“As I create art, it is like a love affair. My days go by loving what I do.”
Peter Max
••• The Mad Gallery •••
Mario ~ Mario Loprete
To see ALL of Mario’s mad-nificent works, as well as our other featured artists (45 total!), visit our Mad Gallery!
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we picked love’s part from a rain filled heart; we indulged a need to wait to bleed; we liked the lure of a Spring voyeur; we watched the world of a factory girl; we greeted affection with cold rejection; we fell to the scene of a broke machine; we mourned folks dead with options gone, where birds tore skin and tweeted song. So much we made of life’s parade, writing all along.~ MH Clay
Business as usual. by Mick Corrigan
Dead my father and not a decent poem written this year,
Dead my father and wolf-boy whistling by the dispense bar
his florid face brandied close to aneurism,
Dead my father and there’s snow on the hills
no threshing in the haggard or turf cut today,
Dead my father and the dancing girls’ step in, step out,
laughing at the stupidity of men,
Dead my father and opium no longer an option-
But in the deep of dark, where all the clocks are stopped
a nightingale opens his heart to sing.
Dead my mother and the neighbour’s thoughts all flying at half-mast,
Dead my mother, the blast radius of your childhood blowing past
mock-mullioned windows down respectable lanes to buckle the thresholds
of your children’s bones,
there’ll be no Ave’s tonight Maria, no sore knees or bruised tender breasts,
Dead my mother and light on water brings no joy
though a singing priest can cause a scarlet flush
to the well-reared daughters of working men,
Dead my mother and prayer no longer an option-
but in the deep of dark where all the clocks are stopped
a small bird tears her soft skin raw.
October 19, 2019
editors note: Sing or tear, to dust we must… – mh clay
Fall by J.K. Durick
Shadows at first, blurred voices saying my name,
calling 911, an ambulance, I have fallen,
fallen out of the day, out of the familiar
into the world of blur and shadows, voices expecting
answers, I have none or few, my name, birth date,
the ambulance wants to know the day, the year,
the E.R. asks the same and what I was doing when
I fell; things try to sort themselves out, hook me up,
fluids in, out, blood pressure over and over, an electronic
this or that, my heart, the odd sounds it makes, they make
discussing me and what I have become, one of the fallen
who needs to be explained – it went on for hours, vague hours,
days in the hospital, in rehab, I became strange, living a gap,
a bad dream, a story someone else has written, telling of
fallen angels to this fallen beast, the broken machine
I became.
October 18, 2019
editors note: Machinery malfunctions. So hard when you’re the machine – Oh, my! – mh clay
Bitter Cold Can Burn by Linda Imbler
Perhaps the fires of hell
are meant to describe
a wintry mix rather than that of flames.
Greetings and affection met with chilly, cutting
aloofness can break hearts and stretch the nerves raw.
Such deep and keen, sharp pain within the breast,
the sting of rejection felt in sinews,
like a pitchfork,
such will freeze the blood
of all but the most heartless, soulless beast.
October 17, 2019
editors note: True hell; what we do to each other. – mh clay
Factory Girl by Silba R Marak
When the fiery orb descends beyond the mountains,
The chug chug of the industrial machine ceases.
And figures, like ants scampering out of its colony,
Spurt from the behemothic gate. Footsteps direct their way to the grocery.
How much is the steak? Tomorrow is Sunday.
I’ll feast upon steak and cheap wine.
I haven’t visited my mother for weeks.
Hope she’s topnotch.
I need to check my brother’s progress in rehab.
Johns’ coming over tonight.
Shall I wear thongs and high slit skirt?
My new bodycon dress will surely erupt volcanic tremors swallowing the purlieus into a hazy sphere.
Tring tring… Tring tring…
Hello!… Yeah, John… oh, that’s ok… really, it’s ok… bye…
I will have to watch TV alone.
I will have to jog alone.
I will have lunch alone.
I might one day dress up like an uptown punk and barge into a bar.
Or put on a bodice and a tutu made of turkey feathers to dance at a powwow.
I will finagle my way to a chair in some corporate office.
Or maybe, become an untrammeled tourist guide.
At parties, I will meet young men wearing musk colon.
I can hear us laughing together over a silly young lady
Dressed funny in sequins sitting on a couch in a corner.
Tomorrow I shall be a punk. Tomorrow I will barge into a bar.
Tomorrow I shall search for turkey feathers.
Tomorrow.
October 16, 2019
editors note: Another day in the life of aspirations for tomorrow. – mh clay
Thoughts on a New Spring by John P. Drudge
Over the soft edges
Of curiosity
Into the uncertain woods
Of movement
Spontaneity and light
In an atmospheric shimmer
No actual sky
To be seen
In the wasteland of the real
Delicate and ephemeral
We walk on tenderly
Samplers of experience
Voyeurs of modernity
Grasping new from nothing
Where optimism
Is not naive
In the awe of fresh sunsets
And the power
Of a relentless longing
To be free
October 15, 2019
editors note: No! Never naïve to push for “Yes!” – mh clay
Time Management by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal
The wait is long
to get your blood
taken out of
you, an hour or
so without an
appointment. I
never learn my
lesson. I wait
every time. I
do not take the
time to pick up
the phone or go
online to make
the appointment.
I pass the time
writing poems
on my phone like
I am today.
October 14, 2019
editors note: Wait not, want not. – mh clay
Raining in a heart by Jayanta Bhaumik
I believe it is always raining inside a heart
water brimming up,
and the night
waits for the world to be flooded.
All is an inevitable quotient
between emptiness and memory-flash
Think of a house wending back
and webbed in grey
Think of how time written in a bold font
on the backside of a garden-patio
Endless soil soaked in a water-coloured ink
You can best sense all as you hear the
dying sound of a horn kissed by a horizon
As you open an old basket,
fossils of the vacuum turn into
the continuum of pages and flowers.
I believe it is fascinating
to be lost in the talent like meadows.
Your eyes are the biggest metaphor
The reality is only a secret lane. A bottle of
perfume is lately broken in your name
Anesthetic fogs come out as I tell you, yes,
come, tell me it’s that, that,
nothing can change the sound of
downpour in my heart, but you can at least
know that one sitting deep in me with a
hard acquiescence has nothing to do with love
October 13, 2019
editors note: A dubious drenching… – mh clay
••• Short Stories •••
This week’s edition of Mad Swirl’s “Need-a-Read” series comes to us from Hunter Reardon.
Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this twisted love story:
What to do with the world behind us and the world in front of us? It’s up to you but don’t you dare stay stuck between the two. With that static motion, then you peaked at the past.
Here’s a few tantalizing lines from “THE WATERING HOLE” to get your read-juices flowin’:
(photo “Seating for One; Heart for Two” by Tyler Malone)
What to do with the world behind us and the world in front of us? It’s up to you but don’t you dare stay stuck between the two. With that static motion, then you peaked at the past.
Through the sliding doors she came one hip at a time: the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life.
It is a strange thing to suddenly find the most beautiful woman you have seen in your life. If you know this, then you are in rare company. Furthermore, you know exactly the feeling, and you do not doubt it. To others it is inexplicable, but this is how you know it sublime.
A rush of ancient endorphins– a budding, childlike awe– a sudden and certain faith in God and yourself and the United States of America. And last comes a gripping and strange sadness, perhaps because you know that you cannot remain here forever in the presence of beauty.
The long months he’d spent without Alice now vanished. Almost a year he had tried somehow to forget, wondering all the time if he had not made some serious error in judgement, and here was the answer. Ornery Alice wilted like smoke…
Will this random crossing of paths be the start of a lifetime romance? Who are we to spoil the finale? We just like to be the tease! Get your whole read on 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…
Lovin’ our affairs,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Ty Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor
Mike Fiorito
Associate Editor