The Best of Mad Swirl : 10.18.14
"What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers." Logan Pearsall Smith
••• The Mad Gallery •••
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Photo (above) by featured artist Rosie Lindsey. To see more Mad works from Rosie, and our other contributing artists, please visit our Mad Gallery.
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... Wwe countered crass forgeries with brush strokes striping imagery, emoting over and above propriety; we peeled paint from graffitied statues, redefined our fount of virtues; welos twon, onwe tton gue, notno wundone; we handled a haft, sliced the hue of a laugh into deft declensions of purple; we reveled in a dreamscape rebellion; we strained to dance in moonlit 'scapes o' sand and stars and mist and such, evaded weights of social network numbers tallied, clic an' touch; we flipped fault, swallowed blame, understood outcomes to be the same. Writers wrest our lives from myth, consigned to levels fourth or fifth.
Patience, Family, Patience... ~ MH Clay
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
All I've done recently is apologize.
Sorry, honey
Sorry, ten guys beating me
Sorry, police who made me sit in my own urine
Sorry, guy who bought my bar and got a criminal charge brought against me by driving a kid to the hospital who ripped the tendons in his ankle by kicking me in the ribs
Sorry, foreclosed landlady for giving you money to repay the loan you defaulted on
Sorry, to make you sue me for 3,000 when you owe over 300,000
Sorry, loan shark, Sang Il, who is suing my landlady
Sorry that my landlady didn't take the rent money I paid for three years and use it to repay the original bank loan
Sorry, new owner that you have to kick us out
Sorry, Israel for my support of Palestinians trying not to be refugees by repeatedly mocking your dumb rhetoric
Sorry, Mayan Indians, Triqui Indians, and all others who have been displaced
In Korea you see old women carrying babies on back (but they'll never forgive the Japanese or Americans)
But in the refugee camps in Chiapas you see babies on the backs of young girls cause siblings care for siblings after their parents and grandparents are gone
Sorry, bitchy woman in restaurant for being too loud playing with my son
Sorry, sorry, sorry, for all of it
You're right, honey, it's all my fault
- Ralph-Michael Chiaia
(1 poem added 10.18.14)
editor’s note: De nada! - mh
Big Green Moon In North Laguna
Dodging shiny tank-sized SUV’s
and their texting, latte-sipping,
GPS-distracted, cell-phone chatting,
high on prescription drug driving,
foie gras artery clogged,
utterly miserable, corporate
pencil pushers and peons,
of which I was once one,
I maneuver across a highway of road kill,
through wooden skeletons
of tract housing,
under rusted, barbed wire
that once kept back the cattle,
but now just cut through my jeans.
I continue through cool chaparral
foggy ravines with cottontails
frozen like statues,
black stink bugs,
vines with dried hollow gourds;
once drinking cups for Indians,
the bones of whom lay far beneath
this Pelican Hill Golf Resort,
too green and manicured,
from which fertilizers seep down,
eroding sand cliffs,
poisoning the tide pools below.
I breathe in deeply;
earth peppermint coolness,
salty sea mist,
and dance along the cliff,
arms spread wide like a
yellow-beaked, red-clawed hawk,
over a narrow, rocky beach,
vast darkness of ocean
and beyond that;
a big green Laguna moon,
I can almost touch.
- John Szabo
(added 10.17.14)
editor’s note: Dodging destruction to dance in the moon. - mh
Back Then
Most days, it was a secret.
As the sun sank the light dimmed
and died out, but the numbers on my digital clock
buzzed, burning redder as the dark wore on.
A bulb from the hall lit the crack
under the door, but, that too, slowly, eventually,
flickered and went black.
When the house was dusted with silence,
I opened the door and crept out.
The beat of blood against my head
crashed like waves upon the shore,
yet I could hear every grain of sand shift
under my feet as I tip-toed down the hall.
I made my way outside, careful to not disturb
the motes of silence floating
in the absence of moonlight.
I made it.
I ran, feeling roots and grass with my feet,
and the sparkling stars prickling on my skin.
The space of twelve and five between
the hands of the clock were now mine.
The crack under the door lit
with the suns admonishment
and its rays fell on me: asleep.
- Tom Freeland
(added 10.16.14)
editor’s note: A dreamed escape, a dreamscape, a dream... - mh
Purple Laughter
Laughter doesn’t need to be purple,
but purple is a mysterious, open and noble color
In purple, I cannot always see the reasons
my actions are propelled by a quiet intuition
moved not by logic or inquisition
No Hesitation --
only movement
Stepping beyond the comfortable confines of familiarity
allowing my serendipitous feet to guide me, purple
I will not always know if I am headed in the right direction
but I can always be certain that the path is never wrong
only movement
- Sunya Chavi
(1 poem added 10.15.14)
editor’s note: Color your path with a purple laugh; wrong, right, resounding! (With this poem, we welcome Sunya to our crazy confab of Contributing Poets. Read more of her madness on her new page - check it out!) - mh
Cher
On the co
bweb of he
r tongue I c
alcul
ate the los
s I coul
d have w
on.
- Quinten Collier
(1 poem added 10.14.14)
editor’s note: Soh ard tow in, han gingby lov e'sth read. (We are happy to welcome Quinten back to our crazy klatsch of Contributing Poets, check out more of his madness on his page.) - mh
Two Men Embrace on a Wall in Kaunas
He didn’t expect the paint to peel the heads
and necks, sprayed on a tavern facade that night
when he tried to be famous like Banksy
using paint to display a couple’s embrace,
between two men, graffiti that raised debates
on morality among artists, statesmen, priests
claiming the start of a new Lithuania, liberal,
confident, loose. The storm poured and drenched
the wall for days and all that remains is pants.
- Simon Lewis
(added 10.13.14)
editor’s note: A Lithuanian liberation made relevant for all. Embrace who you will; pants optional. - mh
Corrupted proclamations and judicial fate
Misrepresented contingencies filling penitentiaries; incarcerating minds, souls and bodies beyond the statistics of greater numbers that were and now are truly innocent, plastered with evidence of hate crimes and the power of money making a shadow of doubt, an unjust formality.
Days run long of unrest, of vengeance becoming a reckoning of another’s expiration; a prison dictation being caught up in a system that eradicates a willing mind and turns the souls of many black.
Reparation, revocation don’t give back time to the life of the one unjustly taken from society and caged, becoming a slave of the state by the unjustifiable dictation of the arguments of twelve, judicial fate and those who didn’t reach out to grab the hook; fixed with the bate of judicial genocide, corrupted proclamations.
- James Brown
(1 poem added 10.13.14)
editor's note: Regarding our catch and release program; is a fish caught and mangled, then thrown back, free? - mh
••• Short Stories •••
Need a read? Check out the latest addition to our short stories library, "For the Love of Snakes: Dr. Veenum and Dr. Wang" by Louis Marvin. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about this pick-of-the-week story: "The venom is never as dangerous as the cure, so fall in love with the sting and enjoy what it does to your insides."
Here's a bit to get you goin':
(photo by Tyler Malone)
The letter said this project could change your life, so he sat in his University of Arizona-Herpetology Dept. office waiting for this Dr. Wang to appear before the United Nations. They were showing the general assembly on the cable news station, which was full to capacity, with folks standing on the sides. Protocol and safety were at their usual high standards, but today was a special day.
He looked over the letter. It called him their top choice, and one of only a very few even considered. He had already talked to the other two folks, and all agreed as to the enormity of the project.
She was sipping green tea with a little honey and lemon. Her notes, dog-eared and stained, had been gone over many, many times. She just wanted to go and deliver the good news. No spin, just tell it like it is and let the world react as they will, then get all the champagne toasting Amen! and commencement addresses out of the way. It was time to get out there and boot up these new communities, these new worlds…
Get the rest of your read on right 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...
Whisperin’,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
••• The Mad Gallery •••
Photo (above) by featured artist Rosie Lindsey. To see more Mad works from Rosie, and our other contributing artists, please visit our Mad Gallery.
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... Wwe countered crass forgeries with brush strokes striping imagery, emoting over and above propriety; we peeled paint from graffitied statues, redefined our fount of virtues; welos twon, onwe tton gue, notno wundone; we handled a haft, sliced the hue of a laugh into deft declensions of purple; we reveled in a dreamscape rebellion; we strained to dance in moonlit 'scapes o' sand and stars and mist and such, evaded weights of social network numbers tallied, clic an' touch; we flipped fault, swallowed blame, understood outcomes to be the same. Writers wrest our lives from myth, consigned to levels fourth or fifth.
Patience, Family, Patience... ~ MH Clay
Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...
All I've done recently is apologize.
Sorry, honey
Sorry, ten guys beating me
Sorry, police who made me sit in my own urine
Sorry, guy who bought my bar and got a criminal charge brought against me by driving a kid to the hospital who ripped the tendons in his ankle by kicking me in the ribs
Sorry, foreclosed landlady for giving you money to repay the loan you defaulted on
Sorry, to make you sue me for 3,000 when you owe over 300,000
Sorry, loan shark, Sang Il, who is suing my landlady
Sorry that my landlady didn't take the rent money I paid for three years and use it to repay the original bank loan
Sorry, new owner that you have to kick us out
Sorry, Israel for my support of Palestinians trying not to be refugees by repeatedly mocking your dumb rhetoric
Sorry, Mayan Indians, Triqui Indians, and all others who have been displaced
In Korea you see old women carrying babies on back (but they'll never forgive the Japanese or Americans)
But in the refugee camps in Chiapas you see babies on the backs of young girls cause siblings care for siblings after their parents and grandparents are gone
Sorry, bitchy woman in restaurant for being too loud playing with my son
Sorry, sorry, sorry, for all of it
You're right, honey, it's all my fault
- Ralph-Michael Chiaia
(1 poem added 10.18.14)
editor’s note: De nada! - mh
Big Green Moon In North Laguna
Dodging shiny tank-sized SUV’s
and their texting, latte-sipping,
GPS-distracted, cell-phone chatting,
high on prescription drug driving,
foie gras artery clogged,
utterly miserable, corporate
pencil pushers and peons,
of which I was once one,
I maneuver across a highway of road kill,
through wooden skeletons
of tract housing,
under rusted, barbed wire
that once kept back the cattle,
but now just cut through my jeans.
I continue through cool chaparral
foggy ravines with cottontails
frozen like statues,
black stink bugs,
vines with dried hollow gourds;
once drinking cups for Indians,
the bones of whom lay far beneath
this Pelican Hill Golf Resort,
too green and manicured,
from which fertilizers seep down,
eroding sand cliffs,
poisoning the tide pools below.
I breathe in deeply;
earth peppermint coolness,
salty sea mist,
and dance along the cliff,
arms spread wide like a
yellow-beaked, red-clawed hawk,
over a narrow, rocky beach,
vast darkness of ocean
and beyond that;
a big green Laguna moon,
I can almost touch.
- John Szabo
(added 10.17.14)
editor’s note: Dodging destruction to dance in the moon. - mh
Back Then
Most days, it was a secret.
As the sun sank the light dimmed
and died out, but the numbers on my digital clock
buzzed, burning redder as the dark wore on.
A bulb from the hall lit the crack
under the door, but, that too, slowly, eventually,
flickered and went black.
When the house was dusted with silence,
I opened the door and crept out.
The beat of blood against my head
crashed like waves upon the shore,
yet I could hear every grain of sand shift
under my feet as I tip-toed down the hall.
I made my way outside, careful to not disturb
the motes of silence floating
in the absence of moonlight.
I made it.
I ran, feeling roots and grass with my feet,
and the sparkling stars prickling on my skin.
The space of twelve and five between
the hands of the clock were now mine.
The crack under the door lit
with the suns admonishment
and its rays fell on me: asleep.
- Tom Freeland
(added 10.16.14)
editor’s note: A dreamed escape, a dreamscape, a dream... - mh
Purple Laughter
Laughter doesn’t need to be purple,
but purple is a mysterious, open and noble color
In purple, I cannot always see the reasons
my actions are propelled by a quiet intuition
moved not by logic or inquisition
No Hesitation --
only movement
Stepping beyond the comfortable confines of familiarity
allowing my serendipitous feet to guide me, purple
I will not always know if I am headed in the right direction
but I can always be certain that the path is never wrong
only movement
- Sunya Chavi
(1 poem added 10.15.14)
editor’s note: Color your path with a purple laugh; wrong, right, resounding! (With this poem, we welcome Sunya to our crazy confab of Contributing Poets. Read more of her madness on her new page - check it out!) - mh
Cher
On the co
bweb of he
r tongue I c
alcul
ate the los
s I coul
d have w
on.
- Quinten Collier
(1 poem added 10.14.14)
editor’s note: Soh ard tow in, han gingby lov e'sth read. (We are happy to welcome Quinten back to our crazy klatsch of Contributing Poets, check out more of his madness on his page.) - mh
Two Men Embrace on a Wall in Kaunas
He didn’t expect the paint to peel the heads
and necks, sprayed on a tavern facade that night
when he tried to be famous like Banksy
using paint to display a couple’s embrace,
between two men, graffiti that raised debates
on morality among artists, statesmen, priests
claiming the start of a new Lithuania, liberal,
confident, loose. The storm poured and drenched
the wall for days and all that remains is pants.
- Simon Lewis
(added 10.13.14)
editor’s note: A Lithuanian liberation made relevant for all. Embrace who you will; pants optional. - mh
Corrupted proclamations and judicial fate
Misrepresented contingencies filling penitentiaries; incarcerating minds, souls and bodies beyond the statistics of greater numbers that were and now are truly innocent, plastered with evidence of hate crimes and the power of money making a shadow of doubt, an unjust formality.
Days run long of unrest, of vengeance becoming a reckoning of another’s expiration; a prison dictation being caught up in a system that eradicates a willing mind and turns the souls of many black.
Reparation, revocation don’t give back time to the life of the one unjustly taken from society and caged, becoming a slave of the state by the unjustifiable dictation of the arguments of twelve, judicial fate and those who didn’t reach out to grab the hook; fixed with the bate of judicial genocide, corrupted proclamations.
- James Brown
(1 poem added 10.13.14)
editor's note: Regarding our catch and release program; is a fish caught and mangled, then thrown back, free? - mh
••• Short Stories •••
Need a read? Check out the latest addition to our short stories library, "For the Love of Snakes: Dr. Veenum and Dr. Wang" by Louis Marvin. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about this pick-of-the-week story: "The venom is never as dangerous as the cure, so fall in love with the sting and enjoy what it does to your insides."
Here's a bit to get you goin':
The letter said this project could change your life, so he sat in his University of Arizona-Herpetology Dept. office waiting for this Dr. Wang to appear before the United Nations. They were showing the general assembly on the cable news station, which was full to capacity, with folks standing on the sides. Protocol and safety were at their usual high standards, but today was a special day.
He looked over the letter. It called him their top choice, and one of only a very few even considered. He had already talked to the other two folks, and all agreed as to the enormity of the project.
She was sipping green tea with a little honey and lemon. Her notes, dog-eared and stained, had been gone over many, many times. She just wanted to go and deliver the good news. No spin, just tell it like it is and let the world react as they will, then get all the champagne toasting Amen! and commencement addresses out of the way. It was time to get out there and boot up these new communities, these new worlds…
Get the rest of your read on right 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...
Whisperin’,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
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