The Best of Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum

“I'll paint you moments of gold, I'll spin you Valentine evenings...” ~ David Bowie

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Pig and Pearls” (above) by our newest featured artist Maria Valentina Sheets. Maria brings us a glorious glimpse at what we can only imagine is the visual representation of creation personified – the chaos in texture, in topic, in tones – is so rich that a quick glimpse will not cut it. We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words and yet still, we can’t help but feel like these canvases of Maria’s have even more of a story to say. It’s time we stop telling you about the tale Ms. Sheets is telling us and let you see her story now playing at Maria’s Mad Gallery page… ~ Madelyn Olson

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we sought to make the madness stop, a dead news cycle's photo op; we would the earth's rotation wrest to bring the sun from east to west; we rose from darkness into stardom, the focal point of angels' boredom; we braved the abyss of questions asked, no answers offered in mysteries masked; we mastered the minute, moments made from being in it; we ducked to survive the disposal of declarative deep-felt love proposals; we played our part to seek the start of heart-felt ages acted out on life-lived pages. Each day a challenge; each life, a new page. Turn and read... ~ MH Clay

AN ACTOR’S PART by B.Z. Niditch

To locate my part
along the bare stage
in a windowless studio
to find his lines
standing in a circle
motionless helplessness
murmuring in gestures
before we go on
or nuance
just to have a chance
to take a part
in summer stock
to survive
the clowning reasons
for several dress rehearsals
and to live
in another’s soul
for an open air season
by the ferryman
and south shore
out by nature’s
scythed grass
for scenes
in the park’s theater
is to be once again alive
expanding my portfolio
once more.

January 9, 2016

editors note: Take stock of your summer (your ever), where all the world’s a stage… – mh clay

I’d steal you a skillet by Emily Ramser

You want to steal a cast iron skillet from Chili’s,
but you can’t till you’re married
per your family’s traditions,
so if I were to steal you a skillet,
I’d be proposing
amongst the crowded chairs and customers
of a chain restaurant,
which makes me wonder
if this poem is a proposal too.

January 8, 2016

editors note: A cast iron proposition for (someone’s) posterity. – mh clay

AT LAST by John Tustinon

He came back in,
closed the door behind him
and he held her,
first by the elbows,
then body to body.
Then he kissed her.
He kissed her
at last,

electrical currents running
between them.
He kissed her
at last.

The sun was bright and bleaching
outside
but it was dark in there,
the air melancholy.
He bent to kiss her neck,
careful not to leave a mark
though his belly was burning hot,
his mouth was on fire,
his tongue dying to leap out.
She made little noises,
almost whimpering.

They had waited ten years.

This was the moment.

Her eyes closed,
his open and aware,
they stood there,
kissing and holding each other
like that, tears
in their eyes
for about twenty-five minutes.

She stood fast to memorize the moment
and he stared to memorize her,
her face, her body,
her.

He left, holding her hand
until the last possible moment
and then he got into his car
to go pick up his kids
and she went home
to eat dinner with her husband.

They had pork chops,
rice, applesauce
and salad.

There were fried onions in the gravy
and it was delicious.

January 7, 2016

editors note: So long to wait, too short to sate; pork chops, applesauce; clean your plate. – mh clay

The Forever Question by Tricia Marcella Cimera

The next time he asks her
she is floating languidly
in a pond.
Her hair moves
with the rushes,
her eyes murky
and muddy.
As he leans over,
her eyes suddenly clear.
He sees himself
reflected.
Smiling, her lips part.
Bending close, he almost hears
the answer she
whispers.
He lifts her out but
she dissolves into sand,
trickling into the pond
where she becomes a fish
that swims away
with a twitch of its tail;
can’t be caught.
He shuts his eyes.

When he opens them,
another thousand years
have come and gone.
Still he wonders,
What does she want?

January 6, 2016

editors note: The big one that got away; every lonely man’s fish story. Still no clue… – mh clay

A cloud by Milt Montague

I dreamed upon a cloud
A floating plush cocoon
Of cottony softness
Gently wafting forward

Above the strife below
Beyond the cacophony
Of daily contentiousness
Just peaceful contemplation

Here shall I end my days
In serene tranquility
Where peacefulness and
Quietude reign supreme

I think….I think….
Unless total boredom
Drives me utterly insane
Compelling my return to earth

January 5, 2016

editors note: Monotonous millenia strumming harps. More fun to mess with humans; check your halos at the door. (We welcome Milt to the ranks of our Contributing Poets with this submission. Read more of his madness on his new page – check it out.) – mh clay

To Welcome the Sun Which Rises in the West by Pijush Kanti Deb

I give a chase to it
yet the sun
doesn’t rise in the west,

I jump on it
still I find myself always
lying below a merciless rapist,

I scratch on it
nevertheless the honey is sucked
by a tartar I have accidentally caught,

I pray to it
but my cheque is bounced back
to my empty purse,

I bribe to it
and then it comes to a stand-still
to welcome my sun which rises in the west.

January 4, 2016

editors note: It costs a dreamer’s ransom to stand the Earth on its head. – mh clay

Aylan by Arif Ahmad

Wash away the washed up Aylan from our conscience
Pretend that it never happened

And somehow undo this stirred up hornet’s nest
Anything that helps prevent bursting our bubble

If this is the Arab Spring
It has to get better than this

Or some other galaxy’s Armageddon
For ours would need to wait its turn

Dog eat dog
Never on this planet, not on our watch

Shall we gather our pieces and do it better all over again
For all of those Aylans who are not going to have a picture taken

January 3, 2016

editors note: Long after the news cycles go cold, lives go dead while we go on. Remember… – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? This week we feature a story from longtime Contributing Writer & Poet, Carl Kavadlo. If you're familiar with Carl's works, you'll know he knows how to weave quite the tale. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week story: "Live and die on the page, let the world work itself out."

