“The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who… burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles.”
Jack Kerouac
••• The Mad Gallery •••
“Nakedness That Awakens the Wind” (above) by featured artist Bill Wolak.
To see more of Bill’s twisted illustrations, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Mad Gallery!
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week in Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we thin air gasped and thin air grasped; we sought peace in pieces; we fished to not be fished; we revolted against revolt’s result; we watched a word try to get a word in; we would beauty see, though no beauty be; we with nothing owned would own all. We have, we write, we relinquish. It’s all who own, now… ~ MH Clay
Down On Front Street by Adam Sometimes
This is a foggy step
An amber goo between the prints
The more there is the better chance I have of it fossilizing
I hope you get the metaphor
My paranoia limiting my patience
My paranoia
My paranoia
My paranoia
It seems that’s all there is anymore
I fight so hard to be free
Down on Front street
Just to cage myself in my cave like notions
I wonder if I could ever love again
Or if I’ve ever loved before
Perhaps all I felt was a
narcissistic sense of
ownership and betrayal
Caveman emotions trying to speak modern language
And I’m trying to get rich off of Bitcoin
I had a client say “what’s the point in investing?
We’ll all be dead soon anyways.”
I check my pulse
I pat my gun
Instinct
Paranoia
And I think in response
“Not me motherfucker, not me.”
October 21, 2017
editors note: Not me, either! Uh, wait… where’s my gun? – mh clay
NICE GUY IN A CRUMBY TOWN by Sam Silva
Circumstances force me to be unpleasant
sometimes
it leads to a low ebb
…the tides of good thought recede
leaving their naked sand
full of crabs and crawly vermin
where the soul comes to bury love
…watch TV instead
of looking out toward the streets and their gardens,
stuff cigarettes and food
by the load
to manage better what vagrant daydreams
still linger
in an unconscious eye
which would see all things
as beautiful!
October 20, 2017
editors note: When within renders none, be seen as such by association. Nice guys, all. – mh clay
The End of The Line, Strikethrough Font by Alyssa Trivett
We pay in change and ask the sentence
to seek solace in other forms, maybe roll
into loose-leaf instead, or pen stabbing yourself
to death outside the former car dealership,
inflatable dinosaur, now lumberjack pancake flattened,
no longer hissing air.
The diner is full, as S(entence) has been out of work recently
and asking for references; which pages are open
or what support groups can provide editing.
Had it been me, I’d resort to exhausting all options,
seeking strikethrough if the cards on the table are muddled
and wet, reeking like basement laundered currency.
But instead our day goes on, and eventually,
we all figure it out,
instead.
October 19, 2017
editors note: Words out of work, awaiting gainful employment. – mh clay
Utopia by Ndue Ukaj
Everything is different, in the horizon the Sun is crumbled
The crumbles remained on the earth’s heart like triumphant arrows.
We can’t recognize the colors through the wind caressing the memory
We do not read poetry in the universe of foolishness
Where relations between darkness and light
Appear just like relations between the wall and thought.
Behind is played the surprising game, just like before
Birds are falling on the ground, just like in times when hell was written,
Oh God, everything has changed,
At a time when a small fence is darkening our big eyes.
The moon finds a path through mummy hands remaining like arrows towards the sky
And the sun dissolving just like a candle through tired eyes
Who can’t see anything in the blue sky, except a small cloud
A cloud darkening everything
Therefore, vision is coiled in space
Just like the wind creating its avalanche
Then many faces appear.
At a night, when everything is different,
Containing inside the borders within your head
When your feet walk through illusions
And squeeze their bad dreams
For the time that isn’t
For the time that wasn’t
For the time that will not come
For the time that goes with the wind.
Utopia struggling against reality
Her dreams hiding at the corner of secrets
Are swallowed
October 18, 2017
Translated from Albanian by Peter Tase
editors note: This Kosovar poet wrests the reality of reconstruction from explosions of ideology. – mh clay
Dip by Utpal Chakraborty
Each moment I’m ducking under the streams of thousands of rivers. After each willed bath floats a corpse. Logically there is left no claimant of that corpse. Rather caring a straw for it, I too look forward to a new dawn. At times somebody whispers, pulls one or two of them. I feel hilarious to find me alive among some sounds of arrested silence.
October 17, 2017
editors note: One person’s horror is another’s hilarity. – mh clay
Everything was meant to be broken by Rajtilak Bhattacharjee
Everything was meant to be broken;
hearts,
dreams,
homes,
realities,
and even the darkest nights into
the first light of dawn.
October 16, 2017
editors note: From any shake and shatter, something new can come. – mh clay
Reaching for Dawn by Ann Christine Tabaka
The shades of dawn
falling like colorful feathers
plucked from the sky.
Sorrow, a distant friend with
sodden shoulder and sturdy
pose, no longer needed.
In hand, a timetable of
misbegotten deeds, to be
dispersed to the four winds.
The song was sung long ago.
The echo still remains, of
voices faint and far off.
I do not know the words.
Climbing the mountain,
altitude unknown, oxygen
as a noon shadow.
The pinnacle appears.
Breathing in the clouds,
Focus begins to dim.
Past fading into the future, as
the dawn now turns pure gold.
The summit is within reach.
October 15, 2017
editors note: No wise man at mountain top; only wind. The perfect dispersal place for deeds. – mh clay
••• Short Stories •••
Need-a-Read? This week’s featured story, “M-Theory Musings” comes to us from Contributing Writer & Poet Harley White.
This tale of cosmic proportions is sure to blow your mind.
Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week:
We ring forever, or we don’t. Know, though, that while not here, we sing somewhere else. Something of us, some hint of us, what we want to love or hate the most about us, exists all the more magnificent somewhere else, on the strings.
Here’s a few pinches of story stardust to get your mad minds swirlin’:
(photo “Shoestring Theory” by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter)
What theory unifies forces, weak, strong, with gravity— also, to which belong all the string theories of why and because?
To answer these queries, M-theory does.
Proponents aver it offers clarity as to the issue of singularity.
Where there’s a will there’s a way, so they say…
We’re not gonna be a spoiler on these cosmic queries. Go get the rest of this starry story… right here!
•••••••
The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin’ on… now… now… NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl’s World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We’ll be here…
Burnin’,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor