Blue Fred's Kitchen

Bruce Hodder

2006-12-27T01:35:00.000-08:00

december 27

one day i will write down
the story of our love
and how it ended, how
ever since the world
seems colourless, and flat.
but not today. today
i have to go to work.
today i want to watch
the post-Christmas television
for a while, though there's
nothing on that would
entertain a gnat,
according to the schedules.

RIVER PIRATE

2006-12-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

1.
My friend the gimp told me,
We were camping up
In a lightning storm,
“This place is haunted.”

Woods he’d played in
As a boy,dense and dark,
Deer flitting between trees
Lit up every few minutes
By lightning throwing its
Fiery spears into the earth.

“You’re an idiot,” I said
And struck him with
My pistol on the shoulder.

That night,underneath my
Blanket,I kept my pistol
Cocked.The spirits of the dead
Moved about me.When
I saw the Paddy bastard
I emptied six chambers
Right into his spectral form.

2.
Sleeping in the woods is fine
If you can go into a town
And clean up - sometimes.

3.
I get sweaty in this thick coat
Black jacket and woollen shirt beneath.
The best is when I’m bare-arse
Naked jumping into a mountain river

Especially from a moving train!

4.
I didn’t lose my home,
I never had a home to lose:
Brat girls in white smocks,
Boys with no shoes on
Batting balls with sticks,
Dirty shack with a tin roof
That blew off in the wind
And let in rain continually.

Always freezing,the same old
Shit to eat every day.

My old man,what a bastard.
Spent his money on whisky.
His gums were always bleeding.

The times I saw him beaten up
Begging the young lord
Not to kick him anymore.

And my mother’s martyrdom,always
Staring into the stew pot bubbling
On the stove for the reflection
Of her suffering.She didn’t have
A thing except her piety.

5.
The canals called me to them
And I went as soon as I could
Steal a few pence for my passage,
Bunked down on deck in all weathers
Freezing underneath a blanket that
Smelled distinctly of the captain’s dog.

6.
Sliding over water in autumn mist
I knew Creation as a thing of wonder,
God immanent in the whole works:
It must have been the opium I took!

7.
Song of the River Pirate

I am a river pirate.
My name you’ll one day know.
I kill the men so quickly
And I fuck the women slow.

My fists are hard as shovels.
They will pound your head to dust.
My cock has iron in the shaft.
I split ‘em when I thrust.

Go tell the parson’s daughter
To get her bloomers down.
I am a river pirate
Of fan-testicle renown!

8.
Killed some Paddy bastard in an ale house.
Got scooted out of there by the gimp
Before the locals strung me up.

Threw up when I thought about him dying
And cursed my weakness underneath a tree,
A million stars lighting up the wood.

9.
Drunk,I give my horse a slap
And wonder what will happen
When I’m old and toothless
And can’t rob or steal for bread.

As if I will live that long.
Hang me in the town square
Gawped at by hags and by traders
Keeping their diseases secret.

Give me your opprobrium,O good
Citizens of England,as I kick
And squirm against the hangman’s rope.
I’ll spit on anyone who gets close enough
And see all of you in Hell!

NEW POEM BY BRUCE

2006-11-25T11:49:00.000-08:00

waylon and willie were the soundtrack to your youth

those outlaws presented
the perfect image
of what a man should be
to your teenage mind.

with their hair and beards,
their rough clothing
which spoke of other places
unlike middle-class
estates in england.

their songs of wild nights
and mornings in the
fresh, clean air.
they could handle bars
AND mountain lakes

and their minds
encompassed both
with equal sentimental
love. the outlaws spoke
of the loneliness of heroes

as you were lonely, tho
certainly no hero. they
made romance where your
father made only
the ugliness of duty
he never seemed to want.

your dad was squashed down
by responsibility, or
the angry urge to show
that he had sacrificed himself.
they were cowboy gypsies,
poets living out a dream

of women, drink, drugs
resistance of the hard iron
that gets into the soul
and kills it. this you knew
from watching how
he gave into his rages,
and left at dawn in
smart clothes heading
to the office, silent,
resentment bloody in his eyes.

this you knew because
he never really looked
when you showed a picture
or some writing to him.
he couldn't come back far
enough from the chilly
world he lived in, not
even to make a stab
at faking a reaction.

the outlaws set you free
from that fate, which
your road had been prepared
for. you might have those
chains laid about your arms
and legs by family, or
mortgage, but your mind
would always be your own

and always itch
to hike into the backwoods
to smoke and drink and dream
and be large, as Kesey says.

the outlaws helped you
to see your own life
as a movie in which
no one was the star but you.

every time you find
a secret path into the woods
you turn into a wounded hero
packing iron, on the run

even when you're carrying
two bags full of groceries
or heading off to work..

NEW POEM BY AUSTIN McCARRON

2006-11-25T09:56:00.000-08:00

Stone Water

In a room of stone,
at the gate of water:
to lose the friendship of air.

The draft of love:
underneath: the heart
is a fume of sinking rocks,
delivered by water, on seaflower ends.

Time grows feet,
suffering wings, on the upturned sole.

Tongue, crimson ladder,
zipped up in a uniform of skin:

I watch its images drown.

Mouth to mouth, mouth of hell,
plate of blood, I leave it with stone,
rolled over in front of its speechless eye.

The invitation of air:
we exchange cards; air visits my room;
we drink out of glass words a mix of empty signs.

The text of motion is like water to stars.

Austin McCarron lives in London.

love story

2006-11-25T04:32:00.000-08:00

"jesus, what does it take with you?"
i remember one very kindly said
underneath her eiderdown one night
after her right hand failed to reach me

stepped out

2006-10-20T01:16:00.000-07:00

w/ uncombed hair
and half sleeping
still, i stepped
out to check
if it was bin
day on my street--
my neighbour's bins
are always out
the night before, so
that wd tell me--
stepped out and i
was hit immediately
by such a blast
of gorgeous, chilly
rain i laughed--
impossible to
be angry now.

God Addresses The U.S.Congress

2006-10-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

sit down, mortals,
and listen. i've
got something to say
that's been burning
a hole in my head
for too long. and
I've come a long
way, so don't interrupt.
you people have got
me feeling all cranky.
Let me start, if
i may, with the gays.
yes, the gays. please
stop rolling your eyes.
the gays are NOT
automatically
going to Hell,
any more than you
"saved" folks have
a free pass to Heaven
it's a matter
of character,
which i actually
said two thousand
years ago, need
i remind you.
the true marriage
is love, people,
whatever form that
it takes. and while
we're at it, i DON'T
go whispering
in president's ears
about war, other
than to hint
that it's usually wrong,
especially when oil
is the super-objective.
to be truthful
(i can hardly be
otherwise) it pisses
me right off
being used to excuse
such a mortal
folly as the resolution
of difference by
horror and violence.
my way is to love.
do you know what
that means?
but ah, even i
reach the end of
my rope, though
mine unfolds back
to the beginning
of time. when i
see suits worshipping
while my raggedy
children starve out
on the pavements,
or drown in the flood
waters your negligence
let in over the
cities, when i see
that, i'm tempted
to pack up the whole
damned operation,
zap this doomed
ball back to the dust
and repair to some
virginal edge of
the cosmos
to start over,
this time giving
dolphins opposable thumbs.
but i probably won't.
why? because my way
is love. LOVE.
love is my cross.
it's what makes me
put up with you
dumb sonsofbitches.
but don't assume
it is limitless.
don't assume you
can go on
perverting my Word
and be forgiven
every time, however
heinous the crime.
that's a warning. i
can crush you.
now get out of
my sight.and give
a stranger your wallet
before you drive
home tonight.

on holiday

2006-10-17T04:06:00.000-07:00

incense gives the dust

a scent of jasmine--

writing at the keyboard

raging drunk

LUKASH MEETS GWB

2006-10-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

by Geoff William

In the cold doorway of dawn
lurks the one-eyed raven.
I see Lukash floating in a blue lake,
lavender blue, hiding from me your tongue.
Orchids bloom at the break of dawn,
slugs slide down stairways,
the mole digs beneath the stones.
The mole becomes a slug, a mosquito,
a locust, a rat, vermin, George Dubya Bush,
who sends the Zionists to swarm
over the Hashemites, to slaughter children, destroy orchards.
The children are neither with us or against us.
How could they know? You are either a slug
or a butterfly. But it is the slugs
who will destroy the olive trees.
Horror. Fear. Death lies in the wadi.

PAYBACK

2006-10-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

by Steve DeFrance

I go downstairs.
My neighbor's feeding fish heads
to some local dogs.
I find my car.
The day's hot enough to
glaze pottery in the back seat.
I start the engine & crank up the air
conditioner. It's running hot.
I flip on the radio.
Bombers race toward Baghdad.
People on the street look dazed.
At the corner, a pregnant woman
stops in the center of the busy street
doing a body count of her growing family.
My knuckles grow white on the wheel.
I miss the light.

Hot. No wind.
The car's a jar with a lid.
I roll the windows down.
Try to cool off.
Trees on the street cringe
from the heat. Birds have stopped
flying, instead they huddle
in melting pools of color,
grey, brown and black,
heads bobbing slowly.
Next to me on the car seat,
a half-eaten Chocolate Hershey Bar
has exploded.

All that is plastic is devolving
into petroleum ooze.
Fillings in my teeth are burning,
touching a nerve.
Rounding a corner, the asphalt's
melting--heat ripples rise
as if from an Iraqi mirage.
High Noon in L.A.
Ahead--two sweating men charge
snarling from trucks, it's all about a parking place.
They fight in the street. Bone & flesh collide.
Under a deserted building, a lone dog wails.

I eye the ageing buildings on this
block--dying Victorians--blemished,
battered, broken & bleeding.
Dwellings filled with growing families.
Spilling over stoops, rambling down steps,
scattering into the street, where they spray
each other down with water hoses.
Lupine smiles seem to contradict the menace
glinting from their predatory eyes.

Just as it is too hot for the fat red spiders
who sit in heat shock--watching
the death dance of the web-caught flies.
These predators are not in a hurry.
It is too hot for them to dine on me.
They will dine when the sun's down.
I turn right onto 7th Street.

All in all, it's a day that causes
ordinary men to break cue sticks over bald heads.
A day so sweltering it makes
common thieves too hot & too wet to steal.
On this day--shrieking babies are being
smashed against cement walls,
and regretfully married women are sharpening long knives,
sweating and staring at the soft underbelly
of their husbands' throat.

It's a grand day for getting even,
a day for settling festering scores.
A day for payback
a day designed for vengeance.
A day to use baseball bats in alleys.
A day to swing socks filled with ball bearings.
A day for reprisals by the damned.
It's just that kind of day.

Driving by the Park on 7th Street,
I see hawks hankering for retribution,
sitting in the shade of hemlock trees
considering all possibilities.

fridge magnets

2006-10-12T03:24:00.000-07:00

we bought each other fridge magnets
declaring our undying friendship
just before our friendship died.
i see them each day
as i reach in for my eggs and juice.
i take a masochistic pleasure
in their cruel reminder
of the illusion that we lost.
and (though i'm ashamed to say)
a manly pride
in the way that i destroyed it.
this is why you'll see them
clinging to my fridge door for a while.
how could i possibly remove
something that affords such fun
when i have little else to occupy
my twisted mind?

a.m., bathwater running

2006-10-08T01:24:00.000-07:00

i sit, reading.
voices murmur
on the radio.
a sharp light
breaks through
the curtain.
i notice
birdsong.
i hear a car
passing on
the road below.

i turn the page.
i realise:
i'm happy.
my mood
crashes thru the floor.

Another Friday

2006-10-06T11:59:00.001-07:00

it's delicious, coming out of work
into the cold and rain
knowing you don't have to go back
and see those fucking people
for three long days
you descend the hill towards the main road
like a liberated hostage rushing towards
a waiting family of careless shoppers,
pissed off commuters going home
and sneering kids.
the squalls of rain blow out the dust,
the radioactive dust, of work
your optimism rises, and it lasts
about another thirty seconds
which is when you realise
you are totally alone.
another friday with the bottle and the couch ahead.

The Sky Seems Bluer

2006-10-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

the sky seems bluer
this crisp october day
stepping out to catch a bus to work.

now you are not my friend
the morning light seems brighter,
the cold air bites more sweetly
than it did before.

with your absence you have given me
so much that your presence
failed to provide,

so much
that i should thank you for.
with this poem i thank you.

the new weather of life after you
exceeds my boldest hopes by miles.

Bruce

2006-09-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

LOVE WITH A SAGITTARIAN DEPRESSIVE

I was happy
when I was
with you,

all evidence
to dispute that
notwithstanding.

I thought
I'd have you
to resent
forever.

Now I miss you
where I wished
you gone.

Bruce

2006-09-30T06:39:00.000-07:00

While I Bleed For Love

I have realised that my heart is broken
four months after I split with her
(now ain't that me all over).
But I can't tell her, I think she ought to know
and I can't hear hers isn't broken too.
Nor can i play the penitent,
pretending it was all my fault,
though dissecting it for blame
would be pointless masochism.
I just keep remembering pleasant things
we did, and finding things she bought for me
like the plunger I unclogged the sink with
while handwashing my western shirt just now.
I want to phone. Talking to her feels so right.
but I can't hear indifference in her voice,
a trace of evidence that we are really over..
I'd rather risk not having her again
than losing her forever while I bleed for love.

Bruce

2006-09-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

Storm

I lie on my couch and listen to the rain.
It pours and pours, and then the light turns yellow .
My heart thunders like the sky will soon.
Perfect metaphor, i think when the flash
arrives, and the crack and rumble.
Like the angry end of comfortable illusion.
I should pick up the telephone. But I
know I won't remember how to talk.

Bruce

2006-09-26T11:03:00.000-07:00

THE EVIDENCE

Days playing Hitman and Wolfenstein.
Calling to discuss my halting progress.
Shopping for doughnuts and
bread and cheese.
Watching 'Jeremy Kyle', detesting
his condescension (so much like mine).
Sitting close on the sofa.
Touching hands occasionally.
Bristling, thinking There should be more!
What more?!

Once again the evidence
is against the genius I once presumed
to be my greatest gift.

GO BACK

Ahh, go back, go back
to leaning on the bench
outside the Lamb pub
in Little Harrowden,
waiting in the cold and dark,
looking down the hill
toward the bridge
watching for her car.
She is heading home from work,
stopping for a pint with you.
Go back, go back,
turn the constellations overhead.

Tim Sansom

2006-08-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

UNCLE BILL

Granddad, I love you even though you’re not a nice man. I’m embarrassed that fisticuffs still impress you at seventy years of age, but I look at your balding crown and see your spectacles and feel I could learn from you. You beat up my angelic Mum and I pity your conformity and your fashionable misogyny but I think you adore her. You are a boring drunken cunt but that’s what the world has taught you to be. You smell well tended and you look fastidious and regal. I love your scarf and your cockney confidence. It is a confidence which sings out it’s expletives in kind of affection that rises above anything academia could afford and knows it. I have to confess that if I had been a youth and were present when you engaged in combat with Dad I would have been exhausted of alternative choices than to have fucked you up so as to make you labour in walking and ashamed to show your face for quite a spell. But I still love you because I can see you are unquestioning and pond skimming market trader and I approve of your general disapproval of all things in life seemingly revered by the masses without foundation. I miss you and I miss your kind. You stank of booze and fags as you persevered each night to insert your key into the Lyndale lock through your balance hindered handicap. I’m told you were a womaniser and that you broke your second wife’s heart. But I want to believe that to have been ego and mindlessness rather than snarl and sadism. Mind you, your last girlfriend was a beehive hairdo powered by a dynamo wasn’t she Bill? She might have been a bit of karma for you mate, translated into your vernacular Bill that’s “Wot goes rand cums rand” mate! She was as warm and as humane as Himmler and that was if she was having a good day, but I suppose that we should love our enemies. I loved your son too, he was a lot like me, quite mad, quite confused and not a beneficiary of the grape and the grain. I don’t blame him for protecting you (His Dad) for as I have said, I would have done the very same. Your daughter loved you and she admired you bravery in facing death. Anyone who thinks you were a cunt I understand, but for all that I’m sorry we can’t chat anymore as is the case with most of the dead. I doubt you had many secrets or even much depth, you were probably very young when you realised what a load of rubbish the latter was hey Bill?
Well Uncle Bill, I may see you soon in another dimension but if that’s not how it works and it’s just lights out only, thanks for that World War One gun layer and special thanks for joining Emily in creating the enigma that was my mother. For kicking her in the head I’m afraid I have to inflict upon you the most severe punishment I can think of and that is as follows, spend a good many moons thinking about it, then when your soul is finally destroyed with the attrition of remorse and regret, see if you can’t spruce yourself up, get on your best garb and have a walk down the Steyne. The Steyne known only to the Saints and to the Father himself and make a few changes to your outlook. Whetere or not you do, I promise I myself shall.

Your Grandson Tim
TIM SANSOM EARLY 2000

Ronald Baatz

2006-07-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

THE WIND WANTS TO SLEEP WITH ME

It's a winter day like any other winter day.
It is cold and windy out there and the
wind chimes are being thrashed about.
The most important thing i have to do
is make an early fire, and maintain it until
i climb the stairs around midnight to crawl
into bed. The bedroom faces the road,
the bedroom which i've been sleeping in
for fifteen years now, three years
with one woman, seven with another.
The other five years i've slept alone.
On these cold winter nights the wind
tries to muscle its way into the house,
into the bedroom, into my bed.
The wind wants to sleep with me,
but i don't want to sleep with it.
How can i tell the cold winter wind
that i am not in love with it?

MY DOGS WON'T ALLOW ME TO DREAM
WITHOUT IT

They won't allow me to dream without
my lime-green shirt on

I am to have my lime-green shirt on
in every dream

If i am without it then they wake me
with loud barking

The only place i own this lime-green shirt
is in my dreams

It has long sleeves which i roll up
and i leave the top two buttons open

In every dream i might possibly dream
i am to be in lime-green

Whether it's a good dream in paradise
or a bad dream in hell

My dogs insist i wear my lime-green shirt
and that i smell from freshly cooked pork chops

from ANGEL HEAD #4

t.kilgore splake

2006-07-23T11:23:00.000-07:00

missive on the wind
(poem for cc)

"wait caitland wait"
tranny horses warming
blinding whiteout clouds
UP blizzard from hell
motoring north
CLIFFS trailhead turnoff
hiking snowy path
climbing rocky trail
storm abating sky clearing
first dawn
painting wilder-woods-ness
lighting far horizon
"dearest c remember"
past the cobblestone smokestack
around headframe boulders
beyond mine shaft foundation
poet tree location
hidden among pines
we’ll toast morning’s sunrise
collins and smith
icy champagne salute
with green tea candle aromas
maturing "beat" hellion mates
making CLIFFS limnster aerie home
mojo cait with backwater graybeard
above maddening crowds
masses accepting mediocrity
satisfactory way of life
tired numbing platitudes
sucking brain-skulls empty
jackoff moralists
andy of mayberry
family values reruns
continuous psycho-babble hum
glossary of "can’t" excuses
growing generation
sloppy blowjob wimps
people fearing solitude
cell phone umbilicals
pockets full of extra batts
underwhelmed cipher-citizens
prisoners in sad small dreams
constantly phoning others
lacking original imaginations
unlike "driven" creative souls
artistic gamers
not wasting time talking
seriously contesting
elusive damn dame lady muse
giving good weight
producing solid
poetry limn
painting oils
final chapter
shining glaze
CLIFFS commune of two
reading brother brautigan
old charlie "buk"
romantic bardic ballads
into late afternoon dusk
later nestled around campfire
march nighttime heat
listening to wolves
singing love songs
nearby "big rock" lair
two ghostly shadows
survivors from "beat hell"
together at last enjoying
breathe it smell it
spring coming into
blowing across the peninsula
a little earlier

than planned

from ANGEL HEAD #4

Tim Sansom

2006-06-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

THE WOODS

The gilded trim of the linnet’s wing
Splay tapered to her feathered form
Whose delicate maths sway and swing
Each blissful breeze, each trying storm

Dawn’s warbling sweet cacophonies
Calm gently amidst glistening dew
Earth’s rhythmic fulfilled prophecies
So regularly ensure they do

Those shrieks and tweets from dense wet woods
Play sweet and real trustworthy scales
A music not puffed up but good
Our spinning sphere recounts her tales

Capillaries of unmarred streams
Like slim deft digits reach and spread
Descending dales steps and steins
To quench life’s thirst and cleanse the dead

Our forbears knew the trees I’m told
No map nor compass was required
They read on bark the sap and mould
It told of rainfall routes and time

Moist worms recoil from two for joy
With six for gold scarce next to us
Above behold each girl and boy
Our swallow’s airborne exodus

Each morning cracks with leaps of light
Awaking mice, sedating owls
Then stirs of warmth replace the night
As black shapes change to grazing cows

And deep into the covert woods
Each fable dances with each myth
No soul can claim “They are no good!”
Nor that the Goblins do not live.

Maureen Doyle

2006-06-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

Blowsy roses bloom
like women with unkept hair
trifling and raucous

Evening garden scents
can make one drunk and sappy
all from crumpled petals

t.kilgore splake

2006-06-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

becoming

graybeard bardic soul
standing eight count
on road to oz
cold dark alone
musing
that was then this is now
WHAT TO DO
plastic insurance card binge
od 40’s b+w films
alky brain cell suicide
grand sexual orgy
ask nun’s blessing
jack armstrong’s "wheaties"
mad man giving away possessions
wooing woodland witch
liking idea
time doesn’t exist
denying nursing home confusion
diaper
wheelchair
toothless
blind
good day rallies
waiting on sign
telling inspiration
"it is now"
dancing naked
long loose hair flowing
beyond
metes and bounds
return to womb
end of the earth
coyote
catfish
raven
bluebottle fly
companions
knowing grinning smile
smooth pale bone
spring
road kill
skull

Norbert Blei: Spam Poems

2006-06-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Patch

Don't let the other guy get the girl
Arm yourself with Ultra Allure pheromones tonight!
Join thousands across the world.
Penis Growth Patches
Are the most potent patch.
Fuel up.

XUCarbonic

I haive the moust beautiful
wetches in the world.
scorecard ribosome cozen.
They're perfect, not overprized. restitution.
tahoe faithful.
See
and tell me
love to see you
But
if you dont,
here watc16h3znowbymail.com/rm
We'll be just fine.

Bruce says: these are part of a new work Norb is preparing in which some experiments with language and form are made for the modern age. Let the Press know what you think either in the Comments field or via email. As part of my new resolution I will not be answering comments unless requested to do so by their author, so you can have your say without being put down, at least by me. Fill your boots, dear reader.

JOE SPEER

2006-06-15T13:30:00.000-07:00

Room to Let

smooth skin college sophomore
searching the campus purlieu
for lodging other than dorm
sign on cardboard in window
to let
reminds me of the gall
of Galsworthy’s Soames
selling the house he built for his wife
and she lives in it without him
a 1936 Plymouth in the driveway
ceramic chimes icicle porch
knock knock
shrill voice bids enter
Mrs Smith peers over steel rimed spectacles
surrounded by art books
she looks for pic of osprey
to embroider on doily
walls canvassed with her paintings
she tells me stories of her 89 years
the room is at the end of the hall
her crutch points
a van Gogh Thoreau simplicity
40 dollars a month and kitchen use
i move in the same day
two other roomers share house
Rudolph is into jurisprudence
phones his girlfriend twice a day
Jimbo consumed by sports
volunteers to referee girls volleyball
weekends spent busting kegs with paper cup
her daughter visits bimonthly
to clean and drink cup of instant coffee
before she skedaddles back
to vending real estate
once we solidify friendship
she becomes a target for puckish darts
i hide her crochet needles
tie her crutches together
change channels as she leaves the room
we watch the news
and shout bring our troops home
one night i gulp down her milk
unawares and retreat to my room
she calls out my name
and asks if i emptied her glass
i was reading Homer
the part where Polyphemus
hurls a stone at nobody
i might convince her
except for white arc on upper lip
then after every random breeze
she accuses me
of making calls to Singapore
of spending spring break in Thailand
to spend funds on skin trade
she forces me into peace pact
and our relationship levels off
one Saturday evening she
explained the death
of Pat Garret
”i heard he was blasted
with a shotgun
some goathearder
in revenge for Billy”
”not a bit of it”
Mrs Smith said
”he was shot in the back
of the skull
while urinating
about four miles east
off highway 70”
one rainy day influenza harbors
in my chest
i stop speaking and recoil to bed
she sets up a tray with
orange juice and hot soup
she sits in the chair
to describe how Michelangelo
saw david in the stone
when semester ends i
visit mountain meadows thawing
Canadian geese on wing over
glacier park
in fall i return to class schedule
after matriculation at NMSU
i call Mrs Smith
line disconnected
i visit the house
it has a for sale sign
i call her daughter
my mother went home she says
between the Rio Grande and the Gila
past the stone house
in the Black Range
where she and husband built
away from the well
where injury forced
move to city near daughter
sorry to hear that
things change so much
in three months
she was a labor of love
i walked until i saw a sign
room for let
Mrs Smith was standing
on her crutches in the corridor
sending a last message
from the
ethereal hallway

JOE SPEER is the editor of Beatlick News and runs the Beatlick website (http://www.beatlick.com )

bruce

2006-06-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

kicking love

this is when
i would have
called her:
before lunch,
before the first
bottle.
i can't now
and i miss it
badly.
i'm kicking love,
and the
delirium's
tremendous.

Dave Church

2006-06-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

FOREVER USEFUL

I couldn't find my scissors
And my ruler broke in two.
A postcard picture
Of Bukowski
Leaning against a fridge
Holding a bottle of beer
Was strung out on the wall
Near my desk.
His poet eyes seemed to blink
And say--
Go ahead,
Use me
While I'm still sharp
Around the edges.

I cut that piece of paper in half
Just like the man himself
Penned a poem--

Straight like nothing at all.

~Dave Church, from Providence RI, USA, will have more poems in forthcoming issues of ANGEL HEAD.

Bruce

2006-06-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

love

love
vanishes
like a dream
in the morning
fallen
waking
to a
body
with knees
and arms
dangling
going
to the loo

fallen angel heads: the archive

2006-05-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

SHARON AUBERLE

ABBEY'S SOUL

"Disappear, from everyone, myself included,
down in the grandest canyons of the soul."
- Edward Abbey, Earth Apples

Once I thought the soul was a small thing,
a namecard, maybe, pinned inside, saying if
I was hell or heaven bound, the tiny,
two ounce weight (I read) that leaves the body
at death and can be accounted for
no other way. But now, Abbey's poetry in hand,
words leap from his book--thundering words,
like tonight's storm, sweeping aspen leaves before it
as Abbey's words sweep away my old notions of soul.
Words that sing like that great bull elk
in lightning-lit trees behind my house,
the grandest canyons of the soul!

Now I feel this once-tiny soul, this wild
stormy soul growing immense, rising up,
singing like wapiti, the elk, making up for all those years
so tightly packed into two ounces. Hell? Or Heaven bound?
HELL, IT DOESN'T MATTER Abbey would probably roar.
Just live it all now--the thunder and lightning of your life,
the poetry, elk, aspen and rain. Then disappear one day,
become like him--a pulsing of air in sweet canyon light

GRACELAND

"I've a reason to believe we all will be
received in Graceland." - Paul Simon

Sara, have you forgiven yet
that lean-faced man of the fifties
with his short, harsh hair and those
nicotine-stained fingers?

Does he still come to you
on windless nights, in dreams
full of hanging smoke and ask you why
his Hail Marys full of grace brought him none?

Sometimes, you say, you hear his ghost
crunching through those shattered
bottles where he found his grace,
while all you could do was pray, Sara,
and listen to Elvis-songs
drowning out those whiskey words,

till you escaped one day to a soft-haired man
of the sixties whose grace would implode
in those same bottles and then you began
praying to Elvis and a hot summer moon
riding over the lake, glittering in the glass
you held, and I watched while you dreamed
and sang Love Me Tender and made excuses
for your life.

