Apology

In the mornings when I look

Earth is overgrown

with exhaustion

with a sad insomnia

An ocean of plastic undulates

as if it were hungry

floating its synthetic island

grimy, oppressive

In the distance the horizon

looks ill, mountains are leaning

gathering weakness,

the seas long for new bodies

Before sunrise the dark sky

spreads out like a burial cloth

turning to black bones

I hope today is not my passing

After all, what have I learned,

what have I become?

What is left for the others

in the wake of my life? 

When I’m ready, I’ll give my body

to Earth as an apology

in hope for

a purifying release

If only to float in a hush

above water, trees, land

until everyone is gone, until Earth

is alone without loneliness

-------------------------------------------

Cows Crows Mushrooms

The distressed moon gives off

the soiled illumination

of human trash. Its dust is over

–whelming.

Dirty moonlight depletes my eyes

like polar air

it freezes this dream:

in a field of cows and crows

long, skinny mushrooms

are magical gods

leading to this fable:

a confined messiah

with no magic left,

no sleight of hand,

no way out

If truth be told, eventually

everything splits apart

------------------------------------------------

Sand Dollars

The shore is overgrown with sand dollars

as if crawling

and pulling the sand apart

Sometimes they look at me

like they have faces

Should I love them?

Mostly I feel nothing

toward their pale color

even more, I feel everything

Lowest of all is when

I walk the beach

crushing them beneath my soles

and after the waves come

pulling them out to sea

the starfish will finish them

What remains are

hollow sandy shells

worthless and poor

and I feel nothing

but this wet earth

beneath my bare feet

Somehow it doesn’t matter

wet or dry

it doesn’t matter

and this is enough for me

either way

it is enough falling apart for now 

-------------------------------------------------

Book Two: Epilogue

There may be ways to make

something from nothing

but I cannot

tell the difference

At Four AM this small hour

is not the passageway

it doesn’t pull me through

or deliver the spell

to compose the sound

of dawn conjuring itself

from the darkness

that deadens it

If light is the rising truth

then dark is

the kingdom of its ruler

the everlasting residue

If something comes from nothing

there may be hope

If something is nothing

dawn will fail to rise

and we can all huddle together

in our human anxiousness

waiting for the deliverance

of a new universe

-----------------------------------------------------

BIO

Dah’s sixth poetry collection is The Opening (CTU Publishing Group, 2018)

and his poems have been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada,

Singapore, Spain, Australia, Africa, Poland, Philippines and India. Dah lives in Berkeley,

California and is working on the manuscript for his ninth poetry book. He is a Pushcart

Prize nominee and the lead editor of The Lounge, poetry critique group. Dah's seventh

book is forthcoming in July 2018 from Transcendent Zero Press, with his eighth book

forthcoming in November 2018 from Stillpoint Books.  

wore off the shock

 

i remember when

columbine happened

and i was stunned

 

and every school

shooting after it

sort of wore off

the shock

 

the latest one

feels different

 

like the dumbass

picked the wrong

school or the wrong

time to want to be

infamous

 

of course, i'm sure

the NRA will have

a fortune or two to

spend to shut these

kids up for good

 

i've never lived in

a time where money

didn't rule everything

considered a grown man

 

another afternoon

with the old ladies

 

sadly, the pain is

much closer to the

same than i am

willing to admit

 

my mother warned

me growing up

would often

fucking suck

 

she never told me

it would still long

after you were

considered a

grown man

------------------------------------------------------------------

with a touch of blonde

 

i've always

had a weakness

for fine ass black

women with a

touch of blonde

in their hair

 

too bad it seems

like one that finds

poets with crazy

goatees hot as hell

simply doesn't exist

------------------------------------------------------------------

after the weekend

 

give me a bottle

of liquor and a

crazy woman

and i'll talk to

you after the

weekend

 

but it's only

tuesday

 

my point

exactly

------------------------------------------------------------------

sweet memories

 

i can remember

pictures of you

from my childhood

 

i was never blessed

with the ability to

have sweet memories

 

it's usually nothing

but fucking pain on

top of more years of

fucking pain

 

yet another reminder

i should have never

stopped doing drugs

----------------------------------------------------------------------

the powers that be

 

yet another

school shooting

 

18th this year

and it's only

february

 

and the powers

that be won't do

anything to stop

it

 

they know their

money flow stops

if they say the

wrong thing

 

and people dare

to wonder why

i'm happy i don't

vote and never

had any kids

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

J.J. Campbell

Body of the Whale

 

 Burnt, engraved

slipped for weeks walking on

a shallow incline. I could not choose

my steps or wear anything but out-worn shoes.

I could only be this one way and pray

I was not being deceived.

 

After many falls and aching ankles, thumb-joints, landing-joints,

and my tears in constant flow, I decided not to move,

stay as a sunken root, let the mud flood

around me, driving me deeper into the stench.

 

Fears like a cord tied to my feet, tugging me down where even

undulation ceased and it was cold and simple, without cause

or mercy or chance of escape.

 

I am at the bottom, somehow still myself.

There are strange translucent reptiles brushing

at my extremities. No way to eat and no breath left to be had,

under here in this lightless territory, not much different

than the depths of space, than the place I was first born.

 

But there, I was one with the darkness, and the stillness of void

was tender, womb-like, all I knew. I will find that again here,

 

stop resisting, diffuse, painfully, but with the least amount

of rebellion or horror - dissolve like candy floss in a child’s

mouth until I join the blank weight digestive track,

welcome the bottom feeders and the algae pocket swirls

as my own flesh, until there is nothing left of me but this indent bed,

the space inside this bed that keeps my body. And soon

even that will fold over, coalesce, as though it never was.

 

I was a daughter. I am not anymore. I was waiting

on a personal love, rescue like a clean wave coming to

liquidate my mind. I am not waiting anymore.

I have no strength for hope, no heart

to withstand the hurt.

I break a part and I gather, honoring

the end of my pulse and its reign.

 

 Love is our master

 
The tone resonated the red heat

of a sea of lava burning away the dead cells,

activating a living substance. We held

hands, walking in the deserted late-December streets.

Ours is nobody’s but ours - broken train tracks carried,

dropped, put back together. The lapping wind of the spirit

like a bell in the far distance, calling us here, there

and always home.

 

Your pockets are full of roots, ones

you chopped from the ground, left there with no tree

or shrub to source its life out to. But those roots still thirst,

so you place them in a high jar in our bedroom, tend to them,

give them the attention of your brilliant mind, hurting

for their inadequacies. I love you deep in the hole and in

the twilight of an open summoning space or when locked

in desire, the two of us, giants without chains - the illusion of

isolation shed, heroes to each other’s loneliness, and the rising

of our blood that has no ancestry, no pastlives or this life before.

 

We are the keepers of this conversation. You are the place where

all my ships land, in the infinity of your eyes, a strong arrow spark

of awe-striking connection, where underground tunnels are excavated.

We are a perfect rub and flow, and we flow, fingers

over the tender inner thigh, mouths

braving more than kisses. We built a bridge and we crossed it,

holding hands, watching each other’s back. We take off our shoes,

a field is before us.

 

All animals are gorgeous, each with a full and necessary soul.

Animals peer out from behind the curtain of high trees

lining the field, waiting for us to run. We run

and twirl and lay down in laughter, like we once did long ago.

We are good just as we are. We are one at the knees and at the core.

Hell and the moaning of withheld mercy is far behind us,

we have been devoured and we dissolve -

our shells and our centers, seasoned, spring-woven,

what is ours, what is God’s, combined, surrendered.

 Commitment

 

Take the end of the root and

squeeze. Air is not wind or

a wave. Gazing into the darkest of eyes,

needs forgotten in the tale

of becoming something more than shape,

someone more than someone who rocks

in despair or madness.

 

I held you with my

mind and in my arms, held you broken and stoic

as all dangerous dreams. I was afraid to tell you

but I told you anyway and the song grew into a sunset.

 

Eaten by gravity, blurring in potency as it traveled

past the horizon. I saw

you were the willow tree, the pine tree and the birch

that scattered leaves and seeds throughout the large acreage yard.

I was a raccoon, a beetle bug and a tiny bird.

I moved through you, across you,

made my home inside of you. Can you see

how much of what was mine depended on yours?

When the yard caught on fire,

the fire seeped into my joints, extending into my aura

and all your seeds around me of brown and green.

 

Not a single day when I did not fight to keep your will and commands,

not a day without struggle to keep afloat, keep at bay the urge to

sink or draw the ravenous sharks near and nearer until

they touched - fin against my flesh and then something

sharper.

 

You love me you say, but it is a love

I cannot understand. I know it is a love, colossal, ruthless

in its perfection but it hurts like withholding, hurts

as I try to adore you and be absolved by a mutual tenderness.

You are final and in this I have no say. I love you, but we are not

dancing. I trust you, but we are not

sharing with ease. I am left aching, in sharp

icicle-tip-pounding-lack, struggling to make sense and find “the law”

if there is no mercy to be seen.

