5 Poems by --- John Sweet [ the poem is blood ] monday with the afternoon shadows enormous down these forgotten streets the sky is a wound but the poem is not bleeding the poem is blood spilling from the mouths of starving children the poem is food hunted down in broken glass alleys and the sidewalks end at some point and the houses are replaced by inarticulate fields by rusted trailers and the tears of faded women crawling cracked linoleum floors and the husband finds the lover or the child says one word too many the screams are always heard from a distance and only then if the wind is right and the poem is a eulogy left unspoken simple words or a scrap of paper found crumpled up at the edge of a ragged yard and tuesday arrives with the threat of snow [ poem for the global village ] all of the ways a day might pass and then all of the possible endings a complete stranger shot dead while pumping gas and then another and then a third the way fear breeds power the way my son climbs twenty feet to the top of the tallest slide a small boy without wings a blue sky fading to white just above the hills and at some point there is nothing left to say but too much of the page still remains blank all of our small efforts amount to nothing all of the bigger ones fail completely divide the number of wars fought in your lifetime by the number of ones you've supported or even cared about calculate the number of men women and children killed without reason consider the fact that whichever way you vote will change none of these things the amputee camps already exist and the rape camps and the people who will die in them tomorrow and my son begs for five more minutes of play before we have to go home for dinner and there is nothing to do but say yes anything i can give him will never be enough [ the illusion of motion ] you find a day where you know pollock is dead you stand in a room any color other than pale blue in a house that has ghosts or at least the memory of them badly hung doors and poorly insulated walls and let's say it's november cold rain from a sky that reminds you of your father the idea that each poem is nothing more than a wasted moment that you may find yourself numbered among all of the things your son grows up afraid of and the truth of course is that poison can also be beautiful the truth is that religion is a weapon and progress a myth the starving still starve the leaders will dream of reasons to kill at some point the choice to bleed is no longer yours how willingly will you give it up? [ for the woman who tells me that a poem without hope is not a poem at all ] and the story is true because things like this should never be made up the mother faces the daughter and puts the gun in her own mouth the hills don't quite touch the sky and no one ever saves the drowning in these crucial moments and no one ever remembers the sound the clock makes in the instant before the trigger is pulled no one notices that it stops we are all too busy praying to the god of beautiful poetry [ softly ] softly in the morning where the baby sleeps and the streets don't yet exist even in this warm silence there is fear and even here i would speak your name above all others the need for love was never meant to be dissected tell this to the boy who has had his hands cut off at the wrists for his father's beliefs explain to him the untarnished beauty of the abstract thought place the pen between his teeth and tell him to write from the heart tell him to dig down through the pain and get to what really matters
5 Poems by --- Richard Fein ROY G BIV'S COLORFUL BACK roy g biv a mnemonic for marveling at the colors of the rainbow. Even black comedy has aesthetic moments. God created Mr. Roy G Biv as surely as he molded Adam out of clay and fashioned Eve from a rib. Ethereal Mr. Biv was made from mist as Noah's ark lisped and was stranded in the wake of receding waters. And the rescued disembarked, two by lucky two, with all females pregnant. After all, they were cooped up for more than a year. Noah, of course, got drunk from grapes plucked from a vineyard grown in record time. But all this happened before the drowned rocks dried so no stylus could chisel the tale into stone. Mouth to ear, mouth to ear, small truths are lost with each telling. It wasn't a dove with an olive branch in its beak that was the herald of a newly baptized world. No, it was a turkey with its own droppings dangling from its talons. And as the clouds parted over the carnage Roy G Biv assumed the position, not as a suspect leaning with hands forward against a police car, but as a graceful wraith curved across the sky, like the arched body of Nut