absence has a simple scale
nought or one
distinct steps like piano notes
joy and sorrow are parabolic
mirror images
glissando exponentials like the birth of your smile
how you turn away when leaving
the intensity of waiting is a constant
a straight line that separates dimensions
like...
We are stars
trying to collide,
objects caught in
our orbits dashed to
rocks in process mean
nothing; we merge. Made
massive, other light is bent
in our direction so we keep
shadows hoarded under
skin we share, no place
for hidden hazards in
paths plotted long
before we were
given names
or...
only we
had the tickets
to get into a Butthole Surfers
gig
after some idiot in the NME
had put it out that tickets
would be on the door that night
a huge crowd had gathered
outside the venue
and
there wasn't a single ticket
valid
except ours
pushing through a tight...
mixed media on canvas, 50 x 60 cm
If you're lucky, you catch the early train
If you're wise, you're early to bed
To get up early to go back again
Healthy, wealthy, and dead.
I was being a bit contrary when I named this ... one thing certainly does not seem to inform or be part of the other, title and picture ... and I kinda liked being that difficult and sort of...
since I’ve dreamed
anything that was
not nightmare
This spring
with goslings in
the roses, tulips
and crocuses pushing
color thru crystal
ice, I hardly
notice the wood
ducks. I don’t hear
geese in flight.
I used to dream
goose music, scan
black ripples
walking back
from the pond.
Before I photographed
the last light
glowing in dark
woods
the...
Mixed media on paper, 30 x 40 cm
Kyoto is doing great, especially since the Kyotographie festival just started. As a photographer, I naturally always look forward to this event. Here's my personal contribution...
—Mark Preier
I couldn't help but smile
when a bird outside our kitchen
trilled "Whew whew whew!"
Then it switched to "Wee-oop
whee-oop whee-oop!"
"Listen to that!" I cried aloud,
as Kim kept chopping her kale.
I went to the screen for a toke
while the bird continued.
The singing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lHlOTkrQ34
Melinda red blood in the white snow
the curtains are dying
...and the things I used to know
she drinks before noon
wild black tequila,
her only chance to make it through summer
her daddy's at the bottom of the bottle
and I don't know if...
Awake the pollen grains and log each tiny
particle gone with the wind onto our most
secure of networks. There's notice served. It's time...
smaller, smarter moving parts: our install base,
a choice of legs or wings or wheels or blowin'
in the wind;...
The pinkie of your left hand is very small.
You rarely ever finish almond milk,
you make a face while eating cereal,
always pull hair of older sister Tanu,
and loudly scream when you return from school.
Your curious heart beats like a metronome
and...
Lose your job, your mind, your husband
step over the lines, off the map,
into unmarked alleys
Talk too fast, too much, too loud,
or not at all
Balk at the strangeness
of ordinary things
spot the dark intent behind
their bland disguises
Walk too close to the...
In risking the dancing eyes
of supermarket girls under fringes,
or to chance the scanty graze on busy buses
of a nyloned knee, or strappy shoulder,
I zip-in some long-absent charmer
lest I go running, in my best shoes,
across fields to a dawn-wet door
with...
Tiny winged corpse, trapped
inside the aluminum frame
of a storm window;
Ahmed freed the frozen,
fragile body
with his pen
in hopes that
it would fly again;
trees bereft
of birdsong.
I chase a cat who scampers across the beach.
Her gait's mysterious; assured yet zigzag
and every few moments she stops to tease.
I pant and puff but carry on and on.
She is anonymous. My mind is coming up
with names. A Betty...
"Rhymes in poems are dead," he said.
I laughed and shouldered the bazooka, shook a
Vicodin from the bottle and chased it with gin.
(Now I'm all-in, you dig?)
The room started to spin.
I grabbed the mantle like...
Fell asleep inside him
after wind slipped through
a window, found a crack
into my absent mind.
Tomorrow lurks around
our edges, minutes fall down
at our ears; a train, engine
idle, takes him too far for
comfort, too soon by far.
Less tall when laying together
more than...
Most times though we’d sit
with trays on our knees
the microwave cartons
full of steaming food too hot to touch at the edges
and a tad too cold in the centre
we ate with the blue grey haze of tv light
painted across...
We carefully handle our sub-zero Winter secrets.
But like last year, they begin to dissipate from consciousness
until, like barren tree limbs, we forget they ever held leaves.
As sprinting daffodil spikes and tulip skewers burst through thawing soil,
we unfold stale box...
A couple of
Bath Salts addicts
moved in upstairs.
Each night,
the entire building
can hear 'em
eating each other's
faces.
The astronaut
the man in
the threadbare
tweed
says
he’s laying
low right now,
coasting
through,
baby,
paying off
a few
invisible debts
to secondhand
store angels,
man,
dodging
the black holes,
so to speak,
shopping at
the golden harp
food mart every
other day
roaming the
origami streets
of Earth’s
enfolded cities
requesting
a few quarks
over in front
of the Full Yum
where they
whisper how
he’s lacking direction,
and he...
Late last year I wrote a 10 sonnet sequence entitled New Muses for a Posthuman Age, the idea being to update the goddesses and answer the question: if they were still here today, what would they be doing?
However I'm insufficiently female,...
held between his ankles, very bright orange t-shirt,
plaid shorts I glance at him from the till.
Don't know which suits me.
I ask him to wear each pair of sunglasses
and I'll tell him. He does, I tell him.
Sunglasses cost £3.99. I...
A man lays his hand on a woman. He sees through
her eyes the golden-breasted songbird. The woman looks
on the man and she thinks he will die. They wash, comb
and perfume their hair; together they put on their clothes.
Side by...
we hung around
Gothenburg for five months
or so
renting out an expensive apartment
on Vingalandsgatan
with a fabulous panoramic view
over the Gothia River
and went to three The Knife gigs
trying every blag we knew
to get backstage to meet Karin
and her brother Olaf
total mission
but no...
i never write to be read, i've always said.
it was never a considered decision
to hide my notebooks and scribbles from you
unless you check my bag for money or cigarettes
and just happen to find
whatever collection of scrap i write on
and...
Eventually, we stop counting;
the final bird of prey rips out
the throat of the penultimate
field mouse and dies soon after.
Beyond its understanding, a trail
off a meteor scrapes against fallen
stratosphere, its terminal plunge.
A man who once begged heaven
for space, for time...
I wanna grow up like my dad—planning to leave my wife with my mistress waiting in the gravel driveway at dusk. It would be January and I'd be running out the back door with my bags and a cigarette...
Illustrations from the book Ghost Highway Blues, poetry by Matt Borczon, published by Alien Buddha Press.
I took out the darkness
and added an em dash,
for now
morning hillside
fifty little goat butts
winking at the sun
ex-wife's razor
surprisingly good
seemingly free
Dry day, empty house—
the barely swinging door
applauds
The wind blows—
not to move the trees
but the trees move
tiny typewriter
tiny truths
it is all here
one day
a year
the sky turns
violet
motorcycle
exhaust floats
up and dissolves
against a hard sun
they rev their
engines until
their eyes turn to
coal
the
missing brothers
on the black wall
are still
gone
was
older than he looked,
was
impressed
by the smell of his own farts,
lied
about everything,
never
held a job for long,
ate
everything,
drank
anything,
and
changed his shorts
no
more
than once a week.
Tony had
3 bad marriages,
4 shack-ups,
and
that one month he
never cared to talk about.
i liked
Tony.
Poem read by by Soodabeh Saeidnia in the Farsi translation she created:
https://soundcloud.com/soodabeh-saeidnia/a-messiah-morning
This is one of four Silent Lotus poems included in the bilingual anthology Persian Sugar in English Tea, Volume II, published in March 2018.
My mind is a musty record crate.
Schlepped around. Only exposed to
monthly swap meets, and nostalgic nights.
Brush decades of debris
from my mental music (re)collection,
hoping to add freshly-dug earworms
to proven, fossilized melodies.
Casting moldy bait in binary streams,
I hook the next big...
The day was so tender
it almost broke (us) in two
the buds on the trees
lime-toned and ready to uncoil
the doves not yet married, nestless
A squirrel carried one of
last year’s nuts around
in his mouth, forgetting
there would be new ones
(We) wondered out...
Part I
Part II
The sex falls in
flecks and sputters as the
limousine windows slide down
...
The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his...
One day on the back porch
many years ago, catching
some rays, sunning, as it were,
after the wife had been fired for
crimes against nature, self and child
and the dream and the life and the job
and the house and everything once loving
to...
for poetry,
I can't give you poetry—I'm
not one of those poets
writing for four hour periods
each morning with
french-pressed coffee
I can't give you
words
that will always make sense
and fall into each other with perfect
commas and
strategy
I spit these out like juicyfruit—
and they always lose...
into you and
it felt like the womb
I had left 5
days early.
I crawled
under you
like winter cats in car tires
I dropped my steel and stayed
in your waters, risking air
but I had your air
I didn't need to hear words with
your ears, but...
The flame’s reflection on the television was so crisp like it was real and soon the stereo was on fire. Then the couch would light up and the smell would at least be pleasant, with strawberry and skunk meandering....
From 1984–1987, I published the little magazine Clock Radio. Like many small ("little") literary magazines of the day, this one was produced on a shoestring, with nothing more than donated time, a typewriter, a xerox machine, and cover art help...
I can still remember how
annoyed he got the first time
I used it, “Door mat,”
the way his mother let a brute
of a man walk all over her.
“Door mat”—you’d think I’d
called his mother whore or
bitch. Not strange, I went on,
so many...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NvHJSpI5Zs
Steve Richmond was a mainstay of the American little magazine scene of the 70s and 80s. He gained notoriety not only for his extensive series of "gagaku" poems but also for his longtime association with poet Charles Bukowski. As...
Machine Learning by Zed-Point
You can bitch about quality
all you want
& make your anal
compulsive
lists
the best school
the best fuck
the best career
the best italian
sausage
& then 30 years
removed
or maybe 40
you realize
no one gives a fuck
& neither do you
so you sit down
with a drink
& a small stack...
https://soundcloud.com/user-151672534/i-need-more-2018-edition
Henry: This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Y’know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all...
Oil Pastels, Colored Pencils, Graphite, Lithography Pencils, Bleed Proof White,
Digital Paints on Photograph. © 2011 Thomas Yarbrough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzwgB7EEZbU
The bird circles endlessly in my room, in the half-light—
comes close, carries the harsh carnival of his eye to mine,
causing my neck to fall down in slices of yellow,
my shoulder to reveal the five sleeping armies.
The bird lands upon...
When fathers stopped wearing fedoras at ballgames
unity and chaos wrestled in the mud.
•
When fathers stopped telling the old jokes
quills grew on the tongues of their children.
•
When fathers stopped strangling ice picks
cars sank in a traveling darkness.
•
When fathers stopped building...
Just got off the phone
with my Uncle Jim
2 years, 11
months, and
14 days in FCI Memphis behind
him. He’s
the one who taught me how to play
drums. Spent
thousands of rounds failing to get me interested in
guns. Took
me seriously as a
teenager, listened
patiently expecting
I...
Lena, across the street
on her porch step clutching
her robe closed against the afternoon sun.
ashtrays neat
stacked full of half smoked Kents.
in her bedroom
a real live slot machine
sprayed nickles when you never won.
Lena’s buoyancy declined
absent my mom floating
her tab
at the China...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnoTelwXuww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=78&v=3AIzoMJURAE
I don't wanna pay April's rent
I just got an email (and they never send them) that said
Hey, don't forget to pay April's rent.
I was going to pay the rent like I always do
but now since they sent me that
I...
1.
2.
Watercolour on L'Aquarelle Canson Heritage Block 300gsm cold pressed.
Watercolour paper - 51cm x 34cm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZd4Ats7DRI
EXPLORE
When the will to survive is stronger than love
It's hard for me to accept things the way they are.
I want to fight for what's right and fair.
Acceptance is a part of survival.
I...
