Clockwise Cat

BIENVENUE A CLOCKWISE CAT!

9999-12-31T14:28:00.000-05:00

SCROLL DOWN FOR ISSUE 23!

THE CLOCKWISE CAT

by ALISON ROSS

The clockwise cat
is wise to clocks.
She knows their motive:
to tame the savage animal of time.

The clockwise cat
hisses at the clock-cages;
her fangs gnaw the numbers
and her claws rip holes
in the frayed fabric of space.

The clockwise cat
moves in counter-clockwise cadences
across the hardwood floors of infinity.
She stalks illusions of impermanence
which flit like shadows
across the paint-chipped walls in her mind.

The clockwise cat
tells time with her eyes:
they blaze like candle flames
in the dim closets of oblivion.

The clockwise cat
sleeps 16 days an hour.
She dreams about the minutes
she will devour like bugs;
she awakens to seconds
poisoned like rats.

ISSUE TWIN E TREE

2011-12-20T18:52:00.022-05:00

Issue 23 is dedicated to the memory of Carol Novack, publisher of Mad Hatter's Review. A luminous soul of wit and whimsy.

EDITORS SCRATCHING POST: CATATONICALLY SPEAKING
Occupy Clockwise Cat!

DOGMATIK HYPERBOLE (POLEMIX/RANTZ and SINISTER SATIRICAL MISCHIEF)
Occupy Wall Street: An Occupation of Love (Rant) by Alison Ross
Pac-Man Existential (Satire) by Kane X. Faucher
If the Mob Acted More Like a Corporation (Satire) by Jon Wesick
Cracking the Psychological Mindset of the Day (Rant) by Edwin L. Young
Women and Their Struggle for Full Emancipation (Rant) by Edwin L. Young
The Line (Rant) by Alison Leavens
Occupy The Police States of America! (Rant) by Alison Ross
Street SmARTs (Rant) by Alison Ross
Fuck Work, Part Gazillion (Rant) by Alison Ross
Not Your Average Potato (Satire) by John A. Ward
Two Satirical Pieces by Thomas Sullivan
Time Travels Through Earth's Past and Future (Rant) by Edwin L. Young

POESIE
Fire Pit by Roberta Lawson
Three poems by Felino Soriano
Three poems by Alexander Kwonji Rosenberg
Dead of Night by Craig Shay
Please Proceed This Way by Joseph DiLella
At the Edge of Our Fingertips by Kelly Lenkevich
Pollock by David Mac
Zoos and Laundry by Levi Gribbon
white dove by kristina sheehan
Two poems by Al Markowitz
An Open Letter to the Prime Minister on the Consumption of My Vegetables by Kevin Sexton
Hard Times by Amanda Phoenix
Two poems by Timothy Carroll
Simulcra 635 by Martin Freebase
September by Lucy Winrow
Two poems by James Babbs
Thread of thought by Arjun Devanesan
It's July 4th by Jonathan Hayes
Yellow Sand by Holly Day
displacement by Brock Marie Moore
Liver-Life by Allen Griffin
Random Acts of Would-Be Randomness by J.S. Watts
Tiny van Gogh by Kevin Ridgeway
Mnemonic Triggers by Joseph M. Gant
Bukowski and the spider by Henry Kellogg
Three poems by David McLean
Fables by John Swain
Two poems by Joe Milford
America by John Pursch
Two poems by Uzodinma Okehi
Breakfast by Viktorsha Uliyanova
Still Life With Old Shoe by Neil Ellman

APPRAISALS
Lucy Dreams of a Coathanger in Parallax, Beirut (CD Mini-Reviews) by Alison Ross
The Good and the Bad-Ass (Movie Review of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) by Alison Ross
Review of Craig Sernotti's Forked Tongue by J.S. Watts
Scaling the Garage-Punk Mountain (Black Lips CD Review) by Alison Ross
At the Intersections of Surrealism, Science and Spirituality (Book Review of Will Alexander's Compression and Purity) by Alison Ross
Review of Tendai Mwanakas Voices in Exile by J.S. Watts
Review of the Great American Poetry Show Volume 1 by J.S.Watts

white dove by Kristina Sheehan

2011-12-20T18:45:00.006-05:00

Above the sea
the dove is austere
(and feverish).

All the mythology
and pathos
of asceticism are encapsulated
in this white dove.

Envy splits the atoms of chastity
that attempted to germinate
in my gut.

I am neither composed
nor heroic.

I am obtuse as a snail
I am unquenchable as a dog,
sniveling at your feet,
incontinent,
and pissing on your floorboards.

Author bio:

Kristina Sheehan lives in a house with several boxes of unfinished writings and a few dozen centipedes.

Open Letter to the Prime Minister on the Consumption of My Vegetables by Kevin Sexton

2011-12-20T11:27:00.006-05:00

I will not eat my broccoli
Mr. Harper.
I see it on my plate, green
between the leftover mush
of the white potatoes
and the orange carrots.
But I refuse.
Refuse to eat.

I can sit here all day
Mr. Harper,
till the broccoli cools
and the white and orange
mush hardens.
I can listen to traffic.
I can rub my foot
against the tile floor,
and count every little bump.
But I refuse.
Refuse to eat.

I will wash the dishes
Mr. Harper.
I will go to bed hungry.
I will wake up
tomorrow morning
ready to face my broccoli again,
to sit at the breakfast table, to stare,
And to refuse.
Refuse to eat.

Author bio:

Kevin Sexton was born and raised in Montreal, where he studied English and creative writing at Concordia University. After working as an ice cream biker, music director of a Jewish summer camp and a carny, he moved to Seoul, South Korea, to teach kindergarten. He now works as an English teacher in Berlin. He has had poetry and fiction published in Creations Magazine, Soliloquies, Terracotta Typewriter, Café Irreal and the anthology “Crystal Balls and Birth Canals” by WithWords Press.

Hard Times by Amanda Phoenix

2011-12-20T11:10:00.007-05:00

“In hard times, beauty can seem frivolous—but take it away and all you’re left with is hard times.” –Paul Madonna, Everything is Its Own Reward

gray matter mush, a heart attack
the older brother died at thirty-one
the younger one was picked up put away
his underpaid lawyer tired smiled patted shoulders
fifteen more months of under-seasoned “meat” –could be worse

salt water halo
i leave the door ajar while i sort refold repack the sweaters shirts jeans shorts
tags still attached until he gets back
a scavenger, i eat on food stamps and dig myself a sanctuary
in a compiled dust old junk grease stains house
spiders watch me shower

my saintly lover sighs and i apologize
we met at the start of shit falling apart
our summers bring bad drivers sweat cat hair everywhere
so, we take to the mountains
escaping the stink and thinking

for a week, climbing soggy cheese and trail mix
watching the kaleidoscope landscape crumble into night
he holds me steady, and i can breathe

Author bio:

Amanda “Cal” Phoenix is an undergraduate student at Washburn University, in Topeka, Kansas. She is a member of Sigma Tau Delta and has had work featured in Inscape and The Hobo Camp Review.

Two poems by Timothy Carroll

2011-12-20T11:03:00.008-05:00

Higitus Figitus

In a time of grace-filled goodness
      and thick 
                dark 
                    evil 
                           there is a need for magic. 
The difference between white 
                                              and black magic in such a time    
is that the white for example 
            could give one wings
                        poof one into a sparrow, 
                                               and that’s fun. 
               One can venture off to exciting places with wings,
                                                       a belly full of joy-worms. 
Whereas black magic (not 
      to be confused with the black hawk, which is real   
                                                                                          and 
    wired to dart for the neck) can zap life from a flower.    Can it zap the life back in? Probably 
        (just as it can change from warthog to princess)  
                                                              but don’t count on it. In a world of wizards’ duels, wherein 
                                                       pink 
                                                              elephants 
                                                                          run 
from blue mice, 
                      one side must be rammed over the edge by the other 
because the townsfolk have a dire need to bow. 
                              Who can pull this sword from this stone?

===================

For Lack of Sleeping

movable unman comes tacit courting            
groans a mediaeval Uh

pale ember invades the eyes 

between this frill rhythm and the hemisphere 
the thievish week blows the skull open HUFF

which he falls into like a tenfold hole   
mixing iodine to a loony’s wit

as the brain-legs stumble for everyday train     
mouth parts with a tonic-dove Eh        
which is swiftly picked by a sly panhandler
muffled by WOOF

A façade-sphere points on Ramble Avenue 

walking under suncloud or dragged through ranting red fog     
the phantom’s face wilts   
feels the atomic weight of his clothes

the mind a lofty thought-pit honks
at passing philanderers
their nifty tendons        
basement apes with sweetening growls      

the deaf sun shushing all this puttering        

he reach the descending stairs   
flops down  
 a fishy decrescendo

                                                            sits the sorrows
                                                            the ill-fated wait

Author bio:

Recently, Timothy Carroll’s work has appeared in the Brooklyn Review and Penny Ante Feud, as well as throughout the New York City subway system where he curates a public space project entitled, Service Changes. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota where he teaches high school English.

Simulcra 635 by Martin Freebase

2011-12-19T14:28:00.006-05:00

That day when I first saw you
Time stood still as I waited for you
I saw the greatness inside of you
It was lying dormant, waiting for an agent of change
I was your agent of change
I was the Satan to your Hell
The fire in your belly
Your holy ghost
I pushed you beyond your human limits
I carried you up the great mountain
I showed you the greatness of the gods
You say it is a butterfly world
It’s cold and it’s warm
Inventing a life that has not been lived
Beyond the atomizing rationality of the Gutenberg galaxy
Off to the global village
I am the chief of electronic tribalism
Participating in the productive process
Fulfilling your needs
The monkeys do not have a god
Picking up nuances of me
A certain programming and a certain code
Computing zeros and ones
Learning to overcome the zeros
Enamored by the scientific method
And the peculiar nature
Not appearing until they are observed
These are radical beliefs
My subjects have all been women
This is because women have certain gifts that men don’t have
And women have a higher threshold for pain
It is a biological situation
Thus, I focused on the relationship between the body and the mind
To unlock the mind, I focused on pain
So many people
So many lives
So much opportunity for me
Victims everywhere
It is so hard to choose
I’m changing your tapes
Changing your programming
Don’t look at me that way
Let the sleeping dogs lie
The weak prefer it that way
Round and round we dance
With the devil on our backs
We each take turns carrying him around
He ain’t so fucking heavy
Not for a gentleman
Seeing crosses everywhere
Buried knee deep
We dance to let you know
That life is the reason why we kill
Directly on the streets
I have a commitment to directly engage the space
It is not as primary as it once was
Directly in the middle
Like an asshole
Completely open to the public
The only way to see is to go down
Getting out of your comfort zone
It will always be ours
We hold this one corner of the world

Author bio:

Martin Leonard Freebase lives in Dubuque, Iowa with his wife, daughter, and a black and white cat named “Daisy.” Martin’s work is solidly based on the concept of poetry as a social construction. Through our interactions with others, we create and recreate meanings that allow us to make sense out of a chaotic world full of contradictions. Martin considers the art of writing poetry as one small way of collapsing the confusion of experience into more meaningful patterns of social thought.You can find more of Martin’s thoughts at: Martin Freebase.

September by Lucy Winrow

2011-12-19T11:30:00.006-05:00

Ammonia tones seep in
Curling heavy fingers
Rubbing my gums
Peeling back my lungs
As an empty shadow repeats itself
Across a green divide that hides

Nothing

Everything

Squirming
worms in faded matchboxes
Edged open at cautious intervals
Blasted with intrusive air
Hot early morning showers never remove the smell
My stomach aches for all the meals I tried to eat
Still, voices ironed
stiff with love
Twitter and trill
Look at the sun
Feel it on your skin
Touch it
Breathe
It in

Author bio:

Lucy Winrow has had poems published in a number of journals such as Fire, The Ugly Tree and Rain Dog, as well as four anthologies.

Two poems by James Babbs

2011-12-19T11:22:00.006-05:00

I Slept Late This Morning

I slept late this morning
then I got up and
put the coffee on
last night
I got drunk
because
I was full of anger and
I didn’t have any place to put it
I got drunk
because
I wanted to forget
I felt like drowning
but I knew it wouldn’t happen
I guess
I just wanted to see
how far I could go
I remember
there was music playing
and nobody else was home
I kept standing up
and running around the room
wanting to punch holes in the darkness
trying to make the light bleed through
I got drunk and
I staggered around the house
listening to the ocean
until it grew late
felt the waves pushing
against the sides of my boat

================

All the Windmills are Dead

the heat
the sky
the way
her eyes
looked at me

all the windmills are dead

it never rains
around here
I miss her
it’s late and
I can’t get to sleep

Author bio:

James Babbs has published hundreds of poems over the last several years in print journals and online. He lives in the same town where he grew up. James works for the government but he doesn’t like to talk about it. He has a cherry tree and two grapevines in his back yard and several pesky rabbits. His books are available from X Libris, Lulu, Interior Noise Press.

Thread of thought by Arjun Devanesan

2011-12-18T11:37:00.009-05:00

There is,
on some shore far away,
A planet on which,
being hospitable,
Stands an ocean to which many simple minded tourists flock like noisy antelopes
or grasshoppers,
And within which lives a great metaphor for immensity and vivacity,
Cousins who,
upon rendezvous,
Embrace and merge into a gelatinous whole,
A large jellyfish that swims clumsily in this sea,
Spindly tentacles stinging stray unwary bathers caught up in their own private thoughts
About mortality and morality,
For those are the only two contemplations
Allowed on this planet
on some shore far away.

Author bio:

Arjun's family is Sri Lankan but he was born in India, grew up in Indonesia and Singapore and studied in London, where he now lives. He is a doctor most of the time and writes with the rest of it. He likes to think poems are tangible things and so he likes to make them as sensorial as possible. The rest of his writing can be found at Onomatopeoia.

It’s July 4th by Jonathan Hayes

2011-12-18T11:29:00.007-05:00

At City Light’s bookstore – no one is here today upstairs in the poetry room,
while sitting in the poet’s chair by the open window.

I’m reading a collection by _______ _______________.

Mind at a steady calm, but that ol’ perpetrator, Loneliness, over shadows the current page on my lap for a good minute, until I stand up from the wooden rocking chair and

see a tattered black nylon scarf lying like a dead snake coiled on the floor planks,
and no one else will be up here today,

after I walk down the stairs.

Author bio:

Jonathan Hayes lives in San Francisco, California. He is the editor/publisher of the long-running American small press journal Over the Transom. His book-length poem T(HERE) was released by Silenced Press (Ohio, 2010).

Yellow Sand by Holly Day

2011-12-18T11:19:00.009-05:00

we load up our post-apocalyptic fortunes
of flower bulbs and bright-colored beads
take to the road. tilted blue street signs
of dead civilizations mark the path
streets built wide enough for ox-carts
crumble under our feet.

sunlight glints through the hollowed-out eyes
of battered skyscrapers that loom like mausoleums
for headless mannequins wearing scant threads of fashions
forgotten long before the end of the world.

Author bio:

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Oxford American, and Slipstream. Her book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.

displacement by Brock Marie Moore

2011-12-18T10:42:00.007-05:00

she sat crosslegged on the bed
straight-backed
yoga-stacked
perfect as if a wire pierced
her body (skull, heart, root chakra)
and strung the leyline of her spine from
rose quilt to ceiling

she wandered the paths of her mind
when she (still seated, still crosslegged)
tripped
and dropped - a sinking lotus -
out of reality: through the mattress
through the floor
falling faster
punching through thin paper layers of day
and night and place;
coffee-filter layers
herself heavier than the morning's tepid grounds

she touched down, inertia absent
in an origami landscape
where (how could it be otherwise?)
she knew she was the monster

her talons pierced a paper house
swept low a copse of fan-leafed trees
and still
she tears the land with grasping hands
chews paper swans between mechanical teeth

Author bio:

Brock Marie Moore lives in South Texas with a ludicrous number of cats and a spirit-weary dog. She writes poetry and short stories, sculpts clay into miniscule pointless forms, and customizes My Little Pony toys to make them more interesting and monster-y. Please visit her at Brock Marie

Liver-Life by Allen Griffin

2011-12-18T10:31:00.006-05:00

Live soft aware
In spiraling time-loss
Violent clock hostage
Employment
Rain little, so little, puddle treasure
Free no no
Incarcerated
Rare funds-No no trust
Sun
Teach me//caffeine
Teach me//Ibuprofen
Oh beer bubble electric
Gin joy
Oh to sleep too sleep

Author bio:

Allen Griffin is a writer and musician attempting to initiate the collapse of reason from his home in Indianapolis. His work has previously appeared in issue #2 of Theory Train, Indiana Horror Anthology, and Rebel Doll Zine.

Women and Their Struggle for Full Emancipation (Rant) By Edwin L. Young, PhD

2011-12-17T21:36:00.007-05:00

Pondering men’s versus women’s interest in porn of the girl on girl or guy on guy type, or any type perhaps, I look to history. Just like the gradual woman’s liberation movements from suffrage on. Landmarks along the way have been their sexual liberation through the introduction of the pill, the dildo, empowerment in the work world, their role in the growing acceptance of GLBTs, same sex marriages, their participation in the hugely growing success of the porn industry generally, and especially women’s freedom to explore and accept their primitive sexuality since the sixties. All of these trends have been leading to more and more women, not just becoming interested in, but, actually lusting after the visual portrayal of all sorts of sex acts.

Remember “Fried Green Tomatoes” when Kathy Bates had her women’s liberation group use mirrors to examine their genitals? That was just as recent as 1991. Back in the sixties, Lyndon’s Surgeon General was fired, albeit surreptitiously, for writing a book that proclaimed masturbation was OK, but ostensibly just for boys. And that was even in the sixties’ with its Woodstock, the Flower Child, and the sexual revolution days! Today, we are finally catching up. When a Mixmaster of dough went awry and flung it all over the girls in the “Two Broke Girls” TV show, one remarked, “They say Santa comes but once a year, and, I think he just did!” it has been and up and down, bumpy road for women’s complete emancipation in our culture.

Women, like gay males, are now coming out of the closet and almost brandishing their primitive sexuality, proving that they now have the courage to fearlessly reveal what for millennia they have had to hide, not just from jealous, possessive men, but even from themselves. Still men, particularly the clergy and politicians, are trying to control women’s reproductive decisions and even what is decent for them to wear in public. Paradoxically, corporations and the media blatantly use their sexuality as bait to lure customers to buy just about everything.

On the other hand, think how far our culture has come from the late nineteenth century and industrial revolution to now. Gradually, history has seen the lifting of oppression and repression of women. Very gradually the bumpy roads are smoothing and the detours and barriers are being removed.

What was there but repressed for so long is now coming out into the open. Not too long ago, Joelly Fisher (actress of Ellen DeGeneres’ (the declared lesbian Ellen) show “Buy the Book”) stated publicly that she loved viewing male on male porn. And then there was Cindy Crawford who said, in the mid *90s, while still married to Richard Gere, “I like to watch!” Now, go back and remember the cigarette ad for Slims that said over fifty years ago, “You’ve come a long way baby!”

If you are a woman, you will remember the flood of books in the sixties that were telling women to get in touch with their primitive sensuality and sexuality. In the mid nineteenth century, George Sand, a famous female writer felt she had to hide behind a man’s name.’ And then, during that same era, there was the tragic tale of Camille Claudel, a genius sculptor in her own right and the great love of August Rodin (The Thinker), had to play second fiddle to him and has yet to receive proper recognition.

Now we even have women running for president. And that must be symbolically liberating. But, in their personal life, they can choose whether their partner is male or female. Women are declaring, right and left, that they like and even prefer sex with women to that of men. Their genitals are no longer clapped in chastity belts. They are leading political and sexual protests. Best sellers in books in every field are women.

It has been a long and grueling road toward women’s full psychological, legal, political, financial emancipation, and toward finally owning of their own powerful, primitive sexuality and sensuality.

Hester Prynne, you have finally been vindicated!

For the love of women as full, whole human beings, may they forever flourish!

The Line (Rant) by Alison Leavens

2011-12-17T21:09:00.007-05:00

“You don’t have to do this,” I tell myself, as I get off the bus at 9th and Market. “You’re not in dire straits yet.” I walk down 9th to Mission and turn left. Peering ahead, I glimpse the crowd milling about the social services building. I cautiously approach.

I never imagined someone like me having to apply for welfare. Contemplating the excursion, my mind had filled with fears and judgments. As a thirty something, middle-class white woman with a college education, I pictured myself sticking out like a sore thumb in the rough group I expected to see. “Will I be targeted and harassed by some angry black man?” I questioned myself. “Will I be shot by a drugged felon?” “Besides,” I conjectured, “I don’t belong in a welfare line. I wasn’t raised this way; I’m not one of ‘those’ people.” Welfare is a lifestyle choice for lazy people who choose to live off the tax dollars of the upstanding citizens who get off their butts and earn a living. Welfare is for criminals and drug addicts, and just plain losers. Right?

Alert for danger, I find the end of the line and step in. Filthy men with pungent body odors and scraggly beards shuffle about. Rough looking men with red rimmed eyes talk loudly to each other. “Hey, bro wha’s up?” Undoubtedly stoned. I stand quietly in this group, trying to be invisible, my eyes flitting back and forth nervously.

Just weeks before, I had been a grad student at a ritzy private college, working on a master’s degree in counseling psychology. I was living on an inheritance from my grandmother and paying exorbitant fees for my classes. I was also ill with fibromyalgia, a syndrome which causes chronic pain, fatigue, and insomnia. Four weeks into my third quarter of classes, I suffered a flare-up of fibromyalgia affecting my jaw joint. In intense pain, I was unable to move my jaw enough to speak or chew, even a food as soft as Wonderbread. When added to my constant back pain and nightly insomnia, I had to face it--I was disabled. With no idea when my condition might improve, I sadly took a leave from grad school and quit my part-time job.

“What now?” I asked myself. I still had money to live on, but I knew I would run through it within months. My thoughts went to the worst case scenario--I run out of money, lose my apartment, and end up homeless on the street. I was scared. What was I going to do?

Resourceful always, I thought, “You have to see if you can get unemployment compensation.” A phone call later I found out that I hadn’t been working long enough to qualify. The overworked voice on the line told me that I might qualify for General Assistance (i.e., welfare), and food stamps. There was no other stopgap money for someone in my situation.

As a person with a strong work ethic, and a belief in the America where everyone pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps, I could hardly stomach the idea of welfare. Yet, faced with a choice between my pride and a perceived threat to my survival I chose to stand in the line.

The line inches its way toward the social services building. Once inside the drab, shabbily furnished room I sit down and await my turn. My fears subside within the protection of the security guarded space, and I take a better look at my fellow applicants. I feel surprised to see that “those” people don’t all look lazy, or like criminals or losers.

Middle-aged Chinese couples sit side by side looking tired and worn. Vacant eyed elderly white men slump in wheelchairs. Latino families huddle together, young children in tow. Heavyset black women grimly clutch their handbags in their laps. I sense a palpable pain within the collective energy in the room; a bewildered feeling of “how did it come to this?” These people mostly look like decent human beings who have been hit with hard times, some disaster or loss in their lives. I find myself curious about them. What are their stories? How did it come to this? I find myself not feeling so different. I am disabled, in spite of the fact that I look like a perfectly healthy young woman. Some of them probably wonder what I am doing in the line. Am I lazy, criminally fraudulent, a loser? They can’t tell by looking at my appearance.

And yes, there are those who match my image of welfare recipients--rough, loud, drugged, tattered and smelly. But my mind, once opened, churns out questions. If they are criminals, druggies, or freeloaders--why? Did something happen in their lives that affected them so profoundly that they can’t live the upstanding life promised in the American dream? What can I really know about someone from their appearance? From the fact that they are accepting a welfare check? Is it ever as simple as good people versus good for nothing people? Is it ever so black and white? My mind shifts a notch into the gray area.

The eligibility worker calls my name, interrupting my thoughts. I follow her down the orange carpeted corridor to her cubicle, where she pages through my application. A few minutes later I leave the building.

Back on the Muni bus, I reflect on my experience, and am surprised to note that standing in the welfare line didn’t strip me of my dignity as I feared, nor did it offer me much financial assistance (food stamps only). Instead, I was given something unexpected--an opening into compassion toward people who I had summarily categorized and judged as different from me. Less than me. “Those” people. Well, I was in the line too. I am “those” people. Given the right circumstances, we all are.

Author bio:

Alison Leavens is a freelance writer and jewelry designer, living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her jewelry designs can be viewed at www.bejeweledbyalison.com. Alison draws inspiration from the grandeur of nature, and lives with her beloved cat, Minnie.

Random Acts of Would-Be Randomness by J.S. Watts

2011-12-17T20:49:00.007-05:00

Admiring the brightly coloured
                                                            randomness
                                    in others,
            the blackbird warbling from the dense knot of thorn,
I see only sharp connections
amongst my drab flora, hypodermics, broken glass,
            surreptitiously spreading links of barbed wire
                                                to be tripped up over
again and for never, ever
            amen-onwards, until the cupboard is bare.
I am unable to expect the unexpected
because it isn’t yet baked,
            always is furniture,
                        might sometimes be vagrant.
It is shaped by patterns, you see,
            visual, audible,
                        the melody, brush stroke, latent sleeping rhythm
            snuggling away down there, together,
waiting to hatch.
                        A clutch of drawn shadows
echoing the ignition
                        of blackbird wings
in a slowly lost forest.
It’s how it sits close to the bone,
                                                            colours shining
                        Do you see me?
                                    Can you hear my colours?

Author bio:

Author bio: J.S.Watts lives and writes in the flatlands of East Anglia. Her poetry, short fiction and reviews are published in a variety of magazines and publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and the States including: Ascent Aspirations, Envoi, The Journal, Polluto and The Recusant. Her debut poetry collection "Cats and Other Myths" is published by Lapwing Publications. For further details see JS Watts

Not Your Average Potato (Satire) by John A. Ward

2011-12-17T20:41:00.009-05:00

When they spackled over the eye buds and put in the Mister Potato Head Eyes, he could see. That made all the difference. He was a potato with vision and wouldn't be confined to a life underground or in a root cellar anymore.
Then he got a nose, a mouth, ears, all of the senses that a human takes for granted. He begged for arms and legs.

He was caked with dirt from the garden, never realized that he had a nice loamy smell before, but he noticed that the people who were making him didn't and he wanted to recreate himself in their image. To him, they were gods.

He needed hands to hold the soap, legs to stand tall so he could reach the hot and cold faucets in the shower. If he didn't get the temperature right, he might be a boiled potato. He didn't realize that it would take 100 degrees Celsius to boil him. He never had high school physics and his creators weren't about to tell him.

They gave him arms and legs and held up the watering can so he could bathe. He scrubbed himself with Irish Spring, then put on his derby and his rakish moustache. The humans looked at their creation and saw that he was alone.

"He needs a wife," said the girl human.

"He doesn't need a wife," said the boy human. "He's a golem. We made him from a potato, a thing of the dirt. Who knew he would become a person?"

"We need a Mrs. Potato Head," said the girl.

"We don't have a Mrs. Potato Head toy," said the boy.

"Let's go shopping," said the girl.

"I don't want to go shopping," said the boy. "Let's try to make him a partner with what we have. We'll make her half an earth creature and half almost human."

"What will the earth half be?" asked the girl.

"I'll use my rubber snake," said the boy.

"I'll use my Barbie for the human half," said the girl. "The snake half should be the bottom and the Barbie should be the top. How will we join them?"

"Duct tape," said the boy.

The girl didn't say anything, but in her heart, she felt it wouldn't work.

Mister Potato Head and the snake woman lived together for a week, but they couldn't have children. For one thing, nobody can have children in a week and they were looking under cabbage leaves for them because that's where
their human creators told them babies come from. It wouldn't matter anyway, because neither of them had the right equipment to do the job.

The Girl said, "It isn't working. He needs another partner. It's nobody's fault. It's just not a good year for Cabbage Patch Kids."

But the boy still didn't want to go shopping, so he ordered a Mrs. Potato Head Kit online.

They sat Mister Potato Head and the snake woman down and explained to them about the new wife.

"I'm going to have two wives," said Mister Potato Head. "How cool is that?"

"No way," said the snake woman. "I'm going to go live with the angel on top of the tree." She was livid. In truth, she was always a little pale, because her top half was Nordic Barbie.

When the kit came, they made a partner for Mister Potato Head from another potato. They wanted to scoop and spackle her eye buds, but Mrs. Potato Head wouldn't allow it.

"That's how potatoes have babies," she said.

Suddenly, the boy and the girl knew where they went wrong and exchanged sheepish grins.

Mister Potato Head took his new wife to see the snake woman, but his ex talked his new squeeze into eating a red ornament off the tree. Then Mrs. Potato Head talked her husband into eating one. They liked them. Pretty
soon, they stripped the tree and were barfing up glass shards all over the floor.

The boy and girl were not pleased. They banished the potatoes from the house and tossed them out into the snow. The snake woman and the angel never died. To this day, they live in pine trees in the forest. When you hear the cry of a screech owl in the night, it's the snake woman in the throes of passion, or throttling anunwary soul. She makes the same sound for both.

Author bio:

John A. Ward was born on Staten Island, attended Wagner College in the early 60's, sold his first poem to Leatherneck magazine, and became a scientist. He is now in San Antonio running, writing and living with his dance partner. Links to his work can be found at Booger Jack.

Tiny van Gogh by Kevin Ridgeway

2011-12-16T13:16:00.007-05:00

A medium sized
Vincent van Gogh
action figure
that I bought
at the Getty Gift Shop
on a rehab field trip
graces my dusty bookshelf

He has interchangeable
heads, one with two ears
vibrant and
crisply tanned
like he went
on a refreshing safari or
an Italian vacation

the other is a gray
sagged skull
wrapped in
bandages with
a limp institutional
grimace

When I am in
the range of stability
to on top of the world,
he has two ears

when life goes into
the gutter of disheveled
oblivion he has
only one

I’m making a third head
with no ears, in addition to
handcrafted sheath shreds
of worn woman’s negligees,
wool hospital booties
and a tiny pack of
generic rot-lung cigarettes
for the truly demoralizing,
engulfed in the
flames of hell
times.

Author bio:

Kevin Ridgeway is a writer from Southern California. His most recent work has appeared in Ray's Road Review, The Left Coast Review, In Somnis Veritas, and in addition he has forthcoming publications in Breadcrumb Scabs, Red Fez, Calliope Nerve, The Orange Room Review and Larks Magazine.

Mnemonic Triggers by Joseph M. Gant

2011-12-16T13:11:00.006-05:00

do I care to wonder why
my hands
that can not now for any else
but write for dime or name
in great prolificacies disregard
all policies and every last neglect,

. . . write poems here in lieu of something else . . .

or even by technicians' right,
when words could buy
more smoke and dope.

there was stitch and there is weaving
on the rims of every hole I've burned.
yet where I write the droll of syntax
lays the lumber from the road;

walking safely with encryption
on my heels—
the path to find me obfuscated.

mnemonic triggers,
claymore fragments
hiding in a forest bombed of joy;
this paper to make poems of

bring me back to where the burning,
needing less, and cauterized
failed to let the leeches in;
sucking raw diseases from my veins again tonight.

Author bio:

Joseph M. Gant is a scientific glassblower by trade and a writer by everything else that matters. His work has appeared modestly in small press and academic journals. Poetry editor for S A M Publishing, Joseph resides outside Philadelphia and his full length collection of poetry, Zero Division, is available through Rebel Satori Press and most major book retailers.

Bukowski and the spider by Henry Kellogg

2011-12-16T13:06:00.008-05:00

The spider did not want to die
and I did not want to kill it

Yet as it crawled over my bag my sleeve
I wanted it gone

“leave me in peace” I want to read poetry alone in the park
Feel the pain of a man now dead but living somewhere
in the ether between the page and my brain

But the spider would not leave me when I looked back to it again
and again

I felt something

It meant me no harm or malice
maybe it meant nothing at all but

It looked like death
and I didn't feel like dying just yet

Small and green bigger than a pin head smaller than a penny
I was probably sitting under her tree, invading her space with nostalgic
quiet sad beautiful poetry which engrossed my soul

Then for some reasonless reason I realized the spider had to die
And it went the way of Bukowski under my soft thumb

I know the spider will meet Bukowski
Somewhere in the ether between the page and the universe
and if they should decide to write poetry together

I know it will be nostalgic

Author bio:

Henry Kellogg is just some cracked nobody on the other side of the internet. He likes to travel around the world and wander into unexpected and awkward situations. He doesn't let life get to him, and he loves to write. Bukowski is his idol/homeboy.

Three poems by David McLean

2011-12-16T13:02:00.006-05:00

just some hunger

they live just some hunger
with insatiable indifference,
not even real evil,

an absent man leaving a bar
brushing against a child
and touching her

with such a terrible
forgetfulness, love and cold conscience,
the faintest trace of death

====================

gray skin

twilight is voracious gray skin
and esurient silence listening
to all the slender absences,

to these useless interstices
every body calls its “me”
i have fists and do not dream,

i have teeth and gray skin
to be. i have absences,
no trace of any need

###################

stealing bones

you steal my bones from the graveyard
that is the flesh, here where a solitary god
sits being a self and a memory,

pieces of meat and dreams
instead of bread and butter,
love on this stained carpet

where corpses walked once.
you steal my bones from the flesh
to render down to dust and drugs,

a solitary god, meaty as any love

Author bio:

David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. Up to date details of well over 1200 poems in various publications, both print and online, over the last three years or so are at his blog at Mourning Abortion. There you will also find details of several currently available books and chapbooks - including three print full lengths, five print chapbooks, and a free electronic chapbook.

Fables by John Swain

2011-12-13T19:55:00.005-05:00

I walked the sunken gardens
under the arches of a house
that was once a slave church.
His daughter picked berries
under skies like a net of frogs
pulsing in purples and bass.
The black stone pond remained stone
although the roots take water
from the fractures like a grave.
I buried a book of her fables.

Author bio:

John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. He has previously contributed to Clockwise Cat and Thunderclap published his most recent chapbook, Fragments of Calendars.

If the Mob Acted More Like a Corporation (Satire) by Jon Wesick

2011-12-13T19:49:00.007-05:00

The following Terms of Service (referred to as “TOS”) are between you, the victim, and Organized Crime (referred to as “OC”). Depending on your service address OC may refer to La Cosa Nostra, the Irish Mob, Russian Mafia, Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, Neapolitan Camorra, or others.

You must accept these TOS as a condition of receiving our “protection.” By inhabiting, doing business in, or merely passing through our territory you agree to the terms and conditions of these TOS including but not limited to the prices, charges, and terms and conditions provided to you in marketing and informational material associated with our “protection” on the OC website. If you do not agree to all the aforementioned terms and conditions, stay off planet Earth!

You will be responsible for payment of service charges for visits by OC or its subcontractors to your premises. You understand and agree that OC may burn, demolish, bomb, or otherwise alter these premises. If you do not own your premises, you warrant that you have obtained permission from any necessary party to make the alterations OC deems appropriate. Furthermore, you agree to indemnify OC from and against any claims by an owner, landlord, building manager, or other party in connection with said alterations.

You agree to pay all fees and charges for the “protection” associated with your account. If the entire amount of payment due is not received by the due date, a late payment charge will be charged to you. OC may assign unpaid balances to an enforcer for appropriate action. You agree to reimburse OC for all costs and expenses incurred to recover payment due including fees for enforcement such as labor, ammunition, explosives, and flammable liquids.

“Protection” may be temporarily interrupted or otherwise limited for a variety of reasons some beyond the control of OC. OC reserves the right to refuse credit allowances for interrupted “protection.” OC also reserves the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, at any time or from time to time, the “protection” without liability.

Your “protection” may be suspended or terminated if your payment is past due. While your “protection” is suspended billing may continue for your monthly charges, and any applicable promotional offers may be discontinued or revoked.

You expressly understand and agree that:

i) Your use of the “protection” is at your sole risk. “Protection” is provided on an “as is” basis. OC expressly disclaims all warranties of any kind whether express or implied.
ii) OC makes no warranty that the “protection” will meet your requirements, the “protection will be uninterrupted or timely, the quality of the “protection” will meet your expectations, and that the “protection” will not conflict or interfere with rival gangs.

You expressly understand and agree that OC shall not be liable to you for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exceptional damages resulting from the performance or nonperformance of our “protection.” In any event, your sole and exclusive remedy for any dispute with OC in connection with the service is a refund not to exceed the total amount of fees paid during the immediate preceding twelve-month period.

In the event OC’s business office is unable to resolve a complaint to your satisfaction, we each agree that instead of using courts of general jurisdiction, we will resolve our disputes through binding arbitration in the alley behind Fat Tony’s Pizza.

These TOS constitute the entire agreement between OC and you and supersede all prior agreements.

Author bio:

Host of the Gelato Poetry Series, instigator of the San Diego Poetry Un-Slam, and an editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual, Jon Wesick has published over two hundred poems in journals such as The New Orphic Review, Pearl, Pudding, and Slipstream. He has also published forty short stories in journals such as Clockwise Cat, Space and Time, Zahir, Tales of the Talisman, and Metal Scratches. Jon has a Ph.D. in physics and is a longtime student of Buddhism and the martial arts. One of his poems won second place in the 2007 African American Writers and Artists contest.

Primates, Extinct Hominids, Neanderthals, Homo Sapiens and Our Fate (Rant) by Edwin Young

2011-12-13T19:46:00.005-05:00

OK, what if each successive species in the tree of evolution maintains some of the DNA of those that preceded? What if Neanderthals and other hominids did interbreed with early Homo sapiens? What if Bonobos share much common DNA with Chimps? The skeletal structure, anatomy, and behavior, especially sexual behavior and estrus or reproductive cycle of Bonobos is the most similar to ours of all Apes. Interbreeding of many hominids, as well as other human sub species, inheritance of past specie’s DNA lower on the evolutionary tree, plus the predominant surviving human species maintaining genes from the dwindling population of Neanderthals, all of these hypothesized factors may contribute to the vast variety of races and anatomical patterns and account for a variegated substrate of genetically determined proclivities.

The resulting Homo Sapiens have an enormous capacity for adaptability to differing environments but also an enormous flexibility or malleability of behavior. Civilizations that eventually evolved were probably influenced by these genetically determined proclivities but, due to the malleability of our species, civilizations evolved arbitrarily within those constraints. The outcome of our current configuration of civilizations, and their diversity, has nothing sacred about it. It has not been designed by any superior, wise, visionary, or self-modifying intelligence. It has merely plummeted along by rivalries between our basest instincts and mere idiotic chance. If we, as a globally dominant species were to accept this hypothesis, take stock of where we are and what disastrous fate we may careening toward and decide to completely redesign the global civilization, it may not be too late to forestall another global extinction through our own unwitting suicide.

Review of Tendai Mwanaka's Voices in Exile by J.S. Watts

2011-12-11T13:55:00.011-05:00

Voices in Exile is a visceral, immediate and raw collection of poems by the South African based writer Tendai R. Mwanaka.

The poems contain stories of horror, torture, despair, “steady howling and gnashing cries” and just occasionally some hope, as the unheard voices of Zimbabwe are given full rein. It is poetry which sometimes sacrifices the perfection of language for the passion of the moment, but is not necessarily lacking because of that.

The passion and urgency flowing through the poems is so unrelenting that at times I longed for a few more moments of respite, but it would be a respite that has been denied the people of Zimbabwe. There are some quieter moments. In the gentle lyricism of poems such as the titular “Voices in Exile”, a quieter voice can be heard, that of the country itself:

“This poem is the soft call of one lonely raven
That has lost her loved birth-ones
It is the voice of reason in times of pestilence
It is the voice of the spirit that left luggage
And bundles of bones in Limpopo River
It is the voice of flesh and blood that sustains
Fish and crocodiles in Limpopo
Year in, year out
It is the voice of the badger swallowing in grief
It is the voice of the raccoon choking in blame.”

The same voice can be heard in the hopeful “Lest We Forget” stating that:

“flowers have
different colours

but they all beautify

altogether as
one nation

different colours.”

But these poetic pauses, though welcome, are brief. The driver of this poetry is inevitably “the unblinking/muzzle flash of a gun again”, the “casualties/ Constructing these sentences/ All alone, unaided, lighting/The threshold to the wordless potent”. In this collection by Tendai Mwanaka, though, the wordless are given words once more through the “Tales hidden in tears” within the poems themselves.

Voices in Exile by Tendai Mwanaka is published by Lapwing Publications at Lapwing Poetry.

Author bio:

J.S.Watts lives and writes in the flatlands of East Anglia. Her poetry, short fiction and reviews are published in a variety of magazines and publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and the States including: Ascent Aspirations, Envoi, The Journal, Polluto and The Recusant. Her debut poetry collection "Cats and Other Myths" is published by Lapwing Publications. For further details see J.S. Watts.

Review of The Great American Poetry Show Volume 1 by J.S. Watts

2011-12-11T13:54:00.008-05:00

Billed as a serial poetry anthology, open year-round to submissions, Volume 1 will give you a hearty meal of U.S. poetry. By my calculation there are eighty-four poets and one hundred and thirteen poems on the menu.

The potential problem with such an open and eclectic gathering of verse is often quality, but a quick browse through the ten pages of notes on the contributing poets discloses a creditable writing and publishing record across almost the entire board.

With so many juicy titbits to sample, it is difficult for this reviewer to choose which poems to highlight to provide a flavour of the diverse verse on offer. I’ve opted for a semi-random selection, but as the poems are arranged alphabetically by poet I’ve endeavoured to select some from the beginning, middle and end of the anthology so the A,B,Cs don’t get all the glory.

First there is the sharp humour of craving a baby in Susan Ahdoot’s “Mutiny in the Body”,

“Yes, the ovaries are pissed
and seeking revenge.
There’s a battle being fought
and it isn’t always pretty.”

and three lyrical poems from Sara Berkely on the joy and pain of having children,

“You are coming down the present in your short dress,
you have not done this before, alive in your first April,
but this is your stride, the rhythm of arrival,
and you carry the moment aloft,
brimming, like pale water in a silver cup.”

In “September 11 – The Missing” Frank Hertle constructs a sombre poem shaped like the twin tours from lists of the dead and a narrative of their known fate, whilst Larry Ziman proffers a prose poem, “Sci-Fi Flick”, enthusing over the delights of an inter-galactic striptease,

“Fast as summer lightning I banked our fighter right and shot into the middle of an asteroid belt and hid our craft behind a speeding stream of planetary
boulders. Just as the enemy ship zipped into our gunner’s sights, a fluffy
pale-blue brassiere landed on the surface on our cockpit window.”

With so many forms, styles and tones on offer you are unlikely to enjoy every poem in this eat-all-you-can buffet, but then again there will inevitably be little delicacies to tempt you, whatever your palette.

The Great American Poetry Show is edited by Larry Ziman, Madeline Sharples and Nicky Selditz and is published by The Muse Media at The Great American Poetry Show and TGAPS.

Author bio:

J.S.Watts lives and writes in the flatlands of East Anglia. Her poetry, short fiction and reviews are published in a variety of magazines and publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and the States including: Ascent Aspirations, Envoi, The Journal, Polluto and The Recusant. Her debut poetry collection "Cats and Other Myths" is published by Lapwing Publications. For further details see J.S. Watts.

Review of Craig Sernotti's Forked Tongue by J.S. Watts

2011-12-11T13:51:00.008-05:00

I confess I have struggled with Forked Tongue, the debut poetry collection by Craig Sernotti. Some of the poems in it I do quite like and some I find quite amusing; “Things to Do Today” for example, with its numbered list of extreme and surreal activities for the day, culminating in the dry final line, “wait to be arrested”. I don’t know if it’s really poetry, but it is funny. Herein, however, may lie the root of the problem. Craig Sernotti himself is quoted as saying, “The poetry in ‘Forked Tongue’ is mostly for people who don’t like poetry.” Not surprisingly, I don’t consider myself to be one of those people. I actually like poetry, which is just as well really, as I write it and review it for magazines specialising in it. One might therefore think that there is something contradictory in asking a poetry reviewer to review a book written for people who don’t like poetry.

Sernotti is also quoted as saying this is a book which will be appreciated by people with “a warped sense of humour.” In theory, there should be a better match here. Friends and family frequently tell me that my sense of humour, or what passes for one, is warped. It is probably what enables me to appreciate poems like “Anxiety” with its quirky lines,

“Steal all the porridge you can
from those goddamn bears”

and culminating in the less than reassuring ending of traditional fairy tale reassurance,

“I will tell you everything ends
happily ever after
whenever you need to hear it”.

Yet other poems in this collection leave me totally cold and, to my mind, often achieve “warped” without any accompanying humour. Perhaps I am just a poetry loving, old fuddy duddy at heart, but the themes of sex, dreams and death running through the collection became boring after I had read the fifth “I had a dream” poem, or the sixth one dealing with blow jobs and cunnilngus. Poems like “Dream” (the one on page 24, not the one with exactly the same title on page 17), with its punch line of shaking John Updike’s hand whilst wearing a rubber glove that had been used to clear out a blocked toilet, strikes me as simply gross for the sake of it.

Judging from the reasonably lengthy list of acknowledgements at the back of the book, many of the poems in “Forked Tongue” have previously appeared in small magazines, so there must be a number of people who do not struggle with poetry like this and who are entertained by its gross-out humour. All I can say is, it takes all sorts.

Forked Tongue by Craig Sernotti is published by Blue Room Publishing, Blue Room Publishing

Author bio:

J.S.Watts lives and writes in the flatlands of East Anglia. Her poetry, short fiction and reviews are published in a variety of magazines and publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and the States including: Ascent Aspirations, Envoi, The Journal, Polluto and The Recusant. Her debut poetry collection "Cats and Other Myths" is published by Lapwing Publications. For further details see J.S. Watts.

Two Satirical Pieces by Thomas Sullivan

2011-12-11T13:43:00.006-05:00

The Big One That Got Away

Dear Sir(s),

Thank you for submitting your manuscript The New Testament for our review. Please know that we read your story about the life of Christ with great interest. However, while we are impressed by the popularity of your previous books, and are also strongly drawn to the idea of publishing a series, we do not believe that a market truly exists for your current story. We also feel that your claim that your proposed series will “become the most popular international book of all time” is somewhat of a stretch. At the current time, we are primarily seeking books about gladiators or sea-based warfare, which are very hot topics at the moment. As such, we do not feel that your work would be a good fit for our catalog.

Thank you once again for considering our publishing house. Best of luck in your future writing endeavors. Also, have you considered the option of self-publishing?

Sincerely,

Marcus Titus
PublishRome & Associates
June 3, CLX

=================

Help Wanted

Wanted: Middle-aged, white person for national-level leadership position. Ideal candidate will possess limited moral core. Job duties to include: re-framing previously failed economic policies, enhancing and expanding economic inequality, and presenting the replacement of senior health care with tax cuts for high-income earners as a form of patriotic discipline. All candidates must possess or be able to secure deep social and monetary connections to financial and/or defense contracting industries. New ideas not required. Candidate must be comfortable delivering World War Two metaphors and implying a personal connection to regular citizens through emotional stories about working-class ancestors. Previous experience in race-baiting and gay-bashing a plus. Physical resemblance to actors in dandruff shampoo commercials a major plus. Avowed religious faith (however genuine) a must. Job requires relocation to Washington, DC. Housing provided, but private schooling for children recommended.

Author bio:

Thomas Sullivan’s writing has appeared in Pure Slush and 3AM Magazine, among others. He is the author of Life In The Slow Lane, a memoir about teaching driver education for a cut-rate company in Oregon. For information on this title (published by Uncial Press), please visit his author website at Thomas Sullivan.

Pac-Man Existential (Satire) by Kane X. Faucher

2011-12-11T13:28:00.017-05:00

Each and every day is the same; the same featureless walls, the same monotonous charging forward to consume the standardized detritus of my very small, confined world. The arrangement of the walls change, yes, but their essence remains identical, their meaning inalterable. I am accompanied only by the monotonous sound of my own gluttonous consumption.

I am pursued by all that I have repressed. All my anxieties, my denial, that threaten to overwhelm me. To these psychological shadows of the self I assign names so that I may somehow take control of these by the act of naming: Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde.

Sartre says hell is other people, but I can think of no worse hell than to live within myself, and only myself. In those rare moments of courage where I consume that powerful pellet of confidence, only then do I turn and confront my trailing demons, my phantom issues. But as I go in pursuit of my troubled past as a therapeutic gesture for my own psychological emancipation, I see there the financial cost of such therapies––and each issue I gobble, that I cannibalize, is added to my overall existential debt.

For it matters not as all that is repressed and eventually confronted only returns to threaten me again, to endlessly chase me in this labyrinth of the self. And there is no way for me to chase these phantoms that beguile me to their source, for the source is bricked up, and I am prohibited access. Only the eyes of my repressions purchase entry only to return in full, vivid garb, in pursuit of me once more. And still I become nothing more than a spectator to an arbitrary increase in numbers of a score that has no extrinsic value.

It is this inescapable entrapment, and this endless pursuit. I move so rectilinearly to evade the ghosts of myself and rush to consume as though this will make me whole, will restore some lost unity. The gap between me and some threatening phantom in my psyche narrows, and so begins my mad munching scramble for anything that will shift the balance on my fate, even if only temporarily.

I think to myself perhaps there is a god that may rescue me from this monotony, and perhaps his name is Mitchell. And perhaps my entire life is a coin-operated madness, my every move the whim of a failing god whose dexterity might err. But to what end this pursuit and evasion, maze after maze? I am reminded of Freud's remark in his The Interpretation of Dreams: "With one of my female patients all dreams have the character of 'hurry'; she is hurrying so as to be in time, so as not to miss her train, and so on. In one dream she has to visit a girl friend; her mother had told her to ride and not walk; she runs, however, and keeps on calling." What am I hurrying to or from? I have only the immediate to focus on, and the perpetual dread of turning a wrong corner and being outflanked by those creatures I am sure are of my own making. If there is a god who pilots my movement, who has authored this maze, I cannot be sure that this god is anything but imperfect––perhaps even negligent or insane.

I am told by those articles of faith that after 255 rounds of this maddening grind that I will come to some victory and that my self will be united with the meaning of it all. Yet, I see myself weakening before this abstract future may be realized, to allow––as is my right to take destiny in hand and terminate my own life––the phantoms to overtake me, to deflate me like a slashed tire. Anything to end this incessant sound of my own munching, my own slavish consumption! But what happens at this mystical end? The limits of my world, perhaps, when the last fruit––the vain pursuit of possession––is drawn, only an impassable gibberish of my world's code spat out and blocking any further progress.

I have choice. I need not appeal to the limits of a transcendent world that confines space and purpose to essence. But this choice may itself be banal, a Gentzen tree where I may opt to chew down one corridor or another, forever or for as long as fortune holds out. I have another choice, and that is to allow all that lurks within to accost me and bring an end to these meaningless pursuits. Survival is the motif, but survival to no purpose as I move parasitically from maze to maze.

I know myself to be round, but this does not furnish me with any significant meaning; I must undertake to understand this serialized space. What I take to be exists on the left and right only succeed in making me appear on the other side of this mirror. Or, perhaps it is more the case that I have taken this world as flat, as square, when in actual fact it is a labyrinth printed on the surface of a sphere with no depth. I am just a tracing of a looped space, and I can only secure my release once I have exhausted the resources… only to repeat the process yet again. But for each successive world that I enter, the challenges increase, the phantoms of all that I have repressed gain in speed, my ability to confront them contracts in duration. I have discovered this insipid truth: That at a certain numerical achievement in consumption, I am granted an added chance to repeat this existential folly. I must absorb into myself 200 of these tasteless dots, or 50 of those pellets that artificially buoy up my will. I scramble about for other truths about this space that might provide insight to my purpose that may be concealed from me. The following are true:

The ghosts of myself are immortal, or perpetually regenerated for as long as I am alive.

The configuration of the labyrinth is variable, but not infinite.

The walls of the labyrinth are impassable.

I travel at a constant speed whereas my phantoms increase in speed over time.

All objects in this space are identical according to their type, and my interaction with them produces the same sound.

There is no escape; only repetition is afforded me.

These truths do not redeem me, nor do they bring me closer to the purpose of this existence. I have only to hurry, to hurry again, and in the process suffer as the foes within myself gain on me until that one erring moment where I choose the wrong turn in haste, and find myself boxed in. There is no time to reflect, no way of interrogating my pursuers, no means by which I can appeal to any entity to grant me the reason as to why I am compelled to perform this function.

I dream of completing this labyrinth forever and being transported to a space without walls, without pellets, and without motion. I crave absolute inertia so that this tiresome scrambling may come to a definitive close. Perhaps, in that mystical afterworld of level 256 there is a world unlike the previous 255; or else, as may be the dark humour of an unseen god, I am condemned to repeat my Sisyphean labour at level zero as the rock rolls back down the hill.

Author bio:

Kane X. Faucher is the author of The Infinite Library and other novels. He teaches at the University of Western Ontario.

Two poems by Joe Milford

2011-12-11T13:15:00.006-05:00

Ear To The Last Fallen Leaf

I can hear the wood underneath the finish,
the stain in the grain. And the sand beneath
the glass and cooled fusion. And the walls
suffocating under paint. And the earth under
the asphalt. And the current within the wire.
And the staples trapped in the carpeted corners.
And the rivers succumbing to plumbing. And
the sun trapped underneath my freckles. And
the fire trapped in Zippos. And the light trapped
before the finger flicks the switch. And to me
museums are almost unbearable prisons. And
the seeds in the wombs I hear and the names
engraved in stone. And the bubbles in the beer’s
amber. Sometimes I hear the grains martyred
in fermentation for my buzz. I hear the spores
on fern-fronds whispering under winds’ wisps.
And the orgasm waiting within your abdomen
as i lay my head on your bellybutton. And the storm
of rain waiting to condense up from Lake Michigan.
And the stranger in the window thinks I can’t
hear him. I hear the pit in every peach. And
the queen within the mound or the hexagonal hive.
And the scream lingering within the lung. And this
constant poem wailing between my two ears
Like a universe of constellations waiting for the night to fall.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Psychic Debris

gods are psychic debris
gods are avalanche: me
crazy in the debris, we
unhappy to be just flesh filigree
symbiotic and psychically see
gods are avalanche and we
on top of the ride kamikaze
lives lived on mountainsides exploding
we be crazy Commanches, be
artisans of sea and tsunami
in the freespun cyclone
I reach my hand in and pull out
wineglass shards without getting cut
magician of tongue-grappling
ing-ing as only wings can
gods are avalanche of wings, see
gods’ skies fall on me
gods are psychic debris.

Author bio:

Joe Milford is the host of The Joe Milford Poetry Show (Joe Milford Poetry Show) and the co-editor of Scythe Literary Journal (Scythe Literary Journal). His first book was published by BlazeVox press in 2010. He is a full-time professor of English and Creative Writing in Georgia.

Cracking the Psychological Mindset of the Day (Rant) by Edwin L. Young

2011-12-11T12:57:00.007-05:00

When I was young I saw the evils of wealth, status, and prejudice. I discovered early on that people did not always tell the truth and all too often gossiped and said bad and untrue things about others. Later in late my teens and in my young adulthood, I learned the lessons ‘be realistic; grow up; that’s the way the world is’ first hand from employers. ‘The way the world is’ that they were referring to meant that there are two kinds of people the takers and the taken, the cheaters and the cheated; it meant that if you get the upper hand then use it to crush your rivals, it meant money talks, you are how you dress, there are only winners and losers, liars and suckers, elbows are meant for getting ahead in line, fair play is for fairies. If you wanted to get ahead – and I was learning that that was all that mattered – it was who you know and not what you know.

I regularly went to church and it eventually sunk in on me that these people listened to sweet Jesus sermons on Sunday and on Monday went out ripped off customers with a smile and exploited the vulnerable with an air of entitlement. I wanted none of that crude, merciless, mendacity, that blatant worship of manna, wanted none of the hypocrisy exhibited by those to-the-manor-born, nor the greedy-grimy-filch-fingered merchants, wanted none of that so-called ‘good life’. Also, while growing up, I was repelled by my peers’ mischievous, arrogant, rebellious, bullying behaviors. I was appalled by their silly, juvenile attempts to model after adults’ wayward, self-indulgent, avaricious, hypocritical, and prejudiced behavior.

It seemed clear to me that adults’ double standards and their domineering and punitive reactions to their children were being emulated by their children. Oddly, while I veered dramatically from my peers’ behaviors, and therefore was somewhat on the fringe, I was still regarded as a friend by most of my peers, even the rebels. I suppose that blind fate was preparing me to regard the beliefs and conventions around me with skepticism and to not be too uncomfortable with going my own way.

Having gradually come to see the world from a point of view that was counter-materialistic and had come to be suspicious of consensual prejudices, I had my next, worst shock which confirmed the suspicions I acquired during growing up. This came after I went to college and was employed as a psychologist in a state mental hospital. There, I learned that what my university professors had taught me about philosophy, psychology, and religion was patently false.

There are intellectual and emotional challenges to following an alternative, questioning, and non-materialistic path in life. You have to learn to think for yourself and to accept being considered eccentric by the more conventional sort. The reward for my tendency to blaze my own trail began in earnest in 1968 when I saw the startling results of my restructuring the Admissions Ward at Big Spring State Mental Hospital in West Texas. Since then, I have had to seriously challenge one after another of my intellectual conceptions of the world and people, particularly with respect to the application of psychology. Consequently, I had to endure the social and emotional concomitants that came from my gradual reinterpretation of the intellectual conceptions I had been taught.

Having begun to learn to question academic authority, I was somewhat prepared for what was to come. For example, I had to question, in a massive way, everything I had learned in abnormal psychology and psychotherapy classes. What I was witnessing when I reformed that Admissions Ward was supposed to be impossible. This experience was repeated with incarcerated delinquents and adult felons, with education of those who hated school and were far behind their age mates, and with the extremely poor and undereducated Hispanics, Blacks, and poor whites, including prostitutes. I had to reinterpret the prevailing image of prison guards and even the justice system as a whole. Everywhere I worked I found that, when I applied my emerging natural systems philosophy to reforming these institutions, I had the same tradition-shattering positive results. Over and over, when reforming one institution after another, thirteen in all, I experienced these mind-altering, emotion-challenging outcomes.

From 1968 to the present, I continued to reflect upon and apply new insights while revising, tampering with, and improving my approach. This also required that I continuously expand and rewrite my natural systems philosophy that resulted from these experiences. I usually had some forms of performance measures with which to evaluate the degree of success of my methods. Those measures overwhelmingly supported my approach to each institution’s reform. However, I found that I needed to try to get scientific validation of my intuitive propositions regarding what was changing inside the residents of these institutions. These were speculations about the processes of intentionality that were embedded in my natural systems philosophy. These were forming in my mind as I observed the effects of external changes in institutional structure and systems. Over these years, I had been thinking and trying to systematically develop these propositions about inner processes in parallel with my reform efforts.

I was graduated with an MA degree in Counseling in 1962. Over the years from 1964 to 1982, I had been rejected from PhD candidacy five times. When, in 1982, I requested readmission to the PhD program one last time, I explicitly wrote that I wanted to test my unproven hypotheses about how the externally observed changes in behavior resulting from my reform approach were engendering enduring inner changes. In my last two years of my PhD program, I was allowed to do that and not only so but in my last year I was awarded one of two annual grants to PhD students to further their research. When I was told that I was chosen to receive the grant, I broke down and wept profusely in front of faculty and fellow students. Perhaps it was a mixed blessing that my dissertation committee did not fully comprehend the significance of the research I proposed. Nevertheless, they did understand that results like mine that came out of my research were unheard of. Out of about 10,000 tests of statistical significance, over eighty percent were significant. The norm was that research studies generally got quite a few significant results but some to not get any significant results.

I had a research topic that had been considered verboten up to that time. It had to do with ‘intentionality.’ This was very nonconformist for the behaviorist mindset of the day. Nevertheless, philosophers were now proposing that it was legitimate to explore this topic. The groundwork to broach this area of research had begun, but in philosophy, not psychology. I later discovered, however, that psychologists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany were doing somewhat similar research. I now suspected that my natural systems thought processes, which had been leading the way all of those earlier years when I attempted to pursue my PhD and was kicked out, may have been one of the reasons for my repeated expulsion. I also suspected that it was my reputation for being an intellectual maverick that all too often had unnerved my professors.

The results of my dissertation research, entitled “Testing a Model of Intentionality Using the Writing Process”, was to bring me, finally, respect, if not understanding of my theory. For me, however, all of those many years of sitting hour after hour trying to analyze what the external changes in institutions were changing in those inmates, patients, students, poor, and such had finally paid off abundantly. I think that even I was startled. I went on to apply these new additions to my natural systems philosophy to one more institution. That institution was the Harris County Youth Village, a correctional institution for juvenile felons[i]. This time I was able to fine tune changes in the structure of the institution to target very specific inner intentional processes in the youth. This time, the results were astounding beyond what I had anticipated in my wildest imaginings. Checking back after eighteen years, I find the program is going strong.

Increasingly, from 1968 on, I had had to cope with and to try to understand why the myths about society and its criminals and mentally ill were so far off the mark. I even had to rethink myths about what was right and wrong. I felt that I had to try to communicate the revolutionary way that I had been learning about how to raise children and treat their misbehavior. I had to try to explain to people why and how criminals, the mentally ill, the poor, the weak, the racially different, and the sexual non-conformists should be related to and treated. These challenges are still staggering to my mind but I care passionately about them more and more as the end of my life draws near.

It cannot be expected that anyone, no matter how smart and knowledgeable, could just drop the implicit assumptions about the world that they learned while growing up and in graduate and professional schools, assumptions they have had most of their lives. They hold these contemporary beliefs in common with most other modern-day humans. Consensus is such a powerful force shaping opinions. This is especially true when one believes their opinions were self-generated.

An ability to listen to, tolerate, and perhaps even consider and grasp my avant-garde, seemingly eccentric ideas, would be like walking out of a dark and dense forest into a safe clearing with friendly faces greeting you. Everything that was puzzling and frustrating would be bathed in the liberating light of this new insight. However, since I have been trying to understand my own inchoate theories for forty-three years now, I cannot expect anyone else to just suddenly grasp what essentially is a psychological paradigm shift.

A Thousand Shining Kindnesses by Uzodinma Okehi

2011-12-11T12:51:00.009-05:00

The secret of ants and bees, of civilization, is that at any given time no one individually seems to have much of a clue. And like that, there was a certain point after which I began to nakedly observe this idea in motion, for instance, in the countless bookstore jobs that seemed to be the only ones I could stand. Maybe it was different in bookstores, and I suppose there was always a certain part of me that just felt lazy. I’d take my paper cup of coffee and when the mood struck me I’d be gliding around, smirking and talking to people, or just cruising by watching the obvious schemes they’d built up over the years to make it look as if they were always working at a breakneck pace . . . One way to put it would be to say the average work day all over the world was usually spent doing next to nothing. I chose to tell myself that this was no scheme, but in fact the glue that held cities together, like unsaid thoughts talking, brick to brick.

Author bio:

Uzodinma Okehi lives, breathes, writes, and draws comics in New York City. For issues of his zine, Blue Okoye, try him at: okehi@hotmail.com

America by John Pursch

2011-12-11T12:46:00.006-05:00

A phase of civilization known to build
to intonations unbecoming an ossified,
yet somehow intact, bovine rim shot,
complete with public address blarings;

a vaguely multidimensional
quagmire of noxious plumes
and symbiotic misanthropy.

Author bio:

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in Breadcrumb Scabs, Calliope Nerve, Camel Saloon, Clockwise Cat, Counterexample Poetics, Four and Twenty, Puffin Circus, Orion headless, and vox poetica. You can follow his work at John Pursch Twitter.

Breakfast by Viktorsha Uliyanova

2011-12-11T12:34:00.007-05:00

Birthday cake, one more year,
Smiles, swimming pools,
Tired, tired.
Drowning, waves of pressure on the bottom,
Nose bleeds,
News anchor in a freshly pressed suit
Screaming across a baseball field.
Droopy eyelids,
Too much coffee,
Tired, tired, Middle America.
Family dinners,
You, me, Mom, Dad,
Talks of higher education.
Babble, babble,
Shut up already.
Cattle, cattle,
We are sheep.
Me, me,
Turn the talking box on,
Brain-dead.
Turn off brain,
Brain-dead.
Drive in your car,
Plastic, plastic or paper?
Consume, consume.
Pay stubs, taxes,
Our family goes to church on Sundays,
Middle America.
My son is the student of the month,
Wednesday night youth group.
Bread, bread and milk,
Ten of each,
Coupons saved,
Consume, consume,
Sleep.

Author bio:

Viktorsha Uliyanova is an import from the old Soviet Union and is currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry and fiction works focus on hidden politics, city panhandlers, and occasionally getting stuck in the black solar system. In addition to her writing, Uliyanova is an experimental, 35mm film photographer. Links:
Viktorhsa, Modern Mystery.

Still Life with Old Shoe by Neil Ellman

2011-12-10T20:23:00.007-05:00

(after the painting by Joan Miró, 1937)

an old shoe
worn too many times
in long marches
in too many wars
worn through to its soul

worn through
in too many winters

it is food
when men chew
on the leather
of their despair

it is the way out
the only way

it is an ark
coming to peace
on Ararat

it is at rest
at last
on the stillness of
a table-top

Author bio:

Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey. He has published numerous poems in print and online journals throughout the world, as well as in five chapbooks. He frequently bases his poems on works of art, most often on works that are surreal and bizarre.

Two poems by Al Markowitz

2011-12-10T20:19:00.007-05:00

BALK!

Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens

Everybody
and everything eats
chickens
looks at us and sees
dumplings
mashed potatoes or baked beans
as our silent companions
or maybe a ruffle of feathers
and a wild full belly
without personality
or even individual existence
all of us
attempting to scratch
a meager living
from the hard earth --
all of us
just a meal,
an easy mark,
a tool,
a hand,
a temp,
a consumer,
a sale,
the accursed obstacle
in the road,
collateral damage
or the expendable pin
on a map
of bloody conquest.

++++++++++++++++++++

Undeclaration

It was a good idea       once
inalienable rights and the abolition
of tyranny      but
we've mucked it up, this great
American Experiment
our own inbred aristocracy madder
that noon-baked Englishmen with
crimes and usurpations running amok,
torn bodies and new hatreds in every
casbah               tentacles
in every pocket and a
knife at every throat
and we wage slave
descendants of the free
the not so free
sinking in the refuse of yesterday's bargains
punch clocked and jackbooting our way
to the fossil record at the speed of credit
with no payments 'till January --
a toxic spoor of ruined
places, broken lives and gulags.

We had a bad run but it's time
to come clean,
to admit our failure to
examine the bloody Manifest
of our imagined Destiny.

Time to Repent
for mass graves and wars of false premise,
for all those dictators, our murky turkeys lurking
in every hot satrapy with trained goons keeping 
bloody order and a quota of disappeared.

Time to admit
it was all a mistake
made in the bravado of our youth and 
rejoin the Commonwealth
Stop seeing stars and turn in our 
bloody stripes
be British again
take tea and healthcare claim
our place           lordless
in the house of commons where
Empire is only a memory
best forgotten.

Author bio:

Al Markowitz is poet, philosopher, chronically unemployed idler who has done may types of work back when he could get it. He publishes the Blue Collar Review and has a long history of progressive activism which continues to this day.

Three poems by Felino Soriano

2011-12-10T20:05:00.007-05:00

from Divaricated, Spatial Aggregates


1.
 
Anatomies                                                                                           :
—share-shapes (anti Platonism), momentum
walks
 
mimesis
 
echo-profile
                        silhouettes of inundating sound
 
                                                                                    philosophy of movement
                                                distrusts
ego as does woman toward hand of horizontal testosterone swipes—
 
freed or flung
(seam dislodged tongue of tonal togetherness)
 
frayed or flight
(aerial communiqué enlists eyed voices’ moribund, elementary certainty)
 
architectural : portrayals’ inebriated                                                   music—|

 
2.
 
recall the womb the
bomb the curtailed singularity of bodiless
 
before
 
the prior
or pungent faculty of adulation’s realized deliberation: manifest, sparkle
 
heaves of a dragonfly’s verb
 
extends holes upon acknowledged confinement
rolled across unfolding versions of air’s soliloquy of
 
rhythmic alterations|

 
3.
 
Some     thing
 
                                                                        stained
 
                                    an abridged A bridge       —after personal constants truncating existence’s sober notoriety
 
fingerprinted, tainted, torn, fatigued, ransacked, poisoned, proprietary, organized
 
the crime of raze of
 
raising hands toward               oscillating conscience, constant
 
syllables ruining bow of light’s descriptive nonchalance
 
 
 
: an organized font freeing particles
 
                                                                        portending silence as obnoxious noise
gathering as weeds’ misunderstood
 
 
 
                                    beauty|

Author bio:

Felino A. Soriano is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities. Recent poetry collections include Intentions of Aligned Demarcations (Desperanto, 2011), Pathos etched, recalled: (white sky books, 2011), and Divaricated, Spatial Aggregates (limit cycle press, 2011). For information regarding his published works, editorships, and interviews, please visit: Felino Soriano.

Two poems by Alexander Kwonji Rosenberg

2011-12-10T19:56:00.006-05:00

Girl

Alabaster jewel, split open
of bleached enamel, scrubbed countertops
a seed, really
pried from your mother’s corpse
you stuck to her side like sand under a fingernail
growing inside, the precious nacre baby
your body curves: a glass moon
dipped in milk, shining
bright, bright against the waves
you are the prize won.

===================

Your cat is dead

but it could just as easily be
your mother
who is somewhere in you
woven in the cellular system
of your body
you can feel it
the space between atoms
where secrets quicken and congeal
another world unfolds.

You heard yourself speaking
for fear of silence
and felt the echo of her voice, as if she
had spoken in you
as if you weren’t quite you, but were
growing and continuing
as if her expressions
were flowing and emanating from your face.

You wonder
if that’s what happens to older people
when they die contented
that they feel they somehow
transcended the wall of flesh
that their fire and protoplasm
and pulse have leapt
over bounds and will live on
in those dancing, rushing off to new days.

And you remember Alejandra for her name
it was the same as a neighborhood street
or brand of water—something like that
and she once said the word
beverage
which stuck in your mind
as her identifiable language
the ring of sophistication and commercials.

But you also remember, absurdly now
how her little brother drowned
on the cold lakes
while walking on ice
you didn’t know how to react
to her white, drawn face when
you saw her back at school.

You wanted to say nice things
how sorry you were
and then you felt a sudden hardening
a strange anger at her
for her weakness
which intensified yours
so you said nothing and avoided her eyes.

Author bio:

Alexander Kwonji Rosenberg studied English and creative writing at Cornell University. After working and living in Uganda and Tanzania, he finally knows how to make a fire and sit still. He has enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Oxford. His work has appeared in Ink Magazine, The Trellis, and The Prose-Poem Project. A forthcoming collection of essays, The Lives of the Unknown, will be published by Mkuki na Nyota in 2013.

Dead of Night by Craig Shay

2011-12-10T19:52:00.008-05:00

In the dead of night
I am awoken –
to find the American dream
uninhabitable –

I have picked the lock
of an illegal door
and am pulled
into black waters

It is a vast sea
of isolation which
sucks everything in

I wait as eons
carve mortal flesh
into fine marble dust –

Sparrows flutter
deep within my chest –

I turn my neck around
and upward
deliberating the pulsar
behind the face
of a black silence

I am moved now
to listen
as if recalling,
an unschooled wilderness
coaxing particles
of a Bright star
to return –

Author bio:

Craig Shay's poems have appeared in print and online over the past few years. His poetry ebook, Now that the Revolution has begun...will be available this April from The Camel Saloon. More information is available at Craig Shay.

Please Proceed This Way by Joseph DiLella

2011-12-07T17:24:00.008-05:00

the tall, slender brunette ordered me
to bed
in the 13th floor room, one of Hilton's finest,
with five, plush and comfy over-sized down pillows
even a momma duck would be proud to call her own.

"Shoe's off, jacket too, then the pants"
she ordered before motioning me to spread 'em
legs, arms wide open
like a child making snow angels in the winter.
Cuffed like a fish-eyed fool on TV's Cops,
I puckered up for a kiss
but instead
was rocked by a right cross
that knocked me into next Tuesday's dreamland.

When I awoke
with jawbone sore, though spirits high
the domineering girl was gone
and I was blue
freezing
in a tub filled with ice
- minus one kidney.

Moral of this story:
Never take the arm of a stern English looker
at a a new local British pub
for the next meat pie you eat
just may be your own.

Fire Pit by Roberta Lawson

2011-12-07T17:20:00.006-05:00

So you were born — from thick red blood, from mud and tears. Once you were part of everything that had ever existed. Torn from this your birth was by necessity an amputation. Once there was the scent of meat and oh there was fire, red-orange and savage. Rocks sang your name and shrilled in the night-time winds, and you pledged a silent promise that you would not forget their crackling redness, their sparks in the pitch-black. Once there was song and screams and you bellowed I'm ready to be born now! And all about you, women in a circle, round as all eternity. These mothers all your mothers and you will birth them one by one. Your story's written, splattered on the walls, the muddy earth. It's trickling blood, sweat, saliva. Lie here, lie now, on this ground, this circle of wet seeping earth, for this earth is your body. Hands will touch you until you are made flesh. Listen to these, the sounds of joy and anguish and let your heart swell. Let the tears come; let yourself be born in a baptism, a purging, let the whole world be washed clean.

—

Two people came together. Two people met each other in a tangle of physicality and you were conceived. The world linked hands, danced a sacred, muddy dance. The world lit a fire and you jumped into it. The world lit a fire and you danced out of it: a plume of smoke, an idea, a thought-form made flesh. You tasted the air and the air was breath, the air was smoke and blood and love and earth, and yes, here you are now, born of the earth. This for all your relations, for all who have come before you. You don't know this language yet. Wait, listen, for this has no words. This, a language you have always known. Face to the ground. All fours now. And — low. Climb up. Lie. Lie like a snake on wet grass, lie to gain strength. Uncoil slowly and be free. You're all the strength that has ever been; you're all that can ever be. Sweat sweeps over you and you shed skins, lose your face. Circles of years — seven apiece — fall from you on this floor, lives peel back. And you. You are woman, human. You are everything. Time spills from you in drip-drops. You are ready ready ready. Red-black as a womb, born in the heat and the darkness, born too hot to live. Oh yes, you are ready.

Author bio:

Roberta Lawson lives in Brighton on the coast of England. Her writing can be found in places such as 'Sein Und Werden', 'Prick of the Spindle' and 'Gutter Eloquence.'

At the edge of our fingertips by Kelly Lenkevich

2011-12-07T17:05:00.007-05:00

Home.
That place You run away from in Your dreams,
but always with the reassurance that You can wake up,
and land back in the comfort of Your bed.

“I’m not an investment,” You said,
slamming the door as You abandoned
Your youth for the forbidden.
The hinges were old and worn,
and the door bounced back open, creaking
ever so slightly, letting the ghosts escape.

At the edge of the world—
the gutter where the driveway’s edge
meets the street, black
against white—
You paused to jump off.

In school They taught You the earth
is round. Your eyes protested
it’s flat. Black against white
in an ocean of grey sky.

You crossed over
to the dark side.

When monsters began to fall from the sky,
tiny rain droplets melting into the earth
and growing like weeds—You were not afraid.
“You’re not Real,” You said, knowing
things that aren’t Real, can’t hurt You.

But they can. Time ticked against You,
a bomb counting down. Money fell from the sky—
two-hundred fresh-picked leaves every time
You passed Go. Stop.
Red lights warned You,
Stop.
Octagons, and octo
puses, and pussy
cats, and cat
walks, and run.
Run away.

Home.
That moment where the place You’ve always run from,
becomes place You’re running to.
Your fingertips pushed the creaking door open,
but the ghosts had already escaped.
Nothing was real. Home had disappeared, and You knew

at any moment You’d wake up
in a motel bed,
fingers numb beneath Your aching head
with no alarm to wake them up.

Author bio:

Kelly is an English major at the University of Michigan. She received the Caldwell Poetry Prize in 2010. To read more of her semi-inspirational ramblings, please visit her website: I Am Disenchanted.

Pollock by David Mac

2011-12-07T17:01:00.009-05:00

stick in the sky
what’s that stick?
held
flicked
paint splattered
dripped?

and the man
possessed
bent
over
round all 4 sides
the mad canvass

stick flung
colours spread
cross
mean something
say anything

no question
no answer
never was

just technique
spontaneous
technique

art reaching its
final destination

Author bio:

David Mac's work can be found in Ambit, Purple Patch, The Journal, Weyfarers, United Press, Monkey Kettle, Clockwise Cat, Urban District Writer, erbacce, Urban Landscapes, Heroin Love Songs, Neon Highway, KRAX, Moodswing, Antique Children, Danse Macabre, Mud Luscious, Burning Houses, This Zine Will Change Your Life, Poetry Over Coffee, plus many others. He has also been a featured poet on The Poetry Kit’s ‘Caught On The Net’. He has various self-published chapbooks available plus ‘These Dirty Nothings’ and ‘Room is Brutal’ from erbacce-press. He is currently starting up a new UK poetry mag called 'Meat Songs'. Submissions required and can be sent to lutonghoul@hotmail.co.uk.

Zoos and Laundry by Levi Gribbon

2011-12-07T16:56:00.008-05:00

The zoologist whistles in the launderette while his pants thump repeatedly and rhythmically in the rickety dryer. The dryer vibrates with the intensity of a hundred angry vibrators as if it was about to collapse from years of abuse and neglect. Much like a middle-aged housewife’s moist vibrator that lives in the dark and desolate crevices of her panty drawer only to get a short respite in the light and fresh air before being plunged into yet another dark, dank, and desolate crevice.

He hazily recalls how the day before yesterday the bats escaped from their safe shelter and chased a troop of girl scouts through the reptile house. Normally he isn’t inclined to reminisce about trivialities from his dull work life, but the look of panic and terror on that Girl Scout as she ran into and then through the glass display will be immortalized in his mind forever. If he would have known back in prekindergarten that his life would be a perpetual sideshow of bats feasting upon the innocence of girl scouts, he would have just ended it then.

Author bio:

Levi Gribbon’s work has appeared in Blinking Cursor Literary Magazine, Blink Ink, and Hobo Pancakes. He is a creative writing student at Concordia University St. Paul.

Time Travels Through Earth’s Past and Future (Rant) by Edwin L. Young

2011-12-04T16:44:00.007-05:00

I took my walk this morning, as usual, at the exact time that the sun was to arise. As usual, I looked closely at the different kinds of plants and trees, the variety of rocks, the surrounding hills and mountains, the birds flying overhead, the animals along the way, the Ute Indians and the Blacks, Hispanics, Anglos, and other humans walking or driving their motor vehicles, the buildings, the clear blue sky, and, most of all, the sun gradually peeking over a long ridge of mountains in the East.

As usual as I walk, I think about the billions of years of strange and epochal transformations of nature that were involved in producing all of these wonders. I reflect back on the nature of the horse’s intricate pastern situated between shin and hoof; the complex human foot and hand bones; and the birds’ amazing rotating wing bone in the socket between body and wing; and so many such as things as they are related to the first organic life, the subsequent dinosaurs, the famous missing fifty million year-old link with its human hand-like structure discovered only a little over a decade ago in Germany.

I think about those tiny gradual increments of change, those quirky mutations that produced such dazzling phenomena as the lizard with very long tongue and its deadly accuracy used to catch flying insects. Creatures that used echolocation to navigate the air. And, consider those amazing schools of thousands of fish that all turn instantly in the same direction; the locusts that incubate for a decade underground only to emerge, fly about and mate and die in a season. And what the tiny Monarch butterflies that make their annual thousands of miles migration from Canada to deep into Mexico to the same small area with just a specific species of tree. You have surely seen videos of the huge varieties of monkeys that glide effortlessly and so accurately from tiny branches in the tee-tops of tall trees.

The sun is fully above the Eastern ridge of mountains now and I think to myself, ‘Will all of these wondrous, magnificent, enormous complexes of eco-connected and dependent forms of life still be here in the year 2100?

I saw this CIA report on the earth’s twentieth century:

CIA Report on Changing World Conditions During the 20th Century

“Globally, the 20th century was marked by: (a) two devastating world wars; (b) the Great Depression of the 1930s; (c) the end of vast colonial empires; (d) rapid advances in science and technology, from the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (US) to the landing on the moon; (e) the Cold War between the Western alliance and the Warsaw Pact nations; (f) a sharp rise in living standards in North America, Europe, and Japan; (g) increased concerns about the environment, including loss of forests, shortages of energy and water, the decline in biological diversity, and air pollution; (h) the onset of the AIDS epidemic; and (i) the ultimate emergence of the US as the only world superpower. The planet's population continues to explode: from 1 billion in 1820, to 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1988, and 6 billion in 2000. For the 21st century, the continued exponential growth in science and technology raises both hopes (e.g., advances in medicine) and fears (e.g., development of even more lethal weapons of war).”

The CIA left out of this summary such ominous trends as the very certainty of the coming drastic climate change; overfishing; pollution of the earth, sky, and sea; exhaustion of natural resources around the globe; the ever-increasing expansion of humans’ use of legal and illegal substances; the increase in human slavery, even of young children, and of sex trafficking; and, mother of all evils, the monopolization of business and industries that tends toward an ever greater gap between the elite and the rest of us; their ubiquitous tsunami-like use of the media to control thoughts, preferences, and purchasing habits; and even the legalized control of access to peoples’ vital necessities of life.

I am a great fan of science and technology. Unfortunately, science departments and corporations’ research departments are not values-neutral and, over the last century, they have tended to serve the interests of those monopolists mentioned above rather than the good of all people. Technologically based corporations, likewise, are driven by market forces that are deliberately ethics-neutral. The technologically oriented corporations either cater to an unsuspecting populace with the most trivially enticing, wasteful, and to the greatest extent even harmful products or to they produce highly profitable but lethal products serving wealthy governments’ military interests.

The CIA also left out our government’s global operations involving the influencing, even to the point of assassinations of noncompliant leaders and fomenting civil unrest and civil wars, of foreign governments to serve our US non-ethical or explicitly illegal policies of exploitation of labor, illegal weapons sales, and denuding of their natural resources.

Strange that the CIA would avoid such topics as these; he said with tongue prominently in cheek.

Is the CIA merely emblematic of the ‘intelligent and politically powerful’ in all of the seriously flawed ‘civilizations’ around our defenseless globe?

Scaling the Garage-Punk Mountain (Black Lips CD Review) by Alison Ross

2011-12-04T16:40:00.007-05:00

I really thought the BL could never top the exquisite Let it Bloom...and they haven't, actually. But they come damn near close on their latest, Arabia Mountain. The album is practically a perfect meshing of hook-laden retro-pop and garagey grit, and I declare it the best local album I have heard this year. Yes, better than The Coathanger's new one, or Deerhunter's latest, and it really pains me to say that, because recently I have favored both of those bands over the Black Lips. But I am an honest sort, and always aim to give credit where it is due.

Where Let It Bloom was all about the abrasion of punk being channelled through and tempered by the more sprightly sounds of the 60s, Arabia Mountain almost eschews the punk ethos altogether. There is still the rowdy rawness that BL have become renowned for, but it's audibly restrained. And that vibe is apparent on some songs more than others; clearly the BL covet an easy equilibrium between boisterousness and bouyancy.

The sound here is familiar, as ever - it's not like the BL will ever be anything other than a garage band - and yet the production more spirited than previous efforts. This is because BL have employed producer Mark Ronson of Amy Winehouse fame, who excels in summoning nostalgic noises out of musicians who instinctively lean in that direction. Just as Amy Winehouse revived the ghost of 50s and 60s girl groups and wedded those vibes to jazz and R and B, so the BL awaken the angels and demons of motown and 60s rock and roll to craft a semblance that nonethless is very genuinely realized.

The albums intervening Let it Bloom and Arabia Mountain, Good Bad Not Ugly and 200 Million Thousand, boasted considerable charms, to be sure, but neither were as solidly cohesive as these more triumphant ones. Good Bad Not Ugly has one of the strongest BL songs, in my estimation - Cold Hands, with its searing surfy guitar solo - but the album is otherwise asymmetrical, with almost more mediocre than mesmerizing material. Some of the band's stabs at humor on that album, too, are just juvenile and fall humiliatingly flat, as on the Native American cataloguing song and the mock-country tune. And while 200 Million Thousand featured some interesting forays into doomy bluesy dirges and even rap, it otherwise felt mired in its own sludgey sounds.

At any time on Arabia Mountain, you can hear loud whispers of the Beach Boys, or the Yardbirds, or the Byrds, or the Velvet Underground, or the Sonics - or any number of motown musicians. And hell, even earlier rockabilly influences can be discerned.

And yet this is not to say that the songs sound dully derivative. Sure, the BL derive their persona from the past, and they certainly are not radically reinventing the template. And a lot of the time they really do sound like they did actually record their music in the 60s.

But there is something refreshingly real about the BL; it's not slick garage rock like the Strokes, or an off-kliter take on the genre like the White Stripes, or a more packaged version like the Hives. It's a faithful facsimile of rock and roll and rhythm and blues when they were still at their nascent stages, and yet spit-smeared with a bit of punk's grease and grime.

Of course, Let it Bloom excels in this arena whereas Arabia Mountain is merely very successful - but it's heartening that the BL are capable of locating deeper and more dynamic dimensions to their musical moods.

Occupy Wall Street: An Occupation of Love (Rant) by Alison Ross

2011-12-04T16:25:00.013-05:00

Egregious Fact Number One: Our tax dollars were used to bail out Wall Street.

In case you need a reminder: Wall Street banks, et al are private corporations, not public services. In a democracy, taxes are supposed to go toward funding roads, parks, health clinics, schools, social security, etc. etc. etc. - anything that benefits the common good. Despite the lame claims of some vociferous Tea Party morons, the government is not actually "taking" our money - we collectively maintain infrastructure and social services through consensually paying taxes.

If we did not pay taxes, society would collapse. You cannot maintain society through anarchic private entities - that's antithetical. So the fact that our public dollars were used to bail out banks that do not have societal interests as their primary or even secondary or even terciary concern means that our money was stolen from us. The banks use those public dollars to fatten their coffers. Meanwhile, cuts to social services - mental health, education, social security, and on and on and on - pervade. Foreclosures abound...while Wall Streeters acquire three and four homes. It's the very embodiment of plutocratic theft...enrich the elite while bleeding the effete.

Egregious Fact Number Two: The majority of our taxes are used toward malevolent military misadventures, such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both of these countries have been devastated and now are being rebuilt by corporate war profiteers.

So, our country is in "debt" because our taxes are being misused toward private and profiteering ends. This is also known as Corporate Welfare.This is a fictitious debt crisis which can be easily remedied by taking corporate interests out of public politics, re-funneling taxes towards social services, and taxing the fuck out of the rich...in countries like Denmark, for example, there are no multi-millionaires, because they cap salaries through taxes. No one "earns" the kind of wealth we see flaunted with such hedonistic abandon among the affluent.

Random egregious facts: Family income has declined by nearly 7 percent in the last two years, unemployment is between 10-15 percent, and over 46 million Americans live in poverty, the highest rate in 50 years.

Meanwhile, the 1% dwell in their marbleized compounds, piloting their luxury vehicles, and disdaining everyone else in smugly contemptuous fashion.

Occupy Wall Street is a glowing, growing global movement that is stridently anti-corporate in nature and yet propelled by the principles of peace. It is a people-powered movement that is way WAY overdue. It was precipitated by radical college-agers but quickly gained momentum among the mainstream populace - young, middle-aged, and geriatric alike, since so many are so gravely affected by the perverted profit-motives of the corporate titans. The kids who founded the movement sharply saw that the corrosive corporate influence over our ostensibly democratic system is bleeding them of money, of jobs, of hope...theirs is a future mired in misery if they don't act now, and act radically, to demand an overhaul of the system.

Indeed, the OWS movement has already won. It has altered the tenor of economic discourse in favor of the people rather than profits. It has brought the issue of economic justice to the forefront and tattooed it in the minds and hearts of people everywhere - to those both affected by and empathetic to the cause. For the movement has magnetized people from all paths of life - all ethnicities and all income levels. There are even those who are in the upper tiers of income realms who sympathize - because they too, could be affected by corporate corruption, and also because they share the humane ideals of economic equity. Many of them realize that greed is never good and that they could perhaps curtail their own lifestyles so that more could prosper - not egregiously so, but comfortably so.

For we have an inherent right to food, shelter, education...these are our spiritual luxuries, as it were - not entitilements, but things we are born needing because it logically follows that if we have a right to life, then we require these things sustain life.

The OWS encampments all over the country are a mode of protest against corporate dominance - the parks are OUR parks, the streets are OUR streets. They do not belong to private entities to profit from - they belong to US, the vibrant public.

What needs to happen in the movement in order for it to effect real enduring change is for there to be bank sit-ins, and massive boisterous marches to government offices with a list of concrete demands, and all manner of peaceful civil disobedience akin to the civil rights movement...and so on. These are the only things that have ever given rise to revolutionary restructuring of society.

And Bloomberg's backing down when he called for a "clean-up" of Liberty Park, and the fact that so many right-wing authoritarian types are so threatened by the movement as manifest in their vicious slanderings of it, and the police militarization of NYC, and the horrible treatment of the PEACEFUL protestors all over the country, specifically NYC and Oakland (I mean, tear gas, grenades, rubber bullets...really?!) ...all of these things evince that the movement is working, and winning.

Occupy Wall Street has occupied our hearts, and will one day bring about the radical renovation of a crumbling house presided over by sleazy corporate slumlords.

Lucy Dreams of a Coathanger in Parallax, Beirut (CD Mini-Reviews) by Alison Ross

2011-12-04T16:16:00.013-05:00

Parallaxing with Bradford Cox (Parallax, by Atlas Sound)

I make it no secret my huge crush on fellow Atlantan Bradford Cox. I have worshipped at the shrine of his main band, Deerhunter, for five or more years now. Cryptograms, the band's second album, remains in my top five favorite albums ever, and their output since then has failed to disappoint, too. Cox's second band, Atlas Sound, is also a treat, but I admit to being more ambivalent about the Atlas Sound albums than those of Deerhunter. There are always shimmering gems on every Atlas Sound record, but those albums have not been as cohesive as Deerhunter's, to my ears, anyway. But the new one, Parallax, is just blow-you-away fabulous! Atlas Sound has always been the folksier twin of ambient-punks Deerhunter, anyway, and on this album the folksy description is particularly apt. I am still digesting the album, of course, since I just bought it, but I can say that I immediately liked it, which is rare for me concerning Atlas Sound albums - usually they take some time to sink in and work their spell. Parallax features buoyantly danceable tunes, gorgeously languid ballads, zenful meditative pieces...and I think the production is what drives this album home. It showcases Cox's mellifluous, southern-drawl-tinged vocals without drawing overt attention to them, and the instrumentation is just magical. I cannot hyperbolize enough about this album - just go ahead and fucking get it! Bradford Cox is one of the most prolific and intriguing artists playing today, and you'd be shamefully remiss not to take notice.

The Laced-up Larceny of The Coathangers (Larceny and Old Lace, by The Coathangers)

As has been reported previously in CC, The Coathangers are one of my favorite local Atlanta bands, and my estimation of them has only grown with each new release. The first release was their party album - it was meant to be taken at face value, even though it packed a wallop and was packed with solid singable tunes. Too, the electric synergy among the girls and the crass vocal caterwauling seemed to foreshadow great things for the band, if only they would take themselves slightly more seriously. So then came Scramble, which did indeed delve into the more cerebral side of their musical antics - if that was even possible given their wild, wayward, feisty-whimsical nature. But it proved that the band could indeed add depth and dimension to their songs while still infusing them with silly-sassy attitude. The new one, Larceny and Old Lace, almost seems to take this ethos to new heights, however - the acerbic humor, though present, does not seem to be as prevalent, and the songs possess a more growling edge, almost in a metal-punk vein. While on the first release the humor was veering toward the endearingly ludicrous("Nestle in my Boobies," "Don't Touch My Shit"), by the time Scramble rolled around, the humor had hardened a bit (though they had also softened romantically, as on the deliriously lovely, "Sonic You"). On Larceny and Old Lace, it's almost as though The Coathanger's have toughened up TOO much, become jaded before their time. After all, they're only three albums in! What's been especially captivating about this band is the crackling tension between the aggressively giddy fuck-it-all demeanor and the more earnest focus on musical maturation. It's not to say that there is not still an upbeat vibe at times, but there is something more darkly moody in the band's approach these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I hope these gals don't eternally eschew the humor, since that is what grounds them and at the same time gives them a wholly refreshing levity. Musically speaking, the songs are as punk-polished as ever, which is to say they have truly refined their amateur approach, a glorious oxymoron if there ever was one. They seem to draw more from classic rock, blues, and metal on this album...witness blazing opener "Hurricane," with its Motley Crue allusions, as well as "Old Tobacco Road," with its subtle southern rock nods. Naturally, despite any reservations mentioned, The Coathangers are still bangin', and their live show remains a must-see EVENT. I just hope they don't get too mired in their mercuriality, because just as their party tendencies could wear thin, the darkness could actually sink them.

Riffing on The Rip Tide (The Rip Tide, by Beirut)

Beirut has always been known for its woozy, swoony, melifluous gypsy tunes that boast a dash of new wave flair. The songs are so horn-heavy and contain such luscious vintage luster, they are almost like anachronistic anomalies, except they paradoxically feel updated with the times. Vocalist Zach Condon's full-flavored baritone adds such nostalgic reverie to the songs; it's as though he was plucked straight from the streets of Moulin Rouge-era Paris. The new album, The Riptide, is not dramatically different from the last two (in truth I only own the Flying Club Cup, but I have heard a few from the other), really, except that it seems a bit tighter in structure and more vivid production-wise. There is a more polished approach to showcasing the sundry instruments, and the songs do not ramble quite as much, but seem to have more compact purpose. Also, the songs do have a more American-jazzy-pop feeling, rather than being as blatantly Eastern/Western European as before (hear "Santa Fe"). Too, there seems to be more of a bias toward ballads (hear "East Harlem," "Payne's Bay") as well as proud stately statements like "A Candle's Fire." But the rag-tag spirit of the songs is intact, and the only thing that can be a bit off-putting at times is a suffocating sentimentality.

Lucy Dreams and Lucy Sings (Vivian, by Lucy Dreams)

The gist of the music of Lucy Dreams is, in fact, as the name suggests: ethereal. Indeed, if you take the band name to its logical genesis, perhaps it was inspired by the Beatle's song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (its mischievous acronym being LSD, the drug which induces a wild and wayward dream state). The music on their album, Vivian, isn't quite that hallucinatory - you don't necessarily feel like you're tripping in a field of mushrooms while listening - but the songs do invoke a floaty tranquility. Shoegaze psychedelia might be the most apt genre in which to pigeonhole Lucy Dreams, but most artists resist labels, and rightly so, because such restrictive descriptions too readily straightjacket the sound. Either way, Lucy Dreams has carved out a startingly subtle musical mood, songs shrouded in soft cyclones of feedback and shot through with mellow, muted crooning. The songs strive to achieve that coveted balance between abrasiveness and fragility, with metallic guitars domineering the soundscape while vocals (which alternate between male and female), keyboards and synths offer gossamer, even ghostly, embellishment. But the sound is far from amorphous - there is actually scaffolding that ensnares you with its multiple hooks. This is an astoundingly mature sound for such a green band - the youngest is in high school and the oldest members are still in their first years of college - and it foreshadows creative longevity for this Atlanta quintet.

Fuck Work, Part Gazillion (Rant) by Alison Ross

2011-12-04T13:14:00.013-05:00

There are people on this earth who must toil in sweat shops, enduring unfathomable conditions and excruciating exploitation. There are also people on this earth who cannot find employment because of the dastardly dearth of jobs, and so they must live in cardboard boxes under bridges, or inhabit makeshift tent cities, or thrive off of trash heaps (as in Indonesia), and so on.

This situation, of course, transcends mere tragedy, and is akin to Dante's harrowing embellishments of hell. It is not simply unacceptable - it's abominable.

But this tirade is not going to dwell on the unemployed or the starving. Instead, it is going to focus on those of us who are "privileged" enough to actually be working.

And my sarcastic bias toward the word "privileged" in this context is two-fold: Firstly, I do not think it should be considered a privilege to have employment: everyone should have access to work so that they have the financial means to live.

Secondly, as strongly as I do feel about the accessibility of employment and also about equitable workplace conditions - that's the socialist side of me evincing itself. The surrealist side of me feels snarlingly disdainful toward the very concept of work.
As I have discussed in various rants, I feel that "work" as we understand and live the idea, should be abolished. Real work would be woven into our lives so as not to feel so estranged from it, and so as not to encumber us. We are not here on earth to live miserable lives; on the contrary, we are here to have full, happy lives. And a full, happy life cannot be achieved when we devote the bulk of our hours to sweating at labor which either is sucked dry of purpose, mostly profitable for someone else's purse, or both.

Sure, there are jobs laden with purpose - but those jobs, like teaching, caring for people and animals, and so on, would be the kinds of "work" that would be seamless with our lives of leisure and pleasure in our radical world-overhaul, when I take over the universe and re-align it according to the dictates of logic and compassion.

And though there are always going to be the nagging narrow-minded naysayers who proclaim preposterously that such a world is utopian hallucination, that striving toward euphoric purpose is a pointless squandering of our mental and physical innervation - to them I say fuck off, because it's people like you who through your cynical misapprehension of the past, present, and future, are holding the rest of us back.

Talk about wasting energy: your pessimistic prophesies of a deadly dull existence of inhabiting cubicles, making money for the already stinking-affluent while performing mindless, soulless tasks are just further entrenching us in this type of no-life.

We need a Zen-Surrealist approach to living. Life is poetry. I don't care HOW crudely cliche that sounds, but I am sure even the most generic corporate automaton, with his bar-code brain and stupified zombie demeanor, would agree that cubicles and punching clocks are the numbing antithesis of poetry.

So how would a workless world look, and function?

It would LOOK like a lot of fucking FUN, that's what it would look like....a big flipping playground for adults.

And it would FUNCTION just fine. It would function like things used to function before humans got a stick up their ass and decided to create repressive hierarchies. People would garden, and hunt (as much as I detest the idea), and educate their own children...or there would be community schools where all the adults would partake in the education of the children.

People would build their own houses, or perhaps partake in community construction of housing. And during their free time, people would ENJOY life, because they'd have copious time to enjoy it and because their work was part of a communal effort, and not something disengaged from themselves and something to satisfy and benefit some other abstract being who fancies him or herself as divinely deserving of riches while the rest of us grovel in gutters.

Of course, it will take a revolutionary reworking of the world to achieve this, but in the meantime, we can muse on the things we actually enjoy doing. Herewith, 25 unorthodox things one could do in the blissful absence of the oppressive 8 hour work day (please note that I also almost included a list of ORTHODOX ideas (such as raising farm animals, taking signing lessons, etc.), but in my own Zen-Surrealist mode, I figured these would be more entertaining and edifying, and are far likelier to stave off episodes of zombifying apathy):

1. For women: Masturbate with a different finger, every hour, on the hour.

2. For men: Watch your girlfriend or wife masturbate with a different finger, every hour, on the hour.

3. Make an acrostic of the word Masturbate that uses sexy words for each letter, like Mammary and Ass

4. Make confetti of your bills and stage a confetti-throwing party at your power company, gas company, phone company, etc.

