Hedonistic Obscurantist

if i have a belief
it's in the make believe
and the practical magic
obscurantists preach
Hogwarts like seminaries
and plastic beads
thrown at worry
like Mardi Gras
Fat Tuesday
every day

i am on the verge of
piety
will redeem sanctity when
i turn in x number of envelopes
to my parish

indulgences are all mine
in my head
in my mind
especially when it rains
champagne
i mean Holy Water
rain
salty tears

well, it's wet and
it keeps coming
i thought you were only baptized
once
but maybe i was never

maybe it's that
veil of tears
real after all
and life after all is a process of dying
to ourselves
and in the end just a matter of where
we Fall

By Laurel k. Graham

Sunday Night

The wine never got drunk,
the girl who whispered in my ear
about hair pulls and purrs
never showed up,
The music never got turned up
and
that book never got opened
But
My loneliness decided to stay
to keep me company,
And this madness is here staring at me
from under my coffee table
as
these words continue to waltz lazily
Across my paper.

By Kristofer Koerber

To David

“How you gonna cross-stitch those faces
Into your dream-catchers, face catchers,
Tender cottonwood branch mandalas?”
Says the mighty derelict,
The immaculate scumbag,
The simple bum, me,
To the artist of the awful,
Artist of the ugly,
Who crafts eight-eyed beasts
And gnarled toads
And Frankensteinian dead-eyed worms
In his waking-mare,
That sleepy-frowned
David Gonzalez of Pittsburgh.

Crooked Apache shoulder shrug.

He will with slight-of-hand,
Slight of foot,
Cross-stitch the awful beatific
Of all mysteries onto tiny
Canvasses and finger-built feathers
From here all the way to Pittsburgh’s
Hot Metal Street.

By Tony Burfield

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 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

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

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.