The Best of Mad Swirl : 07.07.13
"I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you." Frida Kahlo
••• The Mad Gallery •••
Paradise by the Sea series (above) by Toni Martin, one of over 20 featured 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 yours right over here and a-way you'll GO
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we sequestered a somnambulist's safe haven for ourselves; we sought a septegenarian's supressed rage, reversal not achieved to arrest the onset of age; we caught a knot fraught with ideas of what life is and what it's not; we found a fertile, manic butterfly view of brain state stutterings, solitary sightings, impossible and undocumented; we earned aftermath anxiety o'er who saw what and who first told of what was new-fold, what was old; we disclosed dark details of demonic dominance; we posed a poignant present to preserve those passed. Mark these moments, all; hold fast. Ensure the longevity of the line. ~ mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
Apple Juice in the Hall.
The DJ played a song about suicide at a Christmas party.
Flashing lights, tinsel, cigarette smoke, knit sweaters, red cups,
and a life unconquered.
There was a sudden, unspoken consensus to slow down and
ask for the names of the people we’d
been dancing with.
How strange to think that we had laughed into the
shoulders of people we didn’t even know.
Patrick, your eyes are green and I think you had the
sadness when you were sixteen.
I can tell because your baby mint irises were
glossy like marbles when the
chorus picked up
and you played all the lyrics
across your lips without so much as blinking.
My father use to sleep in the bedroom
above that sticky beer basement and I wondered to myself
if he had ever cried there in 1987.
His mother drank too much and his
father was always busy.
Did someone have to remind him that someday he’d have a
daughter with brown hair and his smile?
I so badly wanted to climb the stairs and
visit his ghost and tell it to wait a little longer.
Buzzed and down,
we all stood stalk still, faking engrossment in conversations
we weren’t hearing.
Everything was second to the thoughts about the
three a.m. sorrow that our best friend didn’t understand
on that very lonesome June night when things
went too far.
I watched the smoke swirl as the refrain picked up
and someone softly talked about the scar from the
I.V. they had in their arm.
Sipping from my cup, I nodded my head along to the
bass drum beat and raised my hand with everyone else’s
(in a moment of so much loneliness, there was
comfort in the empty space of air).
My body was swaying and my mind was with
sixteen-year-old Patrick and
the time my dad spent alone on his old bed-set.
The sound of tomorrows and
thoughts of battles won
rang like cymbals in the worst way when the song was over
and the room of fifty seven people
was silent.
- Taylor Gall
(added 07.06.13)
editor's note: Hands in the air, the empty space we share, those passed on with us still here. (sigh) - mh
demon du jour
We live together, you and me.
You live inside me.
You move through my body.
I feel you in my throat,
burning like a struck match,
covering my words in ash.
I feel you in my stomach,
thick and foul,
making me sick.
I feel you in my head,
permeating every thought,
clawing at my eyes,
altering what I see.
You live inside me.
Strip everything I am and you will remain,
small and black,
bitter and hard like a bit of coal,
moving across my insides,
darkening wherever you go.
We live together, you and me.
- Amy Lawson
(added 07.05.13)
editor's note: We could cough up this bilious bilge muck, like owls and cats clear their guts of indigestible goo. Put those demons on paper and burn the book, instead. - mh
TALLAHASSEE TRAIN TRACKS
Looking at
a triple-something exposed photo
of my sister, and her trampy ex-boyfriend
(just barely a ghost in the corner,)
I remember a sunny day in Tallahassee,
walking to some Fair,
he says as the train passes,
"There were people in there, did you see the guys in there?
They had dogs."
I say, "Were they young?"
He says, "They were old."
- Nicole Kuwik
(1 poem added 07.04.13)
editor's note: By the testimony of two, or more, witnesses, let the truth be established. Er, um...maybe not? - mh
Short Black Haiku
Rorschach creature
on the saucer
fecund caffeine
- Virginie Colline
(1 poem added 07.03.13)
editor's note: That design looks just like a...butterfly. - mh
Gordian
There are no points to this
nor any short way there.
What you see are diamonds
in the rough, tenuous, we call them 'A'.
Death imagined on the other side,
a membrane made of gauze
we float through, searching
for a better term, we call it 'B'.
Distance is a line, not.
Curved space rotates,
ideas are challenged
and we find what's real is knot.
Universe and universe,
they talk and talk and words
lose meaning, angry is the juice
that ties in intestinal knots.
Fingers feel the pinch, we spin
and spin a story into cloth, add
characters and clauses, beginning
is the end, the end is the beginning,
our minds unraveling the secret knot.
© 2012
- Rose Aiello Morales
(1 poem added 07.02.13)
editor's note: Life's got questions, we make up answers; ready or knot. - mh
70th Birthday Party
As the family gathers,
we celebrate her 70th birthday,
pale pink balloons
full breasted and floating.
I struggle to find a young girl’s face
buried somewhere amongst the crevices
and parchment histories of women
dressed in clever stripes and flowers,
dresses that sell fertility and fruitfulness,
concealing pea sized shrunken wombs.
Opposite sits the Hairdresser Confidante
- saying nothing -
corpse white fingers,
elongated and pale from their
all day feeding amongst the shadows
of the dark and the dyed,
his hands resting on swollen belly,
fingers locked in deadly combat,
a bloodless self-embrace.
The children flit through our adult world,
they spread grace and sin in equal measures,
skipping between the hot house flowers
and the suited pockets deep.
Once again,
the balloons, pale pink and silver looming,
long tailed and anchored to white linen,
on tabletops rounded for conversation
- and profit.
But the Party Girl’s line dancer friends
sit not in circles but side by side,
lifting their glasses with the practiced ease
of high priestesses, who have reconciled
dancing alone, while with each other,
still afraid of finding themselves sitting
where the circle’s beginning
meets it’s end.
- Niall OConnor
(added 07.01.13)
editor's note: Our oldest spectator sport; watching the progress of age. Our arms are muscled but ever unable to hold off its pressing push to circle's end. - mh
SLEEP, MY FAVOURITE THING
Drifting off to sleep again
In the middle of the afternoon
Had no time for lunch today
Just the time to smoke and think
The inevitable is coming
Sooner than I expected
But away I go to my favourite place
The Land of Nod
I love to sleep
It’s one of my favourite things
The dreams I can have
The rest I can get
Sleep really is my favourite thing
And my bed is my favourite place.
- Bradford Middleton
(1 poem added 06.30.13)
editor's note: Smoke and think about sleeping; sleep and dream about smoking. Hold off the inevitable... zzzzzzzzzzzzz. - mh
••• Short Stories •••
Need a read? Of course you do! Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week short story, "Between the Barricades" by Shawn Macrae: "We really enjoy those we don't know anything about: celebrities, sports stars, strangers with large chests on beer billboards. There are more Franks in the world than we want to realize, though, even the ones we see on TV. Everyone is a little deviant, most have the simple potential for murder, like a lone crow on a power line. Remember to say Hi! to that sweet lady sitting alone on her porch next door, but don't forget to lock your door when you get home." Here's a taste to get your hairs raised...
(photo by Tyler Malone)
A friend of mine had once advised me to refrain from making friends with my neighbors. This advice proved to be useful, but had I followed through with it, I would not be writing this. At the time I was naive, and thought nothing of a friendly chat with the neighbor next to whom I had just moved. I lived on the corner of Leffingwell and Carriage where I occupied a room in an apartment building. I had a single neighbor to my right, two neighbors above, and a heavily wooded forest to my rear. What initially drew me to the place was the beautiful garden just outside of the building. It was wonderfully tended to by the neighbor to my right / His name was Frank. He was a rather soft spoken individual: an odd and off-beat character who thoroughly rubbed me the wrong way. He had a problem keeping to himself.
Get the rest of your creepy read on here...
•••••••
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 mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...
Portrait Paintin',
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
••• The Mad Gallery •••
Paradise by the Sea series (above) by Toni Martin, one of over 20 featured 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 yours right over here and a-way you'll GO
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we sequestered a somnambulist's safe haven for ourselves; we sought a septegenarian's supressed rage, reversal not achieved to arrest the onset of age; we caught a knot fraught with ideas of what life is and what it's not; we found a fertile, manic butterfly view of brain state stutterings, solitary sightings, impossible and undocumented; we earned aftermath anxiety o'er who saw what and who first told of what was new-fold, what was old; we disclosed dark details of demonic dominance; we posed a poignant present to preserve those passed. Mark these moments, all; hold fast. Ensure the longevity of the line. ~ mh
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
Apple Juice in the Hall.
The DJ played a song about suicide at a Christmas party.
Flashing lights, tinsel, cigarette smoke, knit sweaters, red cups,
and a life unconquered.
There was a sudden, unspoken consensus to slow down and
ask for the names of the people we’d
been dancing with.
How strange to think that we had laughed into the
shoulders of people we didn’t even know.
Patrick, your eyes are green and I think you had the
sadness when you were sixteen.
I can tell because your baby mint irises were
glossy like marbles when the
chorus picked up
and you played all the lyrics
across your lips without so much as blinking.
My father use to sleep in the bedroom
above that sticky beer basement and I wondered to myself
if he had ever cried there in 1987.
His mother drank too much and his
father was always busy.
Did someone have to remind him that someday he’d have a
daughter with brown hair and his smile?
I so badly wanted to climb the stairs and
visit his ghost and tell it to wait a little longer.
Buzzed and down,
we all stood stalk still, faking engrossment in conversations
we weren’t hearing.
Everything was second to the thoughts about the
three a.m. sorrow that our best friend didn’t understand
on that very lonesome June night when things
went too far.
I watched the smoke swirl as the refrain picked up
and someone softly talked about the scar from the
I.V. they had in their arm.
Sipping from my cup, I nodded my head along to the
bass drum beat and raised my hand with everyone else’s
(in a moment of so much loneliness, there was
comfort in the empty space of air).
My body was swaying and my mind was with
sixteen-year-old Patrick and
the time my dad spent alone on his old bed-set.
The sound of tomorrows and
thoughts of battles won
rang like cymbals in the worst way when the song was over
and the room of fifty seven people
was silent.
- Taylor Gall
(added 07.06.13)
editor's note: Hands in the air, the empty space we share, those passed on with us still here. (sigh) - mh
demon du jour
We live together, you and me.
You live inside me.
You move through my body.
I feel you in my throat,
burning like a struck match,
covering my words in ash.
I feel you in my stomach,
thick and foul,
making me sick.
I feel you in my head,
permeating every thought,
clawing at my eyes,
altering what I see.
You live inside me.
Strip everything I am and you will remain,
small and black,
bitter and hard like a bit of coal,
moving across my insides,
darkening wherever you go.
We live together, you and me.
- Amy Lawson
(added 07.05.13)
editor's note: We could cough up this bilious bilge muck, like owls and cats clear their guts of indigestible goo. Put those demons on paper and burn the book, instead. - mh
TALLAHASSEE TRAIN TRACKS
Looking at
a triple-something exposed photo
of my sister, and her trampy ex-boyfriend
(just barely a ghost in the corner,)
I remember a sunny day in Tallahassee,
walking to some Fair,
he says as the train passes,
"There were people in there, did you see the guys in there?
They had dogs."
I say, "Were they young?"
He says, "They were old."
- Nicole Kuwik
(1 poem added 07.04.13)
editor's note: By the testimony of two, or more, witnesses, let the truth be established. Er, um...maybe not? - mh
Short Black Haiku
Rorschach creature
on the saucer
fecund caffeine
- Virginie Colline
(1 poem added 07.03.13)
editor's note: That design looks just like a...butterfly. - mh
Gordian
There are no points to this
nor any short way there.
What you see are diamonds
in the rough, tenuous, we call them 'A'.
Death imagined on the other side,
a membrane made of gauze
we float through, searching
for a better term, we call it 'B'.
Distance is a line, not.
Curved space rotates,
ideas are challenged
and we find what's real is knot.
Universe and universe,
they talk and talk and words
lose meaning, angry is the juice
that ties in intestinal knots.
Fingers feel the pinch, we spin
and spin a story into cloth, add
characters and clauses, beginning
is the end, the end is the beginning,
our minds unraveling the secret knot.
© 2012
- Rose Aiello Morales
(1 poem added 07.02.13)
editor's note: Life's got questions, we make up answers; ready or knot. - mh
70th Birthday Party
As the family gathers,
we celebrate her 70th birthday,
pale pink balloons
full breasted and floating.
I struggle to find a young girl’s face
buried somewhere amongst the crevices
and parchment histories of women
dressed in clever stripes and flowers,
dresses that sell fertility and fruitfulness,
concealing pea sized shrunken wombs.
Opposite sits the Hairdresser Confidante
- saying nothing -
corpse white fingers,
elongated and pale from their
all day feeding amongst the shadows
of the dark and the dyed,
his hands resting on swollen belly,
fingers locked in deadly combat,
a bloodless self-embrace.
The children flit through our adult world,
they spread grace and sin in equal measures,
skipping between the hot house flowers
and the suited pockets deep.
Once again,
the balloons, pale pink and silver looming,
long tailed and anchored to white linen,
on tabletops rounded for conversation
- and profit.
But the Party Girl’s line dancer friends
sit not in circles but side by side,
lifting their glasses with the practiced ease
of high priestesses, who have reconciled
dancing alone, while with each other,
still afraid of finding themselves sitting
where the circle’s beginning
meets it’s end.
- Niall OConnor
(added 07.01.13)
editor's note: Our oldest spectator sport; watching the progress of age. Our arms are muscled but ever unable to hold off its pressing push to circle's end. - mh
SLEEP, MY FAVOURITE THING
Drifting off to sleep again
In the middle of the afternoon
Had no time for lunch today
Just the time to smoke and think
The inevitable is coming
Sooner than I expected
But away I go to my favourite place
The Land of Nod
I love to sleep
It’s one of my favourite things
The dreams I can have
The rest I can get
Sleep really is my favourite thing
And my bed is my favourite place.
- Bradford Middleton
(1 poem added 06.30.13)
editor's note: Smoke and think about sleeping; sleep and dream about smoking. Hold off the inevitable... zzzzzzzzzzzzz. - mh
••• Short Stories •••
Need a read? Of course you do! Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week short story, "Between the Barricades" by Shawn Macrae: "We really enjoy those we don't know anything about: celebrities, sports stars, strangers with large chests on beer billboards. There are more Franks in the world than we want to realize, though, even the ones we see on TV. Everyone is a little deviant, most have the simple potential for murder, like a lone crow on a power line. Remember to say Hi! to that sweet lady sitting alone on her porch next door, but don't forget to lock your door when you get home." Here's a taste to get your hairs raised...
(photo by Tyler Malone)
A friend of mine had once advised me to refrain from making friends with my neighbors. This advice proved to be useful, but had I followed through with it, I would not be writing this. At the time I was naive, and thought nothing of a friendly chat with the neighbor next to whom I had just moved. I lived on the corner of Leffingwell and Carriage where I occupied a room in an apartment building. I had a single neighbor to my right, two neighbors above, and a heavily wooded forest to my rear. What initially drew me to the place was the beautiful garden just outside of the building. It was wonderfully tended to by the neighbor to my right / His name was Frank. He was a rather soft spoken individual: an odd and off-beat character who thoroughly rubbed me the wrong way. He had a problem keeping to himself.
Get the rest of your creepy read on here...
•••••••
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 mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...
Portrait Paintin',
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
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