Artificial Music 

Unwritten exceptions,
undermined escapes,
our novel approach.

Tactical engagements
of unspent collateral
in linear non-speak.

Suggestion surrenders,
impulses as electrical
discarded warnings.

Uninvited
in my own body,
I want yours.

Trying to be human
in this android factory of
dazzling spare parts.

Immobile until
inertia surrenders
remote possibilities

Love becomes
a tempting commodity
others manufacture.

We take our places
as if an assembly line
of the latest models.

Electrical impulses
through liquor placebos
we test for sparks.

To artificial music
on crowded dance floor
take tentative steps.

Lacking direction
we slow dance until
only we remain.

Rp Verlaine, a retired English teacher living in NYC, has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He has several collections of poetry including Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers (2018) and Lies From The Autobiography 1-3 (2018-2020). Rp’s work has been featured in Punk Noir, Ygdrasil, and Runcible Spoon.

That Was Many A Moon Ago

Sometimes the chill of the season matches the distance from me and my soul.
All the old faces are but photographs captured within my mind.

There’s magic in youth that if I knew the destination, I cannot say if I would have endured the
journey.

Sometimes holding onto a ghost, beats holding onto nothing at all.

I remember the reflections of what I once considered love captured within another’s eyes.
We always linger upon the verge and dance upon the brink.

Cold winds and a gentle embrace, I never wanted anything beyond a moment’s escape
entwined with you.

You’ve officially reached your destination.
The season is now as empty as my reflection.

Here’s a toast to the loves that we shall never know again.

STATEN ISLAND FERRY

We can see as one,
from many boats,
the beauty –
from the ferry to Staten Island,
from a kayak in the sound,
of souls, white steamers,
like diamonds resurrected
from lumps of coal,
in the clock face –
that’s us, young together,
magicians headed for a shore
that confounds so many
but is the perfect landing place for us.

Our intellect
is like feet on wet soil,
visioned on the rivers of the world,
like a verb, that immaculate engine,
both of us, making tracks up the dock
and laughing – now I lead, now you lead –
swift and slow, slow and swift,
smell of smoke, some city buildings,
leafless lots and emerald flame
from the bloodshot sunset,
feel like I’ve cashed a big check
though my pockets are empty,
burrow deep in the rushes
in the wake of our getting here.

This time we’ll buy up
the parks and the houses,
with a broken bottle
you just about step on,
where a condom half-buried
backs up to the bus terminal,
and the small hand of a child –
where’s the poolhall?
where’s the jazz club?
where’s the jail?
where’s the doors throw open?
but there’s shelter in stupor,
there’s wine in abandonment,
there’s hallowing in the dark to come.

standard ritual
for lost friends

rattle of your pills
severed by thin partition walls

into a shaking hand
like you once held a pencil

once upon a time
a cigarette

an echo against the box

she would think of you
like a caged memory

in your stomach
where hope is kept

an alchemical reaction

a toast
to better days

 

Omaha Song #3
for jay kreimer

one man’s swamp
is a field filled with music
an old tire swing
a lonely swimming pool
with grass turned brown
where every girl
is a metaphor
for a firefly
drowning in an
empty
beer bottle.

 

 

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including, Which Way to the River: Selected Poems 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), and Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles, 2021). He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Every day’s a Tuesday here

she was dancing with ganesh
I just had him on a T-shirt

stones went slipping into the lake
ducks sclattering

a ramshackle cocoon boomed
the lake on fire

replacing ‘I am’ with space
in the end, they bite just the same

the moon gibboussing
the monk walking through in his
cerise robes
squeezed & pleased

a vector of sounds
instead of sights
ducts to ducks
vapour pouring off the underworld
what would be smoke now stilled

the fairy stock, the pixie carnations
sold out
narcissus jangular
little blue irises
please the teacher

a pundit for cosmogeneity
crosses on all fours
doesn’t get his knees wet

a paucity of deal-breakers
slapdash alternated
hands in the ruck

he wore knee pads
under his onesie
no harm in looking after yourself
in the rocky clouds

Where everything revolves around you
or, an egoid of poets

surfboard stuck upright in the sands
like a gravestone
for the living

Every day’s a Tuesday here

THIS IS THE FIELD

this is not the field
for truth to grow in.
its furrowed lips are sealed
with knowing
nothing can sing
in the wrong wind.
the crop is stunted
self-expression blunted
opinion gagged
and head sagged
waiting for the final blow
from the farmer’s shadow.
the field hands
cut to His commands
and every leathered face
has served in its place
like all the others, for centuries
in these peasant penitentiaries,
without bolting
or revolting
in union, except for Loveless’s Tolpuddle few,
who knew what to do
but were jailed, or transported
and thwarted.
this is the field
to refuse to yield
in. at Peterloo, sabres slit gullets,
and now, tear gas and rubber bullets,
try to abolish workers’ rights,
but our solidarity is stronger and fights.

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry  https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. 

His poetry has been published in over 200 publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner and Literary Yard Journal.

Safest Place to Be

They’re screaming
far back on a distant street

sagging roofs
foundations cracking

sunset reflecting
vibrating windowpanes

straining voices
under currents of crying

a country collapse
no time to pack

domino effect
slapping faces and rumps

pistol pulling
no bullets to pop

frantic arguments
which door to yank

sudden helicopter
wide circling overhead

sirens blasting
all directions hopeless

I stand in place
on my cold homeless corner

out in the open
safest place to be

at least for now.

 

In the Bitcoin Era

The cavalry approaches — or is
it Calvary. I get mixed up when
people are bellicose around the
time of religious festivals. Ponti-
fication. Fits both alternatives. A
Pope in jodhpurs, ready to ride off
to meet the Uhlans who are far
closer than anyone was aware,
since the cackling geese, the early
warning system of their time, have
been removed from Rome for
economic reasons. That, & for the
dinner plans of another religious
festival. Elsewhere, & for others,
it is a time of fasting as I watch —
one feed across many YouTube
channels — the minor pilgrimage,
Umrah, the Kaaba circled anti-
clockwise, by a peaceful crowd.

Tornado Dodgers

The trailer park resident
waits at a forever detour for a thank you
from a gated compound privilege.
Suburban and urban dwellers
contribute to the joke butt
by retreading in public canned sitcoms.

Flooring an accelerator
on the extraction principals,
a high roller cartoon character
takes, only, too busy to hail a cab
or to let up on the poor.

Government regulatory administrators
tire while sitting in the emergency vehicle
with four flat tires and a bumper dimple.
The red tape that comes with a legislative bill
doesn’t hold long before private sector
moths eat loopholes for trucks.

And pathways to wealth for clerks exhaust:
Promotion to a hedge fund right hand
wears down shoe leather too
but worth the deadening exercise.

“Trash” piles just off the highway
for the eventual blind sacrifice.

Rich Murphy’s poetry has won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice Americana (2013) and The Left Behind (2021) and Gival Press Poetry Prize Voyeur (2008). Space Craft by Wipf and Stock also came out 2021. Books Prophet Voice Now, essays by Common Ground Research Network and Practitioner Joy, poetry by Wipf and Stock 2020. He has published seven other collections of poetry.