Forget not the opium

by Jay Levon

I miss the opium sunrises,

morning defiantly greeted
with empty heart,
and mind devoid of guilt,
regret, and pain.

Rawness is the new me
open wound and bloody teeth.
I count the broken bones
and hope not for relief.

(Take two of these
and fuck away the morning,
says the good doctor
in my head.)

Remember always
the sore cock
and empty balls!
It was these that carried me
through the wilderness
of her crippled, angry heart.

And forget not the opium
the sweet, sweet opium

Memory of a Balcony (for Megan Taylor)

by Jessica Otto

Begin when you are scratched away.

Belonging once to the soft smell
of the wasp nest in your neighbor’s window,
you now belong to waking up
in a stillness that embraces you with
lesson arms a little like fear.

Say: This is a lovely morning
wherever you find yourself to exist.

Bald Spot

by Marc Carver

I looked in the mirrors

as i dried my hair.

They face each other all day long.

I walked back into the changing room

thought about telling the guy in there.

'Those mirrors go on and on into eternity just like life.'

But in the end

I did not bother

I thought I would let life do it instead.

Oppressive, 1973

by Mark Blaeuer

Dead hour. No change in the mercury
hellometer. Sleep ransacked. A red skull,
an inbred apparition. That locale
ground them out ex nihilo. Animate
leaves crackling as if under human weight—
recidivistic prowler shifting to
his haunches for an upward-angle show
past wind chime, holly. She sprang off the bed,
dressed lightning, scoured the gray neighborhood
until she finally became insensate.
The presence—close as fear, conjoined with hate—
stayed. Drone of air conditioners: a lie.

FOR THOSE, THESE AND FUTURE TIMES

by Tatjana Debeljacki

Keep this heavy prayer as a secret
I ask you to go because I love you
Prayers for mercy and salvation
I sink into their silence.
Passion freezes in us
With its honest scream,
With a vowel and a consonant,
And we would, and we’d not,
Or we would, and would, but...
Love shoots in its core,
Mollified and coddled,
Yet I speak about my heart.
Meet me.
There is the one who will remember
And in the silence dare
Add, deduct and love again.
Meet me, you the first and the last one.
What do free acts and thoughts restrict?
An image grown from the words hides the rainbow
God is the witness of the fragile flow,
Slave driver.
Jealousy does not sharpen you
You are defeated by safety
And deceived by the mirror reflecting you as one
With a prelude, a quibble
Years, years and swallows .
Love named by my name, his surname,
Thank to your heart and faith.
Nothing remains but

The mighty anticipation.

FRIDAY NIGHT SIX PACK: DEATH IS BIRTH

by Stephen A. Rozwenc

1.

that night
right after I died
like the pink and smooth scream
that gardens eternity
with a tiny rose petal

you stood on the other side of the river
that pours the absolution of mystery
and innocence
and called me to come back

you
I could not refuse


2.

so that
the land mines would become begging bowls
filled with nectar
held aloft from their graves
by the cupped hands of the dead

so that
the one legged children would wrap
their detached limbs in smoldering cheesecloth
and offer them to the starved wolves
for food

so that
the cunning hole in the ozone layer
would become the mouthless ego
that swallows itself whole

so that


3.

since I am
the pastel soft reincarnation
of an undiscovered impressionist painter
and your every life
has shielded the endangered
that we should meet frequently
in some prearranged chamber
perhaps inside a boarded up store front
just off that noisy retail street
in Paris Bangkok Atlantis
Hector’s effulgent Troy
or beneath some indefinable aura
where bamboo curtains gleam with astral hindsight

that we should speak the ruby-throated language
of hummingbirds
stamen and pistil brushes
slathering the insides of each other’s brains
with lush Tuscan landscapes
while we sample gourmet morsels and sip evocative wines
occasionally from the holy grails
of our clairvoyant genitals

that we should dress in stately Chinese silks
and legless beggar’s rags
to engage in dying wild chocolate
anima to animus transformation
you into me
me into you
our cherry blossom hearts bleating starlight
until we can stand it no longer
and scream for it to stop
but only
so we can begin again


4.

the fog’s unbelievable nightgown lifts
to reveal
a missing deck of tarot cards
sketched from memory
by a star with no wound

incognito hills
fluff vegetation
with déjà-vue innuendo’s
nonchalant bodies flee

tonight
there are nothing but starfish in the sky
and miniature skeletons
hidden in a shoebox
your childhood
is finally safe
buried in that musty crawl space
beneath the rickety front porch
next to the stranger
whose ice cream breath
bulges scratchy sandpaper cheeks
and dark vacant holes
in a hairy brown coconut head
with absent eyes that will surely devour bliss


5.

for those first delicious hours
after he died
his heart wore a black silk slip
with nothing beneath
but creamy white completeness

the farther away from his body
the eerie dream fluttered wingless and free
the more every thought and sensation
even a worst pain or sorrow
was felt only as pleasure

but then from nowhere
wafted that willowy coo
he had always trusted
way so long ago
in those stunning days
when they frolicked into sweet scented pines
ruby faced and swearing
untouchable memories

you have to come back
her gentle murmur stroked him
just as it did then
and he knew instantly
his tiny son and humbling works
ached for his return
no matter how much or how little
he had left to give

ever so touchingly summoned
he chose to return
gradually descending down inside
the luminous Diaspora
where so many half-things congregate
to reveal by absence
and fragmented presence
who they really are
and what good or evil they might pursue
into the corporeal clamoring

6.

ambling sustenance
along a platinum blonde beach
my left big toe flips over
one of her pink seashells
half buried
in totem sand

recalcitrant lavender teased
to discover dulcet tones
I’d never otherwise know
I lift the transcendental accident
to my ear

instead of psychotropic oceans
or descant choirs
from chorale atolls
27,000 voices of different musicians
poets sculptors dancers and painters
who have lived
on earth before
throat a fathomless chant

some call them angels
dead beings
or spirit entities
I call them clusters of genius
who have removed themselves
from all pretension

they remind me
I have paused with them frequently
between earthly lives
and have been sent back
one more time
to channel exquisiteness
to the living


Credits and acknowledgements
Poems by first lines:

1. “so that”—first published in “Words_Myth”. 2009
2. “since I am”—first published in “Nefarious Ballerina”. 2011
3. “the fog’s unbelievable night gown lifts”—first published in “Adagio Verse Quarterly”. 2010

Stephen A. Rozwenc lives in Haydenville, MA and Mueang, Phichit, Thailand, dependingon the weather and his mood. He has published 4 collections of poems. In the last 3 yearsover 50 of his poems have been published individually in various poetry journals and ezines.He has been the past recipient of 2 Massachusetts Arts Lottery Grants for poetry.

You breathed my name into the air I never knew I existed until then

by Trina Tan

Maybe we exist only in exhalations maybe
there is no us. Maybe we are six billion people
surviving on the voices of (six minus one) billion people
each of our breaths a consequence of
someone else uttering our names in stories of
sometime adventures. There is no gravity we exist in a flux
of cause and effect. Suspended in the middle of cotton quilt
and stone graphite we are always reaching towards the red-hot baton of
another’s sorrows, they say warm air rises and we are not cold. Our names
condense in the winter and crystallize into signboards of love the way
angels clothe themselves in air, navigating us into one another’s arms. (Today
I met a man who pinched nail-deep into his elbow every ten minutes
to stop the pain and I imagined that
no one had uttered his name in a long time.) I thought maybe
this is why poets say they are immortal maybe
God is powerful simply because so many people have uttered His name
since time immemorial maybe
the moments I felt I could not breathe was the result of someone
censoring my name from the screening of a filmstrip memory. There is only
a world whose song is a recurrence relation of an infinite number of names
articulated in a finite number of breaths. We die the moment
our names are said for the last time, our souls finding
a deficit of memory and there is little choice but to default upon
bankruptcy. There is no life or death no rich or poor        only
the number of breaths we have conquered        only
the melody of our names on
each other’s lips.

To the killer hiding in the back seat of my car at 10 p.m.

by Jessica Otto

Hello.
Who’s back there?
Lovely night, isn’t it?
I was going to go home
but now
I want to treat myself
to an adventure;
something I can sink
my teeth into.
Get away from me! Stupid
driver! I hate it when people
get right up my ass
like that. I hate it
when people don’t get out
of the way for ambulances
and fire trucks;
Mr. Tough Guy
with a cigarette behind his ear
and an elbow sticking
out the window like the
biggest asshole in the world.
Wait till you start speeding 90,
100 miles in the wrong direction,
am I right? Splatter
brains all over the highway!
Seriously, you need to
speak up if you’re back there
because I hate it
when people call me crazy.

GETTING OUT

by Marc Carver

I told one woman
she was the joy of my life
and
another called me darling
and then one
drove off and left me
and i have only been out of the house
for a hour.
I really should get out more.

Allegory

by Mark Blaeuer

I grab my first aid kit.
The target house near, I decide
to run there. Soon I’m on the highway,
stuck behind a marathon
of centenarians, most crawling.
I yell, “Hurry up, you old
people!” They reach a place where
they’re supposed to rappel up a cliff,
and this slows them further, dogged
seniors moving two inches
per thousand years, covering
the precipice I have to ascend.
Unlatching my kit, I pull out
the bullwhip. CRACK! “Climb, suckers!
Hurry up, you old people!”
CRACK! “I’m responding to
a medical emergency!” Elders fall.
“Come on, damn it!” CRACK! Finally,
enough of the face clear, I
can elbow past, dropping a few
more. At top I dash to my
destination, family
at the door. “You’re too late,”
they accuse, “He died.” “Well, heck,”
I say, rummaging my kit
to find a baggie. “I was going
to administer this to your father: who
wants a doughnut hole?”

Combination Plates

by Ed Markowski

Ten minutes beyond a mandarin orange salad,

a bowl of hot and sour soup, two crisp egg

rolls, fire cracker shrimp ding and two hot

cups of oolong tea, my girl Dixie deep fried

me until I froze solid and popped in the damp

and delicious heat of her banana split.

Biting The Worm

by Bryan Murphy

The ebb tide breaks;
life flows in his favour:
unbidden, unforeseen, relentless,
it replenishes a micro-universe
with love, ecstasy, contentment.
Wise-monkey eyes flick open
to macro-horrors
in a shrinking world;
one existence blooms,
a universe rots.

Victoria Rose

by Ella Barstowe

This day won’t last forever

And tomorrow’s almost here
So drink three cups of water,
Some Gatorade for electrolytes
And chamomile for emphasis,
Two aspirin for the pain,
And a firm pinch on the arm
Or a cut
To remind you that you’re still real
And you’re still you
And you still remember
How you got this far.

But you accidentally remember too much

And your monsters come back
To attack from all sides
And mine do too,
Since the call is sounded.
But this time,
This time we know
What we didn’t know before
And we fight with all weapons drawn
Until our monsters subside
And we realize
We’re still here sitting together,
Gasping for air,
Throats tightening
Around the stories of our pasts
As they try to escape
Mixed with tears.

With tears in your voice,

Your hair in your hands,
Your lips curl into an arc
As they sip
On the chamomile we prescribed,
And then
You stop drinking,
Tell your last secret,
Hiccup,
And announce that you’re going to bed.

can’t play pictures out here

by Mike Foldes

jorge focused on taking the same photographs over and over. different people who all looked the same. mangold said “we can't keep writing the same poem, painting the same picture, shooting the same photo…. you must get out and away and come back with fresh flowers and wet sand. i think there’s some down that alley.”   jorge went to search for wet sand and fresh flowers. mangold never saw him again. when he returned, jorge was a different person, unrecognizable. his work was different, too. he’d taken up guitar and composed music for it that turned rivers green, the sky red and mountains mauve. when he put away his instrument, the world he played in went dark.  mangold said, “let’s go inside. you can’t play pictures out here.”

Incandescent Soul

by Randall Johnson

A wire too small to see
turns spirit into being
perfect transference
not an ohm wasted
the who, watt, where and why
dispersed instantaneously
until the little fiber
one day
darkens.

Chambers of the Mind

by Amal Younis

Contents within the heart begin to unravel

Thoughts scattered across the mind beg to be spoken

Deep desires surface, while silly mistakes reveal a newfound purpose

Words that can’t pass the tongue struggle to be released

Leaving one mentally stable, yet vocally deceased.

Words from within take over numerous pages,

Replacing the once void lines with bottled up emotions

Power to the mind that never sleeps; more power to the heart that constantly speaks

Rare moments of weakness often occupy chambers of the mind

Replaying failures over and over like a broken tape recorder

But silence will only leave the heart heavy with words it cannot keep

So power to the mind that never sleeps, and power to the heart that constantly speaks

Gothic-ism-esq

by Devlin De La Chapa

He sat beneath the threat of rain
and watched the chickens peck

he had a favorite here and there,
the others were just props, ornaments,
trophy’s on a life less accomplished

the southern dust picked up and
tethered through his thick dark hair,
the same hair she pulled on many nights
before the fights before the idea of
peaking the American Gothic-ism-esq

a wooden screen door slams against the frame
of a door twice built, he notices the house is old
but holding well as she reaches him in a blue polyester
period dress in feline steps mirroring the cat ambling
beside her legs mirroring the chickens clucking

“where’s dinner?” her tone is broken like a tune
of past regret, lips thin, bare, refined, unpursed
like their lives unrehearsed on mother’s earth

sighing, he plucks up a favored chicken thinking, as
he headed toward the barn, that she at least deserved that.

He just walked away

by Bobbie Troy

he didn’t look back

after setting the swans

on fire

he didn’t see them

flapping and flying fruitlessly

into the unknown

then suddenly dropping to the ground

in a mass of blackened beaks

flesh upon flesh

sorrow upon sorrow

death upon death

he didn’t look back

he didn’t dare look back

he just walked away

$40 co-pay

by Ross Vassilev

sometimes I think

I've got every disease known to man

I've seen so many fuckin doctors

over the years

and I know all you doctors

made so much fuckin money off me

the co-pays and

deductibles

and all the useless shit

that helped you pay the mortgages

on yr 3-story homes

you're all a bunch of fuckin crooks

every one of ya

America is just one big con game

everybody's trying to con everybody else

those who can, get rich

and those who can't

sell drugs on the corner

it's all a big sick rat race

and there ain't no end to it

but you're still the shining city on a hill

right?

Revisiting Grandma’s House

by Ella Barstowe

Here, I grew up

With mothy dresses
And amber patchwork meadows,
With rusty fences, musty barns,
And twelve mothers’ attempts at unconditional love
For thirty three of the world’s most pointy-chinned children.

Here, I learned
That “lame” does not just mean a horse with a bad leg,
That if you are rude enough to ask Grandma
To give you her old toys, she will,
And that if you are polite,
You get nothing,

That all five of my mother’s sisters
Are clinically depressed,
And that I am likely to develop hip problems
In my early thirties.

Here, I discovered
The meaning of republican
And alcoholic
And out-of-wedlock
And bail bonds
And terminally ill
And refinance
And Luke 21:19

Here, I was told
That the life-size doll in the attic
Is actually Aunt Patty, who died young,
Preserved in a morbid display of taxidermy,
(Which proved to be untrue)

And that if I go to college,
My eggs will shrivel up
Like tadpoles abandoned in an evaporating pond
And I will miss my short window
Of child-bearing opportunity.

Here, I learned
That ain’t ain’t a word
Because my mama said it ain’t
And that I ain’t never going to feel
Like a part of this family,
Despite my undeniable McCullough chin.

O, All My Life

by Séamas Carraher

 

Alguien pasa contando con sus dedos.

Cómo hablar del no-yó sin dar un grito?

Someone walks by counting on his fingers.

How speak of the not-I without crying out?

Cesar Vallejo, Poemas Humanos. (5 noviembre 1937)

translated by Clayton Eshleman (1968)

O, all my life, in its

bottomless bits,

who shaking our flag

was shook by the chest,

how all headless men shout

this calling with no answers

(and animal in bones

to bite his own heart).

And so fell the world

with its arms all futile

and wonder in knots

for a man with no feet.

O, once upon a time

he was, (i found him)

lost among seasons,

(his minutes sharp and mean)

for change that could not change him,

and raw with working

(O all this class!)

for countless days and still the dark,

solid yet so full of veins,

who struggles yet seen it dead,

and absent in places

(and him more thing that

wrench the soul,

that build these men

and break them)

and sad and stifled,

andnobody in names

these lips and lovers

without love.

O all our life, large with its louts

and a nameless man

who screams in dread,

and all his sky so full of richness

(and then these children starving!)

Such sight inside his sightless brain:

and guns.

And bombs.

All killing dead.

And nothing said.

All saying sung.

And nothing done.

O, all his life with its fire

lit with fuses!

For these eyes a crutch!

A heart for that leg!

And lungs and voice

to bewilder it back.

(This beast-in-power

looks like a man!)

O all that life,

lousy in its dregs,

who dreamed the most but better.

i shook him! And pitied him,

(promised him bread, a slice a mouth)

and the waking parts were beautiful,

but the rest, rags and rotted.

i cried with him

but his mouth was stone.

i nursed him,

and cursed him

(to despair this bad)

then cursed them all,

whose heart was this?

And there was a place

with no single

song left,

and no mouth to shout its end.

 
O all our life, in its futile flags

and all, and everywhere

this rotten siege,

these church bells, and guards,

their spies and things.

i called him commissar

and shouted him books,

(this empty laugh with

its throat all cut)

blew wind

and watered him

sealess,

cried in secrets

for his shame that bad,

was god and mother that could

love him not.

O all that world, that wordless world!

And man, like child, who drowns

in our darkness,

and empties bare the last

of these shouts.

If only i could sing, he thinks

(grave as a tomorrow with your hand in mine)

of all this life in loss and loudness,

our silence grim,

it aches and utters.

No home or rest in this war

full of butchers,

no walk or flight will fix

this stone.

 

O all our li

fe

(this funeral life!)

Its love now loss,

and all this endless wartime,

sinking now

into your nearly

deadness.

 

monster evening

by Mike Foldes

the monsters came from everywhere
to sing, to dance, to copulate,
to pen their poems in shadowy halls
where monsters go to procreate.

the languages they spoke were one,
a blend of blood and sand and snow,
of crystal skies and perfect fruit,
of guttaral, pachyderm and crow.

the monsters came from everywhere
and when the shiraz began to flow
unscheduled breaks, a spark, a spore,
their fecund minds, flint and steel

lay lightly on the feathered plain,
throats parched, riven to the core.

and what did you taste

***and what did you taste
     to suddenly understand
     the language of the birds
by Miriam Sanger

dragon’s blood
from the edge of your sword
or your own
     red
     external
from a loose tooth
or bloodied nose
after you crashed
     through the privet hedge
and went head over
     handlebars
on the new bike
you’d forgotten how to brake
     on
viscous
     between the legs
forbidden, but...
calendrical
or smeared to the knees
in childbed
this humor you must have put yourself in
before the crow
in the parking lot
cocked its intelligent head
and told you
weather was running in
from the west.

Update at Ten

by Randall Johnson

Fire was news not weather then.
Water ran like water,
from taps, you understand.
They say fire weather tomorrow
and water’s short.

Fire weather?

We scoffed at bottled water once
which now pervades cold cases
at every store where needs are sold.
Will we cough at canned air next
or buy it in bulk before dirt weather?

Memo on a Parable

by Ed Werstein

To: The Shepherd
From: The Poet

Re: Your Lost Sheep

 

Let’s consider this from his perspective.

 

Maybe he had a mind of his own.

 

Maybe he was tired of conforming,

of every time his eyes wandered

feeling the crook of your staff

round his neck.

 

Maybe he just wanted to be

alone for awhile,

to not be a part of the fucking

flock any more.

 

Maybe he was sick and tired

of your mid-night advances.

 

Maybe he was an artist

searching for a tar pit

to dye in,

the original black sheep.

 

Maybe he didn’t want to be found.

Maybe you were just afraid

of what songs he’d sing to your flock

across the hills at night.

 

There were ninety-nine others.

Plucking Glass w/Tweezers

by Devlin De La Chapa

the sweat of cold beer slips through my hand,
Kool cigarette ashes feather over beige
shag carpeting at 11 in the morning
her body lies naked big tits black
snatch blond hair red nail
polish on fingers and
toes, my teeth grind
my head unwinds

last night rewind
a dingy motel room
lots of booze, horny broad
in carnal systematic positions
this was not the road I’d wish to
take to poetic perdition; I am fucking up
these hands penning words on blank hangover
canvases to create distorted fragments of poetic pornia

wood spent missing linoleum is what my blood-shot
eyes grasp as I reach across the nightstand for
the stenograph but the late morning sun
creaking through red sangria curtains
blinds my sight, warms my skin,
dries my mouth, my big head
throbs as I cannot bare to

think about the remnants
of red nail glass chips embedded
in both ends of my shoulders where her
fingernails had raked across my skin in the heat
of last nights streescapade so I spend the day plucking
glass with tweezers, true I may not be remembered as the
poet vying for the next Great American Poem but somewhere a
famed poem will be penned of a poet plucking glass with tweezers

BROKEN

by Bradford Middleton

There is broken glass all over the street

Whilst there are broken dreams all over this town
Due to the broken promises from those who are in control
Those who’ve never had it hard and made it to the top
Simply because of their old school ties

All I’ve got is my minimum wage

But I don’t even deserve that they will say
All they want are obedient serfs
To do as they are told and do all the work
But why should we when all we get is no thanks at all

Laid Off

by Ben Rasnic

What tipped me off

was his plastic puppet smile

illuminated by the funeral parlor

fog that always seems to hang

over four suits in a cramped room

with one empty chair.

Then came a spew of syllables

from the designated, flapping mouthpiece

with a gush of bloody feathers

from a dying quail

that made no impressions;

a Q&A that began and ended with

“Our attorneys advise we are not required

to pay you any kind of severance” and

“Aren’t you retiring soon anyway?”

concluding when a greasy, clammy hand

splayed rigid fingers extending

into empty space

like a housefly I swatted

with my self-respect

on the way out the door,

mind churning

like a fully loaded magazine

spraying bullets haphazard

into the void.

At 58,

& in the diminishing light

of horizon,

it is at times with deep personal regret

that revenge is a poison

I can serve only

lukewarm

and in silence.

HATRED

by Marc Carver

I looked at her

with my hate filled eyes.

'I know you hate me I can see it in your eyes.'

'Yea, i really hate you.'

I don't hate her for what she does to me

or even for what she does to herself.

I hate her

for what she does

to someone i love.

Bumped

by Mike Foldes

“The graveyards here are so very big,” she said,
As we drove through Queens, then Bronx.
“Those graveyards are filled with the bones
of people who put this city on the map,”  said I.
“It’s 500 years we’re talking about.”
On the Cross Bronx, she said,
“Those walls look to be 100 years old.
“It must have taken a lot of money to build.”
“Not taking into account sweat equity,” I said,
Weaving through traffic under the elevated
to get to Tremont, Webster
and the impacted ramp onto I-95 South.
“I bet they’d kill me if I got out here,”
The white girl said at Arthur Avenue.
“They won’t kill you,” I said, “My daughter
went to school here. She survived just fine.”
“This part of Bronx is Little Italy,” I explained.
“Where everyone gets bumped…,” she said.
“Bumped?”
“Bumped. Like in the movies.”
“Oh. Bumped. Like in the movies.”
“Where are the Italians?” she asked.
“Bumped,” I said. “Like in the movies.”

fill in the blanks

by J.J. Campbell

stealing glances
underneath street
lights, soulful
music blasting
in the night air

i know you can't
be happy or you
wouldn't be
looking

and just as i
muster up the
courage to slip
you my number
as your boyfriend
wasn't looking

the lanky geek
took your hand
and pulled you
away

off into the dark
for who knows
what

i had just spent
the last ten hours
standing, baking
in the sun,
listening to
music

a pursuit was
definitely not
in the cards

i'll let my
imagination
fill in the
blanks of
what could
have been

beer drinker

by John Grochalski

the beer drinker turns away
finishes a bottle of bud at the bus stop
opens up another one
that he has hidden in a paper bag
but he’s not fooling anyone
he’s doing it more out of respect
for the other people waiting for the bus home
people not used to seeing men
drinking beer in strange places
people who wouldn’t understand the need
after eight hours of selling your time down the pipeline
people for whom this way of life
is just the expected, inevitable norm of human civilization
the ones who will never find another way
the beer drinker tips the new beer
pours a waterfall of gold into his mouth
his eyes are red with weariness and booze
his hands are thick and black with grease
his clothes are stained brown from dirt
to say he is the standard and the stereotype
of the fading blue collar ideal
would be an understatement
he’s the american hero incarnate
but still the people recoil and move away
clutching their bags and their briefcases
no one here wants to associate with the struggle
although politicians stake their claim on his type
every election cycle
they just want to read about guys like him on the nightly news
and shake their heads at the way the country is going
the beer drinker, he just wants another beer
and probably a day off
he pours himself another waterfall of missouri piss
then cracks the next bottle a little bolder this time
he lets the paper bag go sailing down stillwell avenue
as the good  ecological people huff and pull on their clothing
people who’ll never know a beer buzz at lunch
people who know no desperation
because it sits manifest like a rank cloud over everything
so thick it blinds their hunger and need
chokes them on their own conceit
before they ever see the natural
light of day.

Onward

by Richard Hartwell

Every evening we are poorer by a day,
but richer by a memory;
every dawn we are poorer by a dream,
but richer by an opportunity.

It is this forward shift, this change,
this inevitable variability,
that is mankind’s lodestone;
for, without change,
or the expectation of change,
or the vision of change –
without this or these,
what is life worth?

Unrest is the mark of existence;
variation is vitality
not fulfillment or satiation.

Mankind needs need and
pursuit of the far country;
arrival is not a goal, only
passage is of genuine worth,
its challenges fulfill mankind.

Forward motion is all, whether physical
or intellectual or emotional.
Mankind is made for movement,
not entropy and stagnation.

Just like genghis

by Marc Carver
 

As I sat down on my bed

watching a film

it began to thunder and lightning- so

I got up and went outside in the rain

thought I would give god his chance

I waited for a while

but I just got wet

and I thought I had given him long enough

so I went in

and watched the end of the film.

Lung Tap

by Miriam Sagan

my name is on my wrist
so it has come to this

there’s screaming down the hall
but why I can’t recall

they say the screamer is me
but this is hard to see

I tell her to shut up
scream lessens not a bit

my name is on my wrist
an opiate of bliss

in sacrificial pose
bound knees support my nose

the needle is my name
she’s screaming just the same

I read what I am called
and memory is jarred

my name is on my wrist
m-i-r-i-a-m means bitterness