The Best of Mad Swirl : 12.21.13
"Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will." Ezra Pound
••• The Mad Gallery •••
My wholeness envelopes the whole world (aka I stellify) (above) by David Arthur-Simons
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... to wrap our minds 'round mindful wrappings, untainted by tinsel and holiday trappings; we fantasized o'er a phonic frontiersman's find; we imagined the spark of all existence squeezed into the sea with no resistance; we acquiesced to the orderly warden who always takes more than we can give; we considered the constructs of folks uncommon which moguls would malleate into mammon; we bequeathed a blasted land unto brethren disowned; we counted consciousness as prescient ploy of god-made mind, or high-tech toy; we posed a picture postcard possibility of nuptial holiday bliss, cruisin' for a bruisin'. Just another seven in the Swirl. ~ MH Clay
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
Malice: A Custom Tour from Everafter
The trip this year had us slip through malice
Got it all over us
We bought postcards
With pictures of bruises
And decided next time round not to book again
But we never gave up ideas of sliding past acrimony
As blue and grey runaways
With a stabbing nostalgia
We’ll rip at our souvenirs
Not stopping to ask how we can scream and smile at the same time
Next year there will be a sudden honking outside
Some sort of announced abduction
To a place you first charted
With pictures of bruises
To illustrate the fun we’d have when we got married, angry and carried away
- Steven Minchin
(1 poem added 12.21.13)
editor's note: A slip and a slide through Honeymoon Haven or Holiday Hell is defined by the fine distinction between a scream and a smile. - mh
I Think Therefore I am Confused
I think Therefore I am
at least a hologram,
a brain floating in a vat
a clone or something like that.
- Alex L. Swartzentruber
(added 12.20.13)
editor's note: What comes from dieting on food for thought? Confusing, yes... - mh
The Desert
The desert wind was a
tempestuous creature.
Brown dust ripped from the soil, billowed.
A gray haze hung over the desert
a dust devil was a frenetic dervish.
Heat shocked the air causing
distant mountains to tremble.
The wind died causing the shroud
of dust to tumble to the ground.
Not a living thing in sight.
Green is an unknown color.
Spring rains flood the
acres of checkerboard earth.
Turning it into a quagmire.
This would be an ideal place for
an Indian reservation.
- Mike Berger
(1 poem added 12.19.13)
editor's note: If it's good for them... Well, good for them (just not for us). - mh
Certain Parameters
Certain parameters’ brief fictions might get played out
When undertakings, trounced by sparrows, wrens, select jays,
Surge with songs of desolate places, evil sensations, analytical beadles,
Vast tracts of memorized texts.
Portended invertebrate victories, thereafter, could be minimized
According to rare energy pockets, motes, music, mayhem of the electronic sort,
Glimmering from everything arrayed between parenting and religion,
Such martial visions of discrete goals.
Parts of service chanted from ambos, could blur
Because of life’s demarcations, spreading chestnut arbors, constituent atoms,
Spinning due to computer simulations meant to determine rainfall,
Cups of letters exploded off of pages.
Projects essential to maintaining systematic interaction fail
Despite bright floral carpets studded with burnet, smallage, skirret,
Generating structural modifications, redefinition, other incalculable help,
Uncommon folk’s workaday tapestries.
Chainmail-decked lords, thus get stymied, can’t exercise
Although print editors, peer reviews, SEO gurus, all text families,
Array desired properties, create enough expose’ for multiple audiences,
Magnetic exchanges juxtaposed with pocket money.
- KJ Hannah Greenberg
(1 poem added 12.18.13)
editor's note: Repose our ragged rulers, rest our rank rapacity. A lot of everything ensures no value guarantee. Measure that, you captains of industry! - mh
THE BEGINNINGS OF LONELINESS
The night as summer rolls its polygons
into September’s rust:
man in the window with the moon above his shoulder,
though sometimes he is more a warden of stars.
I showed him flesh
but all he wanted was bone.
- Francis-Xavier Anopuechi
(added 12.17.13)
editor's note: Inmates, listen! Give him his due, or don't; in the end he takes skin, bone and all. - mh
Projections
Often,
when I imagine
the life of others,
I can see
inside my own
a sacred place,
a door without a key
a constellation of apples
ready to be picked
with one hand
but no answers,
only metaphors,
like the elastic
skeleton of a sea sponge
holding water.
