LOSING MY MIND ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Sunday afternoon and whilst outside
Town loses its collective mind in a
Show of pride from which no one will
Emerge with anything except damaged
Minds and damaged bodies i sit here
Deranging my mind, all in a bid to forget.

There is so much right now which
Begs to be set free from the recesses
Of my mind; a nemesis back in town
But only until tomorrow and, so far,
No word from them.  A drink in my
Local but this weekend that just
Repulses me with the idea of 6 pound
Pints served in plastic cups and then,
The thought of work, and how they
Phoned me earlier, asking if i could
Go in tonight to which i simply said
No way, not today, need more rest.

I crave a return to normality as here
More than anywhere else i can just
About handle that, provided the joints
Keep coming and the bar at the end
Of the road has a stool waiting for me.

Bradford Middleton lives in Brighton on England’s south coast. His debut poetry collection ‘Given Half a Chance Anything Goes Around Here’ is now available from the Alien Buddha Press. Recent poems have appeared in the Paper & Ink Zine, Mad Swirl, A Thin Slice of Anxiety and Beatnik Cowboy.

Street trees of Birmingham

I like to stop and look at the candle tips of
the white beam trees in the street
occasionally an oak 
more often a lime 
on Edgbaston Park Road there is a plane
solid reaching mass of green 
by the church swirling chestnut trees
and the coach station 
imported olives in giant planters 
made of composite stone 
along the River Rea 
pollarded willows 
alders and ash whipped banks 
in the sun
seared 
I like to rest beneath the canopy 
of the cherry trees on Cartland Road 
in the shade 
and watch shadows lace the long grass 
the council stopped cutting 
at the end of the world 
your flat feet
they sound like a reproach on the concrete paved floor
I’ve been here for so long 
I felt you recoil from me in the dark 
and come back again
in the sylvan scape 
every wrought and twisted branch 
drenched in electric light

Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki is a gardener and writer from Birmingham, England. He writes about trees and plants (mostly) and people (sometimes) and other unimportant things. His work has featured both in print and online including Pulp Poets Press, Lunar Sea Literary, Fixator Press, Password, The Lake, Sextet, Alocasia and 100subtexts magazine.

Psychobabble

I toss words around in my mind
which make no real sense. I mold them
into psychobabble and spit them 
out into a world where no one

is ready and willing to try 
to understand how painful it
is to form them. Like a riddle 
of gibberish, I create them.

None of these words have a name. I 
toss them against shadows. I see
them trembling in the darkest parts.

I cast the words into the void.
They are something from a dream I
would never welcome as I sleep.

Luis was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His latest chapbook, Make the Light Mine, was published by Kendra Steiner Editions. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Mad Swirl, Unlikely Stories, and Yellow Mama Magazine. 

Receiver (Only) “Come Give”

“Synthetic ‘Emotions’
… the Mimic
and Pantomime…
if I ‘Reserve’,
yet be open
to ‘Receive’
… the Warmth
and Springtime…
of the ‘Courting
Stage’… up into
the ‘Middle-ish’
section of the
‘Honeymoon Period’
… lining-up
‘Options’
ready for cold,
harsh DISCARD
…I Gain
and ‘Win’ by Default.”

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since. His novel “Crazy Like Emotion” is published by Close To The Bone. Short story collection “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry collections “It Is Big And It Is Clever”, “South Wales Outlaw”, “The Gutter Symposium”, “The Dark Side Of British Poetry” and “Uncivil Disobedience Is My Forte” are published by Hunsbury Press.

Dandelions

He called me in for two hours a week
to hack back brambles, cut the lawns.
As I crawled from steps to terrace,
he followed, belittling his family
and his last gardener.

The next week it rained, so he pointed
from the window at weeds I’d missed,
and when I missed a weed
he’d pointed at, he banged on the glass.
I cleared dandelions

from the gravel drive. When I’d finished,
he held the money back and shouted
about how I hadn’t shaken enough
sand from the roots: Carry on like this
and I won’t have a drive left.

I nodded, and he relaxed his grip
on the money, which I took.

Paul Bavister has published three collections of poetry with Two Rivers Press. His work has appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Soup Can and Drawn to the Light.

Old Toys

The old toys
still sit in my mother’s attic
like retired soldiers
nobody thanked.

One missing an eye.
One permanently smiling.
One with dirt still packed
inside the wheels
from a summer
that no longer exists.

Funny how
children abandon things
the same way adults
abandon each other.

Quietly.
Without ceremony.

And somewhere
inside a cardboard box
a small plastic dinosaur
still believes
I am coming back for him.

Leon Drake has been published in Spill The Words Press, Horror Sleeze Trash,
Synchronized Chaos, S.A.V.A. Press and the Crossroads Magazine.

A line from J. P. Donleavy

Sometimes you’re not the same
person. Maybe you don’t miss the
old versions, are glad they’ve gone
away. No condolence messages,

but these days most people think
they tend to be overdone, that
they’ve lost any sincerity they
might have had. & even though

you agree with that, occasionally
you turn a corner & meet some stray
thought or image moving towards
you, to remind you of your past.

Mark Young’s most recent books are synecdoche, published earlier this year by Sandy Press, &
a recent downloadable pdf, Curtains, from Neo-Mimeo Editions. A collection of visual pieces, In
the Key of G, is due out later this year.

Cigarette burns

(for Britt)

Bushido cowboys- out in the open

Smoking opium long pipedreams

Dangerous configurations

Mystic transition

Blowing smoke rings across a body in outer-space fantasy while waxing poetic nightmare-esque
sequences in a Saigon jail…

Transfixed by the glowing cherry of a cigarette

Nicotine sweat makes skin glow like cotton candy

Be kind

Rewind

It’s an analog mutant mixed madness kind of way

Where nothing is as it seems

Reality but shards of fragmented collections

Elvis mugshot from DEA agent daze under Vegas lights

Nocturnal hawks descend

Wet copper descent

Ash pressed into red skin

Encircled

Blood moon eyes

Long night goodbyes

How I wish

Keeping window shut

Could prevent us

You and I

With our smoking sensual ventures

From going out

Everything burns

Mike Zone is the author of: Wonderful Turbulence, Fuck You: A Fucking Poetry Chap,
& The Earth Was Shaking For Days and Shedding Dark Places (almost) along
with being the co-author of The Grind and Razorville. A frequent contributor to: Alien Buddha
Press and Mad Swirl. His work has been featured in: A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Horror Sleaze
Trash, Better Than Starbucks, Piker Press, Punk Noir Magazine, Synchronized Chaos and Cult
Culture Magazine.

As the best man

At his wedding
I quoted Byron,

“We’ll no more go a roving
so late into the night….”

Forty years later,
at his funeral,
I was speechless

Alan Catlin has several new books, Work Anxiety Poems (Roadhouse) The Naked City, related short stories, (Anxiety Press and Still Life with Apocalypse (Sheila Na Gig Editions.)

Redneck Shaman
for ron whitehead

i think it was bill hicks
who said fuck the dali lama

the world is on fire
& i can’t hear what you’re saying
over the clanging
of clammy beer bottles
& i wonder if i’m supposed
to be enjoying myself
the only thing
i know for certain
is that your beard
looks cool.

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of
poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020),
Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis
Chronicles Press, 2023) and Dead Photographs, (Stubborn Mule Press, 2024). He may be
reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.