The Best of Mad Swirl : 05.02.15
“I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone's imagination” ~ Hunter S. Thompson
••• The Mad Gallery •••
“Gonzo Fuel” (above) by featured artist Brett “BA” Ardoin. To see more Mad works from Brett, and our other contributing artists, please visit our Mad Gallery.
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we stepped into a sink of somnambulant recall; we found a pharmacopoeia to fill our ills; we catered to a construct of caffeine and cannabinol; we cried through a year's fall of tears (all okay); we stood in the stead of stolen stories; we stalled at the brink of a sleepy think, stared down self with a wink and a blink; we heard of a house, is not, is too, accommodates dead and a sufferers' queue. We seek room to wait; elaborate, then vacate. Elaborate, All! ~ MH Clay
THE HOUSE OF NON-EXISTENCE
The house is.
An ancient house without a name,
do you know who lives there?
The house is not.
A chimerical vision in someone’s
mind, the old house is invisible.
Inside the stranger’s dream,
the house is,
without words,
beyond our world,
&
buried in the deep snow of his brain,
the house comes into being.
Outside,
the house is not.
Who lives there?
the labyrinth of the night whispers
into the shell of my secret haven,
where I hide from the sphere of sadness.
Not I, a voiceless voice ensconced in my
eerie emptiness shrieks,
not in the House of Non-Existence.
Only the dead live there,
I proclaim defiantly in my private wasteland,
a whirligig whirling around nowhere.
Yet perhaps, I protest too much, in my
Shakespearian monologue,
for I hear the howling coming forth from the
maw of the Chimera,
interminable ululations inside the ancient
mansion.
The House of Non-Existence is vast,
with room enough for the dead
&
other vanishing beings,
enough for a queue of sufferers spanning the
swirling universe,
&
for me too
- Mel Waldman : May 2, 2015
editors note: The house in this invisible vision is not – is. Crazy, Nowhere man! (This one is one-third of a trippin’ triptych. Read the other two to tweak your existence on Dr. Mel’s page – check’em out!) – mh clay
Dark Fantasy
All alone in a dark room –
I gather myself exhausted and tired
on to the bed placed in between two reflectors
sitting there
I look at the image on the left –
I wink
wink and wink and smile back
to please myself
I glance at the figure on the right –
it blinks
blinks and blinks back and frowns
- Aniruddha Sastikar : May 1, 2015
editors note: Wanderings in wonderland when bedded down with a smile and a frown. (Another of Aniruddha’s mad missives on his page; our common frustration – check it out.) – mh clay
in absentia
twisted in kind agony,
awash in hurried beats – I escaped walls to lectures
on how to stand knee deep in antiquity,
waiting for love to plumb, make whiny.
we’re all merry, enough – to forget a year we’ve passed.
we’re to ratiocinate vagrancies, with remorse.
but seduced by shapes, wanton geometry makes
me pluck it with my lips like a pin off a grenade,
and at times close to touch meaning, like a man, I spot faces hidden with powder cowering.
I am held back spying upon – by their anger curt,
wilted by abundance of light and no dirt.
they’ve jumped to the first age – their flesh truant.
doom struck at noon, lurched back to life,
done away with the nasty, we stuffed our troubles away.
we’ll continue to borrow our fellows’ stories.
we’re done for today.
- Shibaji Ray : April 30, 2015
editors note: Interactive archeology; emotion as artifact. – mh clay
Don’t Be Afraid To Do This
Let the tears fall like old ladies
on black ice or like roses on coffins.
Let the tears fall like pine needles
on the carpet or hardwood floor
on the third or fourth of the new year.
Let the tears fall like radiant embers
on the 4th of July, my Mayan birthday.
Let the tears fall like hail in August
over the last few days at the reservoir.
Let the tears fall like obvious autumn
leaves doing their beautiful thing.
Let’s let the tears fall out on the floor
like a puppy dog’s tooth or like bird
shit on your picnic blanket.
Let’s let the tears fall like it’s ok
because it is.
- Alex L. Swartzentruber : April 29, 2015
editors note: Yes! OK! Let’s let’em… – mh clay
High
Coffee tastes bitter,
metal tastes better
only when sliced, do I slip
into jaw breaking chewing gum,
law breaking stewing thumb,
which is floating in the soup
which, is eventually duped.
the toffee comes whittled
from the outside in,
carved and unsteady,
starved and unready
the toffee is brattled
from the inside out
as the mind stays rattled
with sharpened pencil tips,
sharpest window panes
cutting blood from blade
how should this matter
when the flavor is metal
and the taste feels warm
bitter like coffee,
but better like…
- Jada Yee : April 28, 2015
editors note: A double-shot, hot milk-foamed, frappa-macchiato, mocha, mocha, my, my, um… can I get that with a blueberry scone? Make that two! – mh clay
My Latest Adventure
Citalopram
they call it,
but I don’t know how
to pronounce it.
Sounds like fun though;
side-effects include
nausea, vomiting, distress,
pulse racing
suicidal thoughts
twitching, shaking,
loss of consciousness
leading to coma,
hallucinations
abnormal dreams
loss of appetite
over-eating
but sadly not bone fractures
or production of breast milk in men.
Perhaps I should go back to the Doctor
and complain;
or maybe take all the pills
at once
and see if the side-effects
come as one
or not at all
what the hell;
if you piss on a tree every day
it’s sure to grow up strange.
Sensitive to sunlight,
have problems passing water
vomiting and diarrhoea
but look at those leaves
brighter than any neon:
Doc, what else do you
want me to take?
- Ian Mullins : April 27, 2015
editors note: Big pharma calls this a cure: New symptoms to replace the old. Pissing on a tree, indeed! – mh clay
Procrastinating
I’m constantly looking forward to looking back,
Tired of falling awake.
Though it’s never for long.
I drift into it then find myself
Slipping back to slumber.
Sleep walking through life,
Remembering things while they’re happening.
The present in past tense.
- Anthony Ward : April 26, 2015
editors note: Sooner or later, we’ll all get around to this. Didn’t we? – mh clay
••• Short Stories •••
Need-a-Read? We got us a fine tale to kick-off the weekend's drinkin' debauchery from the mad mind of Oleg Razumovsky.
Here is what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about this pick-of-the-week tale, “Plague”: "Take some time to celebrate sickness from time to time, because at least you have something."
Here's a small dose of some "Plague" to get the readin' itch goin’:
photo by Tyler Malone
She grabbed me by the balls in the alley near the fashionable beer joint Mug, where all sorts of outcasts usually hung out. Intelligent, sometimes talented young people thrown out of the roadside of life by the damned community of worst philistines, punitive organs and the middle-class hypocrites.
We drank all that was available at that plague time: the fatal rotgut wine 777, vodka as cool as the Black Death with a skull on the can, a treacherous drink called Macbeth and the Belarusian raspberry-flavored poison. After drinking this stuff we shook like we had swamp fever in basements, in the cemetery, in all kinds of cheap joints, boiler plants and numerous chance apartments. We always drank at night…
Raise your glass, take a huge swallow and get the rest of your read on here!
••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••
Join Mad Swirl at the NEW Absinthe Lounge this 1st Wednesday of May (aka 05.06.14) at 8:00 sharp, when we Swirlers & Swirve will whirl it up madly in the LIVE way that we do every month now for OVER 10 years! This month we are featuring Dallas poetess divas, Opalina Salas & Maggie Smith! This is a dynamic duo you do not wanna miss!
After our feature set we urge you stick around to get yourself a spot on our list… first come, first on the list! Which means… get there early!
Come one, come all! Mad poets, musicians, actors, singers, circus freaks & other miscellaneous loco locals… come-n-strut-yo-stuff. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl.
Mad Love,
Googily-Eyed Guy
P.S. THIS 1ST WEDNESDAY ONLY Absinthe Lounge will be BYOB. Also, bring your appetite too and enjoy some eats from Absinthe’s menu!
P.P.S. AND, as you may or may not know, every 1st Wednesday we get all giddy with the swirlin’ madness. Here’s who we will be featuring next month:
June: Brendan McCormack (direct from Ireland)
July: John Kelly & Stefan Prigmore
•••••••
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...
