The e-mail kiosks lock on to me as I cruise the Mall. My exo- skeleton — beltbuckle, glasses, the tips of my shoes, even the decidedly feminine gold chain I have around my wrist — lights up with messages. They are not for me; I am being mistaken for someone else. But there are few shops in this part of the strip & I’m a snoop be- sides, so I read them with half an ear, even though my heart is in the jeweller looking through their recipes for eloquence & my soul is in the toystore set on rich dark fruit cake laced with brandy.
Strange, dear, but
true, dear. The Cole Porter song enters my morning mind as if it had every right to be there, as if it lived there & was returning home after a night out. But not simply the song, a specific rend- ition of it. k.d. lang’s, first heard on the Red Hot + Blue tv special & subsequent album compilation. What is stranger is
how to interpret the locus of the singer, of the mindsong. In the video, k.d. lang sings as if she is person who is being sung to; & in my mind, it is also as if I am the recipient. To personalize, it is the not-I singing to the other which is me. It’s a tableau that has a logic only because of its similarity to that Magritte painting
La reproductioninterdite in which a man is looking into a mirror in which his re- flection is thrown back, but as if seen from the back. Twenty years ago I wrote of this painting: “Shown from the back the image is androgynous — think k.d. lang in her man’s suit phase.” & here she is again. Strange, dear, but true, dear.
I-less in Gaza
Nothing makes sense anymore. Everything does. I bind my camel to a smokestack at the edge of an anticlimax & set the guidebook alight to give me light to better read it by. The hidden pattern in the last flicker of a hologram tells me I’m in Machu Picchu where I shouldn’t be. Entropy arrives to peck out my I- balls. Equilibrium. It’s a eunuch experience.
Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. His most recent book — his sixty-second in fifty-five years — is with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish, published in 2023 by sandy press.
You can find more of Mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I listen to the voices of night frogs croaking, in the late hours of the night, and try to understand the meaning of their messages echoing off the silver moon:
Their hoarse voices curl through my sleepy, mind, sewing strange thoughts from long- forgotten memories, in my mind. In the midst of their croaking, they speak to me in their language of sorrow.
During the fading hours of the night, I search for metaphors to translate the meaning of the frog’s melancholy mutterings as their voices continue to burst into the mysterious emptiness of the moonlit night, but all I end up with are strange symbols.
When I Am Old
When I can no longer see stars crawl lazily though the vastness of sky
on silver moonbeams, or the beauty of verdant trees in secret hollow glens, and my weary bones and ashen hair tell me I am no longer young and it is useless to believe in magic anymore or see elves and sprites dancing in meadows fallow, I will feel sorrow’s weight upon my shoulders.
Long Lost Memories
Amidst the cold, brisk gales On an abandoned winter night, Long-lost memories Suddenly burst forth Inside the billowing steam, spewing From an ancient iron horse As it disappeared into the Unforgiving gap of dark fears Riding on rusted iron rails, And I wept in sorrow.
Memories of Grief Were Forgotten
Emerging in the hours of an iron-colored metallic night, rusting symbols covered with an aging patina of dark contractions whispered across an old man’s ebbing life, causing him anguish.
Crystal poems written in scarlet ink were shattered by metaphorical hammers pounding words of grief into gloomy synonyms and causing dark allegories to ache inside the cold dreariness of his aging mind.
Images of broken tombstones in a field of unknown graves entered his consciousness and his trail of tears melted into the cemetery’s soil, damping it with more sorrow than it could hold.
He sensed dark, once-forgotten memories being awakened, but as sharp pangs of grief started piercing his collapsing mind, the tainted memories in the blink of Meng Po’s eye were forgotten, and calmness ensued.
What Are Those Strange Images, Which I Think I See?
Is it helplessness Suspended in rust-coated visions,
The hallucinatory echo of An old broken tenor saxophone,
An antediluvian sea where Dead things scream at midnight,
A place where abandoned women Cut their hair with broken glass shears
While they painfully paint crimson roses, On their bedroom walls?
Is it a shattered, rusted nightmare that Tastes metallic like rusted blood,
Desires twisting like toxic tendrils inside poisonous mushrooms,
A white psychedelic pill that Confuses similes with syntax,
Or a dark poem about death inside A nightmare that haunts a poet’s mind?