spread among the stars, a vaulting dome above her beloved Nile. But Biv's colorful back was henceforth an umbrella, so we below were cursed only with small leaks and not heavenly hemorrhages. But take heed, beware, woe unto you, for we walk in air that we, ourselves, pollute. Verily, our befouling gives the sunrise a showy splendor and makes the sunset a colorful coda for each day, but Mr. Biv's back becomes less awesome as it blends with the chaos of colors in the sky. And this vanishing can be seen from both angles from below where we continue with our antediluvian torts, and from above where the supreme rainmaker must be regretting his postdiluvian covenant as Biv's back fades amid the smoggy sulfides and the miasma of earthly sins. ELEPHANT MAN'S UNCERTAIN DREAM As tumors squeezed his throat and as he tried to sleep sitting up, did Joseph Merrick dread the day when his assembled bones would be displayed as specimens before squinting doctors? For his living flesh had already been hyped by carnival barkers as an exhibit before wide-eyed gawkers. The privacy of the grave would surely be denied because his body was mortgaged, as a lien against his living keep. True, his hospital room was charity, but even charity is balanced against its cost. He couldn't have known about hiccuping genes accumulating a horrid cornucopia of flesh and bone, an excess that molded him into an oddity, a soul with the impossible dream of strolling unnoticed down even one noontime street. He couldn't have known. He could only have whispered a midnight why, alone and restless on his sterile hospital bed. In those late-night struggles against limb-twitching insomnia, during the slow minutes before merciful sleep, did he also dread what others dread most, the uncertain content of that final and eternal dream? Or was he cursed with a unique dread, a private hell, the looming certainty that his disarticulated bones would be coated with shellac, then joined together by steel bolts, an askew skeleton strung from steel wires in a glass display case? After closing his eyes did he open them again for a panicky instant, wondering if he were already dreaming the uncertain content of that last sleep? FUCK YOU Those piercing taboo words, with no mother, no little sister, just father and son alone in the car at the corner of E. 10th and West street. Cut off by a cabby, all around us was lawless chaos. Cars seemed driven by psychopaths who wove sharply around each other for just a two-second lead. Traffic got rougher as I got older. Rules of the road I learned in sixth grade safety class were not obeyed by adults--at least not on those roads. I was almost eye to eye with my father. He didn't repent what he had just said, for we were alone, and I was eleven--old enough. Of course I knew the words--and had been shouting them for years, but always out of his earshot. And I had never heard them from his lips--until then. A bar-mitzvah, a confirmation, a tribal circumcision at puberty, a coming of age in an Oldsmobile, part of my childhood ended. I struggled hard to look indifferent, to be just one of two men who cursed a passing yellow cab. But right then, though I just heard my father's forbidden words, I could not repeat them in front of him-- not yet. STAGNANT MIND Cobwebs as its metaphor, paralysis amid clutter, Sticky strands clinging to a frozen topography: in darkness, in stillness-- in dust settling out of stale air. But something moves up there: the spider's busy spinnerets, the flighty, inattentive bug. Noisy up there also, but low--very low: the trapped insect plucks silver cords, eight legs scurry down the dirty strands, the meticulous tailoring of the silken fabric as fangs swivel like scissors, the sucking up of vital fluids, the final implosion of a motionless being. Things are up there--in the attic, weighing down on the boards. The floor sags; the ceiling below droops, a warped symmetry is bent into shape. A kind of rusting pervades, a slow oxidation--a heatless, dark burning. An eschatology of ash. But memories still stick like dead flies on the web. Shrouded tidbits impassively sway when the softest vibrations rattle the walls and web. But nothing in the attic moves of its own accord. Nor can silk glisten under its dusty film. The lackluster threads that network all grow more fragile, some have already broken. And at the tips of these dropped strings are the veiled husks of life dangling as if they were bait cast into a sterile lake, by a fisherman who now snores loudly. ALL THE WORLD'S AN OFF, OFF, OFF BROADWAY STAGE A spastic carpenter and blind painter built the scenery for this hundred-monkey-authored play called "This Is Your Life." You can't recall ever reciting your first line, but it was during Act I, a small speaking part that grew into a rambling discourse. And now you're on stage ad-libbing it with a mob of clueless thespians. Someone in the wings whispers the cues to Hamlet. But this isn't Hamlet, it's "The Turkey in the Straw Lays an Egg" or in short, "This Is Your Life." Acts XX, XXX, XL whiz by. You gradually discover that you don't have the leading, or even supporting, role. You're an extra, a loin-clothed-torch-bearing extra relegated to the back of the stage near the scenery with all the other extras earning union scale wages. What idiot agent got you cast for this role? You speak mostly monologues because no one is listening, or if they are they're hearing permutations of, "Hear, I hark the fire canons," or something like it. You might get it right by the last act. There's supposed to be a script but no one has read it, for it was, after all, written by a lot of jabbering primates. Come to think of it, you don't even remember rehearsing. Acts L, LX, and LXX light speed by Speaking of light, the footlights blind you to what's beyond. The producers of this comic catastrophe may or may not be front row but a critic definitely does lurk out there. After his review you'll be hired as a full time waiter at Joe"s Heavenly Cheap Eats, unless you're typecast in a Hindu or Buddhist soap opera, in which case you might have a second or thousandth performance. Suddenly you get stage fright and lose control of all bodily functions, while the curtain falls on you. Beyond the blinding footlights there is a thunderous snoring ovation as everyone sleeps in their seats.
2 Poems by --- Andrew Lundwall TRAILING LEGS trailing legs move through light briar bushes locking away secrets that an orange light should flash alive release yesterdays doves through a purple frown that spreads horizons with cobwebs caught close below quivering armpits A FLAMING PORTRAIT the tearing away stingrays in mid-air treacherous terraces lined with false steps the tears of natives becoming a chorus of cries huge ashtray restaurants mirrored by these echoing sidewalks a place calling home digging constantly for answers within a flaming portrait
"Autumnal" --- by Raleigh D. Meadow (for Dale) I can hear your smile two decades away, in the impossible gossip of flaming foliage, the determined discussion of the leaf stained river, the boisterous clamor of rutting bucks' intoxicated antlers. Oh to be Vincent, twofold, when the canadas, v-honking, flash your pearly whites in my ears. This was your favorite time, this frost-kissed kaleidoscope of change. How you loved to taste a stump in blackness, savoring the chill, watching night's taillights set the east aglow... it was my favorite also, back then. The embodiment of vibrancy, when you fell as an Autumn leaf. Today, my October countenance remains inviolable, stern, as it listens to your smile streaming through the painted hills.
ShoeString Poetry is pleased to INTRODUCE ~~~ Mr. PARKER LEWIS WINTERS ARBITRATION In servitude of the moment, exploiting tomorrow also comes, civilly ranting the development of its armamentarium. Just another demonized mattress, disguised as enabling force of spirit; staying eager every night, seeking the favor of presidents, making one so impatient that old books become uneasy, until something anxious, like a busily drifting whisper, falls into the ear, secretly seducing sentiment, and at last, expression stands stoically alone. Indeed, the physiognomy of success, is always a quality of pain equal to perception, and the experience of life itself, is easily lost in the act of living it. AN ANSWER FOR ALICE "Because, my dear Hatter, they croak forth, leaning against the wind, collecting the shiny object, pollinating the blooming carcass, constructing grandiose contraptions in the canopy, to hatch the commerce of scavenging. Thus, towering trunks give birth to each, and both inherit properties unbequeathed, allowing passersby to know a beautifying. And that, Mad Hatter, Sir, is why a raven is like a writing desk." TOGETHERNESS The ingestion of each moment is a secret. True, we give birth to our tongue, but the canyon of perception can offer only echos to those who would listen, the pure un- adulterated tone of a moment can be heard only by the one living it. Rather ironic, for such a gregarious lot to be unable to share the purest of self until the final charity receives donation, and dust mingles unrestrained to break down the science of individuality. All material herein is Copyright protected. Use of any material without an Author's consent is prohibited by law.