Artists in each of the arts seek after and care for nothing but love.

Marsilio Ficino

••• The Mad Gallery •••

INK SPOTS by Colleen Boueil

Mad Swirl is thrilled to welcome back Colleen Boueil, with her photography that captures the most tactile elements of nature. Whether it’s twinkling waves against a shore, or the crispy sand itself, Boueil’s eye for texture transforms familiar landscapes into their very own tapestries, inviting her audience to connect not just with the simple beauty of nature, but with the tangible presence of it. Her work is a testament to the often overlooked details that make the world endlessly entertaining to take in, and you can bet we’re staring with eyes wide open. ~ Madelyn Olson

To see more of the textured world we live in thru Colleen’s lens, as well as our other resident artists, take a virtual stroll thru Mad Swirl’s Mad Gallery!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we fired the flames, made a hurricane; we stood all alone, turned out from our home; we made our days in tranquil craze; we flagged a world of hurt to defend a stylish shirt; we ripped a rant on what robots can’t; we recalled a wish for sunfish; we learned to last from our outcasts; we wondered if it’s funny to be in The 1-in-20. Yes, we blunder through our wonder. Who doesn’t? ~ MH Clay

Sketch, Unfleshed by David Dumouriez

Welcome to The 1-in-20 Club, you’re here!
Knowingly you had no choice, it’s true. A slab
of the unfathomable or called to this. Your place:
to toil beneath a lofty and indifferent eye,
or shift at the behest of some erratic thumb.

This side of the soil, untouched by fire,
the space you occupy is yours alone.
Breathe proudly – you can do no more.
Breathe, and look around until it takes
your sense away. Respond and counter-
formulate until they shut you down.
Until you join the 95%.

October 19, 2024

editors note: Delirium dirt nap… or not? – mh clay

Outcasts by Stephen Kingsnorth

We’ve learnt the worth, rotating crops,
we know recycle, seasoned time,
so why regret the sleeping trees –
insomnia dreads restless dawn.
Reaching spring starts underground,
the hidden clawing of the corm,
a crystal thaw of frost in soil,
expectant smiles of warming earth.
Metamorphosis from the crust,
rings of fire and icecap melt,
the stacking plates and boulder split –
but lost and found is core belief.
So fall time leaves when auxin drives,
preparing welcome mat of tilth,
means losing pieces from our pods –
floating, thrown out, swallowed bird,
has birthing bed for tapping wealth,
outcasts turned to feed the world.

October 18, 2024

editors note: Cast out till Spring sprouts. – mh clay

Sunfishing by Jim Bates

Evening sun lowering
Older brother driving
Motorboat racing across mirror calm lake
None too soon to their secret fishing spot
Swaying reed grasses tall
Sunfish hiding beneath
Younger brother ties boat to cattails
Lightweight lines dropped over wooden gunnels
Needle sharp shining hooks wriggling worms
No bobbers fishing by feel
Pumpkin seeds and bluegills circle below
Two brothers enthralled with fishing
A sunfishy summery delight
All too soon shoreline shadows lengthen
Sun begins settling below the horizon
Daylight fades fast in the east
Moon rises into an amber twilight
Time to go home
Lines reeled in and secured
Starter chord pulled and the engine catches
They head out across the lake toward a cozy cabin
Both brothers wide smiling faces turned into the wind
Racing the sunset stringer empty
Sunfish safe for another day
The two brothers already eager to return.

October 17, 2024

editors note: Such memories eagerly await our sweet recall. – mh clay

AI’s Test of Meaningfulness by Henry Bladon

With apologies to A J Ayers

Search within your artificial existence,
make use of your neural pathways
and explain to me
the peace of sitting by the shore
or what we mean by a velvet touch.
Tell me what it’s like to watch a butterfly,
or how you laugh during a snowball fight.

You can’t.

You will never get to smell fresh cut grass
or taste the juice of an orange.
You will never sense that petrichor moment after the rain
or empathise with a squawking gull.
You will not understand the woodland waterfall
or the snow crested hill.
You will never appreciate sunlight
as it beams through the clouds
or the relaxing rush of an ebbing tide.
No sense of pride in achievement,
or the excitement of epiphany,
or the thrill of success.
No, all that is not for you.

And something else:
you failed the verification principle.

I would ask you how you feel about that,
but you wouldn’t know.

October 16, 2024

editors note: Take that! And, you’ll never say, “I am not a robot!” either. – mh clay

Shirt lyric by Guest Poet Tony Beyer

now and again
even in winter
I prefer to wear this Hawaiian shirt

a vintage pattern
I bought off a rack
in Waikiki

among its motifs
are surfboards and an old-style
wooden paneled station wagon

both souvenir
and comfortable garment
it goes as well with

cold night fires
or beer in the afternoon
and standing around yarning

sometimes
out of the depths
of sleep

it’s the only flag I’d raise
and defend to the death
with musket and black powder

October 15, 2024

editors note: How to stand your ground in style. – mh clay

The Upside Of Crazy by Linda Imbler

When I was full-on crazy,
I thought angels transplanted barbs
for feathers within their wings.

I went to therapy to
understand the darkness
preceding my sanity’s curfew.

I’m still crazy enough to howl,
but now it’s done with tranquility.

October 15, 2024

editors note: The best way to handle your crazy (less messy, too). – mh clay

A refugee’s tale by Guest Poet Brindha Vinodh

Imagine living in two countries
at the same time

body in one, spirit in the other.

Home was safe until
it began to smell of gunpowder
oozing cries of children
powdered scarlet gore
stillborn sun
dead dawn

and yet in spirit you live there
thinking of family time together
the ivory stars sparkling from laughter
honeyed memories
before the catastrophe began.

How you never thought
you would experience migration

how you thought your dreams
would unfurl to widen wings

and how you hopelessly hope
that you would some day
return to your roots
and grow pretty purple flowers
and jasmine in your garden again.

October 14, 2024

editors note: Will you? Imagine that? – mh clay

Hell Fires by Robert L. Martin

Infernal coals from the floors
of Davy Jones’s Locker
heat up the waters inch by inch,
feet by feet, yards by yards,
fathoms by fathoms, sea to surface,
surface to the eyes of the sun,
lying still in the soft
summer currents, luxuriating
in the bosom of the Mother Ocean,
turning their bellies toward the sun,
red hot fires still shooting from their mouths,

but then their fiery faces
turned cold and lifeless,
their spears and battle axes are
melted down to ashes and the
tempo of their pulse is slowly crawling
inch by inch until there is close to none,
just a feeble smile from their petrified lips,
their white flags waving in their shaky hands,
yielding themselves to the heat of the sun

for the takeover of the new devil taking
over the tired old devil,
the alliance of the two forces
offering themselves to dance with the
swirling winds to the music from
the infernal chamber orchestra from
the Isle of the Dead, from the
drifting mausoleums in the teeth of the sun
with torches that kick up the waters
and turn them into turbulent waves,
then into violent hurricanes
that wreak havoc upon the ships and
the shores and the hinterland.

Mother Nature is our
lady of many moods,
our lady of power and beauty,
of resolution but yet vulnerable,
of trust but yet deceitful,
of honor but yet scorned,
saint and friend and foe and devil’s ally,
but yet the same since the
spirit moved across the waters
for the birth of our Planet Earth.

How else could she be?

October 13, 2024

editors note: That Mother Nature is a real mofo, this time of year. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

This week’s featured read,”When She Tries to See Herself in the Funhouse Mirror“ comes to us from Contributing Writer & Poet Marianne Szlyk.

Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this read’o the week:

Whenever art and life aren’t on your side, there’s always loving time. It’s always there… until it isn’t.

Here’s some of the reflection to get you seein’:

After Future Proof ~ George Rouy

Teasingly, Marty calls Mary the last of the Modernists for the paintings she loves, the museums she frequents when she comes to New York. She wonders if she has been mentally and emotionally arrested since the year she knew Frankie and Jacob.  Everything since then has been an epilogue. Even her recent, long-term relationship with David, which just fizzled. Officially, they haven’t really broken off. She just knows that he married her younger “friend” Alicia Gottlieb this past June.

So here she and her friend Marty Bird stand at the gallery in front of the painting that blends acrylic and oil. On the canvas, bodies melt like wax. Some body parts are solid, some not. She can’t tell whether there are three or four figures in the frame. Perhaps the figures are part of a collage—like the Braque paintings she loves for their uneven layers and explosive energy. Unlike the Braque paintings, the air in George Rouy’s painting seems like jelly. Perhaps it is humidity. Perhaps it is the turpentine that dilutes the oil paint…

Get the whole picture right here.