my new blog

http://asphodelmadness.wordpress.com/

The Writer Buries Himself in The Mud Until The Next Rainy Season

by Melanie Browne

where, once again,

he will ramble

through the menagerie

of chaos,

mating with

the masses,

hoping his carrion

offspring

will deliver

the wake-

up-call

that

nudges

the sleeping

mobs

out of their

peaceful

stupor

BAD CHESTER RYAN

after taking his sweet time

nibbling at his last meal
he smoked a cigarette
despite quitting years ago
and he listened absently
as the preacher tried hard
to console him with passages
from the Bible he never read
and telling Bad Chester Ryan
If you believe you'll be saved
but Ryan believes he's beyond
the pale and hope is a tiny thing
that will burn with him
in that chair and after this
he can rest his murdering bones
under deep ground where
he can't hurt another living soul

by Salvatore Buttaci

http://salvatorebuttaci.wordpress.com

*"FLASHING MY SHORTS" -- order it from AMAZON.COM http://tinyurl.com/2d4kjuk

or KINDLE EDITION http://tinyurl.com/2bkms9w

SEPTEMBER 24, 2001

by Lyn Lifshin

brown leaves
on the steps, from
rust and green
to ashen like
the last weeks.
Now on the
metro, I’m sniffing
for something that
smells like
nail polish remover,
for someone
with a bomb.
Last night I
dreamed I gave a
reading but I
couldn’t find any
poems I wanted.
When I open my
mouth, I spit a
black rose


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

thank god I’m a poet

by Tommy Hobbe

I scraped this dog shit poetry off of the sole of my soul

with a termite infested wooden prosthetic hand

and splattered it onto the back of an unpaid parking ticket

it’s as lovely as chainsaw sodomy preformed post mortem

feels like I’m holding up my warm slimy intestines

for the leisurely perusal and cockeyed judgment of zombies

it all began when some modern lit teacher said

that my bloody vomit looked like abstract art

since that moment I’ve crucified my pride daily

so that chronic spiritual masturbators

could watch this trailer park freakshow with outraged eyes

and be reassured that they're not as fucked up as some people

SUCH KNOWLEDGE

by Richard Godwin

What do I know
About the perfume of midnight cemeteries
Or the blood rose
With no thorns at all

What do I know
About the hand that touches me in the dark
And stops my blood beating in my veins
Or the ice in my ear

When I hear an avenue of hummingbirds
The sounds they make full of the colour of their wings
What do I know
About the hidden desires of my

Loved ones whose faces change in twilight
What do I know
About the veins that trace a journey on a leaf
Or the hidden energy of air

SORT OF A NEW BEGINNING

by Steven Gulvezan

Alabaster in the shining moon

His buttocks and belly were bare

He sank into the pond

A chain of stones around his neck

A garland of honeysuckle in his hair

His skin so pale shone luminous when wet

He wished a wish to sink and drown

And forget—

But he could not…

And as he struggled to die

All his hatred

And jealousy and fear

Bobbed up within his brain

Causing him much grief…

Much more so, indeed, than the water

That was trickling into his lungs and

Not really suffocating him…

He bobbed to the surface

Sucked in the air

Ripped off the stones

And clambered – cursing

Both life and death –

Back onto the beach

And returned to this world again

Artist's Son

by Mathias Nelson

The artists are dandelions:
There are so many of them
unwanted.

God called my mother
a dandelion
and told her she was
better than all the other
flowers.

Wasn't too long
till they chopped off her head,
poured weed killer
across her stem
and she drank it up,
became a member of society:

bane.

But not before she born me.
And I'm still a seed
flipping in the breeze
past the wanted flowers,
one of the few artists
who's still got a head.

But the mower is always
in the distance.
And who knows where
this wind will carry me?—when
we are all destined to be
shitty poems.

