Untitled

A man with a fierce black beard walks up to the drunk and pushes him

into the gutter.
"You're not drunk!" shouts the man with the fierce black beard.
"But my stomach hurts," whimpers the drunk.
"Well don't come bleeding on me!" shouts the man with the fierce black

beard.
"Have you any hot milk?" asks the drunk.
"Hot milk?" yells the man with fierce black beard. "What's wrong with

good
brandy? Or for that matter black rum?"
"I have decided to become sober." explains the drunk.
"Out of my way fool!" shouts the man with the fierce black beard.
"A drunk cannot decide to become sober, he must decide to become

drunk, or how else will we know where we stand?"

By Billy Childish

Con-versing with mineself whilst someother sits across the room

I need to talk to you
Can you stay
Awile wit me?

Listen:

my hart sings in disdain

My soul breathes in the sad songs
The drunken bums sing aloud
all night long on Bowery street
Just outside the Mission's
soup kitchen.Listen

I stand shoulder to shoulder with
All saints and madmen.

Denouncers of Fate
Thee Ungodly scum
Who breathe new life into this world.

I am my own hero,
My own future to look forward two.

And you, Florence,you should listen.
Youre always speaking in spanish
And I hate that about you but dont
Mind it so much cause I know
youre beautiful and trying so hard
to keep in touch with me my sweet

Truth is
I've distanced myself from you,
and though youre sitting just across the room
from me right now
As I write this
ragged shoddy shit pome
you may as well be siting somewhere
Haffway across the wurld.ah well,

Go on then
leave

It's the end of the discushion
And we should be lost by now.

By Pablo Pastor ( Yonkers, New York)

The Empty Box

I wanted him to come inside,
take his socks off
and stay a while.

My box had been empty for
quite some time,
the crimson striped ribbon
frayed
from jagged fingernails
clawing for fresh testosterone.

But he couldn't quite locate
the sliding door
to my personal space.

Bumping into invisible walls
I never got around to painting.

By Sandy Sue Benitez

Sunshine

If I could
I would lick sunshine
from your arms
feed the guinea pig your yellow
heart torn into tiny pieces
like the petals of a daisy

I can't smile the way you do
can't pretend that I smell
frangipani
while drinking a glass of sun
with artificial sweetener
swirls inside mixing my emotions

How can you walk in dry sandals
when the earth rotates its tears
I falter with every other step
forget how to tie my shoelaces
but you skip over the details
head straight to hopscotch
drawing hearts with sidewalk chalk

Your eyes reflect the sky blue
with tints of golden light
smiles that water glide on
belief, love, faith, hope, serenity
that stick to you
clinging as vines do

while I am covered in thorns
each cut bleeding me
one step closer to illumination

By Sandy Sue Benitez

Ruins Of A City

April
Thirteenth
Two-thousand and six,
What the old man said to me
Amid the
Black ruins of a city:


"This house is dying.
These stones will soon decay.
Ill weather will wash away the names
and dates of our living and dying.
Only our bones will remain.

Our memories will grow gray.
We'll grow old like cowards,
dragging our burdensome lives behind us. "

By Mr.Topo

The American Vital

I do things -
when no one's around.

I pick my nose.

I talk to myself -
and answer back.

I kiss my pillow -
to remind myself -
I still know how
to kiss.

I fantasize -
I'm on a game-show.

I fantasize -
about screwing
the American Idol contestants,
all of them.

I fantasize -
I'm on The View,
being interviewed
by Barbara Walters
herself
for doing something -
note-worthy.

I am jealous -
of the makers of "Head-On."

I illegally
download sad songs
so I can remain,
unhappy.

I think -
about getting high.
Sometimes, I do.

I put things -
inside me.

I pee -
in the sink.

I sign in
to the poetry message boards,
and I wonder -
just how long it's
going to take,
before people realize -
I'm a literary genius?

Every other poet
has millions
of comments
placed lovingly
on their poems.

Mine -
aren't even viewed.

I'm glad
I do all those other
fucked up things.

I get my immediate needs
met
regardless.

Who the hell
wants
constructive criticism
anyway?

Famous?
For doing fucked up
things
when I'm alone
and pissing off editors?

Hey, we all
gotta shine
somehow.

Don't we?

By Bryon D. Howell

Not Even The Candy-Man Can

It's come
to that point
where your depression
now supersedes everything
including us.

We don't talk
sometimes
for days.

When we do,
you sound more
and more
like a saturated mop,
being dragged
from one end
of a cold, flooded room
to the other.

Those are the very words
you used
to describe how
you've been feeling.

I only added the word,
cold.

I tried to make
you smile.

There once was a time
our mindless
chatter
and my dry wit
used to get
a real rise out of you.

I tried to help you
turn things
around
and I guess in a way,
I did.

We both said goodbye
and hung up
the phone.

You
rolled over.

By Bryon D. Howell

The Quick In The Red

We had had
a volatile argument,
full of gunpowder
both of us
cat fishing
for one quick
match
of words, to strike.

Luckily for the two of us
our better judgments
moistened that wick.

You say I'm sensitive -
trigger happy.

I'm getting too old for this.

Some cowboys,
much younger and more fortunate
than I
can drink their whiskey
straight up
while sitting on
all kinds
of broken barroom glass.

I can barely draw,
my hand shake more
than the town drunk's,
and my teeth
are just as sensitive
as I am.

I look at them in
the mirror
as if I'm inspecting the inside
of a covered wagon
and discovering all kinds
of hidden secrets -
like you.

And like you,
I can just about
see
right through them.

You'd made
a pot-full of homemade
chicken soup.
Good choice.
Good for the soul -
hot as hell.

Needless to say,
my payback was a bitch.

I took one swift
spoonful and my mouth
exploded.

It would be awhile before
I uttered
another word -
kind or otherwise.

Now all I can do
is keep my mouth
shut
and wait for the rest
of the million some-odd feathers
to settle -
like fighting dust.

And although you
may have struck
fool's gold,
I'm taking out
a $1,000,000 bounty
on your head for just
one southern accent of
truth -

in your East Coast lies.

By Bryon D. Howell
...a poet currently residing in New Haven, Connecticut.
He has been writing poetry for a great number of years. Recently, his poetry
has appeared in poeticdiversity, Red River Review, The Quirk, The Cerebral
Catalyst, and The Lost Beat. Bryon is also the Editor-in-Chief of two online
poetry 'zines: The Persistent Mirage and Bringing Sonnets Back.

No Time For Sleep

Through roses and anemones
my soul is wandering free.
No time for sleep
No time for love
The night grows blue
And the sad moons weep
Far away in the distance.

By Florent Thibault

Vagabond

Your absence keeps
Me company.
Immigrating,
Like a ghost
Clear and simple.
Sojourner
Widowed,
Lost.
On those roads
Leading towards
Your afternoons
Of solitudes.

By Florent Thibault

Pop Icons

If a company sold a pop singer’s poop,
people would buy it.
And if they told you it was good for you,
people would eat it too.

By Michelle Rydberg

Double Entendre

It’s the year of the cock and I woke up
early to sit next to the pussy willow drinking a
cocktail
under the warm afternoon sun
stroking my pussycat as she lays their tired
and lazy like a
cockatoo

By Michelle Rydberg

The Director

She is the director of her life

She takes the horn and blows it in the man’s ear

“I’m not your wife”

Grab me a beer

she commands. And it is done.

Gently stroking her employer on the cheek and whispering,
“I will make this company grand and glorious,
let me work for you and you shall see.”

Speeding away on a hotfoot to the tryst
vociferations bellows from her desperate friend
But it’s too late…she’s made her wend

To Paris and back!
She prowls around town with a cigarette sniffing out her prey,
spotting a sexy man, with champagne in his hand
She is waking up in Cannes and parting in Nice,
And back to Paris the next week.
It’s her plan.
To keep up with her is
unfeasible
She eats her years
And spits them out in your face

By Michelle Rydberg

Whatever things make me think of you

It wasn't the persistent tick of the clock
On the nightstand next to me
That made me think of death. It wasn't
The spider quietly spinning her
Delicate web in the corner of the ceiling,
Nor the dying glow of a cigarette
about to meet its end as it hangs
Between life and death
Between my finger tips.
It was an unfinished poem I found today,
Hidden away among old notes.
lines to a girl living in some small unknown
town in France.
A note that read like love;
a love poem
written in terrible French.

By Benjamin Soahlis

An Apology

I did not love you
because you are not the only one.
That street, on which we met,
Became a lover's highway,
That slowed with all its signs,
the bloody mess of human love.
Our union ,
A scar after a terrible wreck,
My lies,
the drunken driver
who dies in regret.
And you,
the unlucky passerby,
Busted bones, broken neck.

By Benjamin Soahlis

Waking Up at the Bustop

Haunting Love. Huntress of Dark Desires.
There
In the gathering twilight. Moonlight
Breathing blue.
The end comes suddenly. Dead among blossoming
Flowers.
Post Mordumb madness
lives to be still-born. A mother's grief.
Pain of creations desired desire to be creative.
Modern Matrimony. Terribly wounded, shadowy
Singing sisters pray.
Charming melody of seaside girls
Decked in silky blood red
Dresses weeping wailing weary
Maid-of-honors.Seas. Smiles
Of mourning women.
Good Idea he had of it Mr Joyce
Says. Smart idea, certainly so,
" Marry in May and repent in December"
Long and short of it.
And one night
They'll bring you the leg
Of a duck." and so
Life limps on...

.Befitting storm clouds gather
Above his head.
Pleasing as anything to sea
Cottony clouds of vengeance.
"When did ye return?" Emily asked
Indifferently thinking
"... Dick is sin..."
Emily in fading blue denim jeans,
In the arms of her lover, broad
Armed Mr.Collins
There in the land of the dead
Just 'round th'way, and he
" I've returned just last week" Grey
Hound bus from Reading
To Penn Station...asleeping...
Were you waiting long?"
Thinks
" The splendor of traveling cheap!"
To himself thinking
"Sweet taste of her ovaries"
Wearing moonblue shoes new
In a striped suit splintering at the seams

Forsaken In silence,
Silent in cruelty.

Mr.Topo

ms.Corinne

<>

I loved your lips,
ripe mangos
bending
the heavy
bough
the
orange
glow
of her sun
burning
early
autumn
at dawn.

ms.corinne
and her men

in white shirts
dressed
in black
shoes for the feet
to keep moving.
Dancing the dances
in lobbies and halls

ms.corinne

at the front doors
parting

ways hesitant to a kiss
or a late cafe au latte.Spring

pressing on like lightning bonbon
so long.

By Steven Wakowski

Strolling through some thoughts

today I walked across
a little old bridge which hung
above a modest lake diseased in toxins.
is summer, are a few men fishing,
some young some old, some swans, two,
floating by the shore peopled by lazy
folks laying in the sun near willow trees.
I've forgotten to bring my matches.
I ponder this cigarette,
I look to the fisherman and ask for a light

A cracked vase, ashes on a window-sill.
Detrimental pictures of members of your family
you severely detest nailed to the blue walls.
nagging hunger urging you
and you prepare your early morning
meal half-heartedly. Comforting monotony
of this particular ritual.all men must eat,
and women too. Chipped and peeling tiles.
furniture rearranged. sunlight
through the window. wind in the curtains.
I've hung up my laundry and I've cleaned
the black sheets. And the clouds turn
into myself, I smoke a cigarette
and smell the cold winter fragrance.
out on the porch, my boots on ,
and the smoke clings to my coat,
smoke and mist thinking
about everything I don't own.
That guitar I've yet to play
lies in a corner of my room.
a spider resides inside
it's wooden belly I suspect.
old dusty webs where the music would be.

By Billy Herzog

Sun And The Moon And The Wars

Our fathers drank together,
Our brothers cursed and fought.
Our mothers danced together
A sleepy time in waltz.
Their laughter broke the moon in two.
Their anger burnt the sun.
and all is good,all is good,
Yes, all of that is good my brother.

By Billy Herzog

Anna Minstral

"I wish I knew where I belonged.
Sam says he knows but ain't saying much.
I'm tired of singing the same old songs.
Life's like weed and we need a dutch."
“And Ann, she's tired of taking the same old walks,
Talking the same old talk,
And dancing the same old waltz...

She's pretty
A pretty girl living an ugly life.
Stripping to pay the rent
On an old, cramped apartment
In some small town in
Upstate New York. It's a real nice town.

By Antonio Merzal

Movie House

In old , abandoned movie houses,
Where the lovers suddenly stiffen
and kiss one another with the pale lips
of ghosts - the colour of a dying people.
That is where I'd like to be found,
amid sunken ships
beneath ill tempered harbours.
vicious bays grown tired and fatigued, quite used
to the bitter wave's laments
and the ancient seas memories.
That is where I'd like to be...
Amid the drowned fish,
Dancing without feet, dripping wet
tasting of the salt's excess and algae dreams.

By Pedro Marrero, Jr.