I never saw you cry, Sara, not once,
you laughed instead, saying you dreamed
of rivers--lazy, warm rivers carrying the debris
of your life away, bearing you to a new home
where grace lived and then you left us
on a night when that hot yellow moon crashed
in the lake, to rise again on the Mississippi,
that old, slow river flowing into Graceland...
Sara, does Elvis still sing you to sleep on nights
when you can't help remembering a lean-faced man
with nicotine-stained fingers and what he did to you?

fallen angel heads: the archive

2006-05-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

NORBERT BLEI

Finders Keepers

Find me in the desk drawer near the loose paper clips, broken pencils, illegible notebooks, old knives, dead fountain pens, wooden matches, faded love letters, and holy cards of the Blessed Mother...In Loving Memory of (mother) Passed Away: Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; ...he said. Find me in the back pocket with the loose button of the gray woolen pants on the bent hanger in the closet. The glove compartment with the water-stained yellow receipt for new brakes, faded road maps of Wisconsin, and the photograph torn in half under the seat of the white van stripped of engine parts and licence plates near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. In the coal bin of my father's basement and the wooden hand-painted black and red tool chest belonging to a great uncle who tuned pianos in Chicago at the turn of the century and saw visions of saints on fire flying round the parlor ceiling at night. In the hole of the prairie earth dug with boyish hands, covered with weeds and sticks to trap WWII Germans and Japs in the heart of the old neighborhood; and the package of Lucky Strike cigarettes stashed near the roots of a catalpa tree, under the rock the size and shape of a man's head. In the black leather pocketbook hanging forever from the wrist of the grandmother-who-sewed...buttons,seeds, hair pins, string, folded dollar bills, pennies, peppermint candy, a lace white handkerchief with a fancy letter K embroidered in red. The cellar of the northern farmhouse with shelves of preserves and Babi's glass egg wrapped in a paisley babushka. The bucket in back of the garage holding a chisel, glass doorknobs, broken hacksaw blade, spool of wire, lock washers, a Wisconsin license plate 1939, the split handle of a screw driver. The scented pillowcase beneath the woman's sleeping head, her pills, a pearl-handled knife, a gold band, a rosary, a pair of black stockings, a torn photograph of an uncertain lover...the other half of him.

Todd Moore

2006-05-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

laredo showed

me all the
bullet holes
in the side
of the
barn sd
this is
where i
tried to
write my
name in
gunfire
the little
holes were
the old 22
the big
ones came
from the
44-40
from the
looks of
it i didn't
spell so
good but
i liked the
way she
bucked

bruce

2006-05-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

hands crossed on her lap
right scratching left
in slow circles, absently
her clean white lines: like
a lily in a long-necked vase

"The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle"

2006-05-07T22:03:00.000-07:00

This album reminds me of the rootless days
when, young and uneasy, in shapeless cheap
jeans and ragged trainers, I shambled aimless
through all those warm or tepid summers,
dreaming of love and of writing glory
and not quite making either one.
I'm sentimental for them now, wish my mind
could be as free again, not encumbered
with all the useless luggage that I make
it carry. Then even old was new--my
weariness with everything a novel journey
and not one more outworn attitude, cold
as stale porridge in a bowl beside the couch.
I wore vests like the younger Springsteen
and tried to make Wellingborough
another Asbury Park, the romantically
unpromising old town that made me Me,
and all the girls in Wimpy uniforms
and all the dowdy shopfronts were pictures
of a Beat adventure straight out of Bruce,
albeit one that even then in bouts of
hopelessness I knew I'd never consummate.

Tim Sansom

2006-04-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

WHEN I WAS

When I was a boy aged five with pensive scrutiny
I looked and reckoned at Horn lane’s unceasing flow of cars
Apocalyptic fancies though a thought mode new to me
Soon corrupted how I heard the birds and saw the stars.

Calculating patterned growths and broken oaths I felt
Doubtless that we faced a vast impending wave of change
I sensed the cards of disregard which we mankind have dealt
To soon be shuffled by the earth and dealt back in her rage

Then aged ten complexities placed next to me had grown
With accelerations of unprecedented pace
Ruining at leisure tools to measure man was thrown
Into what appeared to be to me an alien place

A place where inconsistency insists to be a pest
By smashing into smithereens our ethics goals and faiths
With morals made like lemonade we’re fed and without rest
Subliminally a clueless viewless few indoctrinate

Then aged sixteen I first sat a different school of lessons
Innocent of truth that well intended kin hid well
My eyes opened to the present’s calibre of weapons
I was weak with disbelief their ease to unleash hell

I loved life being thirty and if given Godly choice
This I would have crystallised to time forever long
Balanced between spring of limbs and having found one’s voice
I could watch earth’s rising seas and choking trees whilst strong

In a twirling giddy month or two I’ forty-two
Weather’s jarred behaviour has the seasons bumping heads
Arsenals aren’t permitted to be owned by those who do
Order, peace and kindliness hang on today’s frayed threads.

TIM SANSOM is a Northampton-based musician and poet.

Bruce

2006-04-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

what I will remember

a taxi ride with you
through the roads around Wilby
two summers ago.
windows open a notch.
breeze flutters our hair
and on the car radio
'Summer Breeze' by the Isely Bros
coincidental, but perfect.
we are going to Northampton
catching a coach for Birmingham
our first big adventure.
you are animated
looking ahead at the road.
i keep touching your hand.
i'm amazed by the beauty
of the half-smile your face
wears in profile
puzzled like a curious child:
to be here with you
in the summer
in love--
such mysterious fortune.
i can't quite believe
i deserve it

Albert DeGenova

2006-04-16T11:23:00.000-07:00

Enough Space

give me the Blues
give me
the Blues
all the space I need
is three chords
to tell a howling
'ya beautiful honey'
knuckles cracking at sun-up story
give me the
Blues
with deep pockets of bass rhythm that pumps
like the heart of black earth and
dreams deferred.
The Blues is
enough room to breathe is
three chords
and a bit of sunlight
through dirt- and smoke-fogged
windows, the Blues
is an attic garret in
Paris or Prague or New York
or Chicago or
a sharecropper's shack in
Bogaloosa Lousiana -
where art
without any name at all
first cries its be-wah-wah-be-wah-dah.

give me enough space
give me the Ba-looos

Albert DeGenova is the Editor/ Publisher of "After Hours", a journal of Chicago writing and art (http://www.afterhourspress.com ). He's also one half of the performance poetry duo AvantRetro, which appears throughout the greater Chicago area. Of his first book "Back Beat", poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote, "Back Beat beats everything for being beater than the Beats."
More of Albert's poetry will appear in forthcoming issues of ANGEL HEAD.

Bruce

2006-04-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Spring

the bare trees
have bird villages
on top

Bruce

2006-04-14T05:16:00.000-07:00

controversy on the bus
the pensioners are treated
to a culture clash

my moustache versus yours
seeing each other off
through a perspex window

just give me my change,
driver, we'll act like
Woodstock never happened

fallen angel heads

2006-04-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

from angel head #2

Ralph Murre

Flyin high this angel
wings still beating that
thrump thrump thing
we used to hear
Here, here!
Glasses of econobeer raised
bkerouac praised
May the beat go on
be it angelic at midnight
or wee hour demonic
thrump thrump thing
transatlantic
harmonic

(bkerouac was for a long time not only the editor's admonition to himself--ie, be like Kerouac--that is, write with surreal elastic eye and deep soul--but also his email address. It now serves as part of the URL for ANGEL HEAD)

Two Poems

us, then
young eyes smiled as stars
but words carried sad world's cloud
as we sipped coffee
music of strange lands
flavor of warm baklava
sweetness of struggle
we would eat, often at the same table
never shared, though, were our cold, narrow beds
honeyed afternoons
of vinegar morning'd days
dark weight of unrest
pickets of protest
united in common cause
desired each other
like magnetic poles, unable to touch
we were attracted to what would not be

My Room

Asian art.
A haiku, framed.
And there was dirt.
There was dirt and mess--lots of both--
in what I had hoped would be my wonderfully
neat somehow Japanese black-floored room.
I thought by creating the room I could
create a nice new self. A neat self.
White walls angled upward to apex of beauty
now spider webs but they have the right
I suppose to use what I can't reach.
High corners. Peaked ceiling.
I'm not tall after all.
Window to the east--morning light
now filtered through fly specks and blue streak.
Flies have to live too or spiders starve.
Sleeping mat, disheveled covered with books
my bad art--no girls.
Floor mat, beyond repair.
Some shoes, creepy.
Sandals, really creepy.
Clothes, never in style anywhere piled everywhere.
Never in style anywhere--no girls.
Really creepy--no girls.
Not in my room.
Not tonight.
Not soon.
Can't remember the haiku

fallen angel heads

2006-04-13T08:33:00.000-07:00

from angel head # 2

ronald baatz

on the fourth day
i named the fly
howard

an icy evening
a bowl of noodles and thoughts
of a naked woman

in the driveway
shoveling snow that's the same
eerie white as the moon

lonely pussy willows~
the only place snow
seems to be sticking

we act like children
laughing when i fart in bed
between my bony legs

in the window
enough leafless branches
to weave me a coffin

the rake~
of no use against
the constant rain

a rare thunderstorm in march
knocks the bread machine
out of commission

screeching like baby birds
in a crowded nest~
dumplings frying

out in the field
waiting to piss
it starts raining first

after the game
the chess pieces stand around
shocked at what happened

old crow
so close to dying~
why walk across that frozen pond?

fallen angel heads

2006-04-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

(title Ralph Murre)

The Angel Head Archive Space

from angel head # 2

t.kilgore splake

untitled

on the road darkness
lonesome hours passing
driven by mad desires
awash black guiness bitters
super high buzz
stiff foamy beard
holy outlaw poet
moving beyond
well-rounded schoolboy
dickhead first class
reenacting others lives
chasing after silence
listening for voices
seeking faces
emery margaret
paula barbara olga
dreamy nightmare

winter day into darkness

earlier CLIFFS ravens
raucous insouciant
cockandballs
pussyandtits
piercing arctic clarity
lone wolf
zig-zagging prints
light powdery dusting
driven by hunger
warm mate hot rut
cattails snowy cones
distant muted church chimes
shadowy dusk falling
shrouding fifth street "le metrops"
five o'clock home bound
headlights eerie glow
bardic graybeard
soft amazing grace
light blue-ribbon buzz
keen alky perspective
backwater poet
living on the cheap
karma properly aligned
free to sit
play buddha

SHARON AUBERLE

2006-04-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

CHOICES

A man sits hunched on steps.
The light around him is fragile.

Rain begins, spotting his thin shirt.
He smokes, the smell mingles with wet.

Across the river, lightning sparks
over a silent carousel.

We are waiting for a bus
to take us in from the rain.

For a moment
I could love him.

The bus arrives, rain pours.
We board, he slips quietly to the back.

I hear two women reading from a book:
what if you could choose your own death?

One reads to the other. They giggle. I don't
think I could love them.

A man sits next to me.
He looks like the Dalai Lama.

Yes, I will love him,
spinning silently

on the carousel
in the rain.

SHARON AUBERLE will have more poems in a forthcoming edition of ANGEL HEAD.

captain america comes home from the road

2006-04-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

i watched him die. i held him in my arms and saw the life drain out of his uncomprehending eyes. i watched him die.
they shot my bike out from under me. two yahoos with a big gun driving where no law could reach them. they left me bloody under the burning teardrop gas tank. fire consumed the stars and stripes that had been painted there.
and now i'm here again, in "the old hometown". only, it doesn't look the same. (i watched him die.)
how are you gonna go back when everything has changed?
pool games on a friday night. lonely girls, sad derelict beauties in search of a love connection they think they'll only get thru sex. old drunks who know too much to be mad at anyone. these are my companions in the neon-lit darkness of the bars.
i lie awake for days smoking, stare at the damp rot circle in the ceiling and wait for it to fall. old freaks come by with roaches gossip plans. i send them all away. i can't stand them anymore. i can't stand anyone.
i get a gun. (I WATCHED HIM DIE). my plan is to decorate my bathroom walls with blood, join Billy where it doesn't hurt. tomorrow. today there is no reason. today there's nothing but the memory of his face in death.
every time i shut my eyes i watch him die again

GARY BECK

2006-03-31T21:25:00.000-08:00

DISPOSABLE YOUTH

The badly decomposed body
of a young boy was discovered
stuffed in a plastic garbage bag,
near a South Bronx housing project.
The police arrived at 9.00 A.M.
responding to a 911 emergency call
and found an 18 month old child,
who looked like he had been dead for days.
They hauled the lifeless child away
in a green plastic body bag,
and no one cared, or waved good-bye,
or even knows where the body lie

GARY BECK lives in New York. More of his poetry is scheduled to appear in ANGEL HEAD.

First Day of Summer

2006-03-31T08:47:00.000-08:00

The sun today is brighter than it's been all year,
pouring from the left over my neighbour's roof.
The birds chatter like crowds at an opera intermission.
Men slam car boots. Wind flutters through their uncombed hair.
I won't do anything today except shop for wine,
then lay back and dream awake all afternoon
like the dust motes floating in these streams of light.

~Bruce

Nostalgia

2006-03-12T16:55:00.000-08:00

How I miss
those old worlds
that exist now
only in my head,
like when Elvis
was alive and
everybody knew
he was the King,
before videos
were rotated
endlessly on
music stations
and new young
kids disrespected
any sound that
wasn't computerised.
How I wish
I could return
to legends of
the 1950s
re-enacted by us
two decades on
in clubs where there
were always fights,
walking home along
the back roads
trying to roll
like Danny Zuko,
our parents home
waiting who had
been there when,
and understood.
Elvis, rock and roll,
our parents, these
were constant
points of reference;
now the reference
can only be
our memory of
what has passed,
ghosts of universes
once everything
now absolutely gone,
and substituted
by scenes, people,
alien to me,
conventions I
don't wish to buy.
I feel homeless,
as if cut adrift
in unfamiliar waters
remembering
the life I had. If
only one could go
back! I'd do it now
and walk on
safer streets tomorrow,
heading down to
Dix's with the
boys for chips,
pissing contests out
the toilet windows
in the Arndale,
our silver streams
descending on
the people waiting
at the bus stop
on Commercial Way

Steve Urwin, County Durham

2006-03-05T07:27:00.000-08:00

I always feel greasy when I wear this coat; I can smell the wax on my hands. And the onion-breath clouding my speech as I regret these hours; cobblestoned streets and freezing sleet as I stand huddled in some doorway gnawing at the thick wedge of stotty oozing bloody sauce and grease. Double steakburger and...grease? No, I don't think I asked for that. Regret; I always feel it when squandering is the order of the day and the weather is of little ease. And the cocksure little students--well-versed in Eliot and Shelley, Wordsworth and Byron--pretty little things, storing up data and spewing out fact--not an ounce of soul between them... Bitterness, bitterness, here it is; the bitterness born of insecurity. I always feel it. I always feel greasy when I wear this coat and it rains and Durham is my destination; scurrying like a demented rat, from bus station to burger stall; from wet street to Waterstones--and trips to the cash-point inevitable. Ah, the guilt. The smell, the wax. This rat; my greasiness.

This Morning

2006-03-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

This morning
I am broken
by my need
for you.

Your absence
makes this
cold house
colder.

I made a
you to sit
and make
me ache
at dawn
for loneliness.

Which shows
I love you,
and tells
of our
approaching end.

~ Bruce.

Untitled

2006-03-01T12:22:00.000-08:00

I stayed in the car while they went in to shop.
I was tired,and needed to get some sleep.
So, relaxing in the front seat, I pressed the button
to retune the radio, from the r & b my travelling
companions favoured to a symphony;
then I shut my eyes.

They came back in half an hour,
laden down with bags, and high from the neon hustle
of a supermarket on a Friday night. "Ah, opera!"
one shrieked. "Ah, look at him, so cultured,
such an old man dozing in his seat!"

My peace was gone. As we drove out she reached
between my arms and pressed the tuner until
the r & b came back. Its slow beat and soul vocals
counterpoised. "That's better. No more of that
artsy-fartsy noise." And the rest seemed to agree
with her. The unease that had greeted Amadeus
at Sainsbury's vanished in a careless rhyme.

I am too English. I couldn't tell them
they reminded me of children stuffed narcoleptic
with Coke and crisps on a long trip home
from seeing grandparents. I couldn't say
how much I wanted her to get out of my car
for her bristling aversion to Mozart's higher art.

And so we drove on through Northampton streets,
my travelling companions hypnotised
by the trilling harmonies and the easy grooves
oozing from the radio. And I not speaking.
Perhaps we'd make the drive-thru
before we started dropping people off.