no balance

spitting shitfaced bullshit belligerently
with no sense of balance
berating with snapping sharp consonants
teetering and sneering insults, i
sling shit at everyone standing around

seething and snarling at foreign figures
only recently friends
tottering totems saying nothing now
dismembering these symbols, i
misremember their meanings unfound

shitting out an oversensitive screaming stream
of bellicose nonsense
spouting torrentially, smearing and staining my senses
straining no longer to stand, i
topple to the ground

JWR

Form with function, yet hardly functioning, too busy fathoming and fornicating.
It's more like floundering, really, even with the immense understanding belying that Fall.
Frivolous fledgling, fondling this freedom, pondering that forgiveness.
And yet still, frying the backs of your eyeballs for superficial thrills.

Who are you? Better question - you are who? Here is who you arent.
Your whole self. (Though I suppose through and through, this is physically you.)
An instantiation; proof that you exist. But more just a pointer we point to.

When you die, you're really gone. And there's no use asking.
But if you asked where? I'd point neither here nor there.
Because where you really are, we can't point to. Not in the air.

VLS

argentines want to drink my beer.

I am walking on clouds
high above where
argentines want to drink my beer
that i sip through a straw
& they confuse me with
my passport
& see me as a name they can't pronounce
consonant clusters which
are so natural become
unnatural
unnaturally broad & slender

But I confuse them too:
with friends & enemies
with words & ways of walking.
Why see difference
when you can see sameness
& similarity?
Why take when
you could receive?
& in giving a dollar or 4 pesos
what is returned?
what is the value of experience?
of jumpstarting braincells to
take in stimuli?
It is the returning which teaches
us to open.

But the argentine who wants
to drink my beer
still picks fights with me
from 5000 miles away.
I tell him "if you want to go
outside that's your problem"
& he says "do you wan' to go ou'side?"
I say "no, I want you to go outside-
I paid to be here"
& we walk away from trouble
but not from the problem.
Later in the bathroom after
5 handshakes
he tells me my presidents fuck
his country (with no specifics)
I'm holding my dick
& my tongue
& rolling my eyes.
He thinks he's educating me
But all he really wants
is the cigarette I don't have
& the beer I finished.
he doesn't want to fight
he wants to talk about it.
he wants to demonstrate
in the street
every Thursday & 2nd Sunday
of the month.
"When you go home you make change"
he gave me no specifics
but cardboard & a fence post
can't change much.

Now I'm riding much
closer to the ground
at home where
other people will want to drink my beer
& I will give it to them
If they will only ask.

PDM

9/18/10

reading old manifestos is like looking into lost, mad pasts,
and the future isn't anything like it seemed it'd be when
writing those lines in tiny black notebooks, tightly bound,
in tiny, ramshackle black print.

looking at old photographs is like looking into lies
and the future isn't anything like it seemed it'd be when
the flash went off, when our smiles told some impossibly small fraction of the story,
without any of the depth that makes reality real.

looking inside is like digging through your own mess,
and the future isn't anything like it seemed it'd be when
you left things muddied, half-forgotten, knowing you'd be back to dig,
unaware of how different your digger would be

JHS

I don't want to perceive infinity

I don't want to perceive infinity
to braid my mind infinitely
into unknowable patterns
of mind
from Socrates to Plato
unasking their own answers
in a writhing synergy
of mind
to me
unknowing nothing of my own mind
noting a few patterned infinities
in the singular synapse
that is my perception

JWR

A Sonnet Regarding Poetry's Inability to Fully Recreate an Experience Beside a Brook (That I May or May Not Have Had)

If I should stop to stand beside a brook
(if I should ever be so near to one)
and stoop to ground to get a better look
and gently graze its softly glittered run,
or should I brookside toss a stone to bed
to hear hardscrabbled rubble babble good,
or should I shout across the bank instead
to hear high hollow echoes in the wood-
If any of these actions I should take,
(if any of these sequences occur)
should I, in pauses there- which I should make-
should I attempt to play at raconteur
and write the wooded brook, it would be nice.
But one poor man's recounting won't suffice.

JWR

One a.m (a different work in progress)

hot dog wrapped in cheese
I am 1 a.m
Day 32
I am 1 a.m
cloudy I'm sure
I am at 1 a.m
recognizing some inadequacy
in television
I am 1 a.m (when I am
amazed by the planet)
[1 a.m] I am
in High definition
I am 1 a.m
Fade to blue
the new color of t.v.
i am 1 a.m
...no really…
I am 4:16 a.m and I am ready to fall asleep
but not quite ready
the tv beckons
it's quality cable, ya gatta admit
it don't quit
it's still kicken after
1 a.m I am
soon taken over by infomercials at 4:17 a.m

PDM

Beer the Band

                                      by Chris Svetlik

sunday

two men are quietly making love
in an empty bar
on a sunday
falling into their beers
leaning in
listening
saying something meaning
"i'm lonesome"
"me too"
But where are all the lonesome women?
As I'm worrying about where they're at
I turn the corner
& there she is
Beautiful & lonely
So I set the table for one
and she says
"it's actually for two..."
& I go off the lonely one.

PDM

here

here
here where we stand
on foreign land
here where we aren't us
where we're everything we've known
that we know that we don't
that we've grown
here we sit
or sleep or lay
or recover
on a couch
others stand
in other spots
in high hopes
in silly shrines
and let them
and envy them
if you must
if you're sad
if you're happy
if you wait
i'll arrive here
i'll be good
but i'd rather be here
but i'm here
for a sec
for now

NDW

layers

layers
ones that lay
in heaps full of them selves
lying
lovers

laying
laden lady
being laid
two rest
leaning
laid out

liquid
loaded
languid

leeks
in a field
deep
in the deep

meanderered
inside
in a layer
in a brick
home
cozy

lazy lays he
days she do
later
lately

dazey

in a daisy
on a lane
on a day

in a dream
in a dream

NDW

Heatwave

heatwave
the heat comes in waves
like a gas leak
above a candle
the air is waving
& guns go in the ground
again

it was a heatlight
a hotnight
though frighteningly barren
And that light fades

PDM

“Wish I met you sooner…”

     And it won’t matter tomorrow that you ran your fingers down my forearm,
crashing them over my knuckles like waves over a jetty. Even if you locked those same
fingers into mine and brought our hands to your lips, kissing prolonged a clasp that
seemed to be meaningful. It won’t matter that you turned towards me after sex instead
of away, resting your head on my chest, looking up softly and studiously into my eyes.
     I won’t think about the way your hair would drape around my face while you
straddled me, sealing out the world, like in a tent or behind a falls. I won’t think about
how your looked so natural while the Venetian blinds cast a blanket of shadow over you,
nude, while the aqua glow of your blackberry illuminated your face and I stood watching
from the doorway.
     I’ll forget about the comfort, the sanctum from the stresses of the world that I
found in your bed or in your eyes. I’ll forget about the time I sang you old Bee Gees
songs when you were crying, and the laughter that pushed its way out from under the
tears. I’ll forget about the time you saw me in just my business socks, or the times you
wore my t-shirts to bed.
     I can’t remember you because it’s poison in my veins. I can’t remember you
because I have to. Because I’ll never see you again—and if I do than I’ll forget it all.

Chris Carlin

Please, Remember to Remember

Take this time bless it caress it and kiss it
and wish it would always be there and then miss it
think fond of the moment the moment was found
and then cherish it, hold it to light, wish renown
on the makers of memories worth your remembrance
and hope that your summons comes after your penance
for ten ants on one hill of sand underfoot
are all equally sundered and equally shook
by the flames that lick lustfully out of the eyes
of the beast everwanting that takes all our lives

And here it arrives

JWR

a bizzar interlude that happened when a goose was heard honking

The geese descended on the green
it was the end of their journey
but they had come too late
For it was the end of all human righteousness

They flew far & when they touched down
A sound similar to but different
from a whisper
greeted them.

PDM

One of my Acid Rants

Hat headed
   hat wearing 
      Strangers
          &
         Ranger
  And blackeyed 
    Muffdiving wierdos
   Slap me a new
       Millenium
   Friday is Thursday
           nope

~L. Delko