November 2003 | back-issues, poetry
By Joseph Armstead
Forgive us our trespasses…
There is a room inside
Our minds, inside the
Swirling maelstrom of
Sensation, fear, sex
And ego that makes us each
Unique, where we joyfully
Visit the deepest pit
Within the Circus Infernal.
No one likes to admit it.
No one likes to
Acknowledge they know
Where this place is in
Their minds, this tunneling
Spiraling hole through
Their soul, but when
Emotions are at a fever pitch,
When despair takes hold,
When the reptilian brain
Awakens, we stride growling
through the door, willingly,
and we dance amongst the
sulfurous magma and the
leaping flames with the
lunatic abandon of
broken children at play
in the fields of the brutish.
Our lust for the wicked
brings us to tears, falling
like wet crystal razors.
It frightens us, how much we belong.
It is our darkling home away from home.
Forgive us our trespasses,
Because we can be ever so
Much more inventive than that.
We need to sin big or
Not bother sinning at all.
It is our nature to be cruel.
It is our desperate aspiration
To be children of the Divine.
There is beauty in The Pit,
There are stories of courage
And of devotion, tales of
Raging angels and crying devils,
Of sins against nature and
Sins against the purest of Love.
The flames on the pyre of
Malevolence leap, burning
white-hot, close as an embrace.
We love that dark doorway
To Hell every bit as much
As we despise hosting it
Inside our hearts and minds.
Our duality is a curse.
It is also our strength.
Battling the beast enobles us.
At least, that is what we
tell ourselves when we are
alone staring into the
mirror at a face that seems
more animal than Man,
insanely impassioned, yet
more angelic than mortal,
perfectly flawed compassion.
Forgive us our trespasses…
Opening the doorway down,
We do not look back.
It frightens us, how much we belong.
Our hunger for all things
Wicked brings us to tears,
falling
like wet
crystal
razors.
October 2003 | back-issues, Kelley Jean White, poetry
Midge
show me the one that leaps
that spirals
that plummets
that rises
remains
is lost
is gone
Midge
show me the one that leaps
that spirals
that plummets
that rises
remains
is lost
is gone
Midge
show me the one that leaps
that spirals
that plummets
that rises
remains
is lost
is gone
Midge
show me the one that leaps
that spirals
that plummets
that rises
remains
is lost
is gone
Midge
show me the one that leaps
that spirals
that plummets
that rises
remains
is lost
is gone
October 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
your name called out at
the exact moment
a woman’s body washes ashore
three thousand miles away
or a man pulling poems
from the bones of old lovers
obvious things
my wife and her fears
my lack of faith
my lack of money
the possibilities of
highways and of walls
the idea of starvation
of sunlight
through rainsoaked trees
and what if
the unborn child becomes
a weapon?
what if the ocean is bottomless?
don’t believe for a second
that any of this poetry
don’t think that
killing the killers is
the same thing as justice
and maybe
it doesn’t have to be
maybe christ’s death was as
meaningless
as anyone else’s
can you accept this
as the truth or
do you want to see me bleed?
consider your answer
maybe all that it
makes you is human
October 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
rain
somewhere
animals caught in
baited traps
or the air thick
and yellow
the sun shapeless
and the pieces of
a sixteen-month old girl
are found in a city
five hundred miles away
the smell
of battery acid
like a blanket over
everything
and the rooms in
this house are familiar
the bodies found hung
from the trees outside
have names i’ve
heard before
and i don’t
live here anymore but
maybe at some point
in the past
maybe before
the first tiny hand
was dropped into a
food processor
and now i live
nowhere
while faceless men
decide my future
fucked
but not quite the god
of starving dogs
this by itself a
reason to live
October 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
in the blue and the purple light
on the shadowed sides
of these houses
in a room with a cracked window
and the ghost of edie
crawling naked across the floor
i am my father at 34
and his own father before him
i am the face my children fear
and the voice
and the raised hand
i am the emptiness and
the absence of warmth
and america is
its own form of violence
the boy is dead
next to his sister in the
back of the van
the father drives
with the radio on softly
with dylan’s voice dragging itself
through my headphones
as i sit at the foot of the bed
watching april sleep
and do you remember
the hill of fifteen crosses?
the girl you fucked there and
the way she couldn’t
remember your name?
and what about the man who
tells you you’re not a poet?
what about the way war feels
from 10,000 miles away?
all of the butchered
without faces or names and
the reasons you choose to hate
the people
and some of them i’ve known
and others have just written
to ask for favors and
in the end
there is only this street as it
crashes into the highway
this back yard turning brown
in the cold grey air of
september
in the blue and the
purple light of early evening
this house too cold to
ever be a home
September 2003 | back-issues, poetry
HERE IN THE SHALLOWS…
where we breathe uncomforts.
We see and hear the walklings
skip across our heads;
feel their heels dig
into our existence.
Souls are just like flesh
except unblemished.
They rip open easy–
ooze out into the air.
Where they become
less than intended.
Their rotting wounds
satiate our thoughts
until we can no longer
think and reason and sense
our beginnings and ends
hence eternity is Hell.
I felt the exact moment or thereabouts
when my soul slit open–
I found a cockroach in the kitchen.
Squashed it with the bottom of my glass.
Wiped its remains on the counter’s edge.
Poured Jack in the glass. Met it’s brim.
Drank it straight
down without a second thought.
Or maybe it was the time
when I told that lady she looked good
in that skirt. When in fact, she looked like
a deranged flamenco dancer on crack.
If not those, definitely
when I saw my son slam
his mouth into the table
and my initial reaction was
‘that’s just fuckin’ great’!
I wonder if the walklings know
they are just a thought away
from oozing their soul
into the slums of oblivion?
I wonder if they know
that when they pass a homeless lady
on the street without giving
her at least one freakin’ donut
out of the dozen they carry–
they are indeed ripping the seams
of their silver-linings?
But then again, if they knew,
they’d probably give her one!
Not to be kind
but to prevent the ooze.
Hell, they might stategize
and give her two
like stockpiling good deeds.
It doesn’t work that way you know.
The act has to come pure without self-thought.
It’s harder than one would think.
Take this for example-
A lady gave away her cab.
We watched from down here
through the grates under the streets.
She waved a cab down.
When it pulled over she went to get in
but saw an old man hobbling toward her-
waving, yelling “Hold it! Please!”
She held the door open for him. It took him forever
but she still kept a smile. When he got there,
she suggested they share the ride.
He replied “That’d be great!”
and then said he’d pay
since she was so nice to hold the cab.
She let the old man get in first and offered her arm
for support. He slid over and told the cab driver
his destination ‘the westside.’
The lady thanked the old man for his kind offer
but noted that she was going to ‘the eastside.’
She wished him well and shut the door.
But here under the layer of her reality-
We saw how she lifted her head
and wrinkled her nose
as the old man scraped by her
when he got into the cab.
His more than a day old body odor
hugged her too tight. She couldn’t breathe
comfortably.
We heard as she stood on the sidewalk
sniffing her clothes, her hair, her arm-
she cursed that old man and muttered
“G-D, I hope I don’t smell like him!
Maybe it’s just on my sleeve!”
She took off her dress Jacket
and waved another cab down.
It was easy
for her to get a cab.
Here, under the walklings-
we can see and hear them: truly.
We feel the shiver of thin slivered souls
drip down the metals bars
that barely separate
us from them.
Maggie Shurtleff
