sleep – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 06/28/24

June 28, 2024 James D. Casey IV

Butterflies in Reverse

You’re a child again
Badass to pain-in-the-ass
To asshole…

Demanding endless
Expired entitlements
Blind to what
You’d once seen
Unaware the toll,
Sacrifices made on
Your behalf
Just like we
Did you back in the day…

Except we were kids
Born into it
And gained insights
We still hold…

Until we become
Children again
Or God willing
Fucking die before
Becoming assholes.

Things Running Through My Head at 3:38 a.m.

Laying awake, needing to piss for the third time, still rolling on that Indica edible I took to sleep along with a tramadol and a trazadone because my joints are all shot and wake me up, I’m in that perfect zone of the warmth where my body meets the bedding and the cool night air coming from the open window, and I’m wondering why I drank to ease my pain, and I drank to hurt myself, at the same times, on the same nights…

DNR

I handed my son a 12-gauge shell, No Burden, written on it in Sharpie/
One in the back of my bald dome when the time comes son/
Don’t lose that but I’m not ready to give you that old Remington 870/
Not just yet.

JD Clapp is based in San Diego, CA. His poems have appeared in Farewell Transmission, Wasteland Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Poverty House, Revolution John, Maya’s Micros/The Closed Eye Opened, and the Remembering Charles Bukowski Anthology (Moonstone, 2023). His chapbook, Underbelly: Grit Poems(Alien Buddha, 2024), was just released.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 02/07/24

February 7, 2024 James D. Casey IV

In my dream I let go

for Larry, for Driftwood

boxed in/crushed
ground powder
all that’s left
in the bottom of the bag for
sleeping/remembering
a dream/dread & drowning
in the black
coal dust/empty
grain husk, siloed/alone
having fallen
asleep, letting go
the running board
running out
of food
or water—
something to drink (how many hops
in a straight line
under the influence
until you fall?) slipping
or mistaking the speed
plunging break-neck
into snow deep six feet
(in, in it begins to seep)
stunned÷the blinding white light
stomped
beneath
the shoed hooves of the bull
unable to crawl
or getting out
& having to watch you fall
& not wake up.

You’re never too young
to face your dreams

to live your fears.

Roy Duffield’s debut collection, Bacchus Against the Wall, was published by Anxiety Press in 2023. Roy helps edit Anti-Heroin Chic – “a journal that puts those on the outside inside” – and you’ll find more words of his in the likes of the Nashville Review, Into the Void, Seppuku, Unlikely Stories, Fevers of the Mind, Cephalopress’s Ink Sac, and Back Room Poetry’s Flights. He was chosen to perform at the 2019 Beat Poetry Festival in Barcelona, and has been shortlisted for the Book Edit Prize (2022), nominated for the Best of the Net (2023), a runner-up in the Still We Rise competition for revolutionary poems (2023), and won the Robert Allen Micropoem Contest (2021). Contact him on Twitter (@drinktraveller) or Instagram (@drinking_traveller).

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 01/05/24

January 5, 2024 James D. Casey IV

No One Leaves The Party

I have fallen asleep.
Perhaps I have gone home already.
I may imagine the pollens
of her voice, but the hostess says,
“All desire a home. No one wants
to go to one.”

I hear ‘One’ echoing around,
murmur in my sleep,
“One ceases to be one if we
hanker for it too often.”
The dreamy rag under our feet
spreads softness, engulfs the drink I spill.
Hush hides the glass fell for miles
from my hands.

The hostess says, “The place
you want to leave for the home matters.”

The author of Postmarked Quarantine has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/06/21

September 6, 2021September 6, 2021 James D. Casey IV

I Refuse to Look at the Moon

I need water and sleep,
and the sound of radiotronic
dogs barking,
to stop.

I need to slide my bra
from beneath two shirts
out the right arm hole.

I need the hum of night
to breathe less loudly
and the death of Beethoven’s 9th

to cease its crescendo
in the outer reaches
of my frontal lobe.

I need my retinas
to forget the color blue,
forget there are endings

always skirting beginnings.
I need to say a prayer
for the dying.

Aleathia Drehmer was the editor of Durable Goods and In Between Altered States. She spends most of her time writing novels, but has recently published poems in Anti-Heroin Chic, Fragmented Lines, South Shore Review, and Heroin Love Songs. She had upcoming work in Impspired Magazine.
http://www.aleathiadrehmer.com

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/12/21

July 12, 2021 James D. Casey IV

Send in the Demons

Send in a riot of head-busters
body breakers
mind-fuckers
I yell for them
curse
throw dishes
blow speed limits
nothing happens
no one shows

What’s fiercer than me and yet
it creeps along the sidelines
where I cannot see it
oozes thick and real as the E N D
I want to be filled with
something apocalyptic
I want every tear drop
of Lake Cocytus
I ask the demons to step out
come at me!!

Silence is deafening
demons don’t show
sinning doesn’t awake any
recognition in their dimmed minds
I’m full of madness kissing the Reaper
with Ambien
before bed
who will send the demons in
to thrash my life
epically turn it upside down and burn
an opening into the corners of my mind so
darkened with corruption
even Lucifer would be sick at a glimpse

Donna Dallas studied Creative Writing and Philosophy at NYU’s Gallatin School and was lucky enough to study under William Packard, founder and editor of the New York Quarterly. Lately, her work can be found in Horror Sleaze Trash, Beatnik Cowboy and Zombie Logic among many other publications. She recently published a novel, Death Sisters, with Alien Buddha Press. She also currently serves on the editorial team for Red Fez.

Editor’s Note:

“Death Sisters is a wild fucking ride! I highly recomended reading this book.”
—J.D.C.IV