You can be the best: You can get the girl, You can make millions. Learn like lovers learn: Memorise this list then Memorise that list then Memorise the Stars in the sky. I will show you how to grow. These are the exact seeds you need to sow.
Cling to the Chaos
Water makes mortar. Mortar makes walls. Walls make houses. Houses make water. Water makes mortar.
Tough Men
Sometimes people die and Sometimes they do not. Life is the strangest game I Have ever played: You get wet then You dry yourself then You get wet again but Now the towel is wet so You just stand there dripping on the floor.
Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. He was educated at The University of Nottingham where he got a degree in biochemistry. He lives in Bristol, England. His poetry has been published in ‘Dream Noir’, ‘Home Planet News’, and ‘Scars Publications’. Twitter/Instagram
I’d always loved flowers and you surrounded me with them. Those numerous bouquets would bring me joy, you said.
And now the heart of me is filled with your flowers, so many flowers scenting my face, engulfing me in a multi coloured glory of fragile petals.
And now
that you’ve left me for the last time I have flowers to spare and I think of you leaving me flowers
and now
I shall take them outside, let them follow you out and wait for the butterflies to visit my last dying bouquet.
Endless
Endless that’s how it seemed a childhood lasting forever, shining teenage years never to turn into grey adulthood surely and then middle age speeding up now and by then we knew. We knew not everyone made it, that life goes on but not for everyone. We knew it wouldn’t last. Nothing lasts forever.
Toby
Toby was a jug back in the day. He was of his time an old man then fashionably dressed. Now he’s ageless and more difficult to characterise. Animal, vegetable, mineral, alien, any or all of them however re-shaped however mishandled he still feels like Toby and still he’s of his time.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes. Find Lynn on her website and Facebook
You can find more of Lynn’s work here on Ink Pantry.
While leaving a party this person put on their houndstooth coat and looked down at their shoes (paused), but the metronome of partygoers kept time a couple scooted past but even bumping the shoegaze personified did not interrupt their ESP conversation with the houndstooth doormat but to be honest that blankness was probably the pattern on the doormat cancelled the coat and, space case, suddenly stuck in the magnetic repulsion, their mind was erased and the silence was more of a bubble where ESP is impossible and psychology itself is meaningless the cosmological equivalent of a mental singularity forming at the Lagrange Point inside a quasar and the wormhole that expelled them was either a laugh in the kitchen or the slush stain on the doormat’s houndstooth offering a sliver of detail to the un-narrativity and imagine if they had not come back then the party-thrower would have had to put a guitar pedal under the person’s toes and run patch cables to the bedrooms and turned up the amp, turned down the stereo, called clear
Always something that needs to be kept from someone, and so I stay quiet
Always a truth I would tell you that might feel like a lie
A room filled with enemies or ex-lovers, a boat on fire in the middle of the ocean, my house at the edge of the flood
Find the room where I kissed you for the first time
Find the stretch of highway where the children were murdered, were buried by their father
Look in all directions and call whatever you see America
I am just beyond the edge of it, waiting
vines, tangled with frost
no fear because you’re pretty sure it’s a dream, this silence, this late afternoon room with the shadows of trees climbing the walls, dust caught in sunlight, child facedown on the bed you sit at the foot of, your oldest son, crying softly, dying, which is a weight left unspoken, air thick with the taste of metal, of sweat, of the fear you thought was missing, and you can’t get warm enough and you have no words
you wake up lost in an empty house
sound of ragged breathing
beneath the slow drift of sunlit clouds
and the heavy buzz of bees and the slamming of doors
wait until the rain has passed
until the smothering heat has returned
and why would you spend every second of every day being christ and what will you prove by ridding your lawn of all weeds?
sit in the car on a wednesday afternoon, ask your wife if there’s anything she wants to tell you and then pretend to believe her answer
remind yourself that poems are only clues
vallejo is dead and the world still continues
pollock’s bones cannot be broken any more
it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying
(the tools of the trade are the head and the heart)
the plague years, but not without warning
the false king, who lies about everything while the assassin waits patiently, because history takes time
these shallow graves are endings, yes, but only of their own stories
you grow up in a dying town in a bankrupt state
you understand empty fields and the claustrophobia of hills pushing in from all directions
you understand the suicides who leave no notes, because words are their own form of failure
because actions mean nothing without resolution
if all that’s left at the end of each day is silence, then let us laugh to pass the time
if time is all we have to truly call our own, then let us gather as much as we can
let us forever burn down the palaces of fools
the other prayer
or darker rooms or distant laughter or maybe just the bitter hum that trails behind the neverending stream of desperate days
rainsoaked flag at half-mast in the courtyard on some grey monday afternoon
man says it needs to burn
says he wants to cast a shadow, maybe just make a fist or pull a trigger
ends up in a field of ghosts
believes in the lesser mercies
bare trees and empty wires against a dead twilight sky
says he’s sick of this town says he’s sick of this state but his hands are nailed to the life he’s made
holds his children hostage
paints white circles on a white canvas and calls it art
says it’s a portrait of christ or an effigy of his father and he says there’s never anything out here but time to waste
says let’s just pull the goddamn house apart board by board and call it good
John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the continuous search for an unattainable and constantly evolving absolute truth. His latest poetry collections include A FLAG ON FIRE IS A SONG OF HOPE (2019 Scars Publications) and A DEAD MAN, EITHER WAY (2020 Kung Fu Treachery Press).
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Evening came, and never passed through It clung to the valley like smoke The heat settled in and no earthly wind blew A layer of clouds swiftly broke.
People looked strange in the dim purple light Their pallor and features were gone They huddled on corners and waited for night But twilight just kept holding on.
Shadows had coiled like snakes on the street A river was ready to flood A figure crept close, wrapped in only a sheet Its footprints were outlined in blood.
When the mountains fell, nobody would scream The valley was buried in earth A slow waltz of ages moved past like a dream A dapple of sunlight gave birth.
Caught on a Face
I am caught on a face like a fool in the rain In daydreams I trace a delicate plane
Where the sky feels too near and wind howls from afar Where a glistening tear burns as bright as a star
The night air blows cold with a sparkling frost Her cheekbones look bold but her dark eyes are lost
As if sparked in the haze of a glittering moon Time explodes in a blaze that takes her too soon
Those mountains still stand while our lifetimes are brief A face healing and grand casts a shadow of grief.
Mitchel Montagna has worked as a special education teacher, radio journalist, and corporate communicator. He is married and lives in Florida, U.S.A.
medias res smash cut in for punchline set-up never explained
deer and hound look startlingly similar splayed disemboweled by side of road
just leave cardboard stay in collar – puppeteer’s hand
assemblies should be fool proof… they had to add stickers
darting flame reflected appears to battle itself carnival glass
Only Illusions
one windmill rests exhausted, lifeless out of breath, bushed
walls press in close quarters become trash compactor
in the stage directions, bolded: everything goes wrong!
old school squib discharges none of painted noise for him… real, loud, messy
morning dew fog over rolling plains car with hood up
Summer Sky
roads closed ahead under construction recalculating rerouting
beside lavatory just grateful to be seated
rabbit tracks are diminutive – look hard
The prayer plant… Is flowering?! …The prayer plant is flowering!!
squirrel on high bar don’t tell him because has no wings is not flying
Jerome Berglund has many haiku, senryu and tanka exhibited and forthcoming online and in print, most recently in the Asahi Shimbun, Bear Creek Haiku, Bamboo Hut, Black and White Haiga, Blōō Outlier Journal, Bones, Bottle Rockets, Cold Moon Journal, Contemporary Haibun Online, Daily Haiga, Failed Haiku, Frogpond, Haiku Dialogue, Haiku Seed, Ink Pantry, Japan Society, Modern Haiku, Poetry Pea, Ribbons, Scarlet Dragonfly, Seashores, Time Haiku, Triya, Tsuri-dōrō, Under the Basho, Wales Haiku Journal, and the Zen Space.
You can find more of Jerome’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I’m on a half-lit street where feral cats chase rats from Norway
and a pawnshop window is hawking stuff I recognise
and sirens roar somewhere off stage
and alleys smell of piss and cheap whiskey
and I hear voices but don’t see faces
and the bar’s so dark there’s no seeing from the outside –
I feel at risk and I’m loving it.
Our Guru
He was more of an impediment than a teacher. A leech if you must know. Not a guide. And an expert only in helping himself to the contents of a fridge. Of course, in his own head, he was the master. But, in my kitchen, he was no more than a free-loading brother-in-law.
“But he has nowhere else to go,” my wife implored. “There is always Katmandu,” I replied. For someone so thin, he could eat like a hyena. For someone so hairy, I had to wonder why my blades went missing. And the constant presence of him sitting in the lotus position in the centre of our parlour was off-putting.
A coffee table would have been far more attuned to the rest of the furniture. “I am a parent of your mind and soul,” he told me. I prefer that my parents be older than I am.
He stayed with us for six months, by which time even my wife had had enough. He never offered to help with the bills. And he had long since transcended household chores. She advised him to move some place where his eastern wisdom would be more appreciated.
He liked to quote from the Upanishad, how the word “guru” is split into gu, meaning darkness, and ru, which dispels it. If only I were a guru myself. I could have dispelled him on the spot and how the darkness would have lifted.
I’m Corralled by an Uncle at a Family Gathering
The unfunny bounce off my ears. Sad jokes scatter across the ground like beer cans.
No uncle, I’m not embarrassed. Nor am I the snooty one in the family. I like a laugh as much as the next man… as long as that man is not my father’s brother.
I’ve heard folks say that comedy is tragedy plus time. Your tragedy still has years to run.
Spring Rain
So it’s drizzling. It doesn’t bother me. The trees lap it up Why shouldn’t I? Warblers sing through it. Egrets shrug the droplets off in style. To the waxwings, it’s a bath that keeps on giving.
The weather can’t dampen mating season. For the male crane, courting season is short. Every dip of the neck is doubling important. The strut, the dance, the fanning of feathers, has consequences for all the cranes to come. Same for the female. She hunkers down in that low-key rainfall, to watch the show, succumb if the performance meets her approval.
Early spring is where life struggles forward and death falls back on wintry habits. March winds blow into April. Boughs dribble water into up-and-coming buds. My face is cold. My clothes are damp. Nothing here for comfort. But the spirit is appeased.
The Abandoned Lover
She’s terrified of wind yet there she is on her porch steps, trembling, shivering, as a blast of northern air whips against her body.
She’s afraid of water, yet she dresses all in white, walks out into the pond as mute as the swans.
Ice is even worse, It could crack at any time. But there she goes, barefoot, ignoring the danger signs, crossing the winter surface one chill at a time.
She’s fearful the snow will bury her but she waits beneath the overhanging ledge. Or that the hungry wolves will carry her off. Yet she walks slowly in the direction of their howls.
She doesn’t want to die. But it’s the weather of impending doom. And she’s a woman after her own heart. That’s where the culpability lies.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves On Pages and Memory Outside The Head, and Guest of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Brigadier Robert D’Alby of those famously Glorious Roscommon’s was a mighty fine, hench figure of a man. As an impeccable Sandhurst officer cadet it became crystal clear that D’Alby was hewn from exactly the right old-fashioned, ornamental stuff. Possessed of athleticism, but devoid of contagious narcissism; he employed RP to acclaim a martial style-of-life, minus today’s all-too-familiar, fanatical ‘boot-polish-up-the-kilt’ mentality. Unerring Apollonian devotion to tours of duty, irreproachable ethics & a Spartan indifference to physical discomfort, made D’Alby splendid soldierly material. Additionally, D’Alby’s tendency to remain celestially aloof (distanced from clamorous subordinates) enabled access to private thoughts beyond the woefully limited appreciation of rough-&-ready non-commissioned comrades. Uninventive fellow officers bored D’Alby too: their impossible drunken mess parties, latent homosexuality, imbecilic gambling & monomaniacal brutalism, interdicted him from honourably pursuing a deeper camaraderie. Above all, he abhorred their collective flat-Earth disregard for synthetic cubism, et seq. Still, such wilful textural blindness didn’t prevent (or detract) D’Alby from admiring Britannia’s venerated strength of character; nor could various mind-boggling patterns of crude, spiteful behaviour, intemperately disseminated amongst Blighty’s privately educated landowning ruling-classes, annul an intuitive esteem in which he held this ruthless creed- neither did that intrinsic nationalistic exceptionalism existentially flaunted over generations of folk deemed lower in rank, status, or quality, by English gents.
Well-cushioned by the UK parliament’s Armed Forces Pensions & Compensation Scheme, D’Alby remained fighting-fit at thirty-seven in the wake of this index-linked military retirement, plus subsequent induction into the ‘Guild of Ancient Mariners & Venerable Fishmongers’ (via an old boys’ network) which facilitated another lucrative career opportunity; a stint of reclusive commitment this time, further serving his class with insignia keeping his end up in a private sector lighthouse. Generously endowed & left to his own devices; a proud wickie, embellished with frilled epaulettes, he kept Bishop Rock Lighthouse shining bright & spotlessly clean. Recreationally, during an abundance of spare time D’Alby manufactured basic collectibles, inc. hand-woven cotton rugs- sundry novelty shaped candles, model warships (frequently embattled within bottles) & craftily assembled reactionary objets d’art to be sold as bric-à-brac for cash at mariners’ fêtes. Despite crackerjack diversions, piecemeal, his lonely life’s daily routine drifted surreally into an unplanned concatenation of doubtful occurrences (albeit his loyal service was made as comfortable as possible by portable paraffin heaters, frozen crabsticks, the BBC World Service’s It Sticks Out Half A Mile, & Scilly regional radio). In the fullness of time, Robert quietly monitored how natural power emitted from those loose & fecund bowels of Mother Earth reigned supreme- that is, put simply- the Everyman, nature’s sentient nonentity, merely floated upon her ethereal waves. Yet one who could curry Poseidon’s favour was blesséd indeed. So, weather permitting, Robbie irregularly attended an austere mariner’s guildhall, where a gracious & most proper art of ingratiation was taught in confidence to select scholars. There, inside Twisted Bobbins Sentinel Chambers, one could confidentially manipulate mystical gifts according to one’s breeding, wisdom & talent; ancillary occult factors being two tools of divine provocation (each empowered with prodigious energy) enabling a righteous seeker to beseech & become adorned with charmed privileges afforded to orthodox craftsmen. These were twofold: one pukka velvet wishing cap (immaculately derived from legendary Fortunatus), & the other a pair of elegant ivory lorgnettes, proffering all-sightedness.
Now, as amusing as this esoteric bourgeois scenario may appear, it was not entirely satisfying. Hence, influenced by the compelling literature of Aleister Crowley (on loan from Bobbins’ hypnotic Worshipful Master), Robert sat forlornly under a pointy puce cupola; staring disconsolately through tight fitting magical retinae at his unemployed, purple Hampton Wick. Hallucinatory masturbation just wasn’t working: hard-core, no-nonsense skulduggery was called for. So one day, this abstemious xenophobe- inasmuch as his wasp’s waist seldom played host to dodgy foreign foodstuffs- clipped his magnificently glossed monkey wrench moustache, smeared petroleum jelly around his unloved ring-hole before purposefully penning a charmingly succinct advertisement, all set to be tastefully displayed in the Lonely-Hearts section of City Limits, a cooperatively run alternative weekly listings magazine, ref: pubescent wantonness; an announcement he dispatched post-haste by the utmost economical means of a tax deductible supplies boat, which fortnightly ferried rations of baked beans marinated in orange tomato sauce. ‘Attention boys & girls! Any cute proletarian teenagers out there, hankering after pagan erotica in a lighthouse, should call D’Alby now. Admission is free!’
‘’Oh, yes. London. Now there’s a filthy big city chock-full of perverted deviants.’’ He thought fiendishly- inconspicuously revelling in tutto-anale imagery. On the surface both Robbie’s deportment & attitude conveyed a cultivated character, a noble esquire who coveted beauty & classical repose above all else. But beneath this calm exterior, D’Alby frantically required several hard-knuckled fist fucks. Assimilating contradictory hyper-religiosity & hormonal pressures resulted in self-adjudged guilt; his pallid superego took waxen umbrage, wanly scolding a Dionysian id for its clammy, impure ruminations: ‘’just lay back & think of Merry England!’’
D’Alby tentatively undressed in front of a full-length cheval mirror; perturbed, critically reviewing his aging reflection: an inner resentment grew uncontrollably dark. Most shocking were nauseating surly features that obnoxiously emerged without invitation; ugly, outlandish, bizarrely misshapen in every last ghastly detail. Each flaccid aspect called for slashing &/or expert mutilation. A self-defacing element imbued Robbie’s mind: ‘‘Oh, for a Black-&-Decker Workmate!’’ Robbie hated it. This damned chimera was alas no longer he; rather a mocking minacious curse.
As giant hailstones crashed around surrounding toughened glass, D’Alby laughed uproariously, artistically smearing arterial blood across his scarred gammon-pink nakedness. Having sliced off his inverted hairy nipples, & super glued them to his knees, he recklessly took a rusty cheese grater to the ship’s fringe benefit tomcat, whilst ejaculating over vivid adolescent memories (of his gang goosing by House Apostles ceremonially attired in uniform coats & cocked hats with ostrich plumes) during his assignment as a Charterhouse fag. Relaxed, he reflected upon infamous full moon initiation rituals he’d witnessed agog; rough sleeping orphan Stan Crabbs, a plausible cephalopod, came unstuck. A rootless persona non grata, Stan’s ovoidal working-class corporation was collected; drugged & bewitched by sinister decree. Manhandled by St Agnes’ sturdy yeomanry downstairs into Old Lanes’ spellbinding crayoned pentagram; forcefully shoved, Crabbs fell prostrate between scary cloven hooves- where he was instantaneously plagued by ankylosis & force-fed slough from millions of damned excrescences while his chafed tramp’s sphincter was invaded by vile swarms of chattering animalcules (besieging his cerebrum & infesting his congenitally stunted imagination with obscure forms of regimental Catholicism). Cruelly enough, metemsomatosis irretrievably undermined Crabbs’ innate processes of perception, rendering his alchemical substitute frenetic, barren, snarling & regardent (why such random, forsaken educationally subnormal vagabonds were solemnly condemned to suffer so, fuck only knows). ‘’And then all us nonpareils, chartered fishermen, aristocratic seafarers & the like, steamed the fat plebeian cunt & gouged out his oculi. He can’t see anything now.’’
Following an eccentric, two-month long collage of auto-erotic overload (resulting in the first instance of little more than a sore willy, & secondly, through the latter period, only dizziness, nausea, & an acute sense of futility born of self-mutilation), having received no expressions of interest, nor any letters of reply, Bob nonchalantly applied enchanted Fastskin Elites before decisively jumping overboard. Resplendent in top-of-the-range Speedos; determined to swim ashore & hard ride Shanks’s pony onto central London immediately, in full Picaresque personage, to get balls-deep into heavy-duty cottaging. He wondered what the precious all-seeing mincer would make of that. Beat off an all-penetrating stethoscope perhaps, or tickle an ever-swollen vulva? Because whatever it is, wherever it’s coming from, unequivocally one’s throbbing erogenous zones need a jolly good going over now & again, just to maintain a soupçon of sanity. Seen?
Evan Hayexists in Britain & rather than follow spurious leaders- over the years he’s intermittently found it therapeutic to write out various thoughts, feelings & ideas as short stories to be examined, considered, & interpreted by clinical practitioners who may be able to offer him professional psychological assistance.
You can find more of Evan’s work here on Ink Pantry.
There is something about this song, there is some thing about this song sung live in Berlin, there is something about this song sung live to an audience who maybe weren’t alive to hear the beginning & yet they all still remember how the foretelling went. There is
something about this song sung along to by an audience who may not even be old enough to see when what was foretold came to pass. There is something about this song written in Berlin, that was performed there a year later, that may have remained just another pop
song until it was Live Aided into prominence. That, two years after that concert, was performed on a stage backed up to the Berlin Wall so that the audience on both sides could hear it & then, two more years on, remembered the song as they attacked the Wall & brought it tumbling down.
& some years after that, back in Berlin, Bowie is brought to tears when he realises the audience he is performing in front of is made up in equal parts of those, the seen & un- seen, who sang along with him from both sides of the wall & who added a new chorus, “the wall must fall.”
Mark Young was born in Aotearoa, New Zealand, but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. His most recent book is the downloadable pdf, XXXX CENTONES, available from Sandy Press.
You can find more of Mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.
The Red Line clitters and clatters and clutters along from Howard Avenue with its genuinely frightening demeanour and dark dangerous corners.
The train clumps along through Rogers Park to the Loop and then to the terminus at 95th Street,
A different world entirely from the one you enter at Howard
If you know anything about Chicago.
The train is a mechanical beast rocking back and forth
Flinging passengers willy-nilly in existential patterns.
It’s December in all its Christmassy glory,
And the others and I are wrapped up in our Chicago-y fleeced winter coats that bulk us up and turn us into shapeless pathetic blobs.
As the Red Line rattles southward,
All us human beings including me stare at nothing,
Avoid all dangerous murderous explosive incendiary eye contact.
Staring blankly, emptily, staring at nothing, their and my faces as seemingly empty as the vast ocean.
They and I stare at nothing.
They and I think nothing.
They and I stare aggressively impassive.
I am sitting while others younger than I stand because in their eyes I am Methusaleh—ancient, tired, glancing boredly at my watch that says 9:13 PM.
The raucous clattering of the train worms into my ears and wipes them clean,
Attacks my senses and destroys them.
A young woman enters at Belmont and grasps a strap in front of me.
Her blue jeans sparkle with silver beads that wind like sacred snakes up and down her legs.
She hangs onto the strap and joins the others and me in staring at the edges of the universe, seeing the origins of life, the remnants of the Big Bang.
She wears a black mask, but above the mask, her eyes strike glimpses of something beyond.
Accidentally (or not?) her booted toes touch the toes of my clunky antediluvian shoes that I bought ages ago at Dr. Waxberg’s Walk Shoppe on Dempster Street with its infinite miles of strip malls and fast-food nirvanas.
The toes of her boots barely touch the toes of my old Dr. Waxberg specials, worn through so many hundreds of miles,
And send a bolt of electricity that storms through my ancient sunken body and leaves me
Gasping.
Christopher Johnson is a writer based in the Chicago area. He’s done a lot of different stuff in his life. He’s been a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a free-lance writer. He’s published short stories, articles, and essays in The Progressive, Snowy Egret, Earth Island Journal, Chicago Wilderness, American Forests, Chicago Life, Across the Margin, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Blue Lake Review, The Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, Spillwords Press, Fiction on the Web, Sweet Tree Review, and other journals and magazines.
You can find more of Christopher’s work here on Ink Pantry.