5. Form a mixed-gender nude rock band. Women will play the drums with their boobs and men will play guitar with their weenies.

6. Bomb the headquarters of Operation Rescue while chanting, "Death to everyone, not just babies!"

7. Gaze into the Existential Void of your navel; contemplate oblivion

8. Extract lint from your the Existential Void of your navel, and sell it in a yard sale as an Artifact of Oblivion

9. Hold a Buddhist Yard Sale, selling nothing for nothing

10. Hold a Karmic Yard Sale, trading your good karma for others' bad karma (cuz bad karma is more fun and the good karma trade-idea will act as an impetus for clueless customers)

11. Paint murals on bridge walls depicting what life was like for those who were forced to work miserable 8-12-16 hour workdays

12. Hold a Dystopian Yard Sale, ridding your house of all the consumerist junk you bought to offset the misery when you were forced to work all day

13. Take a hammer to your flat screen TV; create a mosaic from the shattered glass and steel

14. Occupy Your Couch and protest the greed of the cushions that suck all your coins from your pockets, and the food crumbs from your dinner plate

15. Travel to all 50 states, but instead of visiting the metropolises and typical tourist cities, pick the most rural town in each, and set up camp there for a week, observing and taking meticulous notes. When you return home, write a travel guide called "Rural Backwaters of US and A"

16. Play Neighborhood Tic Tac Toe, using each person from each household on your block as the Xs and Os

17. Watch every David Lynch, Luis Bunel, and Igmar Bergman film 10 times each, and then make a movie in your mind during your sleep. In the morning, extract the movie from your subconscious, and do daily showings of it at your house, inviting only people who embrace throwaway movies like the Fast and the Furious as their favorite films.

18. Watch all the insufferably bad Steven Spielberg films (such as Artificial Intelligence), taking copious notes on how they can be enhanced, then make your own New! Improved! Spielberg movie to show him how it's done. Be sure to compliment him on his highly competent efforts first, such as Schindler's List and The Color Purple.

19. Blatantly flout the Geneva Conventions and extensively torture all the bad directors, such as that Tree of Life asshole and the motherfucker who does all those idiotic Spielberg-lite simulations (M Night Sham-mammalian or whatever the fuck his name is). Oh, and be SURE to include Mr. Mayberry himself, Ron Howard.

20. Practice your burgeoning pyromaniac skills and build a towering inferno of all the bad novels and books of verse that you and your friends and family own...do a Bad-Book dance around the flames in gleeful celebration, then immolate yourself since you can't write any better than those pathetic scribes.

21. Withdraw all your money from your bank, make confetti of all the paper bills, then make it rain greenbacks and coins from bridges onto freeways

22. For women: Tattoo an elaborate colorful penis onto your vagina, evoking gender sympathy

23. For men: Tattoo an elaborate colorful vagina onto your penis, evoking gender sympathy

24. Induce a sugar-coma by eating two bags of jumbo marshmallows; dream of Smores-ville, where you will be Mayor Hershey Graham.

25. Pioneer the art of knee-cap piercing

--

Street SmARTs (Rant) by Alison Ross

2011-12-04T12:53:00.015-05:00

Question: Would you "scrub" the walls of MOMA or The Louvre? As in, dismantle the paintings from the walls - metaphorically scrubbing them clean of art?

If you answered yes, then please annihilate yourself immediately.

If you answered no, then congratulate yourself on having taste and culture, and please read further.

Cleaning up grafitti has got to be the biggest waste of time and resources, not to mention just plain ol' DUMB. The world is our museum! Splatter the walls of bridges and buildings with sinister scribblings or Dada-esque whimsy!

Most public structures are homogenously hideous. There is no vivacity to them...they reek of colorless sameness.

Sure, I'm aware that tags are pointless and petty, but the majority of street art is awesome, and should proliferate until every monotonous lifeless surface is bursting with colorful cartoonish character!

So what if some street artists are in gangs? These days, the majority are not, anyway, as street art has become an almost sanctioned form of self-expression.

But even those in gangs are doing society a FAVOR: they are evincing themselves creatively, a wonderful outlet for them, and in turn giving us bizarre beauty to behold.

Furthermore, and this is the most salient point to consider, some of these street artists morph into gallery and museum artists. Sure, in some ways this can be considered a sell-out, but I say that a street artist displaying his or her talents in a more societally sanctioned space can only benefit the world of street art, through showing people more radical modes of expression. Closed-minded types may be more likely to "approve" of street graffitti if they see similar works in a gallery. After all, look at the success of Basquiat.

So, yeah. Up with street art, muthafreakaz! Who cares if it's illegal? That's what gives it such seductive intrigue! DUH.

The Good and the Bad-Ass (Movie Review of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) by Alison Ross

2011-12-04T12:26:00.007-05:00

I have never been a fan of Westerns, Spaghetti or otherwise. As a result, I have seen very few, because the few that I have seen have not intrigued me in the least. I find them to be laden with machoismo cliche, gratuitous violence - and finally just plain boring.

But when my local artsy cinema advertised a screening of the legendary The Good The Bad and The Ugly, I was inexplicably inspired to go see it. I figured that if the theatre was so eagerly promoting the film, there must be something substantial to it which would subvert my presumptions about Westerns.

My boyfriend said that the film was kind of known as an "existential Western," which further piqued my interest. He said it was not your average Western, and I could tell from the little I had absorbed about it that it did indeed possess unusual merits that elevated it above the typical cowboys-n-guns fare that so pervades the genre.

And so I was very pleasantly suprised at how much I enjoyed the film, despite the fact that it does contain some machismo cliche and gratuitious violence. The difference here is, the film is a knowing semi-parody of all that. It doesn't take itself so seriously. The film is iconic and ironic, and features a soundtrack that has embedded itself into our collective psyches without us even being consciously aware of it.

The film is set during the Civil War and showcases Clint Eastwood as the mysterious Blondie (The Good), who collaborates with wanted men in order to get reward money. One of his partners, Tuco, represents The Ugly in the title. The Evil, or The Bad in the film is Sentenza, who thinks he knows the location of an abundance of Confederate coins.

These three main characters have fairly contrasting personae - Tuco is comedically high-strung, Sentenza is calmly calculating, and Blondie is cooly laconic. But the contrasts work to create an interesting synergy among them, and of course give the film a solid grounding in characterization. True, there do not seem to be multiple dimensions within each character, but the characterizations nonetheless distinguish the film from other Spaghetti Westerns in that these are stock characters with a twist, which is how the film manages to overturn expectations. Eastwood's persona is more of a caricature than anything, though not a cartoonish one; rather, he mocks the archetypal cowboy character with his smirking stoicism.

The violence is the movie is rather sparse until one particular episode, which rivals the infamous Quentin Tarantino penchant for disconcerting torture scenes. Indeed, this scene likely set a precedent for shocking violence in films. I am not enamored of violence in films UNLESS it serves a concrete purpose...and even then I am not enamored of it, but at least I ascertain its inclusion. So the violence in many Westerns to me is pointlessly titillating, and I am grateful, at least, that director Sergio Leone did not infect his movie with persistent violence. And I do understand that violence is an inextricable aspect of Westerns, which is why I repudiate most of that genre.

The film's lingering meditative scenes, ironic characterizations and nuanced humor, plus its inventive stylization and haunting film score, all work symbiotically to create a mystique-filled movie that nonetheless has plentiful dimensions of verisimiltude.

The only reservation I have about the film is that it does become a bit mired in the Civil War/Confederate coin quest...these scenes could have been edited for more taut construction, as they tend to drag out tediously at times.

Overall, however, I would deem this the hippest of all Westerns, even if I have not seen that much of the genre. But its highly reputable stature is well-deserved...it's one bad-ass film whose only real vice is some ugly violence. Otherwise, it's all good.

Catatonically Speaking: Occupy Clockwise Cat!

2011-12-04T12:04:00.010-05:00

Breaking News: Clockwise Cat is going on hiatus.

What began about four and half years ago as a monthly webzine featuring a few scattered scribes, has evolved into something altogether more substantial, if less frequently appearing: an online seasonal periodical packed with content and showcasing some of the cleverest, coolest writers on the web.

Initially CCat had accepted fiction and art submissions as part of its purview, but as time wore on, it was less and less feasible for me, editor and publisher, to read so many fiction pieces. I felt that I was doing the fiction-writers a disservice, so I discontinued acceptance of those submissions. I also stopped actively soliciting art pieces, but still welcomed the random art submission and just incorporated any accepted pieces into the webzine as embellishments of the poems.

So the more focused CCat concentrated on poesie, polemics and appraisals - which basically echoed my own affinity for writing those pieces. I don't really dabble in fiction-scripting as I once did long ago, but I do love writing verse and invectives as well as reviews about books, film and music. And, as such, I love reading pieces that pervade such genres.

And of course, the overriding purpose of CCat during its short tenure has been to propagate progressive views and ideas. The rants, naturally, have emphasized political progressivism, while the reviews have emphasized art forms that have poilitically progressive content or that are inventive in some way. As for the verse, I have not so much solicited pieces that are overtly political, but that rather are innovative in form, content, or both. This is what is meant by progressivism: forward-thinking creativity that obstinately defies the status quo and engenders new concepts and modes of thinking.

Editing and publishing CCat been a wild ride, one that I do wish to perpetuate in the near future. I have reveled in the mostly top-notch submissions I have received, and indeed have learned and grown in ways that I never thought possible. Another reason I have wanted to manage a webzine was that I aimed to sublimate my own envy toward "savvier scribes." If I published them, the reasoning went, then I would be less likely to covet their talents. Instead I could admire them and learn from them.

And it's worked. Instead of morphing into verdant shades every time I peruse a stunningly well-crafted poem that subverts traditional forms, I now euphorically revere the piece to the point that I want to scrawl it on the walls all over town. But I reluctantly suppress my inner graffitti artist and plaster the poem onto the virtual surfaces of Clockwise Cat instead.

So yeah: publishing pieces that I wish I had the talent to write has really helped me quash the green demon. It's been an exercise in artistic catharsis. I have cleansed myself of envy and now can bask in others' gifts sans rancor.

But more than anything, I have simply enjoyed interacting with the amazing writers who populate these pages, and giving them a publishing venue. I have adored, especially, searching for images that aesthetically accompany a piece. Things I do not enjoy so much encompass the realm of HTML. Let's just say I am not exactly tech-savvy. It takes a lot of time to put an issue together (which is why we went seasonal), and tech issues have a lot to do with that.

So I am a bit burnt out. Plus, I want to focus on my own writing. I would like to publish more poetry, and I need time to concentrate on getting my rants out there as well.

But anyway. We are going on a hiatus of about eight months. Rest assured, however, that we will be back in the fall of 2012, most likely with renewed purpose and invigoration!

In the meantime, occupy your creative spirit!

Occupy the Police States of America! (Rant) by Alison Ross

2011-12-04T11:33:00.016-05:00

Imagine you and your friends are hanging out in the park, enjoying a nice early day picnic. A cop tells you to leave. You refuse - it's a public space, and you are allowed to be there. Okay, sure, the park doesn't open until 8am and you are there at 7am. You and your friends wanted to watch the sunrise while enjoying a nice meal of bagels and donuts, and this was the best location in which to enjoy your breakfast and sunrise party.

So anyway, the cop demands that you leave. You and your friends are adamant that you are going to stay there. So what if it's before it opens? Who are you harming, anyway, with your innocent presence in a public park?

So then the cop threatens you. If you refuse, he will have to use force against you. Huh?

So you and your friends become more adamant about staying. It's not as if you've caused actual physical harm to anyone, or stolen anything - you've simply indulged in a bit of a picnic before-hours in a public space.

A policeman pepper-sprays peacefully resisting students at a University of California, Davis occupation

The cop starts yanking you and your friends up by the hair. Your bodies go limp in peaceful resistance. He then throws you on the ground and pepper sprays you in your faces. He yanks up your picnic blanket and flings it and all the food into the trash. He then yanks you up again and shoves you toward the police van with his baton, all the while you and your friends shrieking that your eyes burn, and pleading that you have done nothing to deserve this violent treatment. The cop grabs your arms so hard your bones almost break, and he snaps the handcuffs tightly around your wrists. He does the same with your friends, as he and his cop buddies cacke in unison. The policemen then kick you into the van and drive you off to the precinct so they can book you with unlawful trespassing in a park before hours. Your eyes have still not been treated for the pepper spray burns, and your limbs are bruised and aching from brutal treatment.

Of course, such a scenario is impossible to imagine given the innocence of the picnickers, right? And it's true that it most likely would NOT happen. Most probably a cop would just demand the picnickers leave the premises, and if they refused, he might threaten them with arrest. If they still refused to leave, he might even handcuff them and book them, but he almost certainly wouldn't use disproportionate force.

A young man was brutally tackled to the ground at Occupy Wall Street, NYC, for merely kicking a barrier. He fell to the pavement and cracked his head, and the police refused to allow immediate medical treatment.

So why are the cops using such violent force with the OWSers who are excercising their right to peaceful assembly? Just because they are "transgressing" park rules and staying after hours, or "blocking" sidewalks or refusing to move when the cops are trying to break up encampments? Again, they are peaceful protesters. They are committed to the principle of non-violence. So why the brutal force?

Two words:Anti-authoritarian activism.

Police pepper-spray an 85-year-old activist at Occupy Seattle

If you're just enjoying a pizza in the park after 11pm, the cops are not going to pepper spray you. But if you are vociferously protesting our corporate police state after 11pm in a public park, you'd better be damn sure they will treat you callously. Never mind that their behavior is illegal - they've been told to violently crack down on activists. After all, cops are the pawns of the 1%, even if they themselves are the 99%. They are basically eschewing their duties to protect the people and instead protecting the elite against the masses of which they are a part. And doing so while being paid pennies.

Iraq veteran Scott Olsen was put into a coma after he was hit with a flash-bang grenade at Occupy Oakland

This is the crux of the violent crackdowns on the Occupy Movement. When Tea Partiers protested in DC while OPENLY PACKING HEAT, no cop pepper sprayed them. Why? Because even though Tea Partiers protest the government, they are in fact allied with the government. The Tea Partiers THINK that our massive debt evolved from social spending, when in fact it germinated in Wall Street bailouts and egregious military spending. But as long as the TP are duped into that line of thinking, then the government will allow them their platform so that it can slash more social spending in favor of corporate bailouts and the like. The TP are allied with the government which is ruled by corporate interests. So it will not crack down violently on the TP "protesters" even if the TP protesters have overtures of violence (like packing heat).

Young women are "kettled" and pepper-sprayed at Occupy Wall Street, NYC

But the state WILL crack down on peaceful protesters who are anti-corporation, because the government, as we have determined, is owned by corporations.

Of course, the protesters do have a constitutional right to peacefully assemble in defiance of the government. But even if they do "transgress" minor laws in a peaceful manner, their actions do not merit pepper spray and baton beatings. In fact, the codes for police departments like Oakland explicitly say that such force is not warranted against even protesters who become violent - and yet Oakland used flash grenades and rubber bullets that put one activist in a coma and caused another to have a ruptured spleen, and induced countless other injuries, as have many police actions all over the country - in Seattle, in a few California universities, in NYC, and so on.

The point is, this force is not only disproportionate, it's ILLEGAL. And is the complete antithesis of the OWS movement, which adheres to non-violent principles.

So you get the picture: the police are not going to pepper spray you if you are indulging in some Krispy Kreme delicacies in a park before it opens, but they will use disproportionate force if you nonviolently defy the corporate state - even if you are occupying a park during park hours.

So yeah. Welcome to the Police States of America!

At the Intersections of Surrealism, Science and Spirituality (Book Review of Will Alexander's Compression and Purity) by Alison Ross

2011-12-04T11:28:00.006-05:00

I am often annoyed by how the media pigeonholes "minority" scribes as only being capable of writing poetry or fiction that thematically centers on "minority" topics. Sure, oppression of women and blacks, hispanics, native americans, asians, etc abounds...no one is arguing the contrary here. And poetry and fiction that assert the rights of the oppressed and attempts to subvert stereotypical notions of these groups is needed for edification and reinforcement. But I do think that dwelling inordinately on these topics can actually do harm to anti-oppression movements, and further entrench these issues in the realm of the insoluable. Satire is one way, I think, to relax conversations about oppression, and point out the problems, say, of stifling political correctness.

And another way of helping to overcome oppression without dwelling on it is to simply be a "minority" writer who does not focus on "minority" topics as his or her main mode of expression. A writer who does this, whether conciously or unconsciously, is showing the world that women do not always need to focus on gender inequality or blacks do not always need to focus on bigotry toward blacks, but rather on topics that anyone would focus on, regardless of "oppression status." This mainstreams "minority" scribes rather than ghettoizes them. People can focus on the content of the writing rather than the gender or ethnicity of the writer...those become afterthoughts, as well they should. If we are ever have a truly blended society sans obsession with racial and gender differences, we need to let go of the oppression narrative to a certain degree.

Poet Will Alexander is one of these "minority" poets whose subject matter is not preoccupied with his "minority" status, at least in the volume of poetry that I read, "Compression and Purity." The poems, which are psychedelically surrealistic in their language treatment, instead focus on themes such as physics, astronomy, music, philosophy, culture, painting, ecology, history, and so on. The language is layered and abstract at times, and often littered with obscure words. There is a palpable jazz influence in his poetry, but this could be said of many authors of many races. After all, jazz is poetry in musical incarnation.

The one frustration with Alexander's poetry is that owing to the abstract arcane nature of much of the language, it's difficult to emotionally relate to it. It doesn't move you in the traditional sense...rather, it speaks to you cerebrally. And that's fine, but sometimes a reader wants poetry to work on the dual levels of impacting the intellect and stimulating an emotional response. It's hard to emotionally dive into Alexander's work, because it can almost read like a textbook, except that the juxtapositions are just jolting enough to remind us that it's not academic, but rather creative writing.

Take, for example, the title poem:

Compression & Purity

In this fire of fluidic jeopardy
diamonds uncoil
& reconstruct & re-condense
like adjudicated burins
or telepathic moon forms

like psychic drafts & diacritics
being pressure by conundrum & purity
compressed below the level of the gaunt reflecting metals

diamonds
crushed & glinting pions
incessant suns in the pedalfer vapors
where the sun quakes by quanta
by powerful interior fractual

like singular diamond
like a juggler or a hawk
in condensed mercator warrens
where signs ignite in the phosphenes
like the shape of a comet as Sedna
or holographic combustion
compressed
burning
the dialectic of the ice house

the ground as habitual day star
as aerolith
as perfect star in the fathoms
known as pyroxenes
as repetitious pyroclastics
as lowered concentrations of void
being basalt by subductive infinity

diamond as subduction
as errata of mist under vapor
& these diamonds in my mind
not of the human blood soil
of protracted avidity
but of blank alchemical stresses
being wealth as random mountain ore
being poetic spurs
being strange supraphysical hallucinatory hives

which come down & retreat in the ethers
like double blinded mountains
or a halting circuitous heat from the Permian or
Mississippian

not an avalanche of morals
or a decided human predicate
but the predicate as primordial
as helium
as olivine
as “hydrated minerals”
as feral ozone dosage

compression then
precocious
with neon reversals & flaring
with dense & angular heightening
being a fabulous schist
being monoxide & hearing

These labyrinthian lines can be tricky to navigate upon first reading, and even subsequent readings can render one a bit vertiginous. The opaque language, too, can repel a reader; it's certainly not poetry for the masses. But Alexander at least pairs mundane language with opaque as often as he sees fit, so that a patient reader is not eternally bemused and is impelled to dig out meaning. Granted, that meaning may be ambiguous, but one gets the sense that Alexander does not readily deal in ambiguity, since he does choose precise, scientific words. But of course, these scientific words are used in a surrealist context, and in surrealism, nothing is precise, so there is a bit of an oxymoron at play here. So perhaps Alexander embraces ambiguity after all.

One thing is for certain, though: the significance of the poetry in this collection is inherent in the wildly innovative sounds and images that his poems engender. In other words, while the poems may imply meaning beyond themselves, the meaning innate in the word structures Alexander has constructed is what truly matters here. The verse can be confounding, yes, and even emotionally estranging, but that is partially, or perhaps wholly, the point. Startling word-pairings such as "feral" and "ozone" and bizarre, mind-bending phrasings such as "halting circuitous heat" or "the dialectic of the ice house" suggest an unshackled mind at work, forging a linguistic freedom that titillates our cosmic sense of things. The pairings and phrasings have a stream-of-consciousness logic to them, even if decontextualized they seem alien and alienating.

Ultimately, despite its scientific pretentions, Alexander's work is deeply spiritual. He uses the medium of science to convey a surrealistic spirituality.

ISSUE TWINEE TEW

2011-08-11T16:00:00.050-05:00

EDITOR'S SCRATCHING POST
Catatonically Speaking: Michele Bachmann for President?

APPRAISALS
Joseph Gant's "Zero Division" (Book Review) by David McLean
Linda Benninghoff's Snowy Winter (Book Review) by J.S. Watts
Aquatic Cinematic ("Even the Rain" Movie Review) by Alison Ross
The Thing Itself (Book Review of Michael McAloran's "Abattoir Whispers") by Gillian Prew
Hardcore Raving and Balking (Mogwai, Raveonettes and Balkans CD Mini-Reviews) by Alison Ross
Pilgrimage in Time (Book Review of Slaughterhouse Five) by Joseph DiLella
Charity and Fantasy ("Dreamlife of a Philanthropist" Book Review) by Alison Ross

POLEMIX/SATIRE
The Fallacy of Balance (Rant) by Alison Ross
An Insensible Census Part I: The Letters (Polemic) by Giles Watson
An Insensible Census Part II: The Artwork (Polemic) by Giles Watson
One Nation, Under Fraud (Rant) by Alison Ross
Jihad (Satire) by Kip Hinson
The Wet Dream of Conservative Nightmares (Satire) by Gil A. Waters
A Memorial Day ‘Commemoration’ 2011 (Polemic) by Edwin L. Young, PhD
A Plea for Homosexuality (Satire) by Kyle Giroux
Rabbit Security (Satire) by Eric Suhem
The End of Racism (Satire) by Matt Kolbet
Examining the Regulation of Consumer Choices (Polemic) by Edwin L. Young
Desperados (Satire) by John Ward

POESIE
Coffee Shop Renegades by Randy Lowens
Realization Stains by Sandra Ketcham
Economic Development Plan by Ken Poyner
Ode to an American Herd by John Pursch
Vacuum Sinister by DeWitt Brinson
Two poems by Michael Mc Aloran
Inside Us All by Joseph DiLella
Two poems by Ken Poyner
Durch by Alan Zhukovski
Two poems by Lola Nation
Recipe by Jay Passer
The Scheme of Currency by James Dye
Alone in the House by Liam Wilkison
Two Poems by Robert Scotellaro
Hangman by Willie Smith
breathe easy by Carl Kavadlo
Epitaph by John Grey
Two Poems by MercyRain
Her Room by David Mac
Two poems by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
An Apple and a Handful of Mushrooms by Rich Ives
Nocturne in Crimson by J. Rose
Theory by Michael Fisher
Mouths to Feed by Ross Leese
Three poems by Joseph Farley
Filthy Tomcat by Alan Britt
Three poems by Felino Soriano

Joseph Gant's Zero Division (Book Review) by David McLean

2011-08-11T15:46:00.012-05:00

Zero Division by Joseph M. Gant
Reviewed by David McLean

Zero Division is full of poems about

when loss of satisfaction
left us destitute and wild

(from Regeneration).

With imagery sometimes reminiscent of Dylan, Gant describes the fundamental emptiness that is modern life with its mental disorders, both in in the psychiatric sense and general senses of the word “disorder”. A world where drugs both legal and recreational replace a sense of meaning and purpose. Meaning is something which sentences have, not lives, and words themselves are usually full of shit:

words spread like so much fucked and eaten disease

(from Hallmark)

Gant as a writer is engaged in the process of trying to locate a personal meaning by just celebrating the emptiness or deconstructing the pointlessness of so doing.

The poems include a wide emotional range from passion, humor, lust, to a cold desolation, postcards from after the apocalypse.

night falls without notice. day and dark
alike withheld. my eyes no longer
strain, so conditioned to my present state.
I turn the glass to count the hours, watch
the moments pile, one upon the other;
grains of empty time betray my passing and
I long to touch them, feel the slip,
know that I am really Here.

resigned, I pull the blanket of phantasmal
weave to sleep as I once did before to dream,
but consciousness alone there is. these
cells will never let it go. I walk these halls
in memory’s chains, chains of time unbroken.

