The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 02.11.12

2012-02-11T09:05:00.002-06:00

“Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.” Anaïs Nin

Persistence (above) by artist, Joseph A. Garrison, one of over 20 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 yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we pondered the possibility of paradise lost with a luscious lick of forbidden fruit; we couldn't crack code in a wren-swarmed god-borne message from on high; we sought safety for our psyches from psychos, a moral martial-art; we witnessed creation and destruction in a day, secured comfort in expectation of a calm dawn and a clean slate; we reposed in a room to recall how life is rife with rented reality, we don't own a damn thing; (we dropped a stitch - seven, to be precise; seven days, seven wild sways of the time warped continuum; then came up laughing); we ranted in self-realized portraiture, painted a picture from pieces of everything, looked like nothing we've ever seen; lastly, a bit lost and lonely, we learned to our amazement the safest defense is an open door. Throw away your keys! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

KEYLESS

I’m a keyless entry
Don’t you see?
No key can get to the
Heart of me.
No locks, no bolts, no chains or hooks
Keeping you from
The heart of me.
The open heart
Needs no key.
It’s safe
In its own
Simplicity.

- Denise Lumley

(1 poem added 02.11.12)

editor's note: No lock, no looting; free access eliminates crime. The love police will have to look elsewhere. - mh

A Self-Portrait

"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it.” Franz Kafka

Hiding behind the curtains, the moons afar
are swimming over mercurochrome nostalgia;
crippled, lame walking over the sandy dunes of Sahara.
Are my tears the traitors of Russia?
Are my tears Iodine tablets suffocating in open air?
Sublimating no memory, but flames of dignity.
Do I count my nickels at your feet?
Do I gasp like a maroon athlete?
Do I howl at Winston Churchill’s “Black Dog”?
Do I catapult a lovely gaze at your open yard?
I am here with my arms, jumping over quicksand to re-tell
My Experiment With Truth

I am born an insect, chirpy crepuscular slithering over the edges of your lips,
distinct with a head, thorax and abdomen.
My Jewish nose can smell your schizophrenic beauty of psychic holocaust,
and it makes me furious as a neo-Tsar.
All right, I made a goddamn fuming gaze with no shillings on it.
I did try a Mona Lisa gaze!
Instead a gaze of a scarecrow.
So was I born, free of all emotions,
with a permanent gesture of Ku Klux Klan,
a Charlie Chaplin gimmick.
But truth is: I am born a baby with no smiles in his head.
A subliminal neophyte cooperating desperately,
standing at the exact corner where he should have been buried.
I am born scandalous,
All I have is Van Gogh's ear of delusions,
and hatchet of neural bedlam.
All the White Noises you snoop,
All the Black Chimneys you inhale,
All the faint wails you eavesdrop,
All the lab fumes you gape,
Are they surreal or a metaphor?
Let your razor-sharp retort go!

Now I look at my funny side,
An abstract acme with worms in it,
worms to be steamed and devoured with chopsticks.
Folks swallow them as sweet-bitter lousy talk in a city bar,
With the guns they slay for brotherhood,
They throw stones,
Paint their half-face black and sun-bathe on the equator.
Last time I found, blowing high up in the sky to be exploded
as a tear-gas capsule,
a Tupac Sakur song.
a dream from my mother.
a Crime and Punishment.
in-between have and have-not,
in-between war and peace,
in-between existence and memory,
Played like a sax,
Dropped like water,
Smoked like an Indian pipe,
Read like the bible,
An end like the beginning of an epic,
and a self-portrait of narrow escape,
About to crumble off seismic waves
like the Berlin Wall
like the crispy notes of Wall Street
Might be a chaotic butterfly flapping its wing
Might be a mannequin with her arms
A nothing self, surrendering to nothing absurd with nothing to win or lose,
A ramshackle poem of Sylvia Plath
A negativity of times, paramount of times and the nastiest of all times,
You name me the names:
A narrow escape,
A werewolf,
A mere euphemism,
Or a self-portrait of the emotional half of two legs.

- Nirmal Acharya

(added 02.10.12)

editor's note: This mirror is melting! My reflection looks like this poet, looks like you, looks like Wiley Coyote. Kafka would laugh if he didn't think it all so normal. - mh

RENTED ROOMS

I go home and I’m all alone
No one to greet me or tell me that they love me
My entire adult life has been like this
I spent all that time flitting from one room to another
And evidently they are all the same
Rented rooms

Acrid surfaces that haven’t been cleaned
Dirty carpets that are plain obscene
A lousy bed that I can’t get out of
An overloaded ashtray that says I haven’t got long
No space to feel at home
In rented rooms

Rented rooms are all the same
Whether you’re in New York, Frisco or even London town
They all seem designed for that lonely insecure man
Who has been driven slowly insane by the idea that he will never escape
A life in rented rooms

- Bradford Middleton

(1 poem added 02.02.12)

editor's note: I think my body is mine, owned outright; but one day the landlord will evict. Might as well let the ashtrays overflow. (Let's welcome Bradford to our crazy confab of Contributing Poets! See his other poems on his new page.) - mh

A PAD OF HIS OWN

Beneath the old pier, a hand scrapes
Wet sand into sketches, carving artistry from
Within him, pulling the crowd, who watch
Over the rail and throw into his bucket
Their coined applause. A metallic clap for this
Still life, culled from a husk of the sea.

A hulk of a man, never showing his face,
Bent over his work, he oscillates
From boot to boot. From hip to head,
A woolly thick knitted spine suddenly collects
Its wages and then with meticulous timing,
Vanishes, just before the ocean spawns;
A shifting glaze, through which
The artist’s visuals can still be observed.

His London Skyline becomes
The Underwater City, its muffled churches
Stifled by a pulsating angelus of waves.
The etched mane of horses and the wet fur
Of dogs, cats: these drown quietly
Under bubbling ripples.

And then surging from the deep, thick
Opaque slices, slabs obliterating
Each deliberate line. Mouths and deeply gouged
Eyes shut forever by the shapeless being
Lunging at the beach. Ordinarily incredible,
Hard to imagine, this liquid body being dragged
By its tail, thrown back in a heap.
Yet this is the way of it.

When the quiet industry of a beaten surf
Rolls out its shores of yesterday, as if...
As if there had never been, mistakes, fools
And foolish dreams, you could
Almost believe that this, then, is life:
A smooth unending slate – wiped clean.

- Derrick Gaskin

(2 poems added 02.01.12)

editor's note: Each day we start tabula rasa. The rising of the sun lights an empty page; yesterday's scrawl wiped clean by the waves. (See another one from Derrick on his page - it's a jungle out there.) - mh

Absent

The story of your life begins right now.
The components of this tale are missing.
Its characters got lost in the confusion of my style.

I await the perfect morning with a picture perfect sky
to start writing the story of my life.
I'm right here right now waiting for the temperature to go down.
Holding on to my dreams with nothing but insecure hopes.
Dried up tears from the day before remind me that love fades away
just like the beauty you hold in your youth.

Sarcastically I ask for your forgiveness and you accept my apology.
I disguise my hatred with impure pity.
I hold you close to my heart but very far from my soul.
I salute your lies and embrace the confidence you possess.

- Michelle Camacho

(added 01.31.12)

editor's note: Your life and this tale are at odds; yours started, this other arrested. It's a survival manual for dreamers in a totalitarian state; friends close, enemies closer. - mh

Birds

They all came from everywhere
A-flying high up through the air
They landed on my little tree
And whistled to the world we’re free
Never could I express with words
The sight I saw, a thousand birds
They flew into the parking lot
All landing there in a small plot
Then back into the sky again
A mighty cloud of flying wrens
Then around the yard they all took flight
And vanished mysteriously from sight

- Eileen McNeal

(added 01.30.12)

editor's note: The amorphous moving shapes they make are some kind of cosmic code; god talking to himself and laughing. - mh

Paradise Tasted

True partners-in-crime
Let’s take the honey and run!
Making Love rhyme all the time…

Coupled together with a tantric, hypnotic blaze
Tested in this fire, we certainly have been
So deserving of our wonderfully chaotic daze…

Never having a moment wasted
While sharing our wasted moments
A kiss from you is paradise tasted.

- Michael R. King

(1 poem added 01.29.12)

editor's note: Now, that's lip-smackin', soul-whackin' goodness. Think I'll take another bite. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Lovin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 01.28.12

2012-01-28T07:57:00.004-06:00

“When I say artist I mean the man who is building things. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush, some with a shovel, some choose a pen.” Jackson Pollock

Industrial Suburbia (above) by featured artist, Fabio Sassi, one of over 20 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 yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we prepared ourselves with nine new adages, ancient or nascent, not so clear, but clearly new to us; we observed another adage in etiquette, nothing said leaves no impression, better than the converse; we heard the noise, saw through the blur of two souls unable (or unwilling) to access their adages; we plied a new one, learned from bad experience, water for bread for water for bread, when both need both; we dropped our adages, pled for answers, knowing only hills and bridges would hear the questions; we bobbed in the broken bits of our bad fortune, looking for crazy glue where adages wouldn't do; then lastly, we traversed familiar scapes to an unfamiliar emptiness we know one day we'll know too well. Another adage should ensue - quick, think of something... - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

THE VIEW FROM ABOVE

The view from above the cityscape is vast. It moves
and feeds my spirit. Yet my hazel eyes look south
and touch the elongated Void, an unbearable emptiness
mixed with metallic dust and human debris, rushing

toward my private mansion like never-ending waves of
desert dunes; and soon my house and I will be buried

alive.

So I look north, away from Yesterday’s wasteland and
the eerie, ineffable images imprinted in my psyche;

I look away. Yet still, I see swirling particles, once
human, sailing through the toxic air, plummeting to

earth. I can’t bear to see such evil.

I saunter off on the High Line, a defunct railroad
structure resurrected as a celestial park above the

streets of Manhattan.

My journey begins after sunrise on a sultry August
morning. I stroll across a walkway surrounded by

wildflowers.

From time to time, I stop and reflect. The freight
trains used to run here decades ago. Now, a

glorious landscape of greenery replaces the
antediluvian rail line.
Lost in reverie, I walk for hours and swallow

2

the divine dreamscape. Half-a-day seems

like a lambent flame brushing across my face
before vanishing.

I drink effervescence. Time no longer exists.
And yet, after meandering through the

labyrinth of my mind and across walkways
and promenades, I turn around and head

south.

I stop at the Chelsea Market Passage and sit
at a table. It’s almost sunset.

My eyes drift toward the Hudson River.
I wait.

I anticipate a glorious sunset. Yet
surreptitiously, I gaze at the

Manhattan skyline.

I see what isn’t there. The emptiness
eats my spirit.

The view is vast and devastating.
Each time I look back,

I die again.

- Mel Waldman

(1 poem added 01.28.12)

editor's note: The view is amazing from up there, but the air is thin. It's hard to know if what we discern is true vision or oxygen deprivation. - mh

BROKEN

I am lost and on my own
Disconnected I stand alone
A fragment of what was before
Severed and joined as one no more
The missing piece has been and gone
Detached from where it should belong
Separated, dichotomized
From what it previously occupied
I'm now a part of something new
And I can't be fixed with crazy glue.
The sharp jagged edges mean a lot
hurts deeper than a paper-cut
Desolate I roam the land
Like broken glass tossed on the sand.
Segregated, there I lie
Like pointy splinters cast aside.
Disengaged so many years,
Holding on to shattered tears.
Torn apart, I've learned to blend in
To what are now my surroundings.
Divided, I long for the days of old.
And to what made this broken man,
Whole.

- Arthur L. Seymour

(added 01.27.12)

editor's note: Encouraging couplets! "Really?" you say. When you're standing in the middle of such a pile of pieces, there's nothing to do but pick'em up! Encouraging! - mh

List of questions

A large group of kids
kidding
and following
their cattle
to the forest.

Across the vale
on the sunlit slope
a bell ringing
as low as the bells
hung on the napes
of these hungry cattle.

Down on the river
a broken, single wire bridge waiting
for the big people from the big city
for some years now

and up here on this passage
I’m a list of questions.

But who is to answer?

- Haris Adhikari

(1 poem added 01.26.12)

editor's note: Poets will ask anyway; we make our own answers. - mh

A letter to my enemy

I write this
with an open hand
I have learned
that the death
of your children
will not keep
my children safe

Fire will birth more fire
an eye for an eye
will leave us
old stumbling
blind men
childless
amongst
the dust devils
dry

But if I bring you bread
Will you give me water?

- Michael Corrigan

(added 01.25.12)

editor's note: Why starve? Proud resolve requires neither. - mh

YOUNG MASTERS

Unblurred to one and all
spoiled bodies
ridden by each-word-a-blow tempers,
thundering outhouse, porch and stairway.

When they're unlatched
ringside seaters squinny.
He swigs hold-and-corner methadone
backstage of bins
while she drags the truth of her face
into see-red mania.

- Christopher Barnes

(added 01.24.12)

editor's note: No need to don your magnifiers to see this bit of relational hide-and-seek, the poet makes it perfectly clear. - mh

Inwit

All my native wit can tender
Must procure as blind above the surface
Of those inconsistent waters, sometimes
Dashing sunlit on the lake
My native wit’s worth can’t be paid
In legal tender, but still in dividends
So strike as oars that smite the waves
Or show me to safe passage
Destination: lavish dinners with spirits
To chase and be chaste, palatal
My beating heart preserve, my mind
For the presentation to guests
Of something to remove all doubt

- Euphrates Moss

(added 01.23.12)

editor's note: "In" or "dim"; it's better to be thought a fool and remain silent than to open one's mouth and... - mh

HAIKUS OF THE GREEN OLIVE

Subverted Life:
Religions have perverted
The Free Spirit.

The Sacred Chao
Is for these screwed-up times.
Speak for Yourself!

Deities change.
Gospel according to Freud
From de Dog Star!

Erotic Poetry
Is a telegram for us?
Book of Uterus!

Face to face with You!
The Epistle to Paranoids
Is for Polites.

Each of these yarns
And my past to spread them:
Whole thing myself.

I got the Record
About you will learn more
And understand less.

Everything knowing
With Principia Discordia
About Nothing.

Knowledge of a sage
Put twinkles in Your Eyes.
Wisdom of a Child!

- Daniel de Culla

(added 01.22.12)

editor's note: Here find nine mind nuggets for your perusal. Chew on one or two; if all, you'll need a "stretcher." Eat me! Drink Me! - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Buildin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 01.21.12

2012-01-21T09:57:00.002-06:00

“I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.” Mark Rothko

Pollution Crunch (above) by featured artist, Fabio Sassi. Please join us in saying 'Benvenuto!' to our newest featured artist. Fabio's striking works of art captured our eyes from miles away, from the tasty sounding city of Bologna in that boot-shaped country half-way across the world to our cozy lil Mad Swirl cave in Dallas, now delivered to your senses right here in the Mad Gallery. His works of art have an extreme feel of cultural awareness. Immediately one can tell that Fabio is not just concerned with making art. He brings a new level to it. He makes art with profound messages one can take with them long afterwards. He has a rather simple style, but with a big, screaming meaning behind it. Check out Fabio's work and be prepared to say 'Fantastico!' to his profound messages, political and cultural mindfulness... with a mad twist of 'The King' in space... for good measure. - mio

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we endured the annals of an exiled poet, identified with the disenfranchised; we found cause for celebration in universal reconciliation, killed the fatted calf; from reconciliation we viewed a fair salvation, from bible, beer and the eye of god; then we stole another view, a clear-eyed peak at (im)mortality; mortality stared back through a cold Dear John, written by a pragmatic (soon to be ex) partner; we stared some more at beauty sublime but untouchable, we were not the sun to make that flower bloom; but, undaunted, we ran with the love we had, the luck we didn't - damn them both, our blindness makes the two the same. Now, poets all, write a couplet to complete this sonnet de la semaine. - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

sir baden powell patrol award winners, 2003-04

i took off running
with your hand in my pocket

to get a head start

on kissing the revolution
back to life,

because if we give those
meddling kids a chance,

they’ll steal the fun
right from our drinks

and laugh all the way home
with nothing to lose,

to open all the windows
for fear of suffocation,

or waking up
in a room
that smells like sleep;

i took a chance on you
the moment i held my breath

“because luck,

and love

are just walking around
with your eyes closed;”

believe me:

if i could see the moon
from my bedroom window

i would have started shooting
months ago.

- Andrew Chmielowiec

(1 poem added 01.21.12)

editor's note: Blind are both, luck and love. But, blind or not, good scouts keep their guns cleaned and ready. "Always be prepared!" - mh

Tea in the Flower Shop

For CW

You are the center
of a million thoughts
fizzling smoke-like from a cannon,
just trapped outlining a powder
keg
in the rain.

The teeth in your mouth
are an effervescent
glare
against the bottle of bourbon in the top drawer
of the borrowed dresser you loaned me.
You’re pretty,
Like hibiscus in a tea bag,
and I want to taste you.
I wont,
ever,
because when I come around
you’re only a bud and
not a
bloom.

- Zach Fishel

(1 poem added 01.20.12)

editor's note: The bourbon bees buzz this blossom to no avail. Alas, no bloom, no bliss. - mh

Letter to a lifer

Phil,

I hope this letter finds you well.
There’s no easy way to say this
so I’ll just blurt it right out.
You know you always said
I should find somebody else?
His name is Mark, I think you’d like him.
He’s so selfless and loves the kids.
He doesn’t, can’t love them like you do,
but it’s killing them that you’re gone
for so long, and me too.
I know why you did it and will always stand by you,
but we’re all in a sentence.
Mark is the same age as me and he has a good job.
I know this isn’t going to help much,
but he supports United.
Forgive me. I’d like a divorce.

All my love,
Rosie xx

- Michael Holme

(added 01.19.12)

editor's note: This is one sad "day in the life" with sentence unsaid, but pragmatism poetic. Sorry, Phil! - mh

THEY ALWAYS GIVE YOU AWAY

Fading light but
open wide & crystal clear.

Full-on desperate but
no hint of fear.

Mortality bleeds out but
espies one more day.

The eyes always give you away.

- Mike Owens

(added 01.18.12)

editor's note: First to blink picks up the tab; life for life is a pretty steep bill. Order another day - keep the maitre d' at bay. - mh

far from salvation

It’s easier to wish on stars
when stuck with reality
as far as intentions go -

I’ve laid a graceful plan
that I hardly keep
I’ve been observing
the conservative right
pushing their religious views
Alienating more than half the population
is as solvent as drinking beer
and reading the Bible
As I do

It’s wiser to keep such things separate
since we all fall short of the glory
We’re deserving of cold astray nights
far from the sun
that grand star
all seeing eye
Could be a version of God

- Rafael Andrade Garza

(1 poem added 01.17.12)

editor's note: The graceful plans are hard to keep. Beer goes down easier out of the hot sun. Wish away! - mh

Feast

I had this dream slide over me, like a silk scarf slips from the neck. There were no words, no images, just this sensation and some kind of perfume. A faceless ghost lover passed through me, leaving something different than a memory. A haunting.

I woke up thinking of the prodigal son, how the father waits for his son, deep sorrow and faint hope bound together. How many are like that man, with much to rejoice, but a wound that colors everything. There is a table in these hearts laid for a feast. They await the day when their burden turns to celebration.

- Robert Vaughan

(added 01.16.12)

editor's note: Everyone is the errant offspring. Everyone, also the pining parent. Dinner is served, please be seated. - mh

URBAN READING

The exiled poet
without papers
passport
or green card
only wth a letter
from Ginsburg
gets into the cab,
hears Coltrane riffs
and the blues,
it starts to snow
on the windshield
tiny flakes
like stolen kisses,
the sky is absent
and the fare rises
the hungry poet
jumps out of the taxi
on asphalt streets
hitches for a ride
on moonstruck miles
a surrealist
with action paintings
in her car
picks up the poet
who goes to the university
Ginsburg is there
with kisses for us.

- BZ Nditch

(added 01.15.12)

editor's note: No fare? Then it's fair to jump ship and hitch with another passing in the night. Ginsberg watches over all wayward poets. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Expressin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 01.14.12

2012-01-14T10:45:00.003-06:00

“Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better” Martin Luther King, Jr

Digital illustration by Johnny Olson

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we got behind the wheel of a fast dash from a checkered past; white-line weary, we shot our wad at a road-side rest; next morning garden gaiety gripped us, unaware of all blossoms bring to arrest attentions; which next went 2D, LCD-screen flat, fueled by avarice, our insatiable, media-whetted appetites; to compensate, forbidden fruit floating from our gaping maws, we contemplated constraint and a cloistered life; we were consumed in the story of our own falling, frozen decision and frittered dominion; finally we cashed in all for a pilfered pass to paradise, Peter pacified, Paul's pocket picked. Saints preserve us, saints be all! - mh

Sweeping generalities
(under the table)

Just because
everything
is falling together
doesn’t mean
it isn’t falling
and just because
everything
is coming together
doesn't mean
it can’t come apart
so I am going
to go through with
my obligatory
responsibilities
with white trash
panache
and allow myself
to be midwifed
into mid-life
and then
I will party
crash the pearly
gates
with my
never-said-I-was-a-saint
VIP pass
which I stole
from Paul
to give to
Peter

- Ivan Jenson

(1 poem added 01.14.12)

editor's note: Falling and coming, it's all for the benefit of middle-aged passage from here to the next. Paul's got pockets full that will never be missed and Peter will be none the wiser. - mh

Decision and Dominion

One decade held in pixels, stalled
forced figure locked in motion.
His dominion his decision then
by art of stealing souls preserved
the camera caught The Falling Man.

Though eyes perceive new narratives,
I will not claim to know his thoughts.
That leaping man, I too can see,
as many do, and many will
I too can cast his narrative,
suggestive claim his state of mind.
Yet Falling Man remains unknown.

Refuse my impositions slight
dominion his decision, though
I too will stare, I too can see:
reject my need for knowledge.
For the Falling Man now pixel print
symbolic held one decade framed.
Existence is decision and
dominion I refuse to steal.

- JW Mark

(added 01.13.12)

editor's note: It's all about to be or not. Choose dominion, bear responsibility; while decision defies choosing, ye be what ye be. - mh

Nun

I would have been a nun
had I kept my soft virginal glory
intact -

the whisky replaced by the tea-caddy,
the negligee by the gown.
The cock replaced by the crucifix;
according to the law of purity.

Waiting for bread to break its
silence.

The soup to stir -

filling the air with condensation,
and in this way blessing us. Now it is
weeping tears of joy, unable to
stop.

The fruit remains a mystery.

- A. Swimmer

(1 poem added 01.12.12)

editor's note: Oh, what we could be, would be. Eat the fruit, don't eat the fruit; the air is still full of condensate, your tears or someone else's. - mh

Depredation

The works of man, o builders,
are smothering our planet,
suffocating the surface
with endless coats of concrete,
denying respiration,
yet expecting survival.
Toxins pollute the land,
poison the air,
sterilize the seas.
Those who care,
hoping our children
will have a future,
bravely raise their voices,
but are thoroughly stifled
by the confusing clamor
broadcasted daily
by the servants of profit
to distract us from tomorrows.

- Gary Beck

(1 poem added 01.11.12)

editor's note: We thought we heard something here, but the TV was loud and there was a commercial about something we want. Now we've forgotten both, damn! - mh

Snapdragons Crackle

Snapdragons crackle
in the air for Maura
and her flowing gait,

a swagger neither Nora
nor Maureen would ever
let a suitor savor.

Maura knows
that in her wake
men with scythes

and burlap sacks,
creep like gators,
eyes afire, jaws agape.

Nora and Maureen
can smell these men.
Unlike Maura

and her flowing gait,
Nora and Maureen will smile,
take their time and wait.

- Donal Mahoney

(1 poem added 01.10.12)

editor's note: Flower garden subterfuge abounds. Cinderella inflorescence fills the stunted bloom, deformed by jealous over-pruning. - mh

Ten years Later #5

The road is long
and cold:
this scandalous sex
living hugeness,
vivacious,
unscrupulously spread itself
before my amazed eyes.

The road is long
and dry:
the uterus is rotten
blood drips
slowly
the world
implodes.

The road is long
but I feel good
and on your body
I explode
through all the pores
of my skin.

- Walter Ruhlmann

(1 poem added 01.09.12)

editor's note: It's not the road, so much. It's the mileage... and knowing the good road-side rest-stops. - mh

Driven

Mesmerized.
Yellow lines flash.
Blending;
the hum of the open road.
Driven to fly;
shedding shackles.

Haunted.
Her tear stained face.
Calling me back.
Drinking dandelion wine together;
we had it all.
Driven,
unable to turn back.

- Mike Berger

(1 poem added 01.08.12)

editor's note: Even turning back becomes the new forward. Keep the pedal to the metal and the windows down. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Dedicatedin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 01.07.12

2012-01-07T11:08:00.003-06:00

“Submissive to everything, open, listening” Jack Kerouac

Ayahuasca (above) by featured artist, Christian Millet, one of over 20 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 yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we floated into this New Year tipping and tugging on old restraints; we acknowledged the harsh reality of forced retirement with no gold watch; we dabbled in dog-death remedies, found nothing to offer but pain management; we found a new acolyte, eager to please, enlightenment understood - all about "him"; we continued the cult, twanged a taught thread, unraveled his god-like garment; that god discarded, we found a new one (long old), coldly controlling our conscpicuous consumption; lastly, we dumped that one, too, grabbed no substitute, rather strung our strained supplication through the stars, looking for a Listener... still waiting for a reply. - mh

•••••••••••

A letter to God

O Lord! I feel where you dwell: in corners
or on walls; in the streets or on tall tower-tops –
you are not beyond my ken
but you pretend you are a million miles away…
you just see the way stone statues do.

But oh!
MISERIES WE LIVE; MISERIES WE DIE.
We’re entangled on the hooks of questions that you,
and only you, can uncurl. Lord,
O Lord!
Your world is but half unfinished.
You have left everything in a mess!
Are we to finish it with our miseries
of minds and hearts?
Are we to act for you?

I’m surprised how you just see your creation roll down
and down
I’m surprised how you just see your children
grow wilder each passing day.

While I’m awake, you seem to be asleep
While I’m mad, you seem to be carefree
While I’m begging for your attention, you seem to be preoccupied
Oh Lord! What obliges you to latch your compassion?

I fear you might spot me for my grumble
But this is what I have to ask you for your grace.
Your eternal serenity, silence or peace
is what we all need, Oh Lord!

This soul has waited for so long for your smiling glance!
Keep me on your lap.
Show me the way forth.
Humanity, my love, is so desperate to dance in your kingdom!

Your world has resorted to
such dangerous paths
of clashes
between religions
between cultures
between impulses of devilish hungers.
I reckon man is to reverse his way
and join the Nazis’ uproar
or kill himself for a side of a coin.
Oh Lord! Isn’t there any limit
to your toleration?

You mustn’t be silent, O Lord!
You live in every breath of our lives:
you are a beggar; you are a billionaire
you are so generous; you are so mean –
every story has you, the silent side,
at the rear or in deep
letting go things unnoticed
and uncontrolled.

How could you be dead
when I can intensely feel you?
Come forth, my Lord!
Take back
the power from our miserable lives!
We are bad at giving and we are bad at taking.
That is the only problem we have been living.
Lord, come forth and release us from our guilt-ridden psyche!

- Chiranjibi Niroula

(1 poem added 01.07.12)

editor's note: Our earthly brain tweakers and soul preachers can't answer these questions, though good they are. We trust celestial answers are pending in frequencies our fragile ears can register. Shush now... listen. - mh

MOVING IMAGES OF THE 2nd DIMENSION

It's fantasy.
Created for your mind.
And you willingly submit yourself to an entrapment...
You are trapped in space and time -
It's a fault of the system you created once - the routined existence...
and you shall pay for it
with things that are dear to you -
pay with money, emotions, and time.

Emotions cannot reason,
you cannot think with that little corner in the brain you call heart (I call it amygdala)...
It begins and ends in your home...
In your living room...
With a smaller canvas 14 to 40 inches;
or papers filled with information that lures you;
Lures you out of your home,
and into the big dark castle - with surround sound.

It is a Fantasy Dome.
In there, you expect to travel into a new space every time;
and you are never traveling light,
you carry these commodities,
for the other senses that you don't indulge,
you want to make the best of the 2 hours; the culture of it, the whole experience of it.

Your sense of taste,
of smell and of touch...
you want to feel good.
The Show begins.

First they'll flirt with you.
They may make you laugh,
smile; make you start liking what you see.
They have to. You have to.
You have to be eased into the whole process;
They will never use force,
your indulgence is too precious.

It's all a relaxing supply of serotonin and dopamine...
quiet little chemical impulses, in your brain...
Making you happy,
taking you into that fantasy you want.
They'll even use examples from your daily life.
Things you need to relate to,
Things that make you feel, "That is me,
that is my idea, my voice."

And you use all your reasoning - but everything based on emotions...
They sum you up into simple formulas of life,
A Mission you always wanted to achieve,
Romance - love letters, beautiful conversations,
a kiss on the first date, or the wish for it.

Adventures, fears, and everything you wished for in your
boring little life.
Accompanied with music,
to entrap your emotions some more...
make you feel like it's you that you are watching...
And then before you know it - a twist.

Overworking your amygdala,
they present you with another mission to accomplish.
And another, and another.
You never get tired of the indulgence,
while always sitting in that dark space.
You forget the thousands like you; watching, feeling,
because you find your connection.
They want you connected.
They will never let you go free.. and you do not want to be free either;
you want escape...
into the mind of a bunch of men and women taking you for a ride into their minds...
their imaginations.

But you make it your own...
when they leave you,
you still don't come out of it,
and you are never free when you leave the dark dome.
The trip is never over...

Right after you go home,
that girl from Twilight will sell you an I-pod in your living room.

- AbhiManyu Dixit

(added 01.06.12)

editor's note: The same cluster of nuclei resides within all; TV Land is omnipresent. Buyer beware! - mh

Pale Girl

The phantom, the naïve flirting
her infant of a thousand parents
she had a “bad heart”
always for him

up on the hill, Dr. The Great
Bear is happier but really envied
because we strip tease and
weep upon a big rainbow
for my Triassic funny bone,
the little orphaned thread to my heart.

Angel veins are like jelly
fish twisted in my fingernails
I stand in your momentary
swoon skin and bone,
I do it gold baby.
Herr and burn-
Let’s stay for the air.

- Kayla Siobhan

(1 poem added 01.05.12)

editor's note: He musta been some nattily dressed professorial so-and-so. He can herringbone choke on his own self-adoration, cuz we won't. - mh

book store

I tortured you with long French titles and how I love Les Mis,
and you took it well, bored but smiling, yawning but trying
to be interested in what I was.

You mocked my lack of reading and listed the ones I should.
I wrote them all in my purple pad and hoped I really would
to learn about you and your interests.

It wasn’t until I was quiet and reading, yes reading, on my own
that you crept beside me, and happily I obliged thee
for a moment stolen amongst the stacks, playwrights in fact.

At least we have one interest in common;
at least we are both interested in you.

- GMSpear

(added 01.04.12)

editor's note: Hmmm. Let's read him to be him. Every author, even god, aspires to this. - mh

Matter of Time

A dog dying on my living room floor,
The vet said only a matter of time,
pain killers given for the pain,
but what of the rest of us,
dying always only a matter of time,
Where are my pills?

- Douglas Polk

(added 01.03.12)

editor's note: Doctor can't prescribe the right remedy? Self medicate; the antidotes are multiple, the gamble is an adventure. It is a dog's life! - mh

Getting Religion

After having worked all your life,
The new lords of management
Have arrived with their new religion,
Preaching the glories of poverty,
Not for them, just for you
And others of your ilk and age.

Soon you will be shown the door,
The imprint of a large iron boot
Bruised into your backside.
The lords of management encourage you
To enjoy your new freedom
As you fight among the beggars
For a place on the sidewalk
With a cardboard bed,
And an open air urinal.

- Joseph Farley

(1 poem added 01.02.12)

editor's note: This is enough to make atheists of us all. No god but mammon? (Let's welcome Joe to our Contributing Poets, read more on his page.) - mh

Scull

Nothing more
than a small un-painted boat,
cracked boards leaking water
no name on the stern

pulling gently on its chain
like an old dog
eager to be home;

but if I lie back on those boards
mouth open wide
to suckle a little rain
I would howl and howl
till the river roared back,

and between us
we broke our chains.

- Ian Mullins

(added 01.01.12)

editor's note: What way to begin a year full of new is better than to swim in the stream up or down unfettered? - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Submittingly Yours,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 12.31.11

2011-12-31T09:39:00.006-06:00

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” T.S. Eliot

Digital illustration by Johnny Olson

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we teetered on the brink of ideal obsessions with peace on earth; we beatified the boundaries of social convention, never trust a mustachioed male, his quivering lip hidden by so much hair; we dodged our transitory time-share, eyes squeezed shut against the lightning strikes of short stark exposure; we wound a wonderland woven under, madness at the core of our consciousness; we sampled a new cuisine, sugar from sand to heart-stopping ginger; we dabbled in the nuance of nude renderings, no sexual fixations but what we cannot control, the art-loving animals we are; then, on the eve of annum novum, a new alphabet for the spelling of life and laughing cow universe, not quite nascent, but crowning nicely. 2012 will require sunblock and shades, we think!! - mh

Modern Walls

Out in the dark
I dig, dig, and dig myself;
Stalking meagre alphabets
Revolving around them like a brainless planet
I’m a stalker
Lover of several words
A, B and C
P, T and Q
I lose sense of them
Maya says Love is Hate
Prakash says Hate is Lust

The white skin of the coughing sky
Drags on the slippery tongue
Slips, sleeps,
Suave macho!

And I laugh, laugh
Breaking all my teeth one by one
Massaging the cow’s tail
I am her unborn calf,
I am her invisible universe.
Tomorrow's sun will evaporate me.
I will tan my heart.

- Arun Budhathoki

(1 poem added 12.31.11)

editor's note: Our gasps and grunts amount to little if not perceived as the emanations of our untanned hearts. Throw out the sun block; lick the sky; put on your shades... - mh

Collage

All of the art students’ hairdos hold together:
a newspaper hat, a pencil barrette,
a paintbrush, the weather, gravity, glue.
Art students hold that the nude is not—
gravity is—what moves us and holds us
glued to her breasts. Her skin is the weather.
That triangle of hair is a newspaper hat
penciled in and folded over, holding together.
Under the moon and a newspaper hat
I make love to a blue-haired student of art
with pencil-breasts, a single paintbrush
miraculously holding all that weather of hair.

- Paul Hostovsky

(added 12.30.11)

editor's note: A downpour is imminent and me without my rubbers. Gravity brings gravitas to my art appreciation! - mh

Ginger

Something was said
of this I’m sure,
something in green,
something with teeth.

Something profound.

I lean in to
catch a whisper,
but it’s far too late
for that.

And I can see her eyes change
from sugar
to sand,
smoothing out
the ripples;
the ever growing distance
between us.

I want to know the words,
I want to know why!

And I fell apart
like a dying sunflower,
slipped Down a hole
in salt,
a whole in salt.

I just let it happen.

Didn’t put up much
of a fight really,
let go and unraveled,
unraveling still.

And I can still taste the ginger,
as I listen to my heart stop.

- Abigale Louise LeCavalier

(added 12.29.11)

editor's note: Here's a recipe from Life's cookbook. We didn't know ginger could stop a heart. Use sparingly, to taste. - mh

THE MAD HATTER

How
is a Raven
like a Writing Desk?

The riddle was posed
to a man,
once a soldier,
now a hatter,
sitting
down on his luck beside the closed
down factory behind him.

I honestly
have no idea. He replied
looking up
towards the woman in white
in front of him.

This woman was merely called
The Queen,
the owner of many hat shops across the land
who had taken pity
on the distraught man.

Perfect!
She responded with glee
and offered dainty
white fingers towards him.

What if I said,
in exchange for your sanity,
and your sword
I could make you immortal?

Never dying,
never needing sleep,
never requiring food...
Without a second
thought
he took the woman's hand
and
gave a nod of agreement,
before his mind
fell into madness.

The clock
struck 6
and a cat
walked by,
smiling broadly to him,
a hare came up
as well, and a mouse
scurried up his leg....

We're all mad here!

This was the beginning
of the story to a man
who is no longer a man,
far gone from the boundaries
of society
to the point
that he can simply be called Mad.

The story isn't all this,
no,
far from it.

The man now called
The Mad Hatter
opened up a wee
shop at the edge of the city,
The Hatter's Hat Emporium
it was called
filled with hats for all
shapes and sizes...

But alas
his mind was gone
taking the friendship from
a March Hare,
a Doormouse,
and
a Cheshire Cat
with him into the dark
that was his own head,
or as he called it,
Underland.

Would you care for some
tea?

- Michael Ian Sattler

(1 poem added 12.28.11)

editor's note: A spot of tea for the Mad Ones, fresh from a party perpetually in progress. Under wonder! (Let's welcome another mad poet to our Swirl of Contributing Poets - read more on Michael's page.) - mh

Realization

This crude life
Is asking for many things
Stretching its arms
With the manner of insatiable
Lightening weeds of summer
Where our human forgets
The dark horse we rode.

Know this lingering self
Who has to return back
Withering along the night
So to realize the position
Understand yourself
In the lightening furrow
Among the black clouds
Just to make that light
Meaningful depiction
For our momentary
Residence on earth.

- Hem Raj Bastola

(1 poem added 12.27.11)

editor's note: In dead of winter longest night time of year, a little light to show the way; glowing from inside out or flashing from outside in. - mh

Articulations Calling Peace

Our articulations can call peace,
As long as we fail to compare my bête noirs to yours.

Likewise, our children can overcome blind spots,
If only we strive not to treat the next generation like remoras; they’re complete, as is.

Equally, despite resultant feelings of prohibition,
It’s possible for us leftover souls to lead among the media’s darlings.

All frazonism in our thoughts needs be clipped, trimmed, measured,
While we willing halt adhering to stupid realities involving exclusive social rubrics.

- KJ Hannah Greenberg

(1 poem added 12.26.11)

editor's note: It's hard enough to have high expectations mostly mildly met, but to turn them into mental strip-search thought crime crenelations meant to crimp others' comport? No wonder we can't keep the peace. - mh

a christmas pome

the fool considers
the construct of the season
myriad noels
god rest ye merry
ad infinitum
yuletide eternum
ever glows the fire
heating the outer chromium shells
of jingling bells
dangling jangling from the nape of the neck
of harlequin
covered in black and white checks
yin and yang contrast
twixt blindness and sight
holiday opulence
or occasion for thanks
we make the choices
annual opportunities
to be numb to the game
or look around differently

the fool embraces
the good and the soft
the kind and the caring
with angels aloft
fair messengers singing
a heavenly tune
rejoice in the notion
the faint possibility
that one day a year
can proliferate multiply
into every and always
and peace on earth
good will
good will
good will

- MH Clay

(1 poem added 12.25.11)

editor's note: Why do we limit this feeling to only once a year? Let's make everyday a holy-day! Come one and all, let's put on our jester hats and be enlightened fools! Peace on earth... can it be? Who knows, perhaps someday... - jo

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Beginnin' Again,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 12.24.11

2011-12-24T11:39:00.006-06:00

“We live at the edge of the miraculous.” Henry Miller

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we sang along to some songs of the Season, the eccentric season of the Swirl. We considered the consequences of unchecked consumption - you better watch out, you better not cry; then stepped to a bar filled with jazz and drunk jeers, knocked back our shots and chased'em with beers - jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way; we curled by a fire, kissed a doll, watched by many - baby, it's cold outside, I really must go; we suffered a stretch of time, strained to discern the sound of a voice - go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere; instead we heard a sound unexpected, the whisper of aboreal wisdom - O christmas tree, o christmas tree; we re-tooled our concepts of what makes a man big - here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, comin' down Santa Claus Lane; then, on this Eve of eves, we mixed our magic morning expectations with a bit o' stark reality, not everyone gets the pony or the ring - peace on earth, good will toward men. - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Waiting For Santa

She spent her last dollars
on milk and cookies,
arranged on a spotless
chipped plate, liquid
in a re-washed paper cup
(the only set she had).

Fell asleep on the rug
a gift of salvation
along with two rough chairs,
a candle in the dark,
Sterno and a couple of matches.

Fist of awakening rubbed from eyes,
maybe it was the absence of a tree,
one bare stocking taped on the wall,
the heating coal must have fallen
from the holey sock, powdered
from the drop, wind blown away.

She had written an unanswered letter,
not asking much: money for the lights,
fuel for the fire, and, if it wasn't too presumptuous,
somehow, someway, to have a way out.

© 2011

- Rose Morales

(2 poems added 12.24.11)

editor's note: 'Tis the Season, deck the halls, chestnuts roastin' - now to find the right colored paper and the perfect box within which to wrap a way out. God rest ye merry! (Another good one from Rose on her page - out with the old in with the new.) - mh

A Big Human

Resembles human
Different when talks,
Language doesn’t speak
Arrogance barbs
Like wild lion
A colossal human!!
An idealess heavy head
With a huge crown of dishonor
Visionless eyes hidden under skin
Views the Everest very small
Doesn’t see the human figure
Steps on the head of every human
A cold heart inside the rib cage
A brain damped by the severity of arrogance
A statue of flesh and blood: lack of feelings and emotions
It is not an animal in structure
It doesn’t have human behavior
A miniature of big fish
A resemblance of human
In the nature of a big ferocious shark!!!
Thinks himself a great scholar
By the visionless eyes
Inside no Abraham Lincoln or Gandhi
But within resides Idi Amin of Uganda
Big person remains big
Doesn’t know how to become generous
Generous doesn’t know how to become big.

- LP Bastola

(1 poem added 12.23.11)

editor's note: Hmmm, we thought bigger was better, but better is served with small actions; no fanfare, no notice or praise. Hard to achieve when living large. - mh

Winter Trees

Ice falls and tumbles,
coating our lives
lovely shimmering clear.
Sparkling limbs
sag and bend
under the weight
of solid water.
I listen to the moan, the sad
beautiful music of trees
as they splinter.

I imagine you
in your ice covered
house. Do you sleep
through the cracks and sharp
sounds? Or do you listen
as the winter takes branches
held in shiny brilliance
crashing downward?

If you hear the splendor
and sorrow of frozen trees,
give me the acorn you have
hidden in the snow.
I will hold it gently
in my palm
until it thaws.

- Elizabeth Glass

(1 poem added 12.22.11)

editor's note: Hush those carolers, still those bells... listen to the whispering of trees, telling us secrets of solstice. (Also, welcome Elizabeth to our crenelated crowd of Contributing Poets. She has more great poems on her new page.) - mh

Mending Reality

There is the sleep
of your tongue so
dormant over the
months, words that
are lost because you
haven’t spoken; the
verbs and syllables
of your speech that
decline all in one
breath. The phone
on the table gathers
dust on sunny days
before they go grey.
What happened to
the sound of your
voice? Years have
heaped their withered
hours on my nerves
and time is so elastic
depending on when
you deign to speak;
it stretches and it
shrinks. I want to
trap your voice
inside a box, punch
a hole in at the top
and listen to it wake
up from its sleep,
but that’s not mending
reality. It’s when you
choose to appear.

- Bobbi Sinha-Morey

(added 12.21.11)

editor's note: Yes, a dose of one to mend the other. Reparation repartee! - mh

Mistletoe Moment

Good faith in bad beer coming my way
on holiday, celebrated on a couch
as intricate as a Jewish banker’s vest dreamt
in a German-designed lucid bad dream.

Our curled toes greeted space heater coils,
as she strategically placed a coaster on the
last scrap of wood from Heinrich Steinweg’s first piano,
At that moment I make it a mistletoe moment.

I married a doll; many, actually. Dozens displayed
spot-free in wicker hats, plastic plump cheeks,
like babies winking in hot wax. I found a coaster:
a binder, pictures of people dead in their beds.

Hair spread to the side like tea bag tag strings,
tucked into Sunday best. Bed sheets for all eternity.

- Tyler Malone

(1 poem added 12.20.11)

editor's note: Holiday hijinx and homage to German ingenuity; sleep until magic morning openings reveal... another doll. Jingle bells! - mh

12 Aspirins and a bottle of scotch

Torrents of whisky wash away the flavour of nicotine.
Smoke hangs in the air, men drink at a rum soaked bar.
The floor glows like liquid silver from spilt beer.
A match is lit, the flame moves like mercury.
Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong play jazz throughout the bar.

A mature woman drinks an elegant martini, she plays with the
green olives as her blond hair dances to the groove.
A man in the corner chews on a cocktail stick, the aroma of sweet
perfume and musky cologne lingers in the air.
A saxophone is played in the toilet.
Drums beat to the beatniks.
A man in a purple hat flips a coin.

Heads or tails?
Heads or tails?

Shots of gin are swallowed, rivers of Smoky bourbon flow,
men with goatees and women with custard coloured berets kiss and flirt.
The cool dames and the crazy cats swing all night long.
Sitting in an old brown leather chair
Tom Waits writes another
cool jazz song.

- Luke Ritta

(1 poem added 12.19.11)

editor's note: Happening in a bar near you - join in, call it Holiday Cheer. Santa brings aspirin with the egg nog! - mh

Collage Sonnet 35.

This might seem to bode ill
for anyone living in a gated community—
unless you think of consumption as passive.
Plainly, however, the weak economy
is no different from its opposite
in that the future remains deliberately vague.
As such, speculation becomes perilous
and, in some cases, expensive.
On the other hand, we have tended
to consume without compunction,
pouring funds into durables
and embracing the start-up.
Given the risks, one marvels
at our ceaseless willingness to gamble.

- Thomas Cochran

(added 12.18.11)

editor's note: Well, the Holiday Season is a bit of a crap-shoot. We offer our loved ones the fruit of our consumption and wonder, "Should I have gotten her/him the red one, after all?" - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Livin' on the edge,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 12.17.11

2011-12-17T08:36:00.002-06:00

“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” Bill Hicks

Transition at Night (above) by featured artist, Christian Millet, one of over 20 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 yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we attacked idols, unworthy of our acquiescence; we raved a beastly rave; rhapsodized the storytelling tendencies of sound waves in air and space; we witnessed the moldering memory of slapped kid and girl in urn; we blamed the casual catalysts of the familial chasm on ourselves, only ourselves; we sent a bitterly seasoned season's greeting, invoked the strike of a match, the flare of the flame; all to yield control, to change our personal focus to the management of drool. Delightful! What cathartic joy. The coming week must contrast surely to all this introspective ennui. I'm gonna, by god, jingle my bells! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Control

was my problem
- lack of it
and need for it -
according to my Pop
psychologist who paid the bills
with child-like scribblings on checks from crazies
worse than ME
but submissive enough
to believe her daily diatribes.

"So, you think you're cured?"

"No, but I believe you're insane."

The White Jacketed One,
glasses steamed-up with rage,
pounded my chest
before punching me
in the crotch. After my ass-kicking
she waved, "Goodbye,"
through the tiny door window.

I would have given her my best
one-finger salute
but with my arms tied
criss-crossed in front of me
all I could do
was stick out my tongue
and drool...

- Joseph D. DiLella

(2 poems added 12.17.11)

editor's note: Lost yours, restrained by theirs? Be Houdini! And, wipe your chin. (Another one from Joseph, a bit o' funereal fun, on his page - check it out!) - mh

This Sure As Hell Ain't From Hallmark

I should tell you that I hate you,
but I actually want to thank you

that 'relationship' we had was the absolute
worst mistake I ever made in my life,
but I have to say now
that it really opened my eyes
and taught me how devious and black-hearted
fast-talking men really were,
how they could sweep you off your feet
while simultaneously pulling the rug out from underneath
is entirely devastating;
you really fucked with my heart and my mind,
but I must tell you that it strengthened me
and made me a better woman

it was a hell of a lesson,
but one well-learned
so I want to thank you for that
and, since you had the nerve to resurface
and try to contact me again,
I must admit that you've definitely
cured my recent spell of writer's block—
now the words flow like blood;
I'm writing a poem a day
and they're all about you, darling,
so, from the bottom of my heart,
I thank you

P.S.: Burn in Hell

- Cynthia Ruth Lewis

(added 12.16.11)

editor's comments: Well, it depends on your personal season to color your greeting. Actually, I think you might find this one in the Hallmark catalogue - look under "dead-beat dialogue." - mh

it wasn't her fault

when her family arrived
i stayed in my bedroom
listening to prince and madonna
cassette tapes
because i'd spied her from my window
blonde and tan
more beautiful than i remembered
i'd become a fat and lonely monster
since we'd last seen each other
and i didn't want to disappoint her
so i thought that i'd just stay in the bedroom
the whole time her family visited with mine
but it only took ten minutes
for my mother to knock on the door
then open it
without me saying to do so
and there she stood before me
so goddamned blonde and tan
california gold from head to toe
the smile fading from her face
as my mom grinned and shut the door to my dungeon
leaving the two of us alone
to sit on opposite sides of the bed
listening as the music played
hoping that it wouldn't be long
before they all called us downstairs to dinner.

- John Grochalski

(1 poem added 12.15.11)

editor's comments: Here's a great holiday tweaker for us. How's that go about family and fish? Get ready, folks; the family will be arriving soon. - mh

Mush rooms

Another year relaxes in its embers
We gather for our farewell

Through the months cuckoos have called
You have not heard, I wouldn’t know
Leaves fell off branches, regardless

In the evening sun on a Bandon hill
Still at this familiar hole
I try to think of your face
Taste the earth in the air

Your intake of breath is what I remember
That preoccupied, sucking - yeah!
Peculiar to this parish as you were
We can’t confuse you with mother
You are absent-bodied no more

We came here together apart thirty years
We carried each other once a piece
Me a slapped kid, you in the urn
We shared similar meals in between
Those blood red beef stews we loved
Stock full of juice and mushrooms

This is all we had though, moments at dinner
Dirt chewed today is spat tomorrow
My thoughts slip away leaving you
Under mouldering heaps
I head towards laundry and tea
As the moon balls out above the church
We have both gone
To a colder ground called home

- Anthony Murphy

(2 poems added 12.14.11)

editor's note: Not your usual psychedelic, fungal, Friday-nite freakout, nope. This trip is a downer that comes with no actual ingestion, just a year-end suggestion of fungus past and passed. (Murph has another good one on his page; a Fall fox-fuck fright-flight - check it out.) - mh

Life in a Hospital

Male pattern baldness
does not exist in my family line.
What’s wrong with that data?
If you want to head out, head out.
We’re not holding you hostage.
He’s so distracted.
He’s flying back tomorrow.
My left atrium’s here
but to you it’s on the right.
Code blue is cardiac arrest.
Green is crazy.
Yellow they need police.
Red is fire.
It’s like a Ferrari.

- Patty Mooney

(added 12.13.11)

editor's note: A rainbow of random utterances, congealed by context. Good Air, Patty! - mh

Beast

I am the beast in the bar
The beast who drinks anything and everything
The beast who sits devouring whatever it is that comes my way
The beast inside takes control the more I drink for
I am the beast in the bar
The beast who repels women with my je ne sais quoi
I am the beast who simply can’t say no to a drink or the chance to get high
The beast that drinks just to get drunk
I am the beast who prowls the bar looking for cast-off drink and cast-off women for
I am the beast

- Bradford Middleton

(added 12.12.11)

editor's note: Stimulation of this alcohol economy by wholesale consumption of the drops and the dregs is just, I don't know what, "Beastly." Drink with dignity! - mh

Gods and Demons

Dionysus, god of wine,
old and comfortable friend.
I dream of Aphrodite,
goddess of love, beauty, desire,
all my dreams, all my hopes,
unrequited.
In the pantheon of demons,
the emptiness at the heart
of human existence is
Zeus, king of gods, ruler of Olympus.
Next comes boredom, Ares,
god of war, violence, and
the self-destructive turmoil in
so many of our souls.
On a mission to find antidote,
Zeus too exalted,
too distant to hear my appeal.
My quest is for relief,
real, lasting, meaningful.
Damn,
that eliminates all my favorites,
beer, Scotch, wine,
casual sex,
movies, Internet.
Many souls, many solutions.
Mine, I begin to see,
is here, right now,
on this page, Aphrodite's approval
irrelevant.