- Francesca Castaño
(1 poem added 12.16.13)
editor's note: Who's to say that our swelling seas are nothing more than the wrung out wash of a million billion sea sponges, expelling our existence? (Welcome Francesca to our crazy congress of Contributing Poets. She joins our raucous ranks with this poem - check out her new page here.) - mh
To Gerry Mulligan
Happiness cannot be expressed
because we all think it’s phony.
Thank you, Gerry Mulligan, the Irishman
playing blues in New York, putting
bebop into dixie—or was it the other way round?
In that case you really were kind.
Let your humming baritone be
the voice of a sudden friend
in the middle of Los Angeles
or clouds breaking over the coastline
where Highway 1 shines like a string
gone slack out of the basin.
Whatever it was you found there
I hope to God it still exists. We could all
use a little happiness without the ubiquitous
irony of eyes not seeing eyes,
sincere expressions of insincerity,
and a new track mark to conceal.
- Christopher Raley
(added 12.15.13)
editor's note: Music to give feelings a face we can look in the eye and speak the truth. - 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, "Exploring Space and Time in Rappahannock County" by Mike Lafontaine "Lives lived on paper, what's what most writers want to live out. All that's been, all that will ever be, is all insignificant to what's been put on paper: the heaven that flourishes on paper, in a place, full of people, that doesn't exist.” Here's a taste to tempt you...
Millie and I bunkered down against the cold months in Rappahannock County by sitting near the fireplace and reading books aloud to one another while watching old black and white films.
I had never felt peace like that before or since. I grew up in a household with an abusive father and an overbearing mother. My sisters were loud and my surroundings were ugly. We had no pets and when we welcomed in strays they usually died or ran away within a few weeks of living with us.
I realized at an early age I was being taught the wrong things. So deeply ingrained was this belief that I disregarded everything my parents wanted for me. Faith. Servitude. Intolerance to others.
My father wanted me to grow up to be a man. He was a hunter, and I hated it. All through my childhood I refused to hold a gun. The only time I held a gun was when I was shooting cans in the backyard of our house in Rappahannock County with Roscoe, my girlfriend Millie's brother...
You wanna keep readin'? Of course you wanna! Get the rest of your wanna 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...
Star Pickin’
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
••• The Mad Gallery •••
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... to wrap our minds 'round mindful wrappings, untainted by tinsel and holiday trappings; we fantasized o'er a phonic frontiersman's find; we imagined the spark of all existence squeezed into the sea with no resistance; we acquiesced to the orderly warden who always takes more than we can give; we considered the constructs of folks uncommon which moguls would malleate into mammon; we bequeathed a blasted land unto brethren disowned; we counted consciousness as prescient ploy of god-made mind, or high-tech toy; we posed a picture postcard possibility of nuptial holiday bliss, cruisin' for a bruisin'. Just another seven in the Swirl. ~ MH Clay
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
Malice: A Custom Tour from Everafter
The trip this year had us slip through malice
Got it all over us
We bought postcards
With pictures of bruises
And decided next time round not to book again
But we never gave up ideas of sliding past acrimony
As blue and grey runaways
With a stabbing nostalgia
We’ll rip at our souvenirs
Not stopping to ask how we can scream and smile at the same time
Next year there will be a sudden honking outside
Some sort of announced abduction
To a place you first charted
With pictures of bruises
To illustrate the fun we’d have when we got married, angry and carried away
- Steven Minchin
(1 poem added 12.21.13)
editor's note: A slip and a slide through Honeymoon Haven or Holiday Hell is defined by the fine distinction between a scream and a smile. - mh
I Think Therefore I am Confused
I think Therefore I am
at least a hologram,
a brain floating in a vat
a clone or something like that.
- Alex L. Swartzentruber
(added 12.20.13)
editor's note: What comes from dieting on food for thought? Confusing, yes... - mh
The Desert
The desert wind was a
tempestuous creature.
Brown dust ripped from the soil, billowed.
A gray haze hung over the desert
a dust devil was a frenetic dervish.
Heat shocked the air causing
distant mountains to tremble.
The wind died causing the shroud
of dust to tumble to the ground.
Not a living thing in sight.
Green is an unknown color.
Spring rains flood the
acres of checkerboard earth.
Turning it into a quagmire.
This would be an ideal place for
an Indian reservation.
