July 2009 Issue
*** poetry / art / screenplays / radio plays / video ***
***Be sure to check out our Contributors' Bios!
"The Ba llpoint Pen That David Lync h Touched" ................................................ Graham Fulton
"Melding Maiden" ....................................................................................................... Caroline Depalma
"Nostalgia" .................................................................................................................. Charles Brooks III
"The Gods Watched in Astonishment as the Hero Battled On" .................................. Ben Freeman
"Looking to November" ................................................................................................Keisha Poiro
"Someone Said Joe Strummer is Dead" ..................................................................... Graham Fulton
"On Painting Blue Fusion" ........................................................................................... Charles Brooks III
"There Might Be A Mother Hidden Inside Green Skin" ................................................ Caroline Depalma
"The Man Who Liked to Talk in the Pub (in Glasglow dialect) ..................................... Graham Fulton
"Intravenous Feeding of Sound" .................................................................................. Eugene Duvidzon
"Marilyn Monroe's Grave in Los Angeles" ....................................................................Graham Fulton
"Mere" .......................................................................................................................... Ben Nardolilli
"PLAYdate" (move trailer) ............................................................................................ Christian Elder
"Tattoo the Moon" ........................................................................................................ Charles Brooks II
"Christmas Eve" ........................................................................................................... Keisha Poiro
"Undeceived" ............................................................................................................... David Younger
"Buddha Gone Bad" ..................................................................................................... Anne Kaplan
"The Sisters Grimm" (play excerpt) ..............................................................................Damyn Smith-Draeko
"Life Imitating Art" ........................................................................................................ Graham Fulton
"Life with Marshall" (screenplay excerpt) ..................................................................... James Foster, Jr.
"First Fruits" (poetry) ..................................................................................................... Keisha Poiro
Something for the Wickend (short film) ......................................................................... Howard Cohen
"Number Games" (poetry) ............................................................................................. Ben Nardolilli
"Sneaker Cool" and "Smiling for Life" (photography) .................................................... Shaun Films
"Early Morning Sutras" (poetry) ..................................................................................... Scott Dito
"On Street Corners At Four Am" (poetry) ....................................................................... Caroline Depalma
"Five Minutes 'till Closing" (poetry) ................................................................................. Dave Younger
"the tree" (poetry) ........................................................................................................... Palvinder Jagait
"Panther Wheels Abstract" (art) ..................................................................................... Ben Freeman
"Dangerous" (poetry) ..................................................................................................... Dave Younger
"Hold on Tight" (poetry) ...................................................................................................Michael Weems
"stage run" (poetry) ......................................................................................................... Edward Bear
"Blackberry Black Out" (poetry) ...................................................................................... Alanna Higgins
"fickle dreams" (poetry) .................................................................................................. John Kochendorfer
"Turning into a Monster, He Holds on to His Last Innocence" (art) ................................ Eugene Duvidzon
"RAVENOUS" (screenplay) ............................................................................................ Rob Watson
The Ba llpoint Pen That David Lync h Touched
now it’s d ark my head swelling with jet lag bursting
with jet la g standing for a glimpse of the fr uitbat
from Mont ana with his shirt buttoned up to the neck
his sprig of lucky white heather in his top p ocket
and no tie o f something smart to say such a s My teeth
are bleeding or Now it’s dark or You’re nex t fucker or Life
is full of sur prises to the neck and no tie or Life is full
of heaven in the blackness with my maharis hi pen
of bleeding i n the Glasgow darkness they w on’t let me
in without a ticket my fruitbat head all swell ing
with transatl antic jet lag he’s here all smiles and inner peace
as the fires r age across the dry canyons of L os Angeles
and wearing his skinny tie and black coat aft er all and
signing book s to say such as My teeth are in the dark
with his wav y grey hair can you sign this fo r me please David
please and Th anks very much David which i s all I can think to
look straight i n to my Mulholland eyes or str aight into his to
think of all the darkness to which he replies Y ou bet
with a smile bu rsting up my head bledding
Melding Maiden (based on the sketchbook drawings of Georges Seurat in Paris, 1880)
Book One:
He skins the coating from his scalp trying
to escape. Bars grow like algae perennials. He salivates and they turn from copper to gold while he misses the unknown.
Book Two:
Continuous sockets of failed generations. His shoelaces weave through
distilled air of the night, become suspended by emptiness en grande jatté. Large bowl baby. One leg leans against the vault of ambition, arms gravitate towards false hope upside-down.
{BOOKMARK}
charred intrusion she rests her fingertips on his fat knees,
her lower body mid-prance. He dreams it detachable.
*MASTER PLAN*
Breed newfound slavery. Breed her to become him. Let him become tailored to her parts.
Pointelle toes(A), to feed off the waves of her neurotic vocals preaching opera that preach
chain born to serve you with my tounge (B). While undressing, her tibula (C) expands and he
jumps to erase it. Perfection-only allowed for his full-frontal (D) tracing paper princess.
sacrifiées femme à l'extrémité
Noted also: sacrificed woman at the end
de son travail brut, disséqué et morts. gravé en couleurs
of her gross labour, dissected and dead. engraved in colour
seulement quand elle prie pour lui
only when she's begging for it.
Book Three:
Signature of later, invented costume only art can save. Anisrés, bathing place. Lock no key ligaments hanging from a broken chandelier.
Nostalgia
Nostalgia is ruinous, the slow death of better days. Some kind of undigested glory for lepers, for those who don’t love it it’s a specious tale told by drunks.
Looking to November
Looking forward to November I offer
A crisp nod to the man with
The natty overcoat and back
Carved in the arc of humiliation
Reminds me of the man hired to sit me
As a child, I anticipated his moldy smell
Yellowed fingertips and pirate stories
I still see him
At the bridge near my flat
And I almost speak to him
And he almost answers
Instead the overcoat sighs
You don’t know me
Look away.
Someone Said Joe Strummer is Dead
Joe Strummer had Dickensian teeth
and a white riot voice
and wasn’t too hot at fancy guitar
I preferred
the goasfastasyoucan-ness of The Damned
the Artfuldodgerness of The Pistols
the blackhairness of The Banshees
the leatherjacketness of The Ramones
to the Clash’s
three minute manifestoes
but the tears begin to burn
when someone tells me he
is dead
his wife in the kitchen
roast potatoes in the oven
and I’m travelling on hands and knees
among the legs and the sweat
in a lost world of bouncing crowds
as The Adverts sing Gary Gilmore’s Eyes
and Fay Fife of The Rezillos
is saying Excuse me pet
as she tries to get past me
to the stage of the Silver Thread
which isn’t a stage at all
and Siouxsie is wearing thigh length boots
and Poly Styrene is wearing a brace
and Dave Vanian is singing
Is she really going out with him?
with a voice that doesn’t fit his face
and The Buzzcocks are trilling happily
about orgasms and Boredom
and Joe is growling What’s My Name?
like an IRA bomb about to explode
as he shows us who we are
and two boys are sniffing glue
in a dark corner of a disco
with a Golden Wonder packet
like something out of hell
as teenage pints go sloshing across
the lager and lime dancefloor
and someone is pulling the plug
from my neck as we faithfully sing
God Save the Queen
at the tops of our voices
without knowing or caring or falling
apart or caring too much
and I’m giving breath
to all those gone friends
I can still find
in the time and space in my head
who were wasted in the brain
as they crawled along the pavement
in the chemical Central Belt rain
who were killed by out-of-control cars
driven by thirteen year old thieves
who joined the police
or became swimming instructors
as we pogoed off the edge of the Earth
laughing at you laughing at us
and falling through somewhere
we didn’t want a name for
and raging into
the crippled normal sub-zero night
with our safety pins and dog collars
and grinning role model Sid Vicious zips
and bondage trousers electric shock hair
and padlocks on chains round our throats
and my life in the oven
as I still feel this blood ignite
make something real
with the only chord we can play
On Painting Blue Fusion
This needs sky, pear trees, and a glass of red wine. Brush strokes coax landscapes to rise up, surface, then dive beneath. It’s the world’s imprint amazing, moving. I don’t waste my day as a Monet. This is not Waterhouse and his mad Ophelia. The world doesn’t need another Parish; those lantern-carrying clowns. I choose blue. Curves of it over a previous gray start. What better hue to see through? Ocean-colored youth in utero, now wriggles out for completion and a name. Mine are babies cradled in a frame; they chuckle and coo. Toddlers who feed through my fingers live only by looking at you. Listen, speech is vast on canvass. Painting is a moment in transit.
There Might Be A Mother Hidden Inside Green Skin
I. A mother’s placed floating, alive in a wading pool, trying to bathe with dollar bills & a pumice stone. Her body not in pain, but the joy of imagining a suntan million— you see her through the backyard with her legs upright, hands cupped in the shape of a spheroid & feet pointing parallel towards home. Icelight sequins slither through what becomes swimmer’s ear & it’s slowing down your choice: break ice from water or push her under. II. The stone landscape is crooked. My mother’s pale skin, shaking legs, entwined in a ninety-nine cent garden hose. It sticks easily into the grass while she throws each stone with frustration into the formulated mud. I’m a sneaker-soaked onlooker, trapped underwater with rocks on my feet; remembering how through my tears she once defended the action: it’s so snakes stay out of the garden those damn eggs grow without sunlight last through winter; if you believe that. III. Believe everything, she demands. I taught you that. When I think of her: snakes with faces of dead presidents swim regions just to bite her dreams. They’re harmless but she freezes, turns gang-green and covered in ice: the saw’s in my hand to amputate her golden leg: but I postpone action to wait for the Pacific to part in mid-air, tumble out stolen syllables: now your shaking too. Poor girl, you walk just like her.
The Man Who Liked to Talk in the Pub (in Glasglow dialect)
optics ice geez a pint uh Tennents an a wee voddy how long
ti go this iz fuckin nerv rackin ah canni take much mair
uh this jist look at that big diddy they say Real Madrid want
tay buy him whit a fuckin joke eez a load uh shite fur Christs sake
ah saw thi telly last week thi Spanish Italians even thi English
secunt divishunz a hunnert miles an hour bam bam bam its jist too
slow in this fuckin country too fuckin slow fur ma likin look at
that big prick ma wee grandawtir could teach him how ti control
the baw eez fuckin pish av nivir seen a bigger bunch uh clowns
than this lot an am seventy six av seen it aw dun it aw thurz
nay skill any mair nay class nay swaggur a remembur Jim Baxter
an wee Billy Bremner both fuckin dead a remembur wee Jinky
Johnstone an Big Joe Jordan both fuckin dead Jeezuz Christ wuv
hit rock bottom total fuckin rock bottom its aw wuv goat koz thuv
taken ur banks an thurz nay money nay work how long ti go ten
minutes fucks sake ma wee grandawtir cooduv put the baw in
the back uh the net whit a fuckin numpty kin yi see this bunch uh
arseholes gettin ti South Africa the fuckin jungle ha ha hooz that
comin on hooz that goin aff is Joe Jordan still alive how long ti
go geez a pint uh Tennents an a wee voddy optics ice
Marilyn Monroe’s Grave in Los Angeles
The sun is glinting off the M and O
of MONROE
in a tiny cemetery tucked behind a multi storey car park
next to a coffee and bagels shop it’s only
100 paces long you can walk around the lawn in
no time to check the graves of Natalie Wood
and Dean Martin and Jack Lemmon and Billy
Wilder and Truman Capote and Carl Wilson
and Frank Zappa and Roy
Orbison who
lies in an unmarked space beneath
the botox injection of smog the sweltering
high speed hands-in-the-concrete class A among
the glass and steel financial skyscrapers
never drops below 80 in the shade as you try to detect
your favourite grave everyone makes a beeline
for little Norma’s drawer-in-the-wall
I spent
forever trying
to find the surly-chain-smoking-
Dirty-Dozen tablet of John Cassavetes
which I finally did as I was turning to
give in I must have tramped over him
but didn’t see his name was almost
not there people had left American coins
as a symbol of love respect the heads
of Lincoln and Roosevelt I left a twenty
pence piece all I had went and said
never give up to Marilyn’s ashes
one more time with its scarlet lipstick
Hollywood smoochy hands-on-the-phone
Happy-Birthday-Mister-
and big-hipped white skirt blowing up running wild
lost control half in shadow half in sun
Mere
I found out what the roller of big cigars Life from both tears and fears That shine burning, to say It’s lacking the three Emperor illusions I recall, And still somehow They only block the sun
The muscular one, looked at –
Tattoo the Moon
Fly me skyward and spin the earth inside me. Never yield when the bottom falls out. Grin at the moon.
Christmas Eve
Hard rubber sidewalks swaying
In the pungent gray wind as
Cumuli lazily patrol a Van Gogh sky
Part time grimacing Santas stand on corners
Ringing bells despite the chill that creeps
Through transparent patches of a candy apple costume
Superimposed on a Chagall screen are the
Hibernating carrion of metropolitan misery yearning
To drag down projecting eternal suffering
How shallow the chasm between the dead and the dying
On a Christmas Eve like tonight
Not cold enough to freeze but
Warm enough to melt the sidewalks apart
Like taffy to release the
Art below.
Undeceived
It’s not enough, this talk of how it feels
when shadows trick the heart; when silence sings
and stillness shakes the mind’s unfalling leaves,
dropping gossamer glimmers on everything.
It’s not enough to label ‘grief’ and ‘love’
as if these terms could get at what they mean.
It won’t suffice to write down what I feel
in characters less cryptic minds could read.
To write, ‘His skin is dappled porcelain
the calibre of which is seldom seen,
my pupils quicken when they look on him –’
does nothing but annunciate a dream.
‘Metaphor,’ you said, ‘is beating round the bush,’
thus negating me with cliché, labelling me trite,
and so love letters, limp as lilies, languish in the bin,
as true as trash, not saying what they might.
Neither is it right to feel, be honest, undeceived,
nor will it do to love and not be loved,
and even when love’s losses are all grieved,
a metaphoric love’s not good enough.
Buddha Gone Bad
Attachment is suffering
Suffering, life
Consisting in large part
of pain crossed with strife
So spoke Siddhartha
From under his tree
Enlightened, he claimed
By the world’s misery
Still, I suspect that most people more crave:
The pre-Buddha’s court life
Plato’s, pre-cave
Socrates’, sans hemlock
More’s, avec head
And all Henry’s dead wives
Alive…and in bed
Than all the enlightenment under the sun
Developed detachment and knowledge hard won
Yes, far more want riches
In spendable kinds
Than want to spend hours
Improving their minds
And in the end
Most would cheat death if they could
I, for one, know that I certainly would
