Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/04/23

My Star

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.

©2023 Daniel S. Irwin All rights reserved.

Brother Dan

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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.

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/22/21

the pecextat trilogy

1.

but still the rose of sharon blooms a little
just even & the search for the dead rat
futile again
still

now listening to the scanner for weather
check it gainst my hip ache

some testament of faith still or
some indication

that nature the youth ministers warned about
that all my ex-girlfriends’ mothers

saw

some parliament of cast-off owls
wind mad & oppositional curious
eyes wide hungry for more than

what the deacons outlined as what
we had the right to expect

2.

ex
pec
tat
ion

tat
pec
ex
ion

ion
pecextat

x
e pec ion tat

pe e ta x on i

3.

not some AARP commercial this: not like those white backlit Sunday morning ones either you know the ones tween segments of Meet the Press with Tim Russert snarking polite at politicos & praying for one just one just one Buffalo Bills Super Bowl win christ just one then fading into some oceanic dream white sand like St. Petersburg Florida near that giant pink hotel no working people can afford (private beach) maybe a yacht or maybe a calm ratless mountain morning like those later on commercials for ED meds that make you ready when the moment arrives ® & when it does make sure it don’t last more

than 4 hours (poor woman) or maybe it was one of those happy lighthouses before returning to upstate Tim praying for Buffalo cuz that was more likely than the triumph of democracy

come to think maybe
it is
exactly like
that

©2021 Mick Parsons All rights reserved.

Mick Parsons

Mick Parsons’ work has been featured by Train River Press and published in Thimble Magazine. It has also appeared in Unavoidable Disaster, Contemporary Haibun Online, The New Southerner, Pegasus, Antique Children, The Smoking Poet, The Dispatch LitaReview, The American Mythville Review, The Licking River Review, Inscape, and on semantikon.com. He is the author of two poetry collections, several chapbooks, a collection of short stories, and a novella. He’s organized open mics and readings all over the Midwest. He publishes new work often on Instagram (@dirtysacred). He is also the host and producer of the travel story podcast, Record of a Well-Worn Pair of Travel Boots.