Guest Poet

smoke disappears
like
ghosts
on a porch
in the rain
and further
investigation
leads to
dissipated
dreams of
what
could have
been

– Tohm Bakelas

the jobcentre crony
is surprised to see me:
your appointment’s not until later, she says
I’ve a funeral to go to, I explain.
any chance we could do it now?
and she rolls her eyes: well I suppose we can fit you in,
she roots around for a form.

we have some stuff in common:
her collar is white
but she’s working class, like me.
her collar has hung her;
she’s dead, like my friend.
but she does not and she cannot know this,
as she asks me the all-important question:
what jobs have you applied for this week?

and since there aren’t any going, I say:
ALL OF THEM
and my wit, it is a worm
scratching too loud at her coffin lid
and she wakes up angry
as would I
if I died and went to the jobcentre
but it’s cool: they don’t want me here
in this life
or the next
and aw crap, is there really another life to fail at?

– Tanner

I want everything–
the pop song’s dance beat,

two glasses of wine, this kiss,
your hand on my hips,

happy hour haze,
tank tops, glitter,

the drag queen’s
too many costumes,

our bartender’s shirt off,
his smile when he pours

our last round,
sitting side by side

knees touching,
the train and its path home,

the sun going down
over Manhattan,

summer sweating
out our longing,

wringing us like a sponge,
a glass of water.

Baby, hand it over.
Let me drink up.

– Isaiah Vianese

In the night’s dark half-glitter
regard the stones, jewelled
with drops of mercury.

Watch the drip of memory
as it cascades through retort,
alembic, crucible.

Outside the light, forms
amass upon the scales
and unlovely creatures

formed of no living union
caper and prey, immune
from the cloying call

of natural ways, always instead
seeking transmutation, the next
shape they will take

according to a different ordering
far from the tidy arrangement
of the so-called elements.

Rare metals, noble gasses
have their own sphere.
It is our task, my dear familiar,

to harness all to our own
purposes, and to exile
those foul usurpers

accused of witchcraft
for we are scientists, ahead
of our generation

and steeped in the medium,
arrayed in silk and silver,
accustomed to the comings and goings

of nitrates, carbides, all manner
of oddities and anomalies.
See what I have here,

outside the firelight, in my flasks
of burnished lead. Here no glimmer
of reason can penetrate.

– David Punter

The twilight elicits images of Erebus.
Wicked fantasies overwhelm mind and body.
A twist of fate incurs a state of despair.
I need to fill my veins with a floating euphoria.
The waitress brings me a menu…
So many choices, so many highs and lows
“I’ll have opiates for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
Coffee and oxy are a kick start I need the most.
But night falls once again and soon I’m tormented
Demonic delusions, they summon me.
They seek to devour my soul, infuse me with a depraved dependency.

– John L. Yelavich

I made love to a god
who did not care
about my size nor
my gut
down there;

I still see her face
vespers, chants, and
meditations
in-between an altar
and some beads;

I laugh now
each time I meet new gods
who ask me if I pray
and when I pray

cos I stopped waiting to be asked
why I look at myself
in the mirror.

– David Francis Effiong

Agon Hack trains a spellican for heterotopia’s mongod
& mongo not_the_admin_db –eval “db.createUser
({user: \“myuser\”, pwd:\
“mypassword\”, roles: [\“dbOwner\”]}).”
He’s contradictory and heteroglot,
against a backdrop burnt in lixivum.
From Middle French céphalique, from Latin
cephalicus (“head”), from Ancient Greek κεφαλικός
(kephalikós, “capital”), from κεφαλή (kephalḗ, “head”),
the high genres are monotonic.

This is pileata Biblia’s (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m)
{i[‘GoogleAnalyticsObject’]=r;i[r]=i[r]||function()
{or he wears a himation worn
over his tunic. Glucagon
secretion is now stimulated by arginine
or glutamines’ Lucretius (via Alfred Jarry),
ancient mystery cults, Saint Paul, Neoplatonism,
Empedocles and Athenian civic ritual.

He admits that Scyphomedusae’s
rocket_launch: rlaunch -w path/to/my_fworker.yaml -l
path/to/my_launchpad.yaml singleshot,
elects his eminent domain.
For decorum’s sake, the scanning frequency is H=30
~275KHz (DP/HDMI)/ 30~160KHz (DVI),
V=48~240Hz (DP/HDMI)/ 50~146Hz.

When addressing the laity, the device control 1
character (DC1), a.k.a. control-Q, or XON,
starts transmission. Raw materials
used for this production are quartzite
(number= 30), chert (N= 22), quartz (= 19), opal
(n=7), agate (n= 6), rhyolite (n= 5), fossil wood (n= 3),
unidentified (n= 2) and quartzitic sandstone (n= 1).
Polydaemons clap and chant
hedocete fesnist atival.

– Daniel Y. Harris

everyone is familiar with
the presence of innocence
and grace in the eyes of a child
but if you look hard enough
you can find elegance
in the eyes of a junky
or a janitor
even a madman
and if you really stare
look at just the right angle
at the perfect time
you can observe the entire
beauty of the whole world
in the eyes of the dying

– Anthony Dirk Ray

Thrice you pleaded guilty before
a jury of four:
a rake, two ruffians, and a flamboyant bore.
The charge is feticide
of the puerile mind
that lay un-hatched in its paltry womb.

Thrice you puffed away your yawns
at judge and pawns.
The prosecutor began to snort
at your flagrant contempt of court,
at contaminating nasal ports
with the stench of a voracious tongue.

Thrice you gaped at the bleeding dawn,
awaiting execution on a new-shorn lawn,
alone,
no stake or twigs
or a to-be-crucifix
visible within your dwindling zone.

Thrice you felt the dragon gore
inside the marrow of your thoughts,
ravishing your ores,
depleting your wisdom with a bony straw,
dipped through a hole
they surreptitiously drilled into your subconscious core.

– Susie Gharib

The first time a bullet passes over your head, you don’t believe it
20 years old, too dumb to be scared
20 years old, too scared to be brave
Everyone wants to be a hero until it’s time to sacrifice

The first time you kill a man, it feels exhilarating
21 years old, smart enough to make a choice
21 years old, too lonely to care about the end
Everyone wants to fix you “The First Time”

The first time a friend dies, you don’t believe it
25 years old, too ignorant to understand
25 years old, too young to care
Everyone wants to mourn them

The last time you put your rifle down, the saddest day of your life
30 years old, too young to be this broken
30 years old, too tired to go on.
Everyone wants to forget you

– William J Watson