POETRY

by AA.VV.

February (Greg Farnum)
Poetry (J. Marvin)
Poetry (R. W. Howington)


FEBRUARY
by Greg Farnum

STAR BANK
spring-like breeze
morning drive
plane crash
"shark infested waters."

Windshield objects in the rain,
a grey, geometric world.
My office building becomes a Cubist painting
and all its people
its anger
its greed
reduced to funny shaped fedoras
and worried people walking on air.
To the right an American flag waves
proudly
oblivious of the temporary wet stillness
that lays upon the earth.
"Digital entrepreneurial American capitalism
is transforming the world"
says my CEO.
Not yet.
not yet



POETRY
by Jay Marvin

BLACK FLOWER GARDEN

This sickness in me blooms like a black flower
the petals forming in stench and anger
I feel it wrap around my rib cage and hurt me
a constant reminder of the numerous ingredients
added to grow this common plant of total alienation
it drinks three times a day from brown cooked liquid
if it dies I die most things have been tried
talking it out
medicating it out
jailing it out
yet it continues to grow taking more of me
which means I take from you nothing big
a few consumer items you can do without
I stand on street corners sick and shaky
searching for food for my dark sick plant
its roots leading back to you a seed you planted
long ago now in full bloom under the purple orange
smog of consumption and moral corruption.


HOUSE CLEANING

Nothing but fast food gas stations in red white and greens
the carne red from hot dog with chili and cheese fries to go
dirt and gravel roads never open garage engine blocks
golden brown kissed by rust left by long gone tourists
running to hide from what they left only to find it when
they arrive I spotted a motel off the interstate a pool
like a blue thumb print smelling of chlorine I floated
around in the middle of the day listening to the big rigs
blow by like a string of confident pachyderms they had
somewhere to go a schedule to keep I had nowhere to go
no schedule to keep the water lapping at my body
four hundred miles away she was cleaning out the house
taking what we once called ours now called hers
that night I too would do some cleaning with a .45
to my right temple the sound of the big rigs singing
a song I'd never hear. 


JUST ADD J&B

So she said he couldn't sing the bitch
you yelled holding a knife to her throat
lifting her up and dancing her around
the kitchen humming a sick tune between
anger clenched teeth it was a stupid argument
the two of you drunk night after night madness
pouring from your souls like bile mixed with booze
anger mixed with the past bleeding into the future
you with his hands prints on your head and body
her with that jagged scar down her cheek
like an ugly railroad track back to the past
the smell of alleyways and men she'd had  
your aspirations smashed against discipline
and a chemical imbalance mistaken for lack of IQ
the two of you wrapped in hate and love
lover becomes abuser just add J&B and gulp
until death do you part.

YOUR EMOTIONAL SHELF

You never know what you've done
searching your memory like looking
for jars on a supermarket shelf
one minute your in it the next your out
like a swarm of bitter bees denied entrance
to their hive you sit and wonder what you did
why you did it and how to build a structure
that will help you climb out from the bottom
of blame you now find yourself in arms
and hands working in total desperation
to re-arrange the order of things on your
sagging emotional shelf what was once
one visit to your shrink now has blossomed
to three you work twice as hard to afford
this new life breathing necessity never knowing
more or less from the time you go in to the
time you walk out a pair of big black work boots
sit waiting on your emotional shelf caked in shit
ready for you to step right back into it
like you did before.



POETRY
by R. W. Howington

PISS ON THIS.

Written on the urinal stall in the
men's room at POOR DAVID'S PUB in
Dallas and among the crudely drawn
hard-ons and child-like scribbled
phone numbers of people offering sex
to those that have the money to pay
for it, there was somebody's opinion
regarding prayer in the schools. I
read it while relieving myself. It
stated, "There will always be prayer
in school if they keep giving math
tests."


WE'RE ALL GOING DOWN.

I just saw an
anti-smoking ad
on tv. It said,
"You smoke. You
die."

Excuse me, but
I think these
people should
go back to the
very beginning
where it says,
"You born. You
die."


ANOTHER POEM WRITTEN
ON COMPANY TIME.

Jesus, the philosopher (I don't
call him the Son of God, but
that's another poem), once told
his fans, "For the wages of sin
is death."

I sit here at my desk at work,
a career paper pusher for Uncle
Sam, thinking I'd much rather
plunder, rape, murder, pillage,
fuck, gamble and consume drugs
24-7-365 than work 8-to-5 for
40 years in a boring office,
plus be a goody two shoes the
whole time, and fucking die
anyway.


THE FIRST TIME I DIED.

When Julie, my first wife, stood in
the bedroom's doorway and said she
didn't love me anymore her words tore
through me like bullets.

I  sat on the edge of our bed holding
myself tight where it hurt, my head
hung low, tears spilling out of my eyes.

The pain was so bad I was thinking I
wished I was dead.

I didn't know it then but I had already
died.

The tears were a rebirth.