Contributor: Paul Tristram

- -
It’s time for experience
let’s take a trip tonight.
Leave the mundane with the ordinary
let excess make it right.
Put a strangle hold on strangeness
feed the flames of the insane.
I’ll race you to the ridiculous
we’ll watch our brains blossom again.

If you look into the darkness
you will see a crimson light.
It’s not the Devil watching
it’s the lust within your sight.
You have to sail the boat of broken dreams
to arrive at the shores of success.
Here’s 1 for now and 2 for later
addiction invites you to be its guest.

May I tempt you disgracefully
down the road of ruin with me?
May I tempt your senses
into joining the debauchery?
Find the beast within you
let it join in with the fun.
Feel the need burn within you
stronger than the sun.

Out in the distance
is a place where we must be.
A reality free zone
a hazy sanctuary.
It’s time to face the danger
it’s time to lose and win.
It’s time for mindless pleasure
it’s time to share the sin.


- - -
Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories and sketches published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
It's a 50th anniversary dinner
for Bernie and Blanche at the Elk's Hall.
After dessert Blanche grabs the mike
and primes the crowd by announcing,
"Fifty years we've been married
and Bernie's never had a sorry day."
Then Bernie grabs the mike and says
"The nights have been wonderful, too.
Despite her orthopedic shoes, Blanche
still has pistons in her haunches."
In fact, after all these years, Bernie has
but one complaint: Blanche never
gets to the point in any conversation.
It's up to Bernie to decipher the code.

Early every morning Blanche and Bernie
sit in their recliners and sip coffee.
Blanche stares into space and then
jots down on a legal pad everything
Bernie must do before their lovely
Victorian house falls down.
Bernie in the meantime reads
the obituaries with one eye
and watches Blanche with the other
and waits for her head to rear back,
a mule ready to bray a prologue
Chaucer would envy.

Many times Bernie has asked Blanche
to give him the bottom line first.
"Tell me up front what you want me to do
and then fill in the details," he tells her.
But with no bottom line in any conversation,
Blanche makes Bernie feel as though
a python is winding around his chest.
"I know what the python wants,"
Bernie says, "and he'll be quicker."

After 50 years of marriage,
Bernie says meandering by Blanche
in conversation is a small complaint.
He'll never have a sorry day as long as
Blanche has pistons in her haunches
because every now and then,
despite stenosis of the spine,
Bernie likes to bounce off the ceiling.
That bounce, he says, is why
he married Blanche in the first place.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Contributor: A.J. Huffman

- -
I want to spiral down
the wings of a marbalized dawn.
All gold and purple. Tinged red.
Would that be tainted? I guess
that would depend on the size
of the haloed hangover hovering like mist.
Desperately wanting to be fog
[gy]. Here at the bottom
of this well (and subsequently my will)
-tailored suite of mirrors, I am trusted
and reflecting nowhere fast.
Inside, this fathomless folly compounds. Me.
Beating [myself] in time to the music
of silent meditation. (And that fucking flute
fathers nothing!) Listen deeper.
Hear me drowning? Not waving.
That cataclysmic cluster sank. On Tuesday,
I’m a Friday girl. All leave, no luster.
Pick me, twist me, watch me fall.
I dissipate in rainbow kisses (still pissed
off at the wind).


- - -
A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has published six collections of poetry, available on Amazon.com. She has published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. She is currently the editor for Kind of a Hurricane Press literary journals ( www.kindofahurricanepress.com ).

Contributor: Anonymous

- -
Thank you for this
the lessons I didn't want to learn
the pain that made the day brighter
sweeter
with the coming of dawn.

Thank you for the long, dark nights
hellish and cold
that broke like fever
when the wounds
at last
were lanced.

Thank you for each cruel, fitful sleep
from which such beauty has sprung
without which
life would be quiet, featureless
cardboard dreams
yielding only
cardboard rewards

Thank you for the blessings
especially those I hate
(at first)
those I curse
(even now.)

Thank you,
because sometimes
pain is its own reward.


- - -

Contributor: John Ogden

- -
Little stones
and the river is wide
but we try
over and over
we try

until the cold becomes unwarmable
until the heat becomes unbareable
until we starve
because the money has run out

and still, we're not good enough
still, not worthy
of love
of more
than hate
wrapped in stony breath.


- - -
John Ogden was conceived of a government form and a passing mailbox. He lives somewhere out in the woods of a rural land more akin to the fantasy realms of literature than real life, and his favorite dirt bikes will always be the broken ones.

Contributor: Nala Jimway

- -
Life:
simple etchings
burnt lines
cutting
stained time

Life:
frames in film
pastiche of parents'
scratched
pitted
failings

Life:
the fire of it
heat of seeing
being
fully

in too-short moments.


- - -

Contributor: Lyla Sommersby

- -
For peace to last
that would be the greatest joy
summer mornings
"so sweet
and so cold"
variation within order
the music of lazy ease
rising here and there
rising softly
to a faster chorus
of chaos
light chaos
just gently
the urge to move
the urge to slide
as a snail does
as cattle do
to low
so sweetly
in soft, dawn sun
soft, dawn breeze
of summer.
that would be the greatest joy
(for peace to last.)


- - -
I am a student in Miami, Florida. Painting is my other love. My first book, Sketches of Someone, is available through Thunderune Publishing.

Contributor: E.S. Wynn

- -
Cold stones by sea
the dark, gray open wide
open mouth
slushy rush
tongue
rising to push
through rock
through sand
through time
through mind
roughing away
rigid lines
to smooth.

I, stone.
Time, ocean.
Life ends
always
to begin
anew.


- - -
E.S. Wynn is the author of over forty books.

Contributor: A.J. Huffman

- -
I rise, each night, inside this body-
shaped coffin. I am my own
dirt, consecrated
in the church of trial
by fire, I am no phoenix,
no mythical insignia of salvation.
I am a scar, a temporary
scab, a coagulated memory
of pain. Discarded, reticent
piece of trash for the bin.
I border nothing,
straddle the line between forgotten
and ignored. I am waste(d). Here,
let me help you, help me, open
the never-quite-fatal vein.


- - -
A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has published six collections of poetry, available on Amazon.com. She has published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. She is currently the editor for Kind of a Hurricane Press literary journals ( www.kindofahurricanepress.com ).

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

- -
Chicago, South Side

Late July and I am waiting
for those good tomatoes
brought to the city from farms
on trucks with a swinging scale,
brought to the city
and into the alleys
by Greeks and sons
in late July
and early August,
tomatoes so red they reign
on the sills of my mind all winter
too perfect to eat.


- - -
Donal Mahoney grew up in Chicago when immigrant Greek vegetable vendors brought their trucks down alleys twice a week to sell fresh produce to housewives.