I open my skull with a flower, & a mad butterfly flits




in. He brightens the black emptiness as the crow caws &



sharpens Jesoo's claws. Jesoo fornicates with the dirty



bird, loving his neighbor as he loves himself (O probably



not that much) & carries her off to eat crow. A feather



sticks in his yellow molars & withers away from the bad



breath, where all God's creatures meet their death.



Let the dead bury the dead, & my skull closes up



entombing every dirty bird, which Jesoo thinks absurd.



If there's a whey, there's a curd, & there's onions &



carrots in it, & when U finish, it produces shit that takes



a whole shelf at the produce store, refrigerated to last



some more, rotten to the core, but that's how Jesoo



likes to eat it before he bends over to manufacture



shit. The butterfly comes out brown, who was the most



colorful creature in town, before the flit turned to shit.



The Lone Ranger is summoned & Batman too.



Superman is in prison for robbin' Robin, who was



Katjanjammerkidnapped & tied to the transom for ransom,



but the transom breaks in two.



I open my skull with a flower, & a mad butterfly flits



out. They cement my skull back together, & the worms



inside are consumed in darkness ...



!



poem 2



When the bishop cuts off my head, I'm rooked.

I take out my gun to shoot down a bird.

I like him better when the devil's cooked..



No matter really, I guess I'm hooked.

It all seems, constable, a bit absurd.

When the bishop cuts off my head, I'm rooked.



I'm doomed, at least that's always how it's looked.

I'm to be destroyed, says the holy word.

That's what they say when the problem is brooked.



I like him better when the devil's cooked.

t's much more savory, or so I've heard.

When the bishop cuts off my head, I'm rooked.



Sundry headless women get me studbooked.

As cottagecheese, we're a bloodthirsty curd.

That's what they say when the problem is brooked.



Then comes the real problem when you're cold schnooked.

In the mirror you're a bloodthirsty nerd.

When the bishop cuts off my head, I'm rooked.

That's what they say when the problem is brooked ...



!



poem 3





The head dangles between his legs.

Jesoo's nose sweats between his eyes.

Mary stares horrified & weeps/ through



his nostril a bloody worm creeps/ in

Jesoo's teacup the Master's blood steeps.

The worm sips & shrivels up dead/ a



million worms get in his bed &

ball as prostitutes for their bread/ they

all get syph & gon, for getting it on/ how



else could they get off/ hear the

devil's cough/ the concubines get made as

all the little chicks get laid/ anything to get paid,



a job for the Marquis de Sade/ for a small

tip, he gets his whip & loses his grip/ the

whip flies off into the loft & hits a piggy in his



belly soft/ they hang the pig aloft until he's bled/

they sever his head & sop up the blood with bread/

he tastes mighty good, it's said/ the

head is dangled till all be dead ...

"Western Woman"

 

Burning lady driving towards the sun
Trails of dust make life a little fun
Rules are for the weak of mind
Laws to bend the crooked lonely time
Race against the sun's majesty
One more sunrise would be a tragedy
Burning lady, which way are we goin'?
"Whichever way the wind is a-blowin'."

"Wicked Lust"

 

Reaching and writhing
Look and never touch
It's all on a platter
Greasy with lust
Small white teeth
And eyes oh so large
Crawling towards me
Now It is in charge
Hard headed and out of reach
Big eyes closed. Slurred speach.
Time
Time now runs away
Maddening the dogs
Kept at bay

"We head West"
 

my reality, oh it drowns me
my imagination, it now surrounds me
yet my heart burns hot, always in both
and here in life, i am strengthened by hope
because tomorrow just has to get better
there is no other way the sun sets
all of us all are one, we are always together
in our life and in death, we're all headed west

"Hydra Madness"

 

Alone and drifting in the sea
Miles and miles below
An aqua-goddess came to me
In an orange glow
She showed me the reefs and chiefs
And her jewels and pearls
Beauty that light will never see
She cloaks it from our world
We swam up for miles and miles
To bathe in the burning sunset
As the moon lights our smiles
I'm glad that I forgot to forget

"Tripping Violent"

 

I walked to the home
Of the one-eyed craze
Living life in a wise
Stupor and a grand haze
Tripping violent--- breathing walls
Lighting matches--- burn it all
One eye to see
All of the world
Two eyes to see
Nothing more

"Too Many Fools"

 

Too many fools
Spitting
Drowning in drool
Babbling insanity
Illicit creal profanities
Point in every different direction
Stiffened necks surround
Iron perfection
Smoke is pouring from the hills
It is all burning
And screaming so shrill
It's all on fire, a grueling dirge
Choke the silence
With no words
Dance wild and strange
Dance forever flames

Drew Epps

-15

            I don’t know how we made it through that first summer. At first, when there were just a few of them out there, they were pretty easy to get away from. But as the death toll of our own grew, of course, the numbers of the walking dead grew as well. I mean, it’s easy enough to salt, and burn, and chop off the heads of all the corpses you can see, but you can’t take care of the dead you don’t know about.

            We all put up a brave front at the very beginning, thinking we could win. We formed zombie-killing posses, blew up buildings housing dozens of zombies—we hoped—came up with new ways of disposing of the dead. But it wasn’t long before we were all holed up in our basements with our families and as many supplies as we could rustle up, fire and firearms handy, ready to protect our own to the bitter ol’ end.

            During a particularly optimistic period, we ran a primitive network of crank-powered ham radios between each house so that we could communicate with one another. For a while—like, two or three weeks—that was great, because it helped to know that you weren’t the only family in town left alive. The kids really liked it, because then they could blab to their friends about how their parents were driving them crazy, and how they wanted to go outside and play, and all that kid stuff. Some kids started making up their own radio shows, like they were running some sort of network with plays and music and even a mock call-in show. It’s just amazing how kids can bounce back from things, even something as horrible as being chased by hordes of bloodthirsty zombies. Absolutely amazing.

            Yep, the radio was fun for a while, then someone’s—I don’t want to remember whose—house got overrun, and zombies tore up the floor trying to find the people inside. We could hear the zombies groaning and ripping at the wood with their nails and teeth over the staticky airwaves, and you can’t just turn off the radio when someone you care about is about to die on the other end. It went on for hours, the lurching, the stomping, the sound of floorboards and walls splintering. The only noise from the family was the baby’s muffled wailing, which was probably how the zombies found them in the first place. I turned the volume of the radio way, way down, and took it to the corner to listen to so my wife and kids wouldn’t have to hear the eventual screams. After that, the radio wasn’t nearly as much fun.

            Overall, though, life in the basement was pretty tolerable, and was probably going to stay that way so long as nothing bad got down there with us. When June and I first got married, we lived in a tiny studio apartment with a bed in one corner and a hotplate and beer fridge in the other, and we were darned happy. You don’t need a lot of pretty things when you’re in love, and you don’t need a lot of silly things when you’re trying to stay alive. Me, my wife, and our two girls were just fine living in the basement, which was nearly twice as big as that studio apartment fifteen years before had been. We had food and water, we had shelter, and, with a little luck, we had the time to wait out whatever was going on with the world. It wasn’t perfect, but nothing ever is.

            The one thing we hadn’t taken into consideration was the cold. We spent the whole summer sweltering in the basement, the humidity in the closed space just about unbearable, the smell of mold constantly in the air, to suddenly being cold. That’s how we knew winter had come. We were cold all the time, and there was no way to build a fire in the closed-up dank basement.

After about a month of huddling together under piles of blankets and dressed head-to-toe in our deep winter gear, I decided to risk prying the boards off of one of the windows so that we could have enough ventilation to light up the stove. June and I figured that between the four of us, we could move the wood stove over to the window—with the pipe hanging out, so that if anything tried to get in that way, it’d get torched. Zombies didn’t seem to like fire too much, and we hoped that a red-hot iron pipe would cause the same kind of aversion in them that an open flame did. 

It was something else to pull those first boards off of the window and see the sunshine for the first time in months. Four months, to be exact. I mean, I could tell that the days and nights were passing from watching the tiny holes in the boards covering the windows, but I hadn’t seen a whole windowpane’s worth of sunshine since we’d gone into the basement. It was beautiful. The glass was so cold it hurt to touch, of course, but the pale blue sunlight reflecting off the snow outside was beautiful.

And there were no zombies outside the window. Nothing was moving. It was as still as winter in Minnesota should be, without even squirrel footprints marking the hard white snow outside.

“June!” I said. “Mary! Allison! Come here!” I waved furiously at my girls and made them come from the corner they were huddled in to look out the window with me. “They’re gone!”

“They can’t be just gone,” said June, always the pessimist, but almost always right. “Maybe they’re just on the other side of the house.”

 After much furious debate, we finally decided that June and the girls would stay in the basement with one of our shotguns, and I would take the other and head upstairs to see whether the zombies were truly just hiding on the other side of the house. This was my proposal from the beginning, but it took some talking to get June’s permission.

“You better not get killed out there,” warned my wife as I pried open the board nailing the basement door shut as quietly and efficiently as I could. “Don’t forget to say something intelligent and human-sounding when you’re back at the door, or I’ll shoot you,” she added, patting the rifle stock menacingly. “If I think it’s a zombie coming down here for one moment, I’m just going to shoot.”

“Yes, dear,” I said, tugging at the boards a little less quietly. Four months together in the basement was more than even a couple deeply, deeply in love could take, much less a couple that had been married for as long as we had been.   I finally ripped the last nail loose and carefully turned the door handle, rifle cocked and ready to shoot at anything that moved. June stood on the step right behind me, ready to shut and lock the door as soon as I stepped out.

“Any password I should ask for?” she asked as I turned to say goodbye.

“Just open the door for anyone speaking English,” I answered, feeling a little giddy with anticipation. “I won’t come back here if I’m being attacked or chased, either,” I added, feeling  more than a little guilty for saying it as soon as I did. “I won’t be gone long, but if they’re out there, and they see me, I just won’t come back here.”

“Wow. Thanks,” said June, shutting the door. Yep, she was pretty pissed off. We both knew that I wasn’t so much going outside to see how the world was doing as I was stretching my legs and taking a walk.

The house was as quiet as death—I mean, real death, not the shambling death that groaned and howled over our heads all summer long. It had been pretty cold in the basement, but a solid month of huddling with my family wrapped in blankets was no preparation for what was probably a fifteen below degree day in the sun. I could feel the mucus inside my nostrils and around my eyeballs growing sticky and hard, and I quickly pulled the scarf up over as much of my face as I reasonably could.

I picked my way through the living room nobody had lived in for almost half a year, trying not to trip over the overturned and shattered furniture that covered the floor. Whatever had been in here had been real mad. I wondered if the zombies could smell us living people right beneath their feet, and whether or not they had been trying to find us specifically while they had been in here.

The house was completely empty. I poked my rifle into closets and under beds, kicked at piles of ripped clothing in case something was hiding underneath them, and even tramped through the attic a bit before giving up. So far, so good. I checked my rifle before heading out into the front room, and out through the gaping front door. I was so riled up from the sheer tension that I almost took the scarf off my face so as to see better, but a tiny bit of remaining sanity made me keep it on so as to not lose the tip of my nose to frostbite. My hands were shaking so bad that I’m not sure I would have hit a zombie if there had been one waiting for me outside, but luckily, there wasn’t.

The only thing waiting for me outside was an endless, unbroken field of pure white snow, frozen so hard that you could have skated right across it. The only thing that was out of place were all the new trees and bushes that had sprung up all over my lawn.

“What the hell?” I said aloud after a couple of moments of just staring. I mean, we hadn’t been in the basement long before for a forest to spring up around our house. I kept the lawn pretty damned clean of debris during the summer, and one season of negligence shouldn’t have produced so many damned trees. I stepped off the porch and headed over to the nearest white clump, curious as to exactly what kind of tree could take over so quickly.

As I grew nearer to the tree, I could tell that maybe it wasn’t a tree. The gray hand poking out through the snow was a dead giveaway, in fact. I stopped in my tracks and raised my rifle at the thing, waiting to see if it moved, or made a sound, or if any of the other hundreds of trees around me were going to do anything. If those things could have moved at all, I was shit out of luck, because I could now see that probably all of the trees were really zombies, and they were everywhere.

But they didn’t move. Not a single one of them. It was so quiet and still out that I cold have heard a bird sing a mile away, and I heard nothing. It was kind of like I imagine space would be, and it was too much.

“Hey!” I shouted, more to hear the sound of something than to actually get anything or anyone’s attention. I lifted the rifle up and held it at the ready. “Hey!” I shouted again, demanding some sort of reaction. And I got none. I went over to one of the zombies and kicked it as hard as I could, shaking loose pretty much all of the snow that covered that ugly thing. Still nothing. It just stood there, eyes crusted over with ice, glistening from the ice crystals covering its skin. I kicked a little harder, and its arm came off.

“Holy crap!” Again, said for my benefit. Nothing moved, spoke, moaned—nothing. I turned back to the house and shouted, “June!” Now I was running, despite the pain in my lungs from moving against the frigid air. “June! Mary! Ally! June!” I tore through the house and back to the basement door. “June! June! Don’t shoot!” I shouted, pounding at the door. “They’re all gone! You’ve got to see this! Open the door!”

“Mark?” called my wife through the basement door. “I hope to God that’s you out there. I’ve got a gun!”

“Come on!” I called, a little quieter now. “Get dressed and come on out! It’s so cold out here it killed the zombies!”

I heard something scratching on the other side of the door, and a few moments later, the door slowly swung open. My wife stood there, her rifle cocked and ready to go, Mary and Allison standing behind her, dressed in mismatched winter clothes from head to toe and wrapped in blankets. “Oh, my God, it is you,” said June when she saw me, lowering her gun and carefully putting it on the ground. She threw her arms around me, and I could tell that she had been crying.

“I swear, this is all worth it,” I said, laughing, leading her and the girls through the house and to the front door, trying to distract her from the torn-up state of the house.   “Those are our zombies,” I said, gesturing grandly at the landscape outside peppered with frozen corpses. “They can’t move. They’re all frozen, “

“What the hell does that mean?” asked June. “Does that mean that if we get a good thaw, we’re going to be living in the basement again?”

“I don’t know the answer to that,” I said, truthfully, tugging at my wife’s arm to get her to move. “All I know is that right now, they’re frozen stiff, and there is absolutely no reason why we can’t be outside, breathing fresh air and enjoying the sunshine.”

“And the -45 degree wind chill,” grumbled Allison, shivering. Still, even she couldn’t help but turn her face up to the sun, blinking against the brightest light any of us had seen for months.

Holly Day

First Love

 

You started off being microscopically tiny-

Nearly invisible.

You began to rapidly sprout inside me,

My love for you emerging.

 

Just six weeks passed-

It was the first time I had heard your heart beat,

A thumping rhythm- ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom.

I received my first picture of you,

A glimpse of the future.

 

 

Soon you were ready to enter the world,

On July sixteenth you tackled it with a heartwarming smile,

Your shiny brown eyes, full of innocence.

I named you Hercules, knowing you’d be strong. 

 

Daniela Mancuso

House of Vanishing Doors

A breeze came through the window

In a small vacant farm house very far

From town as the soft transparent

Cloth certains danced. A chair and

Table nearby held an open book; pages

Turning themselves as if alone by the

Force of what was searching from the

Outside coming inside, intermittently,

At my reading pace. You see, I once

Lived here in the flesh of events with

Passion like others had done so when

Our fields were full of cotton and trees

Had deep water wells for their leaves To grow cool shades. And the back bed

Room at times became silent as things Stood still for moments. Again,just now,

I can recall one summer day like a dream Written down, the long letting go, a closing

That haunts me since, as I was the one Who died here; and people were walking,

Leaving like in slow motion while the Landscape dried up as the seasons moved

On. Still, I remain looking out the stark Window of migrating birds and dirt roads.

Watching them going, changing, disappearing Into some kind of a lonely series, never ending.

Stanley Morris Noah

The Fall of Berlin, 2 May 1945

Russians are at the Fuhrerbunker, now. Where is A. H. and his new wife, Eva?

In this hour the dirty work had to be done. Up came the six bodies of Goebbels'

murdered young children. Killed by their

parents, Magda and Joseph. Placed on

the grounds side by side. The broken, bent burnt, their eyes open, looking at nothing.

The cold objective camera moving, rolling slowly did a good job filming each child.

Each the subject of what remains in a total war. After identification the duty was over.

It had been very emotional for some, others just a methodical dreadful process. Then the

Russians, framed in black and white, turned, lit cigarettes and disappeared. In long days

that followed there was the clean-up, brick by brick and shovels. Street cars and rail

came back. Outdoor cafes opened with the smell of coffee and flowers. Retail shops, too,

had the latest apparel. Then, all of a sudden it was 1950. The Fuhrerbunker! Where is it?

Stanley Morris Noah 

A War Film Documentary

Stars are falling while people are leaping from shore cliffs of Okinawa, April 1, 1945. Americans now on the beach with gCfthering hours. Civilians

were told the invaders are red

horned demons. The horror. The floating corpses delicti of lies in motion, up and down with every tide, tides coming

in going out, balanced by the timing of the moon's forever indifference, whimsical clock. Bodies beating on sharp rocks

like dead fishes. I have seen

this event many times in my studies. The one woman standing a breath a moment, the letting go. And then I close my eyes. Don't want to

see the divine wind and waves again. Don't want to see the inevitable pungent demise. See mother with child, dangling all the long way down.

Stanley Morris Noah 

 

Last Train Leaving Berlin, 1-May-1945

We must hurry, tall mother

told me. Russians are like

ants every where, more and

more, through streets, buildings,

houses. We must get there

and I did. Slowly, the big black

train moving away. I saw many

staring, standing with hopeless

faces, screaming into a profound

memory. Central Station anew,

1972. 1\10 need to rush now. But each step I could hear skeletons

breakable, bones cracking deep beneath----it was the old world. You Know, they just found Martin

Bormann's skull here in the levels of time. Broken glass vial of cyanide between his teeth. Did

I see him in the crossing, then? Where is mother?-------Mother! The child's voice inside me asked.

Stanley Morris Noah

What the scientist say about ghost

Ghost Are dead people who refuse to lie down. They can walk through walls. But you only see Them coming through doors or already in your Room. They can't make a sound or talk although You are not completely sure.

They'r6!! Invisible but some how you're able to see them Clearly during the night hours and not in the Day time. They are intruders in the house though You know itto be their home long before your Arrival and ownership.

You will Venture into every room in the house except the attic; Thinking that must be where they got murdered or Have secrets there as if it's a sacred place of the ghost In residence. You don't want to offend as they might Haunt you to leaving the house you have now desired And love.

Ghost, according to scientist, Never vacate the premises because they would become lost among the unfamiliar. It's not a good idea to Refurbish your house, scientist say, as this would make Them disorientated. It's a transgression against their Serenity and sovereignty.

They have become empirical in your Mind --not in your closets. But even this is still an on going Intrinsic investigation. And if they turn out to be real and Externally true, don't panic if you hear things shifting in the Night or something missing from the kitchen. Remember, It's their house too. 

Stanley Morris Noah

A little Math Before and After Defenestration

Mr. Finndock was a New York City lawyer with a young and beautiful wife. He was middle aged, about 50ish. And had an office on the 9th floor not too far from Wall Street near the stock exchange. In fact he was in walking distance; and there waiting for him was his destiny. So in the past few years of trading stocks he had become quite successful; it also had first grown into an addiction, then an obsession. Even to a degree where he once said to himself that playing the stock market beats great food and sex. To Mr. Finndock, the action of buying and selling was like art's highest form of expression, even if it meant being reckless at times and even if it meant doom itself. His account now was worth $454,000.00.

Then the impossible happened that October day in 1929. The market crashed and thousands lost millions of dollars in one or two days. Mr. Finndock's stock broker called to give him the bad news. He had lost everything, the $454,000.00. For Mr. Finndock, it went from surreal to shock and finally to despair, all within minimal minutes. His whole life now felt like a financial crucifixion. Mr. Finndock went rushing full speed out the window and nine storys down without making a noise (suicide victims never yell on the way down, bet you didn't know). Two days after Finndock's demise, his widow received a phone call from his broker. He apologized and explained a dreadful accounting mistake had been made. Finndock had not lost $454,000.00 but had made $454.00. One month later, Finndock's widow married his stock broker, Mr. Worthmore.

Stanley Morris Noah

 

Jesse James, Vincent van Gogh and Robert Ford

Robert was living with Jesse and Zerelda James in a rented house, St. Joseph, Missouri. The two, Robert and Jesse were friends and friends-in-crime too. At least Jesse thought Robert as a real and honest, close friend and kept Robert as company and bodY guard.

The time was morning, the 3rd of April, 1882. They had just finished breakfast of blueberry muffins, quiche lorraine and cappuccino. Zerelda then left the room carrying empty dishes made of fine china in Holland. Jesse and Robert were going over final plans for a train robbery to take place at sometime next week; and meeting up with Robert's older brother, Charley, before the caper.

After going over things, Jesse folded the maps of railroads and put them in his dress coat. Both spent the next hour cleaning their Colt six-shot pistols and exchanging small talk as they compared notches on their gun handles. Some of them dating back to the civil war, when they were raiding, killing and burning most anything that belonged to the Federal Government of Washington D. C. You see, Jesse and Robert fought for the Confederate States of America in military guerrilla units. But when the war between the

states was over in 1865, Jesse and brother Frank James and a few other members became delusional and wouldn't stop what was now considered to be criminal behavior. They were looked upon as the black sheep of "the lost cause."

It was time to go. Jesse went outside and got the horses fitted to ride and came back in. They were at the front door about to leave when Robert turned around to look at a strange painting hanging high

on the wall. "Say Jesse, where the hell did you get that colorful thing?" Pointing with his crooked forefinger,

"Oh hell, Robert-Zerelda got it at some neighborhood barnyard sell. She payed fifty cents for it. Never seen anything more colorful. Look how thick the oil is applied, and all the turbulent brush strokes, everywhere. It sort of reminds me of our own lives, where we've been and things we're still doing. Doesn't it Robert?"

"Yeah, sure does! Whose name is that down at the bottom?"

"Oh, that's some guy by the name of Vincent....err....Vincent van Gogh. Never heard of him. Maybe he's from around here. Wait a minute Robert. ,'II get a chair and clean it off before we leave." Jesse stands on the chair, takes a handkerchief.

Robert looks on and was about to say something. But then Jesse heard a gun click-bang. Jesse was shot in the back of the head. Zerelda came rushing in, screaming, "what happened, what happened?"

Robert with a guilty cloud of gun smoke just above his head replied nervously, "I didn’t do it, I didn't!"

The last conscious thought Jesse James must have had was van Gogh's painting. But exactly what was the subject in the painting? Was it sunflowers looking also like his famous big yellow sun; you could almost feel the humidity in the room, or was it an outdoor cafe scene, or sidewalks of Paris lined with green and blue poppies, or a still life, or wheat fields tumbling in the wind? Or maybe one of many self portraits-a man with flaming red hair and red beard. I guess it doesn't matter, not really, However, we are left with a phenomenon and a paradox here. Both van Gogh and Jesse James died from a gun shot to the head. Hundreds showed up to view Jesse's body. Hundreds came to his funeral. Few went to van Gogh's funeral.

Stanley Morris Noah