HAREM

by Hugh Fox

Her ummmmmm, my third wife, sixty-four,
talking full time about "Everyone in my
family died in their sixties," although
(a face-lift 5 years ago) she looks fortyish,
e-mails every day from wife-possibles from
way back, sending me pictures of grandkids
("For me that's what counts, genetic continuation)
photos of themselves, poems, publishing questions,
when can I come out to Carpinteria to visit, five
months since Joey died (shark), "Let's meet in
Chicago," or this skin-cancer beauty in New
Hampshire, "The surgery went great, come for
a visit before the first snow...," my ex-student
in L.A., pals for 50 years, "This widow stuff is
crap...I need you...," a bunch of fucking saint-
whores, amazed at how the legs still hold up,
the surgically-chemically helped faces, and
always this sense of almost supernatural
get-together-foreverness, what I needed was
five lives and a theology that said "Who you
love you marry, forget numbers...."

Conspiracy

by Lisa Zaran

I won't be long
but I might be late.
Don't wait up.
The red moon is up.
Stars blink like
frightened eyes.
Guilt shackles my
naked form to life
and from the corner
of my mind I laugh
because I know not
how to react to anything
right.
My children glint
like little lakes,
swallowing moonlight,
hiding their secrets
in centers so deep
no mother could reach
and so I choose to drown.
Fathers pass away
behind plastic curtains
in critical care units-
no more minty breath
or spinning thoughts,
my father dies delicately
quiet and all I can think
as I slip away, down the corridor
of hush and antiseptic
is why and what will I do
now that there will be no more
warm hands and glue and carpentry.
Who will fix my broken dolls?
Lovers kneel
and send flowers
while a thousand others
tear my pictures in half
before throwing them into the fire.
My heart is stale.
My love is nothing but an astonishing remark.
I'd call my latest lover perfect
but he has a scar above his lip
and his knees are weak from kneeling.
He's far from it.
Okay, I won't be late
but I might be long.
If you write, don't expect a reply.
I did not pack a pencil.


*http://www.lisazaran.com/
http://www.contemporaryamericanvoices.com/
http://www.dearbobdylan.com/

For Paradox 5

by Matt O'Toole

Like an emptied box of cutlery, Eugene's body falls twisted, limbs woven around themselves.
Their dry mouths had one other held hostage.
His milk white neck embracing her fingers gently like blue tack.
They step back from each other, his smile pricking pale balloon pink cheeks,
He dives in her deep inkwell pupils, swimming in thick road tar black ink.
A heavy tear grows in the corner of her eye and rests on her cheek.
Water streams down the steps thowing cutlery either side,
Buckets of ink dry to chalk and dust.

She steps over his fallen twisted wire body,
staring at his white flour caked face,
and smudged crimson lips,
staring into his marble green eyes,
She thinks of when they met at Oul' Butters,
A singed smile in her siren face,
At old butters, where he held her, glowing and tall.
After everything since then, he's just put a barrel to his head,
and painted all 4 walls.

I AM

For I am the life and death.
For I am the sun and the darkness.
I am the power of love and I am the darkness among others.

I am the time and stars.
I am the song which is sung very far.

I am not an energy nor entity.

I am neither of any religion or soul.

I am the message of the beloved.

I am the brother and the father.

I am the love and the hate.

Sometimes, I am nothing but emptiness.

I am the sex to multiply time and again.

I am the number added over zero.

I am the quality of mankind.

I am

I am the friend and foe.

I am the sin and sinner.

I am the silence and crowd.

I am the sadness and pain.

I am neither any of human words nor human deeds.

I am

Just I am

Maybe I am

Let us say, I am, I will be, I was.

So, here I am, here I belong, in this moment of complete solitude

Because I was, I am, and I will be.

by Santosh Kalwar

*http://kalwar.com.np/

Open

by Lara Konesky

proximity can't fuck with muse
it only hurts the physical
only hurts a little
don't even tell me where your home is
unless I open my legs
and it's there

Life is a sad-slow movie with subtitled romance*

by Kristina Marie Darling

And here, Kodak picturesque, my love,
the streets do not end with a damsel taken
her legs splayed and small bills scattered like leaves.
In this strange place, darling,
we dream drugged yellow haze and burlesque shows.
It is so beautiful here I don’t ever want to land.
Someone brings flowers to me in cameo
and the credits fade, with you the dead agnostic
myself left to catch crystals
of methamphetamine cold in your breath.


*from Kristina's chapbook "The Traffic in Women" from Dancing Girl Press

CATAWAMPUS

by Kallima Hamilton

Exuberant beatniks in angst-black turtlenecks,
secretly dreaming of sunlight and waffles,
scrounge their pockets for rhythmic shards
of keen poetry and wailing laments.

Blow those blues, Daddy-O, blow those blues.
Fresh young trees spitting gold cold leaves
on urban decay, the way you do a John Wayne
with a cigarette into this cement gutter
covered with wet newsprint and remnant fries.

It's all neon and Pepto-Bismol from here.
Some fungi swiped your tree frogs.
Sweet confetti of annihilation,
save us from the garish fate
of baboon-butt bright self love.

DISCARDED SOCIAL BURDEN

by Junie Moon

Faint rays of sunlight
through a tiny window
caught the spinning
prism, rainbows danced ’round
that tin can trap called home

Ha, just think, mobile home,
mobile suggesting it would move.
That old bucket hadn’t moved
in thirty years sitting
in grammies back yard

Feeling trashy was easy
when picking up
food stamps each month
was the high point of life

Even worse, the way
people look when
getting groceries,
some folks look away
others look on in disgust

One step above homeless,
a refugee, a pariah,
unwanted, used up, just one
more name on the welfare list

Finally she heard the baby crying,
so distant, strange, unreal,
all alone, disconnected from all
other life forms

Poverty and neglect
suffocating her;
strangling a tattered
will to live.

Just a little light of hope
would, perhaps, give
enough strength to keep moving

Long ago she had given up on God
or any other type of salvation,
redemption surely did not know
her address but the bill collectors did

If only she could just leave,
yes, leave this ALL behind
She went down to the river
most every day when
the baby slept

The water, sparkling, golden,
freedom soaring where the
sky crosses the water

LUST BLOWING UNDER THE DOOR, BRIGHT AS STRAW

by Lyn Lifshin

Your smile’s like sun
flowers he said
as tho
embarrassed his
hands were
pressing
awkwardly the
ring on his
second finger
close to her
eyes
from that room
a wheat sea
lust
blew under the
door bright
as straw
and his warm
parts on
her belly
those small
bones that
changed her
small
bones to water
And not even
knowing
his name
until later
when the floor
fell
the room
turned into a
painting
and the paint
cracked

*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm

The Big Shiny Prison

by Ryan Bartek

Here's a PDF "non-fiction counterculture book" by Ryan Bartek called The Big Shiny Prison. It's a free download.

And another The Silent Burning.

*http://ryanbartek.angelfire.com/blog/

BECAUSE

by Jonathan Hayes

it’s the sadness
of sulfur, or
the fact that
suicides are just
statistics, that
makes me want
to love you, while
i still exist, and
fill in that empty
four-letter word
with all my blood
and breath

Westy bar

by Ben Smith

No one likes the juke box

and any time it's on

the locals ask to have

it shut off.

Every one drinks alone

but in company

and quietly

sip at their beer

with the thunder

of loneliness.

Every time the door opens

people snap their heads

and look to see if it might

be some one who they

know and will break them

from the annoying and

tedious conversation

they are having with people

they hate.

The old dudes that read from

glasses

and

they

have grey hair.

Putting 10 buck bets on every race.

Any thing to elude them from

the outside

and make belive

that it's okay to be this

old and

drunk and

lonely

and un afraid

of death

or something

like it.