The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.

Vincent van Gogh

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“moon trine the drape of decency” by featured artist Mitchell Pluto

To see all of Mitchell’s colorfully chaotic compositions, as well as our other resident artists, visit our Mad Gallery!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we made up myth through character width; we stayed alive to defensive drive; we had for the taking the art of slow waking; we ran replay on a Father’s Day; we popped some pearls for a drowning girl; we were not above some smutty love; we dream sleep greeted while sun-dried sheeted. We write our dreams as we dream to rights. ~ MH Clay

Clothes Pole by Jim Bates

Set firmly in the ground
It had its own spot in the backyard
A heavy-duty metal post with wooden arms attached
Held together with clothesline rope
A lever controlled it going up and down
A thing of mechanical beauty
Simple utility and grace.
His mother hung sheets from it every week
White cotton flags waving in the wind
The kids would run back and forth under it
“Get away from there!” she’d yell
Laughing they’d run away loving the game.
At night he lay in bed
Reading a Hardy Boys mystery
Listening to a baseball game on his silver transistor radio
Wrapped in those sun-drenched sheets crinkly and cool
Until lights out
Then snuggling in amid the aroma of outdoors
With just a hint of sunshine
Eyes slowly closing until finally
Drifting into peaceful sleep
Fresh summertime sheets flapping gently
In a tender dreamy breeze.

March 29, 2025

editors note: Surely the stuff of dreams. Snuggle in! – mh clay

THE PURGE by Mandakini Bhattacherya

Would you come again
to the room, infinitely
dark, dingy,
cobwebbed,
with dusty cupboards,
soiled sheets, faded drapes,
frosted windowpanes,
a malfunctioning AC? —
The room tapering off
into leaking faucets,
a cracked washbasin,
stained towels,
with rusty nails functional enough
to hang clothes on –
all masquerading as
a murky paradise,
a retreat for our hairy bodies
that we rub and cling
together, shedding
our scaly skin, hair,
body cells, fingernails —
Shedding skin vigorously
till blood leaches
and the veins stand out, throbbing.

Would you come again
to this smutty paradise
to be reborn
as the love that was Us?

March 28, 2025

editors note: (re)Birth ain’t pretty. But a life in love? Well, would you? – mh clay

Drowning Girl by Guest Poet Jorge López Llorente

After Roy Lichtenstein

A typical gasp.

The reverb of a dampened cry, perhaps just
a whisper to the blank sky unseen above:
I’d rather sink… With hair colored Klein bluish;
with hushed open lips not finished yet, folded in
ruby origami, closed off from the ocean’s
expanse; with closed eyes, nervous fingers.
An unfelt wreckage,
an “I don’t care!”,
but just look, look at such pretty loss.

The pain is out of the frame;
the melodrama is in full view.
Typically, a gasp is due.

Another soap opera, the very picture of loss, a sea
of troubles foams before our eyes: thick-lined tear pearls
like aspirins dissolving as they drop,
not quite bubbly, about to be stirred,
gulped down and washed away,
in a stylized pulpy fiction
on a blue cushion of sleekly painted, suspended despair
for one to gape at, before moving on
to the next passion,
the next item.

A strained sigh still echoes, though.

But she does sink, and there was no Brad,
no drama, no throb.
Just beauty,
left alone.
All alone.
(Sigh!)

March 27, 2025

editors note: Someone, throw a life preserver! – mh clay

PEJORATIVELY COLESBERG STREET by Guest Poet Michael Layne Heath

On this day,
a memory of bloodlines.

I had two fathers:
One gave me life
then abused that of his wife
and kids

Cross-country trucker
taught me about music
also how not to treat partners.

Second was high school sweetheart,
classic varsity tackleback.
His colors ran right off on graduation;
he took it out on her and us.

Glad to be here mind you
They meantime now
all below Pennsylvania peat

It’s all luck of the drawn zygote really

and all who still have yours
who still remain
who maintain civil parlay
are to be envied

This day I settled for
the radiant company of the city
and of choice

And thought only briefly
of loss
on either border
of this bloodline.

Father’s Day 2023
San Francisco

March 26, 2025

editors note: Not just the draw but the playing. Thanks, Dads! – mh clay

Moving Slowly at 10am, Naples, Italy by Guest Poet Linda Sacco

Puffs of cigarettes in every corner.
The crackling speed of a motorbike
snaking down tiny laneways,
strangled by China-made Italian souvenirs.
Impatient start to the morning
(for a tourist – westernised to early work).
Learning the art of waking slowly –
letting blood orange juice
run through my veins
and capture me
in a moment of reflection.

March 25, 2025

editors note: Don’t have to move to Naples to live La Dolce Vita – but it couldn’t hurt. – mh clay

Here We Are. What Happens Next? by Joseph Farley

Billions of years in the making,
Requiring collisions of planets
And explosions of stars,
So much creation and destruction,
To come down to this
Small blue world coughing on exhaust
While dictators wave their fingers
Like so many nuclear missiles,
And clowns campaign for office
For the lack of any other possible employment,
And the dickhead in front of you
On the highway insists on talking
On his cellphone,
While in the lane next to him
Someone is showing a gun
As if that will speed up traffic
And save the world from being late
For jobs they had rather not go to
On another dreary day
That might be the last.

March 24, 2025

editors note: With what looms above, best look ahead – drive defensively. – mh clay

Some Ragged Concepts by David Dumouriez

god was never there
but in your mind.
god was only great
when multiplied by time.

Hell does not belong to death.
Hell is the prolonged undying.

Heaven is the balm they promised.
Heaven! They were lying.

Life’s just what you
did or didn’t do.
Character’s the width
between the two.

Who are you?
Here’s a tester.
Choose one:
Quester or Acceptor?

March 23, 2025

editors note: Do what you must for the idea in your head. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

If you’re looking for a read to light the corners of your mind, “Last One Standing, 2021“ by Contributing Writer & Poet Marianne Szlyk might be the misty water-colored read you need.

Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about our featured read:

Dance, because life (and death) are a slow shuffle.

Here’s a snapshot of how this trip down memory lane begins:

“Life’s Flames” by Tyler Malone

This morning, she is the last of her little family, Melissa realizes as she stands in front of her frameless bathroom mirror. She is the last one standing. Frankie, Jacob, and now Alicia, each one is gone, and here she stands, a sixty-four-year-old woman getting ready to teach as if this were any other Monday morning, as if her daughter hadn’t died the day before from a blood clot in her lung.

She is not alone, though. Her life partner Sam is plucking his bass, waiting for a new song to form as he stands on the patio. Unlike many of her colleagues, she has grandchildren. Two even live in this area. But Frankie, Jacob, and Alicia, each one of them is gone now. Even Alicia, who had found love at last and who was going to be a mother. Even Alicia, the baby she and Jacob made to stay together. For a moment, she lets her bright eyes before makeup mist over. Then she washes her face with cold, cold water, cold enough to scare those tears away. She thanks the universe for the surgical mask she must wear to teach.

The internet still has pictures of herself and Jacob dancing at a club that was not Studio 54. She checked last night when she left her bed because she could not sleep. In the pictures, she and Jacob were probably dancing up in Harlem, Queens, or even the Bronx despite the fires. They didn’t care. Their lungs were young. Hers were anyway. Fridays and Saturdays they danced while Jacob’s mother watched Frankie, their little boy. Nobody cared who she and Jacob were: the tiny woman with the white silk flower in her short, almost-black hair, the tall, gaunt man in the flowing white shirt and tight black pants, the man who spun her in and then released her. For all that Frankie later claimed about his father, he always danced with her, not with other women. Certainly not with the young girls with fake or no ID who crowded the dance floor in those days, whose thick, bright makeup made her giggle in the car afterwards even though she was not much older than they were…

Get the rest of this memorable memorial read right here.

•••••••

If you’re looking for a sign of our times “Jack Schitt For Jesus“ by Contributing Writer Edward N McConnell might be the billboard you’re seeking!

Here’s what Chief Editor Johnny O has to say about our featured read:

Hit the road Jack, this Schitt show has ended, along with our democracy.

Here’s a heapin’ helpin’ of some “Schitt” to get you going:

Photo by Tyler Malone

Democracy, reputed to be the “worst form of government, except for all the others,” seems to be destined, both in America and other nations, to go extinct like a certain bird in the late Howard Waldrop’s story, “Ugly Chickens.”

In America, a new administration, one with strong autocratic tendencies, is taking over. The technical term for this type of regime change is “democratic backsliding.”

Before our new government establishes its own version of the “Ministry of Love” and straps the rat cage to our collective faces, we should take time to remember one of the most endearing features of our dying democracy, the “campaign slogan.”

American elections have always had a “P.T. Barnum,” circus-like quality to them. Using carnival barkers, Barnum enticed people to part with a dime for a ticket to the freak show. Candidates, using campaign slogans in a similar manner, cajole the electorate into giving them their most precious and powerful possession, their vote.

Generally, the candidate who gets the most votes, with the noted exception of presidential elections, receives an admission ticket to public office. For a designated term that person gets to push and pull the levers of power and, maybe, make a little money on the side.

In a democracy, all this starts with a campaign slogan. A good one can tip the scales in a close race. A bad one, well, . . . let’s look at examples of both, then review a recent campaign slogan in action.

First, a few samples of good and bad…

Oh, it just gets “Schitt”ier from here! Smooth move over right here to get the rest of this read on!