Cold Rambler

If you carry initials after your name You cannot write poetry You must first figure out everyone’s woke-ness  Achieving perfect symmetry  In an environment of smug confusion If you are wealthy Don’t you dare write poetry If you are poor You can write it  Because you are powerless  And no one listens If you rhyme  You can write poetry You will aggravate everyone Your words a self-fulfilling prophesy  In harmonious contempt Write poetry that is amorphous Incomprehensible and perplexing The vapid will be transfixed by you And the scholarly will ignore you Your attempt to occupy  A gloomy or cheerful preoccupation In poetry   Are hopeless pathetic The harmful effects  Of your human derivative waste On our environment Don’t waste your time Poetry is not your thing It is not meant  For your type of person And what are you doing Listening to what you think is poetry?  You live in dissonance with poetry Plans should be made  Subsc...

We soon found out that Native Americans were the bad guys. We watched the Hollywood portrayals of the cowardly braves deserving of death and the brave, honest settlers who rightly prevailed. If propaganda is successful it won’t even be recognised. And successful it was for a long time. That is not to say that all ‘indians’ were good people, that they never committed atrocities or preached hatred and abuse. But the power was so disproportionate that they could be no equivalence. The scales were already tipping over. To pretend balance was possible would be a distortion. Then there were the Nazi’s. No one now thinks that their arguments of superiority, of paranoia and racism should find an open ear. But ears were open then. Wide open. And eyes were closed to  enslavement, starvation and death. That is not to say that all Jews, Slavs and gypsies were good people, that they never committed atrocities or preached hatred and abuse. But the power was so disproportionate that they could be...

They found a body with the Spring thaw. Down in the woods across the street. Behind the drug house on the corner with that Jim Morrison poster  draped over the front door. A female we are told. But the papers are mum on the rest. A human popsicle along the walking path the kids use to get to school. No word on who discovered it, or why the entire street has been  taped off. Nosy neighbours  treating it like their ticker tape  parade of rile and rumour. And the hungry bears are up now, looking for that first meal of the season. While the junkies stumble by. On their way to needle park. With that hard dry mouth wanting  that makes you smack your lips  and gives away the prize.   Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Horror Sleaze Trash, Cold Rambler, Zygot...

I’m not waiting for ageing or changing, for growing, restoring, or recreating the mask. I’m not waiting for structures to collapse and reform and reshape and remake themselves from the ruins. I’m not waiting for the revolution in thinking, in acting, in feeling, to happen when the walls finally fall. No. I’ll dig the tunnels. Then I’ll wait. Wait for you to scramble through to greet me then we’ll be away, through with our waiting.   Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for Pushcarts, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

for Joe Pera My second return to Canada from Covid exile was to Windsor, mainly to see Matthew Good do a solo set. I went through the tunnel, and spent less than five minutes talking to Canadian border patrol, because I have long mastered the art of pretending to be a happy-go-lucky Michigan yokel who is just there for a weekend getaway in an exotic land who they cannot stand talking to so much so that, most of the time, they just wave you through in less than five minutes of chatting. To get the full experience of this poem, three things must be noted: 1) Covid, and 2020 overall, had black pilled me to such an extent that I can't possibly imagine anything getting significantly better in the future. This isn't meant to bash or discourage efforts to do so—I wish more than ANYTHING to be proven wrong—but this is one of the things you get when you begin a new decade by getting slammed daily with the most awful, most jack-shit insane stuff you can imagine. 2) I got into a couple of...

The elderly eat canned meat and tinned fish, empty rooms, memories of their mothers and fathers, penny candy, vague feelings of regret, military rations bought at the surplus, 8-tracks, shag carpet, the dreams of kids, scratch off tickets, and a pack of smokes.  Typically they will wash that down with tea and milk, tears and lamp oil.