The Best of Mad Swirl : 10.03.15
“Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.” ~ Pierre Bonnard
••• The Mad Gallery •••
“Abandoned Amidst Greens” (above) by featured artist Aniruddha Sastikar. To see more Mad works from Aniruddha, and our other contributing artists, please visit our Mad Gallery.
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we delved in the dust of eternal attics past; we picked apart root from bole, bark and branch exposed to soul; we braved the brunt of what comes after a predilection for taste on tongue of rousing laughter; we jumped the gap of love becoming; we made metallurgical clarity from mystical alchemy; we braced the briskness of change of season; we dallied in the sweet disruption of manic manager's interruption. There's no control, 'cept in how we roll... ~ MH Clay
NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE by Alan Britt
Tiny space . . . now clockwise . . . or left
to left, excuse me, I meant right; I don’t
appreciate interruptions, normally, but
reminds me of the time that I, hosting
a General Manager from Massachusetts,
& he entered a posh restaurant, Crystal City,
via the freight elevator.
Everyone cheered when from their kitchen
elevator filled with crates of cabbages,
corn husks & carrots, two sheepish suits
emerged.
Though well attended to, as I recall, water
glasses brimming, plates disappearing like
Houdini’s & desserts piling up like the usual
quid pro quo.
October 3, 2015
editors note: The magic of diversion; cabbages, suits and Houdini’s plates. I’ll take this for that. Yes! – mh clay
FAR ABOVE by Roger G. Singer
A ripple of air passes over a
curtain in an open window.
Papers tumble gently, trapped
at the base of a picket fence.
A weather vane signals
direction, twisting quickly.
A furious language descends.
Shutters slap senselessly
without rhythm.
Tree tops swirl like ocean
bottom seaweed.
Leaves and branches are
swallowed by wind’s appetite.
Clouds swell. The sky ignites
with jagged bristling tails.
Rain releases the beginning
of healing.
The storm finds reason to move.
Sounds fade to welcome release.
October 2, 2015
editors note: There’s a bite in the air this morning; I feel the season turning far above. – mh clay
In This Dream by A.J. Huffman
after Metallic Dreams, artist Osnat Tzadok
I am silver. Gold and bronze,
my brothers in armor (yet to be
forged), crawl from midnight’s fire.
We will join
battle against blasphemous sun.
The enemy of creation
is a molten eye. Clarity
holds a magnifying presence,
scars our skin. We prefer to pick
the scabs, let them run
like rivers amongst the fogged
echo of nocturne’s voice.
October 1, 2015
editors note: Which awakened sense preceded; eye or ear? The battle for ascendancy endures, elicits art. (This is exemplary ekphrasis; google the artist and work to see A.J.’s inspiration – excellent.) – mh clay
Do the Moon by Gregg Dotoli
Youth’s pre-love peace
Exited at light speed
Leaving a gutty paradise
Sizzling my heart as summer sand on bare feet
love emerged as my life emperor
and drove the me I became
September 30, 2015
editors note: Love’s challenge, capricious queen; to be gutty while not being gutted. – mh clay
Laughter by Nalini Priyadarshni
Camouflaged as spicy mangotini
that passed between their lips
it melted into a pool of thirst
on his warm tongue
her laughter was rousing
and he had an addictive personality
September 29, 2015
editors note: He’s jonesing for this, his delighful addiction; shaken AND stirred. – mh clay
Erosion by Andrea Bonaccorsi
Hushed words shared
of the ancient rivers
of blood that
scar the earth
like the ones that riddled
her arms
like tributaries
His story
has penetrated the soil
snapped the trees
and stabbed down
deep dark under
the soil
where gnarled roots wind
sedimentary thoughts
September 28, 2015
editors note: Getting to the root of the matter; wet words for parched earth. – mh clay
Still Up In The Attic by David J. Thompson
The trains didn’t stop at my hometown anymore,
but on firefly nights with windows wide open,
I could hear them rolling all the way down along
the Hudson, south to Grand Central or north to Albany,
then west to places I had never been. It was my world
then, the tract house neighborhood full of kids, the A&P
and Western Auto, the Tastee-Freeze, and our elementary school.
We played softball all summer long, games of ghost runners
and poison fields, bought icy, little green bottles of Coke
at the Sunoco station on the bike ride home. Our dads were back
from the war and the G.I. Bill to computer jobs at IBM
and highballs before dinner, tomato gardens in the backyard.
Moms kept house on coffee and cigarettes, served meals
like clockwork with church every Sunday.
But the summer games became summer jobs scooping ice cream
or painting houses, then the kids all scattered for college, or jobs
in Houston, Charlotte, or Atlanta. I heard the A&P got torn down
and the school closed, came to realize my parents were forgetting
any news I gave them on the phone, ran out of good excuses
for not getting home more often. They had our house air-conditioned
a few years before they sold it and moved down to Tampa for good
and died soon after. I came home the last time to get my yearbooks
and baseball glove still up in the attic, and I’m sure that down by the river
the trains were still running like always, but I couldn’t hear them anymore,
my bedroom windows now closed up tight.
September 27, 2015
editors note: Ghosts of the past in an attic now. (David is also a Contributing Artist to our Gallery – check it out.) – mh clay
••• Short Stories •••
Need-a-Read? Well then you’ve come to the right place!
This week's featured story comes all the way from Russia with love... kinda. OK, a twisted and bloody love. But that's kinda what we've come to expect from Contributing Writer Oleg Razumovsky's stories. Here is what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about "Coiffeuse": "What’s love got to with it? Everything. Always everything. Love has eternal blood on its hands."
Here's a bit to get the blood goin':
Mary worked as a coiffeuse and drank rather heavily. She even sold the toilet bowl in the apartment. Then she met a businessman named Volodya, fell in love with him, quit drinking and married. With Volodya’s help, Mary bought a bistro, where in the old days there got together all sorts of local drinking profligates. She herself often dropped in here and got drunk in the trash.
Mary opened in this iconic place an expensive hairdresser salon. They made here fashionable haircuts for two thousand rubles, and regular customers were poured thirty grams of free whiskey. To stay fit Mary started going to the fitness club and took lessons in karate. Then one day in the hairdresser salon, broke in a boy who shouted from the doorway that it was a robbery. Put the money fast on the barrel! Mary happened to be there, collecting revenue. She said to the guy, “Come here and take the money.”
The guy came up and she knocked him out immediately, as she had already well mastered the techniques of karate. She dragged the unlucky robber to the back room and chained him to the radiator. She fed him Viagra and forced him to fuck her for three days while Volodya was in Egypt. Finally, Mary let go of the kid and even gave him a thousand rubles. That stupid idiot ran to the police station and said that he was raped. The cops loved the story and were amused. They decided to put Mary and the guy in one cell and watch them...
Stop there? Really?! There's no way you can! So do what you gotta do & pull the proverbial trigger and get the rest of this read on here!
••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••
Join Mad Swirl this 1st Wednesday of October (aka 10.07.15) at 8:00 sharp, when we will swirl it up madly in the LIVE way that we do every month now for OVER 10 years! This month we are featuring poet/singer/storyteller/comedian Alex Pogosov! (as Total Cult)
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.
P.S. If you can’t be here LIVE, you can view the whole show via our Mad Swirl UStream Channel! Just click here at 8:00pm (CST) and watch the mic madness swirlin’ live.
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:
November: Mad Eulogy
P.P.S. t’was 11 years ago this coming November that Mad Swirl met Absinthe Lounge. In those years we’ve shared a-many mad mic moments upon Absinthe’s stage. But as they say, all good things must come to an end… / On November 4th Mad Swirl will be hosting our last event at Absinthe Lounge. But don’t fret, Mad Swirl’s monthly mic madness isn’t goin’ away, we’re just gonna be swirlin’ our madness upon different stages. Where might those stages be? You’ll just have to wait and see. Stay tuned!
•••••••
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...
Strongly Pleasurin'’,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
••• The Mad Gallery •••
“Abandoned Amidst Greens” (above) by featured artist Aniruddha Sastikar. To see more Mad works from Aniruddha, and our other contributing artists, please visit our Mad Gallery.
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we delved in the dust of eternal attics past; we picked apart root from bole, bark and branch exposed to soul; we braved the brunt of what comes after a predilection for taste on tongue of rousing laughter; we jumped the gap of love becoming; we made metallurgical clarity from mystical alchemy; we braced the briskness of change of season; we dallied in the sweet disruption of manic manager's interruption. There's no control, 'cept in how we roll... ~ MH Clay
NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE by Alan Britt
Tiny space . . . now clockwise . . . or left
to left, excuse me, I meant right; I don’t
appreciate interruptions, normally, but
reminds me of the time that I, hosting
a General Manager from Massachusetts,
& he entered a posh restaurant, Crystal City,
via the freight elevator.
Everyone cheered when from their kitchen
elevator filled with crates of cabbages,
corn husks & carrots, two sheepish suits
emerged.
Though well attended to, as I recall, water
glasses brimming, plates disappearing like
Houdini’s & desserts piling up like the usual
quid pro quo.
October 3, 2015
editors note: The magic of diversion; cabbages, suits and Houdini’s plates. I’ll take this for that. Yes! – mh clay
FAR ABOVE by Roger G. Singer
A ripple of air passes over a
curtain in an open window.
Papers tumble gently, trapped
at the base of a picket fence.
A weather vane signals
direction, twisting quickly.
A furious language descends.
Shutters slap senselessly
without rhythm.
Tree tops swirl like ocean
bottom seaweed.
Leaves and branches are
swallowed by wind’s appetite.
Clouds swell. The sky ignites
with jagged bristling tails.
Rain releases the beginning
of healing.
The storm finds reason to move.
Sounds fade to welcome release.
October 2, 2015
editors note: There’s a bite in the air this morning; I feel the season turning far above. – mh clay
In This Dream by A.J. Huffman
after Metallic Dreams, artist Osnat Tzadok
I am silver. Gold and bronze,
my brothers in armor (yet to be
forged), crawl from midnight’s fire.
We will join
battle against blasphemous sun.
The enemy of creation
is a molten eye. Clarity
holds a magnifying presence,
scars our skin. We prefer to pick
the scabs, let them run
like rivers amongst the fogged
echo of nocturne’s voice.
October 1, 2015
editors note: Which awakened sense preceded; eye or ear? The battle for ascendancy endures, elicits art. (This is exemplary ekphrasis; google the artist and work to see A.J.’s inspiration – excellent.) – mh clay
Do the Moon by Gregg Dotoli
Youth’s pre-love peace
Exited at light speed
Leaving a gutty paradise
Sizzling my heart as summer sand on bare feet
love emerged as my life emperor
and drove the me I became
September 30, 2015
editors note: Love’s challenge, capricious queen; to be gutty while not being gutted. – mh clay
Laughter by Nalini Priyadarshni
Camouflaged as spicy mangotini
that passed between their lips
it melted into a pool of thirst
on his warm tongue
her laughter was rousing
and he had an addictive personality
September 29, 2015
editors note: He’s jonesing for this, his delighful addiction; shaken AND stirred. – mh clay
Erosion by Andrea Bonaccorsi
Hushed words shared
of the ancient rivers
of blood that
scar the earth
like the ones that riddled
her arms
like tributaries
His story
has penetrated the soil
snapped the trees
and stabbed down
deep dark under
the soil
where gnarled roots wind
sedimentary thoughts
September 28, 2015
editors note: Getting to the root of the matter; wet words for parched earth. – mh clay
Still Up In The Attic by David J. Thompson
The trains didn’t stop at my hometown anymore,
but on firefly nights with windows wide open,
I could hear them rolling all the way down along
the Hudson, south to Grand Central or north to Albany,
then west to places I had never been. It was my world
then, the tract house neighborhood full of kids, the A&P
and Western Auto, the Tastee-Freeze, and our elementary school.
We played softball all summer long, games of ghost runners
and poison fields, bought icy, little green bottles of Coke
at the Sunoco station on the bike ride home. Our dads were back
from the war and the G.I. Bill to computer jobs at IBM
and highballs before dinner, tomato gardens in the backyard.
Moms kept house on coffee and cigarettes, served meals
like clockwork with church every Sunday.
But the summer games became summer jobs scooping ice cream
or painting houses, then the kids all scattered for college, or jobs
in Houston, Charlotte, or Atlanta. I heard the A&P got torn down
and the school closed, came to realize my parents were forgetting
any news I gave them on the phone, ran out of good excuses
for not getting home more often. They had our house air-conditioned
a few years before they sold it and moved down to Tampa for good
and died soon after. I came home the last time to get my yearbooks
and baseball glove still up in the attic, and I’m sure that down by the river
the trains were still running like always, but I couldn’t hear them anymore,
my bedroom windows now closed up tight.
September 27, 2015
editors note: Ghosts of the past in an attic now. (David is also a Contributing Artist to our Gallery – check it out.) – mh clay
••• Short Stories •••
Need-a-Read? Well then you’ve come to the right place!
This week's featured story comes all the way from Russia with love... kinda. OK, a twisted and bloody love. But that's kinda what we've come to expect from Contributing Writer Oleg Razumovsky's stories. Here is what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about "Coiffeuse": "What’s love got to with it? Everything. Always everything. Love has eternal blood on its hands."
Here's a bit to get the blood goin':
Mary worked as a coiffeuse and drank rather heavily. She even sold the toilet bowl in the apartment. Then she met a businessman named Volodya, fell in love with him, quit drinking and married. With Volodya’s help, Mary bought a bistro, where in the old days there got together all sorts of local drinking profligates. She herself often dropped in here and got drunk in the trash.
Mary opened in this iconic place an expensive hairdresser salon. They made here fashionable haircuts for two thousand rubles, and regular customers were poured thirty grams of free whiskey. To stay fit Mary started going to the fitness club and took lessons in karate. Then one day in the hairdresser salon, broke in a boy who shouted from the doorway that it was a robbery. Put the money fast on the barrel! Mary happened to be there, collecting revenue. She said to the guy, “Come here and take the money.”
The guy came up and she knocked him out immediately, as she had already well mastered the techniques of karate. She dragged the unlucky robber to the back room and chained him to the radiator. She fed him Viagra and forced him to fuck her for three days while Volodya was in Egypt. Finally, Mary let go of the kid and even gave him a thousand rubles. That stupid idiot ran to the police station and said that he was raped. The cops loved the story and were amused. They decided to put Mary and the guy in one cell and watch them...
Stop there? Really?! There's no way you can! So do what you gotta do & pull the proverbial trigger and get the rest of this read on here!
••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••
Join Mad Swirl this 1st Wednesday of October (aka 10.07.15) at 8:00 sharp, when we will swirl it up madly in the LIVE way that we do every month now for OVER 10 years! This month we are featuring poet/singer/storyteller/comedian Alex Pogosov! (as Total Cult)
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.
P.S. If you can’t be here LIVE, you can view the whole show via our Mad Swirl UStream Channel! Just click here at 8:00pm (CST) and watch the mic madness swirlin’ live.
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:
November: Mad Eulogy
P.P.S. t’was 11 years ago this coming November that Mad Swirl met Absinthe Lounge. In those years we’ve shared a-many mad mic moments upon Absinthe’s stage. But as they say, all good things must come to an end… / On November 4th Mad Swirl will be hosting our last event at Absinthe Lounge. But don’t fret, Mad Swirl’s monthly mic madness isn’t goin’ away, we’re just gonna be swirlin’ our madness upon different stages. Where might those stages be? You’ll just have to wait and see. Stay tuned!
•••••••
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...
Strongly Pleasurin'’,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
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