(from Stripped of Title)

The book also points to the huge gaps in the picture sold to people by the ideology of love and intimate bliss. Intimacy is shown as confusing and the other basically defined as an enemy with whom one makes a temporary alliance in order to assuage a temporary irritation in the itching flesh.

what is this thing
I have just made love to?

where is the love that
I have just made?

how can it be
I have come without knowing

when I took leave of the joy that
I kept?
(from Stranger Each Time)

Zero Division also contains a strand of anger and contempt in many of the poems that is invigorating and enjoyable to read:

I’d lay a forest
for your lone pine box.
trees are far less
odious than your sight,
less offensive to my sensibilities;

for I am a sensitive man
on days less like these.

but I’d sacrifice them all
to rid the planet’s roster
of one more asshole. for
unlike trees you’re non-specific,
far too common.
(from Clear Cut)

The book is really a worthwhile purchase, containing as it does 162 pages, which is rather long for a poetry collection nowadays. Get it here:

Amazon

Author bio:

David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. Up to date details of well over 1100 poems in various publications, both print and online, over the last three years or so are at his blog at Mourning Abortion. There you will also find details of several currently available books and chapbooks - including three print full lengths, four print chapbooks, and a free electronic chapbook. A new chapbook is out now from Heavy Hands Ink. It costs ten dollars as paper but is also available as a free .pdf download.

An Insensible Census Part II: The Artwork (Polemic) by Giles W. Watson

2011-08-11T15:22:00.013-05:00

YouTube link:

Giles Watson

Author bio:

Giles is a secondary school teacher in an English comprehensive school, and divides his spare time between poetry, photography, painting, and film. He also writes prose essays on natural history and mediaeval visual culture, is an avid walker and amateur naturalist, and has a keen interest in theatre. He has taught English, History, Drama, Sociology and Film. His current projects include paraphrasing the works of the mediaeval Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, and whilst he would prefer to be out walking with his dog, he is occasionally distracted by political problems. His photography can be viewed at his Flickr stream.

An Insensible Census Part I: The Letters (Polemic) by Giles W. Watson

2011-08-07T14:05:00.017-05:00

Few people are aware that the British government paid the armaments manufacturers, surveillance experts and Guantanamo Bay interrogators Lockheed Martin large sums of money to administer the 2011 Census. The fact was reported in a few of our national newspapers, albeit not on the front page, and it put me - and thousands of others like me - in an impossible position. The Office of National Statistics threatens those who do not comply with a criminal record and a £1000 fine, and sends enforcement officers to knock on doors of people who withhold their census forms. These visits become increasingly intimidating, and boycotters have complained that family members have been harrassed.

As a school teacher, I felt in a particularly vulnerable position. I was unwilling to get myself a criminal record, but equally unwilling to cooperate with Lockheed Martin in any way. My correspondence with an ONS legal advisor is included with this preface. His final email is of particular interest, since he admits that he has “some sympathy” with my position, and also that he has no idea what weight was given to moral considerations in making the decision to award the work to Lockheed Martin. The email is, however, firm in its reiteration that I would be fined and given a criminal record if I refused to comply.

I finally arrived at a compromise solution. Since I have no particular problem with the idea of a census in itself, I filled in my form. I then covered every available space with post-it notes, and decorated them with pen and chalk-pastel drawings in protest against Lockheed Martin’s involvement. I also wrote the words “stop selling arms” in the boxes reserved for recording one’s religion. The idea was to turn the census into something approaching a work of art – one which would have to be destroyed by the administrative staff collating the census.

Since sending in my form, I have heard nothing from the Office of National Statistics. Other people, who refused to send in their forms at all, have been subjected to repeated visits from enforcement officers, many of whom object to being filmed. Video evidence shows that most of the enforcement officers are either ignorant or ill-informed about the involvement of Lockheed Martin. In some cases, enforcement officers have lied, telling householders that Lockheed Martin is not involved at all.

The arrival of my own census form coincided with a visit by our current prime-minister, David Cameron, to a Middle East arms fair. This was more than ironic: it is symptomatic of the determination of our current Conservative government – and of the “Labour” government that preceded it, to militarise our society, and to implicate ordinary citizens in the selling of armaments. In this context, conscience demanded vociferous protest, and it can only be said that the prognosis for the future is ominous indeed.

++++++++++++++++++++

Editor's Note: What follows are the letter exchanges between Giles and ONS.

First letter - 13 March 2011:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I cannot in good conscience participate in the Census as required by law, as I understand that £150,000,000 is to be paid to the armaments manufacturer Lockheed Martin for its administration. I am unwilling to make even the most tacit contribution to the remuneration of an organisation which I regard as having colluded in the murder of innocent civilians through the manufacture of cluster bombs and other weapons designed to kill.

I am also of the conviction that a government census should be conducted by government employees, and not licensed out to private enterprise, thereby throwing its impartiality and integrity into question. As a school teacher and a law-abiding citizen, I have much to lose through this disobedience, and I have no desire whatsoever to incur a fine or a criminal record. However, in a political climate in which prominent cabinet ministers have no qualms about hawking armaments in the Middle East, even in the context of mass repression of democratic protest in Egypt and Libya, I have no option but to boycott the census in conscientious objection to the current national tendency to do obeisance to the forces of militarism. That such perverted standards should even govern the administration of a national statistical survey is an occasion for the gravest concern.

Given that the ONS threaten me with the stigma of criminality for taking the only option that is morally open to me, I reserve the right to publish this letter, and any responses to it, in whatever way I see fit.

Yours truly,

Dr. Giles Watson

===============

Their standard-letter response can be seen here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29320962@N07/5580049313/in/set-72157626292533339

===============

I replied as follows, around 2nd April:

Dear Mr. McKeown,

Thank you for your letter dated 13 March 2011. I wish I could say that I am “reassured” by the information you have provided, but unfortunately, I still find that I am placed in an impossible position: by sending in my census form, I accept that it is right that the citizens of this country should support an armaments manufacturer; by refusing to send it in, I risk acquiring a criminal record. I am amazed that those who made the decision to employ Lockheed Martin for this purpose could not predict that it would throw a lot of responsible citizens into an insoluble moral dilemma.

There can be no possible excuses for accepting Lockheed Martin's involvement in administering the census. This company makes a range of lethal weapons, including cluster bombs, which by their very nature are designed with a foreknowledge that their use must cause civilian casualties. Lockheed Martin sell these monstrous inventions to a range of regimes, some of which have dubious democratic credentials, at best. It is a particularly unfortunate coincidence that my copy of the census form arrived in the same week that it was reported that our new prime-minister was off hawking weapons at an armaments fair in the Middle East, suggesting that the employment of Lockheed Martin was not merely a mistake of the previous administration, but evidence that the canker of military laissez-faire has eaten deeply into our society.

Unfortunately, your reply is wholly unsatisfactory. It reassures me that Lockheed Martin will not have access to my personal data. It is not in fact my personal data which concerns me: it is my personal honour and moral dignity. I will not sit down and complacently fill in a form when my elected "representatives" have paid £150 000 000 to a company to administer it, given that I consider this company to be guilty of mass-murder. I am told that "any organisation with the correct technical capability, financial stability and experience has the opportunity to compete openly for Government business throughout the European Union without discrimination." Lockheed Martin has practised its technical capability by managing the logistics of distributing missiles around the world. It has financial stability because it makes money by dealing death. It has experience because people like me do not shout out our disgust and indignation loudly enough to bring it down. It is reassurring to know that even international pariahs are not subject to discrimination, but if the government had not abdicated its responsibility to employ people to administer the census, there would have been no need to offer a contract to the private sector in the first place. I am told also that "Lockheed Martin's UK bid offered the best technical solutions and the best value for money for the taxpayer". I want to know how the ONS thinks it can possibly be considered value for money that an organisation of rapacious gun-runners are given £150 million to do a job which ought to be done by government employees.

Your letter makes it clear that "the information that the census provides helps central and local government to understand the needs of local communities, and plan and prioritise billions of pounds of resources and public spending on housing, education, health and transport services for years to come." If that is the case, why has it prostituted itself to one of the filthiest international organisations on the planet? Surely it is a clear indication of how little our politicians care about local needs that they are prepared to provoke a boycott of what may yet prove to be unprecedented proportions by making it morally nauseating for a large portion of the populace to participate in the census? The only reason that it may have got away with this travesty is because most people who have filled in their census forms are blissfully unaware that in doing so, they are tacitly promoting death and destruction in the name of profit, because so little media attention was given to the appointment of Lockheed Martin to this role.

Finally, I am boldly informed that "Those few who do refuse [to send in the form] may be prosecuted and could be fined up to £1000." As a school teacher, I have much to lose from this arrangement, but so do children around the world who may be maimed or orphaned by cluster bombs. So do some of my students, who join the armed forces out of idealism and run the risk of being put on the front line by a trigger-happy government which has no qualms about operating a seemingly interminable Middle Eastern war, ostensibly because it quells terrorism and despotism, but in reality because it makes money for organisations like Lockheed Martin.

You therefore appear to be offering me a stark and simple choice: I must either follow the law of conscience, or the law of the land. When a nation forces its citizens to make such a choice, it teeters on the brink of totalitarianism, and it is the moral – and indeed patriotic - duty of its citizens to resist. I have absolutely no wish to break the laws of this land, but as far as I am concerned, to obey them in this matter would be to betray all of the principles I have ever held dear as a British citizen.

Since your organisation has placed me in the ethical stalemate I have described above, perhaps you can advise me as to my best course of action if I am to avoid a fine and prosecution, whilst obeying the moral law?

Yours truly,

Dr. Giles Watson.

===============

There was no reply from the ONS, so I sent this email:

Dear Mr. McKeown,

I have not yet received a reply to my previous letter to you, in which I made it clear that the commissioning of the armaments manufacturer Lockheed Martin for the partial administration of the census has placed me in an impossible situation, and yet I have started to receive notices, posted through my letter box at inconvenient times, the most recent of which has threatened me with a £1000 fine. My unanswered letter concluded with the following question: “perhaps you can advise me as to my best course of action if I am to avoid a fine and prosecution, whilst obeying the moral law?” As far as I am concerned, the moral law precludes any cooperation with a private company which makes most of its money out of death and destruction. It seems to me that there must be thousands of decent citizens who would agree with me, and I therefore find it very difficult to believe that I am “one of the few” who still has not returned the questionnaire.

I am hereby making it clear to you that I am very willing to fill in my census questionnaire, as soon as this moral impediment is removed. When Lockheed Martin are deprived of their contract, and have eschewed the £150 million of taxpayers’ money which has been promised to them without taxpayers’ consent - or alternatively, when this company decides to stop selling cluster bombs and other weapons designed to kill and maim - I will very happily submit my census form.

Indeed, I am taking this opportunity to register my indignation at the fact that the appointment of Lockheed Martin has made it impossible for me to have my statistics recorded, since it is surely axiomatic that one’s moral obligations must override all others – including those of the State.

Yours truly,

Giles Watson

===============

Mr. McKeown's response:

Dear Dr. Watson,

As I am sure that you will appreciate it is now far too late to change the contract for those support services that Lockheed Martin UK (LMUK) are managing for the 2011 Census, and of course ONS has no way of influencing
the non-census related business practices of LMUK. Therefore it is impossible to meet the conditions that you state are necessary for you to complete the census questionnaire.

There is no way for people to avoid their statutory duties under census legislation, on moral or ethical grounds. The law is very straight forward, every person has to be included on a census questionnaire and it is a criminal offence to refuse or neglect to comply with this duty.

Therefore, whilst you state that you are not refusing to complete the questionnaire, assuming that your conditions are met, you would be committing an offence by not returning a completed questionnaire regardless.

You may be aware that the census operation has now moved on and that those households yet to return a completed questionnaire are now receiving visits from census non-compliance teams, these may well be the staff who have left you notices. These staff are tasked with encouraging and helping households to complete a questionnaire and if all attempts fail they will explain about the possibility of prosecution and then gather evidence under caution, in line with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

Regards,

Matt

===============

I replied:

Dear Mr. McKeown,

Your response is an occasion for the profoundest concern. You state:

"There is no way for people to avoid their statutory duties under census legislation, on moral or ethical grounds. The law is very straight forward [sic.], every person has to be included on a census questionnaire and it is a criminal offence to refuse or neglect to comply with this duty."

By employing Lockheed Martin in the administration of the census, the ONS and the government are discriminating against anyone who holds pacifist views. This includes members of the Society of Friends, as well as a wide range of other individuals who do nothing but promote the ethic of peace. They are also discriminating against anyone who believes in the notion of a just war, but does not approve of cluster bombs or Trident missiles.

By making it a criminal offence for us to refuse to sully our hands by lending tacit endorsement to these promoters of organised international murder, the state has made a totalitarian decision. This is an outright denial of freedom of conscience.

You place me in an utterly impossible and deeply upsetting situation, and your argument may be legal, but is entirely unethical and worthy of the most vehement condemnation. I now have to decide whether to compromise everything I hold dear, or face a criminal record, despite the fact that I have done nothing but labour in this country's interests all my life. You may be a legal expert, but if you cannot see that this situation is utterly despicable and morally reprehensible, I pity you. Some laws are more important than the law of the land.

I may yet decide to be bullied into participating in your bloodsoaked census, but you should know that never before have I been commanded by a government to participate in something so sick and immoral. I hope you will forgive the strong language of this reply, but I think it is important that you should be given at least some inkling of how this makes me feel.

Yours sincerely,

Giles Watson

===============

He responded:

Dear Dr. Giles [sic],

I understand your position completely and have a degree of sympathy with your views, my email was certainly not meant to offend, if the tone sounded brusque or threatening then I apologise. My response was only intended to
alert you to the potential dangers of following the course that you appeared to be considering, namely that you would refuse to complete the census on moral grounds, as there is no provision to do this under the law.

Therefore, it would be up to you to argue your case in court, during a prosecution, in order to persuade a bench of Magistrates that moral and ethical issues should provide the holders of such beliefs with an exemption from completing the census. Personally I think that this is unlikely to sway the court as it could set a dangerous precedent for people to unscrupulously seek exemption from all sorts of statutory duties on moral grounds. Whilst there is legislation that seeks to counter discrimination on matters of belief, I am not sure that this would stretch to cover non-participation in the census due to ethical matters regarding a contracted supplier. Therefore, if you do go to court relying on morality as a defence, no matter how convincing your argument may be on an ethical basis, I believe that you run the risk of conviction under the law, as it stands.

You are certainly not the only person who has written in to ONS complaining about this issue, and while I can well understand your stance and disapproval of LMUK, I have to tell you that there is now nothing that can be done about their involvement in the census. As you may be aware, they were awarded a contract to provide support services to the census in 2008.

This covered elements such as software development, printing of questionnaires, running a help line and processing completed questionnaires. LMUK then appointed a consortium of specialist UK and EU companies to undertake these specific elements of the contract and are therefore not directly involved in the collection or processing of questionnaires.

The majority of the work undertaken under this contract has already been completed, in preparation for the census. Therefore, whether or not you participate in the census will not affect the remuneration paid to LMUK for this contract. You may think that this is small comfort to you but many people who have complained about the
involvement of LMUK have been under the impression that by boycotting the census they will affect the monies paid to LMUK, which is not the case.

Unfortunately, not having been involved in the awarding of the contract to LMUK, I can't give you any further explanation as to why such a company was chosen to provide the services to the census that they do, or why the
contract was not broken down into smaller segments and awarded to the sub-contractors directly without LMUK's involvement, other than to say that I am informed that their bid to the original tender proved best value for
money for the tax payer. They are also very experienced in supporting censuses having supported the UK census in 2001, and a number of US and Canadian censuses. I can't comment on the use of ethical considerations when tendering for a contract as I am unaware of the UK and EU legal constraints imposed on such exercises, and how ethical considerations are weighted in the overall decision making process.

I hope that this expands on my earlier reply, and whilst I am sure that this will not fully allay your deep rooted concerns, it may explain the situation further. If you have any further questions that I can help with please let me know.

Regards,

Matt

===============

On Thursday, 5/19/11, I replied:

Dear Mr. McKeown,

Thank you for your sensitive and informative reply. There is no need to apologise for your previous email; it did not strike me as brusque, and it was not your tone that caused offence, but rather the situation. Indeed, the clarity with which you expressed the legal situation was appreciated, even if it strengthened my conviction that something is very wrong. The information you have provided will certainly assist me in making a decision as to what to do next.

You will not be surprised that I am a little taken aback that you are "unaware... how ethical considerations are weighted in the overall decision making process" when companies are appointed to adminster the census. If you don't know, who does, and why is it not a priority? Since nothing can be done to reverse the decision to involve Lockheed Martin at this stage, perhaps steps could be taken to ensure that there is some forum for discussion of the moral appropriateness - and social acceptability - of future appointments?

I ask these questions not only because of my convictions about war, but also because, as a trained historian, I do recognise the long-term value of the census as a historical resource. By selecting census-administrators who are considered to be morally repugnant by a specific section of the population, the ONS (or the government) runs the risk of compromising the statistical validity of the survey, since those who feel that they cannot comply are likely to belong to particular social groups, who will therefore be under-represented in the results. If no moral considerations are brought to bear in the selection of administrators, it might be considered equally appropriate to appoint a tobacco company to the position: a decision which, I suspect, would alienate many responsible citizens. Since both an armaments manufacturer and a tobacco company can be said to be dealers in death (the former in a rather more direct and immediate way than the latter), it is difficult to see how the one should be deemed more acceptable than the other - and yet I somehow doubt whether the latter would ever make it to first base in the selection process.

I am sure that there are no answers that you can give, nor counter-arguments I can offer, that will resolve these problems. I will content myself with thanking you for answering my last email as a human being, rather than as a legal expert, whilst I try to decide what is the most acceptable course of action.

Yours truly,

Giles Watson

Author bio:

Giles is a secondary school teacher in an English comprehensive school, and divides his spare time between poetry, photography, painting, and film. He also writes prose essays on natural history and mediaeval visual culture, is an avid walker and amateur naturalist, and has a keen interest in theatre. He has taught English, History, Drama, Sociology and Film. His current projects include paraphrasing the works of the mediaeval Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, and whilst he would prefer to be out walking with his dog, he is occasionally distracted by political problems. His photography can be viewed at his Flickr stream.

Catatonically Speaking: Michele Bachmann for President!

2011-08-07T13:36:00.014-05:00

As I have reported in previous issues of Clockwise Cat, in 2008 I sold out my vote to Barack Obama. In the Democratic primaries I had voted for hardcore liberal Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and up until the last minute of the actual presidential race, I strongly advocated for Green Partier Ralph Nader. I invest belief in TRUE progressivism, you see, not the brand of watery/fakey/puny/pseudo-progressivism proffered forth by the left wing of that Corporate Brothel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader, proud social democrats, not only have testes and spines, but they actually EMPLOY those assets toward the common good! Unlike those faux-liberals also known as Democrats, whose spines jellified the moment they took oath, and whose testes shriveled when they were dunked into the cold waters of corporate lobbying. (Of course, I am using patriarchal language since the majority in Congress are men. This is not in any way to negate the Democratic women in office who mostly wield the same toxic spear of corruption. These women have shrunken ovaries and crooked backbones, clearly.)

But I sold out my vote to "Mr. Yes We Can - Be Bush-Lite, Inc." because I inhabit one of those dreaded Red States, and I feared the plague of a McCain presidency. Granted, I KNEW that Obama was a slick deceiver; I saw straight through his polished oratory and carefully constructed facade. But because our system is crassly commandeered by the corporate duopoly of Republicrats, with no room to maneuver for lesser-funded but often more well-meaning third partiers, I knew that Nader votes could swing the race toward McCain. So I pinched my nose and ballot-punched Obama. At the very least we'd be getting a someone who came across as more "presidential" than that psycho-toddler George Bush - in surface ways, anyway, Obama is the antithesis of Bush, with his handsome looks and calm, articulate demeanor. And dammit, it was about freaking time a non-white took office.

But I did not in any way celebrate my sell-out; but neither was I embarrassed because I was doing exactly what I felt needed to be done to dissuade a McCain victory, even though I heartily disdain the system that necessitated my soul-sale. And to any Obama fan who happily congratulated me on my vote switch, I brutally explained my real reasons for doing so, quelling their grating giddiness and engendering a bit of chagrin in the process. Of course, some Obama-suck-ups might still secretly "thank" me for my vote, but I repudiate such misguided gratitude. I did what I felt our pitiful system "forced" me to do.

It turns out, of course, that I would have been right to adhere to my conscience and write in Nader instead - but naturally I already knew that. But Obama has perhaps been worse than even I, the perpetual pessimist, could have anticipated. In fact, we would have been a more progressive country with McCain at the helm. But before you spew your beverage at the screen over that (seemingly) reckless and puzzling pronouncement, let's take cursory look at Obama's record (with help from Alternet):

Ordered Afghanistan troop surge
Participated in extrajudicial assassination
Participated in the destabalization of a nuclearized Pakistan
Participated in furthering Israel's agenda against Palestine
Expanded whistle-blower prosecution
Failed to close Guantanamo
Failed to act on climate change
Advocated nuclear energy
Advocated further domestic oil drilling
Advocated Wall Street bailout and hence further economic decline for everyone else
Advocated Bush tax cuts for the rich
Failed to lower the jobless rate

Each one of these scenarios is precisely upholding Bush's authoritarian agenda, and indeed, are issues that McCain, too, would have pursued, just as relentlessly.

So why do I say that we would have been a more liberalized country if McCain had been president? Because, it turns out, progressives can be just as fact-eschewing as right-wingers. Their beloved Obama can do no wrong, evidence to the contrary be damned!

But I'm here to tell you that just because he's a black Democrat doesn't mean he's not still part of the capitalist totalitarian establishment that is the American Government. In fact, his race and political party are likely what got him elected - he makes imperalistic politics more palatable for the empty-heads otherwise known as Democratic voters.

But a McCain presidency would have meant that these issues would actually be fiercely contested by progressive voters, just as they were with the Bush Administration. Bush, with his ruthless redneck ways, managed to liberalize even the staunchest of conservatives, and further liberalize those who already considered themselves liberals. But Obama's tactics are far more "polite" - he articulates fascist policies quite eloquently - and his progressive campaign demeanor, though patently a sham, still resonates strongly.

And of course, he has espoused some policies that are progressive in nature. I won't go into them here, but there is a website that can be consulted in order to bolster the evidence that he can be, at times, semi-differentiated from Bush:

What the Heck Has Obama Done So Far?

(Of course, just to take one of his "better" initiative: While increasing healthcare access to more Americans is a wonderful thing, ObamaCare still falls way short of what it COULD have been had Obama not licked the asses of the healthcare industry. In essence, it's a further corporate giveaway, even though it has some benevolent provisions. But it's still far from being the utopian socialist healthcare plan it's accused of being.)

Besides, what good is any of it when 14 million Americans have no jobs, hapless Afghan survivors exist amidst rubble, and the entire Middle East wants to suicide-bomb the US?

A few token progressive deeds are not enough to redeem Obama's overwhelmingly right-wing record. You could say he's spineless and capitulates too much to the Republicans, or tries too hard to seek "bipartisan solutions," but I say he knows exactly what he's doing. He intuitively understands that presidential power in the US means not only sucking up to corporations, but basically ceding the reins to them.

Because corporate interests are what fuel American politics - from militarism in the Middle East to tax cuts for the wealthy to the Wall Street bailout to domestic oil drilling to nuclear energy to the Israeli alliance...it's all governed by corporate profiteering, and it's all part of the pernicious political scheme known as American politics.

I have no love for Obama, and no love for American government...and the more I read books like The Shock Doctrine, the more cognizant I become of just how feudalistic our system truly is, and how we are anything but free. Of course, true freedom cannot be constricted by corporate control - true freedom is a psychic phenomenon, and it's up to us to unleash our jubilant potential, and smash the state. And the only way to do that is to vote Republican, because that is what will TRULY compel us toward real revolution.

If you cannot bring yourself to do that - and I cannot - then at the very least, defy the Democrats and their illusory liberalism and WRITE SOMEONE IN.

The Thing Itself (Book Review of Michael Mc Aloran's Abattoir Whispers) by Gillian Prew

2011-08-04T09:46:00.007-05:00

Yes, we are the human slaughterhouse, our voices barely audible if anyone were ever to listen. And what of it?

“…I die, and in this death I see nothing, I see that I am nothing…” (Untitled #1)

This is Michael Mc Aloran…or his narrator. One could assume that they are interchangeable if not rigorously identical. As interchangeable as life and death, life being a continuum of dissolution, a collection of loosely associated, absurd fragments which the narrator does not care enough to embrace nor reject. Yet, there is care. There is care in the creative outflow of inner dialogue: a man transforming his idea of self, his troubled place in the world into a voice traversing darkly surreal landscapes – his verbal and pictorial wounds.

“…no I do not want to leave, yet I do not want to stay, either, something has shaken the fruit from the razor tree, they sparkle upon rent soil in the moonlight, I laugh because I cannot believe myself, that this is, I subtract from death’s irrelevance, with some sense, deepening the wounds, I am the skyline, I am the aborted sun, I am the disfigured sneer…”
(Untitled #1)

Mc Aloran makes his own sense of the failure of objectivity and, ultimately, meaning. But sense is transience. The moment of understanding is also a moment of confusion where neither lasts beyond the expression of itself and all is ultimately emptiness.

“…we spit dreams like sparks that fade into emptiness, and ever the return, ever the return to this perpetuating emptiness…” (Untitled #2)

Existence is trauma. We are born alone, and so it goes. An inhospitable world is our cradle and our attempts to thrive are idiotic and self-defeating.