Bein' Weird,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
••• The Mad Gallery •••
“Gonzo Fuel” (above) by featured artist Brett “BA” Ardoin. To see more Mad works from Brett, and our other contributing artists, please visit our Mad Gallery.
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we stepped into a sink of somnambulant recall; we found a pharmacopoeia to fill our ills; we catered to a construct of caffeine and cannabinol; we cried through a year's fall of tears (all okay); we stood in the stead of stolen stories; we stalled at the brink of a sleepy think, stared down self with a wink and a blink; we heard of a house, is not, is too, accommodates dead and a sufferers' queue. We seek room to wait; elaborate, then vacate. Elaborate, All! ~ MH Clay
THE HOUSE OF NON-EXISTENCE
The house is.
An ancient house without a name,
do you know who lives there?
The house is not.
A chimerical vision in someone’s
mind, the old house is invisible.
Inside the stranger’s dream,
the house is,
without words,
beyond our world,
&
buried in the deep snow of his brain,
the house comes into being.
Outside,
the house is not.
Who lives there?
the labyrinth of the night whispers
into the shell of my secret haven,
where I hide from the sphere of sadness.
Not I, a voiceless voice ensconced in my
eerie emptiness shrieks,
not in the House of Non-Existence.
Only the dead live there,
I proclaim defiantly in my private wasteland,
a whirligig whirling around nowhere.
Yet perhaps, I protest too much, in my
Shakespearian monologue,
for I hear the howling coming forth from the
maw of the Chimera,
interminable ululations inside the ancient
mansion.
The House of Non-Existence is vast,
with room enough for the dead
&
other vanishing beings,
enough for a queue of sufferers spanning the
swirling universe,
&
for me too
- Mel Waldman : May 2, 2015
editors note: The house in this invisible vision is not – is. Crazy, Nowhere man! (This one is one-third of a trippin’ triptych. Read the other two to tweak your existence on Dr. Mel’s page – check’em out!) – mh clay
Dark Fantasy
All alone in a dark room –
I gather myself exhausted and tired
on to the bed placed in between two reflectors
sitting there
I look at the image on the left –
I wink
wink and wink and smile back
to please myself
I glance at the figure on the right –
it blinks
blinks and blinks back and frowns
- Aniruddha Sastikar : May 1, 2015
editors note: Wanderings in wonderland when bedded down with a smile and a frown. (Another of Aniruddha’s mad missives on his page; our common frustration – check it out.) – mh clay
in absentia
twisted in kind agony,
awash in hurried beats – I escaped walls to lectures
on how to stand knee deep in antiquity,
waiting for love to plumb, make whiny.
we’re all merry, enough – to forget a year we’ve passed.
we’re to ratiocinate vagrancies, with remorse.
but seduced by shapes, wanton geometry makes
me pluck it with my lips like a pin off a grenade,
and at times close to touch meaning, like a man, I spot faces hidden with powder cowering.
I am held back spying upon – by their anger curt,
wilted by abundance of light and no dirt.
they’ve jumped to the first age – their flesh truant.
doom struck at noon, lurched back to life,
done away with the nasty, we stuffed our troubles away.
we’ll continue to borrow our fellows’ stories.
we’re done for today.
- Shibaji Ray : April 30, 2015
editors note: Interactive archeology; emotion as artifact. – mh clay
Don’t Be Afraid To Do This
Let the tears fall like old ladies
on black ice or like roses on coffins.
Let the tears fall like pine needles
on the carpet or hardwood floor
on the third or fourth of the new year.
Let the tears fall like radiant embers
on the 4th of July, my Mayan birthday.
Let the tears fall like hail in August
over the last few days at the reservoir.
Let the tears fall like obvious autumn
leaves doing their beautiful thing.
Let’s let the tears fall out on the floor
like a puppy dog’s tooth or like bird
shit on your picnic blanket.
Let’s let the tears fall like it’s ok
because it is.