Is it a melancholy song sung by A bone-thin chanteuse in a shadowy bar,
A decaying memory corroding Atop a broken cement tombstone, or
perhaps a cemetery where ghosts devour reality, and whose skeletal hands scrape at your bones?
James, a retired Professor and octogenarian is a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee and has had five poetry books The Silent Pond, (2012), Ancient Rhythms, (2014), LIGHT, (2016), Solace Between the Lines, (2019), and Serenity (2022), 1770 poems, five novels, and thirty-five short stories published in scores of national and international magazines, anthologies, and books. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He lives in Santa Ynez, California, with his wife Sandy, and a dog named Scout. His great, great aunt and uncle, Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, and John James Piatt were prolific poets in the 1800s.
You can find more of James’ work here on Ink Pantry.
He’s making A mental list Of the things He misses And those That he doesn’t, He has Awful in-laws In his Does not miss category, Then he realizes That those people Actually belong In their own category.
Taylor Dibbert is author of the Peace Corps memoir Fiesta of Sunset, and the forthcoming poetry collection Home Again.
Outside, summer is dying into fall, and blue daddy petunias sprout ears— hear the beginning of night chills. In their yellow window box, they cuddle up and fear death together. The balcony sliding door is poorly insulated, and a cold draft creeps into all the spare rooms.
Bowl of Black Petunias
If you must leave me, please leave me for something special, like a beautiful bowl of black petunias— for when the memories leak and cracks appear and old memories fade, flowers rebuff bloom, sidewalks fester weeds and we both lie down separately from each other for the very last time.
Memories Past
(Hillbilly Daddy)
I settle into my thoughts zigzagging between tears my fathers’ grave— Tippecanoe River Indiana 1982. Over now, a hillbilly country like the flow catfish memories raccoons in trees coon dogs tracking on the river bank, the hunt. Snapping turtles in the boat offline— river flakes to ice— now covered thick snow.
Now That I Desire
Now that I desire to be close to you like two occupants sharing a twin bed sensing the warmth of sweating shoulders, hungering for your flesh like a wild wolf leaning over an empty carcass, you’re off searching unexplored cliffs, climbing dangerous mountain tops, capturing bumblebees in broken beer bottles for biology class, pleasing plants, parachuting from clouds for fun. In shadows, you’re closer to life, nonsense, a princess of absurdity, a collector of dreams and silent sounds. In clouds, you build your own fantasy. Share it with select celebrities. But till this captive discovers a cure for caring, a way of rescuing insatiable insanity, or lives long enough to be patient in longing for you— you must be vigilant, for with time, snow will surely blanket this warm desire.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 289 YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 6 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 453 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society. Do not forget to consider me for Best of the Net or Pushcart nomination!
boots, smelling of here and there, long roads, unending hours
motel beds and sullied skin, roughage along rugged cheekbones
harsh winter, seasons on turn, fireplace or heartburn, calm water-blue eyes
oregano flavoured evenings, albatross wings, words exchanged in hello or goodbye
one closed door after the other, new room, unkempt future, checked bills
half-eaten dinner for rats, tips on a desolate corner table, future sunrise
ignition key on the move, tyres screech release, to a new dream, new flag down
through untold stories, haunted myths or chinese- whisper, shadows live on
Born and brought up in Kolkata, India with parents having an intense interest in literature, Raja Chakraborty grew up in ambient surroundings. Chakraborty is a bilingual poet writing in Bengali and English. To date he has published five books of English poems, and six books of Bengali poems/rhymes. He is also a regular contributor to magazines and anthologies.
This, a good place to begin the circle, dear jogger, opens up the park and the morning.
You should not stir the goodness or the goose. The skein of the waterfowls are scattered in the pasture. Today’s mood made them shells holding a hollowness and a howl for the sea.
*
When the exotic wings glide in the park the goose fights for her boundary at first.
Zen eventuates. She settles between the flocking birders and the winter’s slaty sun.
We, the local walkers, already gave her pet names. The goose stares hard with its hundred names, native pride, doubting vigilance.
The Mystery, Life
My mate finishes pissing. He plays drunken bird toy swaying on the port bow.
“Now we are out of wine in our blood.” He slurs. His voice is ash and sand.
