scarecrow poetics/essays

Friday, October 19, 2007

Spam Poems . . .

Note: the following poems were derived from or inspired by unwanted Spam e-mails and are taken from the author’s on-going work The Modem Is The Message.

Videos Of Girls

Stiff winds blow court walls
where white haired women bathe;
hair piled high, vine roots rusted
in eyes that scour the prose rag
all tilt beds worn down and tasted.

And in comes the sun crow, timidly
drinking sulky cat sour milk sickness.

The Holiday For You

Hotel very clean no cockroaches at all.
towels provided most importantly
Britannia pub with widescreen nearby
and accurate sea views for hot lovers
literally lose yourself in our pillows, yes

amazing pirate adventure show twice daily
kids club for kids and water slide with water
food is colorful and lovely, even egg and chips
what an experience to remember
hey sexy! neat disco and flashing dancefloor

I can’t emphaises enough the pleasure
you and your beloved will find on this hot holiday.

Pale Lesbians Bent Over

Joy puffs their work - these wives want their shine lakes sunny;
their neat habit shadows arise plucking holes done loudly.
Fact: two pale grown men sleep in silence, two groan men
in matching silk gowns, full of lamp-light wine; by the lake
true smoke eats the land, their wives together, hand in hand.

A You New

Bag in one hand and feeling
her features with the other

beneath the pulpit instillation
she abdicates the bedding

and murmurs “Save me. My hand is
black and blue from beating him off.”

This Documents Has Been Moved

The store in town was sold out
all it had was one sub pixel
at the edge of the screen
a fraction of a dead girl

who went missing months ago

in these remote deciduous parts;
it saddened me to note that
she wasn’t missed as much
as the lack of whisky in town.

Select An After Effect

You are
not to leave your
bedroom while we
are away.

Ben Myers 2007.

Ben Myers is a writer. He lives in London. His recently-launched 'WEBLOG' can be found here:

http://benmyersmanofletters.blogspot.com

posted by scarecrow # 8:14 AM

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

For Gio . . .

My son Giovanni's in the other room
as I sit here typing - wrenching my brain

I hear him in there
eighteen months old
pushing his red bus across the carpet
into
the wall
again and again - bam bam, bam bam
making up chatter-box words
in an unknown one-way conversation
as he goes

One-hundred percent present
in
the
moment

complete crunching bliss

And all
I'll ever want
is
to
be just like
that kid

in the now - always -
nothing added

Totally
with
God

Dan Fante 2007

Dan Fante was born and raised in Los Angeles. At twenty, he quit school and hit the road, eventually ending up as a New York City resident for twelve years. Fante has worked at dozens of crummy jobs including: door to door salesman, taxi driver, window washer, telemarketer, private investigator, night hotel manager, chauffeur, mailroom clerk, deck hand, dishwasher, carnival barker, envelope stuffer, dating service counselor, furniture salesman, and parking attendant. Fante is married and has a two year old son named Michaelangelo Giovanni Fante. He hopes eventually to learn to play the harmonica.

http://www.danfante.net/home.htm

posted by scarecrow # 3:28 PM

West Hollywood . . .

Melrose Avenue at Four a.m.

Blood everywhere
on the car's seat
on the floorboard

and me
freaked and desperate and helpless
saying shit like - it's okay - you're gonna be okay - we'll be there in a minute - just hang on for chrissake

and more blood

Your shirt and pants sopped by it
your face white . . . drained . . . porcelain

an entire liver puked up - on the floor of my car

Hang on, goddamnit! Can you just hang on?

"I'm hanging on, fucker . . . . drive faster"

And all the love and all the lies of our friendship
the years of our days and nights together
have
devolved
to this
last careless ride

Okay . . . okay . . . we're here . . . can you hear me?

kissing your head as they wheeled you in
but
only later remembering
I
never
stopped
to say
goodbye

Dan Fante 2007

posted by scarecrow # 3:26 PM

DON . . .

I ran into old Don
today
still checking at the Ralphs on Sepulveda Boulevard
after 25 big ones -

Looks like - just for a change - the boss is screwing them again on their pension plan
and the picketing they did and the strike that time
and the fucking honcho from the A F-of-L
all didn't do nobody no good whatsoever

The working stiff is still the lowest lizard on the food chain

Old Don's doesn't care - says he's retiring at the end of the year
no matter what

Says he's gonna spend full time at that place he built in Mexico
and slam his insulin twice a day
and fish until his hands fall off

And I'm cranking the starter in my Chevy out in the parking lot
when it hits me

I've been doing the only thing I ever wanted to do
- daily -
for almost twenty years
no union - no paid vacations - no O T
and no shit

I still can't get enough

Dan Fante 2007

posted by scarecrow # 3:25 PM

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Welcome to Peckham . . .

Monday Morning

I slept straight
through my alarm
and woke at 10am
in fact I hadn’t
even set it
to go off.
I jumped out of
bed and peeked
through the blinds
and saw two
men doing the
junkie shuffle
through the grey
Monday morning.
Christ!
I thought
even the junkies
aren’t as lazy
as I am
these days.

The First Night Of Snow

There were three murders at the weekend.
Then last night I awoke at 3am and it was freezing. I looked out the window to see a policeman and a policewoman chasing a car thief along the street and into the park. The policewoman was not what you would call thin, but man she was quick.
She caught up with him and as she made an arrest, it immediately started delicately snowing for the first time this winter.
It was like a textbook idyllic chocolate box scene, all those flashing blue lights, barking dogs, out-of-breath policemen and silent snowdrops falling across London.

How I Made My Millions

It was a hot day and I was sitting in the park.
when suddenly it came to me, just like that:
Sweet pizzas! You must invent, manufacture
and market sweet pizzas! Just think about it
for a minute. Combining the public’s love of
pizza and cake, you can’t lose. And consider
the potential in variations. Blueberry jam and
mascarpone. Maple and pecan. Hot fudge and
chocolate. Mmm. I jumped up and punched
the air with delight. I was going to be rich. Rich!

Killer Right Hook

I grabbed my camera and walked to the park to capture the pink winter sunset but two school girls were kicking holy fuck out of one another in the midst of a baying throng of about fifteen boys and girls in loosened Friday evening uniforms so I waded in and tried to tear them apart but they were pulling each other’s hair and swinging fists, eventually they were prised apart when another girl bit one of their hands and as they broke away, one of them, a chubby black girl with bloodied teeth and wild eyes, let out a killer right jab to my mouth and I had to hand it to her, it was a good precise punch, and the throng took a collective intake of breath but the fight was over, the girls were all out of punch and after a while they all kind of drifted apart and went their separate ways until there was just me left standing there in the mud, rubbing my swollen jaw and wondering what had just happened. The pink sun had set. It was dark. It was December. My thirtieth year.

Peckham Sunset

A sunset over Safeway
presents itself like
a medal worn proudly

around the neck
of a great Olympiad;
a once-rippling Greek God

who has now fallen, crippled,
clinging to his memories
like he clings to his mottled medal.

View Of The Park From The Window

two men deftly slice the top from
an aluminum can dug out from the
litter bin below my window
turned sideways and fill it with
water to smock their crack through
as Carla, the Eastern European
Jehovah-seller buzzes my intercom
for the third time in a week;
this is not a literary imagining
or a memorable incident or
anything that matters to me but
it is the truth of a Monday morning
living in reality, Tuesday 23rd Jan.

Quote Carved Into Concrete With Stick On Peckham Pavement

To sleep,
perchance
to dream!

Ben Myers © 2007.

I'm a street fighting writer, pugilist poet and hapless fly-fisherman. I have published a number of books and am a founder member of Captains Of Industry record label and The Brutalists (www.myspace.com/brutalists). I write lyrics for The Gulag. More details can be found: www.benmyers.com. My fiction has appeared in a number of collections and websites such as 3AM, Dogmatika, Zygote In My Coffee, Straight From The Fridge, Bookmunch, Blatt, LaurdHird.com, Dreams The Money Can Buy, Open Wide etc. I have also been known to write for publications such as Kerrang!, Alternative Press, Time Out, Plan B, Q, Bizarre, DrownedInSound, Melody Maker (RIP), Playlouder, Record Collector etc. I have nearly 3000 friends, and they all hang out in my one-room flat every night. I dream of apostrophes. I'm broke.

posted by scarecrow # 7:34 AM

Shit From An Old Notebook . . .

Say It With Flowers

fuck off
and leave
me alone

ornately arranged
by our
instore professionals.

In Hollywood

I heard that some of them bleach their arseholes.

Horoscope

Capricorn. Same as last month, only with Aries rising on the third Thursday you will experience a sense of déjà vu. Maybe you won’t know even know about it, but it’ll happen alright. Seek the stranger in the Wellington boots. Watch a Vin Diesel movie together.

Her Favourite Cheeses

haloumi
gouda
feta
emmenthal
dick

Confession #24

I like to
secretly watch
voyeurs.

ZZ Top

In England we should really call them Zed Zed Top

Celebricide

I’m scared
to leave
the house
in case
i accidentally
become famous.

Examination Question

Two prostitutes are walking down the street
towards one another. One is traveling at
3mph and the other has Chlamydia. Which
one is thinking about how accurate Pretty
Woman was in terms of authenticity? Your
answer should refer to Virilio’s urbanist theories.

Redhead

Your hair is so red and so long I want to throw a bucket of water over you every time you pass me on the street. I mean, that fire comes all the way down past your ass. You’re like a superior sequel to The Towering Inferno, where everyone lives happily ever after.

