human – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 06/03/24

June 3, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Eulogy Menage

Simultaneous terror 
Hair stood on end
500 million volts
 Bolt and Clap are one
Human Communion with
 An impersonal god and goddess. 
His load delivered
 to her surface 
Through blood and bone.
 Painless instant transition 
Is of no concern to them.
As all bodily fluids boil 
Boots burned through 

Bad end to a good day 
In the deep woods 
My Bleached remains found
By a fellow wildcrafter 
Years later
 amidst a huge chanterelle flush

Picked up my skull and said
"Ah the Heretic Vicar, I knew him once!"

_______________________

DEATHSTYLE

Hey kid welcome to the human race
Got your carbon chain shackles and a working cranium 
Prepare yourself to take your slice
Of Gaia's pie. 
This progressive linear resource butchery
Has been our phillistine practice 
in many ways 
throughout hominid existence. 
Rules are :
Consider yourself the last generation. 
 We all thought we were. 
whoever digs the deepest hole wins.
Blinders on stay focused.
 Never mind the noise or chemical smoke.
Give No quarter to the woke.
 Step on toes. Compete! 
It's the 4th Reich
Fuck the liberal elite! 
 Eat their lunch. 
Remain in denial. 
Never play fair or they'll win.
Dig like a pig for 80 years give or take.
If your lucky grab your chest.
Sorry you were born so late
You may BE the last.
No American Dream for your kids.
Bear Witness to human extinction.
30 or 40 ice ages from today 
The cock roaches will say
The monkeys had their chance.

_______________________

I don't know how deep the well.
 the angels won't tell .
they frequently speak through my pen.
 They're here again.
 Provide the only thing that makes me excited about life anymore. 
guided trips through my grey matter imagery. Hamsterwheel chatter..it never stops. 
Goddess forbid if it did 
of what use would I be.

_______________________

Memories of war
Abhorrent acts
On the Killen floor 
Faces live forever in 
Minds eye
Thin veil Rationale
It was them or me.
Thought I could drink away the feelings 
But it doesn't work anymore 
Thousand mile stare 
I'm back there
Like it was yesterday 

_______________________

Whats left after closing time
All the shred and drama done.
Only music fit for listenin
In my arrogant opinion 
 
More stories of the killen floor and my dying day
 played on some slack key resonator 
Preferably a Pegamule with an abalone inlay..don't make it sound no better
Just pretty like a full body tattoo girl 
Curled up around my soul
Might as well dream still
While I'm on this side of the dirt

_______________________

I have a part in all my wrongdoing 
I can no longer point the finger
Serenity exited long ago
Insomnia coupled with amoral thoughts 
Too much late nite chocolate 

_______________________

YAQUI TANKA

Ain't they the same place
Killen floor and prayen ground 
Transition spirit 
Death approaches from the left
Yaqui desert sorcerer 

_______________________

Looken foreward to
  tea with a coven 
adorable michigan druids.
 Dredlocks, snakebites.
Faces tattoo'd
With celtic knots 
And ravens.
Conversation kept light; 
as I'm the only man
 seeking divination advice. 
A misplaced word
 might be
misinterpreted as a slight. 
Resulting in a curse ,Jinx, or hexes 
Cast the bones, read the stone.
Melodic incantation 
Tell me witch! 
What do you scry? 
Does intuition say she's the one?
Do I give it another try?
Or preserve my occluded heart
And say goodbye.

Voracious reader but lately doesn’t have the time.

From an auld Bucks County family of poets (brother and grandmother were both published).

Despite working around the performing arts, Chris didn’t pursue creative writing or performance till a year ago when; through some introspective journaling to cauterize a broken spirit he noted certain phrases had a ring. After attending a fellow poet’s funeral he was invited to read at the New Hope Beats gathering and hasn’t looked back! He now seeks to be published, travels to many open mics and hosts a Thursday monthly read at the Living Room Ardmore. His work has been described as ruminating introspective.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 05/22/24

May 22, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Hey Baby

“Nothing dies of too much love.” Paul Simon, Seven Psalms

Either it happened or it didn’t.
Either way, I have no complaints.
I made Facebook contact with a porn star
I’d been following for a decade,
a woman forty years younger than me,
her gang bangs and DPs, her lesbian sex,
flimsy porn plotlines before getting to the raunch,
the videos all over Pornhub, Vixen, Brazzers,
Peekvids, Hamster and all the others.

But for a moment it felt personal,
once we got past the Hey Babys,
the conversational wariness,
the transactional vibe:
an actual exchange of confidences.
When I asked about her tattoo,
Chinese characters snaking up her spine,
she seemed to laugh and explained –
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
生活带来您时柠檬做柠檬水

Or was this a publicity assistant,
an AI spambot, after all?
Didn’t she have better things to do
than banter with a stranger online?
Sure, it was in her interest
to keep the fans attracted to her,
maybe get them to subscribe to a sexy chat service,
maybe buy some doodad, some merch.

But she or her assistant or the AI program
or whoever responded to my comments
made no insinuations, while the dialogue lasted,
no attempt to score a buck.
The admiration felt mutual, the human interest.
Unless it wasn’t, but does it really matter?

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 05/15/24

May 15, 2024 James D. Casey IV

The Pale Horse with the Marble Eye

All things considered
I would take the Gambit of
the pale horse with the marble eye

He slipped silently from the fog
on the periphery of my field

Marking the little time that we have

Thanks for the update you say
As I go about our day
and I’m lost on the on- ramp
Waiting for the excuse to cut in to the line
Of human succession

A blinker should do
But
Is that right?
Or is it left?

Not knowing the weight of the day I put on the hazards
Just to play it safe
And yet
I have managed to go no further than my
Driveway

I am stuck
along with the oil stains
wishing to be

Gone
without a trace

no spark

No idea
As to what makes us human
Makes us move forward

We are the generation of promises
The generation of easy
The first family of peace

And
We suffer for it

We are not defined for defending
We are not defined for freedom
We can not see the absence of war
Entirely connected

And yet
Lacking the ability to say “Hello”

NO,
We are the ones that know how often death can be

And yet,
fail to grasp the consciousness of the day
We are your parents lost generation

There is no denying it

The truth is
We can have no authority to what America is

We have landed in a reality that betrays the word

And we can not unite
And we can not understand the truth
Only the differences that we are

We have lost the Great Dream
The Great Experience

And we are too scared to do anything about it.
Forever the in between

So give me the Gambit of the Pale Horse
with the marble eye

And we will slip silently back

into the fog.

**Brother Holland reading “Johnny Depp is Not Coming” at Gonzofest 2023**

The new face of the seeker in the crowd, Ben Holland has traversed the globe in search of many things – mostly himself. To now reside in Kentucky after having been chased out of Camelot (some may call it Connecticut), surviving tours of duty in as far away and exotic places as Iraq and Kuwait, is what could be called a small miracle. Belonging now to tribe of transplants that is Louisville, he finds himself square amid a life that is once again evolving into something more fit for his creative spirit. At the urging of his lovely wife, he is finally pursuing an active writing career, and it starts now!