My name is J. Kingston Reed and I am submitting the enclosed poems, "Hello Dear Friend" "One Paddle Ping Pong" "From Thoreau to the Children" "Fargo Found" and "It's true that I am ageless" for consideration in (A Brilliant) Record Magazine.
I am a poet and general creative writer. I call Houston home, for now. I've published a few articles on poetry for The Paisano, the newspaper at University of Texas-San Antonio. I also worked for the student television station at University of Arizona, where I cut music and pasted clips of celebrities and athletes into small boxes. I read my poetry at local bookstores on occasion and was recently featured on Kyle Hubbard's Who Do You Believe In? mixtape. I enjoy space for a blog on Juvenation, a place for Type 1 diabetics.
Hello Dear Friend
What lies in simple chaos now? Impossible
sunbeams in dear, wicked, wicked punishments, see?
Blindfold yourself, or that beautiful nude, look now--
Can you see, right now, punishment for consecration?
By some strange mischance, I feigned sight as colors ran
black to confusing pastel and I saw hatred
in twinkling eyes, that divine spark, soleprints from Mankind.
Where are my shoes? Where are my shoes? Please! Please! My shoes.
And her concealed character's sight bled quivering
quills for a drawn on clog, outside-the-lines mukluks or three.
Prostitution of character is a priest's strength.
Holocaust...Holocaust...scream criminal's insane fury.
The Eternal...numberable...numberable
pleasures, the questioned insolence of youth, your prayer?
You! Me! Stars! We shine in all directions behind,
simply chaos, I fear. Sunbeams on you do not shine.
Yes, but, where are my shoes? How will I walk this tread?
One Paddle Ping-Pong
I had heard that dirty windows obstruct our view from a world less frightening,
but I clean with rag and clean smells and tortured cataract,
yet still, the glass reflects, reflects, reflects smudges
etched with crosses, sickles, stars, and hammers.
But nevermind that tolerance I cannot see
flowing through the whitest and rightest in some variation of red, white, and blue.
If the mirror shows that tolerance, I had better clean it too,
for the feeling leaves me clawing at that window, dirt under nails.
So outside sun shines, rains fall, trees throw fruit
at people hiding in shade behind the veil of their religion,
and I cannot see them, I cannot see them, no they are not here.
I am alone.
In this windowless room, trundle bed rolls out that knowing
does not depend on windows, rolls out pins in the mattress.
From Thoreau to the Children
I feel some chance in harsh dissolving step
and try to find a question tied to hands,
since buried time, for time, below deep sands.
My body stiff, my pulse and head at depth,
now pulled aloft by Soul, and find no debt
between its gentle warmth and flesh too tight.
This chance, the chance, behind cruel morning's night
must bend the only bridge, connect those lands.
But quick! Please steal away from chance so dead!
Don't fall-- don't tear-- your Soul, don't let astray
and here: how She made Leaf ring in your head
and wind now flows from Heart to Hand, not away.
So walk with chance and let it go, hold firm
to all you have, be dead within your urn.
Fargo Found
Fargo gets ready for possible evacuation,
threat from the Missouri River.
It's only smart to think about worst-case
scenarios, and
five adults and an infant, rescued by helicopter.
If you have kids, small and so forth,
evacuation would scare the tar out of them.
It's true that I am ageless
Interesting how we are more like Her than Him, flash rather than knell.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
On Virginia "Going Rogue"
Way to GO, Virginia! At a time when Toyota has been soundly chastised for concealing safety problems with its products, and Oprah is actively recruiting for her "No Phone Zone" distracted driving campaign, Virginia is "GOing rogue" and raising its speed limit to 70 MPH! Irony aside, statistics show that will mean MORE crashes, MORE lethal impacts, and MORE people killed. But what the heck, the state's economic burden will be LESSened by their numbers and the elimination of salaries for law enforcement with no one to chase. And since MORE fuel will be consumed by those driving at higher speeds, there will be MORE tax revenue pouring into the Commonwealth's coffers. With motorists whizzing around the state in record and "potty friendly" time, there will be LESS need for the newly reopened rest stops. Laissez faire est savoir faire? I think not. This move is a continuation of the disregard for human life shown by Tim Kaine's closure of the Welcome Centers. Will someone please put a STOP to that?
Karen Ann DeLuca
Way to GO, Virginia! At a time when Toyota has been soundly chastised for concealing safety problems with its products, and Oprah is actively recruiting for her "No Phone Zone" distracted driving campaign, Virginia is "GOing rogue" and raising its speed limit to 70 MPH! Irony aside, statistics show that will mean MORE crashes, MORE lethal impacts, and MORE people killed. But what the heck, the state's economic burden will be LESSened by their numbers and the elimination of salaries for law enforcement with no one to chase. And since MORE fuel will be consumed by those driving at higher speeds, there will be MORE tax revenue pouring into the Commonwealth's coffers. With motorists whizzing around the state in record and "potty friendly" time, there will be LESS need for the newly reopened rest stops. Laissez faire est savoir faire? I think not. This move is a continuation of the disregard for human life shown by Tim Kaine's closure of the Welcome Centers. Will someone please put a STOP to that?
Karen Ann DeLuca
THE PIERCING
by Vic Cavalli
At 3:33 p.m. on August 19, 1979, Andrew Monaco was almost killed by his conversion experience at Fat Vic’s Striptease Club and All-Night Smorgasbord.
He’d come in as usual at 3:00 p.m. for a double screwdriver and had settled into his red padded chair in the cool dimly lit area next to one of the dancing poles at the tip of the pitchfork runways.
There were thirteen alcoholics, each minding his own business, scattered around the poles like stray gunfire, nursing their drinks, waiting for the striptease artists to appear.
The smoke-soaked blood-red wallpaper surrounding them looked like a massive coagulating wound.
Then the music began, the lights dimmed, and Julia came out. She danced the usual tease patterns to prepare the drunks for the circulating hookers. Julia was dark and beautiful, and Andrew thought of a sapphire saxophone as he watched her strong curves sway. Then she was done—just like that—and wiggled off stage in nothing but her high heels.
Then Jessica appeared, her long red hair still partially wet from the shower. She did the same thing with her beautiful body as Julia did—strongly swayed, showed it all, primed the pump for the hookers and took off naked.
Finally, at 3:26 p.m. (he remembered because he looked at his watch as he took a bang of his screwdriver), Angela appeared. Andrew concentrated. She was perfect, blonde, tanned. She seemed extraordinarily clean. Like the others, she executed the typical teasing moves for the transfixed drunks, but Angela did so with a pure awkwardness. There was nothing nasty about her perfect body. During the climactic
section of her teasing routine, she targeted Andrew—motioning him to sit closer, on one of the red leather stools right at the stage’s edge. Gently swaying, for Andrew alone she removed the final white slivers of her clothing; her pubic hair was precisely trimmed and fresh; and then less than a yard from Andrew’s face she lay her body down, arched her back and spread her goddess legs as wide as possible—it was a feature article snapshot right out of Gynecology Research in Review—and suddenly a white spotlight shone on her vagina. Andrew was shocked at what he at first thought was a small surgical instrument, but after whacking back his double screwdriver and focusing his failing eyes, he realized that Angela’s clitoris was pierced and dangling from it was a beautiful white gold crucifix. She froze in that sacrificial posture of surrender as Andrew stared. Then he felt silvery hot flames licking at his ears, a sharp thrusting pain in his liver, trembling beginning in his loins and emanating throughout his limbs, then a sense of nausea, then a sense of volcanic surging—his skull felt like it was bursting with lava, or with the scattered OO buck shot of a bungled suicide attempt. With a spike in his eye he gazed at Angela’s crucifix. She seemed a pure marble statue. The Jesus was perfectly centered between the crosshairs of his eyes and nasal passages. Her fragrant genitals were a dew-drenched morning garden of fresh blood-red roses; the intensely detailed Christ on the cross was white hot; and then a crashing thrust of white molten snow blinded him and forced him to his knees; hundreds of candescent clear floodlights flashed on—he heard his screwdriver glass shatter and Angela scream. Then all went black.
Andrew woke up in the club toilet, racked with pain and covered with urine and broken glass. He staggered to his feet, out of the can, through the silent club, and through the door onto the street. He felt like a routed mole in the scorching sunlight and began shouting “Repent!” to the countless corpses outside.
He hollered for twenty-one days and nights—never touching a drop of liquor or a cigarette—and for the first time in his life everything was beautiful. Then he stopped shouting. Instead, to each person he passed on the street, he whispered, “Jesus is the Son of God.” And although he never carried a sign, he was insulted and attacked in alleys. Once he was nearly pelted to death with Lysol cans. But as he gradually healed, existence became increasingly profound, delicate, and beautiful. And he began lighting a candle daily in front of the statue of the Sacred Heart in the north-east corner of the cathedral at the centre of the city that once held him like a coffin. And he never returned to Fat Vic’s.
Vic Cavalli
by Vic Cavalli
At 3:33 p.m. on August 19, 1979, Andrew Monaco was almost killed by his conversion experience at Fat Vic’s Striptease Club and All-Night Smorgasbord.
He’d come in as usual at 3:00 p.m. for a double screwdriver and had settled into his red padded chair in the cool dimly lit area next to one of the dancing poles at the tip of the pitchfork runways.
There were thirteen alcoholics, each minding his own business, scattered around the poles like stray gunfire, nursing their drinks, waiting for the striptease artists to appear.
The smoke-soaked blood-red wallpaper surrounding them looked like a massive coagulating wound.
Then the music began, the lights dimmed, and Julia came out. She danced the usual tease patterns to prepare the drunks for the circulating hookers. Julia was dark and beautiful, and Andrew thought of a sapphire saxophone as he watched her strong curves sway. Then she was done—just like that—and wiggled off stage in nothing but her high heels.
Then Jessica appeared, her long red hair still partially wet from the shower. She did the same thing with her beautiful body as Julia did—strongly swayed, showed it all, primed the pump for the hookers and took off naked.
Finally, at 3:26 p.m. (he remembered because he looked at his watch as he took a bang of his screwdriver), Angela appeared. Andrew concentrated. She was perfect, blonde, tanned. She seemed extraordinarily clean. Like the others, she executed the typical teasing moves for the transfixed drunks, but Angela did so with a pure awkwardness. There was nothing nasty about her perfect body. During the climactic
section of her teasing routine, she targeted Andrew—motioning him to sit closer, on one of the red leather stools right at the stage’s edge. Gently swaying, for Andrew alone she removed the final white slivers of her clothing; her pubic hair was precisely trimmed and fresh; and then less than a yard from Andrew’s face she lay her body down, arched her back and spread her goddess legs as wide as possible—it was a feature article snapshot right out of Gynecology Research in Review—and suddenly a white spotlight shone on her vagina. Andrew was shocked at what he at first thought was a small surgical instrument, but after whacking back his double screwdriver and focusing his failing eyes, he realized that Angela’s clitoris was pierced and dangling from it was a beautiful white gold crucifix. She froze in that sacrificial posture of surrender as Andrew stared. Then he felt silvery hot flames licking at his ears, a sharp thrusting pain in his liver, trembling beginning in his loins and emanating throughout his limbs, then a sense of nausea, then a sense of volcanic surging—his skull felt like it was bursting with lava, or with the scattered OO buck shot of a bungled suicide attempt. With a spike in his eye he gazed at Angela’s crucifix. She seemed a pure marble statue. The Jesus was perfectly centered between the crosshairs of his eyes and nasal passages. Her fragrant genitals were a dew-drenched morning garden of fresh blood-red roses; the intensely detailed Christ on the cross was white hot; and then a crashing thrust of white molten snow blinded him and forced him to his knees; hundreds of candescent clear floodlights flashed on—he heard his screwdriver glass shatter and Angela scream. Then all went black.
Andrew woke up in the club toilet, racked with pain and covered with urine and broken glass. He staggered to his feet, out of the can, through the silent club, and through the door onto the street. He felt like a routed mole in the scorching sunlight and began shouting “Repent!” to the countless corpses outside.
He hollered for twenty-one days and nights—never touching a drop of liquor or a cigarette—and for the first time in his life everything was beautiful. Then he stopped shouting. Instead, to each person he passed on the street, he whispered, “Jesus is the Son of God.” And although he never carried a sign, he was insulted and attacked in alleys. Once he was nearly pelted to death with Lysol cans. But as he gradually healed, existence became increasingly profound, delicate, and beautiful. And he began lighting a candle daily in front of the statue of the Sacred Heart in the north-east corner of the cathedral at the centre of the city that once held him like a coffin. And he never returned to Fat Vic’s.
Vic Cavalli
Monday, February 8, 2010
Dear Mr. Logan--
Please consider the following two poems--"Born Again in Stone" and "The Long Journey" for inclusion on your site.
I live and write in New Jersey, and my poems appear or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals. My first chapbook, IIlusions Delusions and Dreams: Visions of the Surreal in Art (Naissance, 2009) was just published and is available from chapbookpublisher.com.
Sincerely,
Neil Ellman
Livingston, NJ
Born Again in Stone
Yesterday
On the 25th of December
In the year of my death
I was turned into a stone.
I felt nothing
Saw nothing
There were no sounds
But I knew somehow.
There was a stillness
Never night, never day
No way to know
But I did.
For the first
And only time
I felt solid and defined
Content as the earth
As only the earth does
When it knows
The soft emptiness
Of life.
It was Christmas Day
When I was born again
Into a nativity
Of chiseled stone.
The Long Journey
Some of us are left.
We avoided the main roads
Circled the sentry posts
And slept in old barns
With faded tobacco signs
And rusted cars
With their seats removed.
The coyotes howled
And left their marks
But we covered ours over
Leaving no trace.
The first died of thirst,
A man who said
He had a family in the south--
Two sons, he said,
Who would go to school
And read his letters
And have children
Of their own;
The next of despair--
He sat by a tree
And stared at
The inconsiderate sun
Breathing slowly
And finally not at all;
The others went later--
One shot from behind
The rest of white heat
And black starvation
The last by a rattlesnake.
It’s just over the horizon now
And whoever is left
May see our El Dorado
Before we die.
Please consider the following two poems--"Born Again in Stone" and "The Long Journey" for inclusion on your site.
I live and write in New Jersey, and my poems appear or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals. My first chapbook, IIlusions Delusions and Dreams: Visions of the Surreal in Art (Naissance, 2009) was just published and is available from chapbookpublisher.com.
Sincerely,
Neil Ellman
Livingston, NJ
Born Again in Stone
Yesterday
On the 25th of December
In the year of my death
I was turned into a stone.
I felt nothing
Saw nothing
There were no sounds
But I knew somehow.
There was a stillness
Never night, never day
No way to know
But I did.
For the first
And only time
I felt solid and defined
Content as the earth
As only the earth does
When it knows
The soft emptiness
Of life.
It was Christmas Day
When I was born again
Into a nativity
Of chiseled stone.
The Long Journey
Some of us are left.
We avoided the main roads
Circled the sentry posts
And slept in old barns
With faded tobacco signs
And rusted cars
With their seats removed.
The coyotes howled
And left their marks
But we covered ours over
Leaving no trace.
The first died of thirst,
A man who said
He had a family in the south--
Two sons, he said,
Who would go to school
And read his letters
And have children
Of their own;
The next of despair--
He sat by a tree
And stared at
The inconsiderate sun
Breathing slowly
And finally not at all;
The others went later--
One shot from behind
The rest of white heat
And black starvation
The last by a rattlesnake.
It’s just over the horizon now
And whoever is left
May see our El Dorado
Before we die.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Please consider the following poems for publication.
Over 200 of my poems have appeared in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Japan and Australia, and the U.K, including: Real Angry Poets, Quills, Unfeigned Coffee Fiend, Detour Memphis, Why Vandalism?!, Plum Ruby Review, Vox Poetica, Outcry, The Hudson Review, Whisper, Poetry Space, Dangling Verbs, Writers Forum, Poesie, Cafe Del Soul,
South Jersey Underground-Issue 6, Protest Poems, Poetry Stop, P&W, elffin&elffa, and many others.
I have had a series of chapbooks published in the 1980's by 4 Winds Press, such titles as "Doors and Windows",
"Dancing in the Eighties" and "Slow Burn".
I have had two poetry books published, the first "Teardrop of Coloured Soul" in 2005 and my latest one released in Jan. of 2010 entitled "I Walk Naked into a Cloud". Also this year i am awaiting final publication of "The Rushing Stream of Desires" and "A Yellow Sunshine night" (both in pre-production)
Chris is also the founder and Editor of P&W (http://triangularduck.bravehost.com), an online literary emagazine.
Prancing Silent
Sunrise finds the heart aching to be unzoned,
uncalled for, distressed.
Plastering billboards with advertisements
of no discernable benefit to anyone.
Buy this, buy that. Feel this way
or that. Slip into phrases
that bound the eyes.
Seeing the blind walk
across the rushing of
the cars. Making it, surviving;
arriving two steps behind the
rest.
Useless verbs that are
understood only
by the symbols of
racing numbers
in a chart.
They bind the answers.
They control the end.
The beginning a vowel
expressed by cups of
tea in a bathroom.
Ugly signs that are
re-zoned for alternative
religions.
Homosexual men prancing
their silk perversions
on an unsuspecting room.
We always buy the latest
edition of the newspaper.
The headlines announce
the arrival of
the lies.
The Door
The door is open.
Spirits race out into the dark.
They are escaping.
Re-inventing death.
I am one of the spirits.
I am one of the lost.
Escaping into the dark.
The door closes.
Slams shut
Now I am outside.
Lonely spirit lost.
Lonely voice screaming in anguish.
Horrors upon horrors.
Night upon black.
Hot wind sears thought.
I think but I am thoughtless.
Cavern of space
with empty eyes.
Sockets of disease proliferating
in jangled tones of sombre.
Grey moon.
Overshadowed undercurrents
of lisping lips.
Are they mine?
Are they mine?
I don't know how to love me.
Useless thinking wasted on
emotions that are shapeless reunions
of sliding weeds.
I am growing a skin.
It is bleeding.
The door is my answer.
Slam it shut.
Don't let the tears out.
They may define my state of mind.
But in truth,
they are shallow.
So am I.
Vanish Without a Trace
Vanish without a trace, my dear, and
I'll celebrate your funeral with roses
and wine. Jiggle like a fat man wrapped
up in his religious point of view. Speaking
this and that to a sleeping audience.
Craving the super delicious tangles of
frivolous delights. Vanish without a
trace, my dear, and I'll sing your praises to
every dead rat in the alley. Put you inside a
big plastic bag and keep you captivated in
the corner of the room. When the bugs come
out to play I'll say it's your fate and dangle
my opinions in your mind. Electric rock and
roll blasting off an old stereo, guitars jangling
to the beat of a brand new horizon. Flagrant
infractions of parliamentary rule will get
you banned from the ice cream parlour.
And we can put your smoldering bones
into a grinder, letting the smell assault
the politically correct neo-nazi's. Change
the sign if it offends the mind, change the
word and create a new perception. Vanish
without a trace, my dear, and Ill vanish
myself right after you. I'll go away and
you won't have me to hate anymore. We
can both pretend that all of this matters.
Waving Me Away Like A Dime Store Hooker
Her eyes
represent her thoughts,
waving me away
like a dime store hooker.
Pushing against
the silence
of
temporary distance.
Her simmering
perceptions
swallow me like
a dinosaur from
a 1940's movie.
Plastic, obvious.
My blue skin
is telling
my white nails
to scratch away
the pictures.
Do not absorb them!
We dare not
stop to
ask for directions.
Men do not do this.
Women do, and it is
this direction
you have selected
to promote.
Her skin
is freezing red.
Mingled with
the
dozen or so
hallucinations
she has
trapped
inside of her.
We cannot
be the
same
religion anymore.
You've converted
to your
own cathedral.
Forgetting
Forgetting.
That's the soul's answer to the locked doors
that confront you in the path.
Open the eyes and see
the zero that has become you.
And when the danger comes, let the
forgetting become a mantra.
Let it flush away the diseases
of yesterday's disasters.
When the yellow sun shines, ignore
the grey skies that have
defined you.
Be the empty that you can be.
It's the solution to the
falling asleep at the wheel.
And when the pencil lead breaks,
sharpen the axes to begin
the hacking away.
Let the zone alarms arrive,
and make them the purpose
of your ashtray heart.
Forgetting.
It's the most obvious solution
to the drowning of the
sense of being.
And when the rain starts to fall,
hold the radio
in your arms and let
the electricity
snapple your brainwaves.
Leave without saying goodbye.
Chris G. Vaillancourt
Over 200 of my poems have appeared in more than one hundred journals in the U.S. and Canada, in Japan and Australia, and the U.K, including: Real Angry Poets, Quills, Unfeigned Coffee Fiend, Detour Memphis, Why Vandalism?!, Plum Ruby Review, Vox Poetica, Outcry, The Hudson Review, Whisper, Poetry Space, Dangling Verbs, Writers Forum, Poesie, Cafe Del Soul,
South Jersey Underground-Issue 6, Protest Poems, Poetry Stop, P&W, elffin&elffa, and many others.
I have had a series of chapbooks published in the 1980's by 4 Winds Press, such titles as "Doors and Windows",
"Dancing in the Eighties" and "Slow Burn".
I have had two poetry books published, the first "Teardrop of Coloured Soul" in 2005 and my latest one released in Jan. of 2010 entitled "I Walk Naked into a Cloud". Also this year i am awaiting final publication of "The Rushing Stream of Desires" and "A Yellow Sunshine night" (both in pre-production)
Chris is also the founder and Editor of P&W (http://triangularduck.bravehost.com), an online literary emagazine.
Prancing Silent
Sunrise finds the heart aching to be unzoned,
uncalled for, distressed.
Plastering billboards with advertisements
of no discernable benefit to anyone.
Buy this, buy that. Feel this way
or that. Slip into phrases
that bound the eyes.
Seeing the blind walk
across the rushing of
the cars. Making it, surviving;
arriving two steps behind the
rest.
Useless verbs that are
understood only
by the symbols of
racing numbers
in a chart.
They bind the answers.
They control the end.
The beginning a vowel
expressed by cups of
tea in a bathroom.
Ugly signs that are
re-zoned for alternative
religions.
Homosexual men prancing
their silk perversions
on an unsuspecting room.
We always buy the latest
edition of the newspaper.
The headlines announce
the arrival of
the lies.
The Door
The door is open.
Spirits race out into the dark.
They are escaping.
Re-inventing death.
I am one of the spirits.
I am one of the lost.
Escaping into the dark.
The door closes.
Slams shut
Now I am outside.
Lonely spirit lost.
Lonely voice screaming in anguish.
Horrors upon horrors.
Night upon black.
Hot wind sears thought.
I think but I am thoughtless.
Cavern of space
with empty eyes.
Sockets of disease proliferating
in jangled tones of sombre.
Grey moon.
Overshadowed undercurrents
of lisping lips.
Are they mine?
Are they mine?
I don't know how to love me.
Useless thinking wasted on
emotions that are shapeless reunions
of sliding weeds.
I am growing a skin.
It is bleeding.
The door is my answer.
Slam it shut.
Don't let the tears out.
They may define my state of mind.
But in truth,
they are shallow.
So am I.
Vanish Without a Trace
Vanish without a trace, my dear, and
I'll celebrate your funeral with roses
and wine. Jiggle like a fat man wrapped
up in his religious point of view. Speaking
this and that to a sleeping audience.
Craving the super delicious tangles of
frivolous delights. Vanish without a
trace, my dear, and I'll sing your praises to
every dead rat in the alley. Put you inside a
big plastic bag and keep you captivated in
the corner of the room. When the bugs come
out to play I'll say it's your fate and dangle
my opinions in your mind. Electric rock and
roll blasting off an old stereo, guitars jangling
to the beat of a brand new horizon. Flagrant
infractions of parliamentary rule will get
you banned from the ice cream parlour.
And we can put your smoldering bones
into a grinder, letting the smell assault
the politically correct neo-nazi's. Change
the sign if it offends the mind, change the
word and create a new perception. Vanish
without a trace, my dear, and Ill vanish
myself right after you. I'll go away and
you won't have me to hate anymore. We
can both pretend that all of this matters.
Waving Me Away Like A Dime Store Hooker
Her eyes
represent her thoughts,
waving me away
like a dime store hooker.
Pushing against
the silence
of
temporary distance.
Her simmering
perceptions
swallow me like
a dinosaur from
a 1940's movie.
Plastic, obvious.
My blue skin
is telling
my white nails
to scratch away
the pictures.
Do not absorb them!
We dare not
stop to
ask for directions.
Men do not do this.
Women do, and it is
this direction
you have selected
to promote.
Her skin
is freezing red.
Mingled with
the
dozen or so
hallucinations
she has
trapped
inside of her.
We cannot
be the
same
religion anymore.
You've converted
to your
own cathedral.
Forgetting
Forgetting.
That's the soul's answer to the locked doors
that confront you in the path.
Open the eyes and see
the zero that has become you.
And when the danger comes, let the
forgetting become a mantra.
Let it flush away the diseases
of yesterday's disasters.
When the yellow sun shines, ignore
the grey skies that have
defined you.
Be the empty that you can be.
It's the solution to the
falling asleep at the wheel.
And when the pencil lead breaks,
sharpen the axes to begin
the hacking away.
Let the zone alarms arrive,
and make them the purpose
of your ashtray heart.
Forgetting.
It's the most obvious solution
to the drowning of the
sense of being.
And when the rain starts to fall,
hold the radio
in your arms and let
the electricity
snapple your brainwaves.
Leave without saying goodbye.
Chris G. Vaillancourt
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Flicker and Fade
The streetlamps flickered overhead again. On and off they alternated in kind until at last they lingered on. There were two dark sticks down below, edging closer to one another, on and off, on and off.
One reached for the other, paused and dropped away. The other returned in kind the subtle movements and like a mirror displayed their whole story at one glance. The street emptied but they filled it once more under those old lamps.
Alone, yes, alone no, one reached and then the other looking up and around, making sure their expression was bereft of subtle suggestion. This territory was conquered; dare they reach another region before the fall? On and off, on and off.
Those dark sticks, floated there adrift in the whirling tide pulled toward and away once more and then they were vanished. The street below silenced again as the first robins alit the line above the lights, flicker and fade and then the day anew. On and off, on and off.
Michael Ramirez
Linoleum Line
By
Michael Ramirez
I stood there,
hot-eared and flush-cheeked
with my back propped against
the chair back
spine-strong,
We stood there,
spring-loaded,
fingers going
red and white waiting
for what was next,
The space between
our feet shined
a wispy track
from the kitchen light
dangling overhead,
"Here it is" I thought,
as his hand rolled up
and flew across my chin,
I now knew he would be
my father never again.
The Downbeats
by
Michael Ramirez
The jazz man came with the quatrain tied to the last lowly note...he played
longer than my sadness as I hid my face behind my hands...hopin' the truth
wouldn't find me there. He kept playin' and I kept hidin' waitin' for his phrase to end.
I wanted nothin' more than to call him my friend, but he kept stabbin'
me in the heart with his agonizin' tones. I wrenched my fingers tight blockin' out the bad news, but it just kept on comin'. The Russian poured on
the next layer with his cymbal, quietly etchin' out the perimeter...
ta-tap,ta-tap, ta-tap.
It was all I could do but pick up my hat and walk outside...away from
their subtle cruelty...into the night air to clear mind and lungs of that damned
jazz. Walkin' down King Street, I saw 'em all-the queens, the fairies, and hookin' girls...
I felt an affinity for them, they were real...in a world full of plastic grass
and vacant stares...these urchins were the glue that kept everything together.
As long as they were around janglin' in the street, I felt like the world
made sense.
Old Hector sat at the spot...the bus bench at the corner of King and fifth. He barely tried to hide his bottle of Maker's Mark anymore, the patrolmen never came out this way...just as well. I ask old Hector, "Where's the fire, Hec?"
He rocked silently,
head down, shoulders hunched. I ask him again, "Where's the fire, Hec?" He sat there lookin' like a dead dog. His buddy, Nacho called from upstairs in the window, "He no hear you Mr. Sunshine...He no hear so
good no more."
I put a dime, a nickel, and three pennies into the can at old Hector's feet and went on my way.
The streetlamps flickered overhead again. On and off they alternated in kind until at last they lingered on. There were two dark sticks down below, edging closer to one another, on and off, on and off.
One reached for the other, paused and dropped away. The other returned in kind the subtle movements and like a mirror displayed their whole story at one glance. The street emptied but they filled it once more under those old lamps.
Alone, yes, alone no, one reached and then the other looking up and around, making sure their expression was bereft of subtle suggestion. This territory was conquered; dare they reach another region before the fall? On and off, on and off.
Those dark sticks, floated there adrift in the whirling tide pulled toward and away once more and then they were vanished. The street below silenced again as the first robins alit the line above the lights, flicker and fade and then the day anew. On and off, on and off.
Michael Ramirez
Linoleum Line
By
Michael Ramirez
I stood there,
hot-eared and flush-cheeked
with my back propped against
the chair back
spine-strong,
We stood there,
spring-loaded,
fingers going
red and white waiting
for what was next,
The space between
our feet shined
a wispy track
from the kitchen light
dangling overhead,
"Here it is" I thought,
as his hand rolled up
and flew across my chin,
I now knew he would be
my father never again.
The Downbeats
by
Michael Ramirez
The jazz man came with the quatrain tied to the last lowly note...he played
longer than my sadness as I hid my face behind my hands...hopin' the truth
wouldn't find me there. He kept playin' and I kept hidin' waitin' for his phrase to end.
I wanted nothin' more than to call him my friend, but he kept stabbin'
me in the heart with his agonizin' tones. I wrenched my fingers tight blockin' out the bad news, but it just kept on comin'. The Russian poured on
the next layer with his cymbal, quietly etchin' out the perimeter...
ta-tap,ta-tap, ta-tap.
It was all I could do but pick up my hat and walk outside...away from
their subtle cruelty...into the night air to clear mind and lungs of that damned
jazz. Walkin' down King Street, I saw 'em all-the queens, the fairies, and hookin' girls...
I felt an affinity for them, they were real...in a world full of plastic grass
and vacant stares...these urchins were the glue that kept everything together.
As long as they were around janglin' in the street, I felt like the world
made sense.
Old Hector sat at the spot...the bus bench at the corner of King and fifth. He barely tried to hide his bottle of Maker's Mark anymore, the patrolmen never came out this way...just as well. I ask old Hector, "Where's the fire, Hec?"
He rocked silently,
head down, shoulders hunched. I ask him again, "Where's the fire, Hec?" He sat there lookin' like a dead dog. His buddy, Nacho called from upstairs in the window, "He no hear you Mr. Sunshine...He no hear so
good no more."
I put a dime, a nickel, and three pennies into the can at old Hector's feet and went on my way.
Nefarious arcadia
It was all for naught until the windstorm.
Regeneration unto the lotus.
One can’t apologize any longer.
It was divine to know pantheism.
We held onto hope. We thought it would die.
A quicksilver lesson brought unto us.
Two days marks the retribution of sin.
We fell from my dreams, neatly on the cross.
I wish I had stayed, not fled as the fox.
A splashing fire and vitality.
Three shades a crowd. Isosceles notion.
I now know why the lonely drink wine.
You brought Armageddon to none but me.
A star fall from the ore of alchemy.
For you I would live against these red bricks.
You are between alpha and omega.
This morning light shattered any distaste.
One more breath of the syndrome before me.
Five masks were there, waiting for the pious.
This is why man searches for righteousness.
Vivify The Ocelot
I feel like my new self again.
Duality knows what I mean.
My other side has a dormant day.
Were the sun moves the pyre.
I've never felt so incarnate.
The war never built its own scales.
Who is invulnerable beyond theyre creator.
Supposing they decide existence.
A desicion of security the celts never knew.
But back to the main point.
No man can escape the vice that addicts all life, Death.
It's never scary when you have riches though.
At least thats what ive been shown.
Veil
Last night,
twin of last mourning.
Oceans depicting truths.
Quiet time,
forever more.
Clear the air.
Distain and secrets,
left untouched.
A funeral for euphoria.
Returning sounds best.
Needless Without Dismay
This is a new harvest of ambition.
Lies are as corrupt as the moonlight.
But afternoon nightfall’s bring my glee.
If I give myself names of morals I will fall.
So at the end of a new fool I will learn.
I’m born without trump cards like a new thought.
Confident decisions are nothing without suspense.
I've waited for me watching the sand.
Countless and ironic I fill my glass.
Simplification revives stagnant nostalgia.
Ageless are words like the seven I love.
A cell wall is broken waiting for fixation.
Regret is floundering weakness.
Migration is awaiting brief silence.
Dystopia bound are the paths I reject.
Like Plato I grant you a token of trespass.
My roman abilities are convent.
I covet the water for being immortal.
I’m regenerating my eyesight for life.
And yet renaissance dreams plague my modern mind.
I’m glad I understand nothing.
And someday everyone else will.
Son of Solomon
It didn’t feel like august.
It hadn’t showed itself.
The sky was all but fogless.
As the books wait on there shelf.
Who knew the river flowed like wine?
Who knew that I would feel divine?
The confidence of grace of stone.
The windless waves have seldom shone.
I can’t remember seeing her.
With wood died green and black and gold.
A heavy chain, the scent of myrrh.
From martyr passion I feel cold.
Standing
This moment capture.
I can seize it.
I won’t forget this.
To myself.
No one really can.
I don’t even need to see.
I just need those vibrations.
I’ll just change for good.
I promise I will.
To you all.
Who will watch?
Those freeing.
Hopes.
Never hopeless.
Until the wrecking wind.
But I can’t worry about that.
Tannen Dell
It was all for naught until the windstorm.
Regeneration unto the lotus.
One can’t apologize any longer.
It was divine to know pantheism.
We held onto hope. We thought it would die.
A quicksilver lesson brought unto us.
Two days marks the retribution of sin.
We fell from my dreams, neatly on the cross.
I wish I had stayed, not fled as the fox.
A splashing fire and vitality.
Three shades a crowd. Isosceles notion.
I now know why the lonely drink wine.
You brought Armageddon to none but me.
A star fall from the ore of alchemy.
For you I would live against these red bricks.
You are between alpha and omega.
This morning light shattered any distaste.
One more breath of the syndrome before me.
Five masks were there, waiting for the pious.
This is why man searches for righteousness.
Vivify The Ocelot
I feel like my new self again.
Duality knows what I mean.
My other side has a dormant day.
Were the sun moves the pyre.
I've never felt so incarnate.
The war never built its own scales.
Who is invulnerable beyond theyre creator.
Supposing they decide existence.
A desicion of security the celts never knew.
But back to the main point.
No man can escape the vice that addicts all life, Death.
It's never scary when you have riches though.
At least thats what ive been shown.
Veil
Last night,
twin of last mourning.
Oceans depicting truths.
Quiet time,
forever more.
Clear the air.
Distain and secrets,
left untouched.
A funeral for euphoria.
Returning sounds best.
Needless Without Dismay
This is a new harvest of ambition.
Lies are as corrupt as the moonlight.
But afternoon nightfall’s bring my glee.
If I give myself names of morals I will fall.
So at the end of a new fool I will learn.
I’m born without trump cards like a new thought.
Confident decisions are nothing without suspense.
I've waited for me watching the sand.
Countless and ironic I fill my glass.
Simplification revives stagnant nostalgia.
Ageless are words like the seven I love.
A cell wall is broken waiting for fixation.
Regret is floundering weakness.
Migration is awaiting brief silence.
Dystopia bound are the paths I reject.
Like Plato I grant you a token of trespass.
My roman abilities are convent.
I covet the water for being immortal.
I’m regenerating my eyesight for life.
And yet renaissance dreams plague my modern mind.
I’m glad I understand nothing.
And someday everyone else will.
Son of Solomon
It didn’t feel like august.
It hadn’t showed itself.
The sky was all but fogless.
As the books wait on there shelf.
Who knew the river flowed like wine?
Who knew that I would feel divine?
The confidence of grace of stone.
The windless waves have seldom shone.
I can’t remember seeing her.
With wood died green and black and gold.
A heavy chain, the scent of myrrh.
From martyr passion I feel cold.
Standing
This moment capture.
I can seize it.
I won’t forget this.
To myself.
No one really can.
I don’t even need to see.
I just need those vibrations.
I’ll just change for good.
I promise I will.
To you all.
Who will watch?
Those freeing.
Hopes.
Never hopeless.
Until the wrecking wind.
But I can’t worry about that.
Tannen Dell
Friday, January 29, 2010
Hello, I saw your CL ad. My name is ---- and I am wondering if you wanted to having sex with my wife. I'll give you a quick story with the situation. I was injured about a year ago while working so I am not able to have satisfying sex. I had an intimate relationship with her... but cannot anymore. She has needs and desires I just can't do anymore. Don't get me wrong, we still love each other, but I want her to be content.
She is DD free, 26 and very intimate so you can see what my problem is. Hopefully you can help us. We're looking for someone who can come to our place (or she can come to yours) and be intimate with her on a good basis, no strings attached. I won't be around so it won't be weird haha. I have attached a picture of us. We are real... and are serious about this. We saw your post on the Chicago section, and we live near you.
I'll explain more but I'm at work right now. Please ONLY if you are interested, mail me back with just a yes. Again, only if you are interested. I appreciate it.
GLO
She is DD free, 26 and very intimate so you can see what my problem is. Hopefully you can help us. We're looking for someone who can come to our place (or she can come to yours) and be intimate with her on a good basis, no strings attached. I won't be around so it won't be weird haha. I have attached a picture of us. We are real... and are serious about this. We saw your post on the Chicago section, and we live near you.
I'll explain more but I'm at work right now. Please ONLY if you are interested, mail me back with just a yes. Again, only if you are interested. I appreciate it.
GLO
Hello
I live with my parents, Tom and Stephanie. Best, Colin James
THE MODERNS TWEAK THEIR HYPOTHESES
In the early days
it was all urination
and defecation.
Later I sat for
a traveling portraiture artist.
He was more than
informative in his
explanations of
being drawn to the light.
"Good vs. Evil" he said.
His effeminate walk began
to look increasingly
like a moral compromise.
I live with my parents, Tom and Stephanie. Best, Colin James
THE MODERNS TWEAK THEIR HYPOTHESES
In the early days
it was all urination
and defecation.
Later I sat for
a traveling portraiture artist.
He was more than
informative in his
explanations of
being drawn to the light.
"Good vs. Evil" he said.
His effeminate walk began
to look increasingly
like a moral compromise.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Hi --
please find two multi-part poems for your consideration.
Thanks for taking a look.
Best,
Howie Good
Howie Good
goodh@newpaltz.edu
ONGOING MOMENTS
(after the writing of Geoff Dyer)
1
When we see birds
in the evening,
Camus said,
we always think of them
as heading home.
A white truck,
its lights blurring
through the rain,
is coming the other way.
2
Can you photograph
an orange in black-
and-white?
The same person
appears in any number
of photographs,
even if it isn’t,
strictly speaking,
the same person.
3
Something was there
and no longer is.
The elevator door
will open again,
not on another floor,
but in another city.
PIG/IRON
1
Up a difficult stairway, it’s the new year, or nearly. I knock on the door of a strange apartment and ask the anxious man who answers if I live there. We’re like Biblical figures meeting by providence at a well. The effort to think clouds his face: the orgasm of a pig lasts 30 minutes; how long does death last? Down in the street, terrible dreams pass each other with a nod. I wouldn’t trust someone like me either.
2
At the reunion someone said someone was dead. I look in the mirror. A stranger’s face, pale and impassive, looks back. I should turn up the Bach sonata. I should set fire to the prairie. Every night I should lie down and travel out along the black branches of the interstate and return to the same address – a room full of light, bread and knife on the table, and a weepy bride shrouded in the glare of a sunny window.
3
I woke up speaking another language. At the store I couldn’t make myself understood. The aged stockboy backed away. The girl working the register shrugged. I started home, but cops were beating a man on the corner. It might as well have been the fall of France, or the day Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. The sky was the dismal gray of neglect. A street musician played the same song on his horn over and over. I also kept weeping. The border was near, sometimes in the guise of helpless firemen, sometimes in the guise of helpless fire.
4
The moon enters in a dark overcoat. What’s going on here? It’s possible to see the suicide in people’s faces, the slope of their shoulders, the way their clothing is worn, their gait. There are days – many, in fact – fingers drum impatiently on the roof. I spoke to the police about it. The stairs that lead up also lead down to an iron bed, rumpled sheets, a photograph of insomnia. Everyone is singing but me. I’m hunched over, tightening a screw with the edge of a dime. It does a bad job.
5
The tiny bird riding on my shoulder only uses words I haven’t ever looked up. Better to live life, I answer, than to write about it. I walk out of the room followed by the man Chekhov said we should hire to hit us with a hammer when we’re happy – and who has, of course, a face like trampled snow. If I turn this way, the sky appears barely mended. If I turn that way, the last few Jews in Krakow are hanging from lampposts. Everyone should listen to everyone the way a doctor wearing a stethoscope listens to a heart.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 15 poetry chapbooks and the full-length book of poetry, Lovesick (2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books.
please find two multi-part poems for your consideration.
Thanks for taking a look.
Best,
Howie Good
Howie Good
goodh@newpaltz.edu
ONGOING MOMENTS
(after the writing of Geoff Dyer)
1
When we see birds
in the evening,
Camus said,
we always think of them
as heading home.
A white truck,
its lights blurring
through the rain,
is coming the other way.
2
Can you photograph
an orange in black-
and-white?
The same person
appears in any number
of photographs,
even if it isn’t,
strictly speaking,
the same person.
3
Something was there
and no longer is.
The elevator door
will open again,
not on another floor,
but in another city.
PIG/IRON
1
Up a difficult stairway, it’s the new year, or nearly. I knock on the door of a strange apartment and ask the anxious man who answers if I live there. We’re like Biblical figures meeting by providence at a well. The effort to think clouds his face: the orgasm of a pig lasts 30 minutes; how long does death last? Down in the street, terrible dreams pass each other with a nod. I wouldn’t trust someone like me either.
2
At the reunion someone said someone was dead. I look in the mirror. A stranger’s face, pale and impassive, looks back. I should turn up the Bach sonata. I should set fire to the prairie. Every night I should lie down and travel out along the black branches of the interstate and return to the same address – a room full of light, bread and knife on the table, and a weepy bride shrouded in the glare of a sunny window.
3
I woke up speaking another language. At the store I couldn’t make myself understood. The aged stockboy backed away. The girl working the register shrugged. I started home, but cops were beating a man on the corner. It might as well have been the fall of France, or the day Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. The sky was the dismal gray of neglect. A street musician played the same song on his horn over and over. I also kept weeping. The border was near, sometimes in the guise of helpless firemen, sometimes in the guise of helpless fire.
4
The moon enters in a dark overcoat. What’s going on here? It’s possible to see the suicide in people’s faces, the slope of their shoulders, the way their clothing is worn, their gait. There are days – many, in fact – fingers drum impatiently on the roof. I spoke to the police about it. The stairs that lead up also lead down to an iron bed, rumpled sheets, a photograph of insomnia. Everyone is singing but me. I’m hunched over, tightening a screw with the edge of a dime. It does a bad job.
5
The tiny bird riding on my shoulder only uses words I haven’t ever looked up. Better to live life, I answer, than to write about it. I walk out of the room followed by the man Chekhov said we should hire to hit us with a hammer when we’re happy – and who has, of course, a face like trampled snow. If I turn this way, the sky appears barely mended. If I turn that way, the last few Jews in Krakow are hanging from lampposts. Everyone should listen to everyone the way a doctor wearing a stethoscope listens to a heart.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of 15 poetry chapbooks and the full-length book of poetry, Lovesick (2009). His second full-length collection, Heart With a Dirty Windshield, will be published by BeWrite Books.
WHILE THE DOMECON'S IN THE TOILET...
Teddy, Teddy, Teddy,
Turning over in your coattailess grave,
Martha Coakley lost your Senate seat,
Although starting out an overwhelming fave!
Took the citizens for granted,
Failed to read the tea leaves of unrest,
How could Massachusetts go Republican?
So she didn't campaign her best.
Was it all about health care?
That Massachusetts plan, not so well loved,
Horror, should it go national,
Send a message, it doesn't fit US like a glove.
Or did the "dispatch" go beyond "Teddy's dream?"
The Dems, plenipotentiary no more,
Camelot's over; back to reality now,
The Kennedy mystique finally the lore of yore.
2008, not so much about Obama but CHANGE,
The electorate is fickle; he's had a year plus chance to deliver,
Welcome to the public service revolving door,
Voters are going to be quick to pull the trigger.
Fed up with the pork barrel miasma of "deals,"
Government giveaways to a favored few,
While the DOMECON's in the toilet, NEITHER party's entitled,
Democrats and Republicans will just alternate in the stew.
It's about "what have you done for ME lately,"
Pretty prose and pandering promises, just no longer enough,
These trying times call for swift action,
Meaty proposals, hold the "nutter 'n fluff."
As we approach the Civil War Sesquicentennial,
A nation divided, Black President aside,
Let's not tempt a "Haves vs. Have Nots" sequel,
Falling down on the world stage, nowhere to hide our slide.
Karen Ann DeLuca
Teddy, Teddy, Teddy,
Turning over in your coattailess grave,
Martha Coakley lost your Senate seat,
Although starting out an overwhelming fave!
Took the citizens for granted,
Failed to read the tea leaves of unrest,
How could Massachusetts go Republican?
So she didn't campaign her best.
Was it all about health care?
That Massachusetts plan, not so well loved,
Horror, should it go national,
Send a message, it doesn't fit US like a glove.
Or did the "dispatch" go beyond "Teddy's dream?"
The Dems, plenipotentiary no more,
Camelot's over; back to reality now,
The Kennedy mystique finally the lore of yore.
2008, not so much about Obama but CHANGE,
The electorate is fickle; he's had a year plus chance to deliver,
Welcome to the public service revolving door,
Voters are going to be quick to pull the trigger.
Fed up with the pork barrel miasma of "deals,"
Government giveaways to a favored few,
While the DOMECON's in the toilet, NEITHER party's entitled,
Democrats and Republicans will just alternate in the stew.
It's about "what have you done for ME lately,"
Pretty prose and pandering promises, just no longer enough,
These trying times call for swift action,
Meaty proposals, hold the "nutter 'n fluff."
As we approach the Civil War Sesquicentennial,
A nation divided, Black President aside,
Let's not tempt a "Haves vs. Have Nots" sequel,
Falling down on the world stage, nowhere to hide our slide.
Karen Ann DeLuca
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