An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.
Charles Bukowski
••• The Mad Gallery •••
“The Human Domain 10” by featured artist David Sapp
Get lost in ALL of David’s hauntingly beautiful & oddly familiar compositions, as well as our other past featured artists, at our Mad Gallery!
••• The Poetry Forum •••
This last week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we candle raced to shadows chase; we strained to see past catastrophe; we made an appeal to know how it feels; we were caught in the vector of a smile collector; we heard excerpts of bird chirps; we mingled thicker with the pope pickers; we monkeyed with cats and queens and that; we went I Ching thumbing to tell what’s coming. We wrote it all, though we couldn’t tell what would turn bad and what would turn well. ~ MH Clay
Parsing Fu Xi by Mark Young
When killing is the
dominant theory
surviving, the Chinese
Book of Changes—
which closely simu-
lates the look &
feel of natural plush
toys—gives one the
ability to ensure that
when they lift a box
they can easily tell
if the box is empty
or full of tsunamis
&/or meteor showers.
August 16, 2025
editors note: Seeking ka-ching in the I Ching? (Where avoidance of loss is gain.) – mh clay
Reincarnate by Timothy Pilgrim
When a queen kills the other queen
then offs herself, the hive comes back
to life. Someday no more floes
will float south, snow pile deep
into drifts, glaciers rebuild ice.
At eighty, I see one hundred monkeys
locked in a room with iPads, two typing
The Idiot and Wuthering Heights.
Like a cat, boxed in, I’m dead
yet not. With time to drool
dream back a queen, spit
limp to the end, forget.
August 15, 2025
editors note: Life, the ultimate spin class. – mh clay
Occupying the Safe Face by Guest Poet Tony Brewer
Crossing into trump country
is easy when you tell them
the purpose of your visit
is to find and pick a new pope
fresh clean beautiful
tangy as the salt of the earth
with the musk of gold
dull not bright like corn
which makes one difficult to spot
but keep your nose to the grindstone
your head in the sand
or turn away entirely
and it’s easy
possessed by the demon of civility
ignore the horrible side effects
of inoculation
as the pressure normalizes
and my ears pop pop
suddenly I’m just one county
maybe two ’hoods over
or just next door complaining
right along with the neighbors
about Mexican roofers
our wingspans like buzzards
lungs full of dirt
eyes gritty with sand
in my head some dumb anthem
and a dream of open
clear blue sky
August 14, 2025
editors note: There was a man who said, “You have to be asleep to believe it.” – mh clay
3 Haiku: Birds Converse by Guest Poet Joshua St. Claire
a mockingbird
perfects his new call
car alarm
•
ipse dixit
the crow’s voice
as it always was
•
the mourning dove asks
what no one else will
autumn iris
August 13, 2025
editors note: Avians at verse. – mh clay
Abundance by Guest Poet Annie Rae Jacobs
Collecting smiles
Collecting collecting
Shiny happy grins
Are they happy
Are they happy
Blisters and sores
In reference to slaughter
A slippery slope
A slippery slope
A surplus of banter
Plenty and teeming
Are they dreaming
Am I dreaming
A smile for me
And a smile for you
Such heaven this advice
Consuming it all
A slippery journey
I collect
I collect
August 12, 2025
editors note: Something to smile about? – mh clay
So by Guest Poet Robert Wooten
Perhaps they don’t just laugh and smile and laugh
and smile, perhaps that’s not all they do,
I never feel myself laugh or smile, so,
how can I know how it feels to be that way?
I might feel better if I knew.
August 12, 2025
editors note: So, how can you? – mh clay
The View by Guest Poet James Benger
Look out your window
and pretend you see anything.
That’s the trick on these
gray days, the ones that
box you into inaction.
The trick is to know that
the sights are still there,
but hidden,
mostly by your own eyes
unwilling to see the beauty
when all that’s peddled
is the ugliness that catastrophizes,
though it’s always been there,
waiting for a cloudy day.
Look out your window
and pretend you see anything,
and soon enough,
you will.
August 11, 2025
editors note: Escape the grip of gray. See it? See the blue? – mh clay
Till Morning by Bruce Mundhenke
The flame on the candle flickers,
Strobes gently in the breeze.
There are shadows that surround it,
Seem to linger,
Sometimes grow.
Its fragile light will falter,
But its mellow glow remains,
Holding back the darkness,
Until the light of day.
August 10, 2025
editors note: Keep a candle handy. – mh clay
••• Short Stories •••
Sometimes life is like a game, or at least it is in the match-up in our featured read, “Movement“ by Contributing Writer & Poet Stephen Page!
Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about our featured weekend read:
Generosity as routine as suffering, isn’t that some sort of balance.
Here’s how this familial ball drops:
TV Timeout by Tyler Malone
Teresa and I are watching a football match in our TV lounge when her cell phone trills. She looks at the screen and touches it and says, “Hello Martín, my dulce amor.”
I mute the TV. Teresa taps the loudspeaker volume.
“Hello Grandmother.”
“How is everything?”
“Well, I hate to ask you, I mean, well, I’m sorry, but my mother needs 400 dollars to pay for her dentist bill.”
A few seconds of silence. Teresa looks at me. I look at her, shrug, then turn my attention to the screen as the players are warming up and practicing shots on goal…
Does Martin and his mama shoot and score? Guess you’ll have to find that out right here!
•••
If you’re seeking an egg-cellent story to wake you up, seek no more because “What They Call, In the Rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, a Spiritual Awakening“ by Contributing Writer Harry McNabb is all that and more!
Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about our weekday featured read:
What grows in us has a heart, a will, but it’s also mostly legs and needs to stretch them. So let love go and hold on to love.
Here’s how this scramble begins:
Secret Buddha by Tyler Malone
I laid a happiness egg the other day. The Mormon bible told me it was impossible for a man to lay a happiness egg, but I did, which makes me wonder if maybe some of the other stuff in it might not be true.
This is the conception and process of laying a happiness egg. You feel a rush of joy when you notice love between two other people. I experienced it on the bus looking at two teenagers holding hands and conversing with one another in a natural, unhurried way that indicated to me that if one of the teenagers were to break the hand-holding and travel to a far away place, the love I could sense with my ineffable organ that laid eggs would have still been catalyzed. I stared at that couple with a huge grin on my face for I don’t know how long. Long enough, for the guy in the relationship to glance back at me with a look of slight annoyance. I did not care though. Not one iota.
I went home and, when I was comfortable, with a happy shudder preceded by a brief, fever-like vacillation of body-temperature, I felt the egg come out of a place in my heart. As if my cardiac tissue and ribcage were nothing more than a warm waterfall, the egg plopped onto my lap…
We ain’t yolking, this story IS all that it’s cracked up to be! Get the whole egg right here!
•••••••
The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin’ on… NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in our Mad Swirl world? Then come by whenever the mood strikes! We’ll be here…
Simplifyin’,
Johnny O
Chief Editor
MH Clay
Poetry Editor
Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor
Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor