NUMB

Soul searching.
What you know?
what , how you feel…?
It’s so numbing.
Stone cold.
A faint distraction in the wrists, brain and hands.
A new direction, ready but not sleek.
Never too clear, never too speak.
A leap through.
A new day.
I sit here and contemplate reality.
What is really going on? Why?
For how long?
What will become?
Will the truth shine thru?
Will it be real or just another story tale of who knew?
Numb, I cannot speak. Numb I wish too peak.

A somber joyness moment.
Can it be true?
How will it be?
Who will turn?
Who will see?

I' ve been out of touch but rizing and learning a new way of life.
A new way of being.
Take it too tha heart.
People who care so much about me.
Who are honest and give me such pleasure.
Always educating, always a fun way too play while sitting there and learning , loving each and every day.
Take each moment for tha moment because as we all know nothing no matter how geling of a feeling, no matter how high one can be. The dark days are for us too see, feel and learn from.
Such hope.
such laughter with the ones you love.
You think now and back of hopefully the good times too come.
I clinch my teeth, my body feels weak.
Who really cares? Whose too blame?
Who to look too for hope and guidance so one does not fall and scrap her knees?
Bleeding so badly it never heals…

In tha art of her beauty/
In the description of her eyez/
I look too you and find no surprise/
And I, seek for you nott/

“One let down after another. Get used too it.
When it’s up, it’s up. When it’s low, it’s low.”

How low will you go? What is low? How low? High? How high, really?

Have you seen this and that? And everything in-between?
Look too me. You have never seen.
Tha distance in which I am too to become.
A thought of mishaps, a forgotten butterfly. Flying. Flying. Flying. And flying.

by Katie Chonacas

Chords

I sleep with chords all around me
so if I get caught up in one I can say I died in my sleep by the most beautiful chord that had ever stuck me.
That it was so beautiful it took my breathe away,
like only a few things can.

Let's call a spade a spade and use it to dig our own graves.
I've been living six feet under the stars for way too long.

We're all stars
Burning too bright to ever see each other.
Dangling from chords like get-away-planes
Crash landing into a new ending

So come and tie us together
Burning stars Hung forever.

We're all cold in this dead space.
I've got body heat can we use it?

So do you
We just need someone to tell us we're warm.

So come and tie us together
Burning stars Hung forever.

I've seen houses burnt down and you said you'd rather go out with a bang.
But all we have is time
You're burning alive

Ya and it's when you stopped living your life by a timeline that you stopped hanging by a thread

Were all spread to thin born with just enough skin to cover up what matters

I'm still tossing in my sleep but haven't hit the right chord yet.

I still find myself catching my breath
And taking heart burn pills
To keep from feeling the friction burns of trying to get close to you said we'd never go down in flames

I know you said to never listen
I know you said to never trust someone who had skin like butterflies
I know.
Never look someone in the eye whose eyes look just like the star you picked was yours as a kid, before people started saying there was a registry and that there were limits on love and heaven had gates.

So come and tie us together
Burning stars hung forever.

So come and tie me together
A burning star hung forever.

by David Ball

BALLS

Balls! Balls! Balls!
I love the sound of balls:
Balls! Balls! Balls!
jouncy, flouncy, bouncy balls.
balls to the walls
balls in the stalls
always, always, always
balls in pool halls.
Monkeyballs, moth balls
and sometimes three-toed sloth balls,
snowballs, glo-balls and Larry, Curly and Moe’s balls.
beach balls, baseballs, basketballs,
bocce balls, soccer balls, but not hockey balls,
cue balls, blue balls, screw balls,
new balls, two balls, sexy Rexy’s tattooed balls,
Harry’s balls, Jerry’s balls, never ever Mary’s balls,
pumpkin balls, brass balls, cannon balls,
golf balls, volleyballs, mud balls,
tennis balls, ping-pong balls, Wiffle balls,
hard balls, softballs, fastballs,
one, two, three, four balls and gopher balls,
fire balls, hairballs, space balls, crystal balls,
super balls, cheese balls and Nerf balls;
no such thing as surf-and-turf balls.
Oh, don’t leave out Cinderella’s ball.
Balls to the left;
balls to the right;
if you have enough balls,
you will never run from a fight.
Balls! Balls! Ball!
I love the sound of balls.
Balls. Balls. Balls.

by Bob Petras

Plushophilia

I saw about thirty of them
in a parking lot by the edge
of the woods
all dressed up
in animal costumes –
roosters, rabbits,
horses, bulls.
From what I’ve been told,
they enter the wilderness
for the night
and fuck each other.

It’s a dog’s day to skin a rabbit,
pull its pelt right off,
to be a frog tongue-whacking
a fly from the center
of a rose’s sweet spot,
a bat caught in too much light,
a pony taking the prize,
a little piggy going to market.

The cat can’t help
but slosh the milk
on his whiskers;
the oyster can’t help
but spit into its wound.
There’s something about
turning a bug upside
down until those legs reach
for a wanting sky,
something about
spraying a porcupine
in the face.

It’s a stupid question to ask,
but why not –
How much wood could
a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
After all, it can’t
toss a boomerang
right into the roo’s pouch,
it can’t pitch wood
quite like a beaver.


The mouse ate the cheese.
The mouse is in the cat.
The dog swallowed the cat.
The dog is in the horse.
The horse is in the cow.

Somebody must have
swallowed the fly.

by Kurt Shinian

Glue Farm Autopsy

I got both your eyes
Sitting on a plate
They freak me out
They move
I can feel, then turn
I roll over in bed at night thinking, "What kind of shit is this?!"
But it's still kind of drinking!
I notice the blood painting, it looks so much like you
I see both your eyes following behind me as I'm coming
I can't ever regret how I met you
We're growing the new kind of body here for the new kind of society
They shrink in the daylight
I've always got blood on my hands
In my hair
On my clothes
In my eyes My eyes!?! Oh fuck!!! I forget them for a minute!
There I remembered how to disfigure the lone alive creature
Burn off the face with a...
Blowtorch the features
Can you stop staring? I know it's not easy but please try
Today's blood special may be yours now as your dying
I'm still alone with those two fucking eyes!

by Lance Tarr

Lost in Love's Translation

So maybe I'm not what you believed
But I'm running out of reasons to live
Ran out of suggestions to breath
Relinquish the blame, there’s no such reprieve
I must have misunderstood your intentions
And the definition of our relation
I suppose the reprisal is vital to your mission
To keep hidden the point that I've been missing
The fear that's set in your mind
Suppressed by the wine and these hedonistic retreats of mine
It must just be me but I believed that apathy
Was reserved for those that deserved to be unhappy
Not the foul unlucky perturbed
Fortune is bestowed on the weak minded cold hearted kind that prey on those that lie dying supine
I've been counting down to my last dying breaths
Hoping the reprise will cease in death
And when my chest feels heavy and depressed
I know it's the willingness to succumb to rest
I saw malicious lies embedded within your eyes
Those obtrusive words you were unwilling to confine
You could no longer subside within your divine right
To hold my heart on a platter
And serve it up cold with a side of revenge
Since then it all seems to suspend in a vengeful crescendo
The fairytale lifestyle is made privilege to those that are so willing to slay and lay pillage on helpless third nation village
Love it seems is a myth lost in translations between fact and fiction

by Rufus Reed

THE BARMAIDS MUSE

I watch them
As they order
Their next drink...
How the melancholy
Courses over the ice,
As they stir their mixture
Of loneliness and gull.

I watch them
As they drag on
Their next cigarette...
How the matchstick lights
The tip of misery,
As their suicidal poison
Hovers around them
In rings of ashen smoke.

I watch them
As they hesitantly
Get up to leave,
Dressing up once again
Beneath counterfeit smiles,
Caught in their constant state
Of despondency.
Hiding out,
Stalling, not wanting,
Not willing,
To make their way back
Through the crowds,
Through their lives,
Through their loves.
With souls closed tight
And eyes open wide,
They stumble out
Into the parking lot
Seeing and feeling
Absolutely
Nothing.

by Amye Nicole Bird

TUNNEL OF LIGHT

I hurt all day
I hurt all night
I vomit in my dreams
Tomorrow is a tunnel of light
Bearing down on my soul
From which there is no return
Turpentine cocktail
O’ thee for I yearn.

by Stanley “Hawk” Hawkins

Occupy

Walking apprehensive through a
concrete jungle
lost in translation lost in my youth,
I feel myself slipping away.
My thoughts lack luster; my words
lack truth.
Damn this socialist plot! go down
with the ship!
Figuratively speaking of course, for
there is no ship.
There is only a polyurethane taxi
waiting to drive,
through the bacterial and viral
streets of America.
Putrid garbage flows violently over
lid.
Stench of political atrocities. Smells like hormone induced poultry!
America I have two dollars, what will
that buy?
Fame, fortune, a Mcdouble with fries?
Deserted abyss of destruction, the
waters of deception
quench Corporate thirsts. Philosophically moving
we seek retribution through a barrel
of a gun. I don’t know why?
I don’t know what from?
Infested apples hang aloft in a tree.
Suicidal thoughts come from money and
greed.
Ginormous debt, generous ignoramus.
Dammit I say to the concepts of day.
As I past a drunkard old fool oddly
named Shamus.
Bullcrap and Folly I whisper to thee;
as I sit on my stoop and wave goodbye
to the trees.

by K.G. Black

Blowing McDaddy

You were lookin’
sooo fine
that first time
in vintage hawaiian

grabbed a seat
at the end of the bar
when someone whispered
to me
“yeah baby
he-is-hot.
i hear he’s gotta
righteous tattoo of johnny reefer
on his leg.”

“uh huh.”

“hey girl, I ain’t lyin’ to you
don’t you know who that is?
that’s McDaddy!”
“word on the street
has it
he spent time out west
with some Indians -
they changed his name to some coyote-dog
you believin’ that shit?”

and the more
he was talkin’
the more
i was lookin’,
and the more I was
lookin’
the more
i was thinkin’
man, I gotta get me some
‘i could use a McDaddy like that...’

by Katharine Hollister