The current streams five shades of the river. A conical buoy oscillates midst this concurrence.
“You may drown.” My shouting sounds gay, buoyant. Sometimes he does drown, emerges eaten by the fish.
And then we steal the boat from the pier leased by his father again and again.
Brother Blood
The brother who opens your id and loses the key, makes you drunk and piss in your own yard as your wife watches from the first floor boudoir returns.
You know the grey. You know the why. You know the honey and the sting he hides. You lower your guards in the ring, let the blood ooze, trickle down your chin and yet do not wipe the corner of your mouth.
He offers your children a lift to their school, takes them for fun instead. Nothing sharp, not more harm than one pale ale too many, your wife sees a blade whenever sun catches his glasses.
He returns. He disappears. You know where. You know why.
Kushal Poddar is the author of Postmarked Quarantine and 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.
My brick home of tough times Looks like My miniature islet. Like some fantasy lovers Dancing under the whole stranded sky My miniature of an islet home Has no address. I cannot whisper my ill wind of ease To my miniature islet home. I admire members under its roof The love is danced, The love is greeted, Love is treated. To a remembered beloved I address my islet. One home I should build For Imagination, I often knock its door Where my imagination wakes up, Becomes a task doer, Makes the world fitted in a room More spacious. But I want to walk in my garden!
Sushant Thapa is from Biratnagar, Nepal. He has published four books of poems: The Poetic Burden and Other Poems (Authorspress, New Delhi, 2020), Abstraction and Other Poems (Impspired, UK, 2021), Minutes of Merit (Haoajan, Kolkata, 2021), Love’s Cradle (World Inkers Printing and Publishing, USA and Africa, 2023). He is an English lecturer to undergraduate level students of BBA and BIT at Nepal Business College, Biratnagar, Nepal and Master’s level at Degree Campus. He also teaches English poetry to M.A. English students at Degree Campus. He holds an M.A in English literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has been published in print, online, school book and anthologies around the world. He also writes Flash Fictions, Short Stories and Book Reviews.
You can find more of Sushant’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Her Face tickled by the zig zag stubble in the sea weed She wore a Silk Rorschach mask to sleep in the clay Like an Alabaster Ghost Woman face to face with a squid Sleepy eyes, reading they start to wrinkle Wild waves between her toes not her hand to catch Sun sets star begin to twinkle Woman raised her cap in an abruptly fetch A bit damp waltzing as the cat’s tinkles’
Lobe to Lobe
Old Octopus woman camping on water Lobe to Lobe Gathering Tuff from the midland bogs Lost her new red cap at stone cutters yard Passed by the half-life of the old tramp Dumping water and stones, from her left boot Ninety nine times’ guilty only circumstantial Un-weeded garden, grows no more Wrongfully condemned, one more outrage Curbstone requiem’s mass funeral was yesterday They still love reading about her today
Sleepy Whale #203
Blood wet Irish Cephalopod Try to remove haunting remorse Of our Soul’s divorce Lonely silence drinking the Church Broth Emunctory wroth Star thrown shadows follow the nights’ course Like her burr sticking in the mane of a horse Ruddy Wool’s haunting moth Meadow of her murmuring water Great brightness is the complaint Robbing peter to pay Squatter’s Pub Mercy of God, oh so faint Henchman began the slaughter Islamic of Sages and Saints
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, LKMNDS and Elavation.
You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.
April and its madness, December and its sadness, n between green things grow, are harvested, eaten, covered in snow. The world turns brown and bare but you are glad you’re still there.
Trees creak in the cold wind. Bones and joints ache along. For better or worse you’ve sung your song, and would again, given a chance, if any stranger should listen and offer another dance.
The Islands
Beyond the sea where crabs walk low along beaches white as snow, the wind lifts the fronds of coconut trees, and locals dance whenever they please.
Strange as it seems
It’s just another day. One of the kind that comes in a package of seven, at a discount we are told, but who really believes advertising.
I saw the sun rise through a crack in the blinds. It woke me from a dream where words were being said that I thought I should write down. They sounded important. Possibly divine. Asleep I could not lift a pen, On waking I forgot them all.
I settled for bird songs from new residents crowding freshly planted fruit trees in the garden. The trees seemed too small for nesting. Maybe the birds were trying to get in on the ground floor while the tenement was under construction, growing homes for growing families.
