had a baby.
I go online,
buy a present,
click ‘gift wrapped’
(I don’t need to
see tiny, sleepsuit
feet).
I visit them,
hold him,
even carry him
to his nursery,
sit in a rocking chair
and sway anxiously
while I question why
my heart
weighs more than
he does.
At the top of the stairs
I...
There’s a squabble of greying women knitting at our local coffee stop.
They are talking about dumpster diving—how survival is another’s refuse.
I swipe hairs from the bathroom floor, the shower, the sink—knot them
together for a winter nest. The girl who...
.the bear.
.lucky elephant.
.monkey.
.mouse.
.yellow bird.
.the hawfinch.
.words.
The first time this goat fainted
I wanted to pack him in a crate
& ship him back home for his safety.
It’s hard as hell to watch him
lying on his back
with his stiff legs in the air
& he faints a lot;
barking...
https://soundcloud.com/rc-james-user841120068/z0001070
Ain’ nuthin’ left here ‘cep
six uv us an’ dry stahks ‘a corn.
We’re up ta movin west
soon as I sort out the T-Ford.
Jenny, ma wife, is set to
have anuther to make us seven.
Got some taters an’ dry beans
in the root...
In November 2017, when the cottonwood trees were golden leaved, I toured Georgia O'Keeffe's home in Abiquiu, NM.
—Kelly DuMar
Can't recall when the conceit of breaking through barriers into a different & more colorful world occurred to me, but it did. In the film, being here at home represents suburbanite stasis. It represents being stuck in one place:...
I play
with friction, skin
and air,
a ripe blueberry
between my lips.
The Autobiographical Note
I walk through the gym doors. Steve is doing chest-flies. He yells
Hey, Flash! (Steve doesn’t know my name.)
Third Person, Past Tense
The sky through plate glass was interesting. He should have
told Steve how he’d felt about Love the...
A child chews on his toy
Lucid imbecility
A baby’s lallation
All his l’s are r’s—
My dumb joy
When I talk like him.
You are obsessed with the furniture.
I don't really care about the furniture.
I am lucky if I get to sit on the couch and watch "Dexter."
Every time I walk out the door
you insist on rearranging the furniture
so it will be...
https://soundcloud.com/avery-fogarty/roses-original1
I used to be sorry all the time
I used to love you
I swim in and out of your mind
I used to be sorry all the time
I used to love you oh
Now I'm constantly contested
Punched a hole in your wall...
https://soundcloud.com/user-417500652/muddy-water-woman
Muddy Water Woman
Down in Missisisippi where the catfish grow long
I found her and I promised her someday I’d write a song
About a rebel woman whose soul could stir a man
To break the chains that bind her, and dare to...
It’s hot
the breeze just lifts and settles.
A man sways to dangerous angles.
The kids look quick but play anyway.
A possum half crushed is
half alive so the guy gets a crowbar.
He walks stiff hoping he will just die
without intervention.
This is what...
. small item .
what you see is magnified.
they leave here larger than life
petrified in their own forests.
scan beds and lens.
light the cracks, the boxes.
tie the books closed, leather
bound, broken, words lost.
boxes can be opened to
reveal.
—sbm.
.fallen.
.before you know.
.crumbs.
.bandage.
.kisses.
.ticket.
.yesterday's fluff.
.my soul.
.961.
.pinc.
How’s she goin’?
Just passing through, eh?
Course you are. They all are.
Don’t get much traffic up around these parts anymore. Odd tourist who maybe got lost. Sometimes ‘Mericans that actually mean to come here for the huntin’ and fishin’, but...
The straightest way
to get from this life to the next
is by climbing through
the sliced-open belly of sky
left behind by
the stoop of a falcon,
she explained.
Then she taught me
how little I knew
about my own language:
the prescription by which
adjectives are always stacked
old...
never tell a zombie the truth
never lie to a zombie
never say things to a zombie you wouldn’t say to your own mother
never stare directly into the eyes of a zombie
never give money to a panhandling zombie
if a zombie ain’t...
Boneyard leaking bones
till shifting rivers,
tilting hummocks
tilling plows of oxen
turned to tractor, turned to combine,
pull the last remaining
shrined remains,
and leave the now unhallowed soil
to rest in peace.
I painted this in my grandma's old shed, so things got a bit dirty. I kind of liked how dirt looked, so I just made it a part of the painting. —Taylor Bain
Streets seem tired,
city, at rest.
We move through balloons,
confetti, Moët,
leftover eggrolls,
last night's jest.
A bare-bottomed girl
runs to a window. Last night
her grandfather muttered
of a world full of violence,
the dread of never-
ending rain, fountains
overflowing their pools,
the earth a mire in which
everything dies; her
parents penned in,
rats under their beds,
scorpions in their robes,
snakes in the...
Most of my abstract work is meant to capture an emotional state. Painting is often a cathartic exercise for me. I am naturally introverted, so I enjoy expressing my feelings visually. For me, this painting represents repressed anger, but...
positive side effect
i woke up a few mornings ago
with what seems to be a sprained ankle
although i can't remember having done
anything to sprain it.
so i've been taking some back pills
that i had in the medicine cabinet.
my foot still hurts
but...
Poe wrote "To Helen,"
considered by many
one of the great love poems.
"Nicean barks" & "the glory
that was Greece," admirable
phrases, I admit, but to
paraphrase Tina Turner,
what's love got to do with them?
Poe visualizes Helen as a statue
in a niche, all marmoreal...
Today is not just one cup of black coffee after another.
Today, I have enough melancholy stacked on top
of more melancholy to climb up a sad stairway,
out of my down-in-the-dumps, here - into
the snow-covered mountain peaks of the Hindu Kush.
I...
Angels enforce Holy Writ, while others veer
toward the particular
Here, children somersault on grass while the
noonday sun, outstretched as thine hand O Lord
pours through a suburban home on a dead
parakeet’s cage
On Sundays, her fingertips flicker over her guitar.
With her left hand,...
My first beer of the Christmas season
I knew in the candlelight against the stained oak countertops that I should be out smoking a cigarette under the sandpaper night instead of sitting there in my sh-tty jacket wishing I could...
Christmas and New Year’s move
toward us
again
the old sickening
duet
the masses coming out
of their tv
caves
the family
gatherings
the gross
dull
nothingness,
the fake
drunks,
the fake
smiles,
the fake
people
may we live
through this
somehow,
one more
time
* This “found poem” is a reworking, in poetic form, of an excerpt from a letter that Charles...
After I blunt Ming's grapnels
with files and buffers, she wolfs
down the meat off the pull cup.
In the open yard where I grow
blush Parfait, beside the bush
is a toddler crouching to squat.
Covered in dusty indigo, she can
be easily mistaken as...
Nights
are hardest to bear.
Alone, that smell
of us,
still heavy and
with ghosts,
our sweat, our
heated exhales.
I taste you.
I pull you.
I sink into a
a tangle of tongues.
I taste your
pillow, the scent
of your hair—
blue figs, oranges,
spit.
He was there at the mic with a glow behind his head like a literary god, so I fucked him.
Me, two other women, and this bisexual guy named Frank.
It was five-bod-fuck and very poetic:
Frank got the whole thing on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgRU9GzElaw
publishers
is retired
and living in France.
he’s on his second wife and
lives on
a farm in the country.
every now and then
he sends me
these long, long
e-mails talking about the wine,
the food, the people
and how much he
loves his life
since he
ditched the
first wife, gave up...
mixed media on paper, 2018
Everyone believes the crippled kid. A blind and mute paraplegic from birth, the crippled kid lets his older brother, Junior, pad his red wagon with a patchwork quilt and canvas pillow of turkey feathers, cradle his body and set...
hotel room in little rock
there were three of them
forceful
drunk
too angry to care
whether she lived or died
she swung
the cardboard pizza box
like a machete
it was all she had
I try not to depend on anyone
I try to understand
easing the monsters.
They never really...
The shearer’s oilstone rides the blade’s silver edge.
There is a swish as one blade closes over the other.
It is a fine tool honed.
He wears blue stretch jeans and shoes fashioned from jute.
When he bends over a sheep, a sprung...
Which came first,
the chicken
or
the chicken,
the egg
or
the egg?
“Pass the Tabasco,”
Buddha said.
“By the way, where’s your bowl?”
“In the cupboard, Noble One.
Giving it a rest today.
I’ve got a lot on my
plate to contemplate.”
"The chicken and the egg?"
"No, I mean my personal
idiomatic plate,...
They hug and whisper kind words
in the other's ears. They share
their home-cooked fares, and
delight in the quaintness of
the other's ways and customs.
They express with kinder words
their surprise at the other's warmth
and grace. They admire each other's
moral codes and are...
Dougherty: Lyn, what would you say to a young writer who had her sights set on poetry?
Lifshin: I’d probably suggest she go for a degree in something she can rely on. The Black Mountain poets never thought of poetry...
Always live in regret.
The past is ever present.
There are no new days.
Today is no better than yesterday.
Look down
and backwards with despair.
The Almighty has planned no new
opportunities for you.
Yah! There’s something to be said
for modern Hep B, HPV and AIDS,
but gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia—
the all-time greatest hits of STDs—
keep raising their infection rates!
Stick trendy condoms up your ass!
Did you imagine rubber flummoxing
those masterminds who leveraged
bestiality to colonize a...
This project grew out of my interest with the tension between the documentary nature of landscapes and the fiction of the story they tell. I took away the realism of my photographs to enhance the narrative by using the...
Twin
Journeys
Bright Lights
When I hear someone claiming
they had an imaginary friend
when they were a kid
I almost say, “bullshit,” but I don’t.
I’m not saying they are liars.
The subconscious believes
what it believes.
If someone wants an audience
bad enough they will say anything.
Not me, but...
each freckle is a planet
in this contained universe, a body
that orbits the sun—
drenched experience I’m in. I say I worship
God, but my skin tells otherwise, sacrificing
myself to the heat, the dark
brown dreams I have had every summer
for the rest...
So when can you free up some time to see me?
Free up some time? "Time is one thing that's
always free" -- remember that, my dear Gottfried?
Sounds vaguely familiar. Who said that?
You did.
Really?
Yep, eight weeks ago tomorrow in physics.
You handed...
acrylic on canvas with pastel and marker
I don’t want it to rack up the likes
even the nicer obituaries with pictures of charity work
and all the good things are cringe
I don’t want random fuckers grazing over my Facebook page
trying to work out what happened
there’s nothing wrong...
things get whittled down
to winners and
losers
the prizes
for naught
'cepting participation
'cause we all find ourselves lost
with nothing to kick
yeah
i misplaced the only-est love i had
then the friends
the food
the will to touch meself
the faucet still leaks, though
it reminds me of yesterdays
and tomorrows,
which...
You have abandoned the day
to hide your secrets.
I keep your hand, hang the moon
in these dark trees as an offering.
It’s late, but then on the table —
a pot of tea and two cups, waiting.
Postlapsarian, we
carry in pockets, the
lumps of perceived iniquities
which,
distract us from
our actual guilt.
The impure loin or
purloined pear or
Pearl conceived by Hester
can
weight us down, or further tempt
the casting of first stones.
My fault, my fault, my
grievous fault with
focus on the my,
makes
my neighbor...
I take that song and immerse it
in a bucket full of cold water,
hoping that the song chills me
down while I fume for missing
my last train home.
Today I wring the same song
and put it on the clothesline
while the sun is...
chalk and charcoal on paper
Soon there will
be more tattoos
on the planet
than people,
more ink on skin
than on paper.
We are already
reading each other
more than books
or newspapers.
I am thinking
of having
X
you are here
in blood red ink
inscribed
directly
over my heart.
I am thinking
if I indelibly
mark the spot,
& leave
a permanent
note
to myself,
I...
".. Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night."-- Subhadeep De
Mixed-media on paper
Oh, you’re one of those, she said. Yes, I said, sadly, I am.
And then I said, You’re not, I take it. She had just returned
from a surgery involving the known world. Her eyes
were visioning… big data, one would...
My gay friend told me
he masturbates
three times a day.
Ewww, I couldn't help
thinking. One of my
bad habits, judging others.
But three times a day?
I thought, bro, way
too much information.
And don't you think
once a week's enough?
but if I don't then wheel me to a window
in my own house and don't assume
I don't understand an acoustic guitar,
the hum of smalltalk, or cinnamon
from the kitchen. Don't ask me if I remember,
behave as if I do. If...
White pencil and chalk on black paper
At Lewes
we sidestepped insignias
like hallowed things
but didn’t buy tickets,
opting to watch the bay
as the ferry shrunk into the cape;
seventeen miles was trivial.
We didn’t consider
the metaphor of shallow displacement
or the freedom in rising tides,
only impending deaths,
that rudderless wind,
and the scope...
Facing the ocean
(because you never turn your back to the water,
because the waves curl over themselves and rush up with rage
like thundering white hooves
and you could be somersaulted, thrown and rolled
along the rocky ocean floor, spun and jolted
like clothes...
Jesus turned water into wine.
I smuggled pot.
Jesus got nailed by the cops.
So did I.
Jesus had long hair.
Me, too.
Jesus walked on water
& raised a man from the dead.
I got sober,
speaking of miracles.
Jesus fed 5 loaves of bread
& 2 fishes to...
Wrap up every rock against the weight
constraints of the contract. Leave one ghost
in the granite garden under the broken palo verde
and the other on the maple table by the stove.
Consign the gravel drive to the monsoon and make
a list...
Acrylic, pastel and marker on canvas. An exploration of color, shape, and composition.
Letter provided to Open Arts Forum by Douglas Goodwin.
Understand this
A moth can be as beautiful
As a butterfly.
And even the plainest
Still has wings.
Today, I will not be praised.
Tomorrow, not remembered.
Still, I am dancing the night
In flutters and twirls.
This moment is mine.
It's my best thing. I offer coffee
and strands of broken light
untangled from the mare's nest
of whatever the hell is wrong
with you and why am I just
learning about this now?
I agree with the guiding principle
only if it smooths the afternoon
into...
316
Chalk and charcoal on bifold
Soft pastels on bifold
Purple makes you sweaty
while you shiver with a chill,
and morphs you into Betty
when your given name is Bill.
Aqua gets you placid,
but it has an ill effect:
it either leaves you flaccid,
or unwillingly erect.
Yellow smooths your edges,
you’ll be far less tightly...
Gouache Colors | 21×29 Cm | On Paper |2018
Blink and you will miss her mutinous
retreat. Dill in the kitchen window has wilted
but not quite gone to seed, books are tossed
aside like faulty algorithms meant to solve grief.
The blast that once lifted her finally flagged
and she fluttered to...
while I watch a huge ant
light-foot up the drainpipe
like it was a piece of cake
to trot your whole weight
perpendicular to earth
I wonder if my difficulties
getting through the day
are of my own imagination
rather than the physics
of an actual predicament
Holding it right is half the challenge.
The other is not to shake before the click.
They say that the aim may change due to
the pressure applied by the finger.
To think that in the old days they had to
handle the powder...
I’m befuddled by the wind,
how it blows;
it has this bodiless direction.
I can feel it kissing my face.
Hey wind, you strange warthog—
how can you touch me so,
when I can’t touch you?
I'm befuddled by the starlight drip
over Wagner Butte.
When did the...
An interpretation of Claude Monet's Woman with a Parasol.
— Subhadeep De
Water colour on paper
https://soundcloud.com/ian-badcoe/sets/crowd-cloud-found-sound
There is never betrayal
in the space between boxcars
where his face still tilts towards
the old life he left. The new life
has already scrawled itself in graffiti
pastels that end with an imperative
and steel-coupled air. She should live
in that swaying niche, call...
They glamourise war with their literature,
support Mexico w/ the import of narcs,
fry pretty much all their food,
& negotiate hard.
They let their children play w/ glocks,
chew tobacco—spit
nastily at the emptiness of pavements.
They hold democracy high aloft their heads, shoot
unarmed black...
Since 7 months Rita and I were living in the same apartment but merely as occupants sharing the same roof. Our 4-year marriage was on the rocks and divorce was just a few months away. Both our lawyers were...
GIF versions of "Fine On The Outside," and "Another Look at Delta" below:
—RIP Koko, The Gorilla Who Used
Sign Language, 1972–20 June 2018*
Sheep in wolf’s clothing, Melon Man’s
what the Town and Country grocery with
biggest best batches of sweetest honeydews
at bargain basement prices called me.
Green magumbos just ripe enough
so my orangutan thumbs could...
acrylic/ 28×22 cm /on paper
https://soundcloud.com/rc-james-user841120068/track-4
And then the sky opened.
The world filled with blood.
Cameras caught it all,
buildings wrenched
from their foundations,
anger and sirens and stench.
We were tired of marching,
of whispering,
sick from the reek of smoke.
By then, my parents were dead,
but they had seen it all...
What began as a way to pass the time
soon became the time I got lost
inside the city’s blanket of haze.
What was supposed to be mundane
soon became the time I got lost
inside the neon light of the street.
What was supposed...
Guest
Hiding
Mistakes
Sweet (2)
Home
Up
The Light
Reach
35 mm film photography with digital manipulation
I keep saying I'm not going to another
holocaust movie. But then I do.
The latest one set in Augsburg,
1958, when twenty-something Germans
thought Auschwitz was nothing more
than a POW camp and their teachers,
their fathers & their uncles had been,
at worst, good Germans,...
I don't like mango but
I’m compelled to consume
space,
to savor the liquid,
label all the rays
upon my tongue,
such sweet perspicacity.
A citrusy mist
collides with taste
at the speed of sound,
an explosive parade
of chest-bound fate.
I am an imposter
but I taste city lights,
the salty crunch,
a...
low over june’s dusk grass
the fireflies’ sparse steeps
all float away in one direction
in the gentlest of arcs
then as my ramble loops back
so the grazing lumens flock
drifts like a compass pin
to keep a slow right angled
optical illusion of departure
I thought you said alphabetic, and picture plastic letters filled
with magnets, colorful refrigerator doors.
“Apologetic,” you argue. “I was trying to apologize.”.I wonder if anger is the new I’m sorry.
.You continue to talk but I don’t hear anything—
I rearrange consonants with vowels as...
She called it a perfect afternoon —
we had just left a poetry reading
and were enjoying our coffees
on a café couch beneath a red umbrella
slightly shaded from the hot Florida sun.
We were reading some of the short ones
from a thick...
before
the hour sounds,
we
are already
sitting
with the dead.
we dangle from a single thread
pendulous from the bars
on the upswing to the hot plates
on the down
to the soft shrapnel of coal
if you’re lucky some doctor with halitosis
will tell you the time you have left
if...
I had nothing but tears
warm as blood
a hemorrhage of grief
all that day and through the night.
They took my nail file and pocket knife
and set someone there
on constant watch
in case I found the sudden
energy to act.
But I’d lost so much,
the...
don’t frown
don’t kick the door
don’t slap the chance
it’s a sensitive bad-ass
don’t zip up the wound
if it begs to expose
don’t turn on the light
if you have no idea
what monster
waits for you in the closet
don’t crush,
don’t crash
and if you have to,
don't...
You are the mirror into which we plunge. - Terry Wolverton
Here at the border, the river
runs clear. We can see our faces
as they ripple in the sun,
our bodies so thin
they’ve nearly disappeared.
We are falling from a great height.
We have left...
Part I
Part II
A self-representation of the door and its meaning.—Faizan Adil
Though night eats its way out of the sack
That cat is in, yet still the caterwaul
Of promises defeats the constant scrawl
Of secrets tattooed stiffly on the back
Like the whip marks or elevated track
Across the city’s underlying wall
Of poverty. They...
I swore I would not get sentimental about
leaving the porch swing behind.
We painted it red to match the floor—the front door.
I swore I would not write about singing "Moon River"
to my midnight newborn while watching
headlights blur down Maple Street.
Just...
a familiar place
our dreams quarreling
over petty things
you've never been here
but seem at home
familiar
what isn’t is vertigo
i adapt to it
adopt it somehow
though it is yours
though you shouldn't
be here
you...
nor smash it with heavy stone pestle
let it be spoiled with caress of cubic sugar
gently, as your wrist dances like a Sufi in Sema
and your lips whispering the grandma's spell
let this mermaid in red rest
on the bottom of a...
back in the 70’s
back in LA
I knew of him
as the uncouth Christ
of the drunk-again alcoholics
the naked emperor
of young trendy-cafe chefs and
of the intellectual
and the pseudo-intellectual
trust-fund kids who wished
to be like him by
living in decrepit houses
the lawns of which
they littered...
Old Glory
at half mast
atop the White House
so some well-off white
must have
been shot
not by a cop
who took
his cell phone for a gat
but a civilian
armed
à la the Bill of Rights
First, turn on the lights.
Ghosts drift toward shadows.
Use the sin of omission as if
it was a life raft, and you can’t
swim. I can swim, of course.
As a child I swam in tanks,
throwing rocks before getting
into the water to scatter...
Only a sheep goes
up any time
to find help or comfort
up it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMOJ7SlgFKw
an illustration that I made for a book with poems for children by Jordan Trethewey.
—Marcel Herms
at
this
point in the game,
i guess
i’m supposed to
be writing things like:
“sands at 70,”
“the end is near,”
and “ode to my lost and misspent youth”...
but
i get the feeling
that i ain’t done yet.
not
by a long shot.
so
give me
what you got.
i’m
tough.
i
can
take it.
go
ahead.
i
double-dog dare you.
I'm growling,
moaning, surrounded
by men—
they think I'm their
entertainment.
But no, you're mine—
you only
exist when
I breathe you
all into me and
stab your knees with
paper cuts.
You're flounder-
ing, such a fragile shard.
Look at me
when I speak—
pick that
up. I'm going
to tell you
the truth.
These poems speak in the manner of hard-boiled detective fiction, rich in the dictions found in Chester Himes, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald and Dashiell Hammett & as do those authors listed, the poems employ their particular patois to drive...
While you were out of town
I went to your house and
I slept in your bed and
I pet your cat and
made her purr and
under your soft blanket
I wondered if you
would ever love me enough
that you would want to kiss
every inch of the walls
that watch me sleep at night and
that is how I feel for you and
that is why I am here now w a i t i n g
for you to come home,
sometimes it seems the only way
to love you is to wait.
Will your memory foam mattress
tell you I was here?
I fell to sleep like
I was in your arms.
I watered the plants.
I fed your betta fish
just in case you had forgotten and
if the flowers on
the kitchen table don’t tell you,
I will:
I miss you more than I should
and you’ve left holes
that I can’t fill.
These are the few poems I managed to write about the very intense and sometimes violent relationship I had with a woman called Miki who I met on my first solo trip to Japan, some years ago now.
I really...
Working with found items, the work has been investigating collections, wunderkammer, cabinets of curiosity.
The process entails museum visits, research, writing and producing imagery, refined into a personal statement on my findings.
Objects, manipulated, covered, layered, the issues not hidden.
Images of...
when trump's words
fall on my deaf ears
their odor
reminds me
of the smell
of burned flesh
on the breath
of bavarian
beer hall
bullies
cutouts
i am beautiful
pale
museum quality bone
i don't speak of the things
that were cut away
boxed
in the garage
or hung in the closet with piano string
there are bits too
hidden in the broom's straw
or wiped into the edge
where counter meets sink
i get what i...
Read
He makes a steaming cup of me
to drink alongside the morning paper,
then lathers me up to be his accomplice
under the head of a shower.
I am gentle on his tongue,
and foam between his shoulder blades.
He tells me, “I don’t want...
after something Tiko said
Not only was I never a great fuck but
I never even belonged to that vast class of people
who once thought they were.
I have fucked people who thought they were
and one person who actually was
and that’s about...
animal day with a pocketpenknife
in your fist. Guide the edge
with your thumb, peel to bone
white. Get a day off as one pelt.
Stretch taut over a hollow, make a drum
to beat as your hands do your lungs.
Remake the day.
https://soundcloud.com/user-739698917/reprise
From her sleep my grandmother faded through the mesh of supposition
that bore the image I had constructed as a child. Her untidy halo snagged
barbs of memory, became flags that marked her boundary, fluttered briefly
in surrender, then dipped to recognise...
Simone Weil looks out
of a black and white photograph
set inside a simple silver frame
which sits on top of a polished
August Förster piano.
the piano is overly ornate
and doesn't look pleased
to be so garishly carved and decorated
and Simone doesn't look overly...
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