 

I should be lucky to know you even as I do, as most

walk the Earth without discovering a trace of your existence.

But is there something new for us?

Is there a bouquet around the corner? A line we can cross and keep

on the other side? I give you my wings, my prints

and all of my sacred stones. Take me

into your softness or leave me here

on these barren sharp ridges. Between us,

there are no secrets, even my children

are freely yours.

Allison Grayhurst

THE MAGIC WHEEL

The magic wheel stops turning and with it any hope is gone

of ever getting my machine back to how it was as it sits stalled

still at seventy-four percent, just like it has been now for the best

part of ten hours.

I write now with a deadline in mind as in a short while my

father will rise from his pit and want to listen to the news and

he'll need to get this machine back so time is of the essence

as I sit here in despair as to what the hell to do

The machine age was meant to be a blessing for human kind

but all it does is provoke angry responses as the updates bring

it all to a stop and leave us wondering if we wouldn't all be

better off going back to the old-fashioned typer

I could have scrawled these words on a nice glistening piece

of white paper but not even I could keep track of all the poems

written if they weren't stored somewhere, giving me the hope

that maybe they'll be there when the update has stopped

But now, as it still sits on our coffee table reading the same

god damn seventy-four percent, I wonder if it'll ever work again

as night turns to day and it still updates, for fuck sake

when will it end?

-----------------------------------

DREAMING OF THE SUN'S WARM IRRIDESCENT GLOW

Damp creeps up my walls

As outside the winter comes calling

The long months ahead of

Chilled frozen nights coming

To wrap me with its refridgerated

Glove destined to keep me cold

Unless I dare venture outside

During those rare few days

When the sun comes to bless us

All with its warm irridescent glow

I just hope that the winter passes

Quickly so the damp don't

Completely overrun my room

And soon we will wake again

With the sun in the sky already

Not looking like 5a.m. at just

Five in the late afternoon as

Darkness comes to steal away

Our warm glorious light where

At least it's warmer than in my room

AWAY AT LAST FROM THE LAST RESORT

I sit in my room

A new room

But still stoned and a little hung-over

As if nothing has changed

But it clearly has as the hallway is calm

And the neighbour to be confirmed

Not yet a junky crack den

For that, I’m grateful

But here the view is just a wall

And the street so anonymous

A buddy who works around the corner

Didn’t even know where it was

When I told him to come visit me

And my phones’ GPS is whacked

As it tells me I sit about a half-mile

From where I actually am

Frankly, it’s all quite odd

As I settle in somewhere new

And still yet, two weeks in,

Still haven’t seen a neighbour

But really I don’t care as all I want

Is to get some rest

Away at last from the last resort

Of junkies and thieves

And the constant fear

Of worst case scenarios

COLDWATER BLUES

On this cold-water Tuesday night

I sit alone

Dreaming of warmth

With a beer at my feet and

A mountain of smokes piled

Up in my ashtray

As winter grips hard

In this apparently moderate

November evening with

Football on my radio and

This laptop on which I work

Most nights are like this

Now deep in the hole

Of middle-aged oblivion

Another day at the shit-tip

Tomorrow is there to look

Forward to and that thrill

Comes just after dawn

And by the time I get

Out it'll already be dark

Before rewinding and doing

It all over again

MISSING YOU

I hate

How this makes me feel

When all I want

Is to feel your skin next

To mine

Embracing kissing

I just want you

To hold me

Like you used to do

The nights are now

Spent alone in bed

Hoping that the next

Time I wake up

The pillow I’m holding

Will have suddenly

Changed for the better

Into you meaning

Us, my first great hope

For a very long time

I want us to return to the psychedelic

Love boutique where nothing else will

Matter except pleasuring each other

SAD AND LONELY EXISTENCE

I know I’m not ready for love again but sometimes the urge

The urge to just go out and find someone and fuck

Well it grows real strong some days and today and yesterday

And tomorrow almost inevitably will be the same

As at work they come straight from the beach and my eyes are on storks

Walking in she would buy her wine whilst simply wearing a tiny bikini

If I ask her for ID I wonder where she’ll pull it from or come to think of it

How she’s even going to pay for it.

Well, to that last question I got an answer but it would almost certainly result in me being sacked

And out on the streets it ain’t much better as the skirts grow shorter

Whilst the amount of bare flesh on display simply gives me a boner

So all I feel I can do is go home, wank and cry myself to sleep.

Bradford Middleton