scarecrow poetics/essays

Tuesday, February 28, 2006

There Is A Tune...

There is a tune (pause)
I am a note you can not mark upon
Yet your blind folded brain,
Withering wafer like wit, turned sour...

OOPS! She's just sculled' the curdled litre
Her mouth now fountain, projectile missile
Alas she is a putrid hose... Alas she is a putrid hose
She is a putrid hose

(repeat) Yet your blind folded brain,
Withering wafer like wit, turned sour
Draws you to strike a blade where it hurts or
Annoys or simply peeves my patience OR I pity you

You want to paint over the blue sky?!
You want to erase the sun?!
You want to seize the stars out of the night sky?!
Annihilate the moon?!

Niagara is NOTHING! compared to
Earth's tears

Fools, who are not really fools have simply just (pause)
Given up there tools of humanity
Fools! Accidental tourists; zygote accidentals...
Ohhh the patchwork planet, will we ever learn?

I'm a gutless wonder, talk and think, don't activate my drive desire
I just contemplate (pause) and drink, reaching high fantastical plains
Of a wondrous existence, in my minds eye.
SOMETIMES! fantasy and reality copulate, procreating a NEW production
Thus I am induced with an atomic ecstatic insertion to give birth
To a new life form, that I think shall always only begin on paper
NOT in the embrace.
(pause) I can always destroy my poetical procreations and simply start again.

Chance always calls... often beckoning

I reach...
I reach not far enough

I try...
I try not hard enough

Chance keeps calling me!

I bang my head against the wall, careful for no blood yet at the same time
Wanting the swell to break, just because I'm angry... angry with myself.
Nohhh, I wouldn't write in blood with my finger tips. There wouldn't be enough anyway.

You know what to do, act on it.
"Do what you wanna' do, be who you wanna' be, yeah"...

Why can not you fly?
Your brain consists of an imagination
Use it! (pause) Wings (long pause)

Oh I've had a hellovaday'!
In fact I've had a fucked day.
In fact, it's a fact I was fucken' fired today.
Therefore it's fair that I take the fact that I was fucken' fired today
Out on you!

Oh really (pause). Well you see I think this is where I really! penetrate your front door
Do not vomit on me. Your crap of a dour day has not a scrape of shit on your shoe, to do with me. I want to make you feel better not worse. FOOL!

I!...am not perfect

Get with it!
- Get with what?
Get with the program!
- What program?
The human behaviour program!

(accent strine) How many times have I told you?!!!
How many times have I told you about EMPATHY... SHARING AND CARING...?!

(end accent strine) Or are you simply a being where spite and cynicism
keeps your engine running as you gradually rot inside thus dying a premature death?
Or just a breathing sultana, grumbling in regret of all the things you coulda', woulda', shoulda' DONE! before you became a BREATHING SULTANA. Perhaps you are a breathing BITTER sultana, contemplating revenge in your old age?

Wanna' turn the clock back do ya'?!
DO YA?! DO YA?! DO YA?!

There is a tune (pause)

There is always a tune... and I am
A hog for pleasure not to mention
(fade out) LOVE & PEACE LOVE & PEACE LOVE & PEACE ...

There is only one way to use the lint remover... (unless you wannit')

I am not perfect... well of course I am not perfect

Why not?
(angry) LOOK! It's a long story...
Come over to my place and I'll make you the best banana smoothie in the whole entire universe...

(demonic and distorted voice from nowhere in particular) "Don't be so hard on yourself. Don't half cock your life, whole cock your life".

Cathy Flower © 2006.

