The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.

Bruce Nauman

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Narcissistic Nationalism” by Resident Artist Mitchell Pluto

Mad Swirl is thrilled to welcome the wonderful Mitchell Pluto back into the gallery, with more mixed-media pieces that riff on collage but push beyond it: layers of paint, paper, and unexpected texture colliding in ways that feel both messy and harmonious at once. Faces flicker, half-hidden and half-imagined, as if the works themselves are deciding what to reveal. There’s a trippy, almost cosmic element to each piece, a sense of order among the chaos. We may not understand the alchemy behind it, but we do know this: Pluto’s work is strange, gorgeous, and impossible as ever to look away from. ~ Madelyn Olson

To see all of Mitchell’s cosmically trippy & chaotically gorgeous canvases, as well as our other past featured artists, visit our Mad Gallery!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum…  we were high on dandelion; we strained away for a “namaste;” we word wended to be bar friended; we searched our head for words unsaid; we passions aroused for a patient unhoused; we wum-bah learned from memories burned; we found the fools who make ice uncool. Make of us what you will. ~ MH Clay

The Names for East and West by Tyler Malone

Cross the sun/ Lost to shadow to say/
You know/ I might join ICE/
Steal the sun from space/ Box souls/
No table/ No sustenance/ No new humanity/
No plants offer air/ To those who steal sky,

life is a crime/ Skin to blood-kin/
Brother says/ It’s hard in Texas/ Grass is to lawns
as risen concrete is to burning round radials/
To better homes down roads/ To park bench spikes/
To summer on all sides of the year/ Join ICE/ Shrink sky.

God builds cages/ What would be your home/ Airbnb
bridal party rentals/ Inflated penis balloons/ Michelob Ultra/
Who holds your lantern/ I hear silence/
Through the valley of the shadow/
Of life we could live,

10,000 miles in any direction/
From it’s a job to do/ Christ on a cross
dies for —/ ?/ The occupation of gathering skies/
A skull-crown of crow talons/
Last breaths/ On lips were vinegar/ And forgiveness.

Garden mud/ Blood god saw a mother’s split bare heels/
Searching for a window to the world made of Diet Coke/ Bones
we don’t talk about/ Roller-coaster spines/ Bodies dead dropped
for dollars/ who’s counting but those who can/ Change your name
from little brother/ To big piece of a shit.

Skin our streets/ Black hair caught between Velcro/
Tomorrow’s thief/ In the phone face of an AI Jesus/
…forgiveness/ Ask yourself in black-mask reflection/
Armor/ No one recognizes you/ But Mom sees
how you walk on her world.

Her eyes see sons/ Living rage named
her first death/ After she named each horizon/
East and west/ After us/ Times we disappeared/
Names haven’t/ She calls to the night/ By name/
For the hands that take/ To return her sky.

December 6, 2025

editors note: Give it back before it’s spent. – mh clay

Papasquiaro Death Mask by Brian Duran-Fuentes

You who were the night of the tricks and velvety cicadas,
whatever remains of the dirty coins after forgoing sleep,
upright coins on the sidewalk until a dog comes to ride the ground
and in its convulsive humps summons the homeless vampires
and those baptized with cannabis liquor sweat of mosh pits and umami rain,
to the electric shade of the poplar tree that not only reverberates on Saturdays,
the snakes made of pure foreskin undulate among the anthills,
pickled dinosaur tissue that dances to bitch at the storms for the hangover
after poetry was made of magma and pubic hairs perfumed with hyacinth.
You who were the night stained with bleach portraying the rites to asshole dead gods
and I who in ’97 swore to a turtle egg that there were only 3 years of history left
that some Buddha-faced comet intoxicated with the film that comes out of CDs
would bang his head against the planet and spill the egg to be swallowed by the sun in a single
wum-bah and that after that there would be no more songs, no movies or cereals
and I who in ’97 wouldn’t know poetry even if you met me on the street
and you told me, hold my tepache son, I am going to commune with the metal of the city,
or maybe not.
In a third of lives, nothing happens, in another third, you die, in another third you tame time,
a time tamed with beatings and hunger, as we did with the wolf,
a time that lends its ass to ride among the centuries of unreleased eras,
the orgasms that we never stirred in Eurydice because we played the cool guy in a shit movie,
to know what the sea peoples got drunk with before they incinerated themselves against memory.

December 5, 2025

editors note: Wum-bah! – mh clay

older than dirt by Guest Poet Alan Catlin

described how she
looked & felt
staring into the melted
ice of sloe gin fizz
muttering, “First they
poison you, then they
mutilate you, then they
burn you”. One thing
for sure, that was no
hit swing tune from
the 40’s she was
remembering fondly,
more likely how she
was living now,
homeless in gaza,
an oncology out-patient
with nowhere else
to go

December 4, 2025

editors note: So wrong, this state of being that should never be. – mh clay

Song Bird Key of C by Marjorie Pezzoli & Christina Chin

caged thoughts

about to speak
she stutters then lost
her voice

scars on her tongue

pride swells
too many thoughts
alphabet soup simmers

the key on the wall

so many things
I wished
I said

December 3, 2025

editors note: Leave the cage open; free your bird. – mh clay

Words with the Wrong Definitions: Compotator by Guest Poet Terry Trowbridge

Compotator: a drinking companion
-Robin Devoe, Dictionary of the Strange, Curious & Lovely p, 29

Potable, as in drinkable,
prefixed with the “com” of compossible,
as in one thing that can exist with another thing;
hence, a drinking companion.

No, that is silly, because we already have words for those.

Clearly compotator should mean:
Someone whose relationship to another person, place, or thing,
is that they have a potato in common.

For example,
“Today, after a grocery errand,
Terry is compotator with Newfoundland.”

Or while out for fish & chips,
“Terry and his fish are compotators.”

In law, of course,
“Having planned to cross state lines with the contraband spuds,
the defendants are both compotatis mentis establishing mens rea,
and to the jury I submit the defendant Terry was a complicit compotator.”

December 2, 2025

editors note: Ha! Of course! Also throws into question the common definition for “dictator.” – mh clay

YOGA CLASS by Lorri Ventura

Shining in color-coordinated spandex attire
Taut bodies
Roll out their designer yoga mats
As their brand-name water bottles
Clatter to the studio floor
They languorously stretch and twist
Warming up their already hot physiques
As they exchange pleasantries
Before class begins
Meanwhile, in the room’s shadowed corner
An apple-shaped woman
Tucks gray locks of hair behind her ears
Adjusts a faded Minnie Mouse t-shirt
Over her stained sweatpants
And carefully assembles herself into a tree pose.
She grunts and grimaces
As her underarms flap and her thighs chafe
She wobbles as if windblown
Hoping to be inconspicuous
While surrounded by
A forest of vibrant saplings
Standing steadfast and smug
She sees that her asanas
Share little in common with those of the yogis
Who flow effortlessly as they become swans
And then goddesses
Yet she and the instructor share warm smiles
Knowing that her imperfect, unpretentious practice
Nourishes her soul

December 1, 2025

editors note: That strain on the body is no stretch for the soul. – mh clay

SUMMER OF GRACE by Marie Higgins

How I want to behave
It’s a consideration
But stress blows me
Elsewhere
When I can
Grounding myself
Entreating God
To help me
Knowing will do it
Because it’s spring
With Grace coming
Into our garden
She’s a biologist
Of bee populations
We didn’t know
We had so many
It’s like the bullfrog
We forget about
Until a close helicopter
Whirls and it responds
We disremember bees
And nocturnal amphibians
As well as God
Before we ache
For distraction
Wanting to hear
Of our successes
Because we cared
To not use pesticides
To plant color
To pray for others
But not the puff balls
I hate them
Canker wort
Lion’s-tooth
Irish daisies
Milk witch
Doon-head-clock
Yellow gowan
Priest’s-crown
Monk’s-head
I pluck them
When I judge them
Weedy things
Before I’m grounded
In the summer of Grace
Who adores including
And all things yellow
Like my mother
Making necklaces
Tasting wine
Blowing wishes
Collecting salad greens
What to do and be
Before I sleep
I buzz my garden
Loving the dandelions

November 30, 2025

editors note: Grace in summer for warmth in winter. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

If you’re needing a divine flame of inspiration, “Ablaze“ by Contributing Writer & Poet Harley White just might be the fire you are seeking!

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

Being *you* is the journey, and getting to yourself is what you hitch your cart up to.

Here’s a spark to get you ignited:

Blazen by Tyler Malone

Once there was an elder who possessed a vast fortune. He was the proprietor of lands he had amassed, dwellings and retainers and a mansion huge and wide but with just a single doorway to depart outside.

Though this house was broad and spacious, it was in decay. Yet it teemed with countless people, plus a large array of living creatures, big and small, all about the place. While in the halls the pillars were rotten at the base.

The plaster and foundations were cracking all around. Its rooftops and verandas were falling to the ground. With crumbling walls, beams and rafters crookedly askew, that building was quite dangerous, as the elder knew.

The aged man was in decline, nearing his demise. He was prudent, very seldom taken by surprise. Suddenly, fire broke out and set the house in flames. His sons and daughters were within, playing at their games.

That father always felt concern for his children dear. Seeing this inferno, he was overcome with fear. Tongues of flame flared up in all directions round about. With only just one access, how would they make it out?…

The flame keeps burning right here!

•••

If you’re looking for a wild and crazy read, “A Vacation With Oral“ by Contributing Writer Earl Sanders just might be what you need!

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

Gotta exist, in or out of time. And the time is now!

Here’s how this liberating tirade begins:

The Work by Tyler Malone

Left on the beach but nevertheless an outlaw poet, a veritable phenomenon within his distinctly urban tribe, Oral pondered: What does it mean to escape a sinking ocean cruise liner of “academic poetry,” only to be cast away when your row boat capsizes?

There, on sand, this somewhat exiguous mastermind of offering often-naive audiences rich combo platters of Ted Bundy and Grace Paley–all in 15 rumply lines practically whispered in various voices of truculence–felt abandoned, forlorn, an Ishmael of the Tom Hanks variety.

Like any Anal, Oral fumed.

On…The…Beach. Poet phenoms go there when pressed for something solid. To a spoken word artist hell-bent upon the proletarianization of the highest realms of a very special avocation, “beach” is another bourgeois insult…

Get the rest of this mad diatribe right here.

••• Open Mic •••

This past 1st Wednesday of December (aka 12.03.25) Mad Swirl Open Mic was found whirling up the Swirl at Barbara’s Pavillion, getting the Mad mic opened for ALL you Mad ones out there!

This month we hosted our annual Ho-Ho-Holidaze Hijinx!

Grats to ALL the participators & swirlabrators who helped ring in this holiday season:

Hosts:
Johnny O
MH Clay

Musical Overture:
Swirve (Chris Curiel, Gerard Bendiks)

Open Mic:
Johnny O
MH Clay
Alan Gann
Desmene Statum
Scott Eranger
Suza Kanon
Tony Robinson
Tim Cloward
Kasey Jones
Kevin Lee Hitchings
Christopher Soden
Antoine Votaw
Carlos Salas
Robert Wynne
David Shannon

We know you have a choices of what to do with your Wednesday night & we’re thrilled you picked lil ol’ us to hang out with!

Stay tuned ’til next 1st Wednesday (aka 01.07.26) when we will be featuring Tim Cloward!

Peace,

Johnny O

P.S. We had some LIVE feed issues but somehow captured this snippet:

•••••••

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…

Truthin’,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor