poems by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

A Question of Durability

 1)
The durability of red origami sailboats, lit paper folded by my grandfather’s
War-pitted hands – hands I scarcely remember, though I recall the water

Licking my sunburnt elbows. The sun was already going down, swiftly
Down, the green shadows faltering in order to gather me into their nave.
& although I could have asked the passage it seemed, to me then, I was

Already lost to the compass. As you are lost, my friend, who visits then
Vanishes then visits again, as the dead come to visit the grave: I ask you,

2)
Bear the mirror before your face, so my reflection might perish & you
Will visit no more. Yet here you are, again, manhood swimming in light

Glancing off skins of pears: what could be more wondrous than this?
You & I, we have come from the place to which we are going: the here-
After, be it heaven or hell. The priest loans us flowers…True, the instant

Is more invincible than the flung utterance, the pit of which manifests
Indecency, the denuded red grooves of the inward yield. & we fall, to

3)
Fall again, this time grotesquely. To fail better, as Beckett said. & I am
But a poor carnival barker where everything seems, seems…Even they

Who are dressed to kill, even murder itself, the knife blade plunging
In & out of the ribcage where wings beat, as a circle of watchers laugh,
Beer at hand…Seeming, yes, more durable than the red sailboat, than

The grandfather’s hands, the crush of time’s folds & unfoldings. Rely
Rather on the drug deal around the next ride, children observing…

Staying up all Night

1)
on the path to the Yukon
like a denuded man buckled in the passenger seat
my dog’s ashes, cradled in a blue thriftshop urn, keep my company

I spend a sleepless night at a rest area lying on my back
staring up at a browning crabapple tree
hungry for even its bitterness

my eyes & hands ample with emptiness
I twine fishing line round my wrists, twine from a fisherman
long lost at sea

knowing: the spoke of time is a wound

2)
I am wrapped in a blanket on being pulled
from the water
while remembering nothing past impact – told only

I almost drowned
I fork mustard sardines from a tin

the speech of time is hunger
the speech of time is the wound

3)
I stay up all night watching the snowy fields
unfold into a certain liberty
I feed raw shrimp to the dead dog

my daughter nestles singing on my lap

we used to talk all night in the front room on Calvert Street
how we dearly love the ones most
who have hurt us dearly

wanting only to fall asleep finally
as the avalanche launches comets above us

wanting only to be frozen without choice
like the inhabitants of Pompeii

4)
fear is a place
where the landscape dwarfs or is dwarfed

& its muscles are tiny musicbox windows
opening in the body
the neurons entangling like tango dancers

thorned tea roses clenched in their glittering teeth

when I finally fall asleep
I will hear the voices that everyone hears
amidst the sweeping cadence of moonlight

I will be taken away by the green trails of stars
by the snow-tracks of deer & origin’s wolf-howl of my dead dog

by the inventor of water & of war & of HIV

Drawing Lessons

He carried train schedules from the past stuffed in his shirt pocket
with tree petals – & taught me, learn to love the taste
of lemons; it will make you strong, he’d say
            while pruning the lilac’s blooming bough
with erratic swoops of the Shakespearian scythe; & we’d wade
the golden grasses behind a fire-gutted barn where
he taught me how to draw in exchange for yoga asanas.

How weak do you think you really are? he would ask, again
& again; would you succumb to revenge, rage,
hunger – the need for flight? You may be right, he’d say,
            but you are most likely wrong…
For you have dispelled the robbers in your dreams, those
who held your wrists as you tried to fight, those
who held your ankles as you struggled to board the train –

Kidnappers bind our mouths with duct-tape, with terror, with
regret; true, he said, our love may be neither new
nor old, but scatters like stones
            that we may find our way back through the wars
of time, back, back to the sea, mouthing
the lemon wheel crowning our tea.

