There are two worlds: the world we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination.

Leigh Hunt

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Philosophy 101” by Resident Artist & Contributing Poet Colleen Boueil

To see all of Colleen’s rhythmically & extraordinary ordinary scenes, 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 grew less strange with a quick name change; we did bicker over flicker; we were flapped into space by a pinball ace; we found the way with repartee; we rode the roll of self control; we suffered the cheap to promises keep; we made no haste to curb our waste; we eased no time with a three-word rhyme. Maybe we’ll soar with four or more. ~ MH Clay

Stop, Drop, And… by MH Clay

Verklempt, exempt, contempt

A nicely rhymed triptych
With nothing particular to say
Just a line
With no spine

I thought they might
Make a good one but
Just a string of sounds
To distract
From the shit show
Constantly running
On all the feeds

With me not the least bit
Hungry
For this gagging garbled
Garbage fire
With nothing to extinguish
These indistinguishable
Flames

October 18, 2025

editors note: *It* won’t stop, so neither should we! – Tyler Malone

Rubbish by Julia Vaughan

Beer and soft drink glass bottles
Collected, deposits paid
(Felt like getting a free dinner)
All reused, not crushed and re-made
All washed (not always well)
Relabelled, and recapped
Had a chongololo in our beer once

Used recycled paper way more
Than new. Schools gave up teaching writing
With ink pens, nibs tore the paper, ink bled, Biros
Were The thing. New. Much easier. Zimbabwe
Recycling in the seventies

50 litre bins, aluminium or
Plastic, filled with landfill, all bundled
In huge plastic bags
Papers separated, bundled
Glass drink bottles put aside for Scouts
Collecting deposits but sauce bottles just ignored
Recycling in its infancy
Australia behind much of the world
Even in the nineties

Now it’s twenty-twenty five, four bins
And more to separate for. Purple for
Glass, red for landfill, yellow for plastic, paper
And tin, with green for kitchen and garden scraps

Take electrical bits, polystyrene, fluoro
Tubes and more to the Waste Station
Tyres, old paint and machine oils, fridges too
Not everyone has a car or trailer
And it can be expensive

The planet’s resources
Churned out for single use, not used
Even once sometimes, not even once, new
And old buried, incinerated, thrown
Into oceans and rivers
What a mess
What a waste

A Chongololo is a giant African millipede
Archispirostreptus gigas, in Zimbabwe.

October 17, 2025

editors note: We have less and less room for our rubbish. Soon, our rubbish will have less and less room for us. – mh clay

Cell Phone Towers and Their Ilk by KJ Hannah Greenberg

“Cacti,” “palms,” “evergreens,” also “oaks” have become aliases for cell phone towers.
What’s more, “flag poles,” “bell towers,” “building facades” have hidden electronics.

Similarly, people assume nom de plumes when pseudonyms grant desired appearances.
Stage names, after all, often outclass parents’ gift of familial continuity. “Stars” shine.

In “loving exchanges,” partners might or not present veracity if cohabitating. There’s
Small incentive to endue genuineness to transient bed buddies, else to keep promises.

October 16, 2025

editors note: Two items that appear as other than they are (yet both generate revenue). – mh clay

Laters, Yeah by Paul Tristram

… let it all ‘Corrode’ behind you,
it’s reduced to Taxing
attempts at fixing ‘Shambles.’
Rebirth is the way Forward,
there’s nothing over your
shoulder but Mushroom Clouds
and the Bitterest of Pills
swallowed and regurgitated…
until Exhaustion reigns supreme.
‘Acceptance’ and ‘Direction
–Change’ is not quitting or losing
… when done ‘Quickly,’
‘Cleanly,’ and ‘Unemotionally,’
you’re in ‘Control,’ always were…

October 15, 2025

editors note: If it brings a little peace, it’s progress. – mh clay

The Day I Got My Timing Down by D. R. James

It was in that phase of pure
sarcasm, midteens, when guys
work out an awkward stance,

work their pack’s patter
till they maybe have it. I don’t
really remember the day but

the single-moment wonder of hitting
my first come-back just right
by accident, then their free, true

laughter, my perfect follow-up,
the never-looking-back. From there
a career: from Senior Class Clown

to smooth talker in any crowd to
flip teacher spinning lit to wordsmith
chiseling chin-up come-backs

to the tin-clad sarcasms
every life dishes out as it
disarms or drops you or

leaves you hanging, slamming
its clanging locker door in your
gullible, stuttering face.

October 14, 2025

editors note: It’s a kick to finally get in on the inside joke. – mh clay

The Grapefruit Hits the Grinder by Jeff Bagato

Nine out of ten times
the grapefruit hits the grinder
by the gutter, flying faster
as it rolls toward the teeth;
if there are flames,
it’s a fireball,
if there are serpents,
it could lose a little juice.
Some acid in the eye
gets you woke in the morning;
bite off a little peel and you could choke.
It all looks like machinery
designed for a murder—
just sticks and knives and sharp edges,
and a firing range for bump
stock semi automatics
to keep you dancing on your grave.
Gears on the upswing,
gears going down,
levers and buttons and knobs—
a trimmer keeps things even
and a stamper keeps things flat.
But down at the bottom
is a paddle with a spring,
a rocket launcher pulled
by invisible hands;
they control the tempo,
they control the pace,
and as those fingers
work the flappers
you blast off like a sputnik
toward the bumpers
and the lights

October 14, 2025

editors note: Who is fingering those flippers? We want to have a word with them. – mh clay

Flickering by Linda Sacco

Ancestor floats from room to room,
lingering in doorways,
tackling a step like Indiana Jones.

I’m in limbo between two homes.

Whilst she’s roughing us up
with foreign curses,
sleeping with a pin-pricked back,
dreaming dreams easy to forget,
living a life, hard to remember….

we are both
– flickering
– – from this life to the next.

October 13, 2025

editors note: Though brief, make it bright. (We welcome Linda to our crazy congress of Contributing Poets with this submission. Read more of her madness on her new page – check it out.) – mh clay

Killing the Mood by Henry Bladon

I wore a purple home-made dress
made out of seashells
and my dread disguised
as politeness to someone on a park bench.

He wore shoes that bore
deep scars.
He called them part of his “survival suit”
and started to count the clouds.

We peeled tomatoes with our teeth,
and we stuffed ourselves
with raw salmon and noodles until
someone said “good cheffing.”

I lit a cigarette made of mothballs
and blew the smoke into a jar.

We were celebrating happiness.
Or “no war Wednesday.”
Or that the car grew tiny antlers.
Or something less bizarre.

I decided to change my name
from Mary Murder,
because nothing kills the mood
like someone slaughtering bonhomie.

And nobody wanted that.

October 12, 2025

editors note: The perfect picnic protocol. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

If you just remembered you needed a read, “A Couple of Things We Forgot“ by Uzomah Ugwu might just be the nudge you need!

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

Great adventure comes with great pain, but that’s the journey.

Here’s a hint to get you started:

Split by Tyler Malone

V starts to make her meal for breakfast. She gets some oatmeal. She reaches for the milk. V opens the milk and smells it. She pours it in her oatmeal. V now sits looking at the empty milk carton. It was more than a metaphor for what had and had not been happening within the walls that freed her and confided in her a love she no longer knew. With a lot on her mind, she travels far from the table which she has been eating at.

In the living room, she grabs a pillow and lies down. Her heart weighed her down while her mind thought about it. A relationship so broken that the legs it once stood on could no longer walk was hard to erase from one’s mind, let alone go any further in the relationship. There was nowhere to go, and certainly no room to grow. Like an owl, her eyes blink like she was taking a picture and storing it somewhere in the back of her mind, in a pocket of some sort. She wanted to understand what was happening, even if you didn’t know why…

Before it slips your mind, find the rest of this read right here.

•••

If only justice was served like it is in Contributing Writer & Poet Michael Brownstein‘s lyrical tale, “The Branding Iron“…

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

Wear the words that mean who you are. Wear them like skin.

Here’s how this ditty begins:

Justice CLOSED by Tyler Malone

I shot the sheriff in the leg with a sting of lyrics knocking him to the ground. Don’t worry, I said as he began to curse, I’ll help you remove the words. It’s going to leave a tattoo behind, sorry ‘bout that. But the good news is—I put my fingers to my lips to quiet him down—it’ll only hurt when you try to take advantage of someone. From now on, just do your job.

In the corner, a boy was whimpering. He was not wearing a shirt and his pants were unbuckled. Get dressed, I told him, and get out of here. I don’t believe the sheriff will bother you anymore. When he began to curse even louder, I sent another stream towards him. Aren’t I right? I asked. He shut his mouth, bit his lower lip and nodded up and down feverishly. The boy was gone before he could thank me. No matter…

Get the whole song 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…

Feelin’ It,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor