3 POEMS – SIMON PERCHIK

*

Even the night was made from wood

has sheets, a gown, the kind

brides wear only once

though you pace in front the bed

the way mathematicians mull over chalk

scraping it against something black

that could be pulling the room apart

with the faint sound from dust

coming by for what’s left

and the corners –vaguely you can hear

her lips breathing into yours

setting on fire the stars

that would sweeten your mouth

with the never ending hum

emptied from wells and springs

for smoke, no longer knows how to talk

how to glow when side by side

as planks and weeds and this pillow.

*

And though this door is locked

it leans into the evenings

that hollowed out the place

for its marble and grass

where you still hide, afraid

make the dead go first

–they already know what to do

when the corners are no longer enough

and with your finger become

the sudden breeze filled with moonlight

and distances opening the sea

holding it over the fires –pilings

are useless here, these great walls

cringe from the cries rain gives off

where a morning used to be

and you are following it alone

as if there was a light in the window

waiting for you to come by.

*

This fish is still gathering the smoke

left over from when the sea went back

to face some crackling beach grass

–side by side you too are warmed

by salt and standing naked

you can see a woman is striking a match

though when you are dead

the glaze on this dinner plate

will afterward heat your eyes

–they will never close, this fish

is looking for tears to fit in its mouth

tell you eat! bite into its eyes

though nothing will cool or be at home

where you keep the ashes warm

by collecting the bones and sand.

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THE SOLID BEAMS AND POLES… – TIM STALEY

The solid beams and poles that support society
are made of cottage cheese, mostly.

It’s not penis or Washington Monument.
It’s penis and Washington Monument.

Personally
I’m betting the ozone
doesn’t affect me
personally.

People have said to me, you can’t write songs.
You can’t play an instrument. But I’ve got
10 gold records, said Sonny Bono.

Several cavemen
who were supposed to be out killing
just sat around
under a huge cottonwood
swatting flies and gnats,
flicking fleas and ants,
feeling sorry for themselves
about the heat.

I have a 6-ounce box of feta cheese.
It says Masterfully Authentic on the side.

There’s a crack in the great clevis of my gullibility.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with yours.

In his man cave
when he’s not crying and masturbating,
he’s streaming Phish.

I wish I didn’t know your language
so I could hear your words
as pure music.

Cavemen masturbated unabashedly
when they woke prematurely
at the lip of the cave.

Anything I say, only half believe.

They say your body’s 60% water.

There’s my great grampa with a Bowie knife.
On his buckskin pants he wipes the blood
from our collective blade.
Clean—it flashes white in the sun.

Never buy used knives.
Who knows
who they’ve been inside?

AJ has a jacket his gramma
made from an Egyptian rug.
It’s thick and there’s
dead grass in the fringes.
I can’t purchase it on the internet.
It’s an intergalactic crisis.

We all love the environment,
but we have placed creatures above people.
A rat is a rat, said Sonny Bono.

Do you ever wonder if you pledged your gender to the wrong agenda
sometime before you were born?

It’s amazing men have accomplished so much
building and killing in this world
when all the while they could have been
masturbating.

Have you ever masturbated in a hammock while a deer looked on?

Just because you’ve never seen a vegan zombie
doesn’t mean there’s no such thing.

I’ve walked a mile in 0.0000614% of America’s shoes.
That’s 200 people.

Lewis Warsh says, you have to blame someone
when something goes wrong.

You’d be amazed how less pathetic this feels
with a gun.

A man washing dishes by hand
is like a dishwasher with a mind.

I’m standing outside the Village Inn
with Clint Eastwood
and a hologram of Sonny Bono.
We’re the armed guards.

I wish every month I bled from my dick.
I wish I could turn my boner
into something else besides a boner
for 3 to 5 days a month.
I’m sure to flinch the first
flash flood of stringy blood
sluicing out of me.
I want to see my dick that way.

Jay-Z cancelled his concert in El Paso.

My favorite part of The Great Chicago Fire
is how the flame, after 3 long days,
leapt back inside
Mrs. O’Leary’s lantern.

Cher wanted to be an entertainer
more than I’ve seen anybody
want to be an entertainer
in my life, said Sonny Bono.

A faint birthmark above your collarbone I find for the first time
and glance away.

If anybody asks,
that’s what happened to the berries.

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LORIE – MICHAEL LEE JOHNSON


Lorie

Lorie, you want to see me clearly

through this joy of my naked body

avoiding the sweat of my emotions,

just breathing on my neck

rubbing this baseline of my groin-

will not find us here again.

Go away, leave me thinking

louder than your breath-

body moves quietly

in a lazy sway of indifference.

8

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3 POEMS – HOWIE GOOD

Safety Instructions for the Twenty-First Century

You probably won’t look like the real you. Stay calm when you come upon it. Face it and stand upright. Speak firmly to it. Do what you can to appear larger – raise your arms or open your jacket if you’re wearing one. You want to convince it you aren’t prey and may, in fact, be a danger to it. Give it a way to escape, but if it attacks, don’t panic and run. People have fought it with rocks, sticks, caps or jackets, garden tools, and their bare hands. So remain standing or at least try to get back up.

Ashes Have No Memory

The man crossing the street carries a ruler in his pocket to measure the passing of time. He has nice clothes, gold chains. But even so, he may be in trouble, may be on the run, may have no future in Lithuania. All he can see is eyes. He tried to lock up time in the eyes of lovers. “It has to look easy,” he said. “That feeling like it just happened.” He and I lead parallel lives, one a collaborator, the other a resister, two ghosts discussing invisibility in front of a mirror, a pretty crappy way to die.

Alienation Nation

First they’re an animal, then they’re a volcano, then they’re playing with their cat. What if they do have mental disorders? I’m not a fucking therapist. I’ve had two years of absolute violation of my right to peace and quiet. The problem is too many people. I see a lot of them every day. We’re always going to be in this position of losing ourselves in crowds. It’s scary. And it’s messy. After a few Guinnesses, I leave flowers at the latest place where it happened. I can’t keep doing that. People are still at the window screaming for help.

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2 POEMS – DAVID S. POINTER

Night Vision Revisited

I’d clean the killing lens night vision
goggles
with submarine seawater, but, the
eviscerated blindness is lodged off
in the long term
low intensity conflict
brain wirings
never fully sanitized
as the world pulls warm winter covers
up over the collective mindless head
waiting for a new delicate darkness
without carnage,
without calendars,
without fair trials touching down inside
unjust economic system cyber-tent sales

~

Dreamscape Crime


Detectives
relish
pursuit,
but, if anyone
dynamites
or poisons sinkholes
as a cold case walks by,
arrest
the former
not quite forgiven
when the state needs money
after receiving individuals
incensed by mouthpieces
for the vampiric economy
needing
tailbones
for the acquisitions-avoidance
culture receiving so many
mega-judgements lacking
menace-conviction corps

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THE VALENTINE’S MOPES – LANCE GAMBRELL

Horse-girls lasso me in, and brand me a “Sore Loser.”

He had never seen a Siberian winter until she said, “I have a boyfriend.”

In the T.V. illuminated room, a bill from the gym could barely be read, “over-due notice.”


The only commercial that has ever made me cry, ended by declaring that “A diamond is forever.”


“Next year’s Valentine’s day dinner will be much better, he declared,” after pushing “2, 0, 0, start.” on the microwave key pad.

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2 POEMS – Jose Luis Oseguera

L.A. Uomo

My attention is a bowl,

Every distraction a freshly

Washed grape jumping frenzied—

Slippery in its will to explore—

Bouncing off any surface.

As when a man on Wilshire Boulevard

Unburdened his head of a Dodgers cap—

Hair oils and sweat tie-dyed

Its discolored blue—

Frisbeeing it on the grassy verge

Delineating the realm of the walking and driving,

And I worried less about whether or not

He would jerk his cock out in time

To burst on the agave leaves,

And more about the sharp

Of its needles perforating

His uncircumcised flesh, blood-gush

As teeth through grape-skin.

It came out as the rain

That falls whenever it wants to

Not went it’s most needed;

People in cars swerved, unnerved.

In my 33 and a third years

Of living in LA,

I never bothered

To spend money on rain boots.

I overheard another man

Tell his blonde girlfriend:

What else do you think people do

When they move to LA to find a job?

Before he could sip his coffee,

A cyclist zoomed by sneakily,

Too chickenshit to ride on the road.

To wonder why I care about it all—

The neglected that hides,

The hidden that wants to be forgotten,

And the forgotten that wants

Nothing more than to be noticed again—

Is my struggle to look away, and still look;

Too see what I can see, yet remain unseen.

How easy it seemed to empty

Yourself of your innermost waste

On the sidewalk for all to see—

Yet as empty as you’d walk away,

The bowl would always be full of fruit.

 

~

 

nuage un

You want me to be a good boy;

You want me to keep a secret;

You want me to just try it;

You want me to trust you completely when you completely mistrust;

You want me to choose;

You want me to be as faithful as I’ve been unfaithful;

You want me to lie to myself to live your truth;

You want me to be as bad as you;

You want me to come;

You want me to figure you out;

You want me to forgive you for things you haven’t done but will even though you know we’ve been there before;

You want me to abort preconceived notions of you;

You want me to take it;

You want me to like it;

You want me to chase after you when you’re too afraid of saying what you really think;

You want me to believe that you don’t say what you want to say because you fear regret, even though your silence hurts more than words it fails to suppress;

You want me to be as good as you think yourself to be;

You want me to be the bigger person;

You want me to accept your apologies, all your apologies regardless of how unnecessarily stupid they are;

You want me to be thankful for your all understanding, all-encompassing compassion to bypass my flaws, all of my flaws;

You want me to beg;

You want me to watch what I say;

You want me to shut up;

You want me to forget how childish you can be when it comes to playing games;

You want me to fix you with love even though you’re the one who does all the breaking;

You want me to be me;

You want me to be like you;

You want me inside of you;

You want me to be yours;

You want the me that isn’t me.

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CRUMBLING VALUES – GARY BECK

Crumbling Values Disruptions to city life are only noticed when they inconvenience people. Explosions, acts of terror, other extreme occurrences get everyone’s attention. A few try to help, some sympathize, many ignore the event a minor distraction as long as it doesn’t affect them and continue normal routines indifferent to the suffering of others.

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