Closed Eye Visuals by PW Covington

Prayers and trumpet tones
From somewhere out, beyond
The painted walls that hold my life
Wake me in false-dawn light of early May

And it is warm
Last winter’s frost and snow
Receding into misforgotten
Stories told while drinking

Strobe flashes like fireworks
Outside the courthouse, closed eye visuals
Shipwreck current privacy of reason
Baked and seasoned

Cyclone syndrome skips the generations
That deny it
Dizzy Gillespie, high on speed
And blowing through his smile

Beer can ashtray
Red wood picnic table wet with garden spray
And houseflies
Make a home for open eyed sobriety

PW Covington is a Pushcart-nominated poet and writer. He writes in the Beat tradition of the North American highway.

   More at www.PWCovington.com

This What You Wanted? by Scott Simmons

Fuck the living and the dead.
Fuck God and the Devil.

Fuck our universe for existing.
Fuck myself and fuck you too. 

We’re all shit so deal with it.

Scott Simmons is a poet, humorist, and artist of debatable quality from Houston Texas. He is also the editor of the Dope Fiend Daily and enjoys reading your submissions as little as possible.

His work has been featured in places such as The Rye Whiskey Review, Fearless, HST, Daune's Poetree, The Black Shamrock, The Anti-Heroin chic, and Under The Bleachers.

In addition to his creative "career" he is also a professional asshole.

Midnight in Motown by Tony Pena

Some folks cower with dead 
moths in closets of rooms dark 
as a coal mine as the witching 
hour calls for a Pandora’s box 
of beasts to slither from beneath 
a bed rollicking like a ghost 
ship adrift in a storm fueled 
by sins of emotional turbulence. 
 
Some folks revel in dark 
hearts with an offbeat rhythm 
of woe is me unrolling a touch 
not as Midas conjuring gold 
but as a grouser extending 
misery to all who dare 
come near the ravaged 
sphere of personal space.  
 
Some folks dwell neither 
in chambers of fear or self-pity,
but dance, with a honed edge 
of ebony soul tattooing skin, 
bleeding a palette of colors bold
in luster to jam all night to get 
the right shade of light to motor
through the ashes of Paris till dawn.

Tony Pena was selected as 2017-2018 Poet Laureate for the city of Beacon, New York. A new volume of poetry and flash fiction, "Blood and Beats and Rock n Roll," is available now at Amazon.  He also has a self published chapbook, "Opening night in Gehenna."  His publication credits include “Chronogram,”  "Dogzplot," "Gutter Eloquence," “Hudson Valley Transmitter,” "Red Fez," "Slipstream,"  "Underground Voices," "Zygote in my Coffee," and others. 

Colorful compositions and caterwauling with a couple of chords can be seen at:

Www.youtube.com/tonypenapoetry

Www.facebook.com/tonypenapoetry

Shout Out by John Drudge

Call-out culture
Is eroding 
Intellectual integrity
Underprepared
Little hate mongers
Increasing prestige
At the expense 
Of others 
Gutting
The nature of truth
With fear
Imposing beliefs
For self-gain
And sacrificing justice
On the altar of like minds
Where group think
Supersedes all 
And mob rule
Is the price
For inclusion
In an echo chamber 
Of sound

Where the vicious 

And the angry
Eventually
Eat their own

John is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of three books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019) and New Days (2020). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.

 

Warming Up By Alex Z. Salinas

The novelist Philip Roth said when a writer is born into a family, the family is ruined. 

I thought this as I raced the shadow of a cloud on an empty road midafternoon. 

By raced, I mean I attempted remaining within the shadow. Shaded. As in, my skin’s pale and melanoma is killing my mother. 

The Texas sun is savage, especially to light-skinned Hispanics. 

Years ago, I wrote a short story about an alcoholic mother. My mother read it. 

“The words are beautiful, but it’s so sad,” she said. 

I’m not a bad omen. But I’m warming up to wrecking ball.

Alex Z. Salinas is the author of two full-length poetry collections: WARBLES, and DREAMT, or The Lingering Phantoms of Equinox. His debut book of short stories, City Lights From the Upside Down, is expected to be published in August 2021. He lives in San Antonio, Texas. 

Bob Kaufman (Beat poet, 1925-1986) By Kevin M. Hibshman

 

Pitiless vagrant pacing his cage.

Assaulted by the law for affronting the sensibilities of not so

innocent bystanders.

Alone and ready to explode like a rocket in a bottle.

Shouting mangled poems into stopped cars.

Flinging visions off the rooftops in San Francisco.

Surveying and adding to the surreal distraction of New York City.

Reporting from the edge where jazz mingled with street noise in panoramic

discord.

Space man in human guise here to translate the mysterious music of

the universe, audible to only a few.

He marched as a feeble foot soldier.

Rag and bone man watching the stars for a pathway home.

Scribbling in a violent rush onto the backs of dirty envelopes:

A language all his own.

Kevin M. Hibshman has had poems published in many journals and magazines world wide.

 In addition, he has edited his poetry zine, Fearless, since 1990 and is the author of sixteen chapbooks including Love Sex Death Dreams (Green Bean Press, 2000) and Incessant Shining (Alternating Current, 2011).

His current book Just Another Small Town Story from Whiskey City Press is currently available on Amazon.

Under the Periwinkle by Lauren Scharhag

Some call it 

the graveyard vine,

groundcover that, once

planted and mulched, 

asks so little, unfazed

by shade, by the cold

of winter months, by 

the acidity or basicity 

of decomposing bodies;

in return, it rushes in 

where turf and fescue

fail to thrive, smothering

weeds. It stays low,

giving the appearance

of capitulation, pallid

blooms the color

of hush, fit for repose.

Imagine anchoring

down through the old

winding sheets and 

pine boxes, friending

the succulent and long-lived

Spanish Dagger, with its

down-facing white clusters, 

bulbs, cedar, iris and aster;

perennials and evergreens

we plant among the departed

like wishes, like portkeys,

semaphores to signal them back,

to show them that it can

be done. Lost or forgotten

sites, lacking tombstones, 

can be found again,

the past navigable by these

blue-white-lavender stars,

firmament at our feet,

kingdom come held

in petals and stems.

Lauren Scharhag is the author of fourteen books, including Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press) and Languages, First and Last (Cyberwit Press). Her work has appeared in over 150 literary venues around the world. Recent honors include the Seamus Burns Creative Writing Prize, three Best of the Net nominations, and acceptance into the 2021 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com