Myopia

Here kitty kitty
here kitty -
oh, it’s a
handbag.

Redundant Greek Gods

Herpes
Isosceles
Dunlop
Pessary
Biff
Pissoir
Bacchus-Bob Jr

Semantics

Unless the girls I’ve known have been doing it wrong, I still don’t understand why they’re called ‘blow jobs’.

Ben Myers © 2007.

posted by scarecrow # 7:29 AM

Sunday, March 11, 2007

The poet after forty . . .

For years, decades, I’ve struggled to break thru—
in my writing, in my life

And now I’m finally doing it, growing up, learning
to understand my pain and how to forgive
my family

and the women who’ve hurt me and myself for letting
them hurt me, while suddenly finding the confidence
to lay down the cleanest line I can

But now that I’m arriving at this new, well-lit place
I’m finding that there’s no one here
to greet me

Most of my family is dead, the vast majority of my friends
have disappeared into marriages, careers, jobs, and mindsets
I simply cannot understand, old girlfriends are too far away
in every respect for renewed sparks or even mutual apologies,
the new girls are too young and losing interest in my graying
temples at the same rate I’m losing interest in their adolescent
needs, and the older women who are still free are available
mainly because they’re crazy in all the wrong ways or
bitter divorcées or both, unfit of course for a budding poet
learning for once to love life and growing younger
by the minute …

So here I am, more alive than ever and on many more nights
than not alone with my keyboard, a book, or an Angels’ game
on the radio, pacing my apartment like a caged animal,
desperate for someone willing to let me tell them
how profoundly happy I’ve become …

Robert Woodard © 2007.

ROB WOODARD was born in Anaheim, California in 1964 and raised mostly in the nearby Long Beach area. After graduating high school, he dropped in and out of various community colleges and worked mostly in restaurants in southern California, Hawaii, and Australia, while taking breaks to wander aimlessly across big swaths of the globe. During these years he wrote consistently in search of his voice as a writer. Frustrated by his lack of progress, he returned to school and eventually obtained bachelors and masters degrees in anthropology from California State University, Long Beach. After a brief stint as a college professor, he returned to working in restaurants and writing. Burning Shore Press recently published Heaping Stones, his first novel. What Love Is, his second novel, is scheduled to be released by the same house in the summer/early fall of 2006. He is currently writing poetry, book reviews, and a journal.

Contact: bsp@burningshorepress.com

posted by scarecrow # 6:56 AM

Dancing in the Louvre—Summer, 1999

For Katie Farrar

I’d heard it called the Disneyland of art museums
and when I saw its slick ticket windows
and long lines I understood why

but inside the art refuse to be regulated,
codified, or sold:

instead
it jumped off the walls and danced,
sang, screamed, laughed arias,
spewed witticisms,
and hurt like
cold mornings
with no hope
of her ever
returning

And I danced too in my thoughtful
standing still and slow moving from
one painting to the next
as Vermeer egged me on
by saying shit like ride me to
van Gogh like a magic carpet
on your way to Jackson Pollock’s
Long Island barn
early 1950s breathru

or maybe you should shift gears
slightly to Munch leading to Klee
or anywhere else modern, post,
or not you want to go

Or perhaps you should just say
fuck it all
and head down to
the Italian Renaissance
and weep before the
fields of sunlight and
God having meaning
in Leonardo’s backdrop
or so many other greats
my overwhelmed mind
suddenly can’t name
by name

which is what
I then proceeded
to do,

tears coming to my eyes
before I even reached
the stairs

Robert Woodard © 2007.

posted by scarecrow # 6:54 AM

New Wild Boys . . .

I don’t want to walk into the William S. Burroughs
wide-screen gunfighter drama of pulled-down fedora
and secret agent cabalistic webs of no possible
meaning, of secrets held close like a lover just
deceased while helicopter blades rotate ominously
over a desert town and Mexicanos locos
working for the man slip in and out of
knife-drawn shadows of
Big Texas Lawman America
Saudi Oil
South African Diamonds
and deeply concealed interstellar invaders
as small packs of poets wander the hills
like guerilla warriors wearing
Henry David Thoreau T-shirts and stolen Nikes
doing whatever they can to be heard

The sun and the sea are mine too
and I demand they be returned—
a million murdered presidents later
or now doesn’t matter:

because I, one the poets, am not a beginning but simply another
American expression of something much older that can never
quite go away—

so I can just wait you out
if need be

Robert Woodard © 2007.

posted by scarecrow # 6:51 AM

A Pretty Typical Day . . .

