Poetry for the Lost Souls #2

I had a choice between withholding great poetry in this issue or presenting you an elaborate, but qualitative collection of poetry by and for Outsiders …  I chose quality over the norms of quantity and have kept my initial selection of good, criticising poetry and that kind of poetry that touches the dark side of life in a significant way. With writings from Aad De Gids, Walter Conley, John Bennet, J. Bradley, George Wallace, Debbie Berk, Parris Fotias, Kimmy Van Kooten and Luis Rivas I present you ‘Poetry for the Lost Souls’

Aad De Gids

 
this is neither plagiarism nor pastiche
and yet our imagery stems from subconscious
archived sightings,lines of text heady with meaning,
whatever resonates with our own inner being.
sometimes deeply disturbed by what was seen,felt,
sometimes cradled and soothed to finer lands.
and yet from this modern contamination of
powerfull pictures,marketing stratagems,flaming
colours or dissolving vaguenesses forms a
reservoir noir out of which pours up our own
peculiar language,idioms,compulsions.
we’re children of this globalisation jungle
and just like the baaka,yanomani,papoua’s,
we’re searching and navigating through a multitude
of meanings,opinions,destinations,places of our own.
yet as in that other jungles,everything is fleeting.
what yesterday seemed like a trajectory shortcut,
now is cut off by defaults and monetary parametres.
the only solution to really move through this multitude
is surrendering. more radicale: dissolving,walking
along the edges of megacomplexes,moving like a
shadow,eventually dissolve like the smoke of a
sigarette falling on the street and which then,
unwillingly but submitted to a higher goal,rolled over
to a drain to vanish down the trottoir and become a
creature of the dark. first by a discreet last gesture of
fire stilling and smoke flying thinner and almost
unseen and unbarable thinner,and then,as debris,
contributing to our reservoir noir of imagery that
fills our poems and fires our desires.

© Aad De Gids

Walter Conley

neo-crone

you’re a battlefield
magician
posing/pressed
against the sky
your robe snapping like a flag
in the gusts of bitter burning
who will fight as long
as fight you must
to scatter me
and
find and free
the beauty in my soul
no matter
how hard i resist you

 
amanda nine-ten-one

there’s a face in the photo
of the corner
where you died
i snapped it up with my
nine-
dollar camera
the tenth shot of
ten
which loaded on the dell
apart from the others, the
one
and only stray
as if it had been taken
on some other day

and not the weekend
that I saw hell

jar-head

why are going so fast
she asks

on a road like this
he explains
it just doesn’t matter
if you go slow
you’re still gonna bounce

she nods

he shrugs and
hugs the wheel
and
drives a little faster

 
how you pose for a wreck

they found this motherfucker
sitting straight up
man
he drove a wrecker
and used to work all hours
even holidays
but one day
or maybe it was night
nobody could reach him
so my good friend Dale
who knew him too
went over there and
found this guy
naked
sitting upright
on the edge of his bed
a filter in his fingers
looking quite
relaxed and
d e a    d

© Walter Conley
http://baag2009.blogspot.com

Luis Rivas

THE BAGS OF CEMENT

I CAN’T COME IN TO
WORK TODAY BECAUSE
I DON’T WANT TO DIE
I’M IN THE PARKING LOT
AND I CAN SEE THAT THERE
ARE BAGS OF CEMENT NEAR
THE TRASH CAN IN THE
PARKING LOT AND, AND
EVERYONE KNOWS THAT
BAGS OF CEMENT ARE USED
FOR KILLING PEOPLE, FOR
THROWING THEM INTO A
RIVER OR WHATEVER AND
AND I’M A PORN STAR AND
I DON’T WANT TO DIE AND
THERE’S THIS OLD GUY
WITH A MERCEDES THAT
FOLLOWS ME AROUND AND
AND I DON’T WANT TO DIE
AT WORK, HERE, WITH THE
BAGS OF CEMENT AND, AND
I’M A PORN STAR AND THERE’S
THE OLD GUY AND THE MERCEDES
AND, AND THE BAGS OF CEMENT
BUT IF YOU CAN THROW AWAY
THE BAGS I CAN COME IN
OK, I’LL COME IN THEN, OK
BYE
 

