some poems written while working in a dining hall..

i like a job where i don/t have to
speak too often and can stare into
faces like the faces stare into a
television set.
I see reality TV in its most naked
sense and it/s cold like dead lips
and steel in the shade.
forced smiles that could snap in
half like a frozen leaf...
conversation as dry as a passionless
pussy....
eyes that haven/t seen the world
as poets see the world,
yet they speak of experience and
tales of drunken escapades with
the fire and life of Homer telling
the tales of Ulysses.
sometimes I use the asses as mirrors
and see the marrow within my bones..
a dichotomy of arrogance and self-
loathing.
-------------------------
I can/t stop thinking about death
and it/s a shame because you can
think about death during life but
not life during death...
(or so i/ve been told by the scientists)
death seems so final like falling
asleep on the train (awakened by short
chicanos with jail-house tattoos sweeping
the museum of grime under seats.)
but sometimes i stop, and think
and realize who could have imagined
this world while they were breathing
through gills in the womb, so how
can we imagine what awaits us when our
lips turn blue and our kidneys get donated?
maybe birth was a day dream and this
dying, coughing planet is the true womb;
while we wait like seeds beneath the earth
to get a taste of reality.
-------------------------
I never thought I could be a poet
until I picked up a Bukowski book
and than a pen right afterwards..
perhaps the pre-poet world was simpler,
art can chew you from the inside out
like a cancer.
inspiration begs to be released like
sperm.
and i can/t seem to stare at the sun
without calling it the kidney stone
of the sky and i can/t look at a
naked page without wanting to stain
it with words; stain it like a diaper
dirty with carefully placed shit.
i see right through people; their
individuality and worth is as
insignificant as second grade fantasies
and as invisible as truth in suburbia.
you sell your soul for personal enlightenment
and loose the innocence of hope.
you do, however, find a whole lot of beauty
in awkard exchanges of eyes between
soon to be lovers and the sunsets
drunken tango with the promiscuous
horizon.
---------------------------------
fear those who kiss in the shadows
of shadows with loves in the day.
fear the spiders you swallow at night
while covers brush your chin like a beard.
fear those who lie, but even more the
few who speak the truth.
fear the potential tomorrow can bring
(althought it probably won't be that
much different from today)
fear the repetition...
fear the sunlight for ignorance
truly is bliss and the black coffee
cloak of the evening hours help
you forget, like a luke warm
shot of Jack Daniels or a good massage,
the horror that is the ordinary.
fear time for it is the antithesis
of chaos
and chaos
is as free as a negro crow
perched slightly above the
hangover that is the 21st century.
free as a crumbled Hustler page
in the whispering breeze of spring.
-------------------------
my afternoon was lost like virginity
but for some reason I didn/t really
mind.
the solitude was a much needed
acquitance with myself.
everybody else sat in large groups,
like locusts descending, too ashamed
to stitch together their thoughts
and knit a genuine idea.
instead they exchanged stale
conversation like secret santas
and put on smiles like mascara, hid
boners under the table.
i try to stare out the window as
often as possible for i fear an
awkard tango between our eyes could
result in a contact high of ignorance.
i sure can be an outcast, but at least
its a decision on my part..
and when hope dissipates like morning
dew on green lawns trimmed to a stubble,
i write a poem such as this..
a poem about nothing and a poem about
everything.

submitted by: Ryan Uellendahl (Blog adminstrator)

Harvey Keitel Movie

the landscape for her flesh
asphalt broken sidewalk
sagging pock-marked face
--------------------------

The Origami Promise

Unfold, unfold, re-fold, straighten.
Leda and the Swan—amazing.

--------------------------
Sweet Absurd

wasp nest
tail pipe
third wife

washing off with gasoline
when the wheelbarrow
ignited

I made a coat from a tarp,
wrapped my head in a sandwich bag,
Momma swore off smoking

we found a record player
got it to work
patty-cake, patty-cake

in the witch’s oven
I needed a new skin
home from the doctor

a temple of mud
the neighbors visited
our ruin

in forbidding earth
I said, “I’m sorry”—
the end
---------------------
Wizard

the light in the forest
a quick look back

my beard, the newspaper
and yesterday, I was clean

sat by the fountain
young girls splashing

purses tight as an itch
fish a coin

a wizard tends to
light in the forest

Submitted by: Jeff Crouch

Vagabond's Vision

Vagabond's Vision #50



Near where miracles stand straight up,
uplifting loudly in their lyrical
calligraphy, colors dance
in congregated tribunal distribution,
tribute non-deceived
nor mirage,
yes collage
mainly visual attributes
articulating
stepping
stones
landing across streams
where cross-eyed fish walk
undefined
by revolutionary devotion
to subconscious evolution.


Vagabond's Vision #51



A specified error
in climatic change
under
water damages stilled by settled sun's
reaching hands
which hold with high tech,
highest pitch to
humanly possible
heard. The shortest sitting down
squatting
ride brazen seahorses'
leaping fungi,
with plenty left in a repertoire
regarding fancy letters
leftover atop spinning sand grains,
standing salt,
bloated, sumo wrestling orange fish.
A never before envisioned
forecasts as this specifically
dominating
the underworld
aquatic aspects in an allegorical
progression of captivating
change.


Vagabond's Vision #52



The gold of an unzipped arrival,
unblemished syntax
need not translate into forbidden,
foreseeable now,
such a psychic of last night's
lightning, whose coughing
broadcasting foretold a false
instant,
remained within a closet collapsing
underneath cedar dust and particles
of particular danger. Loudness
landed thundering between the gaunt-
let's
guilt and bloody blade,
a cry for more, a cry because
disguise was unveiled after all echoes
had arrived.

Submitted by: Felino Soriano

A sincere apology

I’m sorry for saying all that shit to you,
I didn’t mean it, I was just trying
To let you know that you really
Fucked up this time, and that it really
Was your fault that the car door ripped
Right off the old Celica, but no, I
Shouldn’t have yelled at you like that,
I am so stupid, I swear, but my
Family has a history of manic-depressive
Temperaments like myself (and I was abused
As a child, too, you know) and I
Hope you’ll forgive me for my very existence,
Because God knows you have a problem
With people who have real problems, like myself—but
It’s okay, you’re sheltered,
So I forgive you.

Submitted by: J. D. Roa

Amsterdam, Ohio

She walks down the sidewalks,

they haunt empty.
Rain bounces off gray-crumble
of old pavement
making rainbow-spins with
the black-spill of old cars

in her splash puddles

Sunshine rains,
in her green-hill horizon
she pictures forgot-about back roads
winding ways through trees
older than the almost ghost town
they shelter.

Ohio valley twilight, fog-swirl
dense-thick as clouds
drapes lazy over everything,
indiscriminating symmetry
of gray-blue haze
cleaner-fresher than
familiar steel-mill smog.

She whistles at the W,
his concrete, weathered white-wash
standing stoic by the tracks.
They're both remembering a train
that never comes.

Submitted by: Cindy Kelly

illionois trains

Trains, love them, hate them

the way they play sound; songs they sing.

Transformers switch, vibrate the power

into poetry, shake notes out of the sky.

Short stretch, street to street, long stretches,

Chicago, Elgin, Rockford, though prairie towns of Illinois-

running the same rails over, attached to many places.

Shrill sound of horns dig deep in bowel of urban earth

like backhoes; developers changing passing landscapes

with faint, greed filled faces.

As the trains pass to history, train sounds

fall silent, a minor key.

Submitted by: Michael Lee Johnson

In December

In December Miami sun

stands out on the southern

tip of Florida like a full-

blossomed orange,

wind torn sunshine eats away

at those Florida skies.

Spanish accents echo through

Caribbean Boulevard loud

like an old town crier

misplaced in a metro suburb.

Off the east coast 90 miles,

westward winds carry inward

the foreign sounds lifting off

Castro’s larynx,

and the faint smell of an

old musty Cuban cigar

touches the sand and the shoreline.

Submitted by: Michael Lee Johnson