I woke up yesterday as a curly-haired young Bob Dylan,
all charming and profound and full of life—pre-media
almost and really just learning
how to write a song

But the day turned out to be filled with all sorts of obstacles:
a leaky showerhead, a dead battery in my truck, a nasty email
from an ex-love I finally admitted I still loved
more than a little bit …

And so by around noon (mainly because of memories stoked
by her) I’d very much shifted into Iggy Pop mode:
howling
crazed craziness
with where are the drugs
and the love needs expression
taking over
to the point where for little spots of time
here and there I really thought I might die
and that that might be OK, even while I
most definitely was enjoying my pain …

Until around two when I managed to get some of my strength back
and mutated into a snidey Johnny Rotten semi-bucked-tooth
scowl-and-glare guy, more English than I’d before ever imagined
I could be (but in reality mostly just a pose, not quite me)

I then somehow turned into Bono for a while: self-important,
all knowing and all loving and holier than any Thou—powered
by a profound foolishness and a deep down shame of
what I’d become and was becoming …

By around four in the afternoon the overall trauma of the day
encouraged me to slip into a full-on Lou Reed reality:
speedy and paranoid leave me the fuck alone black leather “toughness,”
while of course demanding that everyone acknowledge that I’m still
king of the pack, still way better than they could ever be …

But events suddenly allowed me to pull myself
out of this mood too:

I found a five-dollar bill in the gutter by my apartment building
and then several minutes later, as I was walking down the street,
a beautiful young Mexican girl smiled at me,
warm and truthful and happy—

and because of these events, I suddenly became all clean
melodic Joey Ramone geek-style happiness inside despite
my outer weak points,
a state that lasted until I got
into bed that night …

It was a pretty typical day in other words, a day that caused me
to realize (as days like this usually do) that in many ways
I’m an amazingly romantic man:

I’ve always believed in poets

and believed that they
should sing

Robert Woodard © 2007.

posted by scarecrow # 6:49 AM

Love Poem Much Delayed . . .

I’ll take with me to the grave the way your
dark brown eyes sparkled and smiled up at me
thru unruly black curls as your barely
seventeen-year-old mouth gleefully sucked
on my twenty-nine-year-old dick
with surprising skill and testicle-lapping
daring well beyond your years,

as well the excitement I could feel rumbling thru
every part of you the first time I pulled your panties
to one side and reciprocated with my tongue …

Shit, I’ll take it all with me!—

The hours of kissing and caressing in which we engaged,
before and in between fucking sessions; the long talks
we had on books and politics and just about everything
else under the sun; the time we spent just lying in bed
watching movies or TV; the amazing way you would
hang around my apartment naked, cooking, reading,
or whatever, apparently never even thinking about
putting your clothes on again until you had to
go somewhere; the cute way you’d giggle and
scream when I would unexpectedly slap your
bare butt while you walked across a room;
the strange guilty pang I’d always feel
when you did or said something that made me
realize that no matter how smart or unusually
mature you were for your age, you were still
a very young girl indeed …

Yes, I’ll take all this with me and more—for these
many years later I’m finally realizing that of all the women
who have flown from my life you’re the one I miss most:

because though I may have loved others longer
and more powerfully, you were the one I loved most
simply, with the least amount of thought or need
for understanding or justification

And because of this, the pain of your departure
still exists deep within me; I still can sometimes relive
with sad accuracy the day you told me, without warning
it seemed, that you didn’t want to grow up this fast,
that you wanted to be a teenage girl for a bit longer …

The irony of course is that within a year you were
knocked up by a guy five years your senior and were
forced to grow up much faster than you ever would
have had to with a dreamer poet of
arrested adolescence such as me …

I’m not sure why this has all come back to me
so strongly as of late—but the truth is that suddenly
I’ve been wishing more than a little bit that I would
have been the guy who left the condoms in the drawer
and that I now had an eleven-year-old son, some sort of
relationship with you still, and a life very different
from the one that’s led me to the warm nostalgia
of this lonely poem to you.

Robert Woodard © 2007.

posted by scarecrow # 6:40 AM

Celebrity Slumber . . .

Celebrity Slumber [1]

I was on some sort of holiday; hadn’t been home yet and was nervous about what father would say about my absence. The blinds were long, metal and drawn. A school girl was staring at me intently from within an ongoing lesson as I idly killed time in the hallway. Her eyes still intent on me, I went back and tried to phone home from one of the plethora of telephones on the window sill: an old cordless, a rotary phone with an enormous, oversized dial – all had been unplugged or sat with frayed cords. Father was going to be pissed . . . I sat watching webpages silently scroll and flicker past in loud colors. My name was not on any of them. Bill Gates appeared between each one on an infomercial set with a thirty-eight jeweled necklace . . . Bill Gate’s Thirty-Eight Jewels, Bill Gates Thirty-Eight Jewels, Bill Gates Thirty-Eight Jewels . . .

Celebrity Slumber [2]

Pavarotti needed help with the zipper on the side of his suit, which had gotten stuck in the teeth and Russians were busy terrorizing the globe’s hot air balloon travel (two explosions already this week. The wreckage, on the small color TV in the lobby, of snapped cords, people bent double over the whicker or possibly crumpled there). The interior of a hotel with sodium lighting and a washed out pastel blue running the length of the corridor, seen from across a vector, from the outside as it were. A lone room service waiter stood in front of a closed door as in a Hopper painting. Again the Muscovite terrorists - this time making voice-over demands over cut-aways of gaseous explosions.

Celebrity Slumber [3]

Tony Soprano pulled me into another room, and turned on some music to avoid being overheard by the feds who had bugged his house. No sooner had we begun to converse when a drop top caddy rolled up and started spraying the place. We made for the back door and circled around . . . (Somewhere in Europe now) . . . And got into a convertible limo at the end of the block, slowly drove by the would-be assassin marking his appearance. Ada was there with us and we began to discuss our options when a trio of Hawaiians approached us with a map of islands, and pointed out that our aggressor was a Maori – promising us more details when we reached Honolulu. Tony pumped them for more info, going along with the ploy and elbowing me with a conspirator’s wink which spoke silently of an imminent double cross.

Judson Hamilton lives in Wroclaw, Poland. More of his work can be found at www.identitytheory.com, www.pastsimple.org, and is forthcoming at www.thievesjargon.com.

posted by scarecrow # 6:31 AM

Monday, June 19, 2006

Poems...

Blood (1).

Fresh red blood
Dries on Gravesend’s streets
With veins so full
And over-worked
This is
No surprise.

Its wounds are
Sutured
Fixed-up
Tied together
With String.

Dad.

Your fingers on my face
Rough from work
And rubbed with tobacco
Huge and protective
Offering safety.

Now my fingers
On my face
Just like yours
Rough from work
Rubbed with tobacco.

Blood (2).

There’s blood on
The toilet seat
Like pillow talk
On Parrock Street
Like Spanish voices
Or Spanish fly
Like the opium dens
In Limehouse
Underground monoliths
Standing
Decadent
In their historical achievements.

My Chest is like a Rorschach Test.

My chest is
Like
A Rorschach test

Red butterflies
Skim
The epidermis.

Sleeping in an empty bed is still like sleeping with
you.

Sleeping in an
Empty bed is like
Sleeping with you

Tugging the bed
Covers and losing
The fight to rest

More so when yr
Out away from home
Ecstasy high

For you I write
Stanzas unfounded
Beholding I

For you I lie
Bic biro black
Ink dry and fucked.

Liberare.

This is my Cuba
The balcony
My veranda
Overlooking the brown rooftops
Grey houses and
Tarmac lakes.

Playing
Screaming
Fighting
The kids are my ocean waves
Crashing against the cars
And electricity.

Our revolution
Will never come
Through words.

Post-Illumination.

You’re not alone
Right Now
There’s not a single book
I want to read
Or a single song I
I want to sing
I just want to sit
On my doorstep
Smoking cigarettes
While the pseudo-spring wind
Blows swiftly
Across my naked feet
While dogs bark
In dark back gardens
While the dead
Move in
And out
Of porches and doors
And out
Goes the light across the court.

Johnny Grace © 2006.

Johnny Grace writes poetry and short fiction. He lives in Gravesend.

posted by scarecrow # 9:13 AM

Two fat boys...

Two fat boys

are being looked at

no, stared at

by a thin man

who then trips over

face first

into a ditch

Two Fat Boys

In Croydon

two fat boys

(Rick and Sam)

are drunk under the moon

neither have ever been fallen in love with

Two Fat Boys

Four wickets in one innings

ah, that was such a long time ago

thinks one fat boy at a desk

eating spreadable cheese sandwiches

Two Fat Boys

Two fat boys

in the back of an old Fiat Panda…

one notices a dead elephant

how could it have become dead?

ah . . . now it begins

Two Fat Boys

Two fat boys

waiting at the zebra crossing

see Nancy on the other side

dressed in the fuckest thing you ever did see

Two Fat Boys

Two fat boys

fight

over a snapped ruler

The next day

they’re best of friends again

having a lack

and having no-one else

to fill that lack

Two Fat Boys

Donald Duck

One Fat Boy

One fat boy

in the toilets of McDonald’s, Stroget

shakes the last drops of urine

from his penis

and notices

the ubiquitous pissmat

of Kerne Hansen

One Fat Boy

One fat boy

looks at his maths mark

a ten!

how gleefully he walks down the corridor

In science

a ten!

again!

mischievously Joe Slick starts the rumours

One Fat Boy

One fat boy

gets lost

in the woods

holding a stick

James Davis © 2006.

James Davies has written in Clacton, Exeter, Copenhagen and Manchester. At the moment he works teaching English - various. Also drawing, readings, mags, festivals, exhibitions, friends, women, bars, etc. He also edits Matchbox.

posted by scarecrow # 9:07 AM

An ode to the author...

Is to be gay more liberating when addressing affections
I question myself of late, and late at night
Not too seriously yet with inner contention
I have loved two men in my life
And as most alphas would have experienced
I am bound to them by blood and money I owe
Yet be it a revelation within me
Or merely a mature acceptance donated by age
I for one am a heterosexual
Living in some form of metropolis
Yet not fond of the term metrosexual
I love women and one woman more than anyone
Yet I have seemingly fallen for a man
Not biblically nor sexually, as it is ...
We have never met, and never locked eyes
He is more a flesh and blood casing for his mind
It is the mind of the man that I desire to be intertwined with
He has made me laugh, cry, regret confess and think
More than any other has done in my years on our planet
I feel I want to buy him a glass of the finest wine
The most sumptuous main courses he devours
All he has spoken to me of on countless occasion
Yet we have never met, never passed on the street
Once I went to find him, but I blushed
I blushed on the plane, on the bus, and again on the subway
Such was the nature of my affliction friends
I couldn't dismount from the A train
And thus I got lost, not geographically you understand
Lost in my thoughts, locked in conflict, utterly lost ...
I longed to overcome my fear of the handshake that I had dreamed of
Yet the moment had passed, like a rat o'er shoe in manhattan
Nevertheless my affections have grown stronger and now I feel fulfilled
I have a friend who I can turn to, and I don't need to talk to him
As when he talks to me I get comfortably lost
And that is where I find my bliss.

Stephen Monaghan © 2006.

posted by scarecrow # 8:53 AM

Thursday, June 08, 2006

To All Of My Dead, Drunk And Missing Uncles...

one uncle
overdosed in a cell
while locked up
for forging prescriptions:
no inquiry
just another dead catholic
in Belfast, 1962

one I remember
hid bottles of whiskey
in the fields
and we had “our little secret” -
entire days at the pub
while he drank and drank
and me, eating peanuts and drinking Coke,
as he explained the difference
between “wee white lies”
and the proper kind

yet another
was a vengeful alcoholic
who tried to kick
my grandparent’s door in
and fell out of bed
smashed his head
and bled
to death
as he slept

one went out for cigarettes
and never returned
another painted imaginary landscapes
from a cell in Long Kesh
my grandmother’s collection
of yellowing newspaper clippings
in an old biscuit tin
all that may remain of his legacy

when I was 14
I was suspended
for writing pro-communist pamphlets
and pasting them
all over my Catholic High School

the priest,
a watery eyed old alcoholic
shook with rage and said:
“Do you have any idea what the communists
“did to the priests in Spain???”
I laughed and said
“Yes.”

they told my father that I was bright
but my mind needed to be
channeled
effectively

but instead of the priesthood,
or teaching,
or the business world
or any of that horseshit
I’m glad to say
I stuck
with the family business

Tony O'Neill © 2006.

In a previous life Tony O’Neill played keyboards for bands and artists as diverse as Kenickie, Marc Almond and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. After moving to Los Angeles his promising career was derailed by heroin addiction, quickie marriages and crack abuse. While kicking methadone he started writing about his experiences on the periphery of the Hollywood Dream and he has been writing ever since. His autobiographical novel DIGGING THE VEIN will be published in Feb 2006 by Contemporary Press, in the US and Canada. Wrecking Ball Press plan to release a UK edition Summer 2006. He lives in New York where he works a variety of odd jobs and writes.

More details can be found at http://www.tonyoneill.net/

posted by scarecrow # 11:04 AM

Monday, May 01, 2006

Anal Mermaids...

Some tip for nowness:
splendor. Yellow dog named Snort
ejaculates upon my name.
Truncated holocaust nails
tiny lips explode in germinated
fields of polished gore fabrics.
“How do you know I haven’t painted on this already,”
that’s the bird dropping off cost’s
sun-veiled toilette. Coupon bleeds

Pink symmetry of wolfhead
falling, dreamy mermaid
beefs up the green. Without
any tact we feel real music
emotion, chopped and bleeding,
flush this.

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.

His new collection of poems [Poems I Wrote While Watching TV] can be ordered HERE.

posted by scarecrow # 10:21 AM

3 Poems...

Such is...

She wants to eat
He wants to drink
They go their separate ways
He wants to save
She wants to spend
No compromise
They took a walk
He thought a lot
She was content
She looked resplendent
He looked away
They joined their friends
He wants to leave
She wants to stay
Same old story
They stare at houses
She sees a terrace
He sees a bungalow
They never made it
He has the dog
She bought a cat
They have never met.

Srangers meet...

Persuaded
Begged
Succumbed
Entered
Stroked
Slapped
Re-entered
Chastised
Aroused
Sinister
Pleased
Shifted
Ridden
Punched
Choked
Caressed
Eyeballed
Kissed
Drenched
Held
Thrown
Held
Thrown
Gripped
Denied
Ignored
Respected
Rejected
Ejected

Moral code...

Once when I was young
Although not so young
As not to know the moral code
The difference betwixt the right and the wrong
I was on a swift promenade through fields
And the undergrowth belonging to the countryside
Stalking was my mission
As I fixated on pools and runs
Natives to the river
Foreigners to mine eyes
I wanted a trout
I badly wanted to feel the pull on my line
The indication of success and glory
And a reward for my patience
And a punishment for my conceit
A clearing became clear
So I joined the overhanging branches
And the moss covered mounds
Cast aside my pensive state
And delivered my fly to the mouth of a wild brown trout
Ignored by the beast
Not for the first time
I surrendered to failure
Yet a sudden yelp
Indicative of neither man nor beast
Startled my peaceful surround and pierced my ears
I swivelled and turned 180 degrees
To both my surprise and delight
A small downs syndrome child
Was giving hot pursuit to a young gelding
He ran like an olympian
Shouted like a football fan
I laughed for three days solid.

Stephen Monaghan © 2006.

posted by scarecrow # 5:45 AM

On Your Way - Somewhere in Hackney...

You have woken up, your temperament sour
You missed the morning
On this day your outlook dour

There is a staircase to descend
That is where it starts
Your day
In the kitchen
Downstairs

You are regret (pause)

There is no more morning pleasure left
To lift your limbonic' lard
No tea
No coffee
The milk is not

You must ascend
Ascend
Ascend
For your morning glory
It is a fight for your survival
Your eyes just openned

To leave your dwelling is a dagger in your heart
You know you can not begin your day
Without that hot liquid pleasure

The white mate is paramount to the accompany the dark
The dark paramount to accompany the white mate
You often played chess but winning became boring

Anger has flushed you out
You have lost again to fury's downfall

You remember where the axe is
The current climate expands the wood
Adding fuel to your rage
The door will not open
You bite your right arm sinking your teeth into your skin
You pull away when the pain becomes unbearable
You look up then down, you take a deep breath
When you release your temper rises
You climb on the kitchen sink and disengage the window lock
You do not break it
Climbing outside onto wet green grass feelers
Licking in between, your morning feet are bare, toes

There is the axe upon the cluster
A fierce manic stride you take your self to the clump
No yank from a log, the axe left behind on it's side
You grab the axe handle
A shard of light catches your right cheek and right eye
From the sun laid on the metal

Your frustration subsides after the wood whack and cut
Your mind has cleared
Unlocking the once surrounding fences, you once put yourself into

You return through the unlocked kitchen window
Ascend the staircase
Apply some fabrics, slip on a pair of slip-ons
You are ready to go out, face the street,
Face the world in your wee borough
You are geared up to depart your asylum.

If the corner shop is closed, you know it's open. You will burn it down.
If the corner shop is closed, you know it's open. You will burn it down.
If the corner shop is closed, you know it's open. You will burn it down.

However your day grows, you are excited
You are on your way to the beginning of (pause) your day.

What will it be?

Coffee or tea?

The mixture of dark and light is always your choice.

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 # 1:46 AM

1970...

1

We begin here. Here we begin -
The modern age with all its novel twists.
We may have been sixties born,
But believe me, when I say it is,
The next decade that made the man -
For seven was my lucky number,
Once over thirty years ago -
At three years old, unaware of what went on,
Tied ribbons round old oak trees.

2

My granddad smoked like Harold Wilson,
Spittle at the cornermouth.
The farm was, by then, on its uppers
Both the sons got civvy jobs.
The milk round in the old Ford van,
As canvassers from all three parties,
Shuttled round the dirty streets,
Promising a new beginning;
And giving us Ted Heath.

3

Paul broke them up, wrote the note,
Placed the dagger between the ribs,
Made his own not so primal scream.
The sixties it seems were over,
The mini skirt had grown an inch,
We weren't ready for the midi -
The Sun showed us Stephanie Rahn,
Fallen from her cheesecloth top,
Sex went mainstream; we buttoned up.

4

Monika Dannemann sips champagne
With her Hendrix - earlier Shanklin
Shuddered with thousands to his squall -
It, he, they were over, promotion to
The great gig in the sky.
Is always poets dying young,
As if they know, how fragile life is.
My earliest memory, I have forgotten it,
But even now I recall the song.

5

The yellow shirts were out in force,
And in the heat of Mexico,
The pale-face Englishmen were beat,
By a greater force than heat.
Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Glen Miller, 20
Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20,
William Knox Schroeder, 19,
At Kent State in May,
They never saw the ball game,

6

They sang! The singers sang!
Smoked hashish at Glastonbury Tor,
Grew their hair just so long.
"Nixon in his counting house
Counting loads of money
Reneged on his promises
Cambodia was quite funny."
The modern age begins here,
Begins here, with our sins.

7

I played on the unkempt lawn.
My sister gurgled in the pram.
We had our first telephone put in.
The power strikes of winter
Sent us running for the candles.
I doubt my parents had chance
Or time to watch Ali McGraw -
Not burning at both ends,
But making candles meet.

Adrian Slatcher © 2006.

Adrian Slatcher is co-editor of a poetry and fiction magazine, Lamport Court, and has published a number of poems and short stories in various magazines over the last few years. He is based in Manchester, where he studied on the MA in Novel Writing at the University of Manchester. He was born in Walsall in 1967. A previous "e-book" of his poetry, "The Market is Second Hand Poems" was published in 2002. Copies of "2004" can be obtained for "£3.00" payable to Adrian Slatcher, from 1 Victoria Grove, Fallowfield, Manchester, M14 6BF. Or email adrian.slatcher@gmail.com for further details.

To listen to Adrian Slatcher reading please CLICK HERE.

posted by scarecrow # 1:44 AM

A Rock and a Hard Place...

one floor before we reached the top
of the Stalin-grey concrete tower-block
we found ourselves in a line
all waiting for the same guy
to sell us cut, milk-sugar heroin:

I was struck by the Englishness
of it all:
forming a queue
to buy shitty drugs

stuck behind a silent, hulking Rastafari
and in front of a sniffling Russian kid
who swore that the shit was getting weaker:
“a tenner-bag won’t even get me straight” he sighed
and I wondered if his old life
in some collapsed soviet state
could be any worse than this one

doing the deal
in a small unfurnished room
stuffed full of paranoia
and rickety, stolen handguns
before being ushered through
a metal side door

and we were out

down through a maze of concrete and
rusting steel, the saddest looking playground
in the world, a child’s abandoned shoe
lay next to a decaying roundabout
a seesaw with an empty can of Special Brew
upturned to the left

the Dagenham tower blocks
cutting into the nuclear sky
like the misshapen, yellow teeth
of the drunks on the benches
rising out of their bloody, black gums

a crow caw-caws and a car alarm
wails across the evening
like some mournful call to prayer
for cat burglars and petty thieves

on a bench
I watch
while Steve cooks up two bags
and right there in the playground
we fix with the muggy air
close around us

surrounded by the broken glass
and the shattered lives
unraveling in these government rabbit warrens
I feel completely
aware
of my place:

microscopic
invisible

adrift
in a shitty universe
which stretches, infinite,
like one billion
Dagenham council estates

I think:
Tony…
this is no way to
live

but then I think of my father
hunched over
back broken
pumped full of morphine
and ink

25 years
on the job
and they left him
with nothing
but money that wouldn’t last
and chronic pain

and outside of this playground
lives dictated by alarm clocks
and work whistles:
clocking in
clocking out
commuting to work
or to unexpected death
concealed in abandoned backpacks

people spending more time
with sour faced bosses
and dour, hateful co-workers
than those they love

weeks spent
in minimum wage servitude
instead of laughing in dark bars
and drinking away the sunlight

I look at the needle in my hand
and I realize

oh Jesus
maybe I’ve got it
right
after all

Tony O'Neill © 2006.

posted by scarecrow # 1:42 AM

For N. B...

the first mistake
in a long fucking list
was made in the pool
of the Beverly Hills Hotel
when I said
“lets get married”
and you said “yes”

the old world versus the new
and the battle for supremacy
was waged in our marital bed
during that endless summer

you introduced me to your world
like some idiot child
about to be shown the
error of his ways

your rich, perfect
West Hollywood friends
drinking cosmopolitans
and shoving tubes up their perfect
white asses
to flush the shit out
of themselves

I have to tell you:
It didn’t work

the outside world
an irrelevancy
when compared to how to get
the best teeth, the best car
perfectly bleached ass-hair,
perfectly shaved cunts,
perfectly shaped eyebrows,
thousand dollar shoes

even though your father
had pissed and snorted it away
you still carried that sense of entitlement
down the years
as if it was you who had won the Oscar
and deserved your just reward

my father drove buses for 25 years
my mother wiped the incontinent asses
of senile old women
to put food on the table

yet somehow
in the topsy-turvy world
of beautiful Hollywood
it was your mother who commanded
respect
for making her money
by spreading her cunt
for the alcoholic heir
of a B-movie actress

dissolution of marriage:
we come in with nothing
we leave with nothing
but I’ll leave you with
these words…

you don’t have to thank me
just hold them close
and I sincerely hope
they keep you warm
tonight

Tony O'Neill © 2006.

posted by scarecrow # 1:40 AM