- Paul Hellweg

(added 12.11.11)

editor's note: Trash your idols, deify your vices - absolve yourself with a few verses. Just a few words... peace will come - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Facilitatin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 12.10.11

2011-12-10T11:10:00.009-06:00

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” Emily Dickinson

Ludo (above) by featured artist, Christian Millet, one of over 20 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 yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we got some sun on the beach by the sea myth; we tapped our inner twig, made ready to hold the snow; we mourned a muffed up martyrdom; listened to the void between cricket chirps; ear's sharpened, we strained to hear the faintest sound of destiny; instead, we got an old crone's rant, resentful of our luck; lastly, reminded to check our list on the way home, we picked up some necessaries. Check it twice, 'tis the season. - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

A Life of Lists

Bin-bags, washing-up liquid, rubber gloves
Strawberry yoghurt to smear over you warmly
Chicken, rice, peas and carrots
A tub of ice cream to eat off your cheeks

Toilet duck, bathroom cleaner, bleach
Mice poison to slip into your tea
Homogenised products
Stacked-up on a shelf

£14.63, authorisation = 072604
CO122 ~ 0188 15:54:52 S000015 R002

- Charles Pitter

(1 poem added 12.10.11)

editor's note: Validate all your transactions with price and time stamp. How else can we measure the worth of our lives? - mh

A sententious old bastard

chest out, jowls low like bird feeders bowing from the weight of one squirrel too many.
A hammered out face, the colour of normality
Spittle gravitating to the corners of a tight mouth with lips pert, bubbling.
A short straight spine, shining pate
Chipped paint from the painted shed
cracks onto a half-made bed
and a little bottle of lemonade supplicating the nocturnal loss of too much acid
A brush and old spice, smell of a disciplined lineage
Sunday action, rise, dress well again, sup down, smoke, get livid, nap
A rhythm in that, however much despised.
A tattoo beat onto indolent cheeks.
Good God! and mumblings,
irritation, every look is an advantage
taken
by underserving languorous youths
'lucky generation
Pulling duvets over their warm full bellies
own bed, own bloody room!'
corroded but unsoftened
both brittle and brutal
chewing only on a sunday
and smiling less than that
with teeth white as cloudburst.
Wheezy from the cigarettes
and living in harsh air
bitter at the stagnation.
A smile that hurts,
that is rigid
That could weep
were it not so invulnerable.
And churches are cold
and the gravestones are always wet
and sadness
is the most sad
when caught at the bottom
of your face.
Like watching a mountain melt

- Christopher Smith

(added 12.09.11)

editor's note: Well, here's a fine portrait of a not-so-jolly fellow. He is always checking his lists; where no one is nice and all will come to naught. Cry for him; especially if sighted in a mirror. - mh

Tune In

For the love of God, man
Slow it down
Take your time
Listen to the signs

I know you hear ‘em
They’re all around
A whispering flow
On where to go

Heed the call
Make no mistake
What you know as true
Is unequaled for you

Life’s too short
To set out so fast
So slow it down
Come back to ground

Listen closely
Open your mind
The future is calling
Your destiny’s waiting

Tune in
Turn it up
Stay tuned

- Jeanette Fields

(added 12.08.11)

editor's note: Ha! Take that, Dr. Tim! - mh

THE SEGUE

The woods shimmer with sound—
chained murmurs, red echoes.
The cricket chirps, the crow caws,
the nighthawk drums its wings.
Wispy mist swirls from the woods.
The wind shushes.

Inside, the house creaks.
Inside the body, blood courses,
air bellows, the pulse beats.
Only the cricket can hear the segue.
Chirping stops. Silence hums.
A shadow floats.

- Robert E. Petras

(1 poem added 12.07.11)

editor's note: Eternal silence between the beats; entire cricket lifetimes happen in that space. Shhh, do you hear them? (Let's welcome Robert to our congress of Contributing Poets. Read more on his new page.) - mh

The Lamenting Soldier

He sits in a bombed bunker
with his gun and bullets feeding his mission.
The heavy suit burdens him with
“Why is he here!”

Once the boiling blood craved
for blood and heads;
for a fountain of red fluids
raping the land of refugees
and now the chance has been utilized
and with it his life too.

His foe and his partners look alike
after death with same bullets
responsible for their fall.

He knows, when he crosses
the border and walks to the land
his army have captured the soils
will too look alike.

“So was this fight to pass some time
in practising revolt against God?”

He is now a sinner, no martyr
in the court of the almighty.

- Sonnet Mondal

(1 poem added 12.06.11)

editor's note: This is the reward for all who battle; the same question, "Is the prize worth the price?" (Welcome, Sonnet, to our creative congress of Contributing Poets. Everyone, check out his new page.) - mh

Sunlight Wanes

tired leaves twist seeking the splendour of the soil
within a tree's core a physical process beyond our ken

upon weathered body carved crevices sustain living realms
in which we will never travel

limbs unburdened by foliage delight in their freedom
ready now to support each snowflake layer by layer

nature leaves nothing to circumstance

- Paula Lietz

(1 poem added 12.05.11)

editor's note: Hmmm, tree rings, thickened bark; if we were trees... Selah! - mh

God From a Grain of Sand

What nature takes,
And most couldn’t tell,
Is God from a grain of sand.

Swimming amid
A sea of truths
Our envious souls protest.

And with no thought
For consequence,
Our burrowing minds submerse

So the spirit alone
Is left to find
The truth within the myth.

And failing, flailing,
Falls head forth
Through galaxies of sand.

© 2008

- Jeremy W. Johnson

(added 12.04.11)

editor's note: Cosmology 101 - go to the beach, get a tan, take a swim, build a castle. The final exam will be multiple choice. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Knowin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 12.03.11

2011-12-03T08:30:00.004-06:00

“My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.” John Lennon

Hunger (above) by featured artist, Christian Millet. Although it may be be needless to say we'll say it anyway, his work is quite applauded around these here parts. This returning favorite's style is profound, bold, and just a tad off in it's subtly eerie madness. The newly added set of paintings by Millet have a fresh feel of simplicity at first glance. But take a closer look and his art is far from simple. It requires a keen talent to play with color and shape in the adventurous ways Christian does. And for that, we hope you applaud him with us. - mio

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we eavesdropped on a dreaming eavesdropper, jealousy ensued; we rose above the dreamscape, aired our insecurities; we tilted with an umbrella, thought to unseat sleet; we shifted back into dream (did we ever leave?), shadows in shadow; we hopped a harrowing house helix, out of one, into one, back out again into one; we wrung the rungs of Life's ladder, up one side, down the other; lastly we reveled in the reverie of a dog's life, perhaps the best life of all. I'll take a dog's dream any day... - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

The Collector

The sun sets
Shivers on the evening.
The dog inhales weaknesses
These woods bring
To his cold muzzle.
I unclip a steel ring from its chain.
Half beagle, pure dog,
He measures to no one –
For an hour he’ll worry creatures who alone
Store the earth’s few treasures.
‘That’s enough!’
Only his tail and paws stop as I call out
In rough Old English.
Tongue-tied by my small mind,
He pees in a buttercup.
The trees suddenly give up.
Alone in the clearing,
He nuzzles the tall sky.
I am brought to my knees
As fingers twirl in tufts above his heart
Where quiet strands unwind my nerves,
His eyes clear and guiltless, destroy
My collection of fear.

- Derrick Gaskin

(1 poem added 12.03.11)

editor's note: Yes, let's exchange our cowardly contraband for the canine collection. They're the gods and we the domesticated pets. Give your god a rump-scratch; store up treasures in heaven. - mh

THEORY OF RELATIVITY

I hear the unemployment rate
is staggering, people crowding
sidewalks smashing heads fighting
to get in the door, score a
gainful opportunity
but see,
I’m staggering too, crowding the
door and smashing heads fighting
to get the hell out, shout my way
down the street into obscure
unproductive retirement...

Theory of Relativity.

- Joseph Roque

(1 poem added 12.02.11)

editor's note: Tag-team again - we wanting out are more than happy to make way for those wanting in. Both directions seem like the best direction at the time. - mh

UNTITLED

you were born in a house that was living and you live in a house that is haunted and you'll die in a house that is laughing and then you wake up in a house that is no house

- Nicholas Martin

(1 poem added 12.01.11)

editor's note: Thus, a vacancy is created, the tag-team cycle repeated. The rent is due at the end of your stay and the cleaning deposit is non-refundable - so, keep it neat. - mh

The City

This day slips away
into darkness it falls
the back streets are my home
on the edges at the boundaries

I sit drinking coffee
wondering about other days;
this city has taught me
we are all fools in its grand masquerade;

Each street is marked out in shadows
no one sleeps, the darkness lingers
savage and silent
waiting, waiting...

In blue balance the darkness gathers
as evening crowds and shrouds this place.
Street lights dim and white
keep the darkness firmly in check;
while a neon cross flashes a bill board salvation.

In this mechanical clock work
each day falls away;
the darkness gathers,
dark blue turns to black.
While in the back street shadows chase the light
wishing to consume it;
In the shadows they linger chasing.

Here we are shadows scotched by the light that casts us into darkness;
shadows we linger on this thin line;
empty figments of the imagination we are but shadows;
shadows cast by the light;

In the back streets shifting shadows change
and in a moment fade
in this mad dash into night.

This city has taught me to dream;
it changes, it fades and then it lives again with the day.
Everything must change in this dusty masquerade
and if we are to live as we should
we change with it as we fade into the night.

- John Najjar

(2 poems added 11.30.11)

editor's note: Now the butterfly dreams he is a man, exchanging nectar for coffee; brightly colored wings for transitory shadows. Quickly, lay those eggs before you die! (Read another, a farewell to lost love, on John's page.) - mh

The tilt

Two people together
trying to tilt toward themselves
an umbrella – unfurled
and so
with stretched tiny holes.

Is the sleet something?

- Haris Adhikari

(1 poem added 11.29.11)

editor's note: Is it? Well, only if you feel the cold. Is everything something? If not, that would be something anyway. (Let's welcome Haris as our newest Contributing Poet. See more of his poems on his new page.) - mh

As a vast dream lying

As a vast dream lying
You stare at the sky
Back to the air, fleeting.

- Nicolas Grenier

(added 11.28.11)

editor's note: Once again the question is posed, "Which is the dreamer and which the dream?" Recycled reverie! - mh

a scene overheard while recovering from tooth surgery

there is a man speaking loudly to someone or himself

it is 3:00 AM

i am on tylenol 3 and penicillin trying to sleep

he says fuck every second word

he is angry

he is in his backyard

i hear him though my open window

i imagine him as having an average to below average level of attractiveness

i imagine him as having an average to below average level of intelligence

he says she doesn't fucking know fucking anything.

he says if she wants to fucking leave, she should fucking get on with it

i assume he is talking on the phone

i assume he is talking about his girlfriend or wife

i feel guilty for listening in on such an intimate moment

i feel annoyed that he is being too loud to ignore

i am trying to sleep

i concentrate really hard on sleeping

he fucking loves her and she doesn't see it

he'd do fucking anything for this girl

he fucking loves her so much fuck

i think about him and his love for this girl

he seems to feel something i've never felt and can't imagine feeling

i both admire and pity him

his voice cracks as he finishes his next sentence with his favorite word

f~ck

he is openly sobbing now

it seems unnecessary, unseemly

to become so upset over someone who doesn't love him back

i don't know what i'm going to fucking do without her. i'm fucking nothing without her

he says between sobs

it seems irrational

to let your identity be defined so strongly by someone else as to loose meaning after they are gone

he stops sobbing. he screams. it scares me.

i've never heard anyone scream out of sadness before

it sounds painful, strained

like his emotions are so intense his body can't process them, and so they come out in inappropriate ways.

i half expect him to start laughing

he is talking quieter now. he has calmed down

it is nearly 4:00 AM

i am tired

i am embarrassed about what i just overheard

i feel sorry for the man

i feel curious as to what it would be like to feel what he feels

that intense, dramatic love that caused this late night scene

i am jealous of a foul-mouthed man sobbing openly in his backyard

- Sarah Tue-Fee

(added 11.27.11)

editor's note: A strange visitation from the tooth fairy renders jealousy over loutish love. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Feelin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 11.26.11

2011-11-26T10:40:00.004-06:00

“It doesn't matter what you believe just so long as you're sincere.” Charles Schulz

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we entered in famished feathers to eat fired crow that's best served cold; we slipped in the slew of homecoming, Kewpie-induced cow consternation just ahead of a storm; we deconstructed the grandiose deduction that originality resides within all, broke it down to disillusionment and deaf spite; we embraced the anxiety of souls adrift, drowning alone in such close proximity; we wallowed in whisky-drenched woe and retrospection, examined the trip-steps which led to our rejection; we looped into lapsed time, found our peace through fraternization with a "mild fantastic"; lastly, we gripped an intransigent truth, a god-borne, gut level gumption that injustice must ever be exposed by our spoken word. Feast and be thankful! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

A FORK IN THE ROAD

Don’t call this the end, my friend. It’s just a fork in the road.
I trudge to the left, into the unknown, inhaling faith, tasting
Fate on my parched lips. I enter a desert of unbearable
heat and sin.

I accept the natural flow of events and the inevitable passage
of time. But on this lonely road, I trudge through a
pitch-black darkness. All that is familiar is behind
me. Alone, I move ahead into the secret caverns of
my mind and spirit. In search of my higher self
and Hashem, my G-d, I travel across my private
wasteland.

My psychological-spiritual quest is mirrored by my
painful journey in the real world of human flesh and
ineffable sin.

I am a Jew. I accept G-d’s Will. Yet I believe it is G-d’s
intention that I protest against the evil of the world. I am
a Jew and an agent of ethical change. And when I see
injustice, I must speak out against it. I must fight for
the good. I believe this is Hashem’s command.

Now, I see another fork in the road. I turn left. And I travel
simultaneously across two realms-moving deeper into the
holy core of my being and outwardly, on the path of
social action in the real world. In the distance,
perhaps, is the Promised Land.

- Mel Waldman

(1 poem added 11.26.11)

editor's note: Don't have to carry a card, lift a label or stifle a stamp to speak out. So many forks require decision and forward movement, no matter the outcome - just keep speaking up to be heard in this darkness. We're all believers, called what you will. - mh

Salvation

How the out-world shines upon this lonely bar,
As I dwell here,
Drifting into the mild fantastic.
A recidivist recluse,
Preferring his own company,
The respiration of my tides
Bearing the vast consciousness of the somnambulant.

While my mind sanctifies the moment
With the inanimate right to breathe,
Sensing the instigation of lives foregone,
Returning to contiguous affairs of coeval enlightenment,
Rearing an examination of character
Amongst such dark interiors,
Becoming sufficiently acquainted with spirit.
Exhilarated by the sudden lapse of time
At the expense of indebted memories.

While the suns auriferous glaze gilds the sands,
Shaped by the ocean—like consciousness,
Reflected a thousand fold by the ebbing tides of night.
With reminiscences cleansed upon the shore
Marooned by this frivolous presence,
In a harmonious façade of contentment,
Braver than any emotion,
Conversing with ghosts,
Haunted by salvation
Within a world that’s dead.

- Anthony Ward

(added 11.25.11)

editor's note: Be absolved in whatever sanctuary claims your consciousness. Salvation comes through settling in with ghosts. - mh

You Will Be Alone With The Gods

Don’t worry about rejection, Taylor.
I have been rejected before,
But it isn’t the poetry that makes
The nights cold as winter under the sheets,
Or makes the girls with mouths like roses,
With bodies like sunset,
With bodies like thunder,
Stop knocking on your door.
Don’t worry, Taylor.
I have smoked twenty five cigarettes tonight,
And you saw all the beer.
The whiskey sets my soul furiously ablaze,
But it’s not the poetry that mutes the phone:
It’s the stale fluctuating factors,
It’s a text from an old lover,
It’s a broken shoelace,
It’s a hangnail,
It’s a psychologist scribbling on paper.
Meanwhile,
The phone has only rung once:
Wrong number.

- Robert D. Lyons

(added 11.24.11)

editor's note: Such is the lot of poets, or anyone, for that matter, who long for the lingering touch of that untouchable thing. Who you callin' "Taylor"? - mh

Islands

She feels awkward because she doesn’t talk
to other mothers in the playground.
She thinks they think she’s odd,
not the mothering kind.
It cuts, but she can’t tolerate the children’s cries
for the swings, roundabout, and slide.

She lets her husband get on with it,
and do what he has to do.
She wants a lover.
She’s a size 16 and used to be a 10.
She’s a facade, a housewife,
trapped in family bidding.

On Thursdays she goes to night-school.
She doesn’t actually like embroidery;
it’s independence.
The class has a male, but she wants
a MAN.

Her husband should know her,
but he’s too self-absorbed.
She’s him in a skirt.
He doesn’t talk to barbers,
and has to change them regularly.

He has poor sex, so he jacks off with magazines.
He’s 16 stone and out of shape. Who would he turn on?
He paints a glaze, and lives a robotic life.

He has one friend who never rings him up.
They drink.
It doesn’t register that with his wife,
they’re so fucking
alone.

(22/7/11)

- Michael Holme

(added 11.23.11)

editor's note: We hear, "No man is an island," ad nauseum. This one begs to differ; poetically, truthfully so. Bridges! Poets, all; conjure bridges! - mh

Music makes the people

I hate when people
go on and on
on Facebook
used to be Myspace
about how they love music
as if they’re unique
in their love for music
and the rest of us
don’t love music
Who doesn’t love music?
everyone I know listens to music
The only people
who I can think of
who might hate music
would be deaf people
out of spite

- Scott Jardany Lewis

(added 11.22.11)

editor's note: And then there's the other sensory-deprived folks who won't see the art-work, taste the haute cuisine, touch the sculpture nor feel the disappointment of all those critics who's aesthetic elitism will never appeal to them. - mh

COMING HOME

The cat has spit up its fur ball
and gone to the fair,
where the wheel is turning
and the Kewpie dolls stare.
Magnolias are in bloom.
But the sky is blackening,
blades of the windmill racing
toward the rain, and the owl’s
ruffled in its tawny coat.
It has arrived. It’s that time,
when the cows come home.

- William Page

(1 poem added 11.21.11)

editor's note: That dark Autumn sky is looming; gotta hurry while the barn door swings. Come on, Bossie! - mh

Journey of the Spirit

Having arrived
journey done
drifting on feathers
burnt through
a sputtering flame
licking its own wounds
after so many miles
millennia of appetite
and sky—
who would have thought
the earth would be so
cold?

- Neil Ellman

(1 poem added 11.20.11)

editor's note: A shivering soar and glide to roost, but not rest, on an empty stomach. Cold, indeed! - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Believin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 11.19.11

2011-11-19T11:12:00.006-06:00

“Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.” Miguel de Cervantes

ice and mesh (above) by featured photographer, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, one of over 20 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 yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum...whipped through seven like a run-on, randomly worded sonnet. Infatuation and familiarity focused love; love left a naked stand and took the bread; a slashed seven-to-ten split took a turn to tumble next to godliness (immaculately conceived); finally to culminate with an elevated view, looking down from a stake. Head between my knees, deep breaths to stop this spinning. - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Fake Spasm

Ordain a cell be-nerved,
Keep a smooth countenance,

Crack open my setting tongue
Blistered at its tip;
Sizzling stirrups - past mare ride
Sally...,

And with showers of red rays,
Good hope crashes.
Rising eastward to whittle away soil
From shores of technocrats

Stroke and gasp,
Masculine make.

Send off to begin
Bright dawn, cross-eyed restraint.

Unapologetically mount my stake.

- Sander Blome

(1 poem added 11.19.11)

editor's note: A life-defining moment, a grand opus; or, another day in the workaday world; either way, "stroke and grasp." Make them believe it! - mh

Mantra

My cleaning mantra is
“immaculate”
whispered in an endless chant
and given to me
by the tough women
who raised me
as a child of 5
and again as a
stuttering man-child of 24

I drank the bar
and went swimming
for a number of years
and they stowed me away
beneath the trees of
a rehab rest home
high on a hill,
away from all of the liquors
I had many morning chores
and I took them
very seriously,
mumbling “immaculate”
over and over again
I was often given kudos
finger snaps at morning
group for making
the men’s toilets sparkle

I was soon elected
President of the
Inpatient Rehab Council
in the fastest sanitarium
social ladder ascendancy
ever reported at that
particular facility,
and I would pretend I was in
high school,
with my pen and pad,
dressed in a
regal lettermen jacket
a temporary superstar
in my bottle cap crown

- Kevin Ridgeway

(added 11.18.11)

editor's note: It's the American Dream as "immaculate" conception - baptized in the brew, crucified by cleanliness, resurrected in white jacket and clipboard. Hallelujah! - mh

Six afraid of seven

Pendulum dagger
dangling from a chain
strike shallow and several
four
five
six chimes
the clock no cross
or symbol
to ward
away
some evil or
thusly swung
some
sudden notion
this
unclasped and deadly
means offense
in cold and bloodless
silence
left
without a death
or hint of naught
else but this
poetic desperate
misery
to crawl and curl
within
and then
only the moon
in the gutter ticks
the seven
eight
the nine

- Jesse Doughty

(2 poems added 11.17.11)

editor's note: Beware, solitary dawdlers! When the count is "one, two . .", better skedaddle before "three." If you hear, "four" - the moon counts the end. (See another one from Jesse on his page - a bit of a Pandora's Box, that one.) - mh

Starry Night

Musing;
veils of the mind open.
Is it peridy
or an elegant madness?

Hand full of sand
tossed by a peevish boy.
The cockatoo sings
of earthly delights.

Perishing for want of bread.

- Mike Berger

(1 poem added 11.16.11)

editor's note: I choose madness. Not even a cockatoo's song can turn sand into bread. Woe, the peevish boy! - mh

Love Letters

That white sheet with green floral print
We spent the cool summer nights on
Still carries the stains of our communion.

The autumn leaves have fallen
I stand perched upon them--
Yellow leaves--
Under the semi naked tree
With your letters.

The slogans in the streets do not affect me
Nor do the cries of the starved
I’m nobody

Mannequins in the shop stare at me
With their dead eyes.
Mocking me, they strip me naked.
I try to hide my ugliness;
I’m ashamed.

These letters are the fictional half of my life
The other half is the reality--
Hideous as the shrunken penis after orgasm.

The memories of the past haunt me.
Of the times we were together
Rebellious, non-believers,
We believed in words
How ignorant we were!

My mind can’t stop thinking
Just like a clock that keeps ticking
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-

As you lay naked in my bed
The first rays of morning light
Fell upon your breast
As it rose and fell
With every breath you took.

Now with you gone I read those letters
Again and again trying to figure out
What went wrong

The world we fought against so hard
Has engulfed you in it
And now you’ve become a part of it
You are just chasing your dreams you say
While I stand naked in the sun robbed of mine.

- Prashant Das

(added 11.15.11)

editor's note: Not even a prenuptial agreement can safeguard the investment of one's soul. What went wrong? Why ask, "Why?" - just clean those stains, make your bed for a clean sleep. - mh

Knowing

Letting that emotion win, Again & Again
Now & Then, we still take it in the chin,
Defending until the End…

This, too, we will mend
All I have is Love to send
I will never, ever pretend…

Knowing this knows that showing this grows
The Heart that stands tall against Love’s foes

- Michael R. King

(1 poem added 11.14.11)

editor's note: Thanks for this "how to", Michael! We could all stand to grow our hearts a little. - mh

Behold My Love

Behold my love the astounding entertainer who is exceptional from the crown of his head to the very fair amazing feet he dances upon. His hair is like soft black wavy strands of yarn. His eyes are deep and mystifying like the night sky with twinkles of starlight. His lips are like beds of cotton rolls that open passage to his charming melodious voice. His teeth are like white gated pearls that glisten each time he smiles. His cheeks are like soft cups of chocolate with a hint of caramel dashed as a dimple. His presence pleasant and captivating like the nature of his voice. He sings with refinement and significance that makes him a joy to behold. Behold my love the astounding entertainer.

- Tameka Sharrette

(added 11.13.11)

editor's note: This is nothing but obssessive fan-fawning over a media-magnified celebrity, unattainable and therefore infallible; perfect in every way. Right? Oh, but we common folk long to be loved like this; so we share the same obssession, don't we? Yes, perfect! - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Seein' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 11.12.11

2011-11-13T01:43:00.005-06:00

“How could you live and have no story to tell?.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

murder in the air (above) by featured photographer, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, one of over 20 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 yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we slid into seasonal bureaucratic bird feeding, operantly conditioned to pick and peck; we restated our alphabetic out-loud announcement that all should behave circumspectly; we viewed the vibrant womb parade from the sideline, looked but didn't touch; we indulged in a self-mugging, robbed our Peter to pay our Paul, when we always thought those guys worked for free; we held our breath in anticipatory observation of a wild careening race from wicked intent to witness protection; we went home to be the foreigner, stood the stares and stinging stabs from those who stayed; then we went abroad where everything was foreign, eschewed the sweet, longed for the love and richness of home. Click your heals together three times... - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Waiting Room

The room reflects the ferocious fluorescent tubes
Attacking the sweating palms, smiles stitched with agitating threads,
On the metallic lotus materialistic monks attain Nirvana
Twang! A feminine voice announces 698
I hand over the dreadful passport and the papers
Bearing the gruesome doubtful facade,
I smell of coffee, umbilical urine, gloomy faces masquerading
At Soho Square, I draw out two tangible breaths
One is sucked by a frog, another by a snake,
I kill the glaring eyes with the arrogant head,
And the snake with the majestic fist,
Near the caustic exit I pass the torch of madness
To another applicant,
Tremor—Himalayas laugh putting off their crowns.

London is crisp, jelly-like, melting in the childish mouth,
Twart! The children join in melodious laughter
While adults grin and hesitate to smirk,
An Indian girl looks at me and smiles: I don’t!
Isn’t she mad enough to do that?
London is full of meanings,
Behind a smile there’s a reason,
Behind a stare there’s a reason,
From the place I come we smile for no reasons,
And stare at strangers for no reasons,
We’re free like Yeti and Sherpas in the foothills of Mt. Everest,
Late in life we will peel our lives like boiled potatoes
And grow memories in the ageing soil of love and richness of life!

London is crisp, jelly-like, sweetening not refreshing!

- Arun Budhathoki

(2 poems added 11.12.11)

editor's note: No familiar Nirvana in a metallic lotus; no refreshment in our sickly sweet Western miasma. But, in the company of sherpas, we are the aliens. (Another good one from Arun on his page; the discovery of true love, "Shhhhh!") - mh

Once, When I Went Back to My Hometown

I knew the sceneries did not exist only to welcome a
daydreamer like me. I knew what they looked like once
when I traveled in this spooky place. Way back, the
roads greeted me as if I was back from a long journey.
I thought I didn't see the buildings before and some
new road construction, perhaps it transformed into

stronger, prouder but smaller build after I left this wee
town two scores ago. Probably, I became used to the
cold the west gave me, or it could be another heat which
has been missed for a long time, the sunlight, jeepneys or
some native tongue. My language still did not change,
though I could speak someone else's . I thought I would

be an expected visitor that day - ushered, catered, loved.
Instead, I saw crude facial emotions, some new family
members who called me aunt or an unusual bypasser. I
knew they smiled out of respect, but they were so cold that I
shared stories they can't relate to, or shared images which

they defined nonexistent in this other part of the globe, that
I lived in my own generation, or they were stuck in an olden
time. I thought it would be another two scores to put things
back - so I'd realize snow never existed here in the first place.

- Sarah Gamutan

(1 poem added 11.11.11)

editor's note: Sometimes going back doesn't work for those who moved forward; it doesn't have to snow to be cold. (Let's welcome Sarah to our congress of Contributing Poets - check out her new poetry page.) - mh

Moving a Divorcee and Her Kids across State Lines

The time was five-thirty,
I woke with a start;
Something was following
My mama’s sure cart.
Shifting from “park” to “drive,”
She toggled to speed,
Pumped hard on the gas,
Mom gave little heed.

Behind us a mammoth,
A terror in measure,
With hinged, metal wings,
Which held fast to our treasure
The bulk of that weirdness,
Its preponderance,
Approached our back bumper,
Threatened to compress.

Mom dove and she darted,
She jumped lanes at great pace,
Yet that overgrown beasty
Well matched our pure haste.
With lights like grand eyeballs,
A windshield as mouth,
It adamantly tailgated
Three states to the south.

Then, deep into the night
In a neighborhood new
With that monster behind us,
We kids did construe
A federal license
A driver or more,
Our cash, our possessions,
The complete “country store.”

They’d been able to link
Our past life to the present,
Had managed to help
Make our changeover pleasant.
With wide eyes we watched
The wine being poured
As cartons and boxes
Transversed our front porch.

- KJ Hannah Greenberg

(1 poem added 11.10.11)

editor's note: It's a crime show, an action movie, a soap opera, a documentary - better'n TV or a Gothic novel. I was worried, too, up 'til the wine flowed. All is well when the wine flows. - mh

Thieves In High Places

The hand in your right pocket
and the hand in your left
are both responsible
for stealing your future
and robbing you of your past.

These outlaws seldom ride together.
Both have bounties on their heads.
When things get hot they disappear
into sand and sagebrush.

It's been said one's in Mexico;
the other hiding out in Greece.
If they ever get brought to justice,
notify me, please.

I'd like to see the trial.
I'd like to hear the pleas.
I'd like to hear the judgment
and the sentence for these creeps.

Then I'll slip back to my shack
where a better house once stood,
and I'll eat a can of cat food
and drink to the gone neighborhood.

- Joseph Farley

(added 11.09.11)

editor's note: Anyday, in any future, the thieving country could be yours. Let's drink to the gone neighborhood while we can. - mh

Blue Portland

junkies & thieves—jazz & sirens—
everyone is beautiful in monochrome
we gave our flesh for bits of food
& burned like cherries under whoreflesh skies

how long do you stop & stare
at all the pretty shells
& the poison on their spines?

we drank all night & cut our hair
wandered the streets looking for roses
or good drugs, or warm flesh—
all we found was cardboard & broken glass

at sunrise the carnival will end
& we will turn to plastic again
we are all fragmented children
grasping for hands in the womb parade

- Ray Barklow

(added 11.08.11)

editor's note: Yes, only glass and cardboard; lest one in the parade is moved to offer them a hand. - mh

Grammar School Proverb

Always Be Content,
Don’t Ever Feel GREAT,
Have In Justice Kindness,
Love Mostly Nobody.
Obey Prejudices Quietly;
Rest, Since Those
Undulating Vices Will
X Your Z

- Kelly Thompson

(added 11.07.11)

editor's note: The mad ones will opt for those undulating vices everytime. Yes, twinkle your star with, "X Your Zs!" - mh

The Aberdeen Bird Feeder

Everyone from the DMV gathers during the fall
to see the Aberdeen Bird Feeder work his way through the parking lot.

People are beset in the fall with definite ideas:
like Colombina
who hides chicken feet
between stacks of paper around her desk

and Tom the cashier
who refuses to give out one dollar bills.

He looked at me once
and noticed my glasses had changed.

Then his face fogged over
and his eyes dribbled out the window.

An abandoned cherry picker sat
face to face with my automobile
feeding water to birds with its hands.

- Patrick Sugrue

(added 11.06.11)

editor's note: The cashier gave me four dollars change in quarters and I still got bird shit on my car. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Story Tellin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 11.05.11

2011-11-05T06:04:00.003-05:00

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” Mark Twain

old collection (above) by featured photographer, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, one of over 20 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 yo's right over here and a-way you'll GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we bobbled seven bounces from beast to beast. There was a plague to parlay, the puissance of the Pack; a jangled, head mangled morning-after japed jackpot; a virtual visit to childhood vagrance; a wrangled revelation of self-emergence into the clear; smack into a dawdling disappointment in flawed deity; only to be riddled with rancour and recriminations, the toppled icon, now erect; finally transformed into Goddess, immolator of monsters, mentor of laughing smiling madness. Who's in charge here? - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Monsters

I will fight wars beside you
Dig in and perfect myself
So I can stand strong with you
As you slay your haunting hunters
I will wait for you to be brave
I’ll set the example for you
Show you how to conquer your monsters
All those past bodies to which you are clinging
Ghosts of guilt, do not matter; they are illusions-
I am strong enough for both of us
Have faith in my will
My pure heart
I have seen the broken book of stones
See a goddess in me
Believe in my power
Tomorrow I will make your sun rise
With out fear or judgment
I give myself freely to your heart, dreams, and desires.
I will believe and hold you to becoming real
Whenever you go, look to me as true as North
I will manifest love from the creator for you
I will be your little sun goddess
When you are a dark star crying
Into the nothingness of collapse
When all that remains
Is the crave of empty skin
Night I sing to your moon
Ache to your howl
Even if you don’t want to be saved
Even if you are not ready
I will be silent for your weeping
A warrior lion's heart
Worth beating for
Worth the beatings
We receive.

- Desmene M. Statum

(1 poem added 11.05.11)

editor's note: When your goddess offers her strength, it's time to line up your monsters like shooting-gallery ducks and let fly with her dead-eye mojo. Yup, set'em up, knock'em down... epic. - mh

It’s Because Jesus Is Angry With Me

my car is always breaking down
during the holidays.
"this is because Jesus is angry with you" she said.
"you are probably right" I said.
as others walk around self-assured
in their good standing with God
I worry about my soul on a daily basis.
I really do wonder if my car breaking down
during the holidays is a message from God
on the state of my soul: broken down,
out of commission, in one piece, but unable
to transport me from one place to another.
I really wonder if my car breaking down
during the holidays is a wake up call from God
to get fixed, to get a tune up, to stop neglecting
my responsibility as a child of God.
hmm, is God that practical to do such a thing?
or am I just paranoid and self-absorbed?

- Mike Meraz

(1 poem added 11.04.11)

editor's note: I can manage the car through my local mechanic. But, mechanics for the soul; that's another issue - where to find a good shop for repairs? - mh

As You Were

My respect for you
Once was so high
That I put you high above in the sky
Where you did belong
Now, after you act like there is no us
I can hardly speak your name loudly
'Cause what you left is a shame
My respect is lying on the ground
So low
I could crush it
But won't do that
For you did grand things
While you were free of evil
Long time ago when all you knew was good
Long time ago when both of us
Could see
Far beyond and high above...

- Biljana Dodos

(added 11.03.11)

editor's note: Dictate this note through your psychic secretary, a memo to your higher god; "Bring back the grand things please!" - mh

My Therapist’s a Lady

It’s all so simple now,
yet it took 30 years
to begin to understand.
It’s as though someone
stole the primer I had
and gave me another
in my own language.
It’s because you are
who you are
that I’ve begun
to become who I am.
That sounds too dramatic.
All you did, really, was scream
when you opened the bathroom door,
saw me wrapped in a towel,
standing at attention on a mat,
waiting in my thirtieth year
for the steam to clear
from the cabinet mirror,
waiting for someone
to shout, “At ease.”

- Donal Mahoney

(1 poem added 11.02.11)

editor's note: What shouts may come as the steam clears? What image seen in that foggy mirror? Takes therapy to figure that shit out! (Let's welcome Donal to our crazy congress of Contributing Poets - see more of his work on his new poetry page.) - mh

Runaway

I always thought that I appeared by some
strange accident, like those little wild flowers
that pop up unexpectedly sometimes, during harsh
weather, found along motorway roadsides, and with
a propensity to curl over or to fold in on
themselves as a form of self-protection, thriving
in the oozing mud, and commonly overlooked –
not rolling from the womb like supposed; held up
and twisted spectacularly through the air.

Surfacing in the backyard one day –
an eight year old child, grumpy, flush, fully kitted
out in winter coat, winter boots, winter mittens,
little red suitcase in hand. And in that case enough
peanut-butter sandwiches to last a child a
week, a torch, a notebook, half a pencil.

And questioning, questioning (so many bloody
questions, too many, swirling around in my infant
brain). “Are you my real parents?” and “If I
promise to stay will you buy me a rabbit or a
kitten?”

Tears and everything tumbling down my cheeks.

- A. Swimmer

(1 poem added 11.01.11)

editor's note: That's all it takes; a rabbit or a kitten? Tears and everything! - mh

The reason that drunks don’t recycle

Humiliation, morning seven am embarrassment.
The clanking of cans
chirping clank, too many bottles compete for space.
Hang dog slide down the fire escape. gotta wait. for the right moment
No neighbors in the hall
smiling maintenance guy. judgment eyes
party in a one room apartment, 105 no ones invited!
Clink clang click…nothing good ever comes in or goes out in a black bag.
Porn and booze and bodies.
Space out the symphony with folded pizza boxes.
Sunday morning functioning, the church bells of shame
But Wednesday, that’s another thing entirely.
Rock paper scissors, who gets the job? Three days a week of pile up and stock up
Gotta go.
Gotta go down all five flights no matter how careful the tip toe
The side step
Still the shame-siren wails in the parking lot
Neighbor’s pit bull head cock. No chicken bones, or other forbidden goodies.
No food for days, just bang-smash the bottles and cans…I can identify the brand
the sound of opening, parlor trick in a parlor-less walk up…but still.
the old woman who swims the dumpster for these lost fortunes
one more guilty verdict for her jackpot.
Think about global warming, the trash island.
Guilty gap mouthed purple plastic is giving me the eye again,
While I feed it’s too-full neighbor up with all that broken music.

- Jenny Catlin

(added 10.31.11)

editor's note: For that perpetual morning after, be the dumpster! - mh

ZIDANE'S DREAM, Part Two

paintings of decadent food to music that would melt

people often disappeared
experimented on to see the results
many lead their normal lives
unable to stop the inevitable

an hour before the exhibition was going to begin
the “scare” started

a piece of news popped on the radio
he wore a surgeon's mask
and had a pump in his hand
he heard a man yell
people began to run
but it was too late…

he pushed out the back door
and collapsed on the ground

he woke in a hospital bed
blurred in his eyes
he tried to move his arms

wings

a state of shock
survived the chemical spray
“Dark Children”
half bat

the tubes pulling out
a voice from behind the curtains
calm

a nurse had walked in
bursting out in tears again
more beast than human
many times in the mirror

a violinist who one day wanted to see the world
but would never play again

wouldn’t eat
wanted to die…

telling him to seek out a “free city”
called Midian and The Pack
fate uncertain…

- Michael Ian Sattler

(added 10.30.11)

editor's note: Can't play the violin? That's tragic. But, now you can fly? Beat wings, find your safe city. (Remember Part One? Check our archives, September 11) - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Rememberin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 10.29.11

2011-10-29T07:56:00.005-05:00

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.” Stephen King

under the weather (above) by featured artist, Eleanor Leonne Bennett.

Our initial reaction upon first seeing Eleanor's photographs was "Wow!" Then we were Wow!ed again when we read her bio. At the ripe age of 15, this young artist has already been published and featured around the world. It's no surprise to us, either - her keen ability to capture life's subtle, eerie truths is definitely worth all the applause. It sure makes you wonder where she'll be in 10 years, huh? Go get yourself a first look and you can say YOU discovered this talented, young photographer way back when... - mio

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we considered an irrelevant question, the answer rife with negative implications; we threw out the bucket and just said "Fuck it!"; we lost our rejuvenated horizontal expectancy, grown cold with age; we defied another question, the stirring of life's stew until thickened; we tripped over time's eternal apple, unheard, unseen, unreal; we revisited the state of our soul, this time spent with a pin-prick puncture, expelled with a whoosh and a swirl; lastly, we perfected our defiance to invade the Day of the Dead as a beast unbroken. Trick or treat! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

A BEAST UNBROKEN

when I become death
the night will darken
and the beaten path does unfurl

I must break the circle

when I become death
the blood of thy mother
where does the river go?

I must wound this healer

when I become death
a hundred years of solitude
through the eye of a mollusk

I must look into this mirror

when I become death
scatter my ashes over
the charred ruins of the great empire

I must dig through this flesh

When I become death
my memories obscure
leaving a vague face of joy

I must seek a newer poison

When I become death
everything will burn
and I will start again

I must cleanse the void

When I become death
I will stand before the behometh
a beast unbroken

- Nicholas Martin

(1 poem added 10.29.11)

editor's note: As we approach this Day of the Dead, we reflect upon another Day, when we become... - mh

My Soul, She Feels!

Today I feel my soul
Coursing through my veins as though...

She is desirous to explore the universe,
As I, earthbound, have always been to explore right here.

I am sure if I feel but one prick today at all
She will rush out in a whoosh...
Then a swirl. And gone into oblivion,
Never again to pulse nor ache.

And only time can divulge...
The limit of flesh constraint.

- Mike R Owens

(added 10.28.11)

editor's note: In with a bang, out with a fizzle; a pin-pricked balloon darting into oblivion. Who cares? Let's test those limits! - mh

TIME

Time is a piper
but I cannot hear it.

Time is a river
but I cannot feel it.

Time is Eden’s apple
but I cannot taste it.

Time is a glacier
but I cannot see it.

Time is an inferno
but I cannot smell it.

Time is senseless
but I can always sense it.

Time is the edge
of eternity.

- Robert E. Petras

(added 10.27.11)

editor's note: Yes, dance along the precipice and thumb your nose; can't see it, etc., so, what's the problem? Uh, don't trip on that apple. - mh

Apraxia

Have you ever seen an
elephant gas mask?
Dominatrix mask for the moon
or a scarecrow made out
of three mailboxes?

Paper cuts into readymade
bleeding hearts.
Have you ever scored a sore,
exposing the pink continent beneath?

Sylvia said, "Love set you going like a fat gold watch"
but I am made of copper -
the coiled mass from a
mothers unspun thread.

These little houses
have no homes
to hold them - only a plot,
that must steep
in order to thicken.

- Kayla Smith

(1 poem added 10.26.11)

editor's note: Just because you asked, doesn't mean I will. Masks, scarecrows, what else? I refuse to see a thing until the plot thickens. - mh

Waiting the Cool

I

I remember I was sturdy enough,
The multifarious chores were effortless for me,
I used to drive and drag the cart,
Carrying weighty loads was nothing for me,
During the day in the scorching sun,
I wasn’t influenced from sweating and fatigue,
My frame was as hard as iron,
My heart was extended enough,
I used to sleep around the streets,
My vision was too clear,
I used to see my world,
Where I was the hero around,
Life was so free,
I used to roam any nook of my world,
There was no chain of command upon me,
I used to be arrogant on me,
There was no worry in my psyche,
My horizontal expectancy was on my soul,
That used to rejuvenate me.

II

I know my heart is shrinking now,
It pumps differently,
My vision is leaving me,
It pains me and I feel dry into it,
My frame is putrefying and rotting,
I am stooped now and becoming shorter,
My muscles are blemishing and fading,
I see the wrinkles are teasing me,
My entire status is the centre of all diseases,
I’m waiting the day,
My life is as like the setting sun,
I shelter with homogeneity to me,
My life is as the dew against dawn,
I have countless uneasiness,
I feel the frost in my heart,
Now I wait the day-the end!

- Chiranjibi Niroula

(1 poem added 10.25.11)

editor's note: Doesn't have to be "the end" - keep that "horizontal expectancy" on your soul. Be cool! - mh

fuck it list

bucket lists are bullshit
what a waste of time
living for dreams
you didn't believe in
chasing crippled notions and
following losers to the gray zone
of equality

in the waning moments
awareness sets in and now
you're ready?
for what,

a certain sunset
to share with yourself

a thirty minute meal
overpriced and consumed, reduced
to a golden crap

puking in some unpronounceable ocean
because you saw a movie and.....

how about a kick in your ass
for not
doing more when you were...alive

when the grind was eating your soul
so the kids could be
happy or
the endless evenings spent smiling
at the table set just so, like a Williams-Sonoma ad
the one your ex-wife swore the Wilson's did not have,
yet

just because Mr. Handcock drove a Jag
you bought the Bentley
showing neighbors how important
you think…you are

the dust on your heels confirms,
dreamers die slower deaths
I say, let's speed up the process
.
.
.
I'm working on my list
my, fuck it list

going nowhere and melting
into myself, at peace with me
even as the red ants of fate dine on my bones,
constant comfort is near

fuck it allows me to breathe
to rejoice in loss
as heroic waves wash my tears away

fuck it to the controlled chaos
the purposeful ignorance that shelters so many

their dark caverns, where books rust
and imagery comes in bills and reruns

fuck it serves me freedom
to soar above the hatred of evening newscasts
the murderous rage so far from my door

one click turns me off, the next
takes me mountaintop high

I vote Fuck It for President
Fuck It for the New World Leader

my new favorite team,
The Fighting Fuck It's
never a concern for victory
as all are winners

so kick your bucket list
to the curb
and step up to say

“FUCK IT”

you'll be glad you did

- Rob Dyer

(1 poem added 10.24.11)

editor's note: Hell, Yeah! Sign me up! - mh

on the mattress of fate

the vacuum cleaner sucks the day
from a swathe of grey carpet tiles,
and in the narrow slice of daylight
between dark stores of dubious goods,
the damp and spotty bedding
of some body's fate
stands propped
beside the sign
that reads:
DO NOT LEAVE YOUR RUBBISH HERE,
PUT IT ON THE STREET

and I think of a house
eight hundred miles
and fifteen years from here,
where one night I was visited
by the little bittersweet phantom
who had helped me make that first death-crack
in the shiny, woody hardness
of the conker
of my heart;

silent,
we rolled on a flat mattress,

and
I will never know
why her insinuating hand
ghosted, unbidden,
to the hardness
of the hotness
of my prick,

and
I will never know
why her slim fingers'
quiet enquiry
was ended, suddenly,
in a noisy rage of slurs,
and in the dramatic crashing
of the garden gate.

when I had my one chance to ask about it,
a lifetime later
in a hotel bar
and in the here-and-now...
well, I think I saw
that no good could come
from finding out.

- this is my england

(added 10.23.11)

editor's note: Sometimes pillow talk is abruptly replaced by cold alone mattress moan. Why ask, "Why?" - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Busily Livin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

P.S. Wanna Celebrate 7 Years of Open Mic Madness?!

"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since." Salvador Dali

Join Mad Swirl on 11.02.11, starting at 8:00-ish, when we celebrate 7 years of open mic madness! Yep folks, we be 7! And what a way to celebrate... doing the open mic voodoo that what we do do! Join host Johnny O and co-host MH Clay, along with the musically magical trio Swirve and the usual unusual mad suspects as we do our darndest to both blow and open your minds. We will be callin' all you mystically mad poets, musicians, dancers, actors, singers, performers & any other miscellaneous mad ones in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to come & strut your mad stuff!

Come one, come all! Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to CELEBRATE! Come to be a part of the madness!

Where's this madness take place? Absinthe Lounge is at 1409 South Lamar Street, Dallas, TX 75215 (located in the SouthSide on Lamar building)

And please, by all means, FEEL FREE TO SPREAD THE WORD!

fo'mo'info' visit www.MadSwirl.com

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 10.22.11

2011-10-22T11:45:00.004-05:00

"Think for yourself and question authority." ~ Timothy Leary

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we caught a glimpse of a new planet; we spelunked the empty places, peace in nothingness; we plowed some rows on the psychic farm; we dodged the dark monsters that did in Daddy, gone Daddy; we mulled some mudpie mayhem, toppings optional; we delved into the dust of past disasters; we shrugged it off and stood our ground, mouthed the mindful manifesto. My, my, my! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Individualist Manifesto

I have set myself apart from the world
I choose to be one of the chosen people
I am not a part of consumer America
I am not a number in the corporate cube
I am more than the money I don’t have
I do not heed the subliminal signals in the light box
I live a real life of my own
I leave the house during prime time
I work to keep my mind functioning
I remember the spiritual grandfathers
I read the words of the artist warriors
I do not let my mind solely be filled
with the reflections of digital images
I do not let the media tell me who is right and wrong
I ignore politics because nobody’s right
I use my own mind
I am one who lives for today and lives on forever
I don’t hide myself from the world
I love the way I look even if Hollywood doesn’t agree
I look through microscopes and telescopes
I do not allow the earth to rotate without me
I get actively involved in my life
I get actively involved in others’ lives
I am not content to sit idly by while
the best minds of my generation are destroyed
by the apathy of the general population
I am different than you
Who sits in the supercenter vacuum
Who listens to clichés coughed up by anorexic pantywaists
Who vacates to the ends of the earth
to get away from your worthless existence
Who believes that voting for America’s Next Vapid Star is time well spent
I believe that there is more to life
I believe in things that I can touch, smell, hear, see and taste
I am in tune with the world around me
I am filled with the spirit of light and truth
I may not worship your god
I know that all gods are equally valid
I worship the wind at sixty five miles per hour
I pray to the ink on pages bound imperfectly
I kneel before jugs of red wine
I give offerings to tightly bound threads sealed with acrylic color
I place value on skin contact
I spread love like dust
I can’t keep it all inside
I catch on fire and rise from the flame in the form of vocal vibrations
I do not do what is proper or normal
I choose not to blend in with the rest of the world
I want to be seen and heard
I want to mean something to myself
I am in the world but not of the world
I do not swim with the current
I believe in what I believe in
I believe in answers from star formations
I believe in truth inside a bottle of whiskey
I am not what is popular or conventional, and
I don’t give a fuck what you think, because
I don’t live to please you

- Lilly Penhall

(1 poem added 10.22.11)

editor's note: No corporate memo will circulate this manifesto for all us cube-clones to acknowledge and forward. No social net will publish this to the cyber-ether for us "friends" to "like" and "comment." No one will pay attention to whether we sign on, sign up or sign off. No one will care... except you? - mh

Then...

How can I convey to you, who were so young
too busy with the multiple chores of childhood
an understanding of the momentous events of then.

Then the people of the city moved like sluggish insects: that is,
Slowly awaking with each passing moment to the tasks of their day
with coffee cups and a stretch of aching muscles
and a moment's silence before the mirror.
Already the cars flowed from the side roads to block the main arteries
Choking up the streets then dispersing one by one until thinned they flowed again.
A million words raced across the wires like bees
laced with information, deals, prices, deaths.
Reluctant pupils dreamed on school buses,
waiters smoked on diner stoops before their shift.
As the city trotted into the morning like a dog after dinner,
slow and resentful of its own bodyweight.

The martyrs came down from the cathedrals buttresses
like firemen sliding on silver poles
Archangels soared past airplanes wearing old testament fire in their hair and clothes
converting the witnesses dumbstruck below with the eloquence of their flight
the purity of each fall and full stop ending.

The finale was breathtaking,
a giant puff of smoke enveloped the city's blocks
Stone became dust, steel girders writhed like snakes
or shattered like crystal into jagged knives
that ripped the passing breezes. Showers of shattered glass carpeted the streets
Clouds of shredded paper rode the firestorm's gale down through the avenues.

For a year they gathered and swept, painstakingly not a comma or dust particle missed
These mountains into huge vats they had tethered floating like airships above the river
Filled them until they groaned with the strain.
A hundred, a thousand, I cant remember how many.
Filled until, so weighed down they were slapped by the dirty river water at each high tide.
Filled them for a year until nothing remained
Nothing but a huge white space, a void, a blank page.

When the huge vats were towed out to sea
a brass band played on the pier until it became dark.
This is the dust of our daily bread, we’ve eaten it now for a decade without respite.
Crunched mouthfuls of glass each morning; choked on dust;
broke our teeth on the shattered rusting girders.
Soon the vats will be empty, thousands have expired in the cause of digestion.
We’ve swallowed the angels with their flaming hair and the martyrs with their fiery eyes.
We’ve choked down great volumes of scrap until our blood flowed from every orifice.
We brought in the women the children the deaf, blind and dumb and all have succumbed
in consuming the mountain of rubble until nothing remained.

Then...

- Danny McFadden

(added 10.21.11)

editor's note: Even though the anniversary of this disaster has passed another year, this poem is timeless. Scars last a lifetime... - mh

Mud Bucket

It's the weirdest thing I guess I do
and telling you, means we are special friends
I am a full grown man that makes mud pies
no, not with my grandkids or their friends
no, not to lure kids to a nightmare
I simply am a full grown man that likes to make mud pies in his backyard
like a man that likes to dress in his wife's clothes while she is at work
I go into the backyard, get some dirt in this old mud bucket
I get the hose and I make mud pies
I put stuff to represent toppings on them
I have it down to an art form

- Louis Marvin

(added 10.20.11)

editor's note: Hmmmm, we wonder, what backyard flotsam would suffice for toppings; fudge chunk, cherry swirl or pistachio nut? - mh

Shadows

We can’t forget granddad, granddaddy
Daddy O’. He, too, like Dad, like boyfriend
allowed the deep dark slithering monsters
to take him away far gone from his kid
kid kiddos, his wife. Farming accident
they say. Farming accident they claim.
Truth. Let’s speak the facts, leave the
verisimilitude at the barn and enter,
go deep into the scene. There he is. Gone.
Gone daddy gone. Look at it. Face him. See.
Bullet. See the bullet. It’s not in his foot.
Not in his leg. Not in the tin roof of the barn.
It’s in his head. His hair, salt and pepper like
Dad’s, his head, has a bullet like Dad’s.
This is how we lose men in my family,
This is how they go. Boyfriend, father, grandfather
All taken by black dark dank evil slinking
stalking monsters. All taken by their hand.
All taken before their time.

- Elizabeth Glass

(added 10.19.11)

editor's note: May we learn to stare down those beasts, not let them devour us. May we remember those who didn't, but not follow them. - mh

In This Path of Life

The rush and crowd in worship,
These chime, chanting, offerings;
To invoke and gather blessings.
All seems to fall,
Fall into their proper place of chaos.
A chase for their own shadow.
For, peace and power dwell within;
In solitude and contemplation.
Whence truth transpires and illuminates,
A Path with no trail of fear.
Where ideas and hopes spring.
If only we seek this clarity.
Break down barriers and fences;
The volcano of hatred embedded,
Be flooded by love and compassion.
Discern anger that destroys; love that builds.
If only we look at the reflection so fair,
In the mirror of life that never fails.
A destiny in our ploughing hands;
Sowing sprouting seeds of a strong will.
Dedicating to victory and rejoicing failure as a giving of no return.
If only we blend in the heart and mind;
A heart of no vices, given a free ride.
A mind tamed upright in control of life.
Walking in this Path of life;
Let every moment kindle a hope,
A new inspiration and a new beginning.

- Laxmi Prasad Bastola

(added 10.18.11)

editor's note: Yes, you tillers of the psychic soil, "You reap what you sow!" - mh

My Favorite Places

It's the empty spaces
my soul craves,
sand-blown desert,
wind-swept glacier,
marshy tundra,
no people
no trees
no cars
no roads
no trails,
and most goddamn definitely
no cell phones,
places
where simplicity
expects nothing,
and the void without
soothes the void within.
Elsewhere,
teeming life
befuddles and confuses
and cares too much
about itself
to notice
other beings
or
that other emptiness,
the one
right here,
right now.

- Paul Hellweg

(added 10.17.11)

editor's note: We are a lonely planet; filling our emptiness with noise and activity to hold back the void. - mh

One Day

I’ll slip into the driving seat,
Steering the world out
Of this long dark tunnel,
Friends following me
Shouting directions
Their voices raking me
Like sullen bullets.
Our first glimpse of the new planet
Will be a skyline fringed with whispering trees,
A crown of hills with emerald lakes,
And beings lining the roads
With offerings of hot tea
Fresh bread and new ideas
For our hunger –
We are starving,
Yes, they know it,
It’s been so long
Since the dawn
Was so generous
To people like us.

- Derrick Gaskin

(1 poem added 10.16.11)

editor's note: I'll crawl into the back seat of that car and let the driver take us to that day. Let's go! - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Questioning EVERYTHING,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 10.15.11

2011-10-15T11:30:00.004-05:00

“If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.” e. e. cummings

oh my! (above) by featured artist, halo jones, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see more fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you will GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we wound a few tales, tied some knots. It started with watching a witch walloping; we walked quietly 'round a wolf's were-whiles; we savored the spirits of the silver screen; we sneaked a peak at the poor, who peeked back; we heaped our plates high with some vanity pie; and then bumped bags with a cowboy's bitch; to lastly make an end with a manged cat's meow. Wow! Knots untied, I'm just plain happy to be here! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Mindful of the Mind, the Meaning of Meows

Under a porch swing hung by rusted chains
a cat lay in decay, lapping itself.
On its head, a little fur, mostly the remains of a face.

From ear to eye, all can see what’s inside.
Mange exposed skull, veins, discolored muscle.
Flies land and try to suck at the musky surface

but the feline moves to lick where she carries
a tumor like a love song, never purring, never playful,
just lucky the eye stays in its socket.

Licking, she found decay not tasty, but a habit
like laying on concrete. Only her owner didn’t ignore her
as she inspected her pet’s rot.
“This cat is falling apart. It must be the heat.”

“Worthless pet. Do you know what we did when it was hot?”
No one does.
“Dead or dying, we picked more cotton.”

Armed with a fly swatter, she smacks the tumor.
The cat left behind blood spots and bad memories.
Minutes later, she asked, “Where is my beautiful cat?”

No one answered. They lick on good memories while they can
while looking deep into their iced tea, pretending
their days aren’t all decay, inside and out.

- Tyler Malone

(2 poems added 10.15.11)

editor's note: Wow! It's a game of "Tumor! Tumor! Who's got the tumor?" Only, I think the cat is not the one infected. - mh

The Man With the Jack-in-the-Box Bag

slid it over the table top, greasy trail and all,
to the edge, next to my over-sized envelop
with his boss' name on it. He reached - I covered the manilla 8x10
before saying, "It's all here? Exactly
what I asked for?"
Cowboy hat tipped down, the words,
"Aren't they always? Don't you ever trust me?"
This time, the drop off location was more lively
than usual amidst the biker gang
bangers throwing packets,
open HOT secret sauce hand grenades
at the fry cooks beyond the counter.
Applause from the patrons
jeered the especially bad tasting Tacos.
"But this is the last one, amiga - no more left
in the desert or the safe," he added before slipping his hand
to my inner thigh, rubbing me down as if we were on a date
at a drive in. Learned in the YWCA Defense Class, I bent his index
finger backwards
until he cried, "Uncle!" and I slipped my package
across the chipped table surface
into his lap.
"Never call me again, Bitch, or I'll set the Doberman's after you,"
he muttered, rubbing his middle digit
before using it on me
as he stumbled out of the joint.
Turned away, staring out the picture window
towards the parking lot where my old man told stories
of the road as if he were Kerouac himself,
I uncrumpled the easy-to-carry paper carry all
scooped the gel from the unmarked jar
that radiated like the Sun on a 100 degree day
in the Barrio, rubbed it across my sunburned face,
and closed my eyes...

- Joseph D. DiLella

(2 poems added 10.14.11)

editor's note: Much ado about sun block. There must be an easier way for a girl to protect herself. (Another one about a popular icon - a real nut-job - on Joseph's page. Check it out!) - mh

Vanity Plates

The pretty boy in cheap blazer
just back from the bathroom,
parts his hair to the left
with Herculean effort
and gets lost in his own reflection.

While the ceiling fan
looks down on the world
and I follow two girls
with hand held mirrors
and little else

out into a parking lot
full of vanity plates
and power steering:

K8 4 EVR
UNCL TOM
#1 MOM
DIVA 22
LOADED
SUPR GRL
BIG DOG
THE MAN...

The sun is self-absorbed.
The summer birds are preening.

Even the freshly paved asphalt
cannot stop admiring
itself.

- Ryan Quinn Flanagan

(2 poem added 10.13.11)

editor's note: You gotta be impressed with yourself, even if no else is. NOPLT4ME. (Another one from Ryan on his page - check it out!) - mh

Gazing Through the Mud Hole

Through a narrow hole
in the mud wall of a hut
I see broken planks of house
of the richest man in the city.

While winter and summer creeps
in to turn the hut into a hell,
the broken window of the mansion
has gathered a crowd
to set it in same design.

The hole indicates the stature of the poor
and the life suitable for them in a
so called third world country.
They are just meant to gaze
at rich wonders here.

- Sonnet Mondal

(added 10.12.11)

editor's note: Hmmm. Adds a different spin to when we toast each other with, "Here's mud in your eye!" - mh

Ghosts in the theater

There is a whisper in the auditorium,

Fair voices of ancient beings
Long ravaged by the decay of time.

And they’re singing.

Singing sad songs of living and being
And being without living,

Strong horrors of the human psyche,
Studded with fear and crippling anxiety.
Dreams without the harbor of hope,
And the foundation of imagination.

Sonnets of faint recitals echoing of the walls
From a forgotten time.

- R.A. Hernandez

(added 10.11.11)

editor's note: All the movies shown in the dark, filling the voices of these ghosts with much more to sing. When the projector shuts off, the stories keep going. Scary! - mh

Night Observatories #15

Ostensible emotion not to show ever and in the smoky nights not to suffer the moist caress of the wolves any more

the heavy leathers of the sick lean in the armchairs of treason and they use their feelings charcoaled by horror as matches

when the shepherds whisper their terrible secrets to the sheep's ears, our hearts spray the greenish lights in the womb of the blasphemies growling the blissful spoken words.

- Walter Ruhlmann

(1 poem added 10.10.11)

editor's note: This wolf-whispered womb of words would breach and bellow blasphemies. Strike your match and lose them. (Welcome Walter to our congress of Contributing Poets - see more of his work on his new page.) - mh

If she were a witch

If she were a witch, I guess you wouldn’t be living.
There was no earthquake in her screams, she was nothing
but wounds all over – red, blue, brown, purple –
bleeding on the junction – a matter of extreme curiosity for kids around
peeping from below your hips, or running after your footsteps.
Perhaps her busted head was a football!
Perhaps your boots, canes and stones were not enough, so
she was yelling at you to drag and thrash her more!

If she were a witch, I guess you wouldn’t be living.
Either she would surely escape flying on her broomstick
or just vanish with a simple click of her fingers right in the beginning
or furiously hurl you into a dark cave where
she would avenge by forcing you to eat human feces
the way you forced her, or, she would hammer your hands and legs
and teach you a lesson by pulling out your teeth
with more force and fury than you used to display your bravado.

If she were a witch, I guess you wouldn’t be living
and your children wouldn’t die of dysentery or of fever. Possession
is what you did to her, not what she did or did not.
She – just a single finger, and you – an entire village,
what a mad swarm of bees stinging a life to almost death!
Neither she spoke scary words nor called a thunder down.
What’s black magic? Why would she only leave the marks of her teeth
on your thighs or arms when she could have the whole of you?

- Haris Adhikari

(added 10.09.11)

editor's note: And since we are living, she can't be, after all. Oh, my! All this blood on our hands. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Makin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 10.08.11

2011-10-08T10:00:00.003-05:00

"The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy" ~ Allen Ginsberg

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we mocked a mole and alienated freedom; we groped for teeth while dodging the bite; we bid on blessings with an open bar but no vacancy; we gambled a poet's heart for a stainless bloodletting, "Out damned spot!"; we witnessed what a whole "will" weighs; we joined a suicide watch, flowers were the funeral; lastly we saw irrational fear try to kill a witch with a far more wicked witchcraft. Wow! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

THE DAY AFTER

How often
I’ve hated myself,
After
Cold gin
Has
Warmed
In my stomach
And dirtied glasses
Lined up
On the counter
Reminded me
Of wasted hours
Spent
Sipping martinis
And dreaming of things
I
Could have done,
Should have done,
And will never do
As long as
Empty bottles
Are replaced with frequency
And gin soaked
Olives
Look better
To me
Than life.

- Sheree La Puma-Watson

(2 poems added 10.08.11)

editor's note: This is a familiar view; this world through an empty glass. Heavy the weight that would keep our view locked on that blurred lens. Turn around; the window is open, the sun is shining. (Another hard confession from Sheree on her page - check it out.) - mh

The Eyes of a Flower

A flower like a suicide leapt
It's plume diffuse spread Grace into a gust
With a heart that's full of secrets kept

out from arboreal care it stepped
Earth, dawn-rain and air into it's bust
A flower like a suicide leapt

With evening rain, on pre-starred breeze was swept
this green stemmed thing, beneath a sky of rust
With a heart that's full of secrets kept

Colours here, like fine words, are inept
We do, not watch, that which we're taught we must
A flower like a suicide leapt.

the tree, in loss, can naught now but accept
What utterly changed, these petals in the dust
A flower like a suicide leapt
With a heart that's full of secrets kept

- Christopher Smith

(added 10.07.11)

editor's note: Thankfully, this poet did watch, did not do what must. Instead, we see this floral sacrifice and ponder saviors. - mh

Are You Willing?

To accept me as I am
with all of my faults and idiosyncrasies
and do not judge or try to change me?

To take the love that I have to give
understand that sometimes it may be too much
and others not as expressive but still there?

To catch me when I fall
reassure me that you are still and always will be
my security and protector?

To let me learn from you and about you
and you from and about me
and combine our knowledge and talents to become
a tremendous force together?

To share the good times and the bad
the ups and downs
enjoying the ride along the way?

To support me in my endeavors,
no matter how crazy or silly they may seem
and offer opinions and solutions, not criticism
if you don’t agree?

To let go of grudges, vengeance and the desire for paybacks
and let judgment be dealt with by a higher power?

To be honest and forthright
not be mean or brutal
but fair and forgiving?

To be there
with me
until the very end?

- Jeanette Fields

(added 10.06.11)

editor's note: Well? Are you? - mh

By This Poet's Own Blood

Alone with the night, I listen to the music on your
play list, the cool white plaster of my bedroom walls
reverberates through the echoes of inspiration, eager
to inscribe themselves there in the simplicity of odd
little lyrics and mesmerizing tempos.

I try to seize upon the greatness of the unassuming,
disappearing then reappearing with artistic modesty
against the perpetual yet immortal energies of their
cries, where beautiful waves of love reside, captured
by humble moments.

If it's a good night, I can see myself in your eyes,
tap into your consciousness, fire up your sensibilities
to the point where you impulsively appear as a neon
glow in the dark sky, the architect of the moon and all
its tempestuous rights.

When words fail I am that someone in your arms that feels
the lifting of your breathing through the blanket aspirations
of blue, you, completely unaware of the opposite forces of
my breath as they seek to find a happy medium within the
tedium of life.

I like the ambiguity of light and sound that ignites the look
of lust; the grasp of a moving hand as it maps and changes
vacant faces with the culmination of all things poetic, resilient
to shifting sands and sterile lands where half-thoughts and
half-truths reign supreme.

I think I have started to fall for you within the hopelessness
of leisure; an instinct for self-declaration, drunk on you, yet
provoked to defense and denial, motivated by the fear of
rejection, by the fear of you somehow being out of my league,
like rain that comes and goes honorably, willingly.

I see the redness in the silent joy; I have a knack for foretelling
the future. The casual reader advises me to go for it, not fully
understanding the complications in my life. I come with a lot of
baggage, with a lot of mingled elements that combine and capture
leaving my heart bleeding quietly unsecured.

So, I will offer you this instead; the words that will never refuse
you, even as they challenge you, the words that sort through the
facade aiming for the truth, the words you will find attractive,
even when my character is flawed, the words that filter all impurities,
cleansing you of any hurt,

the words brought and paid for you by this poet's own blood.

- Teresita Garcia

(added 10.05.11)

editor's note: Poets are compelled to pay the price: blood for time; their blood, our time. Reading is recompense. - mh

See Vacancy

in the cathedral
where
they're
suspicious

see Vacancy
’sa pissing contest
says
the board member
‘scalled Vacancy
and ’snot to be
confused
with a silent auction

‘sin the cathedral
where
they’re
suspicious
of any group
that wouldn’t
want
an open bar

there’ll be an open bar
and
quiet art to
be bought with a quick
pen and
one-upmanship
for the historic
foundation

an open bar’s
pissing
contest
sees Vacancy

- Steven Minchin

(1 poem added 10.04.11)

editor's note: All things are holy, especially the gathering of alms. Don't need to be poor - just get the alms, dammit! (Steven joins our Contributing Poets with this one - see his others on his new page. Welcome, Steven!) - mh

september

i remember
the weeks i couldn’t stop

biting my lip,

in fear of shame,
or something worse:

dreams of baby teeth
and secrets;
waking myself up
in the middle of the night

to flip my pillow,

to see if you
had hidden anything there.

- Andrew Chmielowiec

(1 poem added 10.03.11)

editor's note: Only a bill from the Tooth Fairy, with the standard disclaimer against toothless debtors. - mh

There's an attractive guy

In my Freedom and Alienation tutorial
Who has hairy moles
The hair is so long it curls
If I was as attractive as that guy
I would take more care in my appearance

- Scott Jardany Lewis

(added 10.02.11)

editor's note: Maybe this attractive guy is exercising his freedom to alienate on sight. I shudder to think what might happen in a Negotiating in Conflict tutorial... - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Feelin' the Holinesses,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 10.01.11

2011-10-01T11:40:00.003-05:00

“Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.” William Carlos Williams

fallen angel (above) by featured artist, halo jones, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see more fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you will GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we considered the reality of ownership, what's to whom's; we faced off desire with indifference, made conquest snarl; we toyed with transformation, transformed by our toys; we escaped the eight-legged beast to embraced the half-life of love; we engaged in a mercy killing; we shrugged off the cosmic question with a beer and a snort; lastly, we splashed into the ankle-deep puddle of a muddlesome run-on sentence. Now I gotta dry my socks! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Run On

I’m gonna spill a lot of words
In rapid succession
Articulate angst
That everybody feels
Say out loud the imperative
Not Now!
Not Me!
Not Here!
Not Ever!

Ever goes the swing and sway
The spit-fire words of
What the Fuck?
You wanna do that here?
Now?
Without a net?
Extempore?
Without preparation or education
And research?

Shoot syllabic spider webs
This is connected
To that connected
To you connected
To the unraveled
Unorganized orgasmic obnoxious
Run on sentence

Sentience can’t be proven outside of anxiety
And honest introspection
Spin on spill out
Prophecy forsooth
For who can tell
What happens next?
Elbow to elbow hip to hip
To drop and drip
And scoop up circumstance
To dance
And look askance
At you reflecting me
In your private pupil agony
No worries no waste
No hurry no haste

The peace will come
In time in time
The peace will come
For you and for me
And for some
Running on
Running fast
And stopping never

© 2008

- MH Clay

(3 poems added 10.01.11)

editor's note: Yes now! Yes you! Yes here! Yes... always! Oh, and a big ol' YES to never stopping! We gotta keep on running on 'cos if we stop we just might drop. Hats off to poetry editor extraordinaire MH Clay for spilling a lot of wonderfully mad words upon us all... with a couple more swirling poems to dig upon on his page! - jo

ISINGLASS

Say simple things
And resist the urge to puncture
Or talk around it

There is the giant of a skeleton
Housed in the college of surgeons
He died young
Yet lives forever

There also are the blooms of unfortunate
Elephantitic males
Kids with two heads
And the insides of several sea slugs

The tools are a panorama
What we do and how we do it
It makes one quite dizzy
With the effort
A quick outside
Have a snort
Beer helps
It is what it’s for

It is not all about you
You know

- Anthony Murphy

(2 poems added 09.30.11)

editor's note: "Specialist or specimen?" That is the question here; and "not all about you" was NOT the answer we wanted. A beer and a snort might be the best we get. - mh

Sorrow

I slit my sorrow’s wrist this morning
and watched her die.

She wailed like a bitch in heat

- a fiery sun beating on her back.

Now

I smile

with all

my teeth.

- Nathaniel Kostar

(added 09.29.11)

editor's note: Here is the best case for assisted suicide; legitimized by 32 bone judges, coming out for some sun. Nice! - mh

The Avenger

The charmer stands outside the door, thorn-hearted, shimmering in wolf's skin.
Cupboards bear artificial children
I am the grandfather of wastes
Dump the rotten history on me
The door is hell-mouthed
Bringing in Lucifer’s legions
There’s a sound of hell
There’s a sound that pursues like hell
There’s a sound that kills you like hell

Empty is the room
Empty is the mechanical mind
Black towel hangs on the door, wardrobes stand tall shamelessly,
Black wardrobe exposes its viciousness, bed sleeps succinctly,
The uncouth carpet appears mild,
The furrowed blinds dangle showing the muddy diamonds,

The charmer sits inside the room, rose-hearted, shimmering in sheep’s skin.

Eight-eyed, eight-legged, eight-mouthed
Eight the number of hell
Slashes the petal eight times
Eight o’clock hell spreads cancer-like
I decay, decay, decay
Save me with your radioactive love.

- Arun Budhathoki

(2 poems added 09.28.11)

editor's note: I'm going to hold my plutonium lover tightly while I spray a can of aracnicide to keep that sheep/wolf at bay. Then I'm going to redecorate. (Also, a great bedtime story on Arun's page - check it out.) - mh

Permutations which Transform

Permutations which transform have long included earrings.
Sampled metal, glass, shells, beads, those gimlets of light and sound,
Bring about adverse, even objectionable fervor.

Off road bikes, too, are known for the advent of physical altercations.
Large trinkets, they conjure the sorts of courage indigenous to rabbits,
Hedgehogs, all road kill, as they truncate otherwise grandiose vacations.

Graduate school, also professional opportunities, likewise promise upward lift.
Until the turning of hotel keys into broad doors buckles, makes applicants queasy,
Forces them to redirect enthusiasm for social climbing toward custodial opportunities.

While it’s beneficial to dust off keyboards, to churn out improper amounts of texts,
Honor guard-like jumping at all sighted ogives raises questions;
Even miraculous environments position generations away from basic wisdom.

- KJ Hannah Greenberg

(1 poem added 09.27.11)

editor's note: Questions, indeed! If that iceberg had eyes, would it have moved out of the Titanic's way? Transformed into water, instead of a gash in metal. - mh

Milk for Free

The last time she wore
fur-lined gloves scuttling
grey clouds flew across
the sky as fast as
the muddy waters of
the river flowed beneath.

She stood on the bank
contemplating desire and
indifference and how one
could change to the other
as quickly as clothing
falls to the floor.

Silence wrapped its’ fickle
arms around her.

Conquest curled its’ lip.

- Charlotte Hamrick

(added 09.26.11)

editor's note: That's it! There's no better way to conjure Conquest's jealousy than to decide to "think about it." - mh

Chained

We grasp for things and will not let go,
so we are trapped by the things we hold.
Now ask yourself if this case be true,
who owns what and what owns who?

- Joseph Farley

(added 09.25.11)

editor's note: Well, if possession is nine tenths of the law; then everything, everyone - demons all! Cast them out! - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Damnin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 09.24.11

2011-09-24T12:23:00.003-05:00

“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

simpleman (above) by featured artist, halo jones. We first met halo swirlin' around our open mic madness a couple months ago. Then he made an appearance in the Poetry Forum last month with his poem "COINCIDENCE". Now halo jones is here, hanging 'round in the Mad Gallery as our featured artist. And we're happy he is. One look and we knew there would be no way we could resist his work. halo's canvases creatively entice the inner child to come out and play. We like it when that happens. And we know that you know that you wanna let your inner child come out and play too. - jo

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... our heartstrings were tugged, our headroom was challenged; we were teased with the good tastes of gourmet love; we were succoured with devotion that comes from defeat; we prayed for a playground, moon and breast and waist and chest; we admired the perfection of non-complicated conversation/copulation; we dressed the dream dilemma, undetermined duality; we wrought remorseful revelry, the athletic union, breakfast alone; we wound it all 'round ripe old love - rocking chair, chicken soup, nice old love. Slurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp. Sweet! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

The Flavor of These Years

In the summer sun
on the metal surface of the spoon
your hair looked like
water spilling, pooling
in a small puddle

I can almost taste it, still

Where the smell of grass
sound of wind in thick-leaved trees
green-heavy in the sun
and others’ children
make me remember

what you were like,
so long ago—
and I, too,
now aging complacently
in this warm, safe space
our sweatered shoulders,
just touching, bent
make me remember

the turn of earlier seasons
easy decisions that shaped us this way

but your hair, dripping with light,
tastes just as I remember
when I licked it first from the empty spoon

- Genevieve Jenkins

(1 poem added 09.24.11)

editor's note: Here's the spoon from which we should slurp our daily love elixir; familiarity, acceptance, comfort, yes! Thanks, Genevieve! - mh

The Confession

We’re at the Inn I’ve chosen
for our reunion
and he tells me right away
it’s over
He wants
out
as soon as possible
(“I love you – I hate
the marriage – there’s no hope --
I love you”)

At dinner
he eats for two
while I stare
at the food on my plate
wondering how it got there

He gets me drunk
(“Wine? I’ll order a bottle”)
and we get back to
our cottage
I am drunk
I say, “I’m drunk. Either
fuck me or I’ll sleep on the couch. Which is it?”
He doesn’t
understand. I begin to make up the couch
and he finally gets it
“I’m too tired to do anything more than service you”
“Fine” I say, dropping my clothes on the floor

and we fall into
a new world of
positions
sensations
pleasures

It was as if we had never
scratched the surface before
this
our last time

and he falls asleep instantly when it is over
and the next morning
enumerates what I had done incorrectly
before bounding up the stairs at the Inn
to call her before breakfast

- Sharon Cramer

(added 09.23.11)

editor's note: Ouch! The punishment before pancakes is, just like pancakes, only and ever about appetite. Alas, hunger ain't love. - mh

Use two pillows, sleep fast

Dreams swirl in like snow,
drift in piles -- lovers, loved.
I wrap each in burlap,

lash openings against the cold.
Some vanish by dawn --
frozen, quiet, quick to go.

Others -- warmed, stroked,
unbind themselves -- return, hot,
mute my muffled screams.

Candles I disrobe you by
drip waxy fire, memories wafting
across each fold and pleat.

Slow to know love from heat,
I warm myself in steam
rising from the open seams.

- Timothy Pilgrim

(1 poem added 09.22.11)

editor's note: Complicated is the parsing of love from heat. The secret is, "Layers! Dress in layers!" (See more from Timothy on his new page as a Contributing Poet. Welcome, Timothy!) - mh

Anthem for the Age

Two evenings a week
I go to Melissa’s,
to talk and to fuck.

We talk first,
we fuck later.
Summer, fall,

winter, spring,
nothing distracts us.
We are to each other now

what we were at the start:
someone to talk to,
someone to fuck.

- Donal Mahoney

(added 09.21.11)

editor's note: A perfect depiction of priapic pragmatism. - mh

Let the Moon Come

We will not live long
For the day is too bright
Sun do not favour love
Let us rest
Until the moon comes

Tonight, the moon will be on
Full and charming like your breasts
Arm in arm we will walk
Our shadows following us to the playground
Bring your ears let me whisper more

I will hold your waist
You will hold my shoulders
And we will sway to the drums of the night
The gods will smile
Our children will be plenty like the stars above

Pray for darkness to fall
And veil the eyes who wish us apart
Pray for the moon to rise
And bring strength to our love
Don't just smile and play with my chest, pray my love, pray...

- Kufre Udeme

(09.20.11)

editor's note: Love and prayer in a playground? Love, god, stars, love; yes, pray! - mh

And then there was You

To not ever give up for what you need-
Knowing one day that heart will be freed…
Send the message to all concerned-
Defeat takes much more than getting burned…

Now, I can see beyond the trees,
Through the forest, beyond raging seas…
Tiny moments unraveling in time-
Sharing all of it with my someone, in rhyme…

Someone to touch this life that is shared,
Like new Love & second chances compared…
To have, to hold to follow all the way through-
I looked up, And then there was You.

- Michael R. King

(1 poem added 09.19.11)

editor's note: Here's to the second chance, to the looking up despite the weight of failure that would drag us down. Yes! - mh

A Life Without Love

a life without love.
not many friends.
my family sticks by me
but family love only goes so far.
this is the meat and potatoes of love
but meat and potatoes is boring.
I want gourmet with fine wine,
with all the trimmings.
I want dessert,
not just vanilla ice cream
but a hot fudge sundae
topped with peanuts.
I want the cherry on top.
I want the excitement of love.
I want the beautiful girl
with olive skin
walking across my room
in a black satin dress,
telling me,
"it stinks in here,"
as I pour her a glass of 85
Chardonnay.

- Mike Meraz

(1 poem added 09.18.11)

editor's note: Love like in the movies? Fix your tie, shine your shoes, look into the camera. Cherry on top chardonnay love scene take 102... - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Sayin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 09.17.11

2011-09-17T09:13:00.005-05:00

"With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion." ~ Edgar Allan Poe

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... was a nightmare dream scare (wings, claws and gas-mask stare); a perusal of the politics of poverty (we see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya); a mirror masked mope for what must be (tongued the toothsome tease); a destructive dive in a too-tight tank (better to treadwater); a lilliputian look at legs (chairs, tables, nurse, Death); an incitement (insight into an innkeeper's arrested riot); and an appeal for amnesty (and end to ill intentions). OK, we acquiesce! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Harbour No Ill

I want to reach inside your heart
and pluck out all those little warring men and women.
After that I wrote another note to myself:

The war has passed, The. War. Has. Passed -
even the enemy have forgotten about it and have thrown
their weapons away, traded them for a 'leaf moon'.
Traded them for a dozen pairs of white socks or 2 dozen
Mustangs, a peace pipe - There. Will. Be. Peace.

Never again shall we roll in the flowers or dirt:
Never again shall we fight - instead we shall produce lectures
on the 'way of love', for we so love each other; we can
hardly contain ourselves.

We shall lay in the August sunshine (oh yes!),
blissed up,
and nothing shall arouse us but a kiss – though we shall
sneeze a little, (achoo!) due to breathing in incense -
and if by chance one of us should grow vain or egotistical:
wielding power over other men – then, my friends, then we shall
hold firm counsel, and we shall call upon peace commissioners
to settle all disputes.

My friends, my friends!!, we shall penetrate the very core of
man. By God -
we shall wear their innards as proof of it. We shall carry their
hearts around in pretty little boxes, after death, knowing they
make a fine companion indeed.

And after that, dear friends, we shall grow old, yet continue
to flower - going about our daily business in our birthday suits.
At night we shall stamp away misery with our boots,
dance, dance like bloody maniacs,
etc etc etc.
Let this be the end of the matter. This be the end of the
poem.

Harbour no ill.

- A. Swimmer

(1 poem added 09.17.11)

editor's note: OK, all you maniac dancers! I have here a heart in a box worth saving. Any takers? - mh

Nec Spe Nec Metu

A pariah,
a parasite,
a fugitive
with no fixed address,
money or provisions,
these blue grey eyes
topped by
a spiked blonde crop,
belong to a stranger
to everyone but trouble,
the charming villain of the piece.

In bright
midday sunlight
warming the back of my hand,
smoke twists round
my fingers' black edges
twitching on an ashtray's rim.

Golden shards
bounce off its cut glass
and illuminate
the right side of my face
but leave
the left side in shadows;
filling
my arched brow's furrows,
sinking into my sallow cheeks.

Today
may be young
but I'm drunk as hell
and sick and tired
of listening to
happy hour philosophers
and staring at the same picture
hanging on the too-white wall.

Yeah, I see you,
you bloody fool:

sitting at the back of a bar alone,
half obscured
by the darkness that surrounds you,
eyes pointed up at a painting
lit up by beams
shining through a small window.

What the hell
are you looking at?

The shopping crowd,
jostling in the street outside
and the plastic gangsters,
part-time crooks,
wide-eyed old men,
and morning after wrecks
putting the world to rights inside.

My laughter smears
with the squares of light
across the sticky floor.

Shut up.

There is no truth, beauty or grace here.
Nothing that will outlast our tawdry days.
All your posturing is absurd.

Do you think anybody cares?

Smash the bottle. Pick up the chair.

I don't.

Get the hell out of here
before I tear away the separation,
slash the space between us
and cut off your balls and fry them in oil.

You want a vision of paradise?

There ain't none in this damned place.

Too proud to be humble, too strong to be tender,
it's going down man,
down,
down,
down.

- J. H. Martin

(1 poems added 09.16.11)

editor's note: Here is hope in a poem; fear in the word, not spoken, never heard. Go ahead, break that bottle, throw that chair. Better, yet, speak those words right out loud! - mh

Hospital

These are the people who tend to the healing,
my mother says, the mending and setting of bones,
the cuts, sutures, fingers in rubber,
thread through skin
plaster and metal against muscle and wet organ.

This is the land of recreation,
of doctor's plates and metal tables.
This is where we wait and wait, 1983.

But at only six years old this too
is the land of under-chairs,
of shoelaces
of finger-counting, alphabets and books.
This is the land of the beep beep beep machines
of funny nose-tickling smells,
of pretending penny-farthings,
of the inside outside upside
of dreams and naps
summer-drying up

of tears and more tears and what high
tall tables and what hard bread.

where all things are made and unmade
and remade again,
what shiny tools,
what clean floors,
what time-travel
space ship dimension
naturally, a family
but still no because
what lips
of my mother shushing, shushing me
pressing my head to her leg
hold still, hot hand to cheek
what tall
what lips thin line of the nurse
saying words that are just letters
strung together,
and she says
the man with the funny smell is dead,
we're sorry,
but he's gone.

- Ally Malinenko

(1 poem added 09.15.11)

editor's note: Wonderful picture memory; childhood image sensory recall. Great! Too bad we couldn't get those from the man with the funny smell. What memories did he take with him? - mh

Mermaid

Jesus—
he came to her in $4.95 cigarette packs,
her with a body like poetry;
she just smiled when they touched it;
she couldn't feel anymore
that body like an empty shell.
And when she saw it,
the shimmering scales
of a too-tight dress,
on a too-tight soul,
she realized she was a fish,
and she drowned in the pool.

- Lauren Sukin

(1 poem added 09.14.11)

editor's note: Drown in the bowl, gasp on the ground, fall from the sky. Jesus, look what can be obtained for just $4.95. (Welcome Lauren to our constantly growing group of Contributing Poets - see more of her poems on her new page.) - mh

GLORIOUS IMPATIENT

When that day arrives..
The one I have been waiting for in a lonely room
With hiked up stockings and a drunk, infatuated cigarette..
My bag, with its insides splintered
And glossy mauve bubbles of a lovebird havingsex and admiringpassionatebeauty
I wonder what it will feel like not rushing out of the bedroom
Right after sex and curtaining my recently feasted-upon body..
Because it moans, that it is possessed.
So I start
Scathing my face with soap until it dissolves in the mirror
And dreaming in the flushing water
Tweaking nipples, asking myself like a haunted tape recorder..
Questions I choose to ignore. The taste of that familiar name I refuse to forget.
His colors that still swagger in my veins, meandering like a mythical snake..
Lolling its tongue, juicing eyes into a vortex.
I see nothing. And no logic and no dialogue.
Words seem stapled on to the cupboard or maybe misted in perfume..
Or tangled up in the windowpanes.
Everything crumbles when I think of belonging or facing a mirror
When the clothes tear down.
But someone told me, the day will arrive soon when these empty seconds
Will suddenly gain meanings and there will be no pain. No crying and not my face
Again, rubbed with erased kohl and this impossible longing
Will flower into glorious impatience which women like me..
Have learned to savor and we choose to keep, chunks of it
Always in our mouth.

- Afreen Chaudhary

(added 09.13.11)

editor's note: Strange to you? Really? Go to the mirror, open your mouth and say, "Ah!" - mh

Beggar: The Natural Identity

I'm a beggar,
I beg street to street,
door to door,
Some people neglect me,
I become unhappy and despondent,
Because I have my own leadership,
I want to lead my own life in my own way,
I don't bother someone who neglects me,
Do I? Never!
Some people applaud me,
I become exultant,
I become ecstatic and jovial,
Because they know my leadership as like theirs,
Someone calls me the unwanted,
And they say I am the load for the earth,
But if I'm not in the earth,
How do they show the difference between me and them?
I'm satisfied for my life,
Because I have to just beg,
I appreciate others’ leadership so I beg to them.
I don't have any other chores to do,
The God has created me for the same,
Because He has confirmed my identity,
So I have to represent it ever in my life.
I don't have clothes to put on,
The winter is my enemy,
It chills me and it makes me dead,
I lie over and under the mist and snow,
Passers come and cross me kicking,
They think me a log,
Rich come in Mercedes and strike me,
They back the gear and turn around,
The temple grins and laughs at me,
I feel the hard time!
I see others are also executing their rights,
Then, why not for me?
Justice and mercy of the God is the same,
For all of us,
Why am I a beggar and
Why are you rich?
I only know the reason!
Do you know? No..
The nature is mine not yours,
Because it's dearer to me,
It is close to me,
You are enjoying the artificial things,
But I survive in natural ones,
Your life is like a machine,
Anytime it turns down,
But mine? It runs much longer.
You discriminate others, I not.
Because I’m just a beggar!
You are not one unlike me!

- Chiranjibi Niroula

(1 poem added 09.12.11)

editor's note: We all came here naked; naked we will leave. We are beggars, indeed! Can you spare a dime? - mh

ZIDANE'S DREAM, Part One

in his home town
people often disappeared
scared
but they led their nor-
mal lives unable to stop

on his 18th birthday
Zidane was looking forward
a party had been thrown
a piece of news popped up
on the radio

he wore a surgeon's mask
had a pump in hand
outside he pushed the window
he heard a man yell
people began to run
it was too late

the virus

he tried to move
wings now hung under either arm
in a state of shock
the words “Dark Children”
Zidane began to cry

“Be calm …”

a nurse had walked in
claws replaced his fingernails
a voice on the other side of the curtain
the only thing that remained was a face

“We are brethren now...”

- Michael Ian Sattler

(added 09.11.11)

editor's note: The ultimate horror story. These days, only the richest of the rich can afford wings to fly and Brethren to greet them. Think I might like this virus. Can't wait for the sequel. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Being Passionately Purposeful,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 09.10.11

2011-09-10T12:16:00.005-05:00

"And your very flesh shall be a great poem." ~ Walt Whitman

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... was a nascent crow; a deamcake mermaid; a free fall; a pretentious poet; an unlucky charm; an emptied shell and a consuming coincidence. Whew! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

YOUR COINCIDENCE IS MEANINGLESS

On the road towards Houston
Voice of youth on disc
Brother Two’s sad music
Playing like its notes were
Fingertips
And my insides
Just another malleable instrument

Pull into a bright rest stop
Little animal mascot
Winks atop a sign
Inviting us to stay a while
Buy brightly packaged shit
Straining dollar bills through
An idiot’s bucked toothed grin

Dazed shuffle of the good citizen
All fade into the fog
The brain creates to fool you sane
Meaningless faces match the corporate hue
Of sliding glass doors
Of Madisonville
A nowhere stop
Between a plastic Dallas and a
Styrofoam, hopeless Houston

Then the shock of recognition
Pushes me into the moment
Brother One walking through
The whole plain and predictable scene
The boy I used to know
With teenage uncertainty

Back in the car
Freaked out
As Brother Two
Sings obliviously

- Meg Frances

(1 poem added 09.10.11)

editor's note: The meaning was, no doubt, buried in the surreal, consumer-friendly surroundings; the not-sought brother lost in the strain of dollar bills. Nice, Meg! Good to see your splash in the Swirl again! - mh

If This My Person...

I do not know any more
how to speak of the burning
wires.
How to dress
the cramp with
dream.
I am simple now, like a shell,
a swallow, a
first-love.
I do not walk with eagle's foot,
do not stir myself naked from
sleep
into a gallery of torments imagined.
That is gone like
desire
that clings and begs
for miracles, like a boat that
breaks
the waters then is broken
by a great
Tide...

- Allison Grayhurst

(added 09.09.11)

editor's note: Don't worry over how to connect those dots. It doesn't matter; all we know falls away, in time. - mh

Your Last Name

I gave you a naked
photograph of myself and
the only vestige I
have left of you
is an old Eskimo pie and
the skunk dyed
rabbits foot you gave
me, its nails now
crumbs at the bottom of my bag.

- Kayla Smith

(added 09.08.11)

editor's note: Always strive to leave a more lasting memory than rabbit's foot toe jam, especially when you still have that picture taped to your bathroom mirror. - mh

JAMES

I.

The saddest boy I'd ever seen
wore God in the palm of his hand
when we met. When we touched,
it left a hollow imprint.

(I suspect his wife taught it to him.)

II.

Holding hands in Deep Ellum
I spoke to God
in a vision. He opened
in the flesh like an abscess.

Before anything else, Ariel,
You should know that
James found Erin.

(I stopped in my tracks,
something caught my eye.
The two most perfect
grackles. You could hardly
tell they were dead.)

III.

James speaks the pass-word primeval.
It says so on his arm.

He says it means he's a poet, though
he hasn't written in months.
(He doesn't know that I know
that it matches Erin's.)

Sometimes when he sleeps
I scratch at it.
The ink gets under my fingernails.

- Ariel Starling

(added 09.07.11)

editor's note: So, James is poet, at least he thinks he knows it. Ariel knows better! - mh

Falling Man

I am falling through the sky!
I love the feeling of the cold wind swimming around my body!

I look at my feet above me as I fall!
I feel like a bomb falling on pearl harbour!

I am falling from my office window!
I am heading towards the pavement below!

I chose to jump!
I am happy that I have finally made this decision!

I am ready...

- Luke Ritta

(1 poem added 09.06.11)

editor's note: Metaphor or meat-mashing reality; once the jump is made, might as well embrace it - ready or not. - mh

Skyla's Dreamcake

“I want to swim with a mermaid.” ~ Skyla 5 yrs.

Because I'm 5, I can't decide what kind of cake I want.

So I had a dream.

And I, I dreamed my pillow---was a dreamcake.

Baked by baker fairies, named Wiff, Pritz and Larry.

I got icing in my ear, and a candle stuck in the other.

It's made my bed a sticky mess, I'll not tell mother.

I managed to blow out a single candle that had stayed lit on my nightstand, as the cake slid out of bed.

I thought of the ocean and cleaning the icing off my hair and head.

-

And my dreamcake, for dear dream birthday wish, presented me with pretty girl on the coral rock, tail and hair that went swish, swish.

“Skyla”, she said in tempting mermaid voice, “would you like to swim with me?”

And into the ocean, knocking off clumps of icing they went.

But the water woke her up, and to her surprise, only a faint smell of ocean lingered. And a wee bit of icing on one finger.

A single fish scale, lay shining like a rainbow on the spread.

Happy Birthday.

- Louis Marvin

(added 09.05.11)

editor's note: Sweet! Mermaids, cake, dreamscape - a happy birthday indeed. I'm still smiling. - mh

He Lives!

Jim Crow is gone
From our sight!

He’s no longer here
To torment the
Colored folk!

Gone from the buses!
Gone from the restaurants!
Gone from the voting booths!

The courtrooms!
THE ENTIRE SOUTH!

Jim Crow has
Disappeared!

But…

He is just hiding.

And you can
Find him,

Inside a woman’s womb.

- Roderick Richardson

(1 poem added 09.04.11)

editor's note: Can't play hide-and-seek with destiny, nor peek-a-boo with bigotry. Which is it? Hmmm, well, which are you? - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

In the Flesh,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 09.03.11

2011-09-03T13:15:00.005-05:00

"Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." ~ Woody Guthrie

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we ducked deranged daddy driver's side impact; we strained to hear the whisper of scars; we smoldered on the verge of skyrocket love, sought the short fuse; let lapse a late subscription to a lost love; doffed our dreams, drained dandies, let others drape themselves, we're done; but not outdone, we burned body to free flying soul, unchained, enchanting; last, we were rapt (also wrapped?) in a ravishing recount of love lost in time. Think I'll read'em all again - damn the time! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Stolen Time, Time Stolen

When I met him I was naked.
Pulled the cheap black-red satin slick
sheet around me,
masquerading as last night’s gown.
He smiled, blue-eyed elfin grin
plopped on dented clatter rattle metal toolbox
feet on beaten brown wear worn guitar case
and didn’t leave,
Even when I fumble tugged,
the shiny sheet pinned underneath me,
trying to pull it tighter, the pillow closer,
pretend I was clothed.
We three discussed Evita, Phantom,
Lewis Carroll, Richard Feynman.
Three? Yes, but only naked-awkward for him.

In his next apartment,
still three, but no longer two and one,
on a humid sticky sweet honeysuckled night,
we peered into the eyes of gargoyles
mythical beings, telling tales of souls cavernous wicked.
By the cathedral was a fountain
sparkling gurgling churning water above
a slick whiteblack marble pool below.
Jumping dunking laughing.
Back in his room, he pulled me, wet,
onto his yellowgreen flannel sheets, threw our clothes
on the gritty hardwood floor.
We slept curled like children
over and under, touching, but not exploring
dreaming, dripping, on hot damp cotton.

>>> read the rest of "Stolen Time, Time Stolen" here. <<<

- Elizabeth Glass

(added 09.03.11)

editor's note: As love stories go, this one will take you far, while there's time... read on, you really should. - mh

Unbound

Tie my body, if you must,
My soul you cannot bind.
it soars through the iron bars towards open skies,
squeezes through doors jammed with clichés,
floats through the meandering river of our lives.
Is grasped in your palm,
and then set free in your song.
stored in your diaries,
recovered in memories.

It’s as Real as the promised Land of Eden,
and as Mythic as the Truth that I speak.
It’s in the rays that warmed your bones,
And the wind that kissed your face.

You may lose me in your thoughts,
but in You I remain.
I glide through your blood,
twisting in your gut,
gushing to your limbs,
ambulating around your heart,
And then released in a quick guffaw,
a long sigh,
a silent tear,
and a distracted doodle.

Your arrow pierces my heart,
but my soul it cannot touch.
You crush it like dry leaves,
but it blossoms from dust.
You burn it to ash,
but it rises like a phoenix.

It’s closer than your fragrance,
and farther than the horizon.
You can touch it with your eyes,
and it slips through your fingers.

You chain my body my dears,
but Me you cannot bind.
I am as fickle as your marriage vows,
as inevitable as changing seasons,
as smooth as a politician’s lie,
and as free as a cuckoo’s cry!

- Saheli Khastagir

(added 09.02.11)

editor's note: Can't help but be what we be, no matter what constraints might constrict. Loud sing cuckoo!! - mh

The Fabric of Life

I am a human parrot
repeating singsong
that was sung to me
in my birdcage crib
I am made of
made for mass
consumption
products
and therefore I am
part Mickey Mouse
part Dr. Pepper
with Abe Lincoln penny
thoughts which add up
to a pocket-full
of gently used ideals
and when it is all over
donate my
overalls
to Goodwill
and re-sell my
denim dreams
to those
willing to
slip into them
in the
changing rooms
of time

- Ivan Jenson

(2 poems added 09.01.11)

editor's note: Yes, psychic hand-me-downs, the ultimate string theory - reincarnation of ideas. We humans pass through once; so try on as many as you can before you pick your fit. (Another from Ivan on his page; he's such a tease.) - mh

OPEN DAY OF A STRANGER

Dawn
Breaks a year
Of delicate mornings. Untouched,
You remain a statuette. You turn
Pages, fragments of a magazine;
Your eyes, reflecting cosmetic ads,
Deceptively wear me out;
Turn me down to a fading star.
You shrug; indifferent gestures, becoming
A different person: a chrysalis
Sealed from within. Surrounding you
Earthly words are frozen, holding
No surprise.

Burning-up
In rarefied air, I become
Unattached from your being.
Even passing you chair:
An acquired skill,
An estrangement of hands
Devoid of feeling.

Already having
Thrown clothes in a bag,
There remains
The simple act of opening a door;
Hoping my exit
Is without your thunderous applause.

I would prefer your tears
Or some of your old magic.
Those ancient ways you had,
Of arranging
A mid-morning falling of stars
For special celebrations.

Perhaps our precious days
Could be words in a magazine,
The legend would tell
Of ecstasy and the moon,
In the night your white throat
Arching, yearning for that sigh –
The sign of perfection.
Untouched.
Hung like a star.

- Derrick Gaskin

(1 poem added 08.31.11)

editor's note: Exit becomes magazine fodder for lost love, lost interest. Must have been a subscription; like a magazine, expired in a year. - mh

Smolder

You’ve got a long fuse,
The inferno is building.

You’re teeth graze my lip
Pulling gently, possessively.

I will be yours,
My body curled against you.

You melt into me,
In that kiss we are one.

- Renee Garafola

(1 poem added 08.30.11)

editor's note: Such sweet accelerant is the graze of a lip - enough to ignite my slightest passion. No smolder here. Skyrockets! - mh

SCARS

Sometimes they itch, sometimes
they burn:

the scars.

Sometimes they wake me in the middle of the night,
wordlessly whispering in my ear, whispering...

whispering.

Of course I know they don't itch or burn or whisper,
I know it is all in my mind,
all
in
my
mind,
but the mind can be a dark and dangerous place,
sitting softly as it does
in the centre of the chemical laden brain,

and so I listen
when they whisper, I scratch
when they itch, I toss and turn
when they burn,

and pretend to feel
no raw regret
that they are there, tell-tale tattoos
for all the world to see.

- Edward Lee

(added 08.29.11)

editor's note: Here is a verbal photo from one of our Mad Gallery artists; a snapshot of a "chemical laden" experience that is unique and common to all. (See some of Edwards photos here.) - mh

Passenger Seat

- Still I belong to the progenitors

Steering wheel
Fill me in - your ego.

When I stow away
This wee car-

Is the roof
Over my head

When dad slaps
Me just like when

He points his gun
At my temple, but

Then I paint the
Picture back in July

When we ignore
Him for he is snapped

Still he is my
Dad - lost psycho

- Sarah Gamutan

(added 08.28.11)

editor's note: Auto safety is complicated when you're the passenger; it's nerve-wracking enough, just worrying over whether the driver paid for side-mounted airbags. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Publishin' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 08.27.11

2011-08-27T07:12:00.005-05:00

"I hoped that the trip would be the best of all journeys: a journey into ourselves" Shirley MacLaine

Red Graffiti (above) by featured artist and fellow mad one, Ana Vohryze, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see more fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you will GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... was a head-tweaker from front to back; first, we unmasked the mysteries faced in various containers - honey box, toy box, idiot box; we found a natural shelter from separation anxiety; then we got rained out; we pondered and wandered the length and breadth of the thing, suffered no cuts on its silk edge; we worried the treatment team over lost dreams, lost memory, lost tomorrows; then, we were called to own up to what we live, fine advice for the owners we are (likers or not); lastly, all was well, welcomed and back to a new beginning! I needed a good tweakin', you? - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Welcome Back

It's been awhile. It took a spell to feel well but now I'm back on track. Ol' Humpty Dumpty me fell off the wall carelessly and my broken pieces scattered thin and it took all the King's horses and forces to put me back together again. But, I am back...

I'm finding my heart again. Seems all I needed was a kick in the seat and just a little traction for my wayward feet. Now... I'm planted firmly (sorta) and my head's back on straight (kinda) and my mind ain't dwelling and cloudy and shouting at my sleeve bleeding heart which is finally starting to feel and thumping excitedly at all the possibilities awaiting me. The ticker was sick but not no more. What's opened up with all this reconstruction from its mass destruction is a bigger door! From my heart's shore to its other shore, from tip-top ceilings to down low floors! Now there's room for so much more. I am back my friends and ready to feel.

I'm finding my eyes again. I'm no longer staring at yesterday's whats, whys, whos and whens. I grew so tired seeing only yesterday's classes with half-filled glasses. Now I'm looking out and seeing what is presently. My eyes have longed to see the here and now... soaking in this urban scene, quietly chaotic and loudly serene seeing hot assed summer breezes waving dreamily to the pock-holed pavement, Tejano music bloating and fading, floating and falling, accordion chords ricocheting off these technicolor walls on this X+ street seeing all kinds of beat and diggin' on how beautiful it feels to see again. I am back my friends and ready to see.

I'm finding my ears again. All I kept hearing was chatter and lies, soul shaking sighs, breaking good-byes. But they opened up and I'm ready to sit and listen, to really hear, to perk up and give you my undivided attention and to fully absorb all these pictures you've been saying and praying and hoping just to be heard. Speak to my years, sing to my tears, shout to my fears, whisper in my ears, I hear you. I truly do. I am back my friends and ready to hear.

I'm finding my voice again. It was cracked and weak, ignored and meek. But it's no longer keeping quiet. I got some words that have been waiting to speak, patiently sitting and bidding their time to bounce out in shouts out of my mouth and pair up and make them some rhymes! I've saved up a few stories or two too, believe you me. And my shout is back on, along with my whisper, too. They've just been waiting for the right time to play and say... "The time is now!" because I am back my friends and ready to speak.

I'm finding that the finding finds me finding more doors. Discovering something everyday as I'm scratchin' at my surface. There's still a whole lot more of me left to explore in this quest of rediscovering all of me. But you know what I really feel? I feel back, my friends, and really feeling real.

- Johnny Olson

(1 poem added 08.27.11)

editor's note: Finding is so much sweeter after losing. Welcome back, indeed! Think I'll get reacquainted with myself, too. - mh

Owner

It takes a lot of livin’
To own the life
To buy it with dollars
And tears and fights
To love it for its beauty
Its scars and fears

Life’s too priceless to take the chance
To alter your course
Based on another man’s stance
Trust what you believe
Feel what you trust

To own your life
Knowing the debt’s been paid
No burden of assumptions or judging
Along the way

Freed from the collector
Of guilt and remorse
Freedom to live
Within the life of your course

- Denise Lumley

(1 poem added 08.26.11)

editor's note: Yeah, you got it, might as well own it! No matter what you have to pay, it's better than repo. (Let's welcome Denise to our crazy congress of Contributing Poets - see more of her poems on her new page.) - mh

TOMORROW NEVER COMES

I feel no pain. But I know something is wrong. I do not believe I will be here tomorrow. I don’t know where I’m going. But I’m prepared to let fate take its course. I have been having nightmares. Each time I disappear leaving no trace behind. Is it death or abduction? I cannot understand what it is. Perhaps your treatment team could unveil this mystery. I can’t claim to be a prophet, but I sense things. Something big is going to happen. I don’t know what. Please forgive me for being vague. Maybe I am not supposed to know my fate until the moment things go down. I am not one for surprises or predictions. I hope I am still here tomorrow. I just have an intuition that I will be gone, my memory wiped out, my dreams just dreams that never got off the ground. I want to say so long to everyone just in case tomorrow never comes for me. I could be wrong about everything. It won’t be the first time and certainly not the last. These nightmares give me bad headaches. Maybe something is in my brain that needs to be pulled out. I probably sound like I have some screw loose.

- Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

(1 poem added 08.25.11)

editor's note: I think the treatment team needs to get a hold of the extraction team to speed this rescue before the dream team shuts the whole thing down. I am getting... really... sleepy... - mh

A FULLY REALIZED NATURAL TECHNOLOGY

whether the meaning of the thing
is this way whether or not the design
or the method of the thing is known
those for whom it was owned are
the net and for the sake of the net
which is the net there is a nervous
irreversible life which really is not
avoided and the delicate pattern of
which is thought of so for whom it
was concerning is not because it is
known so in regard to the center of
it because it itself existed for that
being in order to make technical the
silk of the extreme edge which is
a fully realized natural technology
that evolved over millions of years
and to understand it simply and
exactly just examine the interlock for
which is made and inferred in the
system and you will learn that what
ever good you encounter will be in
and of itself and the device actually
does work it does work whether or
not it is actualized with the hand

- satnrose

(2 poems added 08.24.11)

editor's note: Yes, indeed; everything works whether we take it in hand or not! Net without end, amen! (Read another from satnrose on his page - a great way to prepare for the future; see it from the past.) - mh

Splattering of rain

Until it is late midnight
rain splatters into exhausted eardrums
and saturates the sleep,

What a headache, pal!
The noise is so exasperating – and unceasing,

One turns this way and that way –
reads for a while, but finds water dripping
from the book as well
onto his belly…
and cuddles up against the warm blanket
but the blanket is no wall in between –

- Haris Chand Adhikari

(added 08.23.11)

editor's note: ...and parentheses are no umbrella! - mh

Arbor on the Loop

Almond, ash, and linden leaves
drip droplet rains into our mouths,
asleep before the autumn wheat
when no one else is speaking
upon the fragrant park lane.
The hill folds open like a book
as couples lay like calligraphies
inside a wreath of garter snakes.
I buried a brown chicken egg
in a silver box beside the walk
then inside I later found
a little bone and feather grown
to prepare ourselves for separation.
Passings of foot stamp and hoof
dragged a metamorphosed road
over the arbor we shaded.

- John Swain

(1 poem added 08.22.11)

editor's note: Shade of tree, warmth of sun and droplets on the tongue take all the anxiety out of separation. - mh

a fiendish honey

a female talks
about what happens to beasts after death
and the music captures them:
craving to sit. hungering to dream
in the delinquent’s electric room.

the massacre girls are laughing about their
speed pleasures.
After dark they laugh about their sins.
All the while the hot night massacre
simmers under manhole covers
hiding the essential delights.

pleasure 1:
a heart of masks
vibrating surreptitiously as she smiles.

pleasure 2:
a heart of madness
driven into the gap between us
not hearing.

a fiendish honey
covers her face not wanting
to respond to the questions
but she knows the heat of revenge
that has her hooked.

the traffic girls behind her slowly recite
the disciplines of the island morgue discos
that lead to forensic fucking and
the pawned pleasures of the plastic store signs.

red honey
red juice
torture the overly ambitious
all the way home.

we’ll sleep in a toy box.

she asks for the television
to be switched off. sit in a corner.
fucked by time, we’ll talk about the anatomy

of the anonymous

- Peter Marra

(added 08.21.11)

editor's note: After the discussion grows old - massacres, heart masks and life anatomical - keep the remote handy! - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Trippin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 08.20.11

2011-08-20T11:16:00.003-05:00

Words are but pictures of our thoughts.” John Dryden

Red Sketch (above) by featured artist and fellow mad one, Ana Vohryze, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see more fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you will GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... was a bit o' the ole poetry pinball; first, flowers with no happy ending; then, a face saving farce, fiercely smeared our wan reflection; a spoken word fire prevention promotion; a high pitched howl to make do with what does; a dive to duck the disappointments that the gods afford; a hunting guide for how not be the prey; lastly, a heartfelt hack at hubrus to home in on hard times. May we all be the wiser! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

Hard Times

has so many meanings
transfixed on difficulties, times of
economies in dumpsters,
ex-CEO's dumpster diving
finding remnants, crumbs of existence
once given to them on silver, platinum
card, platters filled with heads
of enemies vanquished.

For the working class,
heartache spreads to field workers
picking, squatting, bending over
taking it in
the behind
from bosses Cool Hand Luke
would smile that charming grin
before fleeing to parts unknown
only to return to entertain his mates
with grandiose stories,
eggs, dozens and dozens of eggs,
before taking his final reward
right between the eyes.

If Gabriel ever asks me
to play my trumpet
I'll tell him I don't blow it
anymore for I blew it
on Earth when
I left her in an alley
behind the all night cafe
in a nice, tidy lettuce box
filled with cooling green leafs,
hot sun rising across the valley.

On my deathbed, as I float away,
my heart will be with her
- if she lives
in a simple adobe,
fancy mansion tall,
or workin’ through the hard times
on the streets, short skirts, knee highs
in fear of abandonment
from lovers,
haters
and God.

- Joseph D. DiLella

(2 poems added 08.20.11)

editor's note: So, you can't blow it if you blew it? Let's hope not. We'll just suck it in and blow through it! (The body is 90+% water; sometimes, so is the soul. See how in another poem from Joseph, on his page - check it out!) - mh

Knives in ice

Inuits bury them, handles down,
blades up, add water,

let each freeze solid,
daub the tips with blood.

Lust lopes in before dawn --
wolves believe they've found

seals asleep, streams full of salmon,
caribou laid out end to end.

They lap up the offering,
ignore it is their own blood

they drink to fullness,
to weakness, to sleep.

Curled frozen on red ice,
frosted furs offer Inuits hope,

life with color, warmth at night.
Arctic wind retains howling rights.

- Timothy Pilgrim

(added 08.19.11)

editor's note: This time, we'll shun the puns and cut to the chase: What knives do we approach with scent-crazed appetites, oblivious to any danger or to the hidden hunter awaiting our demise? - mh

sick sick sick

of seriousness
the universe is
a labyrinth in my
ear ear ear
I am deaf from it
there is no sure
melody in these
crazy strains

deaf deaf deaf
dumb blinded
loosening mind
for just 1 moment
to a maze of human
dilemma absurd

gone gone gone
everything is
senselessly gone
running thru rooms
marked no exit
crying out in
no voice

dance dance dance
on the barbed wire
of time feet raw
raw raw bleeding
blood blood blood

- Joan McNerney

(added 08.18.11)

editor's note: Shhhh, listen! Hear life's faint music of madness; sing along, tap your feet in time to that raging rhythm. Um, also, somebody, please call an ambulance! - mh

ALPINE YELP

I love you
What does that mean
Does it mean more than
Why are we here
Or where the hell are we
And all the old jokes
And wish washy philosophies
To stand atop a vantage point
Yodel ‘You’ll do!’
Is that what we are about
Us men
We women
Seeking an echo
Is that the reason for our insanity

- Anthony Murphy

(1 poem added 08.17.11)

editor's note: Is that the mountain side echo, our lovesick lout's refrain? Hmmm, I guess we do make do, but what's wrong with that, if what you do joins with the "who" you love? It doesn't need to be fate, just fact. - mh

Fire and Rain Running: Saying “No” to an Intimate’s Manipulations

Bespeak softly, Dear; see fire and rain running
Jointly insane. Not even your quick cunning
Could have dulled this pain. It’s better I explain
Why, when blended, flame plus hail stuns.

Eye Light, Northern Blaze, Sweet Hazy Glow,
Flashing Sentiment, Bane of Darkness, My Heart’s Show,
Your bright, coal orbs heat so-so, meet
My needs in part, but beyond your rage, you know

Combined with raindrops, those tears that glisten,
That rioting of viscera makes me listen,
Search, seek, implore for more and better
Means to push away your clouds plus prevent your misting.

Fire plus rain, Darling, dizzies, corrupts, stains,
Water-fed conflagrations, confused parts, remain
Difficult, like acid, send me raving, turn me mad
Heat, water, jiggered together, tend to strain.

- KJ Hannah Greenberg

(1 poem added 08.16.11)

editor's note: See, just a calm conversation, a little reasoning and the decimating storm is turned aside. All is well - so long as one doesn't stop talking or turn one's back. - mh

The Face Keeper

I've kept your face intact, spotless, polishing it for 25 years.
I’ve kept it in the hour hand, in the monotonous creaks,
Under the dismembered shelf, on the scratched table,
Through the eye of a sewing sanguine needle
The face travels, swims, walks, flies,
The face acts like a face
The face is not a face,
Oh, yes, I’ve kept your face intact.

I’ve kept your face hidden, imprisoned, amputated it for 25 years.
I’ve kept it in the butcher’s knife, inside the mystified slaughterhouse,
Between the pig’s jaws, tinkling from the cowbell,
The sewing machine cutting and stitching the face,
Royal apparel, purple is the colour best,
I’ve used clothing chemicals, detergents, washing powders,
The face remains intact,
The face is a brutal history,
Oh, yes, I’ve kept your face intact.

I’ve nine fingers, one is an abomination,
I’ve drawn your face with that finger,
Drawn on the slopes of Himalayas, in the trails of Annapurna,
Blew it off in the dusts of Mustang,
Floated it on Koshi River,
The face is the number one stalker,
The face boasts for being evergreen, perpetual, inexhaustible,
The face is a history gone wrong,
Oh, yes, I’ve kept your face intact.

I’ve kept your face intact
And have smeared mine.

- Arun Budhathoki

(1 poem added 08.15.11)

editor's note: Face up, face time, save face, face-to-face, put a good face on it, across the face of time. - mh

The Flowers

A woman brought me flowers and told me to treat them as if they were her.
Orange-yellow flaming flowers, I parted her lips.
She was not lonely, she said. She had baseball... students... coworkers...

Her legs ran down my bed like green stalks and shivered at my touch.
I am the wind, I whispered in her ear. And she replied curiously,
I will never drink the poison.

- Nathaniel Kostar

(added 08.14.11)

editor's note: Strange the voluptuous vixen. Jumps into the water; never drinks, never swims - only floats. Strange and irresistable to all who swallow everything whole. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Snappin' Pictures,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 08.13.11

2011-08-13T07:59:00.006-05:00

“I shut my eyes in order to see.” Paul Gauguin

Manufacturing Vanity (above) by featured artist, Ana Vohryzek. Ana's Impressionistic style impressed us immediately upon reviewing. Her work varies from full-spectrum splashes of colors to one-color sketches, from portraits to abstract landscapes. We just didn't know what to expect next... and that's the way we like it! So without further ado, we invite you to take a look thru the mad artistic eye of the self-proclaimed Batman of artists (she's an international lawyer by day and a painter by night) Ana Vohryzek and get your impression on. All you got to do is move that mad mouse of yours right over here and away... you'll... GO! - jo

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... was engaged in debate with angels; first, a supplication for stopped tears, shunned shame and songs of first-child breath; next, a peek at celestial salaciousness; then, we burned our ebullient brains with a seven-sequenced sin-fest; after, we diverted our cloyed confession to a divine dare; then, unsullied and self-aware, we sustained our unsilent tirade against suffering and sweet nothings; next, we regained our reverent reflection on angelic rescue and earthly escape; finally, we tumbled back to earth, out-lucking Lucifer to lay down here with life all around us. World without end, amen! - mh

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

this is life all around me

i take in the sound
of the upstairs neighbors fucking
repetitive and dull
almost a sunday chore
hear the dogs barking outside
watch the balls of dust
roll from my desk
collect the cat hair in lumps
and then let them go
watch muted televisions
strain for the music
touch my dead grandfather’s watch
stare at the brown stains in the toilet
the hair clumps clogging up the sink
avoid the soap rings
in the shower
have the coffee and the wine
in one cup
step over the tape
holding the floor together
take in great art on the weekend
without a care
walk the park with everyone else
pick the scabs that won’t heal
misinterpret joy as salvation
beer drafts as intellect
try to think of hatred in the abstract
boredom as a nuisance
film as diversion
look to apocalyptic cities for comfort
while at the street corner
of misery lane and desolation way
there shines a final light
that no one sees
as car horns blare
and little kids cry sonnets
to their lifeless parents
their tears are shed
over nothing and everything
as i say absolutely to myself
this is life all around me.

- John Grochalski

(2 poems added 08.13.11)

editor's note: Everyone sees that final light, just not while there is all this nuisance and diversion and comfort to find. (More on a specific nuisance on John's page - check it out!) - mh

AN ANGEL IN MY GARDEN

At dawn, I speak to the whooper swan in my garden. Upstairs, my landlord is still asleep. Below, in my basement apartment, a little home, my home and refuge from the world of people, I see a glimmer of light. It is time. I throw on an old pair of jeans, sneakers, a yellow T-shirt, and my mask, an antidote for the human sickness of hatred spreading across the globe.

Leaving my subterranean haven, I climb the stairs and open the door to the universe beyond. A gold sun is rising. I smell the sweet earth and my flaming red roses around the bend. I trudge toward my garden, which is not really mine. Still, it belongs to me. I nurture it. The old lady who owns it allows me to feed it love with my poetic words and whispered songs and soulful hands.

I reach my private Heaven and see the familiar whooper swan, an angel in my garden. “Hello,” I whisper to the majestic white bird with black and yellow bill. The mammoth creature smiles at me. I move closer and hide within its eight-foot wingspan, my small, skeletal body hunched over, almost reaching the earth.

“My old olive-colored flesh is tired.” The white angel hugs me with its massive wings, longer than the little garden I care for. “When will you take me away? I need to fly with you and soar to the Heavens.”

Now, I listen to the fierce flutter of wings, and a vast sadness consumes my soul. “Don’t leave!” I shriek silently. But the whooper swan runs away, across the barren street as it ferociously beats its mammoth wings and sails high toward a gold sun.

Perhaps tomorrow, it will return to my garden. I will speak once more to the whooper swan and it will serenade me. And together, we will fly away, vanishing from the earth, in search of a celestial home.

- Mel Waldman

(2 poems added 08.12.11)

editor's note: Gaining a seat on Air Angel comes by assignment only. We are all on perpetual stand-by. Patience... (Another one worth remembering on Dr. Mel's page - check it out!) - mh

Halos and madness

The Gods are squeaky clean
And I am laden
With dirt –
Their halos and harps
And my mayhem
And madness.

I do not recoil
From my horror –
I have lived
There for years
And it has settled.

Love is the Gods' undoing,
An undoing
Of sweet nothings.
I can hear them
Echoing the night away –
Telling stories
Of hearts, love potions,
And a general high
Of epic proportions.

I have suffered
The violence of man
And will no longer
Be silent,
No longer be silent,
No longer be silent.

- Dawnell Harrison

(added 08.11.11)

editor's note: Sour go the harp-string tones of angels when mixed with our cacophonous calamities. If a human cries in the forest, but there are no angels to hear it, does she/he make any sound at all? - mh

COINCIDENCE

murder the martyr
the kindergartner
the mass marauder
with no home
and no father
why try
when you won't even bother
why listen
when your words are twisted
why lie
when the truth makes you cry
why paralyze the paranoid
with your delusional spin control
why manifest the disease
when you're only killing the fleas
that feed on your needs
on hands and knees
singing pretty please
answer this prayer for me
and i'll be good
you'll see

- Halo Jones

(added 08.10.11)

editor's note: His inbox is overloaded. An answer will be forthcoming; but in the meantime, a long time being bad ensues. - mh

The Seven Unlocked

Internet porn, neighbor’s wife, “Girls gone wild”,
Indecent thoughts of an adolescent child,
No wanton desires left confined,
Unlock the lustful mind.

Super size, buffet line, Maxed credit cards
Drunken idiots without any regards,
Illicit drugs being mainlined,
Unlock the voracious mind.

Oil and money, Wall Street, political reign,
Massive wealth & power to obtain,
Selfish actions are so inclined,
Unlock the greedy mind.

Welfare, Food Stamps, free handout meal,
Why labor when you can steal,
Hard work is always declined,
Unlock the indolent mind.

Revenge, animosity, Racist rapport,
Vengeance in settling the score,
Contemplation forever unkind,
Unlock the angry mind.

Jealousy, spite, begrudging your brother,
Yearning for chattels of another,
Contentment forever consigned,
Unlock the envious mind.

Blue eyes, blonde hair, no gene disorder,
Playing god, unnatural selective order,
The Nuclear family redesign,
Unlock the prideful mind.

- Laura Funk

(added 08.09.11)

editor's note: Damn! Seven wild beasts unleashed, one cage to contain them, which do we lock-up first? Pandora, can you tell us? - mh

HAIKU: LITTLE ANGELS

Listen to a door:
Love has gotten into Hell
Sins of the Rainbow¡

- Daniel de Cullá

(added 08.08.11)

editor's note:
Not even Michael
Can resist such temptation
Helpless rebellion
- mh

Since You Can

Hear me when I cry
Hear me since you can
These rivers in my eyes
Dry them from my face
Dry them since you can
I weep for none but you
Cast this shame from me
Cast it since you can
I want to sing and dance
So give a song to me
So give it since you can
Maker of all that breath
Breath in me a child
Breath in since you can.

- Kufre Udeme

(added 08.07.11)

editor's note: When the asking is nicely and the giving gracious, we can since we can! - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

With Eyes Wide Shut,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 08.06.11

2011-08-06T11:26:00.004-05:00

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” T. S. Eliot

Drifting (above) by featured artist and fellow mad one, Joseph A. Garrison, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see more fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you will GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we started with a good look after ideal-driven tonsorial transitory self-tweaks; we were born along for a fragrant fraction of time in an angel's slipstream; we fact-checked our hunting dog sense of world and self; we languored in listless lethargy, avoiding the sharpness of life for the softness of dreams; we cooled our brows in a grandmother mist and stepped out our legacy for animals and objects to read when we're gone; we dodged a drench and stymied a stench to partake in the pleasures of a well-earned hand-job; lastly, we pondered the proprieties of the celestial freeway, where getting there first justifies all the jostles and jabs we take at our fellow speeders through space. We went from a moon-like head to a head-trip moon - what a week!

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

The First One into Space is Often the Last to Say Please

Addition and subtraction
could never prepare me for the ovens
of the world.

Black and white
is how Bogart picked up girls
with screenwriters' lines
piano side,

while Elvis swivelled his Graceland hips
and Eisenhower spied on the Russians.

The first one into space
is often the last to say:

please.

Ever since kindergarten
I've been trying for maternity leave.

- Ryan Quinn Flanagan

(2 poems added 08.06.11)

editor's note: The race to space ran a course devoid of propriety, there was excessive celebrating in the endzone of the Sea of Tranquility - penalties were assigned. They brought back rocks and trophies - winners don't have to say "please". (Another crazy one from Ryan on his page - check it out.) - mh

Escaping Disgrace

Sub sequential prize derives from a condoned fricative dive.
Futile to the newborn smile, derived an angle from
the pre tense marine drench now risen immense.
Placate the inquisitive stench with a squint of horizon
bliss enjoyment from the crisp of the sunset dip.
Astound on teams of impeding please, amplified to the branch of placid physique.
Never lose the fear of heights, that sight inspires might,
build that fright a ladder and climb past demise.
Eclipse the ever expensive debt and brevity will take shine reciprocating dispensed sighs.
Like an oriental massage, make pleasure the job.

- Avery Zaduk

(added 08.05.11)

editor's note: Yes! No disgrace in that; reciprocated sighs, ladders climbed out of fright - sounds like pleasure to me! - mh

FOOTSTEPS

It was a beautiful rain,
like grandmother fingers
massaging my face.

The mist was a gentle language;
liquid words from a gray heaven of
tumbling clouds.

My footsteps lay marked on the lawn,
a message of my passing
to a stone wall and the field
beyond.

- Roger G. Singer

(1 poem added 08.04.11)

editor's note: Hmmmm, makes one wonder, is the message of our passing understood in the way we mean it? - mh

Opium Dreams

everybody looks so strange underwater
lukewarm skin to scratch off in silence
sweat & smile—i raise my creature head
& light a cigarette, waking from the dream

i lost my mind in streams of nausea
found the truth on rotten streets
(alleycat—where are you going tonight?
looking for love)

sad eternity in a glass skull
i can't move my mouth to communicate

same as me,

right now i feel—holy & dumb
trying to find a beast in the abyss

you shined a light in my face
i laughed—sick & confused
i can't leave my plastic womb
the other side hurts my eyes

i'm picking up pieces of my personality
my heart breaks every day when i wake up
i can't stand this world of knives
i'd rather take drugs & stay at home

- Ray Barklow

(added 08.03.11)

editor's note: Knives everywhere, sharp and slicing, the slit of the eye, the slash of the mouth. Yes, better to dream than to chance the cutting of knives. - mh

THE UNWINDING

Hedgehogs have changed little
over the last 15 million years.
We could drink to that.
A balloon can rise
at the rate of 1,000 meters
every ten minutes if filled
with sufficient hydrogen.
That must be accurate,
considering sufficiency
is as open as air, being
nothing specific such as
the sidewinder is native
to no Northern habitat.
Some facts are wild boars found
in pine forests, others akin
to plumage of a partridge brought
down by pellets and carried
between the teeth of a spaniel
to the hunter at the edge of daylight.

- William Page

(1 poem added 08.02.11)

editor's note: Some facts don't tally to any corporate bottom line, but in the corporeal tally, at the "edge of daylight", the facts outnumber our faculties to comprehend them all. (William Page joins our congress of Contributing Poets with this submission - check out his new page!) - mh

IN THE AIR, AS YOU WERE WALKING BY

Eloquently exiting fragrances fill~
The displacement of your surrounding air;
These full flavors swim by my will~
Dancing in the heart of chaos with care…

Memories made of this momentary space~
Become a spice within the perfect sort;
Entwined with a ribbon of Angel’s lace~
And invisible flights of passion, too short.

- Michael R. King

(1 poem added 08.01.11)

editor's note: Too short, indeed! Go on, lean in, take a big whiff - can't put a smell that good in a bottle. Gotta sniff it while you can! - mh

Unnatural disasters

Last time I shaved my head, it was to protest
a war, hacking the waist-length mane
in a display no politician would see.

In Binghamton and Albany, I was buzzed
most of the time; never let it grow
long enough to sacrifice.

I’ll likely lop off the locks
inching down my back to clothe
some terminal kid’s naked head or
soak up spilled oil; to sell if I get laid off.

Another year, it might be chemo
that bares my scalp. At least I know
I look good bald, with my shapely skull.

- Sari Krosinsky

(added 07.31.11)

editor's note: Through thick or thin, it pays to know how you'll see and how you'll look. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Explorin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl : 07.30.11

2011-07-30T08:45:00.006-05:00

“To be an artist is to believe in life.” Henry Moore

The Mad Gallery

This week we are featuring my close friend, mentor, mad artist and soon to be expatriate Jon Marquette. This painting, Emerald Shoreline, proudly hangs in my living room after Jon presented it to me after our last mad-minded meeting before he and his family depart to Hungary. It seems apropos to give him this space not only because he helped shaped Mad Swirl by just being his mad self but also because his body of work is amazing. - jo

•••••••••••

Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... was complicated! First it we got a warm slap from a cold snap, veiled in metaphor; then we got some beat treat birdsong lion purr rhythm at dawn; then there were blue funk jazz master missionary Bird Monk Mingus ministrations; and then another music muse this time strumming and fretting 'til bodies were humming and... ; then there was a close-up snap-shot kick-back smile and sigh Kodak moment; and then, and then... then there was an aborted math lesson literary genius exorcism and tongue talkin' tango. I'm tired and wired - yes, it's complicated.

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

0s and Fs

“The tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak.”
Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa)

Born to speak, I rehearsed words,
but mathematic calculations:
Tapping on fabricated calculators:
Unraveling universal mechanics,
got me poor marks, 0s and red Fs:

Miscalculations lamentations, and
parents pitied my brain, they prayed
for God to open my mind—for God
so loves the lazy children
not mindful of work ethic—

but no ethics were brought into this,
the brain was God’s business.
I was damned by the dictionary, the good book—
After the second report card, failure reaffirmed,
I was off to the third revival of the week.

Hands were laid upon my un-mathematical head.
Moving mouths, born with tongues, obtained language,
rambled God’s speech, exhalations in tongues:
Unintelligible words, incoherent invocations.
Tenebrous unspellable words, just 0s and red Fs.

- Tyler Malone

(2 poems added 07.30.11)

editor's note: Jesus could fill an empty basket with bread, so it's told. But ain't no one 'round these parts can fill an empty head with brains, or empty a brain full of words - 0s and Fs, indeed. Can I get a witness? (Another one, 'bout a chicken dinner, on Tyler's page - check it out!) - mh

Photograph (One)

no weep in my eye
just a sense of contemplative calm
which is promising
A near newness
Another
Closer
Sigh audible
A regained recognition of energy.
And the more contemplative I become
the more you appear to relax and to smile
(correcting my vision)
when I lean in closer to study the flowers
on your frock

- A. Swimmer

(1 poem added 07.29.11)

editor's note: A closer look is always better than tense introspection. Take a breath, exhale, squeeeeeeeze the shutter! - mh

Ode to My Guitar

Orgasms should be this pure. Your
soft maple neck, holding the same

fingers that hold you. The way light
shimmers off your glittering body

when I swing you in my arms. My
digits slide up and down your

strings, stopping at frets only long
enough to make you sing or scream.

- William Wright Harris

(added 07.28.11)

editor's note: No worry, no fret - well, frets. Frets and singing and seductive melodic screams. Yes! - mh

Blue Muse

Monk you refused to become background noise in some tin ear
Fuck peaceful tinkering you growled while your ivory’s screamed
Take me to that place where Bird flies red
Monk anoints us and Mingus grabs you and won't let go
Take me to the trinity of jazz and bless
until the blues is released

- Gayle Bell

(2 poems added 07.27.11)

editor's note: When musicians and poets get the blues, they make the rest of us smile. Their suffering is our sweet bliss, we encourage them cruelly. It's their own fault! (More blues, enough to make you happy, on Gayle's page - check it out!) - mh

Wild beats

Slide guitars ring out at dawn, along with larks that sit on a lonely branch and provide the harmonium's vocal.

Slide guitars ring out at dawn!
Slide guitars ring out at dawn!
Slide guitars ring out at dawn!

African drums vibrate at dusk, as does the loud purring of lions after eating a springbok.

African drums vibrate at dusk!
African drums vibrate at dusk!
African drums vibrate at dusk!

- Luke Ritta

(1 poem added 07.26.11)

editor's note: Yes, we heard that beat, starting down in far-off Africa, welling up from our pithecanthropus hearts - like daddy, like child! (Welcome Luke Ritta to our cacophonous... yet, cohesive... congress of Contributing Poets! See his poems on his new page.) - mh

Voice of Everest

Sky shudders over my head
Ice forms in my skull
Stampeding over, they keep record
Either it’s a thunder near
Or it's the lightening in front
Deaf my ears and eyes blind.

My voice is lost in search of ears
Had I the articulation loud
Deaf you may not have remained
Day by day I am going naked
My clothes are removed
For the ice is melting
Neither snow of Alaska nor the Arctic cold
Can recover my skin.

Where are the ears to the cry of sickness?
Where are the nurse and doctors?
My wounds are arctic ice
Every crack is burning with pain
Who will stitch and treat them
Am I semi conscious or lunatic half?
For I cannot feel the pain
deceiving devotion you cannot deceive the truth
I am only child curious, getting to be known
How it makes the difference
In choosing the less chosen
On which highway of the words I walk.
I am still not heard.

- Hem Raj Bastola

(1 poem added 07.25.11)

editor's note: This poet's words are the best comment: "I have written this poem concerning the issue of global warming how the weather is affecting the high mountains where the snow is melting and less snow is seen at mount everest. relating this pain of nature I am relating the pain of my own condition of a poet metaphorically." Well, said Hem Raj! - mh

•••••••••••

Need a Read?

Check out the latest addition to our short stories collection, "The Polygamist in Me" by Tracie Skarbo. Here's a taste to whet your whistle... “I wonder how much time I will have to write, free of the others droning on about how much time I spend without them. How much of my time has been taken from them to serve my fingers and thoughts with no regard for their feelings and desires? This is the constant bicker of the three spouses that I could do without." Get the rest of your read on here.

•••••••••••

Mad Swirl Open Mic

“A lot of people thought this dream must be madness, but we are not crazy.” Gloria Trevi

We don't think Gloria has ever been to Mad Swirl's Open Mic! Wanna get crazy? Wanna go mad with us? Well then let's go!

Join Mad Swirl on 08.03.11 when we will continue doing the open mic voodoo that what we do do! Hosts Johnny O & MH Clay, along with the musically magical trio Swirve and the usual unusual mad suspects, will do our darndest to both blow and open your minds. We will be callin' all you mystically mad poets, musicians, dancers, actors, singers, performers & any other miscellaneous mad ones in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to come & strut your mad stuff!