Circle

if there are people dying from
hunger and neglect
on the steps of a church
and it is said, well, we
better re-pave the steps
and while we’re at it
re-stucco the walls

if hospitals start running
out of room to store the old
and uninsured crazy people
and it is decided to have
them loaded into vans or taxis
and sent off to downtown L.A.
or the San Fernando Valley 

if the homeless population
increases and it is decided
to cut funding to the local
shelters and have them
ultimately shut down
 
if we see kids cutting class
and selling drugs
to each other and decide
on more funding for
more prisons to be built
 
if we all continue in the
same way of looking, then
what is left is only us and this
circle of nothingness, ourselves
slowly, deservingly merging
with it

 
I once E-mailed Dan Fante

i once e-mailed dan fante
and waited more than five years
for a response 

after never getting one
I decided to try again
 
in this e-mail i
told him that i’ve been a big fan
of his and his father, john
and that i’ve been in a few
online magazines with him
and hoped he was still alive

this time he wrote back
ending his e-mail with
KEEP WRITING, LUIS
NEVER STOP WRITING

so i sent him a story about
a porn shop security guard who
one day snaps and kills a customer

he no longer e-mails me

good advice though

 
If You Try Hard Enough, You Can Worry Too

in the other room
she sits watching TV
while I write
in secret
and silence
worrying about my car
hoping I find it
in the morning
without the windows
smashed in
or the tires slashed
or deflated
hoping it starts
because when it’s too hot
the ignition switch
has trouble making the
connection

but in the other room
she sits
unaware of my
worrying, my struggle
little characters
killing each other
on the screen
with no ‘88 Celicas with
ignition problems
to worry about
cartooned or otherwise

 
Two out of Three
 
i was once talking to a girl
from Bolivia

i said that Bolivia was a
great country
with a good president 

she said no, that her
country was being
run by a socialist
who forced her family
to give two out of  three
of their houses
to other people who
needed housing

why did your family
need three houses?
i asked
 
she accused me of being
a communist
for asking and not understanding
 
in Bolivia
they have nationalized
the country’s water
so that it’s free
not a private enterprise
to hope and see if
the income will trickle down
to the rest
but a given and permanent
right for all
 
any person that sees
his or her own people
thirsty and hungry on the street
and buys another house
should be shot in the head

any country that bullies
these same people into having less
and giving more is
a great country

© Luis Rivas

 

Si Philbrook

TRYPTICH

The Meeting

The first thing I noticed
was he wouldn’t look at me,
or even near me,
or even through me,

I’d been told what to expect
but this threw me
more than I expected,

“Can be challenging”
didn’t quite cover it,
“He bites and smears himself in shit”
covered it,

He was seven,
I liked his mother right away
coped alone till he was five,
Dad had dived for cover soon after diagnosis,

Autism,

The weekend started badly
and got worse,
You can either wipe up shit or not,
luckily and muckily I could;
her first break in years,
my first “caring job”
ended in tears,

mine not his.

Walking in Rectangles

The garden was beautiful
full of interesting shrubs
and tubs of bedding plants,

The lawn was neat and mowed
but owed its oddness
to the rectangular path
worn down to earth and dust,

I watched him as he trod it,
thumb and two fingers of each hand
rubbing carefully selected blades of grass
held close to his face
as he paced his rectangle,

“Cannot communicate”
“non-verbal and aggressive”,

I guess because I had nothing else to do
and I like to feel I’m
doing something,
I got up and followed him,

Two hours we trod the dusty rectangle
Two hours,
I even picked some grass and twidled,
two hours

and he turned

and he looked at me.
 

Piggy-back

Fourteen and awkward
and fancying Helen,
and wanting her to just know
I existed,

Sunday afternoon
Talja, (his mum was Norwegian),
spent four happy hours
(my happiness not his)
showing me each piece of lego
each scrap of paper,
each hidden piece of cutlery,
that was his world,

I had to touch each one
hold it close to my eyes,
and to my surprise
a whole new world
unfurled and breathed,

We went to the park
his lonely gait
a stark reminder that he
had not changed,

We took a different way home
came across a cattle grid,
incongruos somehow,
and how to cross,

I knelt and offered up my back
“Piggy back?”
and up he jumped,
and up he jumped
and I existed in his world,
and sometimes
this is
what love is,

Twenty-four and awkward
and trying to make friends
with a boy
from another world

© Si Philbrook

 

John Bennet

A Bed Cluttered with Bears

So many kisses to give,
so much memory to burnish.
So many wrong turns 
in the labyrinth.
So much grit under
quick-bitten nails, 
in my 
pounding red heart.
So much shallow promise &
false-start entrapment.
So much freedom
that came almost
by accident.
 
A pillow over
a tooth
is my idea of
enchantment,
wild dreams 
full of
tooth fairies
in a bed
cluttered with 
bears.

Bananas & Water Jugs  

The last banana 
was eaten at breakfast, 
the water jugs 
need filling, 
the oil & the e-mail 
need checking, 
these things 
go on forever.  

But at this point
there’s no need to 
repair the roof 
or build a deck, 
upgrade my ride 
or advertise 
my business, 
no need to 
drop a bundle  
to see how my 
glaucoma’s doing, 
get new teeth or
work out in the gym, 
dreaming of a 
hard body & 
new romance; 
I did that 
when I turned 60, 
got down to 
165 & a 
32″ waist, 
found the 
romance, 
& then my 
insides exploded.

Now I’m like  
an infant in a
new crib, 
& if 
sudden death syndrome
doesn’t get me,
everything 
should be fine.
  

A Rare Moment in Warfare

The chieftain came 
riding out of
the trees &
across the
corpse-strewn
field in Germania,
bareback on a
candy-striped
unicorn.
 
The Roman general
raised an arm,
& the archers
held their fire.
 

A Father’s Approval

It’s too damn hot
for words so I
break down &
turn on the
air-conditioning
in this car my
father sold me
18 years ago.
It was pristine
back then, 
the ashtray
hadn’t even
been used,
but now it’s a
bucket of bolts,
door handles 
ripped off,
the overhead 
upholstery
sagging so that
it touches the
top of my head, 
cracks in the
windshield,
junk all over the
floorboard.

I scribble away
on my yellow pad
in the cool
of this
minor concession,
still trying to
gain his
approval.
 

Active Duty 

Six months 
in the jungle
on night patrol
& his wife
files for
divorce.

© John Bennett

 

Stephen Mead

A Proposal for Blindness

Peeling down love,
A flower, a garlic clove,
Love exuding its scents,
Love shedding its veils,
Salome’s… 

Is it smoke which swirls here,
Some sumptuous mist?
Every sense grows glowing, regenerating
Insight like feelers…
 
Then, grafted to passion, sensitivity’s
A looking glass.  It’s reflective, multi-
Faceted, introspection moving out—–
 
How many versions of reality are there?

To choose one from the infinite
Is like having the sight of lizards or insects,
God’s littlest eyeballs.  The views of such
Fractions forms an entire lens.

You too have your own vision.
In a thousand, I’m a single slide. 

Perhaps if we just kiss, eyelids shut,
Lips touching only,
The picture will be clear.

  
Faith 

Boy with bruised eyes,
split lips,
the wounds of hands,
But in a Baptist church,
Gospel willing
the rising of his voice…
 
Maybe this here is Alabama
& the bus boycotts have re-begun.
Maybe this is you,
the black kid in me, the kid really
of any nation, sexuality, street…
 
Bleeding heart, open fists
& face the throng of bats
since anger’s stance is
a right not to be victimized.

Lies, lies:
To say pride can entirely forgive
when no one has said, “Sorry.”
Instead, eras of rage
grope for justice as tolerance,
& humanity as spirit
just to understand.
 
That’s how it is with struggle,
its kite flight flag made
from some blood stained cloth.

Moments, the same day, the overcome,
The we shall overcome some day
moments sail, but only when for all
shall the planet truly be civil,
truly humane. 
 

Harbor

So many lights out there upon pleats,
The white tipped black lapping smooth—–
This is our apartment now, the feel of it,
Such a strange space recalling all
The boxes, the last packing…
What’s left is open as a harbor:
Echoes honoring the falling waves…

I know how terrible need is, this distance
Gaping with the intimacy of discarded
Package string, tape, tacks…
I know it unforgettably,
The flow,
Our cove’s slogan…
 
But the way you were summoned, love,
Was just as articulate.
Nearby wait pirate ships.
Tell them for me
We are more than just cargo
For the whole silky bay.

 
Tired Towns

Towns of little commerce near to being ghostly
But for the cheer struck as a match
During the black out of some storm… 

Harmless, love, there is no great harm
In the bars to combat boredom or
The occasional darker stumbling
When time turns frazzled, sparking hours berserk.
 
Love, so we are sparks
Holding ground often only as angels might flutter
When cyclone-caught.
 
There are winds here & they have a light
To them, our hands being lamps, our faces
Being lanterns, & we swing, we are
The breakers, coastal, that bob in the elements
As pilots re-finding bearings… 

Bars, love?
What prison in these streets of lean economics,
These walls coughing up resources, these tides
Commanding all, & we, just a bit dizzy, we,
The keepers rather awestruck?
 
I keep your heart warm to shelter us
In that freedom, & you too,
Are banking the blaze, stocking the cabinets,
Securing the moorings.

We have nothing but a world here,
A heap of stone soup.
No, we have nothing but each other
& the days, afloat, keep us.      

Lover Man

Where
                   Can
Health
Be Infectious
Spread      Catch
Each              Other
Like
Disease
Here
Let   Me
Help             Mother
Remember          4 A.M.
Phone            Dial
Co.              Tone
Tubing           Swallow
The              Rubber
Tongue           Water
Pills            Coming
Calm              Now
Blank           Fingers

does
blood
(slumber)        foretell
wounds      (store)
friction             his
smirk shy
face 
brave
 
 
Oh God Please

© Stephen Mead
108 Pinehurst Avenue
Albany, NY 12203
mead815@yahoo.com

August 2009 Biography: In the 1990s Stephen Mead’s poems began appearing in literary journals, but after moving to Massachusetts, Stephen again began concentrating more on painting.  In 2000 Stephen started seeking publication again for his writing and art combined. Since then his work has appeared internationally thanks to the World Wide Web. In 2004 Stephen began experimenting with poetry/art hybrids, creating award winning e-books such as “Heroines Unlikely”. From there Stephen began experimenting with his art/poems as films. In 2006 Stephen released a CD of poems set to music, “Safe & Other Love Poems”, (CDBaby.com), as well as three DVDs, (Indieflix.com).  Print editions of his novels and poetry-art hybrids began being distributed by Amazon.com and Blurb.com in 2007.  Ever-revising, Stephen Mead released an re-mastered version of his CD re-titled “Love Lullabies” via Amazon in 2009, as well as a new poetry-art hybrid “Our Book of Common Faith”, a meditation on world cultures/religions as a force for unity as opposed to violence.

 

Debbie Berk
 
Lost Letters
 
On these torn pages, letters I write, confessions of my blatant imperfections
living outwardly in by the raw of my skin, to find the reason
for which I am, a better understanding of a world I long to devour
with the sound of my broken pen and its bleeding ink, to be the words
that stick in the back of your mind long after the wounds have dried
and the letters have been lost……
 

Graffiti
 
Thoughts collect themselves like debris, fallen confetti
these graffiti words, my forbidden art splattered shamelessly
on the dirty, worn walls of my soul……open, vulnerable, naked to the world
 

A Simple Girl
 
I hate Sundays and holidays
My favorite day is Halloween
 
I love the storms
and the sound of rain,

the smell of gasoline,

Late nights and midnight caffeine

Don’t care much for daisies
but love the rose for its thorns

And I don’t care much for pretty poetry either
nor am I into flashy, colorful things 

No, darkness is my scene
 
finding beauty in the odd, simple things
 
I’m a hater of crowds, busy streets and such
but love the serenity of railroad tracks and the sound
of the trains as they hurry past, disappearing into a distant hush
 
And I prefer the shade to the sun
and the moon over the day
 
Am not one for walks on the beach
but prefer instead to stroll through old cemeteries
 
and prefer the quiet over noise
 
Dreaming to reality……
 

The Stain

And sometimes life bleeds
a permanent stain of wounded truths
that no cloth can wash away,
no water, no soap that can cleanse
the stench from its filthy realities
 

The Scream of Echoed Silence

It is the quiet chaos,
A beautiful mess
of perfection’s mask
that hides the filth inside,
the dirt, the shame
of un-confessed sins,
the sorrow, this guilt,
my regret
that infects like a disease
and I am sick, suffering within
the noise that cannot escape itself
hidden, lost within the madness,
the shadows that linger
like an invisible hand over the mouth
that keeps the scream
tucked neatly inside the secrets
choking in the throat of silence 

© Debbie Berk

 

Parris Fotias

360 Degrees Of Intolerance

Let us fight
The axis of evil
With 360 degrees
Of intolerance.

Let us take the high
Moral ground
Regardless of public opinion.

Let us flex our muscles,
Intimidate our enemies
And show no mercy.

Let us punish the despots
Who encourage their citizens
To bring death to our shores.

Let us invade foreign lands,
Be defiant to the very end
For enough is enough.

So…

We will risk
The death & destruction
Of our own people,
To rid the world
Of death & destruction.

We will risk
Being labelled

Ignorant & racist
By profiling the minorities
For the safety of our majority.

We will risk
Living in a police state
By increasing security

Until no-one is allowed to visit,

Until no-one is allowed to leave.

We will risk
Recessing our own economy
By spending millions, billions
Trillions of dollars
On war.

We will risk
The ire of our own people
By ignoring the problems at home

Like poverty, unemployment
And natural disasters.

Yet when a Cuban
Plane
Or boat
Is hijacked
Putting at risk
The innocent lives
Of men, women and children,
Let us accept
The selfish demands
Of criminals
And welcome them
With open arms
To the land
Of red, white & blue.

Let us treat the hostages
Like prisoners
By detaining & interrogating them,
Confiscate their aircraft or vessel
While allowing the real offender
To seek asylum.

Let us set this precedence
Of allowing terrorists
To roam free in our society
Rather than returning them
To the proper authorities
To be punished
For their indiscretions. 

Let us place the felons
On a pedestal
To justify decades of ignorance
In foreign policy
Instead of incarcerating them
To set an example
To those who may
Contemplate the same.

The American Dream
Has turned into a nightmare
Of hypocrisy.

The Cuban Adjustment Act
Defies the very essence
Of what you claim
You are fighting for.

Written by Parris Fotias 2008

 
Saving Private War

Forty years on
Yet nothing much has changed
For the Masters of War
Still supply
Conflicts for profit.
Signing contracts
To hoard
Their bloody money
In convoys of greed,
Enlisting civilians
To fight their battles
By driving trucks
While the innocent
Pray only
To feed hungry mouths
And pay their bills.

The demonic acolytes
Of acronyms
Conceal the sign
Of the beast within:
Begin
With
ABC
For live
On NBC
The
VP
Is
DC
X
CEO
With a corrupt
CBO
Looking for a
Quid pro quo
Who shot JR?
Not
FDR
Now
Say
KBR

Still in the backwaters
The Blackwater
Continues to spil
Contaminating,
Infecting
The hearts and minds
Of the innocent
Minions
With lies
And bacteria
As the foot soldiers
Stand side by side
No sign of defiance
But simply
Pleading to be fed,
Hungry for the truth
As the shells explode,
The bullets race by
And the sodas go pop
From the weasels
Who lower the curtain
On their Halliburton…
 
Written by Parris Fotias 2008

DR. OBAMA

As the car sped away,
The man screamed out in pain,
Tears streaming down his cheek:
“Please…I am you,
Is there a doctor who can help?”

His wife lay motionless
At his feet;
Bruised,
Broken,
Bleeding.
Yet no-one stepped forward,
No-one came to his aid
Or put up their hand…

We stand
Idly by
Doing nothing
Waiting for one man
To make a change
And expect him
To show us the way.
Leaders,
Nations
Hope and pray
For his decisions
To crease the fabric
Of our present,
To alter the tune
Of our future
And even
To wipe away
The stench
Of our history.

Yet where is our own conscience?
Should we not be held accountable?
Have we no responsibilities?

Instead of relying on just one
Individual
To shine the light
And break the mould,
Perhaps we should be looking
Through the window
To our soul
At our own reflection.
Perhaps we should
Finally step forward
And be honest
With ourselves
With what we see
Staring back.

Written by Parris Fotias 2009

© Parris Fotias

 

George Wallace

LEFT OFF IN A STRANGE TOWN & HITCH HIKING IN THE DARK
i hear you been having your troubles again & i do not like to hear
that it gives me that old feeling which is older than soap & deader
than a slug on an old park bench it’s harder to take than rain or
horse pills when i hear you been having your troubles like that i

get sore i get anxious i get more peeled off than paint & it’s just
no good no good at all i tell you it’s worse than any damn thing
or being slipped out on by a runaway child it makes me feel all
shuttered down rode off butt naked in the dust madder than a

razor back i do not like that feeling no! like being left off in a
strange town hitchhiking in the dark & no cars coming not a
single headlight i feel like something strange i do not wish to
see — like me in the newspapers or your face at the bottom

of a paper cup — you know how i feel! i need you like your
uncle rick needs your mother after his latest spell in jail so do
not get like that with me it just makes me feel more tired than
a man ought to feel — like foul weather blowing from the deep

south i get to feeling uneasy & put off my food i feel like doing
something stupid something i used to do a long time ago which
no upstanding man in his right mind & with a mortgage to pay
ought to feel like doing — do like gypsy moths in blood — like

death to hobos — like a man who hears the government’s got
things figured out & can say who exactly the enemy is this time

WE PASS EACH OTHER IN SUNFLOWER DAY

though two eyes only have traveled your path — path of storms storm of books books of winter winter of the heart — though two eyes only

have traveled your road — calypso road hipster road four wheel road wreck crossing incredible american rain soaked road of rusted wheat –

everywhere you look, the simple beautiful farmlands being harvested — and you tightening your belt your midwest slurring of speech — your

ballfield of prayer your faltering line drive caught in mid-air — bell ringing in the misty great lake — trousers sagging like a sailor in a drunken alleyway –

a footnote in history like a fool in a tuxedo or a hurricane over the atlantic dying out or veering toward open sea before it can make landfall –

o saint of near misses o heart of my heart opening up in the chill before dawn on the wine-soaked embarcadero — o child with noisy toys and

terrible hair waking me up innocent in your play — o secret butterfly on my lapel — you are news to me, news from abroad always about to arrive

you are lost postcard, visionary hollywood — everything always turning everything arriving departing — everything i have ever seen disappears — love

closing down like an ice cream shop on the beach shuttered against the wind — just a page from yesterday’s news — everything comes to life

and flies and falters like a bird that flies beyond itself before falling — my icarus — my big fat canary of love at the end of your big fat life –

crazy as a traffic light in a jackson pollock shitstorm — flame bright the moment before it dies — third eye opening — autumn sun coming up –

we pass each other in sunflower day — we greet each other and pass — o sudden hypnosis of the heart! o hip gone ghostkeeper of mine!

ghostkeeper of autumn! ghostkeeper of my golden dawn!

© George Wallace

 
 
Felino Soriano

Painters’ Exhalations 531
—after Carol Brown Goldberg’s Listening to Ivy; Waiting for August
 
Green voice
of an errant ivy
speaks into an open door
on the horizontal home, needing.
Waiting
is the seldom face of nuanced
hankering—
waiting specifies
heat building into
losing self among flame’s
repeated disappointing ending.
 
 
Painters’ Exhalations 532
—after Jim Waid’s Bee’s Way 
 
The bee bends
while drawing borders
of the constant crossed, or streets thereof
promised
to guide and delay to
galvanize and disappear.
 
Her tennis ball tone
leaps among dancing whirls
whereas her needle
steers in solitude
machine of constant evaporation.
 
All
these dazzling contours
cannot comprehend
after
the bee becomes victim
of neoteric possibilities
and her death
sits still
between two figures of closely shaven
grass.
 
 
Painters’ Exhalations 533
—after Esteban Vicente’s Green Floating
 
Vertical
hover
reflecting on reflection
glowing
against banner of overgrown
luxurious arm of grass:
 
dragonfly
before an eye can focus
of aerial being before unseen
vanishes as if to proclaim
pretended reality
existed within momentary
illusion.
 
 
Painters’ Exhalations 534
—after Hans Hofmann’s Muted Abstraction 
 
The eye sees
then the mouth sends
comprehended solace
said of the shapes cont
-ouring around waist
of colors the not yet fully
advanced.
 
 
Painters’ Exhalations 535
—after Susanne Steines’ Driftwords
 
Dialect foreign
as to compose dialectical mirrors
imposing self into self-fitting
absence
after shouting method wishes fathom
forgetting words of bodybuilding strength
speaks afterward the wind’s blowing breaths
dismantling organs of the body
left to heal.
 
© Felino Soriano
 
Biography Note: Felino A. Soriano (b. 1974, California), is a case manager and advocate for developmentally and physically disabled adults. He has authored 15 collections of poetry, including “Apperceptions of Reinterpretations” (Calliope Nerve Media, 2009), “r” (please press, 2009), “Search among the Absent Found” (Recycled Karma Press, 2009), and “Among the Interrogated” (BlazeVOX [books]), 2008. He edits & publishes Counterexample Poetics, www.counterexamplepoetics.com, an online journal of experimental artistry, and Differentia Press, www.differentiapress.com, dedicated to publishing e-chapbooks of experimental poetry. He is also a contributing editor for Sugar Mule, www.sugarmule.com. Philosophical studies collocated with his love of classic and avant-garde jazz explains motivation for poetic occurrences. His website explains further: www.felinosoriano.com.
 
Felino A. Soriano
felino@felinosoriano.com
www.felinosoriano.com
www.counterexamplepoetics.com
www.differentiapress.com

J. Bradley

The Kama Sutra of Glenn Beck

Your underwear will disappear
like the truth; don’t mind
the way propaganda slithers
across your inner thigh.

Ignore the village watching
from the closet; it takes
a community to turn fiction
into fact.

Don’t panic if you slant
toward the right,
sink like crates of tea,
talk in clenched fist.

© J. Bradley

 Kimmy Van Kooten

FLOATING FLIP FLOPS

With cut off jeans and a pop-top, my long black hair, worn out mind, and flip-flops . . .
I kicked at the ocean tides . . . A little wave life rides.
Pulling back, was my nature, since now . . . and to break up patterns, under some other moon’s influences, would always set my sails in motion!
But, for now . . . I’ll let myself be sucked in . . . free to float, if I will.
No horizon in sight . . . no boat . . . alone, adrift in surrender.
My knowhow to swim all asunder. For somehow, I’ve just forgot! . . .and I can even say that if I want!
“The me, in me, has become the sea . . . and we meld!”
In bobbing waters, one mind, in a time . . . we fall into some blue, some green color, with sand dollars snailing along at the bottom. ( . . . land into money, and it will always collect further from the top!)              Sharks smelling blood, might, could, slice into us . . . yeah, where the moneylenders continuously feed off the reds!
Fishing, indebted us to an abundance the sea could have provided, yet, we cast our lines, oblivious to the initial hook or any pain our salty, parched lips,   wanted. . .
I feel like such a stupid idiot! Mine see should have a saw it!
Yet, here . . . fear, is nowhere to be found! I’m still aground in my liquid form!
Seaweeds below me, I ascertain, flower above, from beating suns . . . And, I notice how we become one when we give into any two extremes . . . it seems?
I am water. You are land! Where I landed, you were watered . . . You thirsted, I swam . . . you drank . . . I’m drained, just the same . . . and the mixture sunk us into mud, my footprints blurred away, and I got caught, dug into it . . .
Dammit, I just lost my flip-flops!© Kimmy Van Kooten

I wonder how long we can float?

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