The Shoreline Pioneer of Washed-Up Beaches

The Shoreline Pioneer of Washed-Up Beaches

Walking barefoot on driftwood
splinters in my footsteps
lame sole; life infected.
Castaway out here on the border between
the sand and the sea.

With relentless questions
that precariously ride crash waves:
the tide is coming in
fast fast,
swallows exsiccated starfish whole.

Stand fast
my gravel bank seascape defences
all shored-up against
a breach of shingle stories
when surf sounding ‘s’s cascade
into shale surrender.

Shiver;
I’m soaked to the skin with this conspiracy
that tomorrow is always over my shoulder.

--P.A.Levy, having fled his native East End, now hides in the heart of Suffolk countryside learning the lost arts of hedge mumbling and clod watching. He has been published in many magazines and is an original member of the Clueless Collective to be found at: www.cluelesscollective.co.uk.

Base of Madness

Base of Madness

into the id of pain
sometimes we slide
sometimes we hide away
in catacombs of irrational
we forge across a river red

beside the demon rage
we burn the sun
to infect the day

at the base of madness
the reptile slithers
our demon speaks to me

--Billy Jno Hope breathes to impress art. His collection The Thirty Third Witness is available at LuLu.com. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve Part VIII: Why Go?

Quoteable

“I believe in peace...

Bitch.” -–Tori Amos

APPROPRIATING HAFIZ

APPROPRIATING HAFIZ

If she, Reason, was not
So dense, was more intelligent,
And knew how rapturous
It is to be caught in the traps
Of her round, abundant breasts,
Reason would demand more recompense
From we ratiocinationist
When we have hands cut
By her traps’ teeth.

--Duane Locke lives by an ancient oak, an underground stream, and as an osprey’s home in rural Lakeland, Florida.

Future: A 400 page book of his poems, YANG CHU’s POEMS, to be published in April, 2009 by the Canadian publisher, Crossing Chaos.

Present: Featured poet and Interviewed (23pp.) in “Eviscerator Heaven #4."

Past: 6,198 poems published in print magazines and e zines.

The entire issue, Vol. 10, No, 1 of The Bitter Oleander contains his poems
And 92pp. Interview.

For further information, click Duane Locke on Google Search, 138,000 entries.

ALETHEIA

ALETHEIA

Last night
On my way
To the wine shop
To buy life
For my one-legged lover,

I saw my priest
And my guru
Hugging each other
As they entered
The wine shop.

I hope that neither
Tells the other
That I am his client
Who goes
To have his depression
Cured.

I go to both
Because I am desperate,
This depression
Is destroying my life.
I have already failed
On three attempts
At suicide.

If he priest knew
I also went to the guru,
He’d call me, “A backslider
And heretic, saying I would
Burn forever in hell.”
If the guru knew
I went to the priest,
He would call me “Infidel,
Say I would never reach
Satori or Nirvana, would
Be mired in samsara and maya.”

I hope the priest and guru
Do not find out about me
Going to both.

Perhaps, I won’t be mentioned,
But no one can tell
What will happen
When two drunks
Joyfully discourse.

--Duane Locke lives by an ancient oak, an underground stream, and as an osprey’s home in rural Lakeland, Florida.

Future: A 400 page book of his poems, YANG CHU’s POEMS, to be published in April, 2009 by the Canadian publisher, Crossing Chaos.

Present: Featured poet and Interviewed (23pp.) in “Eviscerator Heaven #4."

Past: 6,198 poems published in print magazines and e zines.

The entire issue, Vol. 10, No, 1 of The Bitter Oleander contains his poems
And 92pp. Interview.

For further information, click Duane Locke on Google Search, 138,000 entries.

LIFE IS ONLY LOST WHEN THE SUN IS ROUND AND ORANGE

LIFE IS ONLY LOST WHEN THE SUN IS ROUND AND ORANGE

The sun never
Ends
Its departure the same

Those that think otherwise have
Never looked
At their thousand of photographs
Of sunsets.

People protect their identities
With insensitivity and inattention.
They distort their perceptions
And invent fantasies for beliefs
So they will not face the facts
That structures once thought
To contain a deep logic and pattern
Are really irrational and chaotic.

Their glorification of order, forms,
Binary oppositions, and the not-here
Gibberish.

Sunsets
Are parataxis, each sunset defamiliarizes
The expected pattern,
The expected pattern that never existed.

Yesterday’s sunset resembled a sylph
In a loose, floating silver dress. She
Was not scattering marigolds, but something
Indeterminate and quasi-black, shaped
Like bewilderment. This sylph is in silver
Led to the recall a cracked black asphalt
Mountain road with a pecking cerise-combed rooster,
going downward past
A cemetery in St. Elia, Italy where stood
In front of vastness a stone angel
Covered in lichen whose green
Due to winter had turned to silver,
The silver concealed her wings,
Making the silver, wingless angel more beautiful.

--Duane Locke lives by an ancient oak, an underground stream, and as an osprey’s home in rural Lakeland, Florida.

Future: A 400 page book of his poems, YANG CHU’s POEMS, to be published in April, 2009 by the Canadian publisher, Crossing Chaos.

Present: Featured poet and Interviewed (23pp.) in “Eviscerator Heaven #4."

Past: 6,198 poems published in print magazines and e zines.

The entire issue, Vol. 10, No, 1 of The Bitter Oleander contains his poems
And 92pp. Interview.

For further information, click Duane Locke on Google Search, 138,000 entries.

Bio: Eric C. Caren

From The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guid Thirty-Sixth Edition::



Eric C. Caren was born (a collector) in 1959. By the age of 5 he had collected stamps, coins and baseball cards. He started collecting rare newspapers at the age off 11, after stumbling upon an abandoned house full of them in Rockland County, NY where he lived. In high school in the mid-1970's he apprenticed with a rare book dealer in Connecticut and set up as a dealer at a comic book convention in NYC sometime around 1975. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a Business degree in 1981. His first job was director of a gallery that dealt in rare newspapers in London in Covent Garden Market soon after it opened. He established The Caren Archive, a full-time business selling historical collectibles in 1983. He co-founded HGA Auctions with Dennis Holzman. He is a former Director of The Ephemera Society of America, a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, and a Consultant to The Newseum (Mr Caren's first newspaper collection will be the most substantial part of their permanent collection). He is a partner with Stephen A. Goldman in the business that bears his name as well as in OldNews, Inc. He has authored nine books using rare newspapers -- The Extra series with Castle Books - and has co-authored his 10th book, The Civil War Smithsonian Institution Headliners Series with Dr. Stephen A. Goldman. Reprints of papers from his and Dr. Goldman's archive are sold at The Smithsonian Institution and The Holocaust Memorial Museum.

WHEN KIERKEGAARD WAS WITH REGINA DID HE EVER SEE HER

WHEN KIERKEGAARD WAS WITH REGINA DID HE EVER SEE HER

Infinity is like death,
Neither can be gripped
By a fist and squeezed;
Neither can be grabbed
By two hands and stretched.
Neither can sit on a couch, and
Warm with their clothed flesh
Cloth-covered cotton.

        Both have their myths;
        Both have their logos.
Both are cogent conversational pieces,
Death less.

Both infinity and death are considered
To be real, death less.
The finite is more spectral
The finite requires much oxygen
In brain cells and much practice
To perceive.

The finite can pull a rickshaw
And never be seen,
The finite can carry suitcases
At an airport and never be seen.
The finite can be your lover
For years and never be seen.

--Duane Locke lives by an ancient oak, an underground stream, and as an osprey’s home in rural Lakeland, Florida.

Future: A 400 page book of his poems, YANG CHU’s POEMS, to be published in April, 2009 by the Canadian publisher, Crossing Chaos.

Present: Featured poet and Interviewed (23pp.) in “Eviscerator Heaven #4."

Past: 6,198 poems published in print magazines and e zines.

The entire issue, Vol. 10, No, 1 of The Bitter Oleander contains his poems
And 92pp. Interview.

For further information, click Duane Locke on Google Search, 138,000 entries.

How To Build A Rapport With Your Ass

How To Build A Rapport With Your Ass

[The stress here is on how to understand the ass, if you're to have him listen to you. Toward this end, instructions are given, step-by-step, to achieve this. If you own an ass, or if you should encounter one by chance, what you learn here will be of great import]

Normally, people do not build a rapport with asses. That being the case, there is no need at all for an article like this one. Except that it is an absolute, eye-blinking lie when someone says that when you own one. Because if the truth be told, an ass is an ass, meaning he'll sometimes listen to you for no good reason at all, and sometimes not at all for a good reason: behavior like his. When that happens, you could command, then curse, then scream, then commence to kicking ass; and, when that fails, you could coax, cajole, plead, sob, pray, and then curse all over again, but with far greater vehemence, all to no avail.

And so for the owner of an ass, or, for that matter, anyone in a chance encounter with one, here's a three-step proven way to build a rapport with your ass.

One. Look him in the eye -- not to challenge to dominate, but to allow him a good look at you. This is to humor him. You know you've succeeded when he starts to bray and honk like crazy. It is said that asses find incongruity laughable, just as we do.

Two. Show him that you can trust him. Stand where his kick can knock you flat on your back. And if that indeed should happen, don't blame yourself. Your ass needs a little time to trust you as well. A hint given by all those kicked to kingdom come and back is this: stand up, dust yourself off, and get back to where his kick can (and did) knock you on your back. This shows him that his best isn't all enough to keep you down. This easy, gently defiant act also tells him you're as much the ass as he is. It's of course likely that he'll kick you again. But you'll wear him out. As many a time as he'd kick you, as many a time will he find you where he can kick you again. This way you drain him off his strength, you tire him out, until he accepts the inevitable: you're even more the ass than he is!

Three. Offer him a carrot or an apple or a lump of rock candy. Any ass loves it when its crunch time. So you see to it that he gets his crunchies. But get him to drooling before you get him to munching. Get him to not just crunch away thoughtlessly, but knowingly -- that it's you who's forking over the goodies; and, that without you he'll go munching on nothing but gummies -- his.

...And so now that you can look your ass in the eye, take his side-winding kicks, and get him to eat off the palm of your hand, you can truly say you've built a rapport with your ass...

It's as they say: it takes one to know one.

--Norbert Luciano as a young man was a news reporter for publications in the Philippines and Hong Kong; and a news correspondent, based in Macau, for an American news service. While in Hong Kong, he interviewed, researched and wrote, Early to Rise a well reviewed satire on the Chinese commune system. He has also taught English in Hong Kong and in New York City public schools.

Quoteable

"They're an engmatic brotherhood of aesthetic architects... This city was built primarily by laborers and automatons, but the vitruvians brought the older techniques to the enterprise-such as sacred geometry." --Dean Motter (Mr. X Condemned #1)

catch-of-the-night

catch-of-the-night

in the wake of longing,
the tongue is a sliver of primal, cunning art,
predatory, probing, darting,
seeking the hidden honeycomb,
flowing wildly, profusely,
seasoned by a woman's dare

soon,
amid the not-so-secret laughter,
at the husband's ire,
impotent,
the emboldened, slaking tongue
now slithers on the glaze of a sepulcher
now opening, slightly,
ever so slowly,
to unashamedly reveal
the offering just beyond
a blasted faith

a wayward creature,
panting, gasping, moaning,
caught,
in the scent of juniper and lust...

--Cat Roberts (no bio provided)

Painters’ Exhalations 52

Painters’ Exhalations 52

—after Honoré Daumier’s The chess players

Meditative  jousting.
  Isolated
  thoughts
  resemble
    dangling
daggers of ice
kissing winter’s freezing, fragrant breaths
as light
   disseminates its layered bodies,
destroying dampness,

the weaker, inferior  shades of physical 
       capability.

Patience,
strategy,
mistakes.

Grenades may land atop the shadowy squares
destroying the intellect, the shaky move from 
hands that’ve beaten dead horses
obsessively.

  Will is incoherent:

the seesaw of theoretic movements
intertwined with ensuing 
self-containment
 
 presents genesis to death,
as checkmate

echoes
  boundlessly, circling the players’ field,
specifying dust in the eyes of

     the losing, unprotected.  

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), as well as an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). A chapbook is also forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation.

Painters’ Exhalations 51

Painters’ Exhalations 51

—after Edgar Degas’ The Dance Class

Various
  lessons
and intuition.  Say the wings are at rest.  The body
nesting
  softly
within

   the philosophy of teaching:

your feet, young ones, toss them into flight,

believe the body can acclimate to cyclopedic angles, 
 to light’s
position
highlighting
  your whirling leaps, years of allegiance.

Old sir, gray yarn dangling from
    the focused head
who has seen birds’ stumbling newness
 landing
   eventually 
 beneath air’s many
strumming hands.

Recital, display, soon
bodies will indent
the watchers’
   awareness,
  showing the soft fabric of ballet

draping the shoulders of a night’s sole activity, unblemished
under the direction of teacher’s

     affirming training. 

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), as well as an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). A chapbook is also forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation.

Painter’s Exhalations 42

Painter’s Exhalations 42

—after William-Adolph Bouguereau’s The Little Beggar Girls

Feet unadorned
 with
   costly shoes
    or 
carpeted understanding.

Eyes,
 the setting sun’s
body
  hiding where mountains
confiscate its fueling light, downright
suffocation.

Your mother vanished 

wearing wings of questions:

So alone, an earthly small, 
  why
are your backs

  needing of miracle’s 
resuscitation?

An antiquated profession this begging,
sadness dressed in soft fabricated
wants
 of
  bread
   or
    a gift wrapped
    within the hands of infinite
escape.

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), as well as an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). A chapbook is also forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation.

Painters’ Exhalations 41

Painters’ Exhalations 41

—after Albert Anker’s Boy Sleeping in the Hay

Such joy in ironing of day’s wrinkles.  The effort,
        the body

antiqued 
   ensuing roughhousing, 
                horse playing,
        the body manual
for many young men.

    Rest now,
realize the sequenced photos
             forecasting possible
tomorrows,
  what society deems as simplistic dreams:
your mind’s
        rejuvenating
   akin to newly found experiences
glued to the skipping stone
         your arm’s mighty lever

releases in smiling awe.  

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), as well as an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). A chapbook is also forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation.

Painters’ Exhalations 40

Painters’ Exhalations 40

—after William Blake’s Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing

Brand of spirit
surpassing
   mind’s topographic awareness, a fashionable
outdoing

  outlining exhaling gowns   with 
    ballerina flair,
       spanning
the spinning world 
a moment ago
dancing in pure imagination
of a little girl’s nature.

King Oberon
delighting
   in 
    his kingdom of unbashful
     beautiful
renditions of fair ladies,

the mythical reality 
metaphysicians  document 
 as superlative certainty
few minds recognize
as
 authentic beings

capable of dancing without
manmade
  music.

       Malleable 
to the moment’s sincere hands,
smiles erupt
from clay-toned faces
     in knowing the act
causes multilayered,
unabashed   uncontrolled    excitement. 

--Felino Soriano (California) is a philosophy student and case manager working with developmentally and physically disabled adults. Felino edits the online experimental poetry journal Counterexample Poetics. He is the author of two chapbooks Exhibits Require Understanding Open Eyes (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Feeling Through Mirages (Shadow Archer Press, 2008), as well as an e-book Among the Interrogated (BlazeVOX [books], 2008). A chapbook is also forthcoming Abstract Appearance Reaching Toward the Absolute (Trainwreck Press, 2008). The juxtaposition of his philosophical studies with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains his poetic stimulation.

Love Swami

From the Warren Ellis email blog Bad Signal:

bad signal
LOVE SWAMI

Today I am writing the outline of a tv show, and so I don't have a lot of space in my head for the extemporaneous. I mostly used that stuff up yesterday for the backmatter of DOK SLEEPLESS #12, possibly the most meandering and nonsensical thing I've yet written for the back of that book. Mostly inspired by Herbie Hancock and the fact that there is a thing called "shitgaze." Which amuses me no end.

You know what never happens in comics? Fun neologisms for comics movements (not the bowel kind). Very rarely do you get a comics equivalent of shoegaze, postpunk,
grime, prog, etc etc. There have been one or two, sure, but shouldn't there be like five a year?

Also, Dash Shaw finished his incredible BODYWORLD, which you can now read in its entirely at http://www.dashshaw.com.

-- W
____________________________________________________________________________________
--Warren Ellis is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE, PLANETARY, and TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and the author of underground classic CROOKED LITTLE VEIN.

Transmet Vol 2: Lust for Life is pictured here:

THE MARTIAN ASTRONOMER

THE MARTIAN ASTRONOMER

The visit was brief.
The patient said his piece.
He said he wanted to destroy
every car in the world.

He said the world would
be better served with trees
planted on the highway.
The asphalt would have
to be removed.

He said motorists
were the delusional ones.
He claimed to be
a Martian astronomer.
He claimed the medications
would destroy him
and the voices he loved to hear.

--Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal works in the mental health field for the Public Guardian. His poems in English and Spanish have appeared in Struggle Magazine, Pemmican, Abbey, Calliope Nerve, Main Street Rag, and The American Dissident. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve Part VIII: Why Go? Purchase his chapbook Still Human at Kendra Steiner Editions.

the little god in the yellow hat

the little god in the yellow hat

The Booming Voice From Above:

You can either be the dying crab on the beach,
or the jankety satellite that barely holds orbit.
Your choice!
You can either be the rotten discarded love kiwi,
Or the two way speaker at Rally's that never works.

You will forever be having to pull up to the window to order.
You will forever be having to correct the order.
You will forever be having to hear my dreadful voice.

You will forever be having to be, and that's a raw deal.
My voice has shook even the steeliest of balls.
My bounty has crumpled even the ironiest of knees.
You will forever be having to be my kinda bitch.

You can know death, though.
Would you like to know death?
You can know death then.

(recess)

Pleasant, no? A real no-brainer.
You will forever be having NOT that again.
I am in control, see?

You can either be the dried merlot in your toilet,
Or the hi tech plastic head to a nuclear projectile.

Get it?
You can be the last palm standing after the
next tsunami,
Or a broken support beam setting off to sea.

You will forever be having to make these great decisions.
Hooray for my questions!
Would you prefer fries with that,
Or the more sensible choice of a fruit cup?

--Shawn Misener lives in Michigan. He is in no way related to Julia A. Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan, who is widely considered to be one of the worst poets in history. the little god in the yellow hat originally appeared in Calliope Nerve Part VIII: Why Go?

Quoteable

"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, though and speculation at a standstill." --Barbara Tuchman

assuming the worst

assuming the worst

wouldn't it be nice
if the radio turned itself on
& began broadcasting
some good news?

tomato morning --
clearly tepid, yes, Theo?
Linked to a "9"
like the Queen of the Rose Garden
looking over the fence
at a sanitary cat --

a crooked letter 'K'
twists up after school
& there it was --
the missing notebook!

--J.D. Nelson experiments with words and sound at: MadVerse.com. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve Part VIII: Why Go?

Quoteable

“Sodium Pentothal was an idea I had.” --Anthrax

The Gardener

The Gardener

Seeds of a madness flower
sprouts into weeds
I dug in a poison field
to kill the vultures
but the weeds
intoxicated the children
Dionysus aroused
scorched the garden
Mirage existence revealed
desperate time indeed
to irrigate the oasis of my mind

--Billy Jno Hope’s book The Thirty Third Witness is available through LuLu. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve VII: The Troupe of Calliope.

Halfway There

Halfway There

Hands are wicked
Thrusting against
Bedside manner
Cigar after, ashtray shocker
Swing some of that clear
Bed poison
Rotten afterglow
Some post coital heartbreak

They were meeker times
Unwelcome suicide
Tempest machines
Unplugged for youth(er) years
We'd swing into metal screens
Halfway there

Stealthy villain–child
Who said she'd be the one
To disappear
Procrastinate
Break into the giddy abortionist
Maybe like sunset
She'll wait for me

Slick like the head chip
Fractures we always revisit
Though I never promise
I'll get there first

--Melissa Lebruin resides in New York City and is originally from the Commonwealth of Dominica. She is a poet and amateur photographer. This piece first appeared in Calliope Nerve VII: The Troupe of Calliope. Her book The Rebellious Escapist is available at LuLu.com.

Greyer Eyes

Greyer Eyes

Every song on the radio is a dried-up summer back in the city.
The billboards and streetlights
can’t help us:
we're each a grey mosaic tile
and together we make a grey mural.
In it, there’s you, still bright.

Sometimes it occurs to me
you must know the way to a land
that makes you commonplace,
and how to put yourself away in it
like the cats in Emily Carr’s Koskimo
or like grey squirrels in their trees

You must know something
the weight of a grey jay in your palm
up by the hot springs, in a grey canyon
where you have greyer eyes.

--Beth Langford is a zoology student in Vancouver, BC. This piece first appeared in Calliope Nerve VII: The Troupe of Calliope.

Join, Or Die

Ben Franklin's "Join, or Die" from the Pennsylvania Gazette, May 9th, 1754 is commonly recognized as the first American newspaper comic.

Pamela in the Spring

Pamela in the Spring

She walked by me and everyday she would look through me. Time is irrelevant for me, but I always looked forward to the time when she would walk by me. It’s almost silly to consider that I was in love with her and impossible to ignore that I was in love with her. Yes, me in love with her. I’ve never been in love before and I’ll never love again.

It took a few days for me to fall in love with Pamela; Pamela was her name, as far as I could tell. During the first week of spring, she began to take a daily walk and would go by me in her circuit. Lots of people took their daily walk and went by me, but Pamela was somehow different. I saw it in the necklace she wore, a small silver chain that wrapped around her small, lithe neck and blondish brown hair with a black leather pouch at its bottom. Her Medicine Bag made me notice her, but as I began to watch her, I saw more about her that I craved.

I loved everything about her: the way her sweatpants and sweatshirt clung to her body, the shape of her thighs; the curve of her breast all intoxicated me with love. I tried to complement her several time, by the only way I knew. A piece of me would fall off in front of her as she walked by on her course. She never noticed except for once, when she tripped over a part of my body and kept on walking after shaking it off. I can’t talk in the human way, I tried to learn without success. I could only watch her day after day, as the seasons began to change and the world grew colder.

Eventually Pamela began to walk slower and slower, the clothes lost their shape, and her hair turned the color of my grey-white skin. Then, after one day when she brought her daughter or great-granddaughter to the park and showed her old favorite walking path through the park, she never returned. I did the one thing a rock could do, and I fell apart into a thousand pieces, slowly turning into dust.

--James Dilworth publishes the short-lit and poetry zine Non-Creative Garbage. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve Part VI: Word Slinger.

The Shrine

The Shrine

The last wisp of incense smoke
The last glimmer of candle-light
The chime is still
The offerings dried up
The sand and flowers returned to Earth
Only we remain.

--Scott Marshall is a writer, artist, tech guru, and designer residing in Saint John, New Brunswick.

Quoteable

"Poetry is to be found nowhere unless we carry it within us." --Joseph Joubert

Quoteable

"Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,
because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science." --Sigmund Freud

Ello, Mud Mouth

Ello, Mud Mouth

Baby brackets,
ice number seven
& sometimes eight --

Good talk-talk
like a silver snake
full of rage.

I cried a river
of hot sauce.

I brush my hair
with a big rock.

My teeth
are made of
chocolate.

I'm alone
w/ my halo.

I'm wearing
brown flannel.

I'm an eyeball,
pirate's gold.

The big mouth says
keep up the great work.

--J.D. Nelson experiments with words and sound. His poems have appeared in many small press publications, both print and online. Visit J.D.'s site: MadVerse.com. This piece first appeared in Calliope Nerve VII: The Troupe of Calliope.

Two Pieces by Billy Jno Hope

The Threat

by the nano
genetics disintegrate
past twenty-five sunsets
twilight stumbles
out of obscurity
into dawn's
most contemptuous disregard
of mortality

play

half moon rising
shrugged of
the artifice
on bended knees

--Billy Jno Hope’s book The Thirty Third Witness is available through LuLu.com. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve Part VI: Word Slinger.

Quoteable

"A genre-bending blend of language and posturing and new graphic hip." --Raygun on Preacher Vol III: Proud Americans

Two Pieces b J.D. Nelson

good funk galaxy

like a radish sandwich
like a slice of red apple
on my sprout sandwich
with white cheese
while watching star trek

Vex Reef, Part 2

Cork vole,
rye mo'
me umper-
stamping
of the real
estate market,
deep & deeper,
milestone what --
pox tick like hooves.

--J.D. Nelson experiments with words and sound in his subterranean laboratory. His poems have appeared in many small press publications, both in print and online. Visit J. D.'s site: www.MadVerse.com. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve Part VI: Word Slinger.

Quoteable

"And if this book offends the delicate sensibilites of some people due to their religious convictions - well, that saddens me. Because, as a man who has an unflappable, fervent, and devout faith in God, let me assure those who find this book spiritually questionalbe that I know - in my heart and soul - the Lord ot be mighty, just, loving, and righteous...

and a huge fan of PREACHER."

--Kevin Smith

Old Gropius Speaks Lingua-Sinatra

Old Gropius Speaks Lingua-Sinatra

In western garb.
He innovates his alphabet precisely.
Was never discussed ontologically.
In lingua-Sinatra.
He simmers up his famous marmalade for sale.
His shoals' foaming tumult.
A mingle so pastiche.
What morphemes consist of.
Is who's fooling who.

--Raymond Farr is an accomplished poet who has been published in Aught, Xstream, Hutt, Zafusy, 88, Split, Calliope Nerve, Dusie, and BlazeVox amongst others. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve Part VI: Word Slinger.

Quoteable

"...have no fear. Art will transform you into something meaningful." --Mike Carey

White Tea / Cambric Tea

White Tea / Cambric Tea

She took up the cambric handkerchief
(She took up the cambric handkerchief)

milky white tea spawned cambric face;
toned cambric tea in stable weight

Cicadas “take off their cambric tea sleepwalk
a foul tea - Nursery Tea, also known as

cambric tea:, a very weak
as Sissy tea. The ladies

crave sour things, as with
a fleshy cambric tea

Some forty-two varieties,
But there is a reality under

the many years before when this delicious
complimentary coffee or tea

warm milk with just, served with,
that is, and butter'd bun

the night sun meaning of cambric tea
- Nursery Tea, aka long tea, white tea--

Many years ago when I spent a year
of faith in tea the nearest entity.

--Sheila Murphy’s book Continuations with Douglas Barbour is available from The University of Alberta Press. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve V: The Great Poetry Experiment.

Quoteable

"...out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry." --W.B. Yeats

Quoteable

“Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.” --Gustave Flaubert

Quoteable

"To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” --Robert Frost

Untitled

Untitled

Waiting in a dark car for my mother in the flower shop,
lit up raindrops on the windows (the large kind as my mother has a way
of measuring them-- Oregon drops are smaller but come in larger
quantities, good for watering those roses).
Opening the door against explicit orders,
wandering up and down too bright card aisles (father, grandma,
birthday, Christmas, etc.).
Sewing secrets into paintings-- hold the canvas like you would a harp.
The television is loud (it distracts me from sending messages of how I
don't thrive so well in competitive environments).
We walk into the film late, the previews are over and the only seats
left are right in front (so close I have to lean back far, straining my neck and eyes.)
I tell a girl about you, changing your name and other details.

--Ariel Lee is a young writer from Portland, OR. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve V: The Great Poetry Experiment.

Never See Me Bleed

Never See Me Bleed

For the bearer of the ill-conceived
The unborn waves
Bows low to the
Lovers uncompromised
Let's loose the stones
Of a fallen heart
The god of wine
Shrieks into other portals
Where other witches dwell
To blaspheme reactions
Pagans pay the price
But to retain dignity
I will swallow space

--Melissa Lebruin resides in New York City and is originally from the Commonwealth of Dominica. She is a poet and amateur photographer. This piece originally appeared in Calliope Nerve V: The Great Poetry Experiment. Her book The Rebellious Escapist is available at LuLu.com.

Satellite Minds

Satellite Minds

This doesn't make much sense-
the green and brown beer bottles rattling together
on top of the fridge

Conan's impossible hair bounces
and retains form even through the rabbit ears

she says
our antennae will be obsolete next February
so if we don't get our act together
we'll lose it all

lose what-
Conan's hair?
I wonder aloud
breathing out smoke signals

even more-
she bites the orange and continues-

more than you could ever imagine

(static)

one of the bottles bounces off the linoleum
and suddenly I realize my trajectory
is not unlike
the fake metal
yellow-assed
supermarket chair I sit in:

half in the kitchen
half in the living room

there's only two of us in the efficiency
yet I swear there are three or more
depending on what her story is

divided
repeatedly and possibly endlessly
in our electrified radio wave apartment
by satellite minds

the strip of golden plastic
delineating truth from memories
and forcing empty space between us

--Shawn Misener is a writer. At least in his head, he is. It doesn’t pay the bills. He's been a high school teacher, liquor store clerk, apartment lawnsboy, cafeteria worker, mental health aid, student, and he is not yet thirty. Shawn is a regular contributor to Calliope Nerve.

The Wrist-Snatcher

The Wrist-Snatcher

The others, of course, are more rabid than I
but less apt to show it. Whenever I strike,
I never romp off. I stand under neon
with the wrist that I’ve snatched in my teeth
as I wait, with a smile, for the wagon. As one of the few

wrist-snatchers still on the streets of Chicago,
I do all of my rounds in old tennies. I dive
for the purse hand, whack it and swoop
to the left, sink my teeth in the wrist
of the free hand, give a terrier’s yip

and go for the neon. There in the light
I hide as my head, a propeller,
turns on my shoulders. There
I make certain I have no pursuers.
But in dreams I see all the women whose wrists

I have had in my teeth. They stand,
Statues of Liberty, shrieking
and waving their stumps like flares.
Their screams make a frieze
of the police cars in the middle of the street.

--Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press, McDonnell Douglas Corporation (now Boeing), and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, Revival (Ireland), The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Beloit Poetry Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The Davidson Miscellany, The Goddard Journal, The Pembroke Magazine, The Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine, The Road Apple Review and other publications.

Doolittle

Doolittle

Here comes the snow
he says leaning forward the snow is
relentless
it even blows the huge Japanese chimes
on the balcony the ones that scare the neighbors
into thinking
that someone is stalking them in their dreams

singing where is my mind
wheeeeere is my mind
dressed like a monk
all ochre and maroon and wind horse energy

the snow's gonna stick this time he says
stick all winter
and metamorphitall into piss colored slush
that sticks to the road your car and your eye
and it won't go away until April
so until then he says best to hunker down
and let your brain go gush
see it in the ice water it's swimming.

--Shawn Misener is a writer. At least in his head, he is. It doesn’t pay the bills. He's been a high school teacher, liquor store clerk, apartment lawnsboy, cafeteria worker, mental health aid, student, and he is not yet thirty. Shawn is a regular contributor to Calliope Nerve.

Kali After Lunch

Kali After Lunch

That's just beautiful
she comments smoke flipping from her mouth
beading up in her greasy brown hair the sun
breaking waves over her cheekbones the dead rabbit
slowing being taken away by a squadron of ants
amazing us both in their mindless efficiency

We're staring down from the balcony
and she wonders aloud why such a grisly scene captivates
when in our electric souls we fear death and avoid it
at all possible cost

I can't help but imagine butterflies bumbling upwards
from a kettle of molten iron swinging gently above
the most beautiful quilt conceivable
laced with neon greens and reds on a landscape of blue drizzle
little drips of silver destruction searing holes
and falling into a black infinite mess

And as the ants move along the rabbit becomes something
we can't identify a mess of bones and fur and blood
she lights another cigarette and sighs
concluding something between her green eyes that
she wishes not to share.

--Shawn Misener is a writer. At least in his head, he is. It doesn’t pay the bills. He's been a high school teacher, liquor store clerk, apartment lawnsboy, cafeteria worker, mental health aid, student, and he is not yet thirty. Shawn is a regular contributor to Calliope Nerve.

Constance Stadler reviews Angels In Hell

Amanda Boschetto’s "Angels in Hell” creates, much as the title suggests, an entire world of inversions. We are confronted with layer upon layer of meaning often juxtaposed and akimbo to perceptual reality; where meaning is pregnant with the unexpected and indeterminate.

In ‘the tacky trees’, the first in this exceptional collection of 16 poems, a tree becomes a signifier of defiance, invasiveness, and the sanctity of memory. Beauty yes, but what lies beneath, behind that which is beyond perceptual reality, and what price is paid?

Such skilled, deft and agile conceptualization is also seen clearly in ‘the sun and the night’. Where natural teleology is infused with a foreboding, irresistible sexuality under the wandering gaze of a more than suspect deity:

the sun is gazing behind the trees
licking their woody clits,
by day

by night the trees rape the roads
while the streets shine black and dark,
oblivion is faith reversed
in god’s seedy eyes

…and then there is the power of ‘amnesia’

the stealthy warmth hides the swift light,
between its pale thighs
as night glaring eye joins us,
day’s rape is gone

here

Boschetto’s engagement with humanity is equally complex and beguiling. In ‘Charlotte’ we are again caught up:

...and you shall breathe water
through your loveless eyes
with sunlight in your hands
and your shivering discomfort
for life

And love is a consumptive power, a tearing vital force that often burns to core. We feel this in ‘david’:

i breathe through your love-filled lungs,
seeing the past's ghouls disappear
and the sun set beyond the horizon,
pink and unloving like the winter trees,
reckless though old you stole this heart,
took its broken memories and
now all of heaven screams your name
and the birds pick my eyes out for you to mend

Disease, in its multiplicity of tentacled invasions and nuances, is a common theme: in the world it exposes, in the helpless havoc it reeks, in the sense of futility amplified, in the way it consumes. We see this cry out in ‘ungentle death’ as a soaring crescendo, which gently, gently ebbs…

and i saw you again last night,
gray and pallid from cancer's cold embrace,
so i took that memory's portrait
and tucked it away within my breast secure,
so now with sunlight in your hair
you smile from six feet under
and i have forgotten all about the
brutal rain that day,
with birds in the naked sky,
crawling on my faceless face
as over the face of heaven,
i relive that pain daily
and nightly see your bones dwindle smaller.

Then there is the disease that devours: ‘your words’

i hold these poems against
my heart…
…these words are as much anxiety
as they are a fix to my blood

like cancer they grow and
like morphine they smell of nothing
because these poems…
…these words are a reflection of vanity,
these words are you

In reading a work such as ‘tea-bags and suicide’ the integration of the mundane and horrible steeps through the reader: All distance is transgressed.

fingers touching the darkness
of cynical ghosts
who jump between tattered
tea-bags
and drink the beer from
rusty old cans
fucking your mind back
to childhood,
to suicide's sweet bliss
since the mirror reflected
my own face
and i praised the fear of the
womb

In totality this is a vivid, breathing, tactile collection, not subject to any school of philosophic school of thought or poetic dogma. And in its wild and often devastating originality, it sears. Like Pan’s pipes, the sweep of Boschetto’s poetic voice is compelling and masterful.

If you want the prosaic work of comfortable ‘armchair poetry’, this is not for you. But if you wish to be immersed in portents and possibilities so textured and multifaceted than you have ever dreamed, then run to buy this book.

Yes, run.

--Constance Stadler is the author of Tinted Steam (Shadow Archer) and Sublunary Curse (Erbacce, forthcoming). Amanda Boshetto's Angels In Hell can be purchased here.

Quoteable

"...if you love poetry, read all the regular magazines, go to local readings, and check the new poetry books in every store you go into, you're still only seeing about 5 percent of what's out there. There are the literary magazines, the little magazines, and small presses, where the blulk of poets work, and although these are published in truckloads, few make it to the local newsstand. If you don't do you homework, if you're not up on current action in a field, your going to miss out on the next Robert Frost or T.S. Eliot. Or Beckian Fritz Goldberg. ('Who?' you ask. If you're a poetry love, you'd better find out now while her books can still be found because she's going to be a Very Big thing.)" --Ian C. Ellis

Papernet: Some Incoherent Thoughts

From the Warren Ellis weblog:

I just want to get these down in some kind of order for later consideration. See previously: Papernet, Papercamp announcement, Papercamp 1.0.

As noted previously, my interest in this revolves around making printers spit out sheets of paper with interesting things to look at and read on them. This all stems from Aaron Cope’s 2007 talk on the Papernet, and Schulze & Webb’s 2006 "social letterbox."

It occurs to me that the social letterbox isn’t a device, not in the first instance. Because there isn’t a social letterbox device and software bundle, and wishing ain’t going to make it so. In the first instance, the social letterbox is a dedicated email address and a printer you never uncouple from the computer (because you’ve got a USB hub, or, like me, you’re too lazy).

The social letterbox may just be as simple, in the first instance, as a dedicated Gmail account, where I can just press Print without opening the attached document. In kicking this around within a Secret Society, my friend Alasdair Watson knocked together a proof-of-concept in an hour — email comes in, paper comes out. Automagically, like a podcast that spits out paper.

I wouldn’t want the word "papercast" to get out in the wild, you understand. It’s horrible, and it would hang around my neck like a burning tyre until I die. Alasdair notes:

I love the idea of being able to get up in the morning and have the overnight reading ready for me to hop on the bus with. Hell, even if I don’t ever make the mailbox public, all I have to do is lash it to some RSS-to-email functionality, and presto - a custom POD newspaper every morning.

How is that a bad idea? It’s not like a fax machine, where some bastard buys your number and there’s a sheaf of junk hanging out of the thing in the morning. It’s roll-your-own one-sheet POD. And it’s also subscription-based POD, if you know someone who semi-regularly does interesting things with a sheet of paper and decides to share. They’re either sending directly to your letterbox-email, or you’re on an announcement-only mailing list (or Google Group). Or, as I say, as simple as me pressing Print so they’re spat out for me to take to the pub, or on a train journey. And if they’re not especially personal, I can just leave the buggers on the table or the seat when I’m done with them, too.

I remember, years ago, the artist Laurenn McCubbin saying to me, "I can design the shit out of a piece of paper. But designing websites and stuff? Forget it." And you know she’s not going to be the only one. But this papernet thing can in fact be about designing the shit out of a piece of paper.

This is getting tl;dr, but this is starting to tie up in my head with the emerging notion that this might be the Year Of POD, that not everyone wants nothing but plaintext in their lives, not everyone has a mobile device that does everything they want, and that, sometimes, paper is better.

I shut up now.


--Warren Ellis is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE, PLANETARY, and TRANSMETROPOLITAN, and the author of underground classic CROOKED LITTLE VEIN pictured here:

THE INVISIBLE WAR

THE INVISIBLE WAR

The sirens startle us. We sit up in bed, only to lie back down. It's five in the morning. Our faces are next to each other, close enough for a kiss. We exchange medieval looks of fear and doubt. When we wake up again, the sun is screaming. The daytime drinkers glare at us through the window as we walk past Sal's Place holding hands. Unless it isn't us they're seeing, but the gunships pounding over the rooftops, the infant later found crawling in the rubble in a harness like a seeing-eye dog's.

--Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, most recently Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks. His first full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick, will be published by Press Americana.

Lap Dance

LAP DANCE

Last night I went to a movie at the Upstate,
Marisa Tomei was in it, she played an aging stripper,

but without the cellulite and droopy ass,
who worked at a club in Jersey called Cheeks,

black walls, myopic lighting, loud music,
the graveyard of empires, where a lap dance

in the VIP Room cost you 60 bucks
and the vinyl siding salesmen from Rahway

got hard as she gyrated on stage in a G-string,
her eyes strangely dead, the boarded-up windows

of a once-prosperous downtown appliance store,
I wanted to shout, Oh, Marisa, don't be sad,

you're beautiful, instead the guy sitting
behind me kept crossing and uncrossing his legs

and kicking the back of my seat.

--Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, most recently Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks. His first full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick, will be published by Press Americana.

Our Mutual Wine

Our Mutual Wine

Upon a lustrous
Midnight surf,
Cabernet Sauvignon
Spoke crystal clear
To my clandestine
Fondness of you

Intimidation,
Which held silent tears
In secret captivity
Disillusioned,
Upon revelations
Of our mutual adornment

While the laudable moon
And its intensity
May have been
Our only witnesses

It felt as if the entire world
Watched as your hand
Touched mine,
And for the very first time,
Our dreams fell for reality

In the one moment
Love found courage
And was moved to speak

Aloof distances
And sad reserves
Of silent sentiments
Traveled a lifetime

A Poetic moment
Of equal proportions?

Perhaps...

Or maybe it was just
The bottle of wine
We portioned equally.

--Anna DeVine is vague Poet from the Northwest. She writes poetry, short stories, memoirs, and novels. She also teaches poetry and philosophy to stray dreamers and blind fools. Those are her words, and this is her voice.

BEMUSED

BEMUSED

What when the lamps burn
And the tides go out
And the rustling of leaves
Creates the sound of music

My forgotten barefoot muse
Goes out of printing
Into sprinting out of its cage
Overpowering itself in its rage

To where lie the clusters
Of unfinished muses
And clumps of unattended bruises
Clambering to meet each other.

--Ashutosh Ghidyal writes poetry, short fiction and essays. He is a salaried professional and is currently based in Mumbai. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various print and online zines such as Houston Literary Review, Oak Bend Review, Taj Mahal Review, River Poets Journal, The Storyteller, Cantaraville, Bewildering stories, Indite Circle, Calliope, Calliope Nerve, Mad Swirl, and others.

ABANDONED BUT STILL BURNING

ABANDONED BUT STILL BURNING

What's with the defeatist attitude? So you found a crow's wing stuck under your windshield wiper. How many birds do you think visit major American cities each year? At least you weren't beaten by the drunks in the bleachers for wearing your funeral suit. Then you would've hardly heard the singing or seen the line of refugees from the famine. I'm telling you, Relax. The candlelight we're carrying between us like a sheet of glass is the very light we need. And if the German wolf pack happens to return to prowl the sea lanes, we can always wave goodbye to them with the other hand.

--Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of six poetry chapbooks, most recently Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks. His first full-length collection of poetry, Lovesick, will be published by Press Americana.