Nick D’Annunzio Jones

Zen Dead Reckoning

a languid puff of dew

floats like a cotton bale

in air as calm and blue

as a sea we could sail

without a chart or a clue

 

Bathysphere

I have a bathysphere in my brain sometimes.

The bolted ball, a whale’s eye, droops on a noose

into a lightless trench where what little life exists

glows like chemo and creeps on spiny, fan-dance fins.

 

The pressure makes my face crack and leak.

 

My bathysphere has a name like an Eskimo porn sequel:

soft bipolar II — and without warning or negotiation

it will pop a Polaris, missile me heavenward then explode

in pillowy air, ecstatic, a breathless aurora borealis.

 

Make it a double, a triple, one for everyone.

 

Alas, the God-shots are short-lived; unmapped, too.

After a few corkscrews, I’ll collapse under a sheet,

thrash and drift — an interminable interregnum

on a painfully placid sea — fearing the inevitable night

when the bathysphere will again submerge me.

 

 

Nick D’Annunzio Jones received an MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts from the University of California at Riverside. Recently, he has taught at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and at Lynn University, in Boca Raton, FL. Currently, he is studying Soto Zen Buddhism and enrolled in graduate work in existentialist psychotherapy at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL., where he’s also a care-giver at the Hospice by the Sea.

Nathan Prince

Driving through Deer

I was fourteen
my dad
let me drive
he gave me
a beer
and I took
a few more
from the cooler
when he
passed out
drunk
in the passenger
seat
we were
going
to Tennessee
we were
always
going to
Tennessee
back then
I drove
straight through
the Illinois night,
into the abysmal
black heart
of it all
and ecstasy
it was easy
the vehicle
like a physical
manifestation
of myself
with one
ponderous
touch
the car
veered left
one twist
of the wrist
it sailed right
straight
into the black
heart night
of the abyss
I kept drinking
beer
throwing
the empty cans
out the window
took a cigarette
from the pack
started smoking
just ahead
a small herd
of deer stood
in the middle
of the road
they all turned
toward me
simultaneously
their eyes
burning
beaming
like gods
with one
searing
question
I hit the brights
to hypnotize
them
and accelerated
the car jumped
forward we
sped forward
through the heart
of the night
black abyss
and ecstasy
luminescent
heading
straight toward
deer
passed
right
through them
their beautiful
golden hides
all illuminated
eyeballs
and eartips
fluttering
their breath
mist
and white
tails ringing
my dad
stirred you want
me to drive
now no
I want to
I’ll drive

Martin Freebase

Simulacra 889

My words do not skip, whoop, or wheel across the page

There is nothing like it when things get rolling

My father sitting in the kitchen

With a bottle of whiskey

Bare-chested and drunk

And exquisite look upon his face

An intense satisfaction that was experienced more than understood

Life was exploding around me

Blasting away at the hypocrisy

What I have accomplished in this world is meaningless

The search for a meaningful life is the utmost in futility

We only fool ourselves into believing in fairytales

This is the eastside mother fucker

Nothing here will take you back home

This is not a story of hope

We are familiar with great foolishness

Those who cannot embrace the negativity of truth

The light is found hiding in the darkness

People will find it hard to grasp the evil of the soul

The soul surpassed the mind

The soul dominated the mind and placed the mind into slavery

Thoughts become controlled by the soul

With lack of use, the mind grew weaker

she could understand everything

even when I began in the middle of a sentence

telling how things happen

three bottles of mad dog

and I’m singing merry christmas

climbing up water towers

buying 200 hits of microdot

it was then that I realized that there was nothing to fear

slipping something hot into the moon

tipping the scales

taking the blidfold off of justice

feeling her up under her robe

the two hemispheres of her brain

seeking the end with a full gaze

you have been contaminated by the luxury of five dollar ideas

another incarnation of the bottomless pit

wanting to restore all of your appetites

hundreds of corpreal miles

making love to the mother and the daughter

modulations of a freakish nature

I am squeezed out into measure

there is tension and inflation

a line of women waiting for us to finish

they both had nipple rings and a pierced belly button

in the summer they were blonde

and in the winter brunette

I am proposing the end of the soul

Religion has oppressed the history of reason

There is no reason to think when all of the answers are provided

Thus, the mind mutated into this non-thinking entity

Religion created the birth of the weakling

Each of us has one foot planted in the essential

I revive and restore

We no longer have to look backward

Our gaze should be firmly established on the future

Removing the effect of religious determinism

The absence of a horrid determination

Removing the means of the repressive productions

You were freed to be truly yourself

Not some fabricated caricature of your true self

I made you free to live according to your own wishes

Not the dictates of some manmade deity or deities

There is no utopia in heaven or on the earth

 

 

Martin’s work is solidly based on the concept of poetry as a social construction. Through our interactions with others, we create and recreate meanings that allow us to make sense out of a chaotic world full of contradictions. Martin considers the art of writing poetry as one small way of collapsing the confusion of experience into more meaningful patterns of social thought. You can find more of Martin’s thoughts at: http://martinfreebase.blogspot.com

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