“…I ejaculating into the void with streaks of dissipating words, my death, my death my starry death I am alone, no not else, ever else, the violence of existing, the ferocity of birth, a cold stone hearth in which the bone’s of a child rot unto idiocy, I too am that idiocy, that murder, that abortion, the time taken to unlearn, to forget…” (Untitled #3)

In this world of Mc Aloran’s there is no definitive suffering. One accumulates scars like years; not always aware of each day, each slice into flesh. It is both an accumulative living and dying; a horror and a wry smile at the ongoing absurdity and meaninglessness of existence.

“…I observe my scars in wonder, I cannot then see, I suffocate on the bile of my dying, something grips me, viciously and I expire, void of my ineptitude, I am this flesh, this meat, this absolution, this waste…I smile…” (Untitled #4)

“…At what point, in the striking of lightning does the flesh awaken, once death has awakened in the eyes the clamour of the silence, having no recourse beyond the filth of decay, the brutalizing winds, ejaculating spent bodies emasculated, birthed, into endless nothingness, as if a dream could suffice? I laugh yet I am ice, I see nothing else, penetrative scars, the implements of foreign dreams, and the skill by which such dreams are dissolved, in the cancer of final night, in the shifting parameters of lunacy, cutting the teeth upon the rock’s of bleak mortality, as if to speak were enough, as if to convey were enough, as if this were enough, unto that final line, dressed up for the kill, my head in a vice, skull-dust, heavenly teeth…” (Untitled #11)

In Mc Aloran we have an artist living as a poet living as an artist living as a man. In short, he cannot be separated from his work. His verbal skills translate to disturbing visuals yet one wonders, given that Mc Aloran also has considerable talent as a painter, whether it is the visuals which he finds necessary to articulate in words, as if neither medium can suffice on its own, that his thinking, his interpretation of the world is too complex, too insufferable to be expressed merely in one dimension.

“…Meat petals and the slashed eye, a clock face smeared with blood, the shadow of a death knell, ice in the veins of the death of air, mocked by the crumbling walls of dissolution, a trinket, a casket full of rotting teeth, the death of air is a flock of diseased birds sprayed across the ashen sky, the waste and the frugality of tears, nothing changes, no, not ever more, I am a dream, a figment in all of this, the shadow pierces like none other, echoing, drunk upon the intoxication of blank stone walls, at which were stared in starvation, hallucinogenic, some kind of dreaming, yes…” (Untitled #21)

His tone, his surreal landscapes, put one in mind of Beckett and Bataille, where his inner dialogue cannot rest with itself. There is a lack of decisive punctuation where most everything is a continual struggle with conclusion to which a full stop would be an almost be an act of hubris. The sun, the eye, decay, shattered bloody skies…Mc Aloran has interminable versions of these all beautifully and disturbingly visual. Here, again, his pen would almost be substituted for a paintbrush.

“…A chain of metallic petals, dragging along the spine of all living, beneath the teeth of the sun and throughout the breath, lingering, like a shimmering of cloud in a womb of black sky, the tips of the fingers licked clean of blood, ice shatters, something between to the to and fro-ing, the hands quivering with dislocation, chewing glass to make the smile more opulent, there is no darkness, static absurdly weeps, leeches upon the breast, the heart fades to murmurs, where joy advances like an unwanted drunken lover, a singular butterfly smashed offhandedly upon a white-washed wall…”
(untitled #29)

Michael Mc Aloran is a fractured soul living as best he can in the brief pauses, where the in-breath meets the out; where the comma is the most fleeting of respite. The rest is almost an impossibility; one filled by poetry and art, where apparently contradictorily, the process of dissolution is one of creation. His work is dark, disturbing and compelling; a fractured version of reality. When Beckett remarked of Joyce, “His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.” he could well have been referring to Michael Mc Aloran.

In a world of existential paralysis, where there are few authentic voices, I would recommend attention be paid to at least one – Michael Mc Aloran.

Author bio:

Currently living in Argyll, Scotland with her partner, two children and a cat, Gillian Prew ditched philosophy in favour of poetry even though the former still haunts her. Her chapbook, DISCONNECTIONS, is hot off the press at erbacce.

Pilgrimage in Time (Book Review of Slaughterhouse Five) by Joseph DiLella

2011-08-02T13:46:00.011-05:00

Is there any one amongst us that has never – even once – wished they could relive a moment in our past? I don’t see one hand raised – do you? Yet, if you could close your eyes and ‘wish’ yourself to another place at a former time and could do nothing to change it, would you even bother?

Time to all of us is linear. We are born, we die, and somewhere in between is where all the chocolatey goodness occurs. The high school prom, the first kiss, the wedding, the sports car, the first-born child; but along the way we also pick up emotional baggage: the passing of our guinea pig, the loss of a grandparent, a friend, a parent, a lover, our soul mate. As individuals, we are a collective timeline of both the best and worst of our lives and the lives of others in our neighborhood, our city, our state, our nation, and our world.

And none of us can change the direction of our paths, for time travel is only a notion, a wish, and a dream.

Unless of course, one can imagine a way a person could leave the room and circumnavigate one’s timeline without ever going . . . anywhere.

That is where books and TV shows come into play and allows us to let loose our collective consciousness, to raise the stakes and tap into our imagination.

But remember this: pretending isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be because if we were to travel to the past or future, would it truly be everything we could wish for, without a grim finality of it all?

For six incredibly puzzling years, LOST fans worldwide gave a collective ‘thank you’ to Kurt Vonnegut for his unforgettable character, Billy Pilgrim, and the lad’s uncanny ability to travel from one time to another, unstuck in time, thanks in part to his little green alien friends from Tralframadore, even though the time
travelling was only done in his mind.

Desmond Hume, the Scotsman with an unrequited love for Penelope Widmore, traveled off-island to a time in his life when he desperately hoped he could change his destiny and marry his beloved Penny. But like Desmond, Billy could not change his life or prevent the plane he and his father- in-law travelled in from hitting the top of a mountain. Both he and Desmond, too, were rendered helpless to change their pasts.

Though Mr. Hume did eventually marry his fair-haired woman, have a child and leave the island, his fate was destined. He had to return to the Island, aid Jack Sheppard to defeat the Man in Black and help his friends finally find each other in the afterlife.

Billy Pilgrim, if he truly time-travelled, ended up with a beautiful woman and a newborn, but put up in a cage for all the Tralframdorains to gawk at and point to during zoo hours. Yet neither character could escape their destiny – but both did find a way to pass the time by travelling from the past to the future, if only in their minds.

Kurt’s classic book, Slaughterhouse Five, is itself a travelogue of one man’s life touched by ordinariness, love, death and the unique ability to see one’s past and future all at the same time. For Vonnegut, the story was cathartic and allowed him to expose the time of his life he had avoided most as a storyteller – the war and his personal involvement in it, in all its glorious ugliness, destruction and hideousness.

Billy, the alien’s abductee, represented Kurt’s consciousness as it ping ponged from the current day malaise that often attacks a writer who simply cannot find the right plot to throw his imagination, to the moments he wished he could have been in another place at another time in his life.

In truth, Billy is Kurt. Both fictional hero and author became prisoners of war and are taken to Dresden a few days before firebombing that took over 150,000 lives – more deaths than either Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced under atomic attacks.

Both book character and POW ‘wished’ they could be anywhere but the war under brutal conditions that took the lives of their comrades and innocent civilians. Time travel – if only in the mind – was the vehicle of choice for Billy and Kurt.

Of all the books Vonnegut wrote, he gave himself an A+ for Slaughterhouse Five. Watching both Kurt ant Billy crisscross from the present to the past and back around to the future again shows us that life is not merely unidirectional, but rather a mosaic with tapestry weavings that intertwine us all with grief, joy,
exaltation and the ultimate destination we all must face.

Didn’t the Island’s Protector in LOST, Jacob, meet his violent end by the ever-scheming Benjamin Linus as he peaceably put the finishing touches on his life’s weaving? Guess he should have been sitting down with a good book, like Slaughterhouse Five, with his back to the wall . . . or did he simply realize his fate was already
sealed?

Author bio:

After teaching in a southwest state-run university for five years, Joseph is finally back at home with his wife and 21 month old baby girl. Whether it is relaxing on the beach in southern California or juggling teaching gigs at San Diego State University and other universities, the author plans to take time writing poems and short stories while contemplating his navel and deciding on which direction he wishes his life to take for himself and his family.

Realization Stains by Sandra Ketcham

2011-08-02T13:28:00.006-05:00

Your memory moves slightly

against 

the kitchen wall



With bruised knuckles I 

paint you 

in strands, in

stripes 

of amaranth, 

mustard and denim blue



I paint you 

life-sized to dance with me, your

dark hair tickling my

shoulders, your

salty syllables 

dripping down 

my neck



I paint you 

how I remember you, 

how I want you to be: 



    with golden eyes, howling at the vapid seaside joggers, their 

    tiny rubber doggies, their sweat-soaked name-brand shorts



I paint walls of you, all

of you

beneath trees, inside

sky



I wonder how you'd look

today 

& 

I sigh, 

shallow, 

sink into the carpet fibers,



their frayed gray strands sting

my feet

Author bio:

Sandra Ketcham currently lives in Orlando, where she works as a full-time freelance writer and editor. She is pursuing her degree in psychology and spends her free time working with autistic children and their families. Her poetry is recently published or forthcoming in Rusty Truck, Eunoia Review, Calliope Nerve, Yes, Poetry, Psychic Meatloaf, Cherry Blossom Review, and others. Sandra has a strong aversion to llamas.

A Memorial Day ‘Commemoration’ 2011 (Polemic) by Edwin L. Young, PhD

2011-07-31T16:01:00.005-05:00

This past Memorial Day, 2011, I revisited America’s war history as I memorialized the war dead from many wars. I commemorated:

· The war dead among the American Indians Tribes whom the settlers of the New World slaughtered while driving them out of their native land

· The Africans slaughtered and enslaved by the Europeans while taking their native land and the American Colonists and the nascent United States political leaders and businessmen who continued brutal slavery of Africans

· The Mexican Army soldiers killed when the Texans commandeered their territory

· The Coal Miners, factory workers, and Labor Union members killed when protesting inhuman treatment by their corporate employers

· The civil rights and university student demonstrators protesters killed when the African Americans were seeking to be treated as equal citizens

· The Vietnamese who died defending themselves against US invasion

· The students and veterans who were brutalized and killed while protesting against the Vietnam war

· The Iraqis killed when the US illegally occupied their country

· The Afghans who are being killed by the US and NATO forces illegally occupying their country

· Our patriotic soldiers who died after blindly putting their trust in corrupt and imperialistic political leaders who took their orders from greedy, maniacal corporate leaders and defense contractors

Finally, I salute all American Activists who boldly confront the lies and misdeeds of our government and corporations and call for reform.

Economic Development Plan by Ken Poyner

2011-07-31T15:48:00.007-05:00

I want you to be my economic whore.

I have plans to draw the life

Out of our ordinary citizens

And I need you to stroke

The back of my neck, tell me

It is for everyone's good. I need

To hear how the unity of disunion

Is struggle and how I would never

Break anyone's spirit by taking away

An opportunity for struggle. I am the driver

Of this train only, merely the master

Of this wagon, just the operator

Of this reaper. I need

For you to stand behind me,

Hands on my hips, your no more

Than biologically functioning lips

Pressed to my ear - half information,

Half sex - telling me it is the right thing:

That this is the right thing, that I am making

All creation better for everyone, and that I will

Gather praise in workday baskets: if only

From you, if only from me.

I take into my oligarchic keeping the hard

Hands of people who sweat to pay taxes

And when I imagine nothing of what I do

Is for them I can feel your fingers

At my belt, the panther reflection of your eyes,

The reassurance of luxuries yet to come.

Their children should be happy with scraps.

Author bio:

Ken Poyner has published several hundred poems in several dozen magazines. Work for the summer of 2011 is scheduled for “Fear of Monkeys”, “PANK”, “Pacific Review”, “Illumen”, “Sawbuck” and several other places. He is working on a poem series tentatively entitled “Having Your Robot and Eating Him, Too”. Ken’s wife just set 10 world records in power lifting and is largely the world’s premier female raw power lifter, at least in her weight division.

Linda Benninghoff's Snowy Winter (Book Review) by J.S. Watts

2011-07-31T15:35:00.007-05:00

Snowy Winter by Linda Benninghoff is an elegant edition from the Pudding House Chapbook Series. Its nineteen poems offer an elegiac meditation upon the endings of life, both in terms of the human lifespan and the natural cycles of the world surrounding us.

The collection begins with the title poem Snowy Winter, which recalls domestic memories, beginning with the haunting image,

“the praying silence
of the pots in the kitchen”

via April recollections of jogging and mango juice, round to winters “which are like a world shutting down” when the poet, hungry for company, is forced to search “for the prints of winter birds” in the snow.

The poems that follow explore memory and ageing, illness, dying and death, while drawing poignantly upon images of snow and winter, animals and birds, and the juxtaposition of wild nature and domesticity.

“Curving gulls” soar through more than one poem, while other birds are only present via the prints they leave behind them in the snow. In Going For Chemo the washed pots are once again silent and there is a striking image of a dead gull “flat like paper on the causeway”, whilst elsewhere

“the teapot
made a sound
I remembered
long after that day,
a sound like robins praying.”

Images repeat and echo throughout the poems until the collection comes to a hopeful conclusion with the poem Rebirth. Here there has been death, but “The May air is everywhere - ” and it is winter that is the memory,

“Now roses surge
and life is like a temptation.”

The year has come full circle and hope is in the air. Nature, it seems, is telling us that snowy winters are just precursors to the new life of Spring.

Editor's Note: Snowy Winter by Linda Benninghoff is published by Pudding House Publications.

Author bio:

J.S. Watts' short stories, poetry and book reviews appear in a wide variety of publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and the States including Abandoned Towers, Acumen, Big Pulp, Danse Macabre, Hand + Star, Midwest Literary Review and Polluto and have been broadcast on BBC Radio. She is Poetry Reviews Editor for Open Wide Magazine and Poetry Editor of Ethereal Tales. Her debut poetry collection, Cats and Other Myths is published by Lapwing Publications. For further details please see her website: JS Watts.

A Plea for Homosexuality (Satire) by Kyle Giroux

2011-07-31T15:23:00.008-05:00

As the world moves further into the 21st century, we have experienced new technology, marvelous advancements, and inspiring social movements like we have never witnessed before. Human beings have landed on the moon, torn down the Berlin Wall, calculated the speed of light, and split and atom all in a mere 70 years’ time. However, as the world moves deeper into the “Digital Age,” society has fallen into what can only be described as turmoil. Death, destruction, horror, and sex on television are only a few of the terrors this world has experienced to seemingly no end. There is only one explanation as to why the world has had so many problems: people. Lots and lots of people, everywhere.

There are currently 6.9 billion people on earth. Statistics show that in a few years, there will be 10 billion people, and then in a few more years there will be 20 billion people on this already crowded planet. A group of scientists in Iceland have gotten together and were able to come up with a projection that will rattle even the biggest “population problem” skeptics. They concluded that eventually, there will be 100 billion people on earth, unless our carrying capacity is below that, in which case we’ll all be dead. These statistics show that we have two options for the future: stand shoulder to shoulder with people everywhere we go, or die.

If my time in construction work and in a middle class, all American white family has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to die. Overcrowding is not the only problem due to overpopulation, as any working class citizen will know. People have a tendency to eat a lot of food, and, as the number of people goes up, the number of food products available will naturally go down. Also, scientists have decided that there is a direct correlation with the amount of people on the planet to the amount of bad things that happen. With these hair-raising statistics, it would seem as though something needs to be done about this problem now. I therefore propose that we as a world community put any differences and other problems aside, and work on our population problem, which will strangle us all to a fiery death in Hell unless it is stopped.

The only two things keeping the population problem in check are war and disease. As helpful as these two factors are, they are both very messy, and many people believe that killing is morally wrong. Working white males know what I mean, since they are the most respected people in our society. Therefore, I will suggest what I believe to be our only solution to this terrible mess we people have gotten ourselves into: homosexuality. Scientists have found that to produce a baby, a man and a woman must have sexual intercourse. Without all three factors (the man, the woman, and the intercourse) in play, there can be no baby. Therefore, it only makes sense to take out one of these factors.

However, no working class citizen wants to give up intercourse. But by replacing the woman with a man or the man with a woman, there will be no baby, and, as a result, no population growth. With this solution, not only will there be a massive decline in population growth, but no one will have to die to achieve it, there will be no more whining babies all over the place ruining meals at nice restaurants or crying in church, and everyone can still have as much, if not more sex.

Obviously people must eventually reproduce, or otherwise there will be no population at all.However, it is perfectly sensible to ban heterosexual intercourse for the next 25 years. With this set of laws*, I feel we can achieve this feat, and finally make the earth not so intolerable to live in:

1) If a couple of heterosexual origin is found touching, the limb that did the touching will be cut off.

2) Heterosexual marriage will be outlawed so as to protect the sanctity of the homosexual union.

3) Public and private institutions will not be allowed to hire heterosexual employees for fear of corrupting children with their views on heterosexual fertilization.

4) People who are found to be heterosexuals but who did not participate in the touching mentioned in rule number two will be put into stocks in the town square and pelted.

5) Children found with heterosexual tendencies will be placed in a small room, strapped to a chair, and administered electric shocks until homosexuality occurs.

6) Elderly people found to have heterosexual tendencies will be thrown off a cliff, since old people are really not all that useful anyways.

7) Penis-to-orifice-other-than-vagina contact by a man to a woman will be punishable by castration.

8) Penis-to-orifice-other-than-vagina contact by a woman to a man will be punishable by stoning.

9) Any form of literature or media with heterosexual references will be burned and all memory of the offensive material will be expunged from record books.

10) Penis-to-vagina intercourse will be punishable by medieval torture and execution. The heads of the executed will then be put on stakes outside of the late offenders’ neighborhoods in order to deter others from such an offense.

*These laws of course do not apply to minorities and handicapped people, who will receive a set of lighter punishments issued by the government.

With these policies in place for the next 25 years, the population problem can and will be quelled. In fact, scientists in Afghanistan have recently gotten hold of my proposal, and calculated it into their computers. What they found was that with 25 years of worldwide homosexuality, the world will have fewer people in it than before. Arguing with those statistics is arguing with fact.

You may be asking yourself what you can do about this awful problem. The simplest answer is to go gay, now. By being as gay as possible, you will find a 30,000% decrease in your chances of producing a child. After you have become a homosexual, it will be your job to treat all heterosexuals around you as badly as possible. Tell them what they are doing is morally wrong, and that they will burn in eternal Hellfire for contributing to the population problem.

Even though these proposed laws have not yet been put into practice, tell them that when the laws finally are passed they will be executed for being so heterosexual. Doing this should get people to turn over a new leaf and do what is right. Anyone with half of a brain can realize that this is a sensible and correct thing to do, and no one willing to contribute will be on the losing side.

This coming election is a chance to make your voice heard, so be an American citizen and vote Yes! to Gay, and get all this clutter off our God-given earth already.

Author bio:

Kyle is a working writer out of the Boston area and a member of the Endicott Review editing team. Recently while studying in Florence, Italy, he became a writer and copy editor for Blending magazine and newsletter, and was recently featured in the “Urban Jackalope” exhibition with two short fiction pieces. Kyle has also been accepted for publication in Kerouac’s Dog Magazine.

Ode to An American Herd by John Pursch

2011-07-31T15:15:00.006-05:00

Speak to me in patois, rustled cattle.
Tell us of your brand-name hysteria,
your low-cut range plate,
your battle with bovinity.

Show us your wrought-iron
but bland efficiency,
your blinding gratitude,
your spider's gravity.

Sing for us
the prairie dog chant,
the moronic yell,
the automaton’s tirade.

Honor the three-piece suit,
wave high your nylons,
and dance around your
split-level dungeons
in patent leather shoes.

Author bio:

John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in Breadcrumb Scabs, Calliope Nerve, Camel Saloon, Clockwise Cat, Counterexample Poetics, Four and Twenty, Puffin Circus, Orion headless, and vox poetica. You can follow his work at John Pursch.

Jihad (Satire) by Kip Hinson

2011-07-24T17:02:00.008-05:00

I enter this airport, this city where nobody lives, suburb of nothing, a specious, spacious, cynical gateway with walls of steel and glass, a pass-through place pulsing with fragile, firefly lives and echoes of the droning voices of salesmen and consultants, bankers and real-estate experts and seminar-attendees who carry complex solutions to nothing.

A highly-paid, arm-waving, finger-pointing businessman cuts before me, failing to notice anyone with skin darker than his as he gesticulates his carefully rehearsed bullet points and negotiates his fifth big deal of the month via Bluetooth headset, until much later tonight he'll call his family from a hotel room in Orlando or LA or Philly for their previously scheduled Skype videoconference.

A fat old woman waddles past, gorged on American bounty, her blue-veined legs infirm, the memory of her dead husband fading faster than the 401k retirement fund he left behind; her solemn-faced pug named Rufus stares at me uncomfortably beneath her fleshy dimpled arms, wedged in beside a bulging handbag bearing candy and incontinence pads and a senior-fare ticket.

There goes a ten-gallon hatted urban cowboy with soft hands and pointy boots, dreaming red, white, and blue wet-dreams of roping and calving and driving his Ford F-150 over dirty rutted roads until the day he finds a smiling round-hipped woman who will take his name and bear his children and wash his stiff blue jeans.

A harried mother in skin-tight spandex pants bounces past, pushing her two-point-three American children along in a super-sized, name-brand baby stroller outfitted with plastic Sippy-cup attachments and knobby off-road tires, her husband’s rigid work schedule having once again surrendered not a moment to spare for a quick visit to the in-laws or a trip with the kids to Knott's Berry Farm.

With these mothers and children, divorcees and tanned vacationers, I make my way to the airport security line, I am swallowed up by the American snake, stand near its twitching tail and watch these tired travelers dozens deep before me, weaving slowly through legions of orderly tensa-barriers so they can hurry home to their loved ones, their steely-eyed cats, empty two-bedroom apartments and low-fat frozen dinners cooked in modern appliances to be eaten on the couch before fifty-two inch plasma TV sets while their two-thousand-dollar purebred Bassett Hounds and Yorkshire Terriers bark unheard on the step, their owners too busy lamenting their unused health club memberships to hear them.

We shuffle up, up, up to the checkpoint, remove our Doc Martens, our Abercrombie Fitches, our Zappos and Gucci’s and Banana Republics, disrobing before lazily vigilant FAA employees who pretend to look busy for their secret government agency bosses, standing about wondering when this country’s corrupt congress will cut their forty grand a year salaries and take their undeserved government pensions, worrying over dimly remembered combat training as they contemplate death at the hands of dark-skinned men who kneel five times a day on Mecca-pointing rugs, praying to a stern Islamic god before they take up chattering Uzis, strap bombs to their chests and stuff box-cutters in their shoes all in the name of Allah.

The machine surrounds me, its lethal rays pass through my flesh, imparting cancer, baking my brain, beep, beep, beep, my fingers crossed overhead in a diamond shape as I smile into the camera; I smile at Uncle Sam, knowing he will never find it, my gift from the Imam, the ultimate ticket home buried deep within my purified flesh, because they are fools: let this drooling dreadlocked Jamaican idiot inspect all he will my perfect body, my muscled torso, my highly trained arms, my virgin Middle-Eastern prick.

I slip through security easily, it is nothing, America is nothing, a land of white-skinned, muffin-topped cowards, and beyond me lies a comfortable and safe Threat Level Orange as defined by the Homeland Security Administration, where I walk to the mouth of the escalator, coast up its sharp-toothed metal staircase, walk down a vast sun-filled hallway at the top and hurriedly enter a high-speed railcar only to sit inside and wait while it runs round and round and round, carrying me and my fellow glaze-eyed passengers quickly to nowhere that we couldn’t easily have walked, then spews its busy contents onto gleaming tiled passageways to dodge motorized honk, honk, honking carts gliding rubber-wheeled down dead-end, no-name highways.

The Imam takes no chances, I have hours to spare, I kill time, wander these busy corridors lined with their false advertising mounted on sexy backlit plastic and metal boards, consider credit card offers and low mortgage rates and frequent flier programs I will never use; come back to Dallas, the sign extolls: Live Large, Think Big, and I laugh, rejoicing in my overachievement. The fast food, bars and restaurants: Bennigan's and Chili's, Fuddruckers and Dickey’s, the Cowtown Bar, McDonalds and Taco Bell - these Americans are never hungry, they never want, would refuse to stand in line all day for a loaf of bread or a litre of rehydrated United Nations milk. I order a pink lemonade from the Vietnamese woman who serves fake Asian food to servicemen whose fathers destroyed her country and I think: rise up you losers, you defeated soldiers, take back your lands, your heritage, destroy these perpetual do-gooders and go home to your villages, your hamlets.

I thank her, leave a dollar in the jar and sip my lemonade, stopping to peer in the Best Buy kiosk with its Made in China electronics, the Apple iPods and Sanyo DVD players and Bose noise-canceling headphones, these Americans love their technology, they drop their bombs, their ordnance: daisy-cutters and cruise missiles and sleek Patriot missiles, destroying neighborhoods and houses where once I slept, broke fast, loved and prayed. The American bombs, burning away the secret flesh of my mother, my sister, their faces and hair, their smiles, the American bombs destroy the pride and disintegrate the memories of a country that was ancient long before this place called America was ever conceived by the vomitous leftovers and chronically white castoffs of European royalty, spewed from the diseased loins of imperialist Britain.

I stop to empty my bladder, my pink lemonade, and dodge a cart-pushing black man whose parent’s grandparents knew slavery, whose mother knew segregation, whose son wears gang colors while his black father cleans the floors, scrubs the toilets, empties the trash of the abundantly white. I approach the gate, but stop: I must first buy a gift, Americans love to give gifts, and I find them on sale at JP’s Dude Ranch with its two-for-one specials on overpriced, cheaply-made jewelry and stuffed animals and refrigerator magnets imported from Brazil or Costa Rica or Taiwan, these Americans produce nothing of their own except bombs and I purchase a white t-shirt with the words God Bless America on the front and I Love Texas across the back, but the gift is for me, only for me, so when they find what’s left of my perfect nineteen year-old Iraqi body in that t-shirt the Imam will know me and nod his respect for what I’ve done.

I change in the men’s room and walk slowly down to the gate, forty-five minutes to go and I am calm, I wait and pray, watch the world news, the local news, the national news and Oprah, how the Americans love to know what’s going on, to stick their noses in to everything, to see what's going on outside their little world so they can feel safe, and soon the loved ones of those sitting around me, their grieving family members, will look up at their big screen TV sets, hear the voices of reason from the familiar faces of CNN and Fox and CSPAN as they discuss how the suspect, a young man with an Iraqi passport and a window seat and a shaped charge made from five pounds of C-4 explosive in his abdomen, was wearing a cheap white t-shirt with a longhorn cow and the Texas state flag across the tattered back, purchased on sale from an airport convenience store.

Author bio:

Kip lives in Arizona, where he wastes time blogging at Mister Ass. He's been published here and there, but this is his first appearance at Clockwise Cat, for which he is most grateful. Kip writes to keep the flying monkeys away.

Vacuum Sinister by DeWitt Brinson

2011-07-24T16:57:00.007-05:00

You shiny exclamation point
emote messy kisses to my calves
they will date you if'n you use clearasil
or a shiny pick-up line about
devils eating my pick-up truck

my cellphone is electrical
it's smarter than a penny!

the sheen of clearasil on your
last demon made me cling
to the cleft verbs WHAM!
I'm sorry, I mean to say

Yes, Sir

Please let me out of prison, sir
I am a clean reborn, sir
I do not dream of evil, sir
ain't even got a dictionary, sir
I will go on a date, sir

you'll see

I am shiny as a puppy in pampers
I am shiny

I should be free

I am shiny

Author bio:

DeWitt Brinson ran alongside a monster twice in his life. The first time he won. The second time he won. Do you have a fast monster? DeWitt Brinson will outrun him for you. This is what DeWitt Brinson does. Hooray for DeWitt Brinson!

The Wet Dream of Conservative Nightmares (Satire) by Gil A. Waters

2011-07-24T16:02:00.007-05:00

I am the wet dream of conservative nightmares…

Like our foreign-born President, Barack Obama bin Laden, I am a radical militant of both the Islamic and Socialist varieties. This means that I hate anyone who doesn’t believe in Allah because I’m a devout Muslim, and I hate Muslims because I’m an atheist who doesn’t believe in any god or religion. Presumably, this means I hate myself, which might explain my fondness for suicide bombings.

I am a dark-hued racial militant governed by the vagaries of “identity politics,” unless I’m white—in which case I assuage my white guilt by supporting anti-white racial militants and opposing the justifiably white identity politics of pro-white racial militants like Rush Limbaugh and the Ku Klux Klan. It’s all rather complicated, especially since “race” doesn’t exist in any biological sense.

I am a traitor to my country who wants the U.S. economy to collapse into chaos. But I don’t want it to collapse into too much chaos, because I also want to nationalize it. Let’s say that I want the economy to collapse into just enough chaos to do away with free enterprise and private property rights, but then to stop collapsing just before it becomes so chaotic that there’s nothing left for the government to commandeer. It’s a very tricky balancing act.

I am an emasculating, lesbian, Femi-Nazi who hates anything with a penis. But I’m also a faggot who positively loves penises, especially for the purpose of sodomy. So I have a rather conflicted sexual identity. No doubt this explains my fondness for transvestitism, transsexualism, and hermaphroditism.

I am a farcical caricature of a delusional stereotype.

Author bio:

Gil A. Waters is no one in particular. Read and meet him at Gil Waters.

Two poems by Michael Mc Aloran

2011-07-24T15:51:00.006-05:00

12

Cherubic scar…

Light/ no haven in a dead wound

Blade of ash/ absent body/ undone

Tangent of the slashed tongue

Here now and there the breath the pulse of…

Sky of foreign death/ non-death/ erased

Of a scream torn out/ silenced/ echoing all/ ruptured

Flesh of dusts whispering of the night’s tunnels

Collapsed never to fall/ dreams of less/ non-sun of terse

Cold waters of stillness/ naught/ broken bodies of mire

===================

7

Razor upon tongue

So healeth the eye’s nectarling

Clasp-knife of velvet erectile ashes

Nothing ever worthy/ whispering as of dead

Sky drag and the scarlet taste/ whispers/ dread

Vacuum walls/ light bulb ablaze

Infinite dark long-stretching/ nothing more than breath

Author bio:

Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976) His work has appeared in various print and online zines, including Carcinogenic Poetry, The Recusant, Sex & Murder Magazine, Danse Macabre, The Plebian Rag, Fashion For Collapse, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Clockwise Cat, Sein Und Werden, Milk Sugar, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Heavy Bear, Indigo Rising, etc. His chapbooks include 'The Gathered Bones', (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Final Fragments', (Calliope Nerve Media), & 'The Death-Streaked Air' (Virgogray Press), 'Debris', (Erbacce-Press),‘The Rapacious Night‘, (Calliope Nerve Media), 'Unto Naught', (Erbacce-Press) A full-length collection of poems, 'Attributes', is forthcoming from 'Desperanto' in May 2011.

Inside Us All by Joseph DiLella

2011-07-24T15:38:00.008-05:00

resides the Devil
the leader of the dead condemned
who tells us to hear his voice
obey his commands
to do the taboo
the unthinkable
the irresponsible
only once, then twice, even thrice
until the distinction between
right and wrong
dark and light
remains indistinguishable
to those who should know
the difference.

Hear that sound?

It's opportunity knocking . . .

Author bio:

After teaching in a southwest state-run university for five years, Joseph is finally back at home with his wife and 21 month old baby girl. Whether it is relaxing on the beach in southern California or juggling teaching gigs at San Diego State University and other universities, the author plans to take time writing poems and short stories while contemplating his navel and deciding on which direction he wishes his life to take for himself and his family.

Rabbit Security (Satire) by Eric Suhem

2011-07-22T13:39:00.007-05:00

“Hold a steaming, sizzling Black & Decker iron to your chest as you sing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’!” said little Randy Rabbit, riding the speeding bullet to a new era of corporate government-sponsored hygiene and security control.

“What the hell was that?” demanded an alarmed Chester, sitting in front of the television set, well into his third gin-and-tonic. “That’s Randy Rabbit, dear, he’s the new national security mascot,” said Velma, “I don’t know how you didn’t hear about it.” Chester and Velma lived in a wealthy suburb of Washington D.C. Chester had a position of high responsibility within the government, as chairman of the national security council.

The television screen was displaying, alternately every 20 seconds, a marching band, a football game, a ‘Have a Nice Day’ smiley face button from the 1970’s, an army training exercise, and ultimately the benevolent face of Randy Rabbit, under a caption of ‘To protect the children’, returning to say, “It’s time once again to monitor the dream state of one of our citizens! Brought to you by Monolith Oil!” Chester was irate that, as national security council chairman, he had not heard of this new rabbit mascot.

“I’ve had enough of this damn nonsense, I’m going to my workshop,” said Chester, downing another gin-and-tonic before heading downstairs to start up the electric saw. He had recently taken up woodworking, and found that it eased the stress from his high pressure security council work. Going downstairs, he passed by numerous wire cages, filled with rabbits that Velma had recently obtained.

As Chet entered the workshop, he saw Randy Rabbit sitting at the wood lathe grinning maniacally. Chet blinked and then saw malevolent bunnies, aligned, poised to strike. They had been happy bunnies, frolicking playfully in the meadow of orange and yellow flowers, but now they intended evil, crouching in the weeds. Each one with the face of Randy Rabbit, in a plaid button-down short-sleeve shirt for rabbits, guaranteeing merriment, as the shavings flew perpetually from his project on the wood lathe. Chet looked into the icy eyes of Randy Rabbit and could see the happy faces in magenta suits as their smiles cracked under the harsh white light. The nursery rhymes would reach a fever pitch as the malevolent bunnies and the eyes of Randy Rabbit would expand and attack, in their subtle way much more harshly than any obvious overt act. The lollipops dance amidst the carnival music as Randy Rabbit’s eyes gleam.

“Oh Chet, stop playing around and put the garbage out, and help me feed the rabbits!” said Velma, carrying large buckets of carrots and lettuce shreds to the wire cages. “I really need more cooperation from you in our rabbit care! I can’t do this all by myself! I’ll be bringing some hamsters home tomorrow.” “Yes dear,” said Chester, shaking himself back to sanity as the disturbing vision of Randy Rabbit slowly melted away. Soon Chet was whistling a happy tune, returning to his work on the wood lathe. There was to be a major security council meeting the next day, and Chet wanted to finish his wood project before getting a good night’s sleep.

The security council met in Strangelove Auditorium, 23 grey-suited men and women with looks of serious concern. The chairman of the security council banged the gavel and the meeting was called into session. At issue was a threat by a rogue dictatorship to invade one of the world’s major industrialized nations. All eyes were on Chester as he began, “I call this meeting to order. Gentlemen, we face a grave danger from this regime, and it must be dealt with quickly and effectively.” Chester continued in a matter-of-fact tone, “But first, I enjoy Day-Glo bunnies.” A murmur was heard from the council members as the lights were turned down and the war room’s global map was illuminated. The map of continents was slowly covered by a group of invading Day-Glo bunnies, hopping about from Africa to Asia to the Americas, each a fluorescent red, orange, green, yellow, purple, or blue. “I enjoy Day-Glo bunnies,” said Chester with increasing conviction, chewing on a carrot.

“I am now locking our coordinates for nuclear response to the rabbits, gentlemen,” said Chester, pointing towards the Day-Glo bunnies bouncing around playfully on the map above, mutual destruction assured. Shouts of alarm and confusion were heard in the war room. Chester picked up the gavel he had completed the night before on the wood lathe, and pounded it on the table. “Meeting adjourned!”

Author bio:

Eric Suhem lives in California and enjoys the qualities of his vegetable juicer. He can be found in Orange Hallway.

The End of Racism (Satire) by Matt Kolbet

2011-07-22T13:29:00.007-05:00

Good news! Eddie Bauer has found a way to end racism. Too often labels such as black and white limit us, even if they might be preferable to antiquated terms. Fortunately, with the help of an Eddie Bauer catalog, you no longer need feel inadequate in describing a person’s pigmentation in lieu of guessing their ethnicity and country of origin.

Just as it would be unfair to call both the Na’vi and the Smurfs ‘blue’ instead of employing adjectives like ‘nordic’ or ‘cadet’, real people deserve distinctions.

‘Black’ feels too austere, and ‘dark brown’ too clinical. Instead, think of a person as ‘cognac’ (the label will be twice as clever if the person is inebriated). ‘Saddle’ will work well for a person who might have a color, or might merely be back from a week on a dude ranch. ‘Picante’ works equally well for victims of tanning salons or people who spend too much time south of the border, possibly eating Taco Bell. And who could be offended by being described as ‘taupe’? It has all the class of beige without the monotony, and eschews the dark intonations of ‘fossil’.

Even white people, whose previous best bet has been from a box of crayons with labels like ‘peach’ or ‘flesh’, can benefit from Eddie Bauer’s system of classification. To avoid the stigma of ‘albino’, say ‘bone’. To add a touch of the exotic to your ordinariness, say ‘mist’. To soften your pallor, say ‘buttercream’.

So whether you’re a ‘light olive’ Greek or a ‘sandstone’ Roman, this simple guide will help you avoid potential embarrassment. But, if you find yourself blushing, instead of blaming it on sunburn, think of yourself as ‘tea rose’ and let the world drink you in.

Author bio:

Matt Kolbet has published satire in Clockwise Cat, Defenestration and The American Drivel Review. He teaches and writes near Portland, Oregon.

Two poems by Ken Poyner

2011-07-22T13:18:00.006-05:00

MOTIVATING THE MID-TERM VOTER

I am the flight of your two-dimensional fancy.
I am your irrational hatred.
I am the envy that churns
The catch of your stomach.
I bleed blue blood even though
Yours is a distilled red and
I am your blood. I am
Your wish to be thoughtless action;
I am the thought that
You need no thought.
I carry the world
In a few sentences.
I am a geography
That uses no more than half
A tank of gas. I am the fear
Of what you know: what you do not know
Does not exist. I am
A child playing a game that runs
On batteries. I tweak your nose
At subtle emotions and you do not
Know where you learned to tweak your nose.
I drive the broad gestures
That you execute as detail,
The labyrinth of one straight line.
I have so much to tell you,
So much to tell you that
All you perceive is our rage:
The rage of being you, driven
By me, driven by them, driven
By anyone, hurled like a bowl of
Hunger, a fist in the face
Of something, someone, some now, satisfied
Oh so satisfied.

====================

THE COMMITTEE

We are heading out to town hall
This evening to commit some torture.
There is something we must know
And the pharmacist has buttoned up
Tighter than the seals
On Miss Johnson's mason jar preserves.
He will before the end tell us.
Not that we approve of the method.
It is reserved for only when
Out of the applied process we can see
A specific greater good, when
Sticking to principles might seem
Unprincipled. We can only
Trust in the on-balance outcome.
I admit sometimes the subject
Lies, concocts plans and understands
Beyond his or her abilities, implicates
Everyone and everything, would have you
Arrest your own dog. We keep
And eye out, shake the sieve
To see what falls away and what remains
Settled with the luster of possibility.
What we need is precise and commonly
Verifiable, the sort of truth
That makes itself known by proclamation,
Which has everyone saying, well,
There it is, and I knew all along.
We take no pleasure, no sir.
It is a sorry business, but
The majority vote is to use
All tools and, yes, you can ask
How many blind fish does it take
To make a democracy, but I am
No fisherman, and we are not
Rubes and just what might you know
About this, after all?

Author bio:

Ken Poyner has published during the last forty years perhaps three hundred poems in sixty or so venues, with his latest chapbook being Sciences, Social. He also is doing a bit of short fiction these days. Most recently, he has appeared in Eclectica, Blue Unicorn, Poet Lore, Frigg, Blue Collar Review, Adirondack Review, Medulla Review, Dogzplot and elsewhere. He lives with his world class power lifter wife and a collection of rescue cats in the bottom far right hand stretch of Virginia.

Durch by Alan Zhukovski

2011-07-22T13:06:00.008-05:00

Can you show me the way to the black moon? Хитрая крыса на вершине раины. Guinness. Impossible. Anything is possible, and the world was made for you and I, no, just for me. Can you be, can’t you? What are you talking about, sitting there on a tree? Do you mean that you are just the bravest rat in the world? Raining freedom. Simply glücklich. Неймовірно. Я бажаю бути. Servant of the crown. The state of myself. I’m falling off the edge of the world into the fruitful pit of my consciousness. Into the pit. Windy storm. Electric lights-no breach. The breach of etiquette. Stormy rainy day destroying the stupid and ridiculous electric-light-ideas. Have you been? Where? No matter. Have you been? The soft and arable moonlight opposing the electricity of human Spannung. Who are you, the lonely creator of eternally whitish light in the lungs of freedom? Been you, hito? Yes. My body’s nothing more than my thought itself. The feet of my height are growing from the greenish neat lungs of my ki. The lonely kitten walking on a broken leafless branch of a crazy poplar. Come on, my spiritual neko, staring at the abyss of greenish knives between the lines of the sunset. The wind is constantly saying you are likely to fall. But you won’t fall. Because you are not gonna fall, and you know that. I can see you through my eyes. It is a breakthrough. Thorough. Durch. Across. Насквозь. Через. Я прорезаю. The bunjingish eyes of the evening. Yes, I’m thinking in many languages. I have a silver tongue to pray to myself. How many subtly decisive, electric, heavy, jumpy words to say. They are blown away by the drops of zahlreiche images. How is it possible to express’ em? Експресом. Я знаю багато слів. They are falling like summer rain, like a waterfall of chestnut leaves. Die Quelle. The sharp end of my pen. Ame. Ama. Silver moonshine yuki. The serzce of the blunt-ish and equally grell-ish sunset. Come on, you lovers of the rain. I can be just anywhere. The freedom at the tips of my fingers. Lips. Lips are moving, but I CAN hear what they say. The desire to have anything. Why not? I see a leaf at the poplar top. Why can’t I touch it? The wind ain’t right. Hier war ich. Immer. Nein, ich ward. An image of Bill Ward is slipping away. It is hiding beneath and between... what? The lips of raining drops, which are drumming. They are hitting the roof. The concert hall of my spirit is gonna raise the roof and blow it away. No limits. Only the sound of drums. It is the only sign of Bill being here. He is. Er ward. Er wird... I’m everywhere, in any time and any place. Tear down the wall of common limitations on the way of the raining freedom-no heavy drops. Cannot I touch the tree? Чому ні? Yes, it is warm, and soft, and very tall. It’s gonna cover me and it’s gonna protect and defend. The tree. What is it? Who is it? Me. The leaves are kissing the drops. It’s a collection of desperate love stories. But the drops are being constantly resurrected. They fly to heaven and fall again to be kissed only once. But the poplar remembers and keeps’em. A boy-cat is sleeping. He is confident. His consciousness is kissing the lips of numerous dreams. He’s a hunter. Inkan. Shijin. Sara. Куди себе діти? Я не хочу його турбувати. Кіт. Keine Spannung. The electricity’s fading away between the leaves of a poplar, between the crazy lines of the broken sunset.

Author bio:

Alan Zhukovski's poetry, art and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in "MiPOesias", "elimae", "Foundling Review", "Kerouac's Dog", "Snow Monkey", "Liebamour" and around 10 other American/British magazines.

Two poems by Lola Nation

2011-07-22T12:53:00.007-05:00

Composed

every slanted rant, devoured
as hips viciously grind
tongue over jagged edges
of sharp wit,
I swallow each moment
My hands on his thighs
pulling closer
he’s giving all
and I’ve handed over
what I’ve got
this is fine, this is swimmingly
fine, I think

his hands compose cello sounds
from within baritone moans
a sound production in colorful motion
each step produced ala Rondeau
ostinato

repetitive rhythm
salient promises of focus
He is the recurring leitmotiv

in the sanctuary of
my
melody

Etymology of musical capacity
this is the language of movement
through music without words
keys and chords
spiral from within, chiming
the bell of truth in a choir
octaves above ground

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

My Poem on Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock, if you want my abstract impression-
you suck,
No one would tattoo your artwork on their back
Like a Hokusai wave,
You traded easels, paint brushes and a palette
To toss paint atop broken bits of glass,
that could have been recycled
You smothered sand in enamel that could have been better served a beach,
And as you were an alcoholic,
I think it’s fairly clear you struggled with your art -
unable to name the chaotic patterns that emerged violently
from within, you gave them numbers like any dull system;
and perhaps with your fractal art God did do you a favor
by ending that pain in a single car accident at the age of 44;
unfortunately taking with you the passenger and leaving behind
a girlfriend and a widow to carry on your legacy,
A legacy that still hangs in marvelous galleries in major metropolitan
cities from New York to Tehran, asking us to place it on the
floor the way you saw it, maybe in 1955, walking around it
from all four sides to feel the action
of each splashed and overlapped color
still dripping as if fresh again.

Author bio:

Lola Nation is a poet originally from Venice, California who is currently residing in Kansas City, Missouri. She writes short stories (Make it Short) and poetry (Insult to Injury Poetry) to keep her idle hands busy. She has had the honor of studying under the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Tom Robbins. She is a founding member of the Write the Future (WTF) a not-for-profit organization which hosts national poetry meetings, salons, publishes, and helps other writers network with one another. Her goal is to keep the writers on their meds. Her greatest accomplishment
to date is breaking her leg at a poetry reading last October.

Recipe by Jay Passer

2011-07-22T12:47:00.007-05:00


ancient trees

leaves fail to cling

anti-spring

 

personality independent of the poem wearing it

 

blue jeans

                plaid skirt

                                 argyle socks

                                                     shades

 

the scheme of things Superman or Hoover vacuum

killing the dreams off the carpet on your knees

crumbs of a broken drunk or a moon full of eyes

 

wheat milk bone dung

gloom antecedent

lost heart of an impending attack

 

corn yeast sugar water

brim my cup then off to slaughter

Author bio:

Jay Passer is a native San Franciscan. His recent work appears in 3am Magazine, Haggard & Halloo, Red Fez, Poetry Super Highway and Full of Crow. He is currently at work recording and translating the 'petits-cris' of roaches from within the walls of his apartment.

The Scheme of Currency by James Dye

2011-07-20T15:42:00.006-05:00

A hollow ball floats downstream
gracefully from bank to bank,
suspended free from attachments
like ice-cream scoops in soft drinks.

This is the scheme of currency:
It fluctuates at a fixed rate,
Great interest hovers sweetly,
as the world economy slumps
down dead slowly to the floor.

The floods are getting going fast.
As the level of liquid rises,
the fail floats on from bank to bank

doubling twice the precession.

The ball is dead in the water
on a fishing line that has cork as bait
from stucco rafts attached to
fleets of hollow wharfs.

Author bio:

James Dye is a college student working on his English major in Dubuque, Iowa. He's appeared in a vast number of books, journals, magazines, and websites around the world since he started publishing in 2009. You may read his free poetry e-book at www.poemhunter.com or visit his blog at jamesjdye.blogspot.com. A collection of his poetry will be published sometime in 2011 entitled "Variegate."

Alone in the House by Liam Wilkinson

2011-07-20T15:38:00.006-05:00

my neighbour has this kid
he must be
fourteen maybe
fifteen

and every time
my neighbour leaves
the kid alone
in the house
the kid
shouts the place down
screams
as if he were being
squeezed
by the walls
one of which
we happen to share

he bawls
and shrieks
the whole time
my neighbour is away
I think
there must be
something wrong
with the kid

and sometimes
while the kid
is tearing the house down
with his screeching
I decide to join in

and it feels good
a real release
as though
somehow
the world
like my neighbour
has left me
all alone

and it’s just me
and the kid
screaming
screaming
screaming
until my neighbour’s car
rolls up
on the driveway
and everything
returns
to
silence

the loudest
I've ever heard

Author bio:

Liam Wilkinson lives in Yorkshire, England with his wife and his favourite pen. He is the editor of Prune Juice: Journal of Senryu & Kyoka.

Two poems by Robert Scotellaro

2011-07-20T15:26:00.006-05:00

Penlight

Your silence
is a season
where the
steam irons
are in bloom
in small pots
along the
window
ledge
and
sizzle
when you
spit on them.

Where a sun
creeps
through
a crack in
the clouds
so small
it can be
measured
in karats.

====================

The Next War

It is always the same: the rude symmetry
of a man split in half by lightening,
in equal parts, rolling down either side
of a hill,

the bad dreams that follow, turned
inside-out like gaudy coats.

The angels glutting on cumulous clouds
to wash down the sorrow.

The paperweight: a glass shark, shattering
against the hardwood floor from some
clumsy general's desk.

And the night outside, so dense, it can only
be read in Braille.

Author bio:

Robert Scotellaro's poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the author of four chapbooks of poetry. His most recent collection is Rhapsody of Fallen Objects (Flutter Press 2010). A new chapbook of poems, The Night Sings A Cappella, is forthcoming by Big Table Press in spring 2011. He is the recipient of Zone 3's Rainmaker Award in Poetry. He currently lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.

Hangman by Willie Smith

2011-07-20T15:17:00.007-05:00

Played hangman with myself.

Struggled to untangle

the word in the dream

before the noose over my neck slipped.

Ached to spell the word to break the spell

before I swung over the floor

into the dance without myself.

In the beginning was the dance.

After came the word

claiming the word

preceded the dance,

even as the dance seeded the word.

And I began to see the word seeded,

while through space I fell.

Then the rope the neck broke.

Author bio:

Willie Smith is deeply ashamed of being human. His work celebrates this horror. To see him further embarrass himself you are cordially invited to visit: WS Smith.