Australian born, Cathy Flower has been writing and performing her work for the last fifteen years, enjoying the colour and conviction of poetry from her page to the stage. In 2002 she launched her debut CD of performance poetry, entitled 'Meniscus'. CD No. 2 is in the wings alongside a hard copy volume of her poetry and visuals. Cathy loves the oral induction, taste and mind altering pleasures of coffee, chocolate and (fine) red wine.

posted by scarecrow # 1:55 AM

Monday, February 27, 2006

Pagan Cunts a Virtue, She Says*...

but I won't listen to your thoughts. Granny cooks away her distress in
the kitchen, little Petey comes over with a frying pan and pretty soon
the whole garden is at play, broiled rats and all. Ensconced in father's
lessons of the moment, newspaper weighs its course through bat-bitten
days of sandpaper and toiletries. When pa chokes on a bone, another
master of the house will take his place until the next mystery leaks out
of granny's bra (Arsenic and Old Lace), steering the kindergartners away
from the old wench's gnawed hambone face towards another reality to
chase. I

love you mama when you put on the mittens in the way it makes me feel
fresh inside which you know by now is a fallacy after all you've smelled
and tasted, sensory by-products of an era you never imagined yourself
keeling - but you never had much of an imagination now, or did you hide

it lasso milky weighs the cupboard. Mirrored agenda a faze I knew how to
interpret before I lost the guide, now I dream in black and white, but
my fans say I'm more colorful now. A peep emerges from the muted
conscience. Meted choke of victory perhaps a cornucopia in the bodily
dilated eyeball the spots on that blouse seem to unearth, whether
spotted on purpose by the perilous designer or merely stains to coincide
with a subconstrued warmth in the hands of the enlightened few. I want
to blanch you out of my system. I know you're already there, happening,
love.

*This poem is taken from Travis Jeppesen's new collection: Poems I Wrote While Watching TV.

Travis Jeppesen was born. He wrote a novel. It's called Victims. It was published in America by Akashic Books, and in Russia by Eksmo. His new book is called Poems I Wrote While Watching TV. It has illustrations by Jeremiah Palecek, and will come out in March. His work has/will appear(ed) in Purple, Prague Literary Review, 3am Magazine, Another Magazine, ZOO, thefanzine.com, New York Press, Bookforum, Pretend I Am Someone Else, Thee Flat Bike, dorfdisco.de, Pavement Magazine, Shampoo Poetry, Can We Have Our Ball Back, and a bunch of other places you've probably never heard of. He edits BLATT.

posted by scarecrow # 1:39 PM

Three Poems...

Eyes

One day
things happened

Everything shifts
eyes opened
and changed the world.

But now lids

are lead
and all that is dead.

things happened
one day.

You are too scared

Dry yourself
filth. filth.
cut it open.
deeply fuck
an open wound.
you already did.
finish the job.
you are too scared.

aren't you?

Legs

Wading through the woods
I do not want these legs
They are heavy
and have only taken me
to trouble.
My mind is one.
It is not here.
I am not here.
But my legs always
take me to trouble.

Samuel B. Milsom © 2006.

Sam Milsom is a student and University of Reading, Berkshire. He enjoys his eating, drink and the occasional blinking. And he writes things that he believes he needs to write, else he is prone to the odd psychotic outburst.

posted by scarecrow # 1:27 PM

Four Poems...

Another Night

I had a headache
took two pain killers
the bright lights don't help my condition
neither do the laughing bouncers spitting on the floor
outside Norwegian blue.
Moving on through bottles and pint glasses
hours go by
endless wasted nights
slutty girls dance who pick out identikit haircuts
to dance with,
boys with tight t-shirts emblazoned with retro
Americana slogans
hula girls
welcome to the Bronx
Boston university
white, brown and ambient yellow.
I watch these peacocks present
drunken compliments
bitter rejections.
that’s harsh.
We walk back like we always do
in search of a taxi
I drunkenly push a wheelbarrow
through tombland
Glenn helps me lift
and we hurl it into the wensum
drunk and disorderly
eighty pound fine,
what a waste of time.

Rise

Maybe it’s just the winter,
the cold Siberian sun
which has replaced the Mediterranean sun
which appeared occasionally during the summer
in amongst showers of rain
which was neither one thing nor the other.
my orphaned hand
it rests on the mouse
whilst the other rubs rampant.
during the day I struggle to get a rise
maybe a bit of morning wood
as the dawn sun shines throughout the trees
her hot little ass
floats past in those tight denim jeans
nothing
but now I’m worried
trapped in the midnight pub
as the drinking clock
circles
time moves forward pushing the boundaries
like an upside down cross inverted in blood
that other girl with sunken eyes
anaemic gothic beauty
a body to die for
a partner to rest with
in an oak coffin lined with pink velvet.
In my mind
I was whipped and spanked
hoping something different
might give me a rise
but still nothing.

Friday, like any other day

Thank you for letting us see your work, we're sorry to return it
in the stamped address envelope that you kindly sent.
I wake up to this and wonder where all the good mail is gone
leaflets about Car Insurance, letters about Credit Cards with criminally low APR and pyramid scams, oops I mean schemes.
As I writer it seems hardly worth going on, it’s like punching yourself in the face.
Today is Friday the 13th.
Work, went well
which was nice
had fish and chips for tea
didn’t go out Friday night
Saturday is tomorrow,

Glasshouse Showdown

At times it pays not to retaliate.
This guy pokes me with his middle finger
right in the middle of my chest
what you gonna do about it
nothing I guess,
as I don't know how to fight
I could have punched him
but if you don't fight on instinct
and just take a drunken swing
then its pot luck in the dark.
It’s even more hopeless when you are slow off the mark
he walks away with a smirk on his face
and the chance of retribution
has been and gone

Richard Wink © 2006.

Richard Wink was born in 1984 in the 'Fine' City of Norwich. His poetry is based upon real life experiences and the complications of life, reflecting both the sacred and the mundane

posted by scarecrow # 1:04 PM

Trapped...

It’s my belief that all great artists
do their best work inside a trap. Whether it’s a wheelchair
a bottle
a needle
or a bad marriage with a few kids thrown in for good measure

Everybody knows their names
but for the hell of it, here are a few:
Dostoyevsky (his own epileptic brain and gambling compulsion)
Bukowski (the bottle)
Hitchcock (fat)
etc., etc.

The thing is that we’re all trapped
Whether it’s the decent job that turns sour
or the lawn that you have to mow
or the wife who devours us
We’re all in our own little prisons

Even the maniac flying down the highway on a Harley is in his own cage.

Maybe it’s best if you know from the get-go that you’re
caught
Because that way the pressure’s off
You know you’re finished, and you don’t waste time and
energy trying to thrash your way out
and into another snare

Some call it resignation
Others call it enlightenment
I prefer the truth:
Ever see a fly trapped between a window and a screen?
Ask him.

Mark SaFranko's stories have appeared in dozens of magazines and journals internationally, including the renowned Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Savage Kick. He was cited in Best American Mystery Stories 2000 and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2005 he won the Frank O'Connor award. Mister SaFranko is also a playwright. The Bitch-Goddess was selected Best Play of the Village Gate One-Act Festival in New York in 1992. An evening of his one-acts which included The Bitch-Goddess recently made its European debut at the Derry Playhouse in Northern Ireland. The production then moved south to the Cork Arts Theatre to strong reviews.

Another play, The Promise, was produced at the Millenium Forum in Derry in June, 2003. Other plays have also been seen at such New York venues as the Samuel Beckett Theater, Belmont Italian American Playhouse, the Harold Clurman Theater, the Creative Place Theater, Wings Theater, the Madison Avenue Theater, and the Riant Theater.As an actor he has appeared in several independent films, including A Better Place, Shoot George, and The Road From Erebus.His novels are Hopler's Statement and The Favor, both available through all the dotcoms. His novel, Hating Olivia, is published by Murder Slim Press. The sequel to Hating Olivia, entitled Lounge Lizard, will be published soon.

posted by scarecrow # 12:55 PM

The Noose...

In the middle of the night
Every night around 3, or 4 a.m.
Just before my eyes snap open and
I struggle out of bed to take my old man’s piss

I have this vision
A simple vision
Of an empty hangman’s noose

Gracefully I step up to the executioner’s platform
Slip my head in
Feel the cord tighten ever so slightly around my neck

What’s to come requires no explanation

But I can’t quite figure out what the vision means:

Whether it’s just my chronic clinical depression
rearing its ugly head
Or if it’s supposed to represent you, my wife
and the kids sleeping peacefully in the next room

Or that one day I’m going to find myself on the gallows after I lose my grip once and for all and commit
bloody mayhem

Or maybe the noose is nothing but (right, nothing but!)
A symbol of our existential dilemma down here on earth

And so I lie there, stymied
Waiting breathlessly

For some explanation to emerge out of the blackness

It never does
And I’ve lost all hope that it ever will

Then I find my legs
Stumble to the jake
Sit on the fucking thing like a woman

And let go

Back in the bedroom
The iridescent digits on the nightstand clock say
Two, or three hours
Before I have to get up again
And slip my neck
Into the noose
Of another day.

posted by scarecrow # 12:52 PM

The Lawnmower...

We moved out of the city when the kid turned four
The wife couldn’t go on even one more night with
all three of us
sleeping in the same bedroom

“We’ve got to have more space,” she said
“before one of us loses it.”

So we came out to the suburbs
mortgaged ourselves for the rest of our days

It’s going to be better, everyone told us:
Cleaner air
Less noise
Better schools
No violent crime to speak of

Well, what the hell
I went kicking and screaming
But I went
because I wanted to keep it together
make sure my son had a daddy
I even pitched in, painted the basement floor
and one or two of the walls of the place we bought
to show my good faith in our new, improved life

But I missed the city every day
missed hearing the Spanish and Mandarin and Hebrew
whenever I walked down Canal Street
and the sirens the horns the jackhammers
the shattering bottles and screams in the night
the sweet smells of piss and puke
the rats the winos the maniacs
the magnificent ass swarming over the filthy asphalt
like cockroaches wherever you looked
the way you never knew your neighbors’ names

But in the end
I had to admit “they” were telling the truth
about the crime and the noise and the filth
and the air quality, that is

Now we’ve got peace and greenery:
trees, flowers, and lots of grass

The wife likes it out here
The kid likes it out here (he’s got a backyard to play in now)
And it’s true that we couldn’t continue pissing away all that jack
on rent and a parking space in the city

But there is one thing about living on
Ashbrook Lane that drives me to the edge:
The lawnmowers
which roar outside the windows like mad bull elephants

Seems out here everybody’s got one
They’re gas-propelled
electric
hand-operated like in the old days
some you even ride like a tractor

And mowing their lawns
(and fertilizing, seeding, edging, clipping and pruning)
is all these brain-dead
motherfuckers seem to want to do with their spare time

Now the wife wants me to join the ranks
“It’s exercise,” she says
“and since you’re out of work again,
we shouldn’t have to pay someone to cut our grass.”

This evening I hiked over to the ATM
to deposit my unemployment check
and since summer is just around the corner

all the feudal lords were out there guiding
their mechanical beasts

Well, the din of those infernal engines
got to me
when all I wanted was a quiet stroll in the fresh air
“Shut the fuck up –- I’m trying to think!”
I yelled at one prince
but under his sound-proof earphones he was oblivious,
so he smiled benignly and waved

And moving on I said to myself, No, no, no -– not for me

“No way, honey,” I’ll tell the wife,
“you’re not gonna sucker me into it.
What did I tell you when I agreed to move out here?
I’ll do it for the kid,
but I sure as hell ain’t no lawn service.
No, I got better things to do with my time”
(like write poems and stories and novels
that nobody seems to want)

She was putting the kid to bed when I got back
I didn’t say a word to her
It could wait until tomorrow, I figured

I tried to push the ubiquitous grass-cutters out of my mind
Tried my damnedest to forget that I was stranded in the limbo of suburbia
To that end I switched on the TV
flopped on the couch with a beer
and watched Celebrity Boxing II

And that
is what an army of lawnmowers
will do to a man

posted by scarecrow # 12:41 PM

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

OHMYGOD! An End to Cinema...

We relied too much on cinema
to create feelings and situations.
In the background, I always thought -
I didn’t love you. I couldn’t love you. I only love
The attention you lavish on my lonely
American scenario -
The one you must have seen before studying
Martin Luther King in Georgia.
The women who threw themselves at your accent.
Or maybe in the office.
I was the easy, American intern spread like footprints
In the rain.
I remember walking through London intersections,
Umbrella in hand,
Hating the prospects of slave labor, but looking forward to,
Perhaps, you making an excuse to touch my shoulder.
In front of co-workers, I blush all vodka drunk.
Our battleground - your London bed. My time of the month
This kind of honeymoon virginity
As unplanned as your proposal.
I wanted to be the Sylvia to your Ted.
We were over.
I cried
Not because the film was sad, in particular,
But because I knew I was Charlotte and you were Bob Harris.
We were both actors looking to be more than actors.
And it was then that I realized
I loved you.

Glenna Myles © 2006.

Glenna Myles currently lives and writes in Los Angeles, CA.

posted by scarecrow # 3:12 AM

Conversation in a Hammock...

I start to look at the trees,
then their leaves.
Look Noah, look.
Notice how that one is slightly different.
It moves while the others stay quiet.
Kind of like this hammock.

Oh shut up, he says.

What? What was wrong with that?

We continue to sit in the hammock,
only looking at the trees.
You just encourage it, he says.
You encourage the craziness.

Let's just look at the leaves, I say.
Come on.
Me, you, and the leaves.

Let's just avoid life, he says.
I'm tired of looking at the leaves.
We're people,
not leaves.
Sometimes, we have to admit that.

He lifts off the hammock, walking down
to the dock.

Fine, I think.
Leave. I don't need you.
I still have this hammock, the movement,
and the leaves.

My feet push on the ground as I grind
the twig into the dirt.

I haven't encouraged anything.
The wind made him speak crazy
like the different leaf.
It falls.

Noah skips a stone across the lake.

If only it would rain, I think.
Everything would really
sparkle.

Glenna Myles © 2006.

Glenna Myles currently lives and writes in Los Angeles, CA.

posted by scarecrow # 3:01 AM

Friday, February 03, 2006

Poems...

Mono Eden

Plastic Skunk,
Comedy garden ornament.
I’ve never seen a skunk in the flesh.
I try to decide what
Other Black
and white
Creatures exist;
1.Zebra

King’s Sugar

King’s Sugar
Is bitter
To taste
Strangely
Soft
To touch
Queen’s Honey
Amber, Glass, Syrup
Sticky
Smelly
Sweet
Summer
Modern Nuns
Don’t keep bees
I know this
Because
Email exists
Praying 4u
Holy
Sista

Spores

Spores
Like the
Secret Garden
Infect you silently
Fruit Bodies
In the grass
In a ring
Kill or cure
Seeping poison
Via ostiole
Skin
Ripe
Picked
In the forests
Of Finland

£20

Underbid
Antique set
Of twin decks
In brown leather
Box
Sellotape damage
Exposes
Suede
Like dead skin
On a
Grazed knee

Diction

How to Talk Correctly
Do not speak at all
For
I do not want to listen
I can’t hear you
Nor do I want to
So I shan’t
Concede
Self-inflicted
Deafness

Little Orange Stamp

Bee Hive
And
Scythe
H
A746470
REGD TRADE MARK
Little Orange
Stamp with
Perforated edges
Cut off-centre
Showing green
Of another
Lost stamp

Child of Our Time

Wild Will
Dream-child
Little Owl
Reu
Kimba Toad
Sammy
Kevina
Cam
9 going on 19
Spooky
Rude
A right darlin’
Ritalin
ADHD
Backward
Forward

Little Old Lady Next Door Neighbour

Corporal Sherwood
Was in Singapore
Mrs Smith
In the Hotel
Raised pencilled eyebrow

Lauren McCarthy © 2006.

Lauren McCarthy currently lives in the heart of England’s Black Country, somewhere between a rock and a hard place.

posted by scarecrow # 4:08 AM

Murder Leisure...

It’s so cold in here I want to cut my left arm off. The kids at school will all get murdered. They don’t know the edge of my plan, what it’s all about. Pink dogs are barking out my window; buy a machine gun and fuck the rest. I’m so limited at times in my gallant apprehensions; wanna buy a new grenade? Thick riffs emitted from stereotyped letters. No more coughed museums for sale up the asshole of zero. Whose concert is worth fighting for. The outward dementia. Give me a compliment, I’ll hand you a knife. Videofuck smells nice in the aftermath, I must admit these things to my self. “You don’t want to risk some black business and get deported from the planet.”

Maybe cut her breasts off stick them in the stew that would help things. Get educated before you chop someone else’s cock off; inherit the wind. Orange jehovah bled on the tile, seething mass of mistakes all wrapped up behind the same glass case. We have no respect for your law, your penetrationary mass of absolutes farting down from the ceiling. The attic’s mass of squirt lotion secures a cold place in the shadow of the architect’s eye; who knows how many bones one has to spin through before arriving at the final showdown. The masticated affair knows no parallels when finality gets drawn out. I’m forming a splinter group anyhow; maybe we’ll learn how to re-finance tomorrow.

posted by scarecrow # 4:03 AM

Under a funeral moon...

Swords wrapped around the cusp of our leaving off in silence. Tongue-torqued and holy roller tide the beyonder moonlight and dry ice to get the real effect down we’re fucked satanic breaking moonstream whatever we’re settled for it’s less than what we taste momentarily hark here the straits of the world. Maximal undoing spider form fucker blasting. What lies beyond the gates, it flies into your mind the spirals. I’m a goddamn automaton the cat’s bobsled meow karma. Yellow barbarism.

Black gates form a horde, reused words and forms, goddamn how I delimit myself play a musical instrument laugh defeated. Over there polaroids an instant affinity for the carved self thrown away: eternal misery, he screams. That girl over there. The sofa shits out a moon.

War songs.

Mistress molester, Fenriz’s drumming. De-adjectivize that last phrase please. Try not to describe. Cool nuggets of what I never have. Call iodine. Planted nutjob in the middle of the secret. Hear needs an other tool to fuck righteous. They wait on me to vacate the species. Can’t feel sorry for the deliveryman. Black blocks spin on a cancerous axis. No holes allowed to spew empire. Corpus spells ancient relief from the real Siam. Build for me your sweatsuit, the lion is a king. Plastic tannenbaums gunned down on wooden suede, how long’s it gonna take for the putrid scent to put its tongue in my mouth. Am I alive or else a gun. It always turns into this.

(Not so nervous now as puke once allowed me so. All that eternal plunder. You face gulleys blown fuel of rejection. But the or plane. Panic in the paracide.)

One day we all fall back blood. Less the sped-up galore to shift into height queen hoolahoop mary. We aren’t the future.

posted by scarecrow # 3:59 AM

You are my anything...

I can only aspire to be as fried as you were then, at that age. Blacksmiths were coming to visit the gold of your mother-in-law. Another version of Scandinavia admitted from the stereo’s vixen. How you could succeed through the sudden bubbling of life and mortar, big dazed sunglasses wore thin. Reversed men flash dividend eyeballs. Testimonial showroom flourishes the sign of the dilated testicle, venus attacks the squawk. Hello to be alive. My amoeba, destitute pleasure. Perspiring in the breeze. Put that over here. Dusted burghs erupt sense of true freedom ouch. The allotted savior howls. Rainbow falls over on the insect farm all right. We dance up and off to the side in order to elicit holy how. Articulate grandeur my finger smells. Exaggerate black beauty width to go downtime in tune with teen happenstance chaser, stretch glances across lengthened gorge corridor; howls lightly just to splay you, remember my originary reprimander. Down holey and connoted, the spinning bog devours next assertion. Bury it with the fleas, I’m a corrosive container, riders in the seed. Mountaintop reindeer dancing. Jobs blow up winters away from here. Glam countertop provides refuge from lingering question mark avalanche. Who aren’t you smiting. Nectar in the ass sponge baby tonight. Sunburned embargo melts quietly across the muse. Pancake attack on my shoulder. Motorcycles in the stars fat fucker. Lustified in the relapse, where you going now. Take off that skin, I wanna see you go rabbit-style.

posted by scarecrow # 3:33 AM