13)
editor's note: Arrest evil outcome with this article of faith (or magic spell) boosted from the Bard in three quatrains and a couplet. - 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...
Burnin',
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
This month's featured artist, Eric Caulfield, brings us a refreshing and dreamy collection all the way from the Netherlands, where he's currently residing (and hopefully making more masterpieces). Eric's unique splashes of color allow the observer, be it yourself or your 83-year-old grandma, to feel like they're taking a trip - and not necessarily a fun one either. His paintings, done primarily through paint and oil pastels, are almost haunting in their imagery, but hey, we're not called Mad Swirl for nothing. We dig the madness Eric Caulfield brought us this month, and are excited to share it all with you right... now. - mo
•••••••••••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we saved a state of chance or fate, concluded with a two-line rhyme; we perused some poets from bamboo bookshelf to bier; we reveled rapturously in moon-wrought madness; we likened lyricisms to the poetry of pest control technicians; we countered a type 3 affliction with the truth of our addiction, love, our only antidote for ailment; we gave our ghosts a good run, indulged in "what if" just for fun; we felt love gone far away in a little one's DNA. Damn that double-helix! ~ mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
Residue
clutters your DNA
swirling with magical properties
making you, you, separate
but connected
to me
and her.
Clinging to you when available
squeezing me as tightly as you do
I say, "I love you," but why
do I think of HER
when the syllables escape
my lips as I kiss YOU?
Unexplained is explainable
even though I do not see her
in your face
I feel her
in my heart
through you.
- Joseph D. DiLella
(1 poem added 01.23.13)
editor's note: Sweet is this severe separation, a bitter twist on genetic memory. - mh
Shakespeare’s Ghosts
What if you belonged to another man,
were another man’s wife
and I fell in love with you anyway,
I couldn’t help myself and fell in love anyway
with your beauty and charm,
your elegance and grace,
but I couldn’t have you
because you belonged to him,
what would I do then?
What could I do then?
Would I go crazy,
loving you from afar,
pining away, pacing a rut
through my living room rug,
the thoughts of you throbbing
like heavy trains through
my brain, chewing at my heart
like jackals gnawing a wildebeest carcass,
the vision of your ethereal femininity
like diaphanous bats haunting my daydreams
and my long dark nights too,
like a ghost in Hamlet or MacBeth or Richard III?
Or would I fold my tent,
abandon my quest for you,
go off quietly into that not-so-good night?
Upon instantaneous reflection
the answer is all too clear to me –
I would have to pursue you with every ounce
of my pale pathetic being,
move mountains, conquer the heavens,
how could I do otherwise?
We have only one life and one true love
and they must come together in one place
in time like a tornado touching down
on a clear flat plain
in the lightning and the rain.
- Michael Estabrook
(1 poem added 01.23.13)
editor's note: What if, what could, what does, what not, what ever? Much better, what is. - mh
Type 3
I want to pour the cancer out of your veins
and seep it deep into my body
kiss you softly while you sleep
and weep next to your grave
I want to dance in your shadow as I
watch you seductively take off your clothes
I want to count every bite mark on my body to remember
all the times we called it "making love"
and
I want to be there when you find out the horrible truth
The truth being -
I have never loved anyone the way I love you
and yet still it will never be enough
- Eduardo Quinones
(added 01.17.13)
editor's note: Love may not cure all, but it makes a great placebo. Hippocrates couldn't prescribe better treatment. - mh
The rat catcher's brother
She was a talkative drunk
But, feeling stung by my cool conversation,
Baited the words of her terminal declaration,
You are a close relation of the pest control technician.
Insulting by implication my low caste clan.
Then I watched her stagger slightly as she walked away
Into the open doorway of the dingy pub,
That snapped and swallowed her from my sight
At half past one on a sun soaked Thursday afternoon.
I do not know why I thought
Of Shakespeare, holding the reins
Outside a theatre in the dirty London rain,
The nags missed him when he moved on.
And how we try to trap the elusive rat success
In the blunt jaws of our ability.
Poison the dark mice of distraction,
Humanely capture the thoughtless critics,
Then drown them in the old steel bucket.
My brother will surely understand.
- Danny McFadden
(added 01.16.13)
editor's note: Be not deterred by our low caste, poets all; ever in pursuit of that elusive rat success. Keep the bucket full! - mh
MAD MOONSCAPE
In this mad moonscape
I rise and fall…
Rapturous ripples
between green flanked thighs…
Past fishermens’ testosterone
with cans of orange crush
and thorns in their sides.
I frolic through flirty
parasol shading nubiles
and Lady Justine
clothed with
damson velvet gowns
of dragonflies.
My undulating spine
surges through
caressing fronds of
golden bracken
and wild blueberries.
Liquid lips licking
sloe gin and saxophone.
I comfort
tormented souls,
tossed into this
tourniquet of tears, that
sit on my tongue
like a crescent moon..
Lovers limb locked,
embedded as 1,000 year old
tree roots……
masquerades of ghostly Guineveres…
I flow into a framed
museum Monet..
My hair adorned with
pink water lilies…
I rise and fall
beneath eyes of
ephemeral, etched spirits
in this……
mad moonscape
- Linda Ibbotson
(added 01.15.13)
editor's note: This is moon-wrought madness, for sure; a ribald rollercoaster ride, a poet's parlor game. May I play?!? - mh
Late Arrival
He is the late comer. One leg above earth, devouring texts
we read in grade school.
While we watch with beer in hand, in the cover of night,
he catches up on his typing speed fiddling on keys.
His first Bukowski was picked off a pile of damp books under a
crumbling building in Monrovia;
Tranströmer and Sontag were in the autumn,
‘91 issue of Antaeus torn on all sides:
damp and moldy –
He stitched and set them on his bamboo bookshelf.
It stormed. The thatch roof leaked.
Both book and buyer, shivered before
the mad pour of July rain.
He put Antaeus outside to dry near the hen house where
his friend's corpse was later dumped for two days, embalmed
in fresh plantain leaves and ashes.
- Timothy Ogene
(added 01.14.13)
editor's note: Late come, well-read; something of substance to say at the funeral. - mh
SHAKESPEARE’S TRICK OF SALVATION
A deliberate misreading of Sonnet 124
if lust was simply but a child of state
then and now to be a bastard of the fate
that all destinies are met not good or bad
but in the joke so practically had
time for heart or merely time for hate
the common weeds are gathered with the sate
and by an accident were only meant
to be just a moment of discontent
in every single hour life is short
in every raining shower faith abort
and all alone each forced to perform the trick
that makes profession of faith a heretic
witness the fools of time who died confessing lives of crime
in the belief they are made clean to enter into love supreme
- satnrose
(1 poem added 01.13.13)
editor's note: Arrest evil outcome with this article of faith (or magic spell) boosted from the Bard in three quatrains and a couplet. - 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...
Burnin',
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
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