I use the theater
as a place to duck away
when I’m lost or high
or too drunk to drive
or otherwise can’t go home.
Doesn’t matter what’s showing
or what the weather is like
or what time of day.
I float on into the dark
amniotic dreamhouse
with its carpeted walls
and sticky cement floors
and plush rocking movie chairs
and settle into the shadows…
sometimes I see something good,
sometimes I pass right out,
sink through the floor,
gone, and later rise up
to re-enter the world…

"Allegory of the Cave" (photo by Flickr user Digit ● AL)

The Eye Opens

When you’re on a three-day bender
there inevitably comes
a moment when you slip,
when the chemical levels dip,
and you catch a glimpse of yourself,
usually in some underground bar
bathroom with green tile
and overflowing trash
and the darkest rank odor
of cloacal human existence,
and there in the mottled mirror
you see not what you would recognize
as yourself but an amplified lizard
with eyes like two dull pennies
embedded in wet cement,
and the urge to look further is
only overridden by
the necessity of vomiting,
and then you’re on your way
believing it was all a dream.

"Beware / Little Five Points" (photo by Flickr user Milena Mihail)

Five Points Bar and Grille

somewhere downtown,
with a sign over the door saying
We Cheat Tourists-N-Drunks Since 1929,
a poor woman out front
leaning down unraveling
bandages from her swollen legs,
and a tour bus comes cruising by
with windows full of gawking faces
staring at the people standing
in line outside the foodbank,
or just sitting around on iron grates,
nowhere to go on a Sunday afternoon,
streets mostly empty under cloud cover,
cars moving slow and dark,
and police arrive and hassle some kid
who’s obviously down on his luck,
and isn’t that the way it goes?
When you’re down,
gravity just seems to hit harder.
This is not a world for the weak.
We’ve written a script without much sympathy.
At least that’s how I feel today.
And I know those tour bus people
with their cameras and their pursed
judgmental looks are thinking,
well you got what you deserved,
you’ve got your just reward,
even with their own stories of abuse,
sleeping around and lying about it,
keeping money found in a wallet,
drinking to the brink of oblivion or over.
Some people get away with it.
That’s all. That’s how it goes.
The public bus just arrived—
as long as we stay in the city,
we ride for free.

–

Douglas Cole has had work published in The Connecticut River Review, Louisiana Literature, Cumberland Poetry Review, and Midwest Quarterly. He also has work online in The Adirondack Review, Salt River Review, and Avatar Review, among others. He recorded a story for Bound Off, and has work forthcoming in the Red Rock Review. He has won the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry for a selection of work called, “The Open Ward.” He lives in Seattle, Washington and teaches writing and literature at Seattle Central College, where he is also the advisor for the literary journal, Corridors.

“I can’t stand being here.”

“I can’t stand being.”

"Facebook Friend" (photo by Flickr user Andrew Sorensen)

False Truths and Fake Promises

She glances at my bandaged wrists, then looks away.

“You could’ve talked to me,” she whispers.

I glare. “Get out.”

–

The Silent Treatment

“Why?” her tears scream, and for the first time, I don’t know how to answer.

–

Carter Meyer is a poet, short fiction writer, and occasional singer from Orange, New Jersey, and can be found on most days reading a volume of poetry or humming under her breath. She is the editor-in-chief of Seamless Magazine (which is currently on hiatus) and lives in Maine.

Tonight
it seems
that I just cannot find
two words
that
rhyme

Damned Erato, fickle bitch
I’ll show you what is which

Out with you like worn-out shoes
I’ve found myself another muse

One who likes me and comes when I call
This one’s not like you at all

No, not like you at all, at all
My new muse is called alcohol

Now I compose with simple pleasure
Memorable verses in perfect measure

Malt inspires by the  deciliter
So now I write in any meter

Sonnets, cinquains, and all the rest
Scotch inspires me quite the best

Damned Erato, untrustworthy muse
Single malt now my verse imbues

With towering lyrical flourishes
While my brain it steadily nourishes

Damned Erato, just for you
I’ll pen a scathing clerihew

Damned Erato, you dreadful old hag
Inspiration, damn you, not nag nag nag

Coleridge flew on the wings of his opium
While I pull the cart of your opprobrium

Damned Erato, while that thought lingers
I’ll pour myself another two fingers

And should I happen to drink enough
Of this wonderfully inspiring stuff

Then perhaps Calliope will come to call
She’ll bring me verses that amaze and enthrall

My lyrics infused with meaning so deep
I really need to get some sleep

But memory of Erato is not without sorrow
And I do hope I remember this shit tomorrow

"Erato, la musa che provoca desiderio #2" (photo by Flickr user Flavio Leone)

Reflection on Reality

Dropped like a brass plummet into this mood
Of dark melancholious lassitude
How came I lately there to be pursued?
By this constant, chafing, dare I say rude?
Demand for dull verisimilitude
From that clam’ring odious multitude
Of decorous morons who call me “dude”
I revile them all in terms purple hued:
Reality’s for those who should be zoo’d
Or ark’d if gladly they in pairs be queued
Confined to mirror gazing servitude
That I would most enjoyably elude
Beyond the glass their rules may be eschewed
And the red queen’s minions happily viewed

"Reality in a bottle" (photo by Flickr user Stefan Thiesen)

Lymphoma Blues

I been to the doctor jes’yest’day.
So what’d he tell you?  What’d he say?

Say he give me an em-phatic answer.
Hell no, fool, you got lymphatic cancer.

Don’t understan’ you, cain’t follow yo’ gist.
They’s jes’ the words of yo’ on-col-o-gist.

Well, I don’t heed no clinical minion.
Maybe you needs a second opinion.

Got no truck wi’ them medical highers.
Cain’t all of ‘em be scoundrels ‘n’ liars.

Hell, I’m jes’ a young man, too young to die.
They done crossed yo’ t ‘n’ dotted yo’ i.

They don’t know nothin’, I say hell wi’ them.
Mavis can sing you a nice requiem.

Bastards won’t get me, I’ll stay on my feet.
Orv does a drum roll with a nice slow beat.

Comes to dyin’, I jes’ know that I cain’t.
Preacher’ll say you was almost a saint.

Jes’ turn away now ‘n’ don’t watch me cry.
It’s O.K., son.  Hell, we all got to die.

–

William Dexter Wade is the nom de plume of a de-frocked priest who makes his living by translating ancient, possibly apocryphal, Hittite erotica. A mahjong grand master despite his absinthe addiction, he shares a room with as many as thirteen creative derelicts at the St. Christina the Astonishing Shelter for the Homeless in Istanbul.

“Watch the attack of the mad ax man”
—Michael Schenker Group

He sat in his lawn chair, in front of his cabin, with birds singing and wind whispering the needles of his pines. He had on boots, Levi’s and a lumberjack shirt. He had one leg straight, and one bent and under the chair. He held his ax in his hands.

The smaller trees were calling him again. Those bullies of great stature needed to be taken down a notch and give the small trees and shrubs a chance to catch the sun and for them to grow too.

He was some sort of mad reverse botanist, a bringer of ax and lightning. An example of how the woods can talk to man a little too much. Not what Thoreau had in mind.

"nd 119" (photo by Flickr user Travis K)

“Please help us grow. These bully trees take all the sunshine. Just because we are the wrong type, or color, or height or don’t have flowers to beautify the woods, the bully trees take away our sunshine, sunshine.”

He heard their calls and got up with his ax and bare hands to open up the sky. I can’t save you all, but like the man who throws a hundred starfish back to the ocean when 10,000 have washed up, I can make a difference.

He walked into the woods, and the voices came from every little bush, sapling tree, vine and moss.  “Save us, save us, save us, save us.”

Thwack, into a great large base he cut. And blood-like sap flowed onto his ax and into the ground, and down the the bottom and roots. Thwack, he went with sharpened precision into the meat of the bully tree. It took his slices and dices with a stance that said, “Fuck you, little lumberjack.” Thwack you, too.

When he felled the trees, he never took into account that he was crushing others along the way that were in the giant’s path. For those that were to see the light, it was a great deed. For those that were killed, like the big tree and the saplings in the path of the felled giant, it was murder.

