Mayan Sacrifice by Bradley Mason Hamlin

the
cool thing
about
living
in

2012

is that
we
made it

past the rumors
and metaphors
of 1984

over & beyond
the
space age
dream
of Moon Base Alpha
in 1999

or Arthur C. Clarke’s
2001 monolithic
nowhere zone
where apes rage
against
twinkling stars

we’re not flying around
in cars
like the Jetsons

not yet,
but there’s time
and that’s the
good part

it’s not
the end of the world
but just
the dawning
of a new era

me and you
you and me

the sun always rising
never forgetting
to set
and popping up again
with cornflakes
and cartoons

and
all the aggressive aliens
on Earth
or in Heaven
can just fuck off

we don’t have
time
for their bullshit

as long as
human (or inhuman) politicians
still argue

about

women’s rights
gay privileges
and all the goddamned
liberties
that should be
common sense

instead of …

freedom,
and what the hell
are we
going to do
to make the world
a better place
for everyone …

with less government
and without
raising taxes

I think we
still
have

work to do.

I guess since my Blogad at Litkicks re-directs here, I oughta mention
that you can buy the books at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

GEORGIA MORNINGS, by Puma Perl

The young man never stopped smiling,
as he described his Georgia mornings,
filled with reefer and medication.

It took my mind off the troubles
in my mindhe explained, handing
me a thick ream of papers.

T-cells, viral loads.

He watches television all day.
Likes the science fiction channel best.

We retest him, a formality. Nothing
will change except the protocol.

He leaves for the day, still smiling.
It’s the first time he’s ridden the N train
by himself. He says he’ll be okay, make
it safely back to Brooklyn.

If he has his way, he’ll never see
another Georgia morning.

Path by Allison Grayhurst

I look to the earth,
it is a shadow made
of stone. It turns its
grey-lake eyes to me,
it dreams a white cloud,
communing with trees and
growing things – strong
in their mutual stillness.
I look on the December day
where the private racoon roams
and crows congregate
to threaten a passing form.
The path where the young bird perished
is where no one but my dog and I go.
He sniffs the fresh-fallen snow as squirrels
sit motionless, looking on.
And in this tender wood there is no
division between my heart
and God’s great wing.
There is no time not brushed with beauty.
There is no pavement slush, no hand
that reached out, I would not hold and trust.

Poems by Changming Yuan

My Crow: A Recursive Poem

Spotting a shadow
Above the horizon
In my inner ocean
The snowy crow
Mistook it for the land
And has never returned
To my little ark
Still struggling
Against sweeping waves

12:12 PM 12 December

Do not worry
Do not panic, pal
Right before the milky way collides
With andromeda galaxy
They will surely return here
In time, to collect all the valuables
Of this unique planet, (quite like old Adam)
Such as Shakespeare’s folios
Picasso or Qi Baishi’s paintings
Each Nobel Prize winner’s eggs or perms
Every American president’s signatures
As well as your great poem or patent
And other worthiest human artifacts
Tangible or otherwise, transporting them
Into another universe, where They will surely
Create and recreate an other intelligent race, raising them
Teaching them how to appreciate Earthlings’ fame and power, where
They will surely be created like Jesuses, Allahs or Buddhas
What I am trying to say, Pal, is just rest assured

Double Hallucination

1/ Photism

Although born with a weak vision
I always enjoy watching the stars
Bluish or silver
Getting filtered
One after another
Out of the cosmos
And seeing them
Falling right
Into the boldest pages
Of history

2/ Phonism

Even in the dead
Heart of night
I often hear
A short blunt saw
Working aloud
As if to fell down
The old tall oak tree
Standing high against the sky
On an unknown hilltop
Beyond the map
Of my mind
Are you listening to what you have heard
Or can you hear what you are listening to?

Tomb Visiting: For Yuan Hongqi

Last year, before burying your ashes
Right beside Grandma’s grave site
(To guard her Buddhaship, as you had
Wished), I opened your urn for a peek
And found your biggest bone chip
Glistening against the January wind
As pink as a piece of charcoal
Now, too far to attend your anniversary
Like every other good Confucian son
Burning joss sticks and fake money
Lighting a huge pile of firecrackers
Before your tombstone, on Big Wok Peak
But I did make three loud kowtows
Towards the east, and in so doing
I saw a little rosy cloud drifting around
Like an inflated bird beating its wings
Along the horizon, amid evening glows
And wondered whether that’s your spirit
Still lingering between earth and heaven
What was it tightly holding in its beak:
A heirloom, or simply our family name?

Seven Theses

The ultimate answers to all miracles and mysteries lie more in the way religions are created than in the religions themselves.

Humans are not the only intelligent beings in the universe, not even on the earth.

Our holiest cause is to learn to feel and remain happy without the interference of faith.

Fashion, fame and wealth are nothing but dirty handkerchiefs of human vanity.

I am appalled at human stupidity: why do we all have to be deplorable slaves of our own foolish and excessive desires?

All conflicts originate from the incompatibility between psychological ephemerality and physical constancy.

Science and technology, like wealth, is actually unnecessary to human civilization in the strict sense of the word: while the former serves as nothing but an ever renewable form of self-entertainment, the latter as sheer luxuries.

Triptych of Bobby by Michael Estabrook

ONE – Maria
Bobby! For crying out loud!
Your cousin Maria is beautiful!
I just talked with her on the phone.
She’s also brilliant and very personable.
I can tell she’s caring and loving,
thoughtful, considerate, and kind.
I found her picture up on Facebook.
Dude! I’m not kidding!
Oh my God, she’s simply beautiful!
You should see her, you’ve got to see her.
What have you done?
Where have you gone?
You’d be so happy to still be around
just to spend some time
with your cousin Maria,
to see her, talk with her, touch her hand,
breathe the same air she breathes.
I know you would. I know it.
Bobby! For crying out loud!

TWO – What the Hell!
Bobby what have you done?
What the hell have you done?
I’m so fucking annoyed at you!
You had no right, you know that, I know you do.
Forget about individualism and free will.
Forget about Hobbes, Locke,
Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Kant.
Forget about Shakespeare even.
You don’t really only belong to you.
You belong to the rest of us too.
You had no right, you know that, I know you do.

I’m certain had I been near, had I known
the level, the abysmal depth, of your pain,
I could have stopped you.
We were both way too sensitive for our own good,
so I know how you felt (that’s a dangerous thing)
and you would’ve listened to me too.
I would have said, “Dude, what the fuck.”
(No exclamation point even.)
And you would have stopped, just like that,
would’ve been embarrassed (staring down at the ground)
and ashamed about being caught trying to carry out
such an asinine plan, such idiocy. (What would
your friend Friedenberg have thought
and said, did you ever think about that? Did you!)
Bobby, what the hell have you done?

We’ve come such a long way from high school,
a lifetime away from our high school days.
So much water having flowed by, so much time gone.
And yet I’d give anything to get back there again,
(With you!) if only for a little while.

THREE – Mindless Violence
Such a warm, gentle, peaceful, sensitive soul,
who in 63 years never hurt a damn fly
(the cliché is appropos here, spot on),
never had a disparaging thing to say about anyone,
never mean-spirited, was not an angry man.
How could someone who loved life so,
how could he have ended such a splendid life
of the mind (and the senses)
in such a horrific act of mindless violence?
I’ll never understand it, I’ll never know.

three poems by Sean Neville

Those Dopers Really Got Realer

T A L K to me, drug of drugs.
O F F I C I A L C O M P A N I O N (season 2).
Here’s a peek at my powers. Have a free poster.
To subscribe visit or call US 1 800.
All related characters, names and elements
are free to own. I learned this yr
that high school is a constant
state of metamorphosis so
it is easy to think that kissing hot
boys to make yourself cool is
cool. Queer studies is what’s hot.
And have something minty before you kiss.
If you have a crush your life becomes like
a camera and don’t fear that tempest
of pussy wind. Yell out, Blow pussy
wind, cleanse my ontology,
streamline my bastardization process.
Then negotiate the rights.
Thank you for not selling that
back to me. I won’t forget
your double icon. It’s Angstinct
the movie. Set in Santa Monica
to behind the scenes music.
S T O P H O L D I N G B A C K A N D
G R O W Y O U R H U M A N I T Y
is what this movie’s about, people.
Muscle up.
Be selected.
Work from home.
Action-adventure is orchestral is romp
is UP YOUR GAME. Advance advantage
from your home. But, player, be kind.
Ruby-eyed cobra, yes.
Durable-eyed icon, yes.
You want to keep things that way,
you’ll do as I say. But, Dad, games
are all we’ve got. Just sparkle is all.
Someone will find you.

Some of You Are Voids

1
Are you a void?
Are you one void or two?
Are you many voids posing as one?
Posing as one void posing as many?
I want to say “self-cleaning mop”
but why? My bed is all over. Because
everything is tragedy. Stop
the tragedy before it ends. I am
your baby. Chicken butt,
what are you meaning? What’s
to endanger? I pick up rocks with my jaws
and flaunt them before females with big round rumps.
I had a meaningless baby. I named him Void.
Little Void, play Satan in me. Whoopsie.
Let me make my disaster plan now.
This is the last description
I am going to describe.
It’s for keeps.

2
By way of intro, remember that band,
The Pussywips? They explained their program
under a giant blade of grass. I don’t understand
their pussy program. I’m personally on the road
to pussy. I hope there’s enough pussy in the world
for me. Pussy for breakfast and pussy for lunch.
I sometimes get tired of pussy and look for a change.
A doughnut offered itself causing some panic.
Still, what a beautiful zombie subdivision.
I’m going dog. Down the road I’m going dog
with my PowerPoint persona. I’m trying
to think of another word for pussy. Batter?
Warlord? Nationalism? I fished for pussy
in the Mississippi. Complicated scary pussy.
Back pussy, back! Beyond the solar system
there is nothing but pussy. Leprechauns
are knitting me a new pussy.

Stinky Diaper Story For You

Stinky diaper fell off my freeway overpass
and landed on a drug named watermelon named fred
and drug of watermelon fred got taken to market
and got to be appropriated for a watermelon
by a little enticer duck name of duke of duck.
I wah-wah that little little little duke.
I know you want my stinky diaper story.
It wants you too.
But first thing: My mistakes. My drug lords
and symptoms. Stop with your drugs, my bitches.
My stinky diaper is a flag.
I eat stinky diapers
in the twilight behind the school.
Twilight is the light time for that.
Representative people selling
stinky diapers to drug lords is what!
I possess and possess and possess
in addition to stinky diapers Jesus’s
dildo fashioned from rosewood.
I was born with it inside me.
I keep it in my stinky diaper.
How is your day treating you?

another poem about the winter rain by John Grochalski

my poor cat
she keeps getting worse
the tumor pressing her left eye
causing a lump to the side of her nose
the eye is red
and there is a constant stream
of leaky discharge
you can see the soft, milky flesh
where the fur once was
we take her to the vet and he shrugs
because the end is inevitable
maybe it’s benign, he says
but we’d have to do a biopsy for that
put the old girl under
take another chunk out of her
or we could try steroids
but there are side effects
good christ, she’s a twelve year old cat
i think
it’s better to let her go home and die
with some dignity
but to look at her
is to stare down mortality
the doc says that she’s not in any pain
but last night she stayed away from everyone
i caught her batting at the eye
and we went to sleep to the sound of her
sneezing torrents in the living room
this morning it’s still january
in the early part of the twenty-first century
and outside the skies are heavy with what
used to be snow
from where i sit the music is soothing
i can hear the sound
of the cat eating her food in the dark hallway
a small joy in the few that we have left together
as i linger here
a fake white page staring back at me
from the computer screen
waiting for inspiration to strike my fancy
or for me to write another poem about the winter rain.

Photo and Poems by Drea Kato

Morbid Poems

I miss her bone structure, those
jagged beautiful edges, those rows
of perfect white teeth, that gaping
smile, so open and red it almost looks

like a wound. I miss the crazy words
spilling from her, thoughts about the
afterlife, what stupid mess she was
going to make that night. It is

difficult writing this without breaking
down into what looks more like a pile of
clothes on the floor rather than a human
being; it is difficult writing these

morbid poems, watching them turn into
ghosts in front of me, and then they
take turns haunting me for weeks. These
morbid poems are draining me, they are

coffin-sized mosquitoes sucking the blood
straight from my veins, then tearing me
to shreds, dancing and laughing at me
and my glowing toxic organs. At times

they are only pillows made of syringes
that do not hurt that much because they
instantly put you to sleep. I miss her
voice, often tinged with strange feelings

that gnaw away at the soul, or the feeling
that reminds you that love and beauty
could still kill you or make you weak
at the knees. The way it pleaded like

a puppy at the universe, so lost.

Razorblade Wings

It feels like I could put all the details
of my entire life into poem after poem
about you. And I keep telling myself

that these doctors will make me stronger
and that everyone else does everything so
that must mean I can handle it all too

but then I somehow always find myself
alone on a bathroom floor, wildly crying
the night away. Somehow I always find myself

alone on a bathroom floor with butterflies
with razor blade wings, a completely red toilet.
Somehow I find myself in bed watching the weeks

glide away like clouds, wondering why I so
dislike everything, and, why, can’t I get up
anymore? Poison is something delicate and slow

like a violin played with a razor blade bow.

Someday

The subconscious knows a lot more
than you would guess, it can predict
the future, from the age you liked to

climb walnut trees. That is why my
10-year-old subconscious fed me dreams
of my mother sinking with the Titanic

and me holding her empty guitar case
over her grave on a sunny day and
crying. I knew this would fall apart

considering I watched my sole caretaker
drink and pop to escape her little ones,
considering the first time I got in trouble

with the cops and first got rimmed was
age five. From when you lost your job at
the Guitar Center for having a shot or two

during lunch to help ease some pain in
your teeth, and when you almost killed me
in San Francisco, when I saw you let that

black man kiss your white hands, from when
you ran to New Orleans with no money, just
a wooden boat paddle in your hands with the

American flag sticker. I would like to think
of you as sea foam, mother, drinking on an
eternal wave, gladly absorbing the sunlight

for the rest of your days. I know that you
were a drug addict and an alcoholic, but I
would like to think of you as having been an

artist, an astronaut, a scientist. From the
time I was sixteen and watched you get so
high I thought you were going to die, I knew

would watch you dissolve slowly, but I
would like to think of you as a starry woman
with blood red antlers, a peaceful prayer for

the world, sparkling foam upon the waves,
a beautiful little girl chasing bubbles who
wants to save the world when she grows up

someday.

 

“The young and the hip” by A.J. Kaufmann

The young and the hip give thanks
to bungalow hosts
party pigs
lipstick leather belts
vomiting dawn on the world
reaching out
for another bottle of whisky
give thanks
to the wind that shakes fragile bodies
exposed to sun and moon
writing in tribal riddles
dressing in contours of sleep
furious, young
emblazoned
setting sails on sundown
drifting with sunrise, hooray!
screams of birds impale us
pirates execute us
sing us songs
written back when
the world was fourteen
give thanks
to the idol totem
thin on the TV screen
high on milk and vegetable shakes
when we were drunk on beer
cheap intents
& guardians
give thanks
cause we were there
for them