by Tony Towle

There is a special trip, scenic and
personal, that everyone should take.
To launch it, press the link
Here.  I’m going to continue
with my prepositional ruminations:
for while I fry up the sausage and
peppers (passersby gaze skyward
at the rapidly disappearing comestibles),
younger people are committed
to frying them off (spectators
bid the food adieu as it leaves the pan
on horizontal journeys to wherever),
and a chef on television recently
sautéed down his ingredients, which
must have rendered them revolting;
analogously, citizens that used to simply swap
democracy for dictatorship, now
have to swap them out, in order to reach
a conversational or political objective.

As if on cue, political charlatans appear,
drawing attention to themselves,
drawn by opportunity,
drawing crowds,
drawing upon falsehoods,
drawing support from fools,
drawing blood
but not withdrawing,
while we draw a deep breath
and look to draw comparisons
amid strife, lots of strife,
but pretty much draw a blank.

This might be the time
to take one of my own
scenic and personal trips,
which occur pictographically
in literary gloom;
but the atmosphere is sunny on this occasion
and more like a park,
and the trees are talking among themselves
but they’re talking in German.
Maybe you’re in a German park.
Ah, that would explain it.  I wonder
what the older ones did during the war.
Survive, apparently.
Right, and they were too short then
to provide the German soldiers with shade,
so let’s not chop them down
for being war criminals, or chop them up
for firewood.  In fact,
alles gut, as they murmur
among themselves in the breeze —
everything’s fine.

And they get to stay where they are, separated,
or, as one says now, separated out
by fantasy from the reality I’m stuck with —
turmoil, brutality, and malignant discord
whipped up from shadows into authenticity
by villains and dirtbags, plus those
who have selected bat-shit insanity
as a rewarding life choice,
creating an overall composition too “busy”
for us to focus on much of anything
except abhorrence and terror — all the while
extending our walk, begun months ago,
through the gauntlet of microbial ambush,
where you may be picked off at any time
and tagged for delayed assassination.

And perhaps that has already come to pass.
It might explain the bizarre colloquy
with a figure unknown
to whom I am posing the question:
Why is your thumb in my soup ?
I need to keep it warm.
You’re keeping it warm in my soup ?
Well, if the obvious visual scenario
needs redundant description, then yes, I am,
but just until the soup cools off,
or down, if you prefer.
I’d prefer that you just remove your thumb;
it’s the only lunch they’ll give me.
Did you know it costs £11 to view
a fossilized 9  ^th–century Viking turd
in York, in England ?
This is off the subject.
That’s the equivalent of 14.50 in dollars.
That does seem like a lot.
Also —and I bet you didn’t know this —
your great–great grandfather used to declare
that Populists were ninnies, deluded enough
to think their beloved leader would ever
put their interests ahead of his own.
But here’s the irony: He was talking
about William Jennings Bryan!
How can you possibly know what he said ?
His speeches are on record.
No, my great-great grandfather.
Based on probability.

I wanted to say that my relative died
while Bryan was still a teenager,
that the populist observation must be
about someone else, and said by someone else,
but I couldn’t hear my words;
although I could faintly hear his:
The soup is both too cold to eat now
or to provide warmth for my thumb.
Before it freezes over completely, try drawing the line
between the society you thought you knew
and the one you want no part of,
but which fate may soon swap out for.

We note that my last observation, heard by no one,
is that tweeted wisdom comes only from the birds;
the meaning may not always be clear
but it’s well worth listening to.
I am listening as they draw the curtains.

by Tom Veitch

Once upon a midnight
Satan withered to a dry husk
in the eye of a child.
Oh, but the boy still gave away his power
to false authority and the beast who thirsts!

The shadow of a man must burn
so we can learn the secrets of dying.
14-year-olds with guns
must kill people in the streets
of San Francisco

So nice to be here
So nice to be nearer my God to thee
To be or not in the light of darkness
This sickness that infects all our reflections.

* * * *
O Mother of this Universe,
I am mad with love and longing for you,
I need thee and nothing less.

Stubborn in my faith that you are behind all events
While other gods offer false logic and predatory intent,
I renounce all my earth’s companions, good people
who never created the soul.

Mother Night,
Teacher of winter light
An eternity of fractal unfolding and
fractional worlds folding back
to reveal infinite layers of
fractured relations, the dream
I dream the dream, now
comes the last dream before the dream
of everlasting freedom.
I am ever grateful for death
at the hands of a child.

* * * *
I remember the beginning of the present moment
in 1973.
I remember a woman’s face
was the perfect mirror of my heart
in 1973,
and since then
the feeling of being right has been absolute.

Now I am a cloud of atoms collecting on the wind
and a tremendous gravity pulls me down
into the heart of all hearts.
I have the feeling of being sole survivor
of a long dead race.

On the hillside archaeologists
free a ruined city from the jungle.
I find my bones scattered among the stones
of prehistory.
My sleep is haunted by giants
from that lost world, a time when
rainbows of divinities
danced in a cloudless blue sky,
skies that yet look down and smile
on our lost & forgotten city.

* * * *
Reassembling my body
I rise from blood-soaked ground
and set boots moving on the ancient highway
from the mountain to the plain.
Seven leagues later
I become seeing itself, and
throw off the images that rule me.

Beings on distant planets
come to life in me.
How can Gotham stand against this ?
I tell you, it cannot.

Consider the burning night
And the owl’s secret anger.
Who but the lone hunter can know
the turning points of history ?
You are him, bro, but your brain needs
to go into the shop for repairs.
(song ends)

by Clive Matson

Hello, Paradise.  Paradise, Goodbye.
part Tewenty–One [potato chip]

Light embraces everything everywhere the same.

Into the market for a potato chip,
forty flavors one cabinet, fifty the next,
in the aisle four hundred fifty.

Ice cream, same count. Same count, water.  Milk.
Wine, doubled count. Butter.  Vitamins.  Power bars.
Four hundred fifty
and one chip speaks to you.  To me.  Nifty.

Profusion confusion illusion contusion
one tinge infused turmeric saline blue
perfect for the individual.  Perfect for me.  For you.                                                   No waste.

Multinationals tune to your special taste.

“Say it loud.  Aren’t you proud ?
Look what we’re handing down.”

Two hundred thousand years later
flavors today of course fresh
and will mesh
with our eyes, nose, tongue-out stroll through the aisle.
Married to our senses.

Saxophone riffs circle the ridge and blow through trees.

Ah, jeeze, so what!  It’s a potato chip.
One salty, tasty tidbit of capitalism,
one splotch on the big table.
Don’t trip!
Slippery slope ably greased with jizm.
Someone else’s jizm.
Feed me.  Feed me tastes so I won’t grok my own.
Clang!  Your entire being knows you’re alone.
One among four hundred fifty and no touch.
Face, chest, arms, hands, thighs, legs,
no leisure, no contact, no bone
skin-covered galaxies inside are opaqued.

“Loneliness the ache too deep to grasp.”

Motherfuck.  They got you.  Got me.  We’re marketeered.
The tsunami caresses our sweet spot
and we splash down in the river of tears.

Stay healthy.  Work soft.  Be tender.  Get fit.  Stay woke.  Be cool.

Sparkling-clear TV screens rotate on wheels
behind wheels beyond wheels before wheels
actors, singers spinning, waving, caressing gently
0your fragile, sensitive wrinkles
each one more intimate
and which one will reveal how to be more
beautifully yourself ?
The rich, the healthy, the happy
realized people doing exactly
what they want
so you can too.
A siren song
calling up your tender G-spot place,
a smiling, sly, exquisite face
proffers one secret desire.  Yours.  Mine.

Every such spirit is terrifying.
Ein jeder Angel ist schrecklich.

Feed me.  Feed me tastes so I won’t grok my own.

Through cracks in the mirror
you hear the undertone whisper,

“Aw, soon you’ll feel better, honey.
Zone out and give them your money.”
Tears stream your cheeks and you laugh, laugh.

They’re acting, Dude.
They’re paid to look like that
so you will try that look.

Why, why do you feel you’re a marketing experiment ?
Because, because you are a marketing experiment.
Turn around
and I’m next.  Marketeered.

Happy go lucky, singing a song.
How could we go so terribly wrong ?

In one geologic instant everything gelled.
Thirteen-point-eight billion years
we learned how psychology works.
We learned how to sell.
                                      Take it to the banks,
marketers, who would have figured it out
without
your help, Freud.  But thanks.

“Say it loud.  Aren’t you proud ?
Look what we’re handing down.”

Ably greased with jizz.  Someone else’s jizz.

“Peril in the garden.”  The garden in peril.

Hello, paradise.  Paradise, goodbye.

by Kevin Neal

Come with me to the rain
when it wets the harvest field.
We’ll chase the birds away
and let them watch the vacant
sky alone on our faces.
If you’re afraid, we’ll tease
the thunder down
to become a friend of ours,
to hold our trembling hands,
carry us on monumental shoulders
and laugh with us
great sobbing laughs.
But if we’re not careful,
it will linger past the storm,
catch the wind in our hair,
refuse to fade when the rain subsides.
Our thunder, beating its chest
with electric hands,
slides through empty lots,
listening for our screams of terror,
bends our fingers back,
holds our toys to fire,
and when it’s finally time
to say goodbye,
the rumble in our chests will stay
for years and years and years
and years to come.  Reminding us
of our friend the thunder
like scars remind us
of the knives we kept.