But he cut on. And the big tree fell. In a crushing crash of tangled branches and vines and bush, it hit the forest floor and bounced and shook hundred year-old dust into the air.

He sat on the tree like a knight who has felled a dragon. A human-eating machine who spews fire and poison and is a genuine menace to society. He sat on a tree, like it was a mass murderer given lethal injection. What took a hundred years to grow took him minutes to fell. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

Evil, Eager Beaver

As soon as Mr. Soo heard the crash, he knew Carl had dropped another one of his trees.  It was never on Carl’s land. It was rarely on any other’s land. It was always him that had his trees felled by the great evil beaver, Carl. Only his little trees and bushes called out to be saved.

"Beaver" (photo by Flickr user Brett)

“Oh, that goddamn Carl. I know it was you again. Fuck!”

He had to calm down.  It was always something with these backwoods Arizona folks. Poaching, cutting down trees, teenage beer parties. His land must have had a sign that said “Do Your Worst” on it.

He went into his cabin to call the sheriff.

“Hi Billy, it’s Mr. Soo. I just heard a big crash out there. I know it’s a tree of mine.”

“John, don’t you go out there. It’s only me at the phone here. Terry is getting coffee and some breakfast. I’ll have him stop by and get you first. But don’t you go out there. You know if it’s Carl he’s got the ax and saws and he’s not right.”

“I’ll wait.”

He held back the curtain and looked out into the woods. He sighed and sat down in his favorite chair and took a sip of tea.

–

Louis Marvin is living the dream life in Honolulu with his Chinese girls. Born in Burbank, raised in Arizona, dreaming in Hawaii. Visit http://louismarvinlives.webs.com & http://roobardookie.webs.com for more STUFF.

Maybe I was talking too much.
Maybe I let it slip–

I knew somebody,
somebody who could get things done.

St. Brigid, go gcuidímid.
I guess I used to say it,

dropping names, and I heard
this one from my grandmother;

she was from the old country
and knew things, a lot

more than anyone knew: St Brigid…
and yeah, I said it,

said she could help me–
and then she said something, but

I wasn’t thinking at the time,
didn’t realize what it meant.

“Could she make someone’s dick
fall off?” I thought she was joking.

It was only later when I remembered
how she complained, how often

she talked about her husband–
it was clear that she wasn’t happy.

When I read about him in the paper
I just didn’t put it together–

two plus two, you know.  St Brigid–
I never heard before of a dick falling off.

"St. Brigid of Kildare" (image by Flickr user Lawrence OP)

THE SACRED HEART
–for the police report

Copper pipes–that’s all
they took. All they wanted.
The big-screen, the stereo,

all the rest just a short walk
out the broken back door,
where they must have parked

in clear view of the neighbors,
but they weren’t interested.
Or they were just in a hurry.

There is a list I put together
while I was waiting, things
I wish they’d taken, but no

such luck. That picture there,
for example, the god-awful
thing leaning in the corner;

that hung for forty years,
a bloody scar on the wall
of my mother’s living room.

I could never bring myself
to throw it out. Can I say it
was among the things taken?

But apparently they only wanted
copper. It’s just not my day
And for what? A couple,

three, four dollars an ounce?

"Orange - Day 36" (photo by Flickr user √oхέƒx™)

“TO BE—”

I think about suicide, too,
three times a day,

at least, but
long ago

I realized what
I would be missing,

and topping the list
was orange juice,

and, well, that’s all
I needed to know.

I still think of suicide;
nothing’s changed,

but it’s the o.j.,
three times a day,

at least, that
keeps me going.

–

Louis McKee has poems recently or forthcoming in APR, Free Lunch, Paterson Poetry Review, 5 A.M., Chiron Review, Verse Wisconsin, and Nerve Cowboy, among others. River Architecture, a book of selected poems, was published in 1999, and a collection of newer work, Near Occasions of Sin, appeared in 2006. More recently, Adastra Press has published Marginalia, a volume of his translations from Old Irish monastic poems. Still Life, a chapbook of poems, has recently been issued from FootHills, and Jamming, a prize winner, from TLOLP. His 1987 collection, No Matter, was republished by Seven Kitchens Press in July 2011.