Category: Poetry

She married a bad man. She did not mind that he was a bad man. That he was a bad man excited her.

He never complained or moaned like a baby so long as he could be bad and she enjoyed his badness and his myriad of bad sides. She enjoyed the hard integument that cut her to the core. She enjoyed the terse and taciturn tete-a-tetes that were never verbose. When he shouted it showed that he really cared.

He did care.

And that is why he built a wall around her.

And planted trees that formed a canopy.

When she protested he called her his Madonna.

And the unicorn and the rabbits and ewes made her very happy. And then one day the bad man decided to be a magician. The best magicians are the fakes, the fabricators, the cheats, the ones with the white even teeth, the fake tans, the cat’s eyes, the ones in the white jump suits and undulating capes, the best magicians finally end up in prison or in the mouth of the roaring lion. He made her disappear into a thousand pieces and alphabetically labeled each piece A for arteries B for bladder C for cunt D for diaphragm…

and when the police arrested him, they said, he was a very bad man.

Carl Van Detta

He was dirty man.

A dirty and filthy man. Dirty and filthy.

But a clean man, physically speaking, with an unblemished physiognomy. His chiseled frame did in fact excite the opposite but not just the opposite sex his own sex lusted after this dirty this filthy man. He was meticulous and fastidious when it came to hygiene. Never did a smell roil that structure. He was a spotless man. But with a metaphysically dirty and filth mind.

Impelled by his dirty and his filthy mind he spent many hours in the local laundromat.

Filthy underwear. Smeared lingerie. Soiled knickers. Dirty underclothing.

Until one day she mistook him for her laundry. She folded him up and placed him into her wooden basket. He liked her soft hands, and he liked the way she handled him, and he liked the smell that emanated from her body, and he liked the feeling that something good would happen and so he didn’t complain about being folded up and placed in the wooden basket.  

Carl Van Detta

The spider from the gut spins the web.

The wine from the jug spins the head.

The word from the mouth spins the tale.

From the sky to the earth the glider tailspins.

“I am not here,” inside the head you hear

the devil say, “the world to unconfuse.

The failure of all being being the bomb,

I am but the fuse. Each life born to die.

The rock to crumble. The star to rumble

through the eons to the ashes in its mouth.

Only love breathes eternal; although none

understand why love –

worse than death –

forever and always hurts.”

The spider from the gut the corpse spins. The

wine from the jug plots against the heart spins.

The devil inside, the nausea to ease,

now and again a new tale spins. 

Willie Smith

i drink amongst 

the deranged and lonely

who have no place to go 

where the bartender sometimes 

gives me free rounds on account of

“you’re a good dude and 

i see your sorrow”

i don’t ask for much

and i’m given a lot,

i should be thankful,

but i wish to be 

left alone

i wonder if this sort of thing

plagued my ancestors and 

if this fixation on death 

can be attributed to 

them or if it’s just 

my head

Tohm Bakelas

I thought, one night, of a rose,

and into my mind

the thought of a rose arose.

While into the woods,

disregarding all shoulds,

like a knight on a horse of glue,

I rode.

Willie Smith

     Tip of the smith hat to Rudyard Kipling

If I could reach back and flush myself

like the piece of shit I am.

If I could under the sole of a boot

squish my centipede soul,

contemplate with a grin

the guts-clotted legs twitch.

If I could torch to hell

my slum of a life.

Then might I hold my head high

up my own ass, proud

of the abomination, the impotent rage,

the loser lust, the petty vindictive spite,

say nothing of, oozing down the mirror,

over my eye, the spit. A tiny gnat,

a nit, surfing a saliva bubble,

shrieks, “Save me! For breakfast, at least,

you ghoul, you clown, you horrid shit,

save me!” But no sweat: 

I never eat what I kill.

Fail even to know,

except in pixels like this,

time frothed to defy belief,

what I kill.                

Willie Smith

Cough up your locule

You were standing over me casting a glowing shadow

Within ravens crows & magpies.

You spoke softly & I couldn’t make out the words

I saw your lips move.

The birds swooned casting tenebrous blankets

Bromidic is the integument comes from peregrination

Spit hymeneal chyle.

Piss scrofula erysipelas the gout the pox & love

Shit chthonic kisses

The coagulated the aceldama fructifies fecundity in the womb

When tomorrow we weep tears that are crystal are but otiose

Concupiscence is the trajectory wails the hydra dressed in coruscating silk.

Fulo Devhanque

She was beautiful & alone

I sat

Said

You are intoxicating.

She smiled a supercilious smile with her eyes

I asked if I offended her

She said no

So

I asked her if she were afraid of sex & she laughed

So

I said, repeat this

She said what.

I said

I want to fuck you

No.

See you are afraid.

Betrayed,

Those supercilious eyes feared defeat

She laughed a soft false laugh

Well

I want to fuck you

No thank you.

Richard Wainborough

A night of serious drinking with Cervantes always ends in tears. We drink until sunlight makes the electric light unemployed. In the morning a profound melancholy is experienced, so profound is this melancholy that we start to drink again.

          Stop with the morning talk.

Drink!  

It happens every time, just like clockwork, like the bells tolling on the hour, after a heavy night of drinking there is always a fight. A ball composing of fingers and a thumb will collide with a mouth and teeth will be expectorated in a shower of spit and blood.

The only cure for this kind violence is to

Drink.

And so, after the fight,

                                      We drink.

Cervantes has never been the same since he lost his left arm. It held the hand that he wrote with.  

To this we drink.

Larry Kevinour