- Alex L. Swartzentruber : April 29, 2015
editors note: Yes! OK! Let’s let’em… – mh clay
High
Coffee tastes bitter,
metal tastes better
only when sliced, do I slip
into jaw breaking chewing gum,
law breaking stewing thumb,
which is floating in the soup
which, is eventually duped.
the toffee comes whittled
from the outside in,
carved and unsteady,
starved and unready
the toffee is brattled
from the inside out
as the mind stays rattled
with sharpened pencil tips,
sharpest window panes
cutting blood from blade
how should this matter
when the flavor is metal
and the taste feels warm
bitter like coffee,
but better like…
- Jada Yee : April 28, 2015
editors note: A double-shot, hot milk-foamed, frappa-macchiato, mocha, mocha, my, my, um… can I get that with a blueberry scone? Make that two! – mh clay
My Latest Adventure
Citalopram
they call it,
but I don’t know how
to pronounce it.
Sounds like fun though;
side-effects include
nausea, vomiting, distress,
pulse racing
suicidal thoughts
twitching, shaking,
loss of consciousness
leading to coma,
hallucinations
abnormal dreams
loss of appetite
over-eating
but sadly not bone fractures
or production of breast milk in men.
Perhaps I should go back to the Doctor
and complain;
or maybe take all the pills
at once
and see if the side-effects
come as one
or not at all
what the hell;
if you piss on a tree every day
it’s sure to grow up strange.
Sensitive to sunlight,
have problems passing water
vomiting and diarrhoea
but look at those leaves
brighter than any neon:
Doc, what else do you
want me to take?
- Ian Mullins : April 27, 2015
editors note: Big pharma calls this a cure: New symptoms to replace the old. Pissing on a tree, indeed! – mh clay
Procrastinating
I’m constantly looking forward to looking back,
Tired of falling awake.
Though it’s never for long.
I drift into it then find myself
Slipping back to slumber.
Sleep walking through life,
Remembering things while they’re happening.
The present in past tense.
- Anthony Ward : April 26, 2015
editors note: Sooner or later, we’ll all get around to this. Didn’t we? – mh clay
••• Short Stories •••
Need-a-Read? We got us a fine tale to kick-off the weekend's drinkin' debauchery from the mad mind of Oleg Razumovsky.
Here is what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about this pick-of-the-week tale, “Plague”: "Take some time to celebrate sickness from time to time, because at least you have something."
Here's a small dose of some "Plague" to get the readin' itch goin’:
She grabbed me by the balls in the alley near the fashionable beer joint Mug, where all sorts of outcasts usually hung out. Intelligent, sometimes talented young people thrown out of the roadside of life by the damned community of worst philistines, punitive organs and the middle-class hypocrites.
We drank all that was available at that plague time: the fatal rotgut wine 777, vodka as cool as the Black Death with a skull on the can, a treacherous drink called Macbeth and the Belarusian raspberry-flavored poison. After drinking this stuff we shook like we had swamp fever in basements, in the cemetery, in all kinds of cheap joints, boiler plants and numerous chance apartments. We always drank at night…
Raise your glass, take a huge swallow and get the rest of your read on here!
••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••
Join Mad Swirl at the NEW Absinthe Lounge this 1st Wednesday of May (aka 05.06.14) at 8:00 sharp, when we Swirlers & Swirve will whirl it up madly in the LIVE way that we do every month now for OVER 10 years! This month we are featuring Dallas poetess divas, Opalina Salas & Maggie Smith! This is a dynamic duo you do not wanna miss!
After our feature set we urge you stick around to get yourself a spot on our list… first come, first on the list! Which means… get there early!
Come one, come all! Mad poets, musicians, actors, singers, circus freaks & other miscellaneous loco locals… come-n-strut-yo-stuff. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl.
Mad Love,
Googily-Eyed Guy
P.S. THIS 1ST WEDNESDAY ONLY Absinthe Lounge will be BYOB. Also, bring your appetite too and enjoy some eats from Absinthe’s menu!
P.P.S. AND, as you may or may not know, every 1st Wednesday we get all giddy with the swirlin’ madness. Here’s who we will be featuring next month:
June: Brendan McCormack (direct from Ireland)
July: John Kelly & Stefan Prigmore
•••••••
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...
Bein' Weird,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
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