Bruce

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

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

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

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

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

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

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tim Sansom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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.