This was something I could write about, though I could not understand the meaning of the words then or now. Another divine muddle. Another day. I should be used to it, but never am.
The signifier and signified
Words. Words. I learned to speak. I learned to hear. I learned to read. I learned to write.
Words. Words. An evil fix. Better to grunt and point and be misunderstood
than create civilized noise, supposedly articulate, but always insufficient for the need to communicate.
What I shall leave you
Ah, my children I will leave you no gold, only boxes of untyped poems, barely legible or a total mystery to the eye.
It will be your problem then, all those words that had to get out, as much a part of me as the flesh I wore.
What will you save? What will you burn? Which, if any, of these strange offspring will survive?
I hold no illusions. These small beasts will waste away, shrivel, disappear.
The only works of mine that will go on are you. Composite works of which my contribution was less than half.
That’s fine. As it should be. You were the best art I could create, with ink still wet and many pages left for you to write on your own.
Because
Why write it if it will not last?
Why think it if it will only stay in your head?
Why say it if you don’t mean it? Or if it will hurt?
Why open up to anyone in anyway if what you need to let out will get you beaten, imprisoned, killed?
Why say or write or think at all?
Just sit in silence, unblinking, unmoving. Be a part of it all but not a moving part. A rock or a pillar
or a stone thrown through the sky, unaware and uncaring of where you will land.
December Birds
I listen to birds fighting on my roof. Dozens of them. They make so much noise and tear at shingles. I can’t understand what they say, the subjects of their arguments.
My cat would kill them all, just for fun, if he could, but can’t get up that high, can only watch from a window, snap jaws and wave paws at desires he can not reach.
As for me, I would like to understand what all the fuss is about, wish they would not poop so much on my car, and think how similar their struggles are to rivalries in offices, neighborhoods and among nations.
So much noise and violence. So much of which I can’t comprehend.
Eventually someone will have to fix all that got broken, clean up the messes left behind, when the current flock finally decides to fly south.
Joseph Farley is former editor of Axe Factory, Poetry Chain Letter, Implosion, Paper Airplane and other zines. He has had over 1300 poems and 130 short stories published so far during his 40 plus year writing career. His fiction books include two story collections Farts and Daydreams (Dumpster Fire) and For the Birds (Cynic), and a novel Labor Day (Peasantry Press). He has also penned nine chapbooks and books of poetry. His work has appeared recently in Schlock, Horror Sleaze Trash, Home Planet News Online. Corvus Review, Ygdrasil, Eunoia Review, US 1 Worksheets, Oddball, Alien Buddha Zine and other places.
You can find more of Joe’s work here on Ink Pantry.
He was a cipher A nameless Govbot He was a spook He was invisible.
He was a secret agent man He had many names Many fake identities. So many tales he told.
He no longer knew What was true Or just another lie.
No one knew his real name Just “Big Daddy” To those in the know
He floated through life In the shadow world Death following him In his wake.
As he carried out his secret missions For an agency that did not exist.
he thought that when he died no one would mourn him,
for no one knew him.
who he was lost in the shadows
He was fine with that the price of living in the shadow worlds.
What Is Love, Tell Me If You Know
What is love, tell me if you know
Love is what it is Those who know don’t tell And those who tell don’t know
Do you know what love is, Joe? And how can you make it grow? More than just biochemistry It is pure madness
What is love, tell me if you know
Love is what it is And sometimes Love is what it ain’t That’s the Zen of love
What is love, tell me if you know
Based loosely on the classic Tower of Power Song, “What is hip?”
What Is Hip Lyrics
[Verse 1]
So ya wanna dump out yo’ trick bag Ease on in a hip thang But you ain’t exactly sure what is hip So you started to let your hair grow Spent big bucks on your wardrobe Somehow, ya know there’s much more to the trip
[Chorus] What is hip? Tell me, tell me, if you think you know What is hip? If you’re hip The question, “Will it show?” You’re into a hip trip Maybe hipper than hip What is hip?
[Verse 2] You became a part of a new breed Been smoking’ only the best weed Hangin’ out with the so-called “Hippie set.” Seen in all the right places Seen with just the right faces You should be satisfied, but it ain’t quite right
[Chorus] What is hip? Tell me, tell me, if you think you know What is hip? If you’re hip The question, “Will it show?” You’re into a hip trip Maybe hipper than hip What is hip?
[Break] Come on
[Refrain] Hipness is. What it is Hipness is. What it is Hipness is. What it is Sometimes hipness is, what it ain’t
The Market Rules Us All
The market rules all We are nothing but products The rights to us Have long been sold
Bow down and worship The all-mighty market
Everything we do Everything we see Everything we are Nothing but our brand
Nothing human left over Nothing authentic left over
Nothing but lies Fake news nonsense
The world does not care one whit About you and me As people
It is all about the profits that can be made By exploiting our labour
And once we are used up We become a liability And a burden
If you have not made it to the top By age 55 You are a loser And should be retired Forced to live out your life On your miserable pension
As you wait to die No longer useful To the Masters of the Universe
And true love Nothing but an illusion
It is all about the sex, baby And how getting your baby Ahead at all costs
Who cares about love? It is nothing But a secondhand emotion As the song puts it
Love is nothing but a sexual commodity And we are all nothing but interchangeable Commodities in the marriage and love market
And porno values rule the bedroom As we are nothing more than used body parts
Who cares about friendship? It is all about how they can use you And you can use them To get ahead
True Love and genuine connections Cannot survive In this toxic soup In the modern materialist world
God and spirituality Nothing but a scam As our so call Christian Leaders
Proclaim their love for you All they love is your donations And they too are part of the market
Jesus if he ever comes back Will no doubt Be used to sell more goods
As the right to Jesus Has also been sold
Green Trees Don’t Make It
Everyday I look out and see The ugly green trees Standing guard in front of my house
And I think to myself Who owns the trees? And what do they think of us?
Are we their friends? Are we their enemies? Do the trees think? Or do they silently watch us, Spies to the celestial emperor?
I have pondered this question Many a morning Who is the owner of these trees? And why do they silently watch us?
I wonder if the trees don’t hate us And why they don’t protest Every day as we drive back and forth Emitting poison gases from our mechanical asses Right into their unprotected faces
And every night we eat our dinner And then give the trees Our polluted leftovers
And laugh as they silently die From our acidic fallout Constantly floating down on their skin
Yes, I wonder about the trees And the birds and the bees And everyone else
What are they thinking? Are they plotting revenge? Or are they merely there
Silently, watching, plotting, Designing fiendish plots of revenge Dreams of vast nuclear destruction
Cosmic diseases wiping out everyone in the ass Yes, I wonder and dream and ponder
What is the meaning of those silent green trees? Standing on the corner
Quietly condemning us With their quiet tears, and falling leaves
In the winter they stand Naked and alone Covered with ice-cold snow As we drive by nice and warm
And we don’t care As they stand out in the cold Shivering, plotting warm plans of cosmic revenge Is it too late for us To become friends with the trees?
Or will the day come When the trees will wake up And gather together All of the other slaves of humanity
I have a vision One morning I will open the door And see an army of wild things Led by the green trees Coming to arrest me For crimes against nature
And I will plead, I did not know And they will laugh and turn me all of my kind Into silent tombs
And we will stand out in the cold Like the green trees Plotting dreams of revenge Forever and ever
Until our day finally comes And we can go out and kill all the wild things Perhaps we already have
First earth day poem written in 1977
The Communists Are Out to Get You!
Watching right-wing politicians And news pundits One can’t help
But wonder If we are living In a strange alternative universe
For to hear The line of Marjorie Taylor Greene It is 1955 all over again
Communism is on the march Marxists out to destroy America Radical left-wing demons trying to cancel Normal patriotic white Americans
Who dares to stand up To the communists All around us
And they fill the airwaves And the internet With constant fear And paranoia
About the alleged Communist Paedophile Satanic LGBT Trannie conspiracy to turn us all gay
And the black life matters folks And Antifa Coming to kill white people And to take away our guns
And other fear-mongering memes 24/7 Be Afraid be Afraid The commies are after you.
John (“Jake”) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet, and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department serving in over ten countries including Korea, Thailand, India, Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Spain. He has travelled to over 50 countries, and 49 out of 50 states. He speaks Korean, Thai, Spanish and studied Chinese, Hindi and Arabic.
You can find more of Jake’s work here on Ink Pantry.
