The Day Grinds on Me
I wish I had a river, I could skate away on… Joni Mitchell
This day is no different from
Any other
It swirls around me
Yesterday’s news
The bric-a-brac of Fourth Street
Trash and
I’m not really here yet
I am as here as I’ll ever be
As far as I know
As far as I can tell
I could be sitting here
Beside myself instead
Observing: the way the
Music surges
The way the crowd seems to
Pulse in time to it
Like an undersea ballet
Or the way these sad little stories
Vivisect my morning like
Little forceps pulling the
Shiny tumor a part
People will always try to
Burn you down with their
Dirt-clod minds
Their sad attempts at irony and deceit
Their barely disguised anger
I am gritting my teeth
Leaning into the wind
Call me con man
Call me rip-off artist
Call me a taxi
Hook me
Play me
Catch me
Throw me back
Return me
Unopened w/ no forwarding address
I wish I had a river…
Raindog
literary-stumblebum@earthlink.net
37 ways
The old lady once flushed
a twenty-five dollar
bag of smack
on me.
We were fighting
over my habit;
which believe me,
I had
under control!
I could've killed her!
Not that I couldn't
score some more.
Real life isn't
the movie
Panic in Needle Park.
There's always more
somewhere
if you’re
a working junkie,
but,
I could've killed her over it
that night.
37 ways without getting caught.
I figured.
1967 to 68
I don't know how many people
Cooke and I killed that year
we were together crisscrossing
that country.
But I'm sure it must be in the three digits.
Anyway I know I'm not going to heaven
cause of it, and Cooke even if he says
he's found God, like he says he has now,
and don't ask me to explain that one.
He isn't going either.
Michael P Lefanto
Fanniesson@aol.com
homage to the vegas lounge singers
songs cling to intoxicating memories
that first year living virtually in an office
fit for small press rock & rollers nearby
the slate river of the I-95 humming
from its endless traffic coursing
musically through my couch bed nights
I heard faraway riffs of lounge jazz
my feet tapped a broken rhythm to
what scalding desert air sought to engulf
beyond hills craggy with russet earth
Mt. Charleston looming regally over all
the gilded thanatos vegas stripscape
where the riverboat gambler steals souls
but won't put a bet on their value
equal to music bars we dumbly can't read
or fathom till pianos & drums entice tin ears
within the very poetic lyrics words lie
as sounds keenly offering aural entrapment
to free all from the old office cell snoring
& take us dancing to the glittering party
of easy laughter & clinking glasses still
toasting across the heartland's distance
that elusive desire we privately serenaded
before the beat stopped and went forever
into a flutter of escaping bird wings
unheard behind orchestras of stone
Peter Magliocco
magman@iopener.net
The Cost of Living
This proposal was certainly
on the horizon. Crossing
glances that desperately
enhance my visions. Unrequited
honey that forms and flows...burning
my throat as it goes down.
Adding to the scars that
Resonate.
This is why I choose to wait
while interesting danger conspires
and insurance quotients
rise
Emily Wright
wright23us@yahoo.com
5 Portraits Of Downtown Los Angeles
1.
He looked like
General
de Gaulle.
Wore
dresses
& hung around 6th & Main
with
his
hand out like a rusty pump handle.
Heavy sweat
pouring dirt through
yesterday’s make-up.
2.
Hair like a mop, black in color.
Banging his head on the side of the Bank of
America building on
7th & Spring
& pulling his hair
in the same motion.
& as we pass
we have to lean
close to hear him ask
in a whisper,
“ gotta quarter, gotta quarter.”
3.
With a back
the size of a Main street doorway.
Black patch over his left eye,
with a star shaped diamond
in the middle.
Cursing under his breath, “mudafucka, mudafucka,
you mudafucka.”
4.
She sleeps near a taco stand off the
corner of
6th & Hill
on two green garbage bags which contain
her entire possessions.
She smells like the Chicago
stockyards.
One morning I offered her a cup of
coffee & a donut, & she
spat at me, & made a hissing
sound like a curled up garden hose, full of water,
building to the nozzle.
5.
Screaming down the middle of
6th street
between Broadway & Hill.
Dodging around the cars like a runaway
slave - a white slave, at that, with long red hair
He was bleeding
down his cheek.
Two cops
with guns drawn
were chasing him,
breathing like an old box spring.
Doug Draime
cddraime@charter.net
This Son's Light
We always new it would happen,
Somewhere along the dotted
Line—
Love turns to lead.
And he went bad—real bad,
Forgot who he was,
Hunted
While the talk was of
Acceptable body counts
And the like.
I'm not saying god is the devil.
I'm not saying
That—
Just an old man with
Graffiti on the side of his neck.
Look at that,
The graffiti on the side
Of god's neck,
All blue and
Amateur,
All looking like a war
Without fingers.
Some things
Just change—
Even suicidal things
Like the mystery between me and you,
Between soldiers and sons—
Old November and the
Bleakest side of the road—
When my father dies,
I will not know it.
John Rubio
redtiola@yahoo.com
Music and Light
I hear perfect melodies
in my head as I sit all night
in a hotel lobby in Bakersfield.
My eyes darken,
I compose entire sonatas
until I let go or go simple;
Or until it is 1975 in Fresno
a pitcher of gin eating
through my father like rain.
His face pulverized,
full of the perils of ancient maps—
A momentary voice lifts him to rise.
He nails down the windows,
fills the tiny panes with lilies.
He moves the furniture
to the center of each room,
begins to form the one syllable
that outlives all of us.
You find his head on the floor one morning
shot through with light.
Daniel Mahoney
mahoney@english.umass.edu
Cities on a Lazy Susan
Etched etcetera to the time
tables of the great fruit crate
structures of quartz with a rhyme
Abandoned it, watched it
dissolve and they gave
me two hands
Retired to a flood of fire
A steam room where
they smelted glass slippers
like clockwork in the baubles
dissolving into crystal steam
Radio waves balance
out the turbulence
of these turn tables
in synchroni-
cities
even the commercials
of cardboard voice
and the canned chorus
that keep concealed
the bar codes of
the labels they
invisibly imprint
on our scent, on
our coat-tails, on
our heels, on and on
it goes
If I am a man
I am going to put
you on the shelf
downtown in a penthouse
window
as a pretty
plastic plant
Multifaceted diamond
di-
vision
of the new arch-
itecture is as trans-
parent
as a rainbow,
but this one
you can touch
to assure you as much
that as such this is no dream
These black market sketches
of oceanic labyrinths
in the desert the worm
knows are a shuffle
of anatomical jigsaw
pieces that squeal
like the wheels
of Ezekiel, a colossus
of spaghetti western
graffitti perfume
in the funhouse
of the corpus
callosum and the
thalamus is white light
at the gate pumping
the pearl above
with ecstatic friction
Nelson Gary
tefillah@hotmail.com
CITY
Piles of hoarding and neon signs
Lost me from myself beneath
The skyscrapers where
Crowds of men found a way of life,
And to my disgrace, I lost one.
None seemed to care
Even the arrival of dawn,
Since the difference in night and day
Were none and still like fools
All loved the joy of being artist
Of the unending drama.
Dollars and pounds, rupees and francs
Love lost existence in the far off ground
Which had sunk so deep that only few fairy tales
Could name, and it 'just seemed Interesting'
To hear the same.
Losing all hope in the polluted air,
I dreamt of beauty I could find in love
Till a sound of coins woke me up
Thrown at me by passer-by
Thinking me to be a beggar,
Calling it to be a token of love.
At last I realized love's existence still remain
But the way of loving has met an unprecedented change.
Raghab Nepal
nepalruckus@hotmail.com
Ambition
I’m 53 and one half years old struggling
still to write a handful of half-decent
poems. And my ears on winter
mornings are still cold like when I was a
kid walking back and forth to school in
December too embarrassed to wear
a damn hat.
Michael Estabrook
mestabrook@comcast.net
Venice Beat Scene
Take #1
sun warms wine in paper bags
excello red port 55¢ a quart
gives our men thick rich blood
worth $5 a pint on skid row
they have been gone all a.m.
while we wait on the sand for
happy jack's old nash rambler
to roll into the parking lot
jack is driving
tony rides shotgun
no shortdogs today
tamboo bought a fatman
we will all pull on that
gallon jug of white port
mixed with lemon juice
until only spit is left
tonight we will eat
rice and beans with
steaming hot links
or maybe a 50¢ slice
from the pizza place
on the corner of dudley
by the cadillac hotel
where the elderly toss
glass bottles at our heads
around midnight when
the party gets too loud
up the street poets mix
with plainclothes cops
at the venice west cafe
stuart speeds by on his way
to somewhere the musicians
gather by the shoreline for
a night of drink & smoke
we sit on mattresses, rags
blankets, quilts, towels, rugs
tamboo sets the beat
the drummers follow
billy crawford joins in
on guitar and one night
the hollywood flames sing
a thousand stars in the sky
and while we sing along
undercover police come
out from the waves
wearing scuba gear
their badges are pinned
onto nasty little speedos
they carry batons to whack
our heads and beat our backs
but we are fast we run away
they are fat and unused to
sand under their pink feet
soon they will go back to
their patrol cars where
they can hassle us in comfort
we come back the next night
but it is never as good again
Joy Buckley
joybuckley@hotmail.com
I'm an American
One of those lost souls you've read so much about
Stranded on the side of some broken highway
A fucking stillbirth
that never quite made it
here in my promised land.
Lisa Haviland
Haves34@hotmail.com
Tornadoes, May, 2003
If there is a lesson to be found
in the sickly yellow skies
which brought us to our knees
last night, huddled for safety,
while the sirens cried like squonks,
it is this: in the darkness there
is danger, choice and opportunity.
Corey Mesler
resolemcrey@yahoo.com
THE WASTE
“Babies get killed in wars.”
--The 365 Project, 3/15/03
A seed planted in passion—
or after a fight,
or an all-night drunk,
or forced into an unwilling body
at the point of a knife—
that seed takes 9 long months
to germinate.
The bud that pushes forth
into air takes 18 years
of heart-stopping joy,
occasional tears,
many frowns, frequent
tearings of hair
to reach what the law
calls maturity.
The labor involved
in getting this human fruit
to harvest is immense.
At any stage in the process
things can go wrong.
The most wrong of these
is war.
Spears, arrows, sabers,
Gatling guns, torpedoes,
today’s computer-guided missiles
destroying palaces in the sand
all leave fields of rotting bodies
in their wake.
Each human demolished in battle
was some woman’s baby.
Patricia Wellingham-Jones
Home Page
Allen Ginsberg
one please-master day you speak to cameras telling
world you’ve liver cancer two vortex days you pass
you’ve chosen best day to speak softly farewell about
death its coming predictable as Cassiopeia’s Chair
its big-time-neon-brilliant you bulb screwed into it
that easy mad leap from your bones you the crooked
cucumber of death you prophet against fabled damned
your first line is gift you headline-radio-brain-amanuensis
scrolling words from Bihar where asphodel Buddha sat
writing words directly from war-lips-cute-radiant Che
your last lines yage-queer shoulder greyhound sunflower
still writing rose-in-the-brain-shards until transcendental
cirrhosis turns you into deathly gutter 10th Street cadaver
I remember once at poetry reading your piercing eyes
peer through me knowing I might be quick-love-fuck
I too shy too insecure but yes I wanted you to prick me
hard semen transforming me from wasp nebbish into
poet but I had to wait years before meat words came
George Sparling
gsparling@humboldt1.com
LONG TIME LOST
Sunburst night birth
on an wet January midnight
when I came out screaming.
Didn't stop till I was 3 years old,
after that it was all clown and stories,
moody beast beneath a red mane,
a hunter and a ball player,
Irish prince on a 3 speed bike,
cruising the lawns and dirt roads,
in flight down the hills
on a tiger stripped banana seat,
war lord leaning through butterfly handlebars.
Off the bike I was Dan'l Boone,
I was Davy Crockett singing the theme song
from Walt Disney, "king of the wild frontier".
And then the time came, of course,
when I put down the rifles,
when my brothers were away in Viet Nam,
And we watched Cronkrite every night
to see if one would show up there.
And I read, read everything I could
of the landscapes of poetry and myth
in all the times that came before the war.
At 13 I mastered the V peace sign.
Drowned my fears in Byron, Shelly and Ovid.
Found a pen that worked,
found a voice, and a life, yeah,
found me.
And today I remember the chants
and demonstrations
as background to growing up,
as a waiting for my hero siblings to return.
War and peace, poetry and the metals of the world.
They knew everything that was there was wrong,
one a junkie, the other a decorated Cobra pilot,
Today, so long till today, so long till now.
One dead, one almost.
War was always metal and stone to me.
LBJ and Nixon haunting our nights.
Today the idea of it all is a harder substance.
Today the poetry comes on barbed needles,
on the knowledge that's it's not about
"kicking his ass", or "settling old debts".
Today the gun ships and drones
are readied to bring another sadness,
and I wonder if the children
on their mountain bikes today
will understand that this one is worse,
even less justified than any that came before,
or of any that will follow.
Peace,
a great word and a great deal,
I still begin and end everything
with peace.
H. Lamar Thomas
hlamart@yahoo.com
TRAIPSING THROUGH A LOCAL CEMETERY
Huntington Beach, CA (For Terry Lee & Paul Trachtenberg)
1
New excavations, blue
tarpaulins, rows of abused
green folding chairs waiting
for mourners, and a dais for the priest,
the grief-man consigner of remains
and expediter of souls to paradise.
Walking on these tussocks gives
the sensation of floating, until you
hit a gopher hole. Your muscles snap
then feel sweet again. Your neck and
hips are supple. You hope the jolts
will improve your arthritis.
2
We are insatiable readers, and each
morning scan t-shirt messages
for ones best-suited to the day,
are perturbed that our Birkenstocks
are smudged, grab mugs of coffee,
and read obits, lingering over
Bob Hope's Kate Hepburn's and Robert
McCloskey's–he wrote Make Way for Ducklings.
My favorite comic strip is Crankshaft.
3
Walking among these weepy stones,
I'm disappointed that I don't know
how these folks died. A coronary?
Booze. Lethal cancer nodes like
bits of suet in a plum pudding?
A car wreck? Old age? Strychnine?
4
We visit these graves: neighbor
Josephine–she died, still young,
from cancer. A woman who performed
as Betty Boop. Cacace-- friend Terry's
stillborn granddaughter. A fourth is
Dorothy Peters, Mom's namesake.
Mom died in 1963, while visiting us.
Though buried in Wisconsin, her soul
resides here. I can imagine her wrists,
kneecaps, teeth, and those bones
around the holes that held her hazel eyes,
and the pelvis from which I sprang.
I place a red rose and a sprig of fern
on her flat, modest stone.
Robert Peters August 3, 2003
PTrachrp@aol.com
Turn Out
meringue the white ghost
in a bone bowl
until there are stiff peaks.
Dig the yolk
from mouth, nose eye, ear, bellybutton
undernail, toe, etc.
until every hole is a hollow bell,
one that rings true-
unsheathe from your dress,
skinned elk on the spit.
Did you know that women
who don't bear children get cancer?
Because women are designed
to give birth-it's unhealthy
to deny your body that right,
but then again, you smoke,
so it probably doesn't matter to you.
Wash you face with apple
cider vinegar, then drink from the basin.
Eat yogurt with live cultures-
Hi, have you met Mr. Acidophilus?
Talk to him
until your veins run clear with cranberry juice.
If you can't feel ovulation,
then you're not paying attention.
What kind of woman
doesn't keep track of her cycle in a day-planner?
Why would any woman not be on the pill
when she could be?
When was your last period?
Don't eat asparagus if you plan
to be worshipped tonight.
Wear your hair down, we like it like that.
Don't ever cut it again.
Not too much make-up now-
just look like you got slightly stung
by saltwater roses flung into cream
Take your vitamins-
we have to keep you healthy.
Have you considered going vegan?
What blood type are you?
You have child bearing hips
and a lovely laugh-
we're just saying you're a valued resource.
You control sex and life-
we envy you.
You make the choice every morning
to wear black lace thongs or granny panties,
that's huge.
It's never too soon to start listening to Mozart-
here, we made you a tape.
Have you tried meditation?
How about medication?
Sleep on your side. Become Hindu.
Learn how to breathe properly.
Take a milk bath.
Drink kiefer from a conch shell.
Maybe you should learn how to french-braid.
You'll be so happy if you listen to us-
your body will say "yes."
Put on some Peter, Paul & Mary.
We're bringing you some carrots.
Your feet look so pretty turned-out
in those gold coin sandals.
Would you like to take a seat?
We think the world of you.
We will give you anything, darling,
if you just deliver this.
Anything: extra bedrooms,
expensive shampoo, a back yard fountain,
unlimited pickle milkshakes.
Karyna McGlynn
decocherries@yahoo.com
Squirrel Girls
“When I die,” she said,
“You can come here and visit me.
This is my sacred place”
She was nine years old and beautiful.
“After I die, I’ll be a ghost here
amidst the squirrels, raccoons and deer.”
She was beautiful and she was bald
and she always wore fairy wings.
She took my hand with her tiny fingers
and led me through the forest.
Winding a narrow secret path
towards her sacred place.
She had eight nodes in her neck
from a rare and virulent lymphoma.
I followed the fairy wings
to a mountain meadow
filled with blue lupine
and yellow columbine flowers.
She skipped and laughed,
nine years old and beautiful,
serenading butterflies
with a big smile, bald head, and fairy wings.
I like to visit her sacred place
the morning after winter’s first snow
when the sun strikes the frost and icicles,
twinkling in the forest like Christmas lights.
Sometimes I swear that I can just barely see her,
a reflection in the corner of my eyeglasses –
wings and bald head glinting in the light.
So now I’m telling the story to you
so that you can begin to see her too.
It wouldn’t be such a bad world,
one where the forest was filled
with deer, squirrels, and the ghosts of little girls.
Imagine a world filled with ghostlike girls
and little squirrels...
forests filled with little squirrelly girls...
bald heads and fairy wings...
sacred places.
Gary Evry
White Light for Sally
For Sally Weisbord (“Aunt Sally”)
“Et lux in tenebris lucet”
“and the light shineth in darkness.”
from John i, 1-5
Sally -- you never got to dance at my wedding
& I never got to
eat those latkes you promised to make for me. standing at
santa monica pier I watch smog form over the ocean & think you’d see
diamonds not smog you’d see dignity not homeless
man angels not pizza boys you’d hear symphonies from
boom box. I stand at the pier while
you fight for life in long island hospital
now able to speak only with your eyes I remember
you taking me by the hand, as a child, and showing
me where to find my strength --
something you never lost during
your twelve lymphoma years– never a complaint in
those awkward moments
a smile constant in
your voice as you ask “and how are you, dear.”
you were right about everything even right about
my landlord.
as I watch waves
crash against rocks I think I see you bending over in
the garden pruning roses your
oceanic blue eyes shiny as half
dollars. when I grow up
I want to be magnetic like you like
the time you took me to lunch in
your brown suede shoes from Italy the ones
surrounded by white light in my
closet shoes you wore when you picked me up
in little neck, snowstorm be damned, my tiny greek landlady
helping you downstairs you looked like a page out of a
five star hotel insisting we go to IHOP finding your escape from
great depression – from misguided belief
in mutual bonds and
mutual salvation from myths like reality and
collective renewal. you knew, even then, survival is
a solitary affair. the night you dropped me off my last
night in new york I held on to door of your cutlass supreme--
you got out and clung to door on the other side, & we stood
in the snow crying our eyes out -- a hard bargain to
survive, sometimes, we must walk away.
I never got to eat those latkes
you promised
paper rapidly replaces cutlery on table beside hurricane
lamp you gave me beside cobalt blue candles where I renew
myself like a nomadic vowel.
when I didn’t have a computer you had
one built for me. Oh, we fought, too, like the time in
coffee shop that day I drove from Boston
when you urged me to get teaching
credential -- my drive back filled with rage –
you cared about me.
when you lay dying in hospital your sister came to beg
forgiveness – she didn’t even have to ask-- forgiveness
as natural to you as breathing as
that amazing man you married who sat me on his lap &
read to me from Dante his paradise still
inside you. there’s a void where the void is there’s
lightning on the shoes you gave me
storms be damned if we knew we invented everything
we’d never wake up.
Sally you never got to
dance at my wedding. why does life
have to break our hearts time &
time again in this war we wage from the front lines
I salute you and
the grace you brought to
a sad lost planet
Jayne Lyn Stahl 8/31/02
(previously published in Jack Magazine)
JSTAHL33@aol.com
City: [no e]Scape
I’m so tired
of living here
alone in this
sprawl of lights
and concrete
and sweat
of placing one
foot in front
of the other
huffing my way
around this concrete
racetrack with
one eye on the carrot
and the other looking
over my shoulder
waiting for the man
to slap me on the back
and say, “Come on, boy
we got your sorry ass now”
Living on dreams
working all the angles
getting love whenever
and however not just
from sex but from a smile
or the way light bounces
off a car window on the street
from the smell of midnight
blooming jasmine from a song
on the radio while you
know you’re driving your
life sideways away from
the current dream that keeps you
moving along and you know
that at that moment that
song can say “love” more
deeply than all the late-night
kisses and penetrating looks
your lover can give you
And you can only appreciate
and savor that moment alone
because you are alone mostly
you and your ride a clean
window and light traffic
the music sometimes beautiful
sometimes ugly beyond belief
but always there even
when the radio is silent always
there in the stillness of that
moment in the presence of
the cityscape that rolls past you
like a silent movie with a
separate sound track of
whoosh and roar of song and
chatter and honk and sirens
wail and tires hum & whine
you watch it day in and
day out from the safety
of your head from the
theater of one
What is it that keeps us
in a particular groove?
What force keeps us from
jumping right out
and sliding into another
groove like some dust-
laden turntable needle
trainwreck miracle?
…There is a longing a
gnawing in the gut an
aching in the soul that is
always present always
your companion like an old
injury that never healed
right or an unpaid debt
or a piece of karmic grit
that may or may not
become a pearl of wisdom
a knowledge that something
ain’t right here you sense it
but mostly you ignore it
block it out this feeling of
incompletion as if it could be
buried beneath the daily
input the daily ration of
numbness another course
of bricks another coat of paint
another hour of the silent
movie in the theater of one
another moment rolling past
where you look out and in
the absence of a star look
instead at the lights
on Echo Park lake and make
a wish for a theater of two
for someone to share the
silent movie with for
someone to confirm to
bear witness to the silent movie
to the magical play of light
and sound and the wonder and
horror of it all
Left foot right foot
That’s right
Keep stepping
huff huff huffing
keep rolling
Right foot left foot
keep moving
don’t stop now
where’s that carrot?
who’s that behind me
left foot
right foot
going
going
gone
Raindog
literary-stumblebum@earthlink.net
To submit to DUFUS read on. Themes: there are no themes (or are there?). I'm looking for poetry that is well-written. Deadlines: There are no deadlines. Isn't that convenient? Just email three poems, of 40 lines or less to lumoxraindog@earthlink.net and please no attachments. Also include a brief bio.
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