This year is like blundering somewhere else this year happens to be meeting people people people who kill me each moment of our lovemaking you do not step out leaving our desolation behind to stroke my nothingness even once, reaching out to our memories that are like us hanging ever so loose and forlorn like all those broken tiles that line the inglenooks of our sorrows killing me each moment this year
One day should you be lonely as you are walking along winter roads that are like indecisions
One day should I be alone reclining like a pillar of shadow Should I repeat so many blunders?
Should I recall evenings together that are like nothingness?
Should I laugh and stroke my merry celibacy? Should you care like your full lips in bloom? Like drawing blood on the rocks like our darkening nights Should we grow apart like trees?
Should we, but years should we, but memories?
It was an afternoon when she walked out of our lives leaving me to savor our dinner cold and alone like a heartless collation
sadness angst and afternoon i savor our dinner collation turns cold
stutter and sorrows pastels like evening eyes are closed
She used to make love like quite another woman and the night air was always cool and fragrant during our foreplay
She could easily recall all those heady flowers
the breeze caressed us sprawled out wet and spent like money She was my recklessly groomed lovemaking She was like a woman in love tending flesh, tending memories
Allow me to teach you an old trick or two You take your woman in your arms like eggshells and you tell her what sex is all about
She may not be aroused then you are to fall back on your memories and do nothing else
It so happened that that evening was like your full lips in bloom I have written about your lips elsewhere and yet cannot recall them anymore or even the evening when those lips were so
there is now only your nothingness that likes to hang around with me and so we would walk cozily together in easy camaraderie into an evening that is so very mindless of all those holidays spent with you like prayers in rains and lovemaking
What about a woman without trappings?
What about walking along roads that are no more?
What about my women whom I do not meet anymore? You never happen to miss me anywhere around your lips
while licking the froth of quite empty eventides alone in winter woods
or crying and rising and falling like we were the waves once breaking against the endlessness of passions in the swell and flood of our desires perched like birds and lusty beaks you never miss me when in love or wistfully alone
She was spread like fresco against the rock as I saw her I like the way young women smell my cheeks brushing her tender breasts our lips were smothered and bleeding and we were taken in for moments eyes closed and serene like everlasting stones Let us go away from all our women tonight women are like wastelands let us caress the fields of joy where the haystacks groan and the memories of our lovemaking are rife with agony
January 2003
I seek the silences of your thighs, Calcutta, my expanse and my dwindling fury, as I spit on my grave and look back over my shoulders like my hunchbacked worries . . . I steal your lines and lose my job and kill our children and come sooner than your desire . . . The morning tram droops an early, hopeless return while the winter wraps around our windshield in and out the vanishing green . . . I walk back home in the company of mists and memories of battles and happen to wag my tail and my tongue when I run into my god . . .
Ocean! Ocean!!
You light up a cigarette as I'm swept ashore and walk holding hands with my envy toward the celestial gates of the Bay of Bengal . . . My tongue twitches in fury like the bitch of a winter all around as the sand and the salt and the tears of the ocean rise like litany in unison . . . You run into me somewhere near the waterfront where the beach lies cobble-stoned and panting in season . . . Your eyes move from green to grey to blue as the waves like mermaids heave their breasts in climax . . . Our eyes water as your cigarette smoke is blue against the blue ocean when my envy and I walk in silent camaraderie toward no tomorrows
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Prasenjit Maiti has been widely published in electronic journals in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
His work has been featured in various print and electronic zines, including: 2River View, A Hudson View, Blue Collar Review, Brittle Star, Brobdingnagian Times, Carillon, Circle, Concrete Wolf, Diner, Exile, Famous Reporter, Fire, Gay & Lesbian Review, Going Down Swinging, Green Queen, George Washington Review, Harlequin, Hermes, Homestead Review, and Janus Head
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Issue 3
Mikal Trimm
Where The Universe Ends
The stars die They scream at the speed of light The children of the father Big Bang, but they call him Daddy And the galaxies cry, mothers all, while The black-hole sheep are shepherded blindly Into the welcoming pen of the Event Horizon But the universe stays silent.
Zzzz. . .
Lethargy closes all the windows in my head, pulling my eyelids down like shutters; then it fills my mind with smoke so that my thoughts can't find their way out.
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Mikal Trimm writes stories and poems and songs. The stories and poems may be found in several publications both on- and offline, including 'Infinity Plus', 'Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine', 'NFG' and 'SAY...'. His songs must be heard in person. He currently lives outside Austin, Texas, due to circumstances beyond his control. ______________________________
Issue 2
Mark S. Kuhar
byzantine chantmaker of the towering ages
suspended over midamerica in vast cloudcover airstorms above long furrows of dirt sprinkled with the cream of ages it occurs to me that what i touch is mere frozen vibration, the lost byproduct of a dream congealed
& i am a dreamer & this is the dreaming & that is a dream & dreaming can't manifest without the dreamer without this dream
a harrowing thunder of hours the hot things that become me, the visions that will transpire, an ogre of restlessness crowns a dire anxiety,
a breathing that comes in great heaving huffs this ocean of breath, the possession of apt breath the acres of breathing possible crosscurrents jacked up like a cracked axle, greased breath, inflation breath, explode breath
across snowjangled forest floors a three-legged dog ambles the snap of frozen twigs the thick rustle of fallen leaves crusted with ice the territory of the lost bird this map of conciousness this yellow fog of time
my thoughts predate me my memories fall into place my paths grow arms that point multiple directions like a thousand-armed shiva
in winter the grass is green beneath white cotton cloth snow remnants that arise through the surface in a fertile growth over these things i pass like a byzantine chantmaker of the towering ages, walking streets where the walking empowers the streets, the triangle halo of my ancient tonal connection the oasis of my orbit around you
& you walking upon the water where the walking empowers the water, your message is a swarm of love, your tactics a gift of the somersault cosmos
three trees sprouting from the earth like pitchfork tines, either turn the hay in harvest fields, or plunge it in deep
from where you're standing look out into rays of radioactivity through transcendental oceans, crevices, tall mood arrowheads righteous reactions, revelations, the unison of inspired revolutions,
this turning that turns for me & me only the enfant terrible of my true regard
time like a mongrel
time like a mongrel barking its ugly yap through a chain- link fence, razor teeth sword-edge fierce, pitbull with the carcass of lost hours
i live in this containment this brick-walled fort of mornings in automobiles, computers that radiate a sucking energy, the voices that inquire about things that have no literal meaning
a melange of idiot wanderings the ghosts of pirate souls intent on death & destruction in the name of a pile of gold
thatbarkthatbarkthatbarkthatbark
i recall a joshua tree i met in the california desert, sun dried, a thousand years old connected to the earth & the sky by roots, the welcome of ultraviolet, he whispered, the nights i open a yellow dreaming, i become you in spindles & creature branches
i saw him alone on the side of the bridge, a rock in his hand, his solitary sillouette knifecut artpiece, intentions not clear or an expression of vagueness or a story of disconnectedness not fit to be told to the sky
but it's the barking i hear, the echo of the last bark, the anticipation of the next bark, a reason for the progression of barks that meld together into one long insidious miserable bark
a bark that means hunger unfed bouncing off the face of the moon, werewolf clear, incomprehensible, as long as these footprint trails
baby saint saxophone
my baby a saxophone. the ramma-jamma button push jazz ax toodle-loo, all gleamy in candlelight & dim barroom matchflame like a cat cathedral she sit on the stage all holy-rolled, cold kick her hair back, she looka looka at me with that heroin white edge hover, fleeting glimpse that buckles back to the inside, the noise go ruckus all around in a flick fever like the voice of prophets my baby saint saxophone she wait at my table, she wait for the breath of christ, create the word the word that is this message to the world
words like a thick sap drained from a maple tree honeycomb thick, sliced like pork chops, broken open in chunks, a pile of concrete and rebar gnashing teeth.
when i yell into the bowels of a canyon the echo that returns comes back with bark on its old fat trunk, the rattlesnake whippet of fang inflections, no longer my voice, the creation of terrestrial environment
there is a constant mosh pit of words that play in the background of my heroic thoughts, a backdrop of syllables that don't congeal, fluctuate in a maraca rhythm shimmy that sprinkles on my tongue like salt & pepper
one day i sat & stared at a billboard for hours, the words made no literal sense to me, the image did not match up with the words, the torn corner of the sticky paper a harbinger of things to come
oh these neanderthal implements we use to make hay, to amp the pulse of our ticking hours, why are we so ill- equipped to make the jump from thoughts to words
this flagon of twisted mist that i spill, vapors for me & you
fugue in limited twilight
i have no recollection of the sun as it falls, of the moon as it rises, of that purgatory of time passage between the death of the day & the birth of the night
i am the pan of yr particulars a hercules in vibrating particles, the cosmic zeus of yr mountain dramas, apollo at ground zero with a red guitar
when you approach this city it is the bridges that greet you, the transition between high blocks of land mass, over rivers that run in circles like the canals of atlantis
you must see that this is our cranial mythology, the ghost of our peace & rememberance.
i am here to remind you of yr immortality. this is a job you have forsaken, but do not fear the tempest of yr fine fettle, the wasted & rocky docks of yr incredulous waiting are prepared for the cargo of our rapture
when i approach from the sea i can detect you up on the widow's walk, the place of yr long misery & lone wonders, i am here to pull down the walls that surround you, to open yr mind to the flaming & opulent beauty of yr forgotten inspirations
this is the kind of thing that carries me along against my wishes, the fear of water & brambles, of comets like baseballs & foghorns that wail on the heaving crutch of the night
take this, here, it's from me, i am trying to strip myself of everything but the essentials: words that have crusted jewels of meaning, the things unsaid, the knowledge you possess telepathic & pure
vestiges of the pomegranate moon
i can be your nemesis in potent moments, no escape from my frigidheat, the cloak of atmospheric longing, oh cover the shoulders of yr predicament my little jewel, when you come to seek the floating stone, the last vestiges of a pomegranate moon, a poem of granite written in the lexicon of our merging, yr heart beats like a war drum, you circle like a portugese man-o-war, i'll straddle yr contradictions & translate yr meanderings a language we speak, red seeds that fall out one at a time (ripe beyond imagine)
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mark s kuhar is an ohio-based writer & poet. his fiction & poetry have appeared in whiskey island, centerlight, the american srbobran, ohio on-line, big bridge, sidereality and the city, as well as in the anthologies an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind: poets on 9/11 (regent press) and the long march of cleveland (green panda press).
he has read his work on national public radio & does spoken word performance in his hometown of cleveland. his nonfiction has appeared in a wide variety of local & national business, consumer & on-line publications.
he is also the editor of deep cleveland junkmail oracle, a literary e-zine dedicated to the spirit of legendary cleveland outlaw poet & underground publisher d.a levy. ___________________________
Issue 1
Vaselina Glamatron
Bongwater Venus
I have been a Bongwater Venus. I have used my Welfare Cheque to scrape weed I hadn't paid for yet into a rolling paper I had to borrow. So I know the meaning of Down and Out. I have been a Turntable Isis. I have danced where I knew the DJ could see me and I have excercised my abs before doing so. I have glittered, I have boa-ed, and I have platform shoed. So I know how to Party. I have been a Lavalamp Madonna. I have stayed up all night philosophizing with friends about how we were all gonna make it big one day. And I know the value of a Plan, whether it comes together or not. I have been a Drinkin' Desdemona. I've had Sex on the Beach, Cocaines, Blow Jobs, Orgasms, Fuzzy Navels, and once I tried a Long Sloe Comfortable Screw. See, I know what it's like to Indulge. I have been a Tabledance Diana. I've accepted tips without using my hands I've dangled upsidedown from the brass pole. and I've sold my likeness but not my soul. Because I know the Value of a Dollar. I have been a Crackpipe Astarte I have sucked that glass dick and sucked it hard. I've gone 3 nights without sleep, thrown up in alleys and done things I'm sure I don't recall. So I know what it is to Hit Rock Bottom. I have been an Ashtray Demeter. My voice has been described as "bourbon and cigarettes" but it's 5 years now since I finally butted out. I'll never go back. And now I know the meaning of Willpower. I have been a Nurse Nightingale. I have sat at the bed of a dying friend and held a straw to his lips for water. I have felt the audible exchange of energy between our hands as the Life-Force slowly drained from his body. So I know what it's like to Lose a Friend. I have been a Midwife Medusa. I have been my own Doulah and coached myself alone through the labor pains of delivering the child that died in my womb. I have filled more bowls with blood and blackness than I will ever know. But I've been Brushed by Motherhood and the Spirit of my perfect little flowers will be with me always. I have been a Witch Heloise. I have sat in a circle of women and chanted the names of the Goddess by the light of the Full Moon. I have been healed by Her Prescence. So I know the meaning of Religion AND Oppression. I have been a Virginal Nimue. I have quivered at the touch of a boy and cried my first convulsing tears deep into his neck. I've cried when he said he would call, but didn't. The smell of cotton T-Shirts and muscle cars still takes me there. So I've had to learn the meaning of Restraint. I have been a Bellydancing Bathsheba. I have shaken gold coins on my thighs and my ribs and twirled with my veil like an invisible partner. I have undulated for my own pleasure. Because I know how to Rejoice. I have been an experimental girl. I have been all these things, all these people, all these women. I have flown jet-settingly all over the world, just to share drinks with stranger than the likes of you. Why? Why do I run an hour on the treadmill, when there's no-one to squueze MY rock hard ass? And why do I cruch endlessly, when there's no-one to cum on MY washboard stomach? All for one simple reason: to know what I was capable of. to know if anything really is possible. to know what it means to Live. And I, friends and strangers, tired as I may be, am still amazingly alive. Though bloodied in battle, I smile. Because I've raved and I've vamped and I'm sometimes still rocking. And she who limps is still fucking walking.
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Vaselina Glamatron is a poet drawn to paradox and glitches in life which, with an unwatchful eye, seemingly dont make any sense (she is an interpreter). She digs punk rock and poetry, acid jazz and stained glass, and she enjoys a nice trout, when she can get it.