Art Words by Francis Raven

Early March Poem

The star magnolia is more like stars falling
Especially if you take your glasses off.
Take your glasses off! They are wrong!
Has anyone ever said that you see too well?
Well, I’m telling you now.
It is treated as another tree, a naturalized version
Of what you haven’t yet seen. Not that you couldn’t.
It’s not beyond the realm of experience
Just beyond yours. You haven’t seen enough.
Don’t you hate it when people tell you
That you haven’t bee living your life enough?
Maybe you should tell them
That they’ve been living it too much:
Stealing recipes, forging the feeling of deliciousness
Then writing it down, forcing others to read it:
Making people feel like their lives aren’t quite as fabulous
As yours. Well, I am possessed by the opposite of envy
(I think my life is better than yours)
And I hope you are too, which doesn’t mean that I don’t judge you
Because I do
But merely that
I know perfectly well
That you judge me too: Spring frosts can damage the flowers.

Blue Jeans

“Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.”

To patent[1] and evade history[2]
Legal primitive accumulation
Riveting stress points
            white warp
            navy woof
Born dark and hard
For the laborer needs color
While the dandy can afford to weakly fade.

Choice,[3] symbolizing the American goodlife,
is our common dilemma.
Value is the faded,
Darkest is the dorkiest,
But the almost nonexistent lightest is the
Easiest to wear
            Expense
Appearance of natural
                        Except
                                    You know
            We’re not old.

They don’t look actually worn, staring,
The design, a little too precise,
Whether crosses or lightening bolts,
Is not the voice of man,
But a techno representation of our smoky steps.
Against the tragic acidwash: to pummel with stone,
                        Scrape, like teeth scrape mango from the skin,
                                    Beneath dye’s penetration.[4]

“Ergo, the longer the wash, the lighter the jeans.”

---

[1] Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis’s 1873 patent (# 139,121) was for an “Improvement in “Fastening Pocket-Openings.”
[2] ‘Denim’ is derived from ‘serge de nimes’ & ‘Jeans’ is derived from ‘Genoese.’
[3] Levi’s 501’s come in 108 sizes and 20 different fabrics.
[4] A stonewash for 150 pairs of jeans takes 150 kilos of pumice stone and more than 750 liters of water.

New Staff – caint none of ‘em read or write, but they’s rale cute

Bullet for the recognition by marieClair 2009

I feel small today
small and tight, round
compact
all tissue reduced to
essence
muscles taut
nerves wound to
breaking point,
plucked notes like
wired sound

small, derringer
ready to fire
eager to kill

evil stands there
large, broad
as the dead moon
it eclipses

the corona is
bleeding..
it is bloody red
before it passes
leaving the sky cold
and lifeless

what passes for human
what can be celebrated
emulated, cheered on

what hidden monsters
with closed claws and
mouths of steel
throw dogs to die
defeated, drowning in
pools of human waste,

monster waste
what maddened creatures
rip organs from desperate men
stitching them up with
dollars to feed their starving
souls of need

what well fed gluttons
hog the troughs for more
to feast upon as the
blood of the innocent
runs from their lips

what lizard being
runs amok in the brain
and steals a young life..
lust drenched coward
prancing with desire
to be a man
when he knows he is
a Frankenstein
stitched together from
bits of his ruined life

The earth is a blue
spun ball traveling
within the darkest black
of silent night

I am loaded into retribution
and mourn the loss of light,
the primitive illusion as
man burns fire to reach
the stars

Confessions of a New York City Street Peddler by Dr. Howard Karlitz

It’s February 1980, and David Gordon is standing in front of a class of delinquent kids in a South Brooklyn juvenile detention center trying to teach reading. While patiently guiding them through a short story called “Young Pablo Picasso,” his eye is caught by a reproduction of the artist’s flamboyant signature emblazoned across the top of the page. He puts the book down and stares at the lettering, then happens to notice a small blurb in a newspaper lying next to it on his desk announcing an exhibition of Picasso’s work, a major retrospective, scheduled to soon take place at the Museum of Modern Art. It was strange, the signature and show coming together like that. His mind wanders. An idea is taking form. Suddenly it comes to him. Just in time too, because the kids are going bananas and a piece of chalk whizzes past his ear, powder shattering against the green board behind him.

That evening, in the safety of his modest suburban home, he announced his plan to his wife. “Jill,” he boasts, “this is it, the big one! I’m going to sell Picasso T-shirts at the Museum of Modern Art this summer.”

Quite naturally she’s leery. In fact she thinks he’s mad. And he really can’t blame her. In the first place she’s wondering why in the world anyone would want to buy a T-shirt with Picasso’s signature on it. And secondly, they had just been through a nervous breakdown-inducing business bankruptcy after he invested their life savings in three waterbed stores, all of which sunk after only five months, leaving them in a blizzard of attorneys’ letters, injunctions, collections notices, court fees, judgments, tax liens, law suits (both of the civil and criminal variety), and every other form of lawyer-related horror one could dream of.

But he had to give this a shot and Jill understood why. She understood that he was tired of trying to make it on a teacher’s salary, tired of wheeling around suburbia in one clunker after another, tired of never even considering a vacation, tired of not being able to take his family to a decent restaurant, depressingly tired of watching the bills pile up on the kitchen table month after lousy month. They had held on to their 60’s ideals as long as possible, but like the man desperately clinging to a ledge fifty stories up, it was getting hard because the villain, Mr. 80’s, a/k/a “Greed and Excess,” was stomping on their fingertips.

He hooked up with a character named Benny who owned a T-shirt printing shop near his job. David showed him the Picasso signature from the school book. “Nice shot,” Benny says. Everything in this business is a “shot.” Said he can copy it, enlarge it, and press it onto a shirt. A “heat shot” he calls it.

“What do you think of my idea?” David asks. “Picasso, that is.”

“Great” Benny lied. Thought he was nuts. “How many ya’ wanna start with? A hundred dozen? Two?”

“No, forty-eight.”

“Dozen?”

“No, shirts. Black ones, with white lettering.”

His first day out was in April. David rushed into the city after work figuring to catch the early ticket buyers. The shirts were in a knapsack on his back. As he walked down the block, however, his confidence melted away. Suddenly he was terrified. He had no license, if there was such a thing, no permit, nothing. Here he was, a schoolteacher, with a masters degree no less, slinking around the museum entrance on 53rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues like a criminal. He felt like a derelict or, worse yet, a pervert. He wanted to run back to the burbs, but something grabbed hold of him at this moment of truth and he slipped out a shirt and held it up in front of him at arms length. And like magic, a well dressed woman walked over and began to touch it. “Pretty,” she says. Pretty my ass, David thought, she’s a cop. She pulls out her wallet. Here comes the badge. “How much?” she asks, and when he tells her five dollars she hands him a ten and walks away with two. He’s rocked. Other people who have been watching now come over to buy shirts too. And this is the first critical lesson he learns about peddling, to draw a crowd and let people see money changing hands. It adds credibility to you and your action. On the streets it’s called disalienation.

Under half an hour he’s sold out, but decides right then and there to quit because it’s just too damn scary, too risky, for a schoolteacher with a masters degree that is. But that night back home, he’s throwing the cash around the kitchen, and then he’s on the phone with Benny ordering more shirts which he picks up the next day on his lunch hour which he’s selling that afternoon at the museum after work because already he’s totally addicted to the money and the action.

poems by Mike Meraz 

I’m A Genius, You Know…
 
she started to tell me
what is wrong with my writing.
“you’re good,” she said,
“but you lack detail.”
“of course.”
“you write like you are talking
rather than in a story form.”
“yes,” I said.
“you’re full of bull shit.”
“uh huh.”
“you need to use more metaphors.”
“indeed.”
“how come you don’t
get your stuff out there?”
I asked her.
“I have submitted to magazines,”
she said.
“well, how about a blog.
you know blogs are popular these days.
and it give others a chance to check out your work.”
“no,” she said, “I am too good for a blog.
I want to be published by a real publisher.
I’m a genius, you know.”
“oh,” I said.
she is no longer writing.
she lives with an old man in Mexico.
they have two kids and a dog named Chico.
she still hasnt been published.
and no one has yet to read her work.

She Is Passion
 
she hates
just as much
as she loves.

and that is a lot.

she fights
just as much
as she caresses.
 
and that she never stops.
 
she IS passion.
 
remember,
it runs both ways.
 
Digits
 
letters are merely numbers
that when put in the right order
add up to something good.
 
it’s not about reading immortal poems
of the english language
or going to the local poetry hole.
 
its about tapping into
the human technology,
tapping into the digits
that matter.
 
The Little Death Poem
 
death lingers
in my pjs.
 
talks to me
in my sleep.
 
lingers
at midnight.
 
rings
in my bones.
 
collapses
in my brain.
 
shuts out
all sound.
 
learns
I’m desolate.
 
walks away.

Peter Pan by Oskar Hansen

poems by AJ Kaufmann

The Desperate Land

death is victory
pallid winds of petals
statues, blind & cruel
close to voice
within vapor
ebony
night-sounds
bare broken lamps
mute dusty
messengers
veils of marble
seals of sand
burned
in trembling progress
sun regal dead
king at barren dusk
strange to
the desperate land

Monster of Love

question the piano
wait for no grave
glass for the mine and the mad
moved, the wilder, the private
brown lifeless paper
ahead
wanderers emptying foyer
who ran disguises night
you asleep in the song dream
turning of the piano
and of joy
the discovery of
heart’s
thrilling
mechanisms
you play presence
chromatic illusions
a novel
murmured dress
Paris
death
waited
for the monster
of love

Steppes Song Surreal

steppes tattoo
in her eye
brandy-flowers in my side
loose icy drums
the bottles, the snows
shudder the light
won’t let go
palaces warm obeying her touch
died in the little night
islands sleeping under the dog
small in a window July
half-moon hook grasshoppers
pebble boys of spring
baggage noise in the hushed snow
ten thousand vibrant hills
hollow place
a pint of blood
motionless kitchen fire
asbestos boots
on beatnik feet
the hunchback and his lyre
a distant coyote
curious
of our mortality
wheeling through the night alone
winter jade is free
passengers plundering
vague dance town
touch
the pointed flame
crawling back into their brain
dragon’s mouth – the end
 
Yucatan

listen to your sea
languid dreams of traffic
kill wilderness morning
drowned birds
curved trees shadow
sunken ravine
azure pale
evening forest dark
spirit’s egg
full to death
lawns of heaven’s dropped
tireless torn land
mangled wing ghosts
jar of sun
hoop of drums
marble phantom moon
coralline
a road

poems by Steve DeFrance

Angels Are Dying In Los Angeles

Wind blows across Mendocino
Beach with icy chill,
sinks in & bites hard. The
sand has been
blasted white from this
wind. Situated just above
the beach—sun blanched trees
sit curved from
the wind looking like arthritic
old men staring at
the Northern passage of the
sea.

Back in L.A.
I know the
sky lies like a cheap
electric blanket
over the backs of the
homeless.
The wind here hardly ever
blows.
Machines grind metal
&
oil into still air until it
seems too thick to breathe
& slowly sky sewage is
pumped into our lungs.
Another day as L. A. shooters
try to break even.
Children smashed against
walls.
Murders.
Rapes.
Hot.
Wet.
Dazzling L.A.

I’ve driven
north—salmon-like to spawn.
To escape. To find peace. And I
do.
I find a perfect beach—beauty
everywhere:
sea, rivers, redwoods, curving
streams,
cliffs, big sky, cold rushing
wind,
& trees hunched and molded
by the wind.
Songs from meadowlarks–fill
the
air!
So much beauty. I can’t
stand it!

I need the cacophony of metal
& brakes & horns.
I need the stench of the
homeless in
downtown L.A.—their smell of
death,
as they drift across city
sidewalks,
gathering like blood in broken
veins
screaming at memories &
ghosts
frightening passing
tourists,
casualties from the darker side
of America
these shadows dying in the
city’s crevices.

Up here—I enter a bookstore
called
Walden Pond
I read local poets. Sloppy
rhymers & English majors,
or retirees, or people who
haven’t read poetry
in 50 years, but think they
should write it
by the pound. Their lines full
of
tall pines
& hawks in sky—or spiders
frozen in webs,
dying flowers in field, bees
& insects aplenty,
a total tyranny of
nature.
Enough peace & dope &
nature rhapsody

to make you puke or slit your
wrists or both.

Last Days of the Cross by Joseph Ridgwell – a video preview of Joe’s new best selling book about his life and times in Kings Cross in Sydney in Australia.