Mad Swirl

Join Mad Swirl this 1st Wednesday of April (aka 04.05.23) as we do the open mic voodoo that we do do at our OC home, BARBARA’S PAVILLION as well as from our Mad Zoom Room (broadcasted via FB Live)! Starting at 7:30pm, join hosts Johnny O & MH Clay as we will kick off these open[read more]

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again. Joseph Campbell ••• The Mad Gallery ••• "Currents (1)" ~ Thomas Riesner To see all of Thomas' wicked squiggles, as well as our other resident artists (50 and counting!) take a virtual stroll thru Mad Swirl’s Mad Gallery! ••• The Poetry Forum ••• This past week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry[read more]

All art is a confession. Gaston Lachaise ••• The Mad Gallery ••• "Troubled (2)" ~ Thomas Riesner To see all of Thomas' wicked squiggles, as well as our other resident artists (50 and counting!) take a virtual stroll thru Mad Swirl’s Mad Gallery! ••• The Poetry Forum ••• This past week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum... we stared a while at a[read more]

The knocking woke me from a deep sleep. I glanced at the bedside clock. Three AM. I stumbled to the front door and looked out. An apparition was half turned, smoking a cigarette. I could tell it was a guy. He made furtive eye contact with me. I flipped on the porch light illuminating a man dressed in worn camouflage. My friend Lenny. He looked at me, crushed out the butt, and put it in his jacket pocket. Something was in his hand. Half asleep but still glad to see him,[read more]

They took no classes together, and after that first year, never attended the same school, but somewhere, inside the scattered years of their lives, there were yearbooks. He drives slowly, much slower than he used to, even more slowly today, through the empty school parking lot for the first time in fifty-eight years. Windows not yet boarded. Walls not yet graffitied. His cane balances an unsteady walk as he inches toward his youth. His raised left hand shields his eyes from the sun’s reflection, then steadies him against the window as he[read more]

It was one of those days when I forgot everything and had to leave the store because I forgot a mask. So there I was, sitting in my car, rain pelting my windshield as I poked holes in a bandanna with a pen cap to thread bakery string through them to make a half ass mask. I was only going to be in there for a few minutes. The mother’s day card section looked like it was driven over with a bulldozer, with only a few pathetic sons and daughters picking through[read more]