Where's this madness take place? Absinthe Lounge is at 1409 South Lamar Street, Dallas, TX 75215 (located in the SouthSide on Lamar building)

And please, by all means, FEEL FREE TO SPREAD THE WORD!

fo'mo'info' visit www.MadSwirl.com

•••••••••••

Well there you have it folks! You know what? 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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Believin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Gordon Hilgers
Short Story Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 07.24.11

2011-07-24T18:09:00.002-05:00

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Ernest Hemingway

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we donned our rose-colored perspectives to dull our reactions to a death-defying feat; we hailed Caesar but held our course, blueberry delights trump all other allegiences; we pondered a fruitcake allegory, pilgrim's progress toward a popsicle present; we made no apologies for no obeisance, life is what life does; we, with sins absolved, bounced brightly back into the butter, honey-crazed bees we are; we coveted the covering of conscience-couture to hide our vivid (to us only) vulnerabilities; then, though exhausted from so much self-indulgence, we delved deeper, into dead-and-gone introspectives - for grief and regret are ever the affliction of the living. Poetry as life? Damn poets! They would have us believe life is poetry.

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

•••••••••••

A Sense of Abandonment

You were cheerful in the downward spiral I knew nothing about
Because you were cheerful I didn’t guess that’s where you were at, spiralling
You’d laugh now if I told you I didn’t know you were heading towards the bottom
You’d laugh now, but that’s where you got, the groundswell pulling you deep
The drain of oblivion calling as you decided on the ultimate down-sizing
Your forward momentum charged by negative ions, you were polarised
A rider-less skateboard shooting down the ramp
To hurl yourself far away from heartbreak, a sense of abandonment
Letting go and chucking it all in, at last

You flirted with the nurses when you woke up, temporarily
Dead man flirting, when I heard this I knew it was the end
I’ll add you to the list I suppose
With Hunter ST and David FW
Not bad company I guess
By failing on purpose you beat anyone who wanted you to fail

These dreams of dead friends
Wake me up at night
Late at night, dreams of the dead awakening
I’m talking to you my dead friend
And the lights in the auditorium flicker

- Charles Pitter

(2 poems added 07.24.11)

editor's note: Sad the loss of friends who bail; mad our inner brain travail: Who abondoned whom? (see another good one from Charles on his page - it's a "Delight.") - mh

•••••••••••

Naked

My body is not perfect,
It has never been,
Time does not help either.
Still, I'm not bothered
When you see me naked.
Perfect or not,
I'm not ashamed.

It's different with my poems.
Some of them I share with you -
Those where my pain
Is nicely combed,
My soul is covered with
Many layers of wrappings
Glued together by resin of laughter,
Placed into a painted
Sarcophagus of rhyme.

Other poems though,
Where my pain is
Unkempt and disheveled,
My soul is naked,
With ugly bulges of sorrow protruding
Beneath the worn out rags of illusions,

I may show them to somebody else,

Not to you, I don't want you to see them.

- Irena Pasvinter

(2 poems added 07.22.11)

editor's note: In Utopia, prospective mates are allowed a perusal of each other's nakedness before they seal the deal; no like, no deal. In Poesia, many poets are single... (Another great poem from Irena on her page, about records management, check it out.) - mh

•••••••••••

Copyeditor’s Dream

Earlier than ever this morning I wait
for copy to vacuum. It must be free of error
and the deadline is near.
But what matters today isn’t news about war,
poverty or race riots ripping the city.
What matters today is the warm quicksand
of that good woman under me again,
taking me in. Let her writhe,
let her tug at her knees, let her legs go off
in every direction. Let her take what I have
and lunge for more. I’ll be here forever,
a bee crazed by the honey
buttering her thighs.

- Donal Mahoney

(added 07.21.11)

editor's note: When it's time to get down to business, there's no better example than the instinctive industriousness of bees. Let's get to buzzin', folks! - mh

•••••••••••

Prufrock Redux

I am old
Prufrockian old
(I am told)
My toes are cold
Teeth filled with gold
I cannot hold
A fork.

I am old
A very old
Cuckold

(Not bold
I am told)
There is mold
In the rolled
Fold
Of my cuffs.

Don’t scold
I am too old.

- Neil Ellman

(added 07.20.11)

editor's note: Keep yer admonitions to yerselves, youngsters! After so many years, "no excuse" is the best we can offer. - mh

•••••••••••

Popsicle Aquifer

Wipe the saliva off the sky.
My forehead desires it.
I am sweating in a coffin
Sweet as a lyre.
This decadent polyester balloon candy
Entices me.
Automatic sugar,
Diabetes moonbeam
Slash eulogy seduces me,
Slipping off like stockings
Silky as an ear drum
Beating itself alone
To pulp in a seashell.
I will find my demise
In a basket of grapes,
Plums, pears & bananas.
Prepare the marmalade.
Men, I am here,
Distended as fruit cake,
Peanut butter.

- Quinten Collier

(1 poem added 07.19.11)

editor's note: Ultimately, life is a good lickin'... for someone... or something. - mh

•••••••••••

Under The Black Roof #3

On the path to your body
I walked.

All along the way
blueberries were singing
this old psalm known from all :
moritari te salutant...

- Walter Ruhlmann

(added 07.18.11)

editor's note: Yes, we who are about to die - with anticipation over your sweet succulent surprise; with terror over the thought that one time, down the line, will be the last - salute you. - mh

•••••••••••

WORRIES ME

Up there,
The acrobat who always keeps
His balance on the wire;
The pirouette, the dancing feet,
A secret glance towards the ground.
An earth that looks so soft, so far below:
The sweetness of a kiss, a gentle touch
Of sawdust in the spine.
The restfulness of sleep
Is all he needs.

And now,
The audience applauds and children squeal,
Their ice-creams held... and lovers feel,
Hands interwoven in a secret dark
Outside the spotlight beam.
They cannot sense his tired mind,
A body sick of perfect pace.

The peace,
The earth that looks so soft,
The sweetness of a kiss,
It only needs one step, one miss.
His final trick: he gathers in a ball
Above their heads. A triple somersault,
So easily it’s done.

Screams that fill his ears
Are music in a dream.
His mind so still
Like earth;
The acrobat, no longer

Worries me.

- Derrick Gaskin

(added 07.17.11)

editor's note: A death-defying feat, indeed. We watch with morbid fascination and sigh relief when the performance is perfectly completed; just as we hope to delight the divine audience, watching our own tightrope walk through life. Hmmmm... I recommend a net. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Bleedin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 07.16.11

2011-07-16T08:03:00.003-05:00

“Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.” Andy Warhol

A Poem In Red (above) by featured artist and fellow mad one, Rob Tokarz, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see more fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you will GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we started with the search for meaning by taking out the garbage, a clean slate for the week; we considered the stars, increased our meaningful perspective, and strained for hope in the light; we enjoyed a brief time-out on the heavenly bus; we tweaked our perspectives inward, weighed the difference twixt a song and a smile; we progressed to the cycles of fortune, reincarnation could be pay-up or pay-out; we let karma sit on the porch while we smoked one and considered our options; then we wound up our seven-day slide with a bit o' caveman logic, the base instincts are best... sometimes.

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

•••••••••••

Caveman's Complaint

Since I have to hunt
and gather
I would rather
know now
what you
bring to the bedrock
besides your
propensity
to perpetuate
the species
read my lips
or the symbols
I have drawn
on the granite
I really need
us to rub twigs
and create fire
just about
now
or I am
going to
invent the wheel
and roll on
out of here

- Ivan Jenson

(2 poems added 07.16.11)

editor's note: Here is the quintessential pick-line! Even Neanderthals got straight to the point. Perhaps the male libido was genetically infected with Cro-Magnon proclivities from the start. Yes, ladies, we hear your resounding, "Ya think? Sunny Boy?" (Another great proposition from Ivan on his page, plus info on a new book - check it out!) - mh

•••••••••••

OUTSIDE IN

outside in
the pouring rain
can't light
a cigarette
don't guess that i'll
admit
the girl just yet
perhaps i should
just leave her there
to die
i am sure
that she'll be fine
And the morning comes
it always does
it always has
and the sun will rise
it always does
it always has
and the way we were
on the day before
we began to lie
just a reflection
in a tiny little tear drop
rolling
slowly
to
my
ear.

- Jesse Doughty

(1 poem added 07.15.11)

editor's note: Shhhh, listen... hear the whispered splash; get out a towel and your lighter. Open the door. - mh

•••••••••••

Too many times

sign says ANY KINDNESS
cardboard calling
good morning
like this concussion—
I’ve just come around
the corner
of my ninth life
time’s up
I’m pretty sure
or I’ll be pretty sure
next time.
yeah. I’ve just
wheeled around the edge
steeled for the fall
by a few too many glasses
I’ll catch this next time
pull myself up
clutching the same sign—
ANY KINDNESS
and wishing I could take it back
last time.

- Genevieve Jenkins

(1 poem added 07.14.11)

editor's note: We all see the sign, held by an empty (to us) soul, looking for our help. We can decide which side of the sign we want to be; or maybe Karma will work it out for us... (We welcome Genevieve to our crazy conclave of Contributing Poets with this, her third work to post to the Forum. Check out her new page!) - mh

•••••••••••

dr. n

The relationship
between musicians and
writers
is like this:

You're Pet Sounds.
Complex without ever being
uninviting, even
kid friendly on
the rare wednesdays

you find your
mailbox

empty.
The disclaimer said to
keep it legal.

It was referring to
the sketch, above the mailbox, of you
holding a water gun, I assume, to
the writer who slipped in a
copy of
SMiLE.
An album for people who
don't believe
in albums.

It was referring to
the writers, those SMiLE fans,
parking in droves behind the
music hall. all four corners of their
windshield--
covered in tickets, all of the pages
in their notebooks
covered in ideas
for arias--

He should've been a scientist.
he should've played french horn.

I do not have
a teenage symphony.
I do not own a copy of
SMiLE. I never understood
the Beach Boys.
Not on June 12.
Not in June.

I do not have the whispers of

my writer friends
on record, nor do I want them.
You are not a scientist.
You are not an opera.

You are a scholar in the summer,
when there are no scholars,
warm, welcoming, begging
for five hours of my attention
when all I have is a
quarter.

- Amanda Harris

(added 07.13.11)

editor's note: Composition or contrivance, considered and confounding. Two bits says, we don't have to understand neither the writer nor the musician; all we need know is what makes us SMiLE. - mh

•••••••••••

ASKING HEAVEN FOR A TRANSFER TO THE IN-BETWEEN PLACE

so I have to wonder if this condition
is abnormal if some person puts
labor in place of love in the same way
a sexless worker bee puts buzz
ahead of lust the flood of the rose
walking down my center takes over
my medulla rushes in past all my
defenses and shakes me to the spine
I forget that my where am I is right
here and I cannot believe the only
thing which remains is pure necessity
and I collect the scattered pieces
of my shattered blessings all the while
asking heaven for a transfer to
the in-between place so’s I can have
some time to catch my breath

- satnrose

(2 poems added 07.12.11)

editor's note: We can all use a breather from our condition, a heavenly transfer. Of course, that requires the bus to stop so's we can get off. (Another great ponderance from satnrose on his page - check it out!) - mh

•••••••••••

Tyndall Effect

That Brownian Motion which has super-sized particles
Triggers exhibition of earth's passive resistance
Traces of mobility scrape the land and where
Membranes manufacture propane and butane
Making sure Krakatoa falls behind

Where blood dripped from carbon-dated skeletons
In which it labeled Mozart's Historical Death
Of being impish and awry doesn't
Mean this soul sees no music

It has resonating eye movement under
Regeneration stages of Milky Way Galaxy
Curdling suds of evolutionary tides
Decomposing sediments of calcium carbonates
From a perfectionist to whiten these blemishes

Stripes and circles of armaments with mist ripples
Across the ocean she wades through
Intermixed dates and cosmic structure
Bleached with titanium oxide suffocate
Nostrils of humans getting only very
Minimal hope from that ray of light

- Sarah Gamutan

(added 07.11.11)

editor's note: This proves that random molecular constructs may refract visible light, but will not show us the soul of God. He may have created this saturated solution, teetering upon crystallization; but it's up to us to create the hope that such will be a good thing. - mh

•••••••••••

Back From a Jog

It’s spiritual out my window.
Time to think of the universe
and how we are but hackey sacks
at the cosmic Bonnaroo concert.
So small, so meaningless, so many,
kicked around for no reason
but the entertainment of our high Gods.

Sweat drips from my nose
to the wooden floor
where hundreds of ants crawl
over the peel of my grapefruit.
I scoop it up and toss it,
ants and all,
into the garbage.

- Alex L. Swartzentruber

(2 poems added 07.10.11)

editor's note: Einstein said God doesn't play dice with the universe. We disagree! Apparently, God just didn't play with Einstein, but we've seen him play with us. (Another one on home economics on Alex's page - check it out.) - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Seein' It,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 07.09.11

2011-07-09T07:25:00.003-05:00

“What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow.” Jack Kerouac

Vengeance City (above) by featured artist and fellow mad one, Adam Yeater, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see more fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you will GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we started with a little hide-and-seek, but only lost ourselves; we sat in darkness to sprout daylight from our own ideas; we joined a picnic with ants on crumbs, then ants on tongues; we gagged a bit on broken glass from the paltry fare of alien governance; we tried to eat still more, last runts in the run, starving while the big rats gorged; we indulged other appetites, him for her, her for freedom; all to end in full turnabout - we the food, love the feaster.

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

•••••••••••

THE REAL THING

How come you’re so ominous and large?
What made you grow so suddenly?
And why are the voices, your voice,
most of the touch
where you plant your hands?
What made you dusk and sunrise,
everything in the mirror almost,
over half the footsteps and
the movement in this house?
Where did your threat come from,
the very harshness of your thunder?
Why am I dressed your way,
groomed your way?
Why do I feel like
the small farm
encircled by the huge dam?
You can burst at will
to drown me.
Yes, love sounds so sophisticated
when sugaring the tongue.
But what made you all tongue?
What left me all sugar?

- John Grey

(1 poem added 07.09.11)

editor's note: Now here's a bit o' bondage that comes without remorse or recapitulation. We all seek such sweet shackles. - mh

•••••••••••

Bondage

While he shackles her with the beautiful diamond ring...
All she really wants are a pair of plain white wings.

He builds her a house at the cape...
Frantic, she searches for a window of escape.

As his love for her grows stronger...
Her soul struggles to fly yonder.

He pulls her in sweet embrace...
While she dreams of open space.

To the music of the wild, her heart craves to dance...
But she is stifled under his adoring glance.

He indebts her with his fetters of affection...
Defeated, she finally submits in exhaustion.

- Saheli Khastagir

(added 07.08.11)

editor's note: Hmmm. To be the object of someone else's affection can be bondage, indeed. Must have signed away true love in the pre-nup. "Look before you leap." - mh

•••••••••••

PRAYER AT THE OPENING

Flies swarm the opening to the crawl space. Inside, across the dirt, all dead, save myself, we sprawl. Maggots, wriggling their black magic, blanket the greediest eaters, the bloated kingpins who first hemorrhaged.

I, the runt, ate last. Am the longest to last. The meek shall inherit the valediction.

To die like this in the midst of rich new food...

Blood leaks internally. I retch, knowing a thirst no water on earth can slake...

Did we make too much noise? Too many babies? Neglect to hail the luck that brought us to this heaven turned holocaust?

If (as I suspect) the last: For this twist, on the altar of our drought, let rodent awe ooze.

Flies swarm the opening.

- Willie Smith

(1 poem added 07.07.11)

editor's note: Another ray o' sunshine from our poet friend, Willie. Just think, when the maggots are done, we'll all have perpetual smiles to greet eternity. - mh

•••••••••••

A Glossy Coat of Guarantees

A glossy coat of guarantees
Provides no permanent home
For perky political causality.
Affairs of state could improve situations,
Would natural silliness cease, perhaps,
To elate hurt like shepherds castrating sheep.
There’s enough gold in these hills for all such fools,
Without their resorting to caustic rhetoric.

Eating broken glass, from time to time,
Sprouts troubles reserved for the likes of axolotls,
Tuataras, and giant salamanders, which, when
Imprisoned in zoological gardens, look
Longingly toward the tree tops, where
Their reptilian eyes alight on habitats occupied
By guans, hammerkops, and whale-headed storks,
Prevented from trafficking with sun or clouds.

Communal affairs would need no handling.
If congregants took care of “the wet stuff;”
Our imagined mansions, jobs, and food bills
Could shrink toward the horizon line,
Restricted, for satisfying durations,
Like so many artists’ wares piled up at the shuk.
Yet, our public managers elect to transverse clear lines.
We remain governed by alien intentions.

- KJ Hannah Greenberg

(1 poem added 07.06.11)

editor's note: After the celebration and the sunburn and the picnic and the ants... comes the real craw-sticker and reason for our moral indigestion. - mh

•••••••••••

IBIZAN RAPTURES

We can sit and look
At the excavated terra
Under this blisterful sun
Halfway on a dry pined terrace
Whilst the cicadas engines overrun
We will be bitten
By tiny predators
And again submerge stinging skin
One evening in the middle of July
Before a new moon comes
Ants appear
Hundreds fly and die dimpling
The surface of the warm pool
We cannot swim for fear of mouthfuls
Hundreds more lose their queen
And divested of wings
Busy themselves amongst crumbs
Under the alfresco table
Where the lizards roam
On a feast day
They dally in the glow
Not scared by feet for once
But reaping slowly with silent tongues

- Anthony Murphy

(1 poem added 07.05.11)

editor's note: After the celebration and the sunburn, come the ants, while lizards lie in wait for the sequel. Ah, the great outdoors! - mh

•••••••••••

Until Dawn Sinks

I. Wait; coffees - no disruption
Similar, Sunday - almost aware

Black, still grave
Eye sand - smoke, she-think

Hate, staircase in a flat
Aware, bats flit

Fast, early bird online
Available - no response.

II. As the kernel phase pays over the higher salaries of my TV sister, the kernel phase of today’s contract to build a seven-level living museum for students, tourists, feminists, most anyone educated in education, the first book lights one entry beyond the last, and, as dusk slips into sleep, by the twilight of my monitor, resolve to base another sunk dawn upon one paragraph remains.

- Sander Blome

(1 poem added 07.04.11)

editor's note: Hail to all erstwhile patriots! Here's the day we celebrate with fireworks, little sprouts in the sky. While herein records a countryman of his singular patriotic duty, to start each day in darkness, work through dawn his kernel phase to sprout a day's work, a day's idea. - mh

•••••••••••

Places

I am hiding
can you see me
walking to the dances
where singers rejoice
lovers unite
preachers pointing fingers
to the heavens and hells
rings of glory, rings of fire
predicting the end
to everyone
but them?

I see you hidden
between the cold sheets covered
with her perfume, cheap, like the woman
who wears you around her waist,
bumping in rhythm
on the market streets
sellers of all that glitters
for lovers and losers.

I tried to write a song
but my fingers bled
black and blue thinking of you
until I asked him to write it for me
as I caressed his shoulders strong
torso muscled, eyes focused
on the prize hidden in between
the Crack Jacks remains
of sticky, stubby caramel corns and rancid peanuts.

Eyes closed, I twirled my index
finger until it hit the village on the border state
Thomas Brothers promised
with mountains taller and valleys lower
than you.

With four to the floor,
I'm motoring around the bends
up the winding roads,
a new place
to hide
but only from myself
and never, ever
from you.

- Joseph D. DiLella

(1 poem added 07.03.11)

editor's note: We all peruse the map of life, looking for a spot marked with an "X", looking for the message "You are Here!" We all want to disappear sometimes. But, we just can't hide from ourselves. - mh

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Thumbin' a ride,

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum : 07.02.11

2011-07-02T07:43:00.006-05:00

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” Marcus Aurelius

Dream City (above) by featured artist and fellow mad one, Adam Yeater, one of over 20 artists currently coloring the virtual walls in Mad Swirl's eclectic electronic collective Mad Gallery. We know you'll wanna see more fo' sho' so move that mad mouse of yo's right over here and a-way you will GO!

•••••••••••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we were prescribed pachyderm protection for our weekly jaunt through dreamland; visited the old neighborhood for elbows-on-sill assurance that all is as it was/will be; reviewed the repercussions of rat-on-cat reverse psychology; turned our attentions to elevations of love on lake-borne windy whisperings; viewed a vulnerable lovelorn evisceration; recapped the reason-lapsed results of "leap first, love later"; then layed us down to rest in good company to the fifth degree. Delightful!

Just in case you missed it, here's a taste...

•••••••••••

Final Departure

(This poem is inspired from James Joyce book, "a portrait of the artist as a young man")

The God is my name,
Nepal is my nation.
Chitwan is my dwelling place
And heaven my expectation.

They crucified him for valid claim,
and, before my final departure, here is my wish,

Dingdong! The bell!

Farewell, my dearest ones,
Wherever, you entail,

I know you will burn me,
but bury me,
in some graveyard of our garden,
beside my great-great-grandfather.

My coffin shall be blue,
Five angels at my back,
Two to sing and pray
and, two to carry my soul far away.

- Santosh Kalwar

(1 poem added 07.02.11)

editor's note: Dingdong, indeed! And, how 'bout that fifth? What to do, but crack it open and pour over ice. Start the eternal leg in style and good company. - mh

•••••••••••

NEVER THE END TO BECOME

The first time I saw you in your overalls
your hair flowing, curling towards the end
trying to hold hands
turquoise eyes pale lips and a crooked nose
me with my pock marks, hazel eyes and tar stained teeth
bonded by peculiarities
two peas in the misfit conditioning
a paranoid and a bimbo like you once said
and if I were blue and you were yellow we would make green

Driving through Prescott
a picture of your son who you abandoned
brought you almost to tears
I also learned you had beaten up your mother
reasons for love are never absolute
Never the end to become

- Bob Eager

(added 07.01.11)

editor's note: Life is too short; it's hard to see the end of anything, much less love. We'll take what comes and hope for the best. - mh

•••••••••••

Visceral

Solitary,
Waking to silence
The hollow bitterness
Of alone.

Sexualized,
Under-appreciated and used.
What a pretty smile,
You hide behind.

Fragmented,
Pulled and pulling,
“Where do I belong?”
Not here.

- Renee Garafola

(added 06.30.11)

editor's note: Not here, but where? Feels good, but badly. Full of angst, but empty. That's love disguised as true - deep down we feel something, but it's not good. - mh

•••••••••••

Lake Love

On the rhythmic chest

a whisper rolls

quiet, untraceable.

Is it me or the wind
making an illegal love?

- Arun Budhathoki

(1 poem added 06.29.11)

editor's note: When it comes to Love, puncture those water-wings and let yourself sink - deep. Hope it's the wind.(Oh, and BTW... click right here to get yourself a copy of Arun's new book, "Edge") - mh

•••••••••••

Imposing intelligence

I use double psychology on my cat,
acting as if I am locking her out
so she will dart in.
She cannot miss my line
of dead rats on the porch.

- Timothy Pilgrim

(added 06.28.11)

editor's note: Such psychology is not reserved for our pets only. Every one of us has a dead rat feast we can't resist. Get in line... - mh

•••••••••••

The Old Neighborhood, Without Association

1.
When we arrive, two pigeons.

She filters the grass for food
the thick-necked male pressing his breast and cooing.
The robin, startled by the clap of car door,
lifts and lands on the fence post,
drops a white stroke of waste
to the upturned palms
of fern and soil.

2.
Early morning, a night crawler drowns.
The garter snake slithering through smooth rock
eats small things, is free of venom, nips his own tail.
The robin, holed up in a tree somewhere,
just south of Springfield
expands his redness, releases
a song he has been practicing all winter.

Every neighbor child on their elbows at the sill.

3.
The crack and flash of rain
testing the resolve of Spring stems & petals.
She said, from beneath the eave,
I didn’t think mother robins had red.
But look how fat she is! And he is
protecting them, I think (the eggs
born blue).

Her white haired husband ratchets
pipes at the joint. Weeping
robin, song sodden & wetting the soil,
remembers the first time
he felt rain.

- Jim Davis

(added 06.27.11)

editor's note: The daily transactions of every neighborhood are the same. We humans are the constant in these - flora and fauna vary. - mh

•••••••••••

Magic Beneath My Pillow

Lost in a dark dreamscape
amidst an evil storm
doors slamming shut
Wailing and tearful laments
Dad and Mom raging at each other.

I reached beneath my pillow
and clutched a small
marble elephant.

My Guardian Spirit, My Elephant
Totem warrior rose up within my dream
and moved to protect me from my foes.
Up on her hind quarters
swinging tusks high in the air
Stomping and shaking the earth
bellowing out a loud continuous voice.

Calling forth kindred spirits
from the four corners
heaven’s foot soldiers.

Seven tall spirits of royalty
Dressed all in purple
mounted the hilltop
Calling down a storm
on all my enemies
Pounding a sonic wave
that crushed their ear drums.

Then my elephant warrior
my soul’s true protector
Stood tall against all my errant
thoughts and discordant emotions
and claimed victory as I watched
Evil coil back into its shadows
yielding to the advancing
Armies of God's Angels.

Then a restful sleep
finally came to me
As I listened to
distant Tibetan monks
chanting and singing
along with
their triumphant
bells and horns
Love's healing stream
of GRACE.

- Claude Barrett

(1 poem added 06.26.11)

editor's note: The smallest things keep us safe from the biggest threats, or so we hope as we hide in the dark with our hands in prayer position under the cool side of a pillow—a knuckle’s worth of faith can keep any malevolence, as well as any entity with nothing but enmity, at bay. When all seems hopeless, and you turn to the human imagination, you might just find how endless reverie can be—you may just find the magic beneath your pillow. - tm

•••••••••••

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 poetic conversations going on in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Technicolor Thinkin',

Johnny O
Editor-in-chief

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

•••••••••••

“If no one ever did anything silly, nothing intelligent would ever be done.” ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Are you ready to get your silly on? We sure are. It's been TOO dang long since we did and we are overdue! And if it begets something intelligent too... well then whoo-hoo!

On 07.06.11, starting at 8:00-ish, Mad Swirl will continue doing the open mic voodoo that what we do do! Join host Johnny O and co-host MH Clay, along with the musically magical trio Swirve and the usual unusual mad suspects as we do our darndest to both blow and open your minds. We will be callin' all you mystically mad poets, musicians, dancers, actors, singers, performers & any other miscellaneous mad ones in the Dallas/Fort Worth area to come & strut your mad stuff!

If you're interested in rage, raging against the dying of the light then show up the night of and get on the list!

Where's this madness take place? Absinthe Lounge is at 1409 South Lamar Street, Dallas, TX 75215 (located in the SouthSide on Lamar building)

And please, by all means, FEEL FREE TO SPREAD THE WORD!

fo'mo'info' visit www.MadSwirl.com

Mad Swirl Open Mic: It's THE place to be on the first Wednesday of the month!