- Mike Berger
(1 poem added 12.19.13)
editor's note: If it's good for them... Well, good for them (just not for us). - mh
Certain Parameters
Certain parameters’ brief fictions might get played out
When undertakings, trounced by sparrows, wrens, select jays,
Surge with songs of desolate places, evil sensations, analytical beadles,
Vast tracts of memorized texts.
Portended invertebrate victories, thereafter, could be minimized
According to rare energy pockets, motes, music, mayhem of the electronic sort,
Glimmering from everything arrayed between parenting and religion,
Such martial visions of discrete goals.
Parts of service chanted from ambos, could blur
Because of life’s demarcations, spreading chestnut arbors, constituent atoms,
Spinning due to computer simulations meant to determine rainfall,
Cups of letters exploded off of pages.
Projects essential to maintaining systematic interaction fail
Despite bright floral carpets studded with burnet, smallage, skirret,
Generating structural modifications, redefinition, other incalculable help,
Uncommon folk’s workaday tapestries.
Chainmail-decked lords, thus get stymied, can’t exercise
Although print editors, peer reviews, SEO gurus, all text families,
Array desired properties, create enough expose’ for multiple audiences,
Magnetic exchanges juxtaposed with pocket money.
- KJ Hannah Greenberg
(1 poem added 12.18.13)
editor's note: Repose our ragged rulers, rest our rank rapacity. A lot of everything ensures no value guarantee. Measure that, you captains of industry! - mh
THE BEGINNINGS OF LONELINESS
The night as summer rolls its polygons
into September’s rust:
man in the window with the moon above his shoulder,
though sometimes he is more a warden of stars.
I showed him flesh
but all he wanted was bone.
- Francis-Xavier Anopuechi
(added 12.17.13)
editor's note: Inmates, listen! Give him his due, or don't; in the end he takes skin, bone and all. - mh
Projections
Often,
when I imagine
the life of others,
I can see
inside my own
a sacred place,
a door without a key
a constellation of apples
ready to be picked
with one hand
but no answers,
only metaphors,
like the elastic
skeleton of a sea sponge
holding water.
- Francesca Castaño
(1 poem added 12.16.13)
editor's note: Who's to say that our swelling seas are nothing more than the wrung out wash of a million billion sea sponges, expelling our existence? (Welcome Francesca to our crazy congress of Contributing Poets. She joins our raucous ranks with this poem - check out her new page here.) - mh
To Gerry Mulligan
Happiness cannot be expressed
because we all think it’s phony.
Thank you, Gerry Mulligan, the Irishman
playing blues in New York, putting
bebop into dixie—or was it the other way round?
In that case you really were kind.
Let your humming baritone be
the voice of a sudden friend
in the middle of Los Angeles
or clouds breaking over the coastline
where Highway 1 shines like a string
gone slack out of the basin.
Whatever it was you found there
I hope to God it still exists. We could all
use a little happiness without the ubiquitous
irony of eyes not seeing eyes,
sincere expressions of insincerity,
and a new track mark to conceal.
- Christopher Raley
(added 12.15.13)
editor's note: Music to give feelings a face we can look in the eye and speak the truth. - 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, "Exploring Space and Time in Rappahannock County" by Mike Lafontaine "Lives lived on paper, what's what most writers want to live out. All that's been, all that will ever be, is all insignificant to what's been put on paper: the heaven that flourishes on paper, in a place, full of people, that doesn't exist.” Here's a taste to tempt you...
Millie and I bunkered down against the cold months in Rappahannock County by sitting near the fireplace and reading books aloud to one another while watching old black and white films.
I had never felt peace like that before or since. I grew up in a household with an abusive father and an overbearing mother. My sisters were loud and my surroundings were ugly. We had no pets and when we welcomed in strays they usually died or ran away within a few weeks of living with us.
I realized at an early age I was being taught the wrong things. So deeply ingrained was this belief that I disregarded everything my parents wanted for me. Faith. Servitude. Intolerance to others.
My father wanted me to grow up to be a man. He was a hunter, and I hated it. All through my childhood I refused to hold a gun. The only time I held a gun was when I was shooting cans in the backyard of our house in Rappahannock County with Roscoe, my girlfriend Millie's brother...
You wanna keep readin'? Of course you wanna! Get the rest of your wanna 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...
Star Pickin’
Johnny O
Editor-in-chief
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Comments