“Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination,
intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.”
Jacques Maritain

Cray (above) by featured artist Mike Fiorito.

To see more of Mike’s colorfully crazy collages, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Mad Gallery!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we blinked at a flash of fox; we fractured view for fractured view; we troubled twin hungers; we mangled mediocrity (so should we never be); we bled to empty head; we launched a loved one, streaking star shot; we burned in blessings borne for home. We breathe, we see, we’ll ever be. ~ MH Clay

Remember by Josh Weir

you must be humble
inside the flame

breath deep
laugh
make love
tumble to ash

and let the tears
find their own way
home

November 18, 2017

editors note: Lest we forget… – mh clay

The night Mother Stepped into Space by Opalina Salas

Def: of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move

Wild dreams
Rocket ships
with missing seatbelts
soaked sheets
and
astral projections
shed her
of her
constraints
middle aged
suitcase
carriage ride
blasts
away

mother dreams of this
his hands
picking strings
around her fairytale face

cheese wheel moon
takes her soon
sailing on star trail tail of
wistfulness
behind the sun
tin foil suit crackling away
from celestial maid
body
and she slides
glides
between Styrofoam
meteorites
in invisible arms
opens her mouth
and swallows
the milky way black soup of asteroids
mother laughs
her toes tickled trans Neptunian
night gown sizzling away

mother dreams of this
Star Trek sonar ping
Lullabies
The darkness of dark
twinkling
Shine
Saturn is a turntable
And the tune
Is all right
In flight
At her feet
Tiny earth shrinks
Away
Through the straw
Of her view
Her Ephemeris
Arching
Sublimely

November 17, 2017

editors note: A sad blastoff for us behind, a new frontier for them. Yes! – mh clay

Evacuated brain by Hem Raj Bastola

Grinding,
In a vortex,
Flour of my mind,
Dough, and spin.
Loosing free the skeins
Of: a thought.
Experience ink.

Reminded
Memory of the day,
Like Hydra walk.
Looking for veins to suck
Needle my skin.
Stranded I walk bleeding,
As you ravish me
On the way.

Blood,
That coagulates
On my feet, slimy
and slippery, I end:
With spindle yarn
Of leeches: a rein
Controlling my
Evacuated brain.

November 16, 2017

editors note: No brains, no headache? No matter, everything is empty in the end. – mh clay

thoughts late at night at an open mic by Carl Kavadlo

the wounded, the limited and the damned
the stage hogs who speak tritely
singers who announce histories of songs
before ruining them
messianic nuts who read terrible poetry
and believe they’re
announcing cosmic events. poets who
dance and scream bile
with drums, tambourines, castanettes
on tapes m.c.’s must play.
tuneless guitarists, cliché-muttering
nuts thinking they’re
doing a talking blues, little birds
tweeting around their
skulls, and more. democratic ideals
are always good
but theory and practice are always different.

November 15, 2017

editors note: Yes. Ever seeking to rise above, one’s best is another’s bust. – mh clay

Looking for Trouble by Joseph Farley

The heart wants what it wants
And the cock longs
For what it desires.

The subject is not always
The same,
Though it might
Overlap.

Great if it does,
If not, trouble,
For the heart must have
And so must the worm.

November 14, 2017

editors note: Though the heart may not, the worm always will. – mh clay

Tree Surgery by Lorraine Carey

You butchered us
along the stone wall
we now stand
flagrant, desolate.
Exposed we’re vulnerable
to October rain,
cleansing air, a clearing
for the sun
the rays poke through
gaps under the rainbow.
War veterans with missing limbs,
our symmetry askew,
never to align again.
Our foliage hangs,
depleted
embarrassed.
Branches hacked
and splintered,
congealed
sap in odourless blobs,
our roots retract in disgust
at the clumsy oaf,
his arms swinging with the bowsaw
aping descendants
desperate for an improved vista.

November 13, 2017

editors note: Priorities askew; destroying view for view. – mh clay

Fox thought by Polly Richardson (Munnelly)

Stay
low, stay staystay – sssh scurryscurry
low, leaving earth worm screaming,
Pant pantpantpantpant pant, hold ! sniff sniffsniffing -( lisssssten)
Bolt!
Chest burst almost drumming drum ming, back to damp earth
sinking paws un- rooting -Bolt ! leftright rightleft,
left
down,
Fucking houndsfucking houndsfucking – Still!
Hoofing thunder horning rumbles earth dust snow blanketing eyelids
What to do whatdo do dodo think thinkthink,- Oh come the rain
Mud mudmud on face sinking whiskers, roll roll zigzag zigzag,
– Bolt!

November 12, 2017

editors note: What they do when the man shouts, “View Halloo!” – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Happy Need-a-Read Day! This week’s featured story comes from Mad Swirl​’s very own short story editor himself, Tyler Malone​!

Here’s what editor MH Clay​ has to say about “Pain and Perfume”:

This benevolent ladies’ auxiliary abounds with grace and sharp knives; their blessed abattoir bequeaths relief. From them, no pain is gain.

Here’s a few lines of Tyler’s twisted tale:

(photo “Achtung!” by Tyler Malone)

The sandwich shop sneeze guard is layered with disgust, a windshield driven through a locust plague. Braelynn leaves the stack of hardening foot-long shells of bread to clean the circular common patio table of ladies who arrived fifteen minutes until closing time in a Baptist shuttle to order twelve six inch tuna sandwiches. No chips, diet Pepsis. Across the floor, Braelynn’s ankles mush and crack, the sounds of snakes on soggy mud around farmyard feeding tanks.

Shuttle headlights idly ignite thin curls of the ladies and blossomed sandwich wrappers while Braelynn searches for her right kneecap. It’s there, a digging icepick tells her it exists, same as heartache tells her she once knew what it was for someone else to touch her. Braelynn’s body never mends, never moves on. Moving from the sidewalk drop to the patio, all the bones stinging makes Braelynn mumble unholy short words. Light creeps through aged hair like smoke rising from pasty skulls on a cold night, but this is summer and air doesn’t move congregated perfume mixed with garlic and banana peppers uneaten by false teeth, dried but saved from discolored tongues. All have their cloudless eyes on Braelynn as she grabs sandwich wrappings cradling iceberg lettuce and heels of caloric rich buns. The icepick digs deeper in a knee swelling as skin melts into hot denim. Braelynn wants to puke. Pain, perfume, the souring sandwich vegetables. She’d have to clean up the mess, though, and Braelynn has never puked. All that’s happened, all life’s agonies, she’s kept inside, never purged…

If you even think you have an inkling of how this tale ends, you’re wrong! Find out for yourself right here!

••• Mad Swirl Speakeasy Series •••

HUGE gratitudes to ALL who came out to Mad Swirl’s Winter Speakeasy, “Comrade Confab!” And what an easy-speakin’ poetic & musical celebration of collaboration it was!

More HUGE grats to the fine souls at Happy Medium (namely, Miles, Zach and Andre) for opening their badass space to us Mad ones!

Our featured Comrades, Josh Weir & Opalina Salas, told us to open wide and proceeded to feed us with a poetic feast! Then the stage was opened up for all the Mad appreciators to become participators! A truly Confab-ulous dream scene was had by all!

To get a fly-on-the-wall view of our feature AND open mic set, give this LIVE feed a look-see!

Stay tuned for our next Mad Swirl Speakeasy comin’ 03.17.18!

•••••••

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…

Swirlin’ Madness,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor