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.
There’s one particular Star in the night sky That I know is my star. I know it’s mine because It’s faint and flickering Like a candle burning Near its wick’s end. Once a mighty presence. Now more a memory. A memory engulfed by a sea of memories Tossing and turning On the tides of an Ever ebbing mind. In the end, you just sit And television is your Only friend. Others Can’t be bothered With the likes of you. Their own stars are Shining and rising with The moon and need Tending before they, Too, begin to flicker.
Daniel S. Irwin was born, raised, and is back in town at Sparta, Illinois. His card reads: Artist, Actor, Writer, Soldier, Scholar, Priest. He has won awards for his art, acting (over 100 films and 30+ stage productions), writing (nine books and work published in over one hundred magazines and journals world-wide), retired military (Air Force and Army), graduate of Southern Illinois University/Carbondale and has attended four other universities), and is an ordained Dudeist priest with a Ph.D. in Divinity (not bad for a heathen). Once worked as a medic in an institution for the criminally insane…but didn’t notice anything strange about the inmates. Latest on-line work can be found on Horror, Sleaze, Trash Magazine and Beatnik Cowboy. He would love to move back to Europe but fears the plague.
Merritt Waldon was born in Madison, Indiana. His work has been published in Sun Poetic Times, Crisis Chronicles, Road Dawgz, Twiztd Tungz, Fearless, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts Omnibus, Americans & Others 3rd edition, and various other venues. Merritt lives in Scottsburg, Indiana.
What the drugs do is render you hopeless then helpless till you spell nihilism and ennui backwards in your sleep. When your real thoughts come primal as beatings in high school or at home, where the drugs render you numb enough to stumble through the lost and preconceived until bloodied fists in a botched drug mugging go worse than sideways. Sirens swallowing your Fate while guilty and unclean you watch the ambulance cart your victim to hospital. The cop says get in the car, headed to lockup straight wishing you were high or could afford a good lawyer, but you’d buy your high first and save your life second. It’s what the drugs do.
From Lower Depths
Too many ways to drown with someone you can’t save.
Wearing as much sadness as any beautifully masked face.
While getting high in alleys with others who’ll fall as hard from the lower depths.
Yet with each unwrapping she still remained outside the box.
Her bordello smile welcoming me to lies I preferred to truth.
Until she stole from me precipitous amounts too often not to be for narcotics.
I left her to memory unable to forget all she wanted me to. I stay now in shadows dreams telling me I’m closer to finding a new lost cause.
Of Joyrides
Her loud carpenter, with hammer driving nails tells me the sex will be hot.
She takes her shirt off slower than most strippers do With the same junkie marks.
Pierced in more places than the slain matador’s bull before the dying red sun..
Her conversation excoriates ex-husband who stole her car.
For a meth fueled joyride ending in a crash without insurance or a driver’s license.
Her lips do their worst and me no good, as much as I like it.
No preliminaries like we’re used to avoiding.
She wipes black lipsticked lips with back of her hand.
After swallowing there’s enough truth between us for a false confession.
Count my twenties, like a pit boss, says “later baby.”
When she leaves I can only think later will be soon.
