A poem by James Fleming

There's stuff floating
in my Margarita.
And it also tastes

like soap, and metal.

I come here often
and I don’t appreciate
this mixture at all.

My Margarita should have
the taste of limes,
and nothing like
aluminum.

Please get me another one, sir,
as you do not wish to lose
my business tonight.

(This is my Uncle Jim's poem;

  the words are based on words

   said at a restaurant by his wife,

    my Aunt Lisa.)

Jim Krull

The Shape of a Stone - Eliot Cardinaux

Conserves the forest
in its green,
jar to the shape of a stone,
time willing it
into these lives
like a little stroll,
back out of the hold;


this rock, the shape
of it, the shape of
things to come,
straight up and down,
your brand of suit
like this tree,
viewed as he is,
viewed as you see it.


And the road gets longer,
“this way,”
becomes “goodbye,”
this nature of things
as nature in scope forms
too these forms that grow
up from it,
someone you didn’t
know.

The Swing - Eliot Cardinaux

I spend a few moments

searching for the wind’s voice.

What is it? A fleck of carbon,

an insect?

It comes softly,

as a diatribe,

playing its music

over older shrubs.

Three poems from postcards (Jim Krull)

The matted and unwashed

Who cross the European field,

Celt or Gaul rush

     With their particular civil

                                   persuasion,

Greenly they think thanks,

     Giving the new-lands

Their stink.

 100110

 (Sent to EC)

 Patter is the Gertrude Stein

                             of the cats,

But she doesn't say much.

                     No poems abou

Her food, or the plate it's on,

                     Or the table it's on,

                     Or the floor its on, under,

093010

(Sent to RL)

(Mama's Cat)

Little Figgy is so effete,

She shows just a bit of herá

                                      toes

Under her fur. She is always

Somewhere near her mother.

What a nice idea.

100110

(Sent to AEM)

The Creature of Silence - Sean Ali

The Creature of Silence

I want you,

          As the night covered trees

          Thirst for the morning dew.

I crave your touch,

          Like sun-scorched skin

          Seeks cool water.

Banging my head,

          Against the invisible bars

          That keep me from you,

          Against this shell-shocked solidarity,

          A blind decree from the dumbstruck majority

I want you,

          Like the gaping beak

          Waiting to devour

          The mother bird’s wrangling worm,

          Like the green haze

          That follows the storm

I want you,

          Like my bones want reprieve

          From their restless solitude.

For the soul is a creature of silence

And the body a creature of noise

Quaking in ecstasied-eyed violence

Trampled under venom-soaked poise

Lift my voice to lighter days

          Where seashells clatter

                    In the rollicking waves

The abyss of Eros and the anguished joys

From the astonished faces of lovers’ decoys

Children of laughter,

          Children of tears,

          All of them destined

          For numbers and gears.

Lift my voice to lighter days

          Where the seashells clatter

                    In the rollicking waves

Dreams of night-stained fingernails

Clasping at the bloodred dawn
Dreams of the sunlight vagrant sails
What once was here,
          now is gone.

Lift my heart to lighter days
          where the tide recedes
                    with the rollicking waves

The daytime of your dreaming
is lost forever more
in the frolicking caves
For the soul is a creature of silence
And the body a creature of noise

Into his chest,
the spear was thrust
Out poured blood and water
          and mortality’s dust
Oh, but that the world could contain
          one act of forgiveness
Oh, but that the sea were large enough
             to catch a falling tear
Midnight has come,
              and the light comprehendeth not
Solitude, misery, wretchedness,
               and the banalities of the human lot
For we’ve fallen down stairs,
Strung up our wrists,
Breathed in the nightmares,
While clenching our fists.
Like the contradiction
             between the human heart
              and the smiling face
Or the torrid friction
             between the rumbling upstart
              and a life of disgrace
Behold! the chasm of the human soul
that knows malice without ends,
The yawning abyss of man’s inner being
Making murderers of friends

Oh, but that the world could contain
            one act of forgiveness
Oh, but that the sea were large enough
            to catch a falling tear
For I’ve only one to shed

Mouth

Mouth

Fucker's not responding

sitting here, by the table

a friend rolls by

"Yo, it was like he was all up in the corner, with his dolls and shit. And he was all by himself."

"Just staring out there, and playing with them eh?"

"Yeah, man. He was like playing with his dolls and there was blood everywhere."

I thought the secret was going to be spilled tonight

like his mind on that day

I pictured Hollywood in the distance

the twinkling lights

the boulevard of dreams

I lit up a smoke

I lit up...

I wandered around the house as the night marched on

the din on the stereo

the magic weather this time of year

"See that's my little daughter on the phone,"

I seeped into his dark eyes

Tropical name against old colonial buildings

back then the floor boards were slipperier

the tunnels deeper

the echoes more silent

That's when my lighter gives out

it flickers with no flame

I uncross my legs and go for the toaster in the kitchen

turn it on

and press the tip of the butt against one of the heated wires

in a couple of seconds the tip gets burned

and I inhale furiously to get it lit

blowing smoke into

someone's 2nd story Brooklyn kitchen

A sketch of a middle aged man

I fulfilled your desires with dreams

I came and I went

I laughed a little bit, you know, make it all good and like that

Yet it's sort of serious

No joke at all

Not even kidding

But the weird thing is

That he suddenly stops, turns to me, and goes

“But I have been listening”

-Mark Ge 

Poems I, III, and VIII from "Wall and Cord"

                   I

Or how the storms rush up
beat against the ceiling,
draw down against the hall
Union-theme to those alone.

They are away from the process
Of so minor a creation
Raise the big to little, rather
Land high ambition who tower
          give branches of love and difference.

Moving with speed unknowingly north;
I am so full around others
          and empty by myself.

                                011910


        
                       III

Set the table squares and piles
It is time, though
Fire leads larger and rain
      above
make sound that fill the quiet.

                               011710



                      VIII

Large scope in varied elements
unknown and little knowing
In chorus to fall, and live spring-
enclosed on the center, sent

Triangle cover of the bottom-point
Ears above the head's curve

None shall trade the finished article;
A rake of thorns sits in the path.


                                 040310

Poem VIII from the first section of "Poems and Songs" (Jim Krull)

It was a narrow dream
         of nine or ten-months,
Growing from one occurence
         to the next, in use
         to weather and our heads.

Nature that made a route
         from her heart to mind
Wintered a sun, gave
         clouds to the moon,
         all a beautiful tide;

In coincedence and folly
         our love was bloom.
In the unsaid moments,
         I recall,
         we hid ourselves into a

Return visit, perhaps
        to the home shared
As leaves to trees,  ---
        Then I cradled her foot,
        and she washed my seams.

Now, days before we meet again,
        Over looking the rosey garden
                          or the row of trees
        O'er and between the leaves
                          our gentle lovely-seasons pardon.

        Two seen in two days  ---
        Look! a figure in the distance!
        Imagination un-rewards the penance.

        If our hips were touching in the clay
        Our covered hips, or feet, or hands
Or if the sound of shoes,
        Our hidden moving image through
                          the branches were her here,
        Giving true-view to chance,
                          again another miss taken deer.

    
                                                     1015/2209,070210

Financial Accounts (Alex Hampshire)

II. Financial Accounts. 

The situation at red eye lazarus

provoked a gigantic stand off.

"I thought you borrowed those 

shorts from one of the other girls."

That's okay. For the purest of soil

may also be mistaken for a kiss. 

This is her hour to cut scallions. 

The great scorpion of mistrust

lovingly satiated by the hilltops.

Your kitten heel delightedly 

leaves scars all over my chest. 

Here we have come into contact with

a different kind of masseuse. No, not

Julia the masseuse with tiny hands.

Or that masseuse who was also a dancer

with mistrust for all of us. That the South

ought to be adored for it's insects

and lies is a grand sacrifice.