Once an alpha-male poet with a heart of gold virtue signals sobriety takes women out in recovery for ice-cream sexually assaults them like a five-year-old
XXX galactica
ONE-SHEET Technical difficulties Teleporter atrocities in… SPACE! Zombie STDS who you saying is dead? Ghostship cathedrals emerge Blackholes an interstellar porno story
I am the NPC in someone else’s reality, a side character in someone else’s story. There is no dragon to slay and no maiden to lay in the castle dungeon, just a prison. There are no quests, no mythical and magical lands, no courage in my chest and no powers from my hand. There is no consequence for my absence or presence, as just another glitch in the matrix.
Exploding Head Syndrome
In my tired mind, Chris crossed wires create copper currents, infusing blown fuses with stuttering static synapses shocking the senses into hallucinations of white noise black outs.
Little Poem
I am a little poem, made, not born, as rough scrap paper drafts folded into paper airplanes crash landing through blizzards of crumpled snow balls into the overflowing recycling bin until the inevitable avalanche. But with too many words to write, there are only so many empty pages of white.
Chris Butler is an illiterate poet. He has previously published 500 poems, including his 10 book “Poems of Pain” series, including Artsy Fartsy (Alternating Current Press), BUMMER (Scars Publications), Neurotica (Down in the Dirt) and DOOMER (Ethel Press). He co-wrote a book of poems, Dead Beats, with Dr. Randall K. Rogers. He is also the co-editor of The Beatnik Cowboy literary journal.
THE CRITIC AND OTHER STORIES is a gripping collection of 13 gritty short stories that will keep you on the edge of your seat! Some readers may even find some of the material disturbing. Each story sparks a different emotion, touching on a wide range of topics. Featuring tales of bitter love, hard life lessons, imminent death, business trip savages, assault on a critic, a serial killer novelist, crime family disputes, religion, politics, and more. Narrated from the point of view of various characters in and around the district of Reykjavík.
This book is translated from Icelandic by David McDuff and the Author except for “The Nazi” by Philip Roughton and “The Wrath of Jehova” by Sola Bjarnadottir O ́Connell. “Death Comes At Daybreak,” and “Into the Fire” are translated by Steven Meyers
The cover art is a painting titled “Head of Medusa” by Caravaggio. Commissioned as a ceremonial shield by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte in 1598.
Brother Ólafur
Ólafur Gunnarsson became a full-time writer after publishing his first novel in 1978. In 1970 he published his first collection of poetry. Later he published an acclaimed trilogy: The Trolls Cathedral 1992. (English translation in 1996, nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award a year later), Potters Field in 1996 and The Winter Journey in 1999. Ólafur went on to write more novels, among them; The Ax and the Earth 2003, for which he received the Icelandic literary prize. Ólafur also wrote a series of children’s books about a whale that can fly. The first one, The Beautiful Flying Whale was published in 1989 and nominated for the Nordic Children‘s Literature Award. Ólafur lives and works a few miles outside of Reykjavik. He is the Icelandic translator of Jack Kerouac. His two-part novel The Painter & Sinner was published in 2012 and 2015. From 2013 – 2018 Olafur was a consultant on the TV show Vikings.
Radio? Radio! News cast, a lure a hook, whether I should or should not.
These days are cold; nights hot, a conformity desert for the song and the city, no end probable. News may never stop but there is control — pop news for pop people with pop tastes — thought control… Individual termination, a politics of fashion to be worn, warned, or discarded…
All census and no report.
ii)
Have a pleasant evening? … As I am ordered then to do.
A-ha! So clumsy. A-ha! So deafened… A night of firsts.
I know what I am doing: not enough, no — not enough. Everyone is beyond, out of range of vision and “vulnerable” bites.
Everytime I see that wall of brick, I see a wall of brick. The window panes insult me like the bird.
… Please don’t kill what makes “me”.
iii)
Gasp from my tears, hide in the blatant, safe in the open. Every society needs their bastard like in their stories I disbelieve.
I am forced to look behind all masks because they are there. Most masks smile: those who donned them deaden.
Lit with awe and wonderment this night, a suspect am I. All ways in ways no more I will see what is left to be done.
Look beyond the rags on that fence. I will say hello… And scare you.
The voice on the radio stutters.
iv.)
Us us, or them them?
Some point in argument, all that sustains the pop plan leads me lost, rules my ruin — the propaganda of sticks! All as one is strength is not when one is one and knows, when everyone is aware as merely a one there can be no bundling, no propaganda of sticks.
Too much is too little. The majority are tight. The societal common stagnates — so many creative ways to be imprisoned by the imprisoned.
v.)
Shown the starkness of being, awareness creeps that the average are sold the gain of strength through conformity. They are to aspire to be a part, a piece, never a whole, no self in a part, in a piece.
The powers devised a plan that all should be unaware in a swarm’s instinct.
Am not weak — am not apathetic. They hate, so hate themselves, fight and struggle — stare with eyes growing weaker at such sights.
vi.)
“So, you think you’re special, huh?” … No. I just have my differences.
“So is that what makes you think you’re so special, then?” … No. You just seem to have known no one different than you or your belief and ways. I do not share your beliefs. I do not share your ways. I am no more; I am no less.
“Not being too elitist are you?”
The voice on the radio changes.
vii.)
No clear patterns have emerged as to who as a rule will succumb to individuality or of awareness nearly individual; freedom is myriad.
Conformists have died on their coffee break. Conformists have died during coroner inquests. Conformists have pulled party lines too hardline. Conformists have died live and on the air.
They are they and I am a man out of room. They cannot break what has been broken, an attracted stare that will not undress just any woman.
viii.)
Listen! An underscored symphony.
A lot of time is spent out of room. Firsts are reluctant; to fight for. The thinker must fight to think and to practice the thought.
If the room was my mind I would arrange my thoughts felt physically, to be the scene — would be the centre of it intricate.
In this place when one leaves one leaves with them, and everyone is there as bereavement clashes.
ix.)
The place is bleak cold and dark; most endangered are the naked in the rain. No security, no shelter. Fear makes it darken, sends you deeper, clutching the broken.
Be adrift in the cinema of the soul. Sordid corners, eMpTyVision, satisfaction is not mine; performance is not yours.
Let go — all this time. All this pain — too long. Stay not still. Century to century. Fire. Murder. Wheel. Moon.
David Alec Knight grew up in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. In 2021, David was recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry. His first book of poetry, The
Heart Is A Hollow Organ, soon followed. His second book of poetry, LEPER MOSH, was published by Cajun Mutt Press in 2022. It featured his artwork on the cover, combining his interest in art with his writing.
Recent works have appeared in Verse Afire, Night Owl Narrative, and Medusa’s Kitchen. Anthology appearances include Poets For Ukraine Volume 1 and Love Lies Bleeding.
David sees dark and light around him in equal measure and explores that in his poetry, whether exploring working class themes, neurodivergence, addiction, urban living in conflict with Nature, and the effects all these things have on relationships.
Once flesh, in the visible world, I am this stone. It bears my name and figures that’s enough. You can touch it but any response is all up to you. My stone will, forever, have a stone’s life.
Maybe my image floats up in your head. But, without the being to back it up, I am increasingly decreasing.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Doubly Mad.