And here's a bit of "For Rosealie" to get your need for a read goin':

(photo by Johnny Olson)

Outside, the chair was right in front of the building, and they were drinking rotgut wine. I noticed two Latinos and a West Indian with one of those high caps with yellow, green and red swirls. One of the Latinos wore a waist length, brown army jacket. The third guy was in a big, overstuffed armchair, springs splitting through.

He had been at 320 East 71st Street for 17 years, three at Park Avenue and 68th. He had lost his wife due to divorce, lost much of his practice due to his divorce. Patients looking for stable relationships lost their faith in him. He moved to this place in Chelsea, which wasn’t too classy as far as his neighborhood went.

I was with him from December, 1979, through February 8, 2002, this shrink named Haynes Milton. He helped me find a job and finish a degree and stabilize my life and get some creativity and even meditating. He knew all about the unconscious. He wore his special, three-piece, powder blue suit, among others, tan, and beige. He looked like a riverboat gambler. A very serious man. He had a large bookcase, a purple-motif Persian rug. I lay on a black, leather couch facing a wall, staring at a painting of his, a guy mowing a large, green lawn. The standard setup in each office.

It was a time I was teaching people to get high school diplomas. I was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a job he’d gotten me.

Fridays, I’d move north on Lorimer Street, filled with small, wood frame houses. Most of it was still the old Italian neighborhood with social clubs for the men. The neighborhood was becoming gentrified with briefcases walking out of the little tenements, all the while my shrink’s life was coming apart. The L took me from Lorimer, through all of the Manhattan stops through Eighth Avenue – First, Third, Union Square, Sixth. I transferred at Eighth to the E, rode one stop to Twenty-third Street, walked through the grounds of a housing project to Twenty-fifth and Ninth, upon exiting facing a large, brownstone Catholic church across the street. Then I’d cut left, to my sanctuary of psychotherapy, as the church was the sanctuary for many.

A strange premonition on the train, the night before I’d dreamed of Bedford Avenue, the last Brooklyn stop before First Avenue...

Don't miss the train of thought (so to speak;) of this story! Get the rest of your read on right here!

••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••

Oh what a night it was in the land of Swirl’n mic Mad-ness! This past 1st Wednesday Mad Swirl-abrated the new year at our new open mic home at The Underpass. Huge SHOUT-OUT to this month’s feature, Dallas Poet Jolee Davis. If you were there to taste the poetic stew she stirred up, then you know how MmmMmmMadlicious her set was!

Thanks to all who came out to help share in their delicious madness. What a night of the beat-utifullest poetry and music it was! Here’s a shout out to all who graced us with their words, their songs, their divine madnesses…

(All photos courtesy of Dan “the man” Rodriguez. See the whole Flickr slideshow right here)

Hosts:
Johnny O
Michael Clay
Chris Zimmerly

Feature:
Jolee Davis

Mad Cast:
Desmene M. Statum
Carlos Salas
Opalina Salas
Roderick Richardson
Vic Victory
Daniel Evans
Maggie Smith
Brett “BA” Ardoin
David Crandall
James “Bear the Poet” Rodehaver
TA2
Josh Weir
Suza “Hep Kat Mama” Kanon
Randall Garrett
Anthony H
Jennifer
Daniel Frank
Lindsey Yarborough
Bonnie

HUGE thanks to Swirve (Chris & Tamitha Curiel, Gerard Bendiks) for keeping the beat til the wee hours of the night. We got taken to another dimension of time and space on the wings of their jazzy madness!

More HUGE thanks to fantastic photogs Dan Rodriguez and Scott Wayne McDaniel for sharing their mad eye and giving y’all a taste of the night’s mic madness.

Thanks to Mike & Leo at The Underpass for opening up this fine establishment to us mad ones and making us feel right at home.

And finally we would like to thank ALL of you mad ones who freely shared their hand claps, finger-snaps, hoots and howls with all the mad ones who got up on this sacred mad swirlin’ mic.

We look forward to ALL the m-adventures still yet to come! Stay tuned for February’s feature:

Dr. Googily-Eyes Healing Circus & Mad Swirlin’ Medicine Show: Inciting the Rise of YES and the Fall of NO (a celebration of the death of hate)

For more news & info, visit our mad mic page.

••• Mad Swirl Blog •••

The Swirliverse Expands by MH Clay

In 1999, a Big Bang in the Swirl took place in a living room in Dallas. Three creative catalysts conspired to do something crazy; start a creative platform for artists of every ilk to place their work. These elemental individuals; Johnny O, Cheyenne Gallion and Lisa Carmen, published the first zine under the name of – Mad Swirl.

Since that singular event, Mad Swirl has expanded into zines, an open mic, this web site, festival participation and special events (we call’em Swirl-Ups). Our rate of expansion continues to include more mad poets, artists and authors every month; with plans to move into publishing and other media in the year ahead.

This month, American Way Magazine has published an article about Mad Swirl in Texas and the Blackwater Poetry Festival in Ireland. Check it out: Poets Across The Water

We are ever grateful to the Mad participants who made this possible; Gayle Reaves-King (journalist and poet), Gene Barry (Blackwater Festival Founder/Chairman and poet) and Brendan McCormack (poet); all of whom are Contributing Poets on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum. It’s this kind of synergy that makes our Swirliverse expand!

Jump in – make a splash – create a stir. Let this Swirliverse expand to include you.

“…we’re all mad here.”

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Paintin'& Spinnin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“If you find something to tell, tell it to your truest, though that make little to tell; the truer you speak, the more you will know to tell.” ~ Laura Riding

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Greggy” (above) by our newest featured artist Maria Valentina Sheets. To view more of Maria's mad canvases, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at www.MadSwirl.com

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we reality suspended for a volatile package unattended; we basked in milk white blossom's bloom, lilly petals washed by moon; we stood on precipice and teetered, worked our work in darkness metered; we delved in doctor's therapies, seeking psychic remedies; we conned constellations for selfish validations; we sought the slight ephemery of painful past-felt memory; we tried to find a way to live, bereft of words that will forgive our failure to get it right. Memories, mud degrees of separation; the madness from the mundane. We strive to stand above this melee, we manage... somehow. ~ MH Clay

Some People Never Get It Right by Paul Sexton

Some people drink all night
because it’s what they do,
photographed in Deep Ellum parking lots
while listening to poetry CD’s,
singing Hallelujah
arm-in-arm with a homeless man
named Ray Charles.
Looking for him later
with a banana and cup of hot coffee,
because the world is a fucked up place,
Ray whispered, “Don’t ever give up man,
she’s your soulmate!’ into my ear.
Some people toast the sunrise
giggling and whispering
words of forgiveness,
playing in lawn sprinklers
half-clad at the break of dawn.
They tell each other they
feel like home. But,
people like this aren’t so good at home,
are they?
Some people fall in love with babies
they nickname “Webby”
whose brother asks,
“Where did Paul Sexton get that pretty girl?
At the pretty girl store?”
Some people laugh and cry,
then laugh and cry
so many times together
they become convinced
no one else could possibly understand
them the way they do one another.
They come and go from each other
with a frequency similar to the way
emotions come and go inside their heads.
Some people never get it right
with each other
or with the world.
And people who meet them
always want to give them advice
about what they need to be doing
which mostly they laugh about
and mock
in silly voices,
because they themselves know
that they are more alive than
the smiles on giant crocodiles,
than a million imploding black tar suns,
than most of the rest of you.
Some people never get it right,
but when you meet them
you love the shit out of them
and everybody everywhere
loves the shit out of them.
And you can’t help but wish
they might actually get it right,
not just for each other
and with each other,
right inside themselves,
but right with the world.
A world that, although it seems to love them,
mostly doesn’t get them
or care
or seem to give a shit
about all the million exploding things
they have inside them,
they are trying to get out.
Especially,
the beauty they possess
whilst drinking and singing Hallelujah
late at night
listening to old poems
about to say goodbye again,
about to say goodbye again…

January 16, 2016

editors note: If you can catch just one of those exploding things; gotta love the shit outta that. (This is one of the many poems and prose soon to be released in Paul’s new book, “Hallelujah!,” to be released on Feb 26 (get details here). Early copies are available here– check it out!) – mh clay

THERE… by Hal J. Daniel III

She’s been gone
For some time-
Long enough to know
I miss her.

Complaining about her absence
Doesn’t get me anywhere-
A “professional”,
Her career “everything”.

Only one thing to do…
There…
I don’t miss her
As much as I did 10 minutes ago.

January 15, 2016

editors note: Oh, to be able to turn that knob on demand. Where…? – mh clay

Looking Up by Bruce McRae

Diffident starshine marred by cloudware,
Orion testing his bow, bull’s-eye Earth
adrift in its own juices, time’s cauldron
on a low simmer, Luna fretting offstage,
not usually one for fluffing her lines,
Sirius below the horizon, madly impatient,
barking up the wrong tree, in so many words,
our race drunk-walking the astrophysical gulch
we passengers nicknamed Spaceship Earth,
regardless of the anthropomorphic slant,
never mind the fact we’re only human,
know-it-all know-nothings in the unknowable,
the span of a life a cosmic instant,
our allotted time just another dark matter.

January 14, 2016

editors note: Astronomy 101; pious platitudes muddled by big-bang ideas. (We welcome Bruce to our crazy confab of Contributing Poets with this submission. Read more of Bruce’s madness on his new page – check it out.) – mh clay

Doctor Who? by Tom Hall

I won’t deny I have had my share of therapy.
Doctor’s concur, BiPolar Syndrome’s what my mind keeps prey.
It’s easy to converse with them, they listen quietly.
Their words are few, their thought’s acute, it’s scrips they have to say.

Eviscerated by the drugs, I’ve tried psychologists.
They talk much more and make much less with themes that don’t abut.
I’m not after my “Happy Place” or psycho-chatter myths.
I watch them smear with butter knives, where scalpels need to cut.

The last group of intuitives I let in are my friends.
Their problem is they snarl back and never give out meds.
Well, that’s not true. But they love me, they’ll stay there in the end.
It’s crazy ’cause I can’t make use of twenty cogent heads.

So, do I glean truths from these varied groups or am I self-absorbed?
Oh. Maybe that’s the illness that I ought to have explored.

January 13, 2016

editors note: Self-diagnosis; over the counter, under consideration. – mh clay

Precipice by Ian Mullins

Why so frightened
of the edge? Yes it’s dark
it’s strange,
gravity might easily
pull you under,
send you spinning down
into a space
that has to end somewhere,

but you love the dark, remember?
You love to tumble
then claw your way back up,

but every time you make it
aren’t you a little disappointed
that the climb was no higher,
that you returned
too much like yourself?

Maybe it’s better to shake
and squeal,
howl like a dog in chains
knowing you need
the chemical cosh
to live the way
they say you need to be living;

but look down, stand close,
are you ready to pay that price?
You do your best work
down there.

January 12, 2016

editors note: Embrace the illness; create to the cure. – mh clay

Calla Lilly by Heather M. Brown

Creamy curl of white slides
spooning into daylight’s wake
softened light

Cello strings serenade
this swirly sea
waking ocean’s froth and foam

Her ear curves to hear
sweet morning’s song
dance and sway

Ankles curved
embraced with satin ribbons
mossy green and bright

January 11, 2016

editors note: Sultry siren, burgeoning blossom; description so sweet, have to eat it with a spoon. – mh clay

Sign Here by Melani Grace Tiongson

My label reads:
“Volatile.”

And I’m adorned
with cautionary tape and
stickers warning of
“Explosive Contents Inside.”

Handle me with care in transit and
Do not leave me unattended.

Keep me at room temp–
and even then
you’re still not safe.

On second thought,
This purchase is unwise.

But you didn’t know, did you?

So–
I’m sorry.

(I’m a parcel that can’t be returned.)

January 10, 2016

editors note: No refunds. Buyer beware… – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? F@ck yeah you do! And do we got just the right sh!t to feed that muthaf@ckin' need!

(If you're wonderin' why all the swears, well it's in honor of this week's featured short, "Cussin’ Paul Gets Religion" from Contributing writer and Poet Donal Mahoney.)

Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this kick a$$ story "Human moments can age as well dynamite until they’re something more than explosive. Catastrophic, even until the very end."

And here's a bit to feed your need for a read:

(photo by Tyler Malone)

Word spread fast at the poker club where the retired men of the community meet to play almost every day but not on Sunday out of respect for those who went to church. But this is Saturday and the word is out that Cussin’ Paul, in his 80s now, a charter member, wouldn’t be coming to play anymore.

The word is, Paul’s gone back to church and wants to stay clean as he put it recently to his friend Pete. Too many times he starts cussin’ when he’s dealt the wrong cards and he wants to stop all that. Better not to play cards and not cuss. More important things lie ahead.

Paul is no holy roller. He doesn’t think a man goes to hell for cussin’ but cussin’ can lead to worse stuff, and he’s too old, he says, to deal with getting upset anymore. Some people get upset and get over it. Not Paul. Anger lingers in Paul for offenses big and small, real and imagined. He doesn’t look for trouble but if trouble comes to him he remembers for life who brought it to him.

He tries to explain to Pete over a glass of apple juice—Paul quit drinking too, not that he thought a man could go to hell for drinking in moderation but Paul does very little in moderation except perhaps pray. In fact, until he got religion recently, Paul never prayed since kindergarten. But he has always believed in God and he knows—not simply believes—that one day he will meet God.

“About a minute after I die, Pete, I’ll meet my maker and I’ll have to explain all this crap I’ve done. Not a pleasant experience to look forward to and I don’t want to make my dung heap any deeper.”...

Don't b!tch & moan that we left ya' hangin'. You can get the rest of your read on right here!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Truth'n,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Crown of Thorns” (above) by our newest featured artist Maria Valentina Sheets. To view more of Maria's mad canvases, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at www.MadSwirl.com

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we upended a random take on an uneaten upside down cake; we acquiesced to actions obvious, deferred to love-drives devious (anything to lift love's profile in dark places); we named a name, not spoken, marked a love long broken; we struck the mystery from flower and bug, from underneath romance yanked the rug; we erected irrational orders to stop passage of aliens 'cross borders; we rendered refuge for a poet's diminished deluge, when words fall into weakness; we opened the divine door for a search of our sock drawer - no judgement, no condemnation. Our divinities are defined by our decisions, pick and choose out loud. Own our choices, be proud. ~ MH Clay

If God searches your room by Timothy Pilgrim

It goes without saying
she will find Legos and games

stuffed into closet, dirty socks
tucked under bed, candy wrappers

shoved far back in second drawer.
What cannot be discussed

is how faith in you was lost,
hidden away so deep,

out of the blue comes this lack
of trust, sudden need to sift

your stuff. Better not bring up
betrayal, question why she

freaks out, intrudes. Head down,
keep busy with the broom.

January 23, 2016

editors note: And don’t forget to replace those trash can liners. Cleanliness is next to… – mh clay

THE LAST DAY by Stefanie Bennett

… After I have conquered some of the world’s ills
In my fashion.
After I have climbed what’s left
Of the parasitical plot and attempted
To bring it down.
After the unwanted-wanted posters
Have yellowed and curled – so that
My name’s been struck off
The records, the too human records…
And I’ve greyed a little –
And shrunk a lot –
And my hands have lost
Their bitter cures…
Will you, once again, take me in!
Take me in and not mind
This new stranger
As your lover of old?

Once I’ve been pensioned out – Yes! I’m aware
That it will happen.
Once it’s known that what seemed
Scholarly and spectacular was no more than
Someone held
Hostage by an every-day innocence.
Once I design… the final line
And I’ve nothing left to do,
Say, or display – will you
Find it in you to forgive
The neglect
I shelved for you alone!
Will you
Forget that I served
But one light; and that
It was your ‘light’!
Will you mind, mind my return
… And keep this gypsy poet
Company?

January 22, 201

editors note: Old poets never die; they just rhyme ad infinitum. – mh clay

THE IMMIGRANT by Jay Passer

there is danger
when madmen with vicious gorilla hearts
drink from mason jars of moonshine.

star turns ugly black
First Lady makes duck face
children leak smoke from stomachs.

madmen prideful and happiest
with bully boots and loaded weapons
beauty a thick golden chain.

whatever place we come from originally
in outer space or other dimension
must be a shit hole.

January 21, 2016

editors note: Cross new borders through vats of whitewash, blackwash, brownwash, brainwash. Gotta blend in to be proud! – mh clay

She Trod Without Care by James Tyler

She trod without care in
the backyard, oblivious of the
dandelion and the ladybug,
until you taught her about
wildflowers and red-black
insects that inhabit this place,
a field meant for her to find
joy, meaning, and life.
Now she watches her steps,
avoiding the yellow flowers,
the Forget-me-nots
the lady bug perched
on Forget-me-nots.
Her head bowed, she combs
our land, even the ants are
shown mercy.
“See, now the girl can’t
have fun,” I say, squeezing
the blue beer can, crinkling it.
And you put your glass
of lemonade down hard.
“She’s not a beast like you.”
Our girl, on her hands and knees,
combing the earth like a mine field.

January 20, 2016

editors note: Early indoctrination of ahimsa-awareness? Oh, well! – mh clay

Your Name by Jocelyn Mosman

Your name is not poetry,
but it reminds me of you.
You are a half-shaken snow globe,
scattering cold, empty stares
on everyone close by.
You shed your emotions
like snakes shed their skin.
You are a thousand white horses
drumming their hooves
into your muddy footprints.
I wonder what future generations
will see when they examine
your remains like artifacts
and dinosaur bones.
You are a single sunflower,
painfully beautiful and sad
soaking up light after darkness.
You are science and math.
You can comprehend numbers
and molecules.
You carry yourself like a sestina,
repeating the same six words
in patterns that twist their meaning.
I am your pattern.
I am your paisley and your flannel.
I am your bad habits.
But you must be poetry because
no matter what I am to you,
you will always be guilt
and regret and empty canvas
to me.
You will be tormentor
and muse until I write
the poem that can bring you
back.
No poem will ever bring you back,
so I write love letters
on my palms with hope
one day you can hide
the scribbled words
with open hands.
You are missed opportunity
and almost love.
Our past is millions
of miles of unresolved emotions.
You are a lighthouse
in the distance
beckoning me back to you.
You are my lucid images at 3 am.
You will never come true.
But I’ll keep whispering
your name into my pillow
and wishing on you instead
of candles and shooting stars.
Your name may not be poetry,
but it sure as hell reminds me
of you.

January 19, 2016

editors note: Unspoken, immortal to her; but not to us. – mh clay

Obvious by Jonathan Butcher

On that beach after last orders, the damp sand remaining
stable under our intoxicated feet. That smile of yours as
brittle as the shattered shells beneath our heels, the broken
homes of now long excluded occupants.

It had taken an age it seemed to reach this pinnacle, like a
weeping wound that was never stitched and left to turn septic.
I now bask the clichéd result that was promised for so many
decades and was now slowly delivered.

To seek an end seemed superfluous, to take advantage of
those Friday night vows which were welded together like
rusted chains, and to pass them through the loop of a paper
ring that tears at the first spot of rain.

We stagger up the concrete steps in cold, bare feet; your laugh
now as dark as the boarded-up shop fronts on the horizon. Any
light now completely absorbed, and as you move forward for
that last kiss, I stub my toe for the second time.

January 18, 2016

editors note: Love or lust requited by a kiss on steps not lighted. – mh clay

Pineapple Upside Down Cake by Donal Mahoney

Nothing is anywhere anymore,
Dad shouts over the phone.
His reveille again at 4 a.m.
Will I come over and find it?

What’s missing, Dad, I ask.
It’s midnight and I’m in bed.
It’ll take a while to get there.

Your mother went to make
pineapple upside down cake
hours ago and still no cake.
She’s nowhere to be found.
I called the neighbors.
They won’t come over.
It’s just me and the dog
and he’s asleep.
Son, I need your help.

Mom died 10 years ago, Dad.
You and I went to the funeral.
We buried her at St. Anthony’s.
Remember all the rain?
And then the rainbow shining?

Son, you’re right again
Sorry I woke you but where’s
the pineapple upside down cake?
I’ve been waiting for hours.
A little snack and I’ll turn in.

January 17, 2016

editors note: Can anyone remember where to find the dessert forks? (Another one (fun) from Donal on his page; a glimpse into his musical influences – check it out.) – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? Heck yeah you do! Why? Because 1) It's a great story, 2) You got the means to right in your hands (or desktop), AND 3) You're ALIVE to read it! Need more reasons to give a gander at this tightly packaged, 293-worded short-short morsel?
Fine, here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about "Coroner's Office" by Robert L. Penick:

Other creatures own the night, no matter if we say we own them during the day.

And here's a bit to feed your need-for-a-read:

I thought the worst part of going to work for the Coroner’s office would be the emulsified bodies, the stink of rot hanging in my clothes, an air of finality about my demeanor, decay of the soul and spirit, moral jaundice, an urge to buy new shoes every other week, and wondering at the end of each shift what the hell that was beneath my fingernails. Perhaps the worst part would be the backseat drivers.

That’s a joke.

Turns out it was the groupies. The groupies of the dead.

Every van driver had at least one. A woman who would listen to the scanner and be there when the body came out. Discreet, usually wearing sunglasses, hanging out a couple of doors down from the removal. Mine turned out to be Lilly, an anorexic redhead allergic to direct sunlight and green beans and who carried a hammerless .32 Colt revolver in an ankle holster...

Can't stop there! You're already halfway thru. And really, it's only a couple more minutes of your precious life that we are asking you give. Wanna give it to get the rest of this read? Here ya' go!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Goin' Mad,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“Let us pretend that my mind is a taxi... and suddenly you are riding in it.” ~ David Bowie

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Eggs” (above) by our newest featured artist Maria Valentina Sheets. To view more of Maria's mad-nificent canvases, aslong with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we recorded the local life of the land, banged out on a typewriter, second hand; we looked to hold, but sight too short, found nothing held; we painted snow in perfect form, so closely we became the storm; we cued Coltrane for cosmic head bobbing and facet fascination; we pushed a cart 'round the border of life and fierce order; we moved like low-street wanderers, hurrying past pillars of salt; we became magic prayer gong thinkers, wound up happy strange juice drinkers. Listen, now. Listen for the flow... ~ MH Clay

A juice vendor by Hem Raj Bastola

Street
To street
A strange juice
He makes
From the layers
Of imagination
His hidden flesh
Squeezing clouds
Sailing the air
Oh! Incisive
Soul.

If any audience
You have Oh! Wind
Carry Oh! Carry
To purify the ears
The gong of prayer
A temple bell
Sings.

Magic
Of such art
Winding a juice
In silence he serves
Among the busy streets.
Standing on the corner
A mute consumer, I
Ready to drink
A glass as now he fills
Exuding from
The rock.

Neither did
You hear
Nor did I

The flow.

January 30, 2016

editors note: Magic elixir from a cloud squeezing dream fixer. – mh clay

Journey by Bhargab Chatterjee

Ce ne fait rien
if we step forward

life is a narrow
straight line

those who look back
fall down

with a bang
into a deep, dark ditch

let’s go
we need not make the road wider

you know ‘the world as will and idea‘
don’t be afraid

of a polyphonic silence
the high street is not ours

January 29, 2016

editors note: Yup, it’s the journey. What matters is movement; the end is unknown. – mh clay

Out for a walk by Francesca Castaño

So we enter
the elegant shop looking
like two middle aged
drifters dressed
in house clothes
just gone out
to get groceries
carrying still
the empty shopping cart
suddenly thinking
we need some lustrous
new suit to disguise
decay at the work place.
The young shop attendants
let us try impossible sizes on
with benevolent indifference –
after the third try we give up
and walk out, wheeling
the shopping cart
back to the grocer’s
talking about cucumbers and tomatoes
and ignoring the fierce order of things,
taking each other by the arm
like in those dreams
in which you seem to be both
asleep and awake.

January 28, 2016

editors note: Waking the dream of a day when every day’s a dream. – mh clay

Listening to Coltrane by R.A. Hernandez

Waiting for the subway,
Head bobbing,
Sporadic beat,
Head bobbing,
Setting the new paradigm
For head bobbing,
Coltrane with his gallant sax
Prophesying,
The whole world is a matchbox,
Waiting to go up,
Chin up son,
As my father would say

Listening to Coltrane
Head rocking
Hip hop heads watching
Wondering
Unknowing
Love be supreme
Supreme love being,
Reach out and touch your neighbor
For the sake of all humanity,
Keep the heads of the world bobbing,
When kick drum kicks in
And the roll of the bass drum
Shakes you down to your bones,
Thank life for Coltrane
And subways and graffiti artists
And homeless veterans of the eternal night,
And the death of Mars,

Now stepping into subway car
With head phones on,
As side A fades into side B
Come moving,
Keep grooving,
Keep the love oozing
From pelvic gardens bloom
And hoist the greatest facets of this life
Onto your shoulders
And carry the beat on and on and on…
Head bobbing, the ultimate sign
Of digging someone else’s scared vibes.

January 27, 2016

editors note: Share those scared vibes; a cosmic connection comes. Thank life! – mh clay

I AM THE BLIZZARD by Ruth Z. Deming

I pace back and forth
refrigerator full
hummus from the
Mediterranean
yogurt with chocolate
and raspberry so I
won’t pass out from
a diabetes low.

I stare out the window
such whiteness
a fresh bridal gown
laced with moon beams.

Slipping on my clogs
I step onto the front
porch. At midnight
an otherworldly glow bathes
my skin a milky white.

Listen! Does snow
sound as it falls? Do
it click or tap or
make melancholy
noise?

Its tiny arrows fall
from the sky, piercing
the peach fuzz on my
warm pregnant
cheeks with
a cold ouch!

Barely protected
beneath my
polka-dot PJs
I land in Siberia
where the cold
killed the right arm,
yes, the frost did
it, to a newly anointed
painter name of
Stankowski, not young,

His brilliant reds,
the oranges, the
Rothko blacks, slashed with
poetry, reach out to
embrace me.

I’d like to have his
work hanging on my
wall. There ’tis:
a painting
Huge –
squares of white
white and more
white
feathery white

Hands on canvas
I take a deep yogi
breath, the paint
smells like snow
as I walk right in

I will stay awhile
If I sleep, do not
disturb. Wake me
when it’s over
a live mummy
with frosty-
white hair and
a body that glows.

January 26, 2016

editors note: As the digging ensues, look out for a poet in a painting. You’ll know you found her by “a body that glows.” – mh clay

Eyes of the beholder by James Brown

You look at me and over me, deep down in my soul you’ll never reach, for if you do you’ll freeze instantly, deep down I’m cold inside and you’re outside looking, not at the straining red blood veins in my eyes squeezing my cortices, nerves react; disgruntled reflex, my pupils were blinded as they are weakflesh, sight I could not make see to be free of a detachable heart murmur. You will never feel the real pain until tomorrow but that day it’s just sorrow that runs through the veins as you come home to find you really have no friendship only the prehensile-hold of I done that smile.

January 25, 2016

editors note: To behold is not to be held unless you get beyond that smile. – mh clay

VILLAGE LIFE by John Grey

running bathwater on one side,
Miles Davis on the other,
above, the wannabe diva
screeching something from Turandot
in my one room and half-kitchen,
a small black and white TV,
a pawn shop guitar,
a purring ginger cat,
another neighbor in my one chair
drinking my last beer,
complaining how he can’t get a job,
down below, the small falafel shop
squeezed with, hungry dancers, artists,
on the sidewalk, a street musician
strumming the poor up for change,
a junkie crashed on a stoop,
the local whore grocery shopping
or is that the local grocery shopper whoring,
and all hi the name of
life experience, required research –
on the table, a second hand typewriter,
a blank sheet of paper,
awaiting the payoff

January 24, 2016

editors note: Surrounded by verse, nothing on the page… yet. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? And do we got a raucous tale for you to kick-off this weekend with! This week's featured story comes from Contributing Writer Oleg Razumovsky. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week story: "Art is a weapon, better than judo or karate. Wine is a close second, though."

If you need a convincer, here's a bit of "Aksinya" to whet your reading appetite::

I can’t for the fuck of me understand Aksinya. One moment she’s bald and the next she wears blue hair. One moment she is demure and sad and nothing will cheer her up, than she is the tumult of the falls and starts to fight.

That day we sat on a bench in broad daylight on Kozlov St., near the Krushev slum where our buddy Vakunja dwells. We drank, we smoked and played cards. It is best to drink at broad daylight in the most crowded places. Much less likely that the cops get you.

Aksinya is talented. She draws, writes stories, plays instruments. Her mouth is puckered. I gave her my T-shirt with the inscription: “A TT-30 is better than judo or karate.”

Eventually I went to take a leak to the ravine and met Professor Leon. Talked to him for a while. Haven’t seen him for ages. He is so old and drunk. I once saw him on the porch of a bookstore absolutely stoned. I shouted: Leon! He turned sharply but could not keep the balance and fell. His pants went down revealing a pink butt. A fat woman passing by laughed at the sight so much that her bra burst. Professor Leon is more dead than alive nowadays but he still teaches at the university. It would be silly not to borrow one hundred rubles and a drink from such a drunk, I thought…

Get the rest of your raucous read on right here!

••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••

Join Mad Swirl & Swirve the 1st Wednesday of February (aka 02.03.16) as we continue to swirl up our open mic madness into a new year at our NEW Open Mic home, The Underpass Bar! This month we will be hosting the 1st Annual Dr. Googily-Eyes Healing Circus & Mad Swirlin’ Medicine Show: Inciting the Rise of YES and the Fall of NO. ‘Nuff said? yeah, we thought so ;)

Come on out, one & all. Get a brainful of Swirve, share in the Mad Swirl’n festivities, & if the spirit is movin’ ya get yourself a spot on our list. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to swirl-a-brate!

Mad Love,
Doc Googily-Eyed Guy

P.S. Mad Swirl will once again be trying our hand at the whole UStream broadcast so those that can’t be here in Big D to witness our mic madness live can still get a look-see at the swirlin’ action. Tune in THIS 1st Wednesday starting at 8-ish!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Beep! Beep!,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“I am getting so far out one day I won't come back at all.” ~ William S. Burroughs

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Fish Goddess” (above) by our newest featured artist Maria Valentina Sheets. To view more of Maria's mad-nificent canvases, aslong with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we extended an arm for one last grasp; we would cast away the fear of watered skies, washed in the weir of animal eyes; we wended the way of wrongly wrought days; we entered iconic endings, fraught with impotent fendings; we stared into unsaid situations, infidelity fueled non-conversations; we delved the depths of depraved machinations, love or lust, at least, for hire; we ticked the tock of time to measure lives to celebrate for pleasure. Life, so short; legacies (we hope), so much longer. Read and write to make it so... ~ MH Clay

Sonnet on Time by Harley White

Is time a spiral stairway that we climb
Whose unendingness we seek to borrow
To the last wrought syllable of our rhyme
Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow —
The fusion of the future with the past
In dizzying dimensions ever new
Which hurl us headlong in a void so vast
That what we view as false appears as true?
We must peer through bars forever blocking
Upon the threshold of our promised land —
At the gates of eternity knocking —
Outside we stand — albeit hand in hand.

Through the rush of time we’re ceaselessly swirled.
How heartless is the transience of this world!

February 6, 2016

editors note: Hand in hand we stand against the great Tick Tock. (Another one from Harley on her page; a birthday present – check it out.) – mh clay

LOW HILLS by William C. Blome

Rich dudes have their run of the place here,
place where low hills press down in earshot
of falling black water and women so fucking
tired of washing garments, they hang
their breasts out to dry on hooks
chiseled from fine fountain stone. These
are the same women who squeeze your arm
in between their lacquered fingers
and then push your fingers into their lips
and far, far further back, just so
long as your lucre be green-and-gray paper
and not some nasty alloy.

February 5, 2016

editors note: Love for lucre. How low will you go? To buy? To sell? – mh clay

Betrayed by Shirin Hasrat

Lips tightly sealed
avoiding eye contact
They sit
in stone cold silence while
tumultuous emotions rage
hurricane like
around them.
Hurt, anger, disbelief make
a Molotov cocktail
just waiting to explode.
Perspiring profusely he stares
at his feet as if
the answer
to her unasked question
lies there.
She shivers
at his frigid indifference
and wonders
how easily
he let a passing fancy rip
into fragments
the fabric of
intimate companionship
woven lovingly for over
two decades.

February 4, 2016

editors note: Look before you leap or you’ll be staring at your feet. – mh clay

Phantom Pastoral (excerpt) by Quinten Collier

The Christ and the barbed wire,
The musical cigar, wineskin,
Jewel encrusted sirens:
The horizon drying on the factory roofs,
Winking lies at the hero’s funeral–
Last supper of cheeseburgers and milkshakes.
Mother was fair,
Papa died in his rocking chair:
They were the lucky ones.

Forgotten on the bottom rung of a hospital bed:
Is this what it takes to be forgiven?
Unremembered son; every blade is the last, every glance.
Nobody should die young,
But you make the paper.

No more wanted photos
And no hero’s return.

We reach for the mirage that cast us off
As the dressing room consumes her changing.
What can you teach perfume?

What was and isn’t still awaits,
Says a street urchin in an amulet of paradise,
I read all your letters by fog
So my ghost would remain haunted.
Give me your veil–
I once had hope.

The crossed stars on a boy painted with scars.
His crown lit by the unborn part of town;
Who was he? Fires that never burned,
Dragging his fortune like a prince
Who never leaves his war.
Scripture recited in empty bars.
The body of the host
Sealed as the petals of a stillborn rose.

February 3, 2016

editors note: All live a hero’s life, all made sacrifice; body and blood. (Read this in its epic entirety on Quinten’s page – check it out. Also, read our review of Quinten’s latest collection on our Blog – check it, too.) – mh clay

Definitions by Rose Aiello Morales

No book
of magic,
spells misspelled
or simplified,
uncommon use
brings out
much more
than common in us,
common wrong.

Back doors,
libraries
are locked
to certain people,
admittance gained
by those
speed read
between some lines
who realize the secrets.

Speak
in words of code,
bald rules
were never meant
for anything but broken,
when an “x”
is not an x,
except when used
in obfuscation.

Wrong
the right of
others, flaunting
flagrante delicto,
gallows hanging
outside churchly squares
and never any holy there.

Taste water
on your tongue
know feast from thirst
as liquid becomes holy
from belief, suffused, one body
of ability who walks on water
frozen, trial by fire and ice,
believers grasp the truth
that’s closest to the chest

and
always
get it wrong.

February 2, 2016

editors note: When answers abound, the trick is to ask the right questions. – mh clay

Sprinklers by Christopher Raley

I heard it from the narrow alley
along our house, water hissing
through the tightly clenched mouths
of my neighbor’s sprinklers.

I peeked over the fence. His lawn
glistened faintly in the full moon.
Yellow grass glowed more distinctly
pale than his few clumps of green.

What a long winter. What a long, dry winter
of ugly shapes dark, cold and cracked.
I saw them piled up on his lawn,
all those fear-fraught things, as if begging

for a mercy cast out of the sky —
begging me, mind you, for something
that is not mine to own that I should give it.

And when I returned within she was still hiding
inside the plea of hunted animal eyes.

February 1, 2016

editors note: We would wash away winter fear, but water reaches not within. – mh clay

Exe in the Infirmary by Steven Minchin

even in hate I nurse you
it’s okay
if you don’t remember
you were recoiled

dealing at about 80 proof
with your red back exposed
glaring with the marks
of bottle coping, and your new friend

who’s raw glass edge ripped you
a surface wound, an outside emblem
of what you hid up front – of what
your lips hinted at above the pillow

it hurts!
what are you putting on me?
as you fell out
it was all I could see

the glaring color of your back
you’re back
and at the end of one my arms
there’s a fist

at the end of the other
a last grasp at tenderness

January 31, 2016

editors note: A case of care giver meets careless liver. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? Hungry for some delish words? Oh GOOD! You're in for a treat! This week's featured tasty tale comes from Contributing Writer and Poet, Harley White. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week story: "A new you is as easy as hating yourself each and every day. No matter the accomplishment or sense of satisfaction, ignore it! No one wants that. No one wants imperfection. Society has no need for complexity. The last thing the world should need is more variety. No one wants art."

Would you like a nibble of "Transformation"? Open up and say ahhh:

There was no getting around it anymore—Annie’s stomach had become a definite protuberance. The problem seemed to be her fondness for food.

Still, Annie was not devoid of the tendency toward self-evaluation. Browsing through the fashion-filled pages of Damsel magazine, she had become aware of another hunger experienced when studying the color portraits of lean, hollow-eyed models, accompanied by a disturbing decline in her enjoyment of eating. Inside the back cover of Damsel was a mail order form with which one could receive a gilded full-length mirror. Since the only mirror she owned was on the medicine cabinet, she decided to take advantage of the offer.

The package arrived, and Annie mounted the looking glass in her bedroom. Then she stood back to examine the purchase. But the mirror reflected what it saw, which was unfortunately Annie. She sank sadly into a chair.

Luckily, though, Damsel’s resources seemed limitless and Annie escaped into an article (marked advertisement in fine print) about a ranch to which could retreat those ladies who wished to achieve the perfect figure. There was a picture of a fat woman tagged before followed by a slim young lady captioned after. Also included was a summary of the healthful activities and daily diet (which seemed to Annie the only drawback) that one would follow during each adventure-filled day of the four-week program at the Feather Goddess Ranch, just outside of Someville in the Midwest.

Making the necessary arrangements, Annie locked the door with finality on obesity to embark on her journey into slimness.

Get the rest of your read eat on right here!

••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••

Hello m’fellow Mad Ones. I am Reverend Brother Elder Swirl the 7th. You might remember me from the Dr. Googily-Eyes Healing Circus & Mad Swirlin’ Medicine Show (inciting the Rise of YES and the Fall of NO)…

This past 1st Wednesday we gathered to give praises to the affirmative and damