Cold Rambler

Kaleidoscope plumbago on a zephyr wind jasmine, honeysuckle, and lilac perfume wafting in the vibrating heat wave as I wait Rivers thunder mellow jazz ravens dancing in the banana trees, time is wiser than people, dying is just waking up on another tomorrow Tears of God the panther ate the rose, a delicious morsel of ghost, memory, rain, for two months I waited by the house in San Angel and Casa Azul Sitting for a cafecito and churro, a red purse full of marijuana appeared, soft hands covered my eyes, “Do you like mota, gringo?” she asked “When I was a hippie, I toked,” “What’s a hippie?” I told her as we took a taxi to a park where they trained bulls for the corrida. “When the matador kills them I feel their pain, like my accident.”   Catfish McDaris is from Albuquerque and Milwaukee. He writes to keep his sanity. Most of the time it works out. 

I'm the guy with the yellow tape. I arrive  after the first responders but before forensic,      before the detectives in the suits who've  seen all this before. I wrap that strip around  fire plug, telephone pole, even a parked car  and a mail box. I'm paid to separate the ones  to whom death's only a job and the gathering  crowds who are there for the novelty  of bullet wounds and blood and tears.  Some nights, I do nothing but sit back  in my patrol car, sip coffee, maybe nibble  on a donut, with yellow tape balanced  on my knee, a whole mess of it in the  passenger seat, a box of rolls in the trunk. I don’t seek out tragedy. I don’t solve crimes. I merely tape off the area, tape myself off  in the process.   John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are...

History is littered with stories of imaginary futures unattained. Bread, land and peace were Lenin’s promises and the Bolsheviks believed them and, like others before and since, believed in themselves, believed they could achieve them then. But, they weren’t uncontested.  Power intervened power and conflict external and internal and internal contradictions all in the mix and look where it took them. What was there to be done then. Education, re-education, terror, year zero nostalgia for primitive simplicity, they’ve all been tried. Such promises, such imagined futures, have a long history and even longer future similarly re-imagined every time. So, what is to be done now. Once my generation thought we’d done it, achieved the imagined hopes of Lennon’s song and created the basis for a future based on peace and love and civil rights. Even a pandemic couldn’t stop us at Woodstock. We were unstoppable! Invincible! Peaceful! In diverse countries we saw the rebels become statesmen. We th...

You lay your iron helmet  on the dark field to build a citadel ridge, the sky banners embroidered with fire lilies, the sky unscrolls from the canter of a horse across the rampart, smoke surrounds a dagger in the flame, you decipher the offering glass as I search the city toward the evening with a pure lamp, I contemplate the stone swaths   for the veil of your hiding.   John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France.  His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by the Origami Poetry Project.

Another car wash Another gas station Another coffee shop Another neighborhood pops up overnight Why am I bothered by all these things? When I know neither this town Nor this world belong to me I’m just passing through Gone and quickly forgotten As the streets and the roads Fill up with more and more People who Will soon be gone and forgotten Just like me   Daniel Slaten writes short stories and poetry in small notebooks and on sticky notes.

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...