Poetry for the Lost Souls #4

Starring Audrey Collen Burns, A. Jarrell Hayes, Sarah Ahmad, Karl Koweski, James Dye, Maria Gornell, William S. Tribell, Donald C. Mulder and Leonardo Rosado! Some known, some lesser known, but all have talent! Check it out …

 Audrey Collen Burns

 

Dissipating Sentiment

 

A thought, in moments

Torn Asunder

 

To allow you in

Was my poignant blunder

 

A reflexive sentiment

To unfold and dissipate

 

To tears was my only call

But even they wither as they fall

 

I damned your existence

For meddling with my core

 

Upon my insistence

My presence parts

 

The crushing of my screams

Flow to vex me no more

 

Dreams emerge

To again open a new door

 

An Unobtrusive fleeing

This friendship, blown

 

If you were here

I’d only want to be alone

 

12-18-2008
© Audrey Collen Burns
http://www.myspace.com/audlady

 

A.Jarrell Hayes

 

The Trouble with Drama

Why didn’t Friar Lawrence

Explain to Lord Capulet

That Romeo

Had already wed Juliet?

 

Why didn’t Hamlet

Outright challenge his uncle?

Instead, he chose to buckle

Under ghostly pressure.

 

The trouble with drama

Is that its existence

Is based on the presence

Of sustainable drama.

 

The Quick and the Dead

Why are the living

Referred to as

“The quick”

When ghosts float

Faster than legs can run?

 

I’ve been caught

Too many times by

Apparitions,

Run to the ground

By spirits,

And tripped up

By gouls.

 

There’s nothing slow

About the past.

The only thing “quick”

About life

 

is how quickly it passes.

 

Two Young Boys

Two young boys,

Walking on the sidewalk,

Speak in riddles

Of girls, money, life.

Their conversation

Drifts back to me

And I savor the scent.

They continue walking

And talking,

Lost in their youth;

Increasing their distance

From me, an old man,

Who could no longer

Keep pace with them.

 

Sarah Ahmad

Changing
 
Reflecting a sporadic hero
Risking to hide the deficit
 
Some examples of a typical composure
Knowing which side is more shocked
 
Mistakes that the clouds are not aware of
Menacing bloody mayhem declared
 
Hands of the issue the criminal uses
Emergence of the approach of a new worldview
 
Missing of a serious absence
 
Denies the burning of a faltering affair.
 

 
Pouring Reign
 
One encounter with an unusual disruption
 
Creating memories
 
Damaging
 
Stories of breakdown are source of power and grief
Complex matters affecting the failed hours
Uncertain trust in the touch of emergency
 
Dealing with the evident response to power
Damning the face of concern
 
Frustration is becoming the ruler’s scandal.
 

 
Wired Scale

 

Grinding towards the final act
Speculation of fraud concludes
Victory allowed to compete

The flaw finds the corrupted
Wondering about a separate universe
Incarnation of the available evidence

As the truly crooked draw the line in sand.

 

Distinct Impact

The notion that unfolds every facet
Meaning of the past targeted
As the planned restriction washes out

Free expression fuels the resentment
Censorship aims and measures
Doubt distorted by the willingness

Wishes of the resistant abandoned in dusty rooms.

 

Sabotage

Conspiracy without the local hands
Carried out and delivered
Acquired collusion breaks down

Suffering the uncontrollable reaction
Wept into the match-box

Confession of a pending act
Imprisonment of the destroyed pieces
Serving the persuaded entourage

Transfer that benefits the question
Dismissal of pleas unanswered in failure

Inability to examine disasters
continue to offer the final prayer.

© Sarah Ahmed
 
Sarah Ahmad lives in Pakistan. She likes to call herself a struggling poet and artist as in her world where life is so fragile,not knowing if you will return alive every time you step out of the house, getting someone to acknowledge your art is a real struggle. 

 

Karl Koweski

 

this monster wears a husband’s face

I’ve become the

marital equivalent

of a serial killer

 

defined by the

secrets I conceal

 

these masks

she knows me by

designed to yield

whatever emotion

she wishes to

recognize

 

these eyes are mirrors

reflecting back

creating the illusion

of infinite depth

where only surface

exists

 

with my moral compass

shattered

my desires are the

thirteen stars

by which I navigate

false alibis

 

my cock is the blade

I use to murder

my wife’s dreams,

mutilate her hopes

and dismember

her happily ever after

fantasies

 

I carve her heart out

daily

this trophy

I’m compelled to claim

continually

 

and when I’m captured

as I realize

I must someday be

 

I’ll leave behind

a case file

stocked with interviews

of confused friends

and relatives

who remembered me

only

as a quiet

decent young man

  

idiots with pretensions

“I don’t read as much

as I use to”

Phil admits during break

“mostly because I can’t afford

the books I want to read”

 

are the libraries charging

rental fees, now?

I asked, thinking

this country has truly become

a rotten, soulless place

 

“nah, I’m just really into

three dimensional mathematics

and I can’t pay

the five hundred dollars

MIT textbooks cost”

 

MIT, eh?

 

“yeah, math theory is

my passion.

while I’m operating my machine

I’m always developing equations

in my head,

codes, theorems, numerical patterns

like in the Bible”

 

the Bible?

 

“yeah, I’m sure

you probably don’t know this

but the Bible was

originally written by Hebrews

and the Hebrew

number and letter system

were one and the same”

 

oh really?

 

“yeah, there’s suppose to be

some sort of code

scholars have been trying to crack

for thousands of years.

I figured it out the other night

while machining half pack rod ends”
 

I’ll be damned

 

“you wanna know what the code is?

the code is…

there is no code!

how can there be?

If the holy trinity is three in one

father, son and holy ghost,

the equation becomes

one plus one plus one

equals one

you can’t have a code

based on ones”

 

that’s impressive, Phil,

problem is…

it’s the fucking Hebrews, man

they don’t pick up the check

and…

They don’t believe

in the Holy fucking Trinity

 

“you don’t know

what you’re talking about”

 

Hebrews, goddammit,

they don’t accept Christ

as their savior

no Christmas

no Christmas ham

no one plus one plus one.

you ain’t figured out shit

 

“so you’re a biblical scholar now?”

 

as much as you’re a math genius.

save your five hundred bucks.

get yourself a whore,

get yourself two, three whores,

add them together,

see how many orgasms

they equate to.

you’ll still have enough money

left over for a copy of

Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code

 

“that books bullshit”

 

finally

the math genius

and the

biblical scholar

can agree on something

 

another life story

I sense Brandon working up the nerve

to ask me something

and I’m hoping it doesn’t involve

the loaning of money

it’s too early in the shift

to send him away with

an unpleasant physical reminder

of how much he all ready owes

 

after a good fifteen minutes

of jaw-jacking

he springs the question on me

 

how much would you charge me

to write the story of my life?

 

my eyebrows arch up into my hairline

the story of your life?

like the factual story?

 

yeah, man, how much would you charge

to help me write my memoir?

Brandon, you’re twenty four years old

and I’ve known you the last

two years you’ve been a factory rat

and I know for a fact

you ain’t done shit other

than smoke cigarettes

and bitch about your ex-wife

oh yeah, and you got those tattoos

which I all ready wrote about

 

well, before you knew me

I was a junkie for like eight months

 

oh shit,

you and fifty thousand other jackasses

think putting a needle in your arm

warrants a biography

let me tell you

addiction symptomizes

a lack of imagination

you need a therapist not a novelist

 

I’m just saying I’d hire you to write it

wouldn’t you like to make money

writing something other than smut?

 

that’s true, I conceded,

if I wrote about your existence

I wouldn’t have to overly concern myself

with writing about sex

so… how does three cents a word sound?

 

perfect

 

I sat down and wrote:

 

Brandon was born, but not very well

he seemed to stop growing

at the age of thirteen

he tried heroin but

was too pussy to keep at it

he’s never fucked a woman

who hasn’t turned around

and fucked someone else

in the same twenty four hour

time frame

he got to meet Karl Koweski

 

I handed Brandon the paper,

said that’ll be a buck, sixty five

I’ll just tack it on

to what you all ready owe me

 

two dimensional 

I’m standing at the

pharmacy counter

awaiting my medication

when I notice

a middle-aged brunette

sneaking peeks at me

from the aspirin aisle

 

I tilt my head and smirk

in my approximation

of seduction

 

my movement startles her

“sorry” she mumbles

“thought you were

one of those little

cardboard cut-outs”

 

it’s disconcerting

she would mistake me

for a two dimensional

facsimile of myself

 

bring to mind

a slew of questions

I’m taking the

medication to quell

 

what would I even

be advertising?

 

my appearance negates

hair care, weight loss

or oral hygiene products

 

there’s not a razor company

in the world interested

in utilizing me as their

poster boy for the latest

five blade skin shredder

 

I’m too glum for enzyte

too edgy for prozac

too hetero for Olestra

 

what could I be?

 

 

she doesn’t stay

long enough for any

existential

interrogation

 

escaping into the

three dimensional world

 

leaving me to find

some sort of

understanding

in these

two dimensions

 

James Dye

Sardanapalian

 

Villains breathe legions and legions for a while; buy a melting key to open doors beyond an emerald sea, and death and a dying Juliet, you shall see. Deeper, I breathe breathtaking sounds; those legions sell elongated keys to open doors beyond an emerald sea; vis-à-vis, I turn a key at the clouded apex drearily; a Daliesque key opens a door beyond an emerald sea. Breathtaking devils, sound like wind at sea, Deeper, I breathe breathtaking sounds (as I can see, an artificial key opens doors beyond an emerald sea.) A catching of the breath blooms darknesses eerily, and launches Sardanapalian into eternity Alone, Juliet pulls, iron-willed, beyond dream worlds as these older stories breathe our own selves, as legions beyond Sibylline breathe on our shelves, and breathtaking dream keys beyond beyond breathtaking villains beneath beneath the emerald sea breathe endlessly.

 

 

the bridge over hollow land . . .

 

A bridge carries us over the hollow land 
and strains, hallowed, on the final course,
from bellows that showed us behindhand
the aged spires trailing the stalking horse:
that breaks in our protest atop the willow, 
that eternally bleeds before the swallow
and sows us, unbraid, over billows and overflows
as we cross the bridge to freedom, walking slow,
and haul our eggs across the white snows
and leave our hollow nests in this debris, 
with wild decadence and the furrows snowy,
with artless Oscars and poet Marlowe,
to egg on a queen’s castle and express
the seeing of the river down below
and show a vision like the best,
and so, Blake’s grave, we now know.

 

 

id

 

the rock bottom blue

pipe-dream poet’s farcical

pen dropped; alert the hand

 

 

Maria Gornell
A taste of honey
 
Wasps charge forward
frown set kaleidoscope
yellow and black
sting packed tight
45 pistol ready.
 
Not unlike a soldier in Afghanistan
the heart of soldier tainted
by inhumane propaganda
craving a life before
the sweetness was gone.
 
We wait for the leaves
to fall silently yellow gold’s
reminders of clandestine dreams.
 
I return student of life
with new commitment
after a summer of reckless
regret – cushioned
between four walls
 
synthetic food
a screen to keep
me company.
 
The memory of him
beating in my heart
 
taste the promise of honey
before I turn sour.
　

Tears
  
Thick black mascara
tears streamed like a river
hoping to take us
somewhere better.
 
I remember that urgency too
anger risen blind
a volcano about to erupt
 
In ferocious ache
in the memory of
words that hold
the sting of a mother
who failed.
 
Her dreams rotten ash
burnt slowly away
like the cigarette
you smoke knowing
it will give you cancer.
　
The fear of lost control
shone desperate in eyes
holding mine with urgency
 
that said please let’s not
repeat this cycle.
 
I was born to set us free
I am the child like you
that hungers for peace.
　
That reaches out holding
a white flag
that kneels before the gates
of all the places they rest
 
focusing on the sunlight
shimmering through trees
that kisses the poisoned heart
 
and says ‘This anger has risen
inside of me, I do not understand
it hurts my chest
stings my eyes
 
it is not my original being
it is the shame carried
of all who stood before me.
 
Our tears wash us away
floating in the arms of hope.
for a future erased of all this pain.
 

Mrs Robinson
 
In the drip of perspiration
that collects in deposits
of chocolate;
skin laced with taste of
Latino succulent promise.
 
Flexed in the muscle
as you move
gracefully.
 
I sigh
and it drips
down slowly
In the curve of
my breast.
 
My eyes ablaze
with the desire
of a woman

locked in chastity belt
buckled tight
airless entry.
 
Disillusioned with the dance
tormented in the limited
movement of its tango.
 
Fed the hollow promise
of happy ever afters
that turned sour
devoured the child in her.
 
She now awakened
healed from shock
reels in the glow
of the melted skin

If she were 10 years younger
she would eat you alive.
 
How tragic she stands
now fading beauty
In the brink of transition

In knowledge
she is closer now
to Mrs Robinson
 
than ever before.

 

William S. Tribell

 

Elegy Written for Emmett Till

 

Don’t let nobody turn me round

On the wind a joyful sound

Two young men from Chicago

Summer in sunny Money Mississippi

Delta blue green melancholy

Time to bring in the cotton

Bryant’s store and a pretty white girl

Only but a catcall in youthful indiscretion,

Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam wouldn’t let it go

Like the Jim Crow said so; just another nigger

To the Tallahatchie River

Mose Wright knew that night

Poor Emmett wasn’t going home

Roy Bryant and JW Milam should have met the gallows

For what they had done To Miss Mamie’s son

An act most inhuman to their fellow man; a child

They were charged and arrested but only for awhile

Mississippi justice complete with mock trial

With a jury of peers; friends and well- wishers

Left to live and age free and un- reproved

Don’t let nobody turn me round

On the wind a joyful sound

A spark in that dark southern repression

A call to the light; civil and right

The legacy of poor Emmett Till

Now forever left to rest in the Burr Oak

 

It’s America

 

This is America

Open all night

Painted toenails

A minimum wage

 

This is America

Opening lines

Fluoridated water

Happy endings

 

This is America

It’s a jungle

If you know how to swing

Or TV day- dreams

 

This is America

Nothing to re- arrange

Politically correct

Land of change

 

America

For spacious skies

Peaks and plenty

Patent pending

 

It’s America

Buckle up it’s the law

Covered liabilities

Or full policy

 

This is America

Rent to own

Credit and nothing down

All the live- long day

 

America

 

       Pixeled Pasivity                                                          

        Television

 

Marquee moon at noon

The direction of reflection

And what I didn’t know I needed

 

Alpha level impulsive suppression

Hypnotically fractured and condensed time 

Mediated surrogate

 

Rhythmic titillation

Wrapt in a warm familiar glow

And always-in attendance

 

        Auxetic desires

 

The Murder of Neda Agha-Soltan 

 

You did not deserve                                                        

Laid dead in oppression’s coil

Witness to revolution

Suppression’s lead fist

Draws blood spilt as means to fill 

Gaps in incivility

 

Donald C. Mulder

WATER WASHING HANDS
 
If on the morrow
You feel no more sorrow
What would you say
For it is still today
 
If within your precious heart
You find it is no more torn apart
What would you do
For you are still you
 
In the institutional demand
I am here to hold your hand
I’ll keep it warm when your pen grows cold
I’d buy anything that you’ve been sold
Do as your told (yourself)
Do what you want (yourself)
Do what you need (yourself)
Do what you will (yourself)
Do what others do (yourself)
 
If your flowing’s free of pain
And only heat within your veins
What would you care
For all that is there
 
If you find your eyes wide open
And this day begets you what you’re hoping
What would you keep
For a dreamless sleep

 

Leonardo Rosado

leonrosado@gmail.com, http://sbtrmnl.blogspot.com & http://myspace.com/sbtrmnl

INSIGHT: 1) STILL

                    2) YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH

                    3) LET THERE BE LIGHT

                    4) FROZEN TIDE

                    5) LORELEI’S SONG

                   

STILL

 

I’m still waiting for that decision

Still choosing between right and wrong

Still being you or your home

 

I’m still living breathing talking

Still floating with my lungs filled

Still exhaling whispers gone

 

I’m still here

You’re still there

We’re still waiting for the decision

We’re still choosing between you and me

Still dying every night

Still resurrecting each morning

 

I’m still exhaling whispers gone

Still being you and your home

There’s no more waiting each dying

No more dying each resurrection

No more resurrecting whispers

Just waiting still for that decision

 

YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH

 

Saw her coming steam train unstoppable

Multiple fractures in her touchscreen fingers

 

I can whisper screaming she said

 

No more arriving and staying

No more mental measurement efforts picturing the trajectory

No more lip communication

You need to touch

Need to stretch and push and twist

Shake and stir emotions

 

Saw her coming unattainable haze of accuracy

Provocative in the black and white world we live in

 

Too damn right I am an embraced dogma she says

 

Crashing into waves of crowds dilemma decisively

Like a beacon in the mist of connections

Lost in a bodily translation 

Crying for the beastly call of submission and undoing it

 

Even if it is for the wrong purpose

Even if it is just a glimpse at the sun exploding

Even if it kills the flower that grows in the desert soil

On a lazy afternoon

 

I let myself be driven by the background in motion

While she chats blah blah blah

The dendrites depress with the manipulation of the electrochemical stimulation My will is restrained by her display of physical strobe lights

 

So emotionally driven despite her belief

Artificial intelligence is a communication learning process she would say

Trial fault error learn master and conclusively subdue

 

Instead I define it through your subconscious context

Neural network ever expanding

Trial fault error learn getting close and reprocess

 

LET THERE BE LIGHT

 

She never saw what was coming

Through the touch of my grey soft skin

By the twist of my arms around her bellybutton antenna

Through the stretch of her shade spectrum

It was too late for her to advocate dogma

 

She never saw it coming

A wave of emotional motion

Fiber optic cracking open every pore of her body

Let there be light

 

Something is wrong she said

The electric discharge of copper fingers

Melting the nervous system and reconfiguring synapses

Zzzzzzrrrrrrrrrttttttttttt feedback static white noise

 

Something is wreaking inside she said 

I’m floating in liquid shades of past and future events

Recombining surfaces and shapes of men

Beautiful faces speaking unknown word melodies

 

Everything is rewritten she said

Truth is but a reflection of viewpoints and reference vectors

There is an intrinsic attraction in contradiction

Passion boiling semiconductor veins 

 

She let herself gaze into the eyes of nothingness

Like looking at a white sun

With excitement for the fellow mankind journey

Paving the way to a new beginning of interaction

 

No more military missions

No more chains of command

No more consciousness shackles

Just a tiny web made of nanostrings

And its spider feasting on the overwhelmed fly

 

She never saw it starting

 

FROZEN TIDE

 

The tidal wave filling human bodies of intertwined links

Ether connectivity I would say bringing us all in one mind

Through mobile phones radio wave frequency bluetooth infrared you name it

 

Everything is connected

Passionately like your embrace to instant messaging

The world gladly embraced the idea of ubiquity as the ultimate form of liberation

 

What happened to Woodstock?

The feeling of righteousness and endeavor

What happened to you

And me

 

Technology happened

Knowledge virus spreading happened

Networking with one self happened

Reassuring single minded monologues through blah blah blah audiences

And disconnected realities with physical touch

 

What happened to the Berlin Wall?

It stayed there invisible

A void for electronic hertz waves

It’s still there waiting

 

What happened to you and me?

We don’t make love anymore

Not like we used to – Let’s get physical, physical, I wanna get physical

 

We play mind games through short message service

Discover each other weaknesses by email

Confront our fears in virtual reality

 

What happened to nine eleven?

Its ghosts still haunt our every brainwaves

We pretend it’s not there

But the dust is still glued in our fingers

Preventing us, you, me and her to exchange fingerprints

Like blood brothers would do

 

LORELEI’S SONG

 

In the end all forms of interactions will be wiped

You, her and me

We will be nothing but fragments of wavelengths

Spread through the cortex of electrons collective imagination

Generative dust to feed the birds

Fertilize trees

Shine flowers

 

In the end all forms of interactions will be wiped

And I’m not talking about death

But something else

Something far more extreme

A permanent flatline

An induced hypothermia

 

There will be no such thing as action or reaction

Just a detuned buzz knocking on every door

On every horn

On every heartbeat

 

When you hear that sound

It’s Lorelei’s song

Water untouched crystal clear

 

When we realize this

It will be too late to go back to touch

And color

 

Nothing will be left of us