The Human Disgrace
Stephen Prime
The human cock fucks its mother
The human fist strikes its brother
The human brain thinks only of money
The human shit burns like sulphur
The human smoke blackens the sky
The human feet trample the trees
The human greed consumes the world
The human mouth lies and snarls
The human cunt bleeds toxic waste
The human eye sees only itself
The human word does nothing at all
The human fingers hold a burning cigar
The human stomach digests its ethics
The human smear remains on the earth
The human ear is deaf
The human heart is numb
The human race is a fucking disgrace
_________________________________________________
Requiem for optimism
Mark Wohl
Parent
couldn’t
hold
their
head
now
we got
generations
degenerated
mind
walking around
swinging moods
slinging
highs
and lows
Shared food is a
fork in the throat
Parent
couldn’t
hold
their
head
now
we got
generations
degenerated
mind
walking around
swinging moods
slinging
highs
and lows
Shared food is a
fork in the throat
_________________________________________________
The Bulldozer
(apologies to Blake and his Tyger)
Stephen Prime
Stephen Prime
Bulldozer, Bulldozer, burning bright
In the rainforests of the night
What mortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or factories
Burnt the fire of thine batteries?
On what tracks dare he squeal?
What the hand dare seize the wheel?
And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the pipes of thy heart?
And when thy engine began to whir
What dread gears and damage incurred
What the jackhammer? What the spade?
In what furnace was thee made?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly controls clasp?
When the stars threw down their rays
And water’d heaven with acid rain
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the tractor make thee?
Bulldozer, Bulldozer, burning bright
In the rainforests of the night,
What mortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
_________________________________________________
Ad Marginem
(after the painting by Paul Klee)
Neil Ellman
orange sun/orange sun
burn bright
burn bright
child’s play/child’s play
hide
touch the sun
sing a nursery rhyme
skip a stone across sea
catch the sun
catch it if you can
burn bright
orange sun
watch it fly
watch it sink
beneath the sea
_________________________________________________
september evening
Steve Calamars
raging bull muted on
the television set and
dostoyevsky screaming
in my brain
as i leave a tiny room
on the second floor of
an old apartment building
and run 6 miles
thru rich streets
with poor social skills and
worn sneakers
the miles fall beneath
my feet and i climb the
flight of stairs back to my room
my mind still racing and my
thoughts sprinting
across the page
malicious as
missiles and
molotov cocktails—
_________________________________________________
Communiqué 2:28am
Tony Burnett
My ex-lovers
who are witches
send me visions
in my dreams
to let me know
they are well
and I should stay
with their Sister
and quietly listen
to the Music
of the Spheres
who are witches
send me visions
in my dreams
to let me know
they are well
and I should stay
with their Sister
and quietly listen
to the Music
of the Spheres
_________________________________________________
Dark Light
(after the painting by Roberto Sebasián Antonio Matta Echaurren)
Neil Ellman
In spite of itself
the universe expands
lost control // everything
out of synch
the music of the spheres
without a tune
no harmony no strings
gravity giving up
its compass hold
no guide
east was west
now
up
down
indifferent deities
light once
now darkness reigns
_________________________________________________
Reckless
Dave Wanczyk
He’s divorced and twenty-two in the bug-lit
brown shine of a hand-me-down lamp,
hers, forgotten half by mistake, the way
we'll leave something of ourselves
as gratitude and spite.
He’s punched this wall. The heat high
that day, churning and thick,
faint smell of gas. I will do this, he thought.
And I feel him flailing at a spot
on the window frame, slamming with both fists
like a woman battling her husband’s apology.
I’m over to shoulder the blow.
We sit nodding
over gouged cans of Old Milwaukee.
If I leave him by himself, I’ll be alone.
A wasp—everything creeps inside this time of year—
thunks at the lamp shade, popping
like the failing-twist interior
of the bulb. And the minute hand
of his broken clock pushes up past nine,
falls back again, boulder down a hill
toward six with a swing. Damn
plastic clock. Damn pity. Damn
Milwaukee. Damn sting.
I yank the beaded chain of the light.
He’s blurred, and I’m not-sure-what
in the bug-confounding black.
He’s punched this lamp.
I feel it happening in the mid-morning
treble tin of an A.M. station; he pieces
the base back together,
hot glue flecks on brown Formica.
But who am I to know we break?
I do the slow-nod eyes-closed nose-gasp mouth-cringe,
try to let him know I get it.
“I hate this lamp,” I say, wanting
to get us out of there.
“It was hers,” he says.
I’m sitting again, sorry,
and tapping the hard buttons of the couch.
The place smells like last night’s supper, Goya.
Tick. Pop. Thunk. Damn nothing
to say. Damn her.
“I really hate this lamp.”
It works. He smirks, gives me this look
like I should follow him outside, tells me
he’s still got one Roman Candle left
from last year's Fourth. And he’s got a bow.
He grabs it violent, goes out
to the iced-over fire escape, preps the light,
and draws back a thin thread,
ready to shoot fireworks
into the pain-cold night.
And who am I to know the burst and carom,
how no one can shoulder his boundless
destruction, a chance taken rashly
with wide eyes and ears covered? Who am I
as we watch the whir and hiss tight-lipped,
bouncing off a power line, spiraling out
with a whole lot of fight
and then that fizzling abandon.
_________________________________________________
The Sensitive Layer
(after the painting by Yves Tanguy)
Neil Ellman
I
dream within a dream—
faces I should know
fall apart disintegrate
six fingers on a hand
a hundred baby spiders
babble alphabets
i should know
the sound of ampersand
II
somewhere mother calls—
“you’re it”
(a liquid sigh)
“am i lost found”
at the center of the earth
(paradise unbound)
_________________________________________________
Its Watch
Dave Wanczyk
Dave Wanczyk
Nothing seems to pop
until a man in tan and hemp
vomits on the street: translucence
on brick, brick under the now-apparent sky.
If I could scrawl the village deviance,
and turn my own to melody. . .
No. Such a plan withstands execution.
But the town heeds him like a reflex,
convulses once and reorders.
The world looks up from its paper,
its watch.
He, undaunted,
wipes his face, unconscious
of his difference-making.
That streetlight considers his 'do.
Graffiti perceives.
Two squares of sidewalk vivify to accept
the nonchalant output.
Over there a windchime jingle rings
its hearty accompaniment. A subtle change
in weather, light.
As the hemp-man passes,
some busker with dimes
in a checkered hat chuckles,
shakes his head, and begins to play
vainly, though frighteningly
well, a song that won't ever stick.
_________________________________________________
Porn Clones
Stephen Prime
Swivelling hips
gyrating thighs
oscilating genitals
churned-up sex
milk oil
male/female froth
explosions, moans
stretched anuses
prolapse innards
expensive yachts
faceless clones
fucking in groups
_________________________________________________
The Mistake
D.W. Martin
D.W. Martin
Twist of the t-shirt, she,
goosebump group and slender
shoulders ten and two held,
steering-wheel steady, bit of mascara
on the last chance eyelash—
all of this is
named, she, wishful thought,
and we,
tipping eyes, long-
ing and away, look,
pools of fleeting could-bes,
and a crossup glance, she.
Look
about, round
about, lay about she,
suggests tenderly,
fifty cotton, fifty poly
knotted about the
rows at her hip,
trail of cold heat
flying in formation, she.
Hands by sides, vague-pained,
the hollow feel in my feet,
unafraid of heights but
not falling.
The feel
of the dip of the street
on my chest,
and the lash on my collar
like lipstick,
she.
_________________________________________________
Tony Burnett is a member of the Writer's League of Texas and an award winning songwriter. He writes a science and nature column for a regional Texas newspaper. His short fiction has appeared in national literary journals including, most recently, Tidal Basin Review, Fringe, Fiction 365, and Larks Fiction Magazine.
Steve Calamars lives in Texas. He has a B.A. in Philosophy and works in a grocery store. His first collection of short stories, six years of relative happiness, is available at lulu.com and Calliope Nerve Media. He blogs at dirtywordsoncleanliving.blogspot.com.
Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey. His poems, many of which are ekphrastic, appear in numerous print and online journals, anthologies, and chapbooks in a dozen nations of this world and, perhaps, others.
D.W. Martin is an ice cream store owner and part-time writer whose work has appeared primarily overseas. He's working on a book manuscript entitled From Here to Modernity: Fin de Siecle Film and Its Fans. He's made some mistakes.
Stephen Prime, originally from Yorkshire, England, now lives in Tokyo, Japan. He teaches English literature at a Japanese University and has been published in Aesthetica and Forward Press. He likes whiskey and walking his dog and hates society and pollution. Feel free to visit his blog and heckle him at www.stephenprime.com.
David Wanczyk teaches in Ohio and his poems have been published in Catalonian Review, JMWW, Miracle Monocle, New York Quarterly, Shaking, and Xenith.
Mark Wohl is trying to defeat this cosmic, petty tyrant of a head game but doesn’t exactly understand how the game is played. He vividly dreams of a lucid new way where to touch is to feel and to hear is to listen. A new way of harmony. The dreaming of a dream that is perpetually trying to wake the eternal sleep. Other works can be viewed online at www.wideeyedgroove.com.
