“...and everything is going to the beat - it's the beat generation,
it be-at, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart,
it's being beat and down in the world...”
jack kerouac

STATE OF THE STATE

I’ve got more fingers
than there’s farms,
more toes than there are
wooded hills.

Long gone are
the yellow forsythia,
the cottonwood trees,
the picnic benches.

Many are the
reasons there’s
only new graveyards
not old ones:

money, bulldozers,
politicians, and what
the hell do with all
this garbage.

And, sure
there’s still a pond or two,
brown as the muck
they dump in them.

They chopped down the forest
to put up a Mental Hospital.
After all,
why stop at one lobotomy

- john grey

(1 poem added 03.12.10)

editor's note: Here's a sweet slap of sensibility. Thanks for the wake-up, John! - mh

...AND THE CHILDREN WILL EAT THEIR FATHERS ALIVE

...and the weak will dance
a
death of human compromise
an
illegitimate cry
however great the sound in size
and the clocks will burn their hands in time...

...and the bored will sodomize
every
inch of field that the martyrs yield
salting
every flower growing out the spine of hell
then the atoms beat upon the walls of their cells
and everything under the sun does melt into one...

...and the sperm is dispersed from
a
male's entrails and the egg
grows to beg
and the infant weeps or at least the unlucky ones survive
just as their fathers before them
...and the children will eat their fathers alive

you're all in the clouds
just
fucking each other

- nicholas martin

(added 03.11.10)

editor's note: Who's to say what shall come from what? Such proclamations, we are told, brought our universe into existence, while also predicting its demise. So, this poet has done the same. We have been pulled into his universe. Do we worship? Or rebel? - mh

Status Quo

I grow tall from where I stand now.

Rivers of whiskey, vodka and wine,
thousands of cigarettes.

Still
aching for the Word.

30 years.

And I grow taller.

Hundreds of poems,
awful lot of problems, fights, wrangles,
poverty, starvation, homelessness, lovelessness,
and small flashes of happiness.

Living on three continents,
eager for the Word.

Only 30 years,
still growing.

Emigration,
alienation,
solitude.

Half of my life is gone.
All of my love is ready for donation.

Hundreds of read books,
speaking four languages,
and still…

My fingers are itchy,
my heart hurts,
my soul drifts

for the Word.

The Poetry is my fix.

- peycho kanev

(3 poems added 03.10.10)

editor's note: We hear again from our Bulgarian friend. He is aching for the Word, while bringing it to us. How strange it is that all the healers are never healed. Get your fix here, and wish one for him. - mh

EMPRESS OF AGONY

The gum on the window
Runs casually
As her aging broomstick charges the ceiling
Maddened
By the shaking
Of the box springs
The parade
Moves on
The broomstick
SCREAMS
A hostile challenge
Naturally

- justin test

(added 03.09.10)

editor's note: This is the natural outcome of mad broomsticks confronted by parades? This is a strange dream from gum on the window? I don't know what this is, except it twangs a twisted chord somewhere deep in my the cortex. Someone tell me why... - mh

Autumn Shade

Would I’d slept where another man wept
Where another man had this leaf
And ‘thin this spring where lullabies sing
I beckoned for her sheath

I gazed at her
Dressed in Ermine fur
She walked and talked of the time
And then she’d say
I’ the middle of day
That she just can’t be mine

I fell to my knees,
And I begged her, “Please!”
But my pleas fell on deaf ear
Another man had come to seize
The hand of my maiden dear

Would I’d leapt where another man kept
Where another man had this she
And in this spring where lullabies sting
I cried and could not be

- julien edmund moss

(added 03.08.10)

editor's note: Love lost to another, presented with such whimsy. This poet knocks that whole traumatic experience down to size. - mh

Wolves

Wolves don't excuse themselves after they howl.

They don't ask for permission, either.
They see a moon yearning for them and they yearn right back,
sending an aching, lone, long yowl from the heart.
Do they expect the moon to cry back?
Maybe.
Is this why that howl seems so sad, yet strikes fear in the hearts of humans?
To cry out without reply-
what a pity.
To discover the indifference of the moon,
shakes the brave to the bone.

- d. victory

(added 03.07.10)

editor's note: This grabs me by the scuff of my neck with a cold, wondrous hand. This is it, exactly! This is how I felt when first I heard the howl of a wolf. This explains so many things... - mh

A Simple Guy

I can’t leave you alone I’m sorry but I simply cannot leave you alone I know you would prefer that prefer being left the hell alone by me we are getting rather old after all enough of this sophomoric adolescent behavior enough of me putting my hands on you enough of me kissing your perfect lips so endlessly like I love to do yes I wish I could honor your wishes your innermost and private desires and leave you the hell alone but well I am a guy simple as that a simple guy and you are still an extraordinarily beautiful and desirable woman the most extraordinarily beautiful and desirable woman I have ever known and I simply cannot leave you alone never have been able to and never will.

- michael estabrook

(added 03.06.10)

editor's note: I love a good, goofy, run-on love poem, cuz it's all about that wonderful fun, butterflies in you tummy, goofy love. Any simple guy is hard-pressed to resist. This simpleton (yeah, that's me) wants to go find his lover and cover her with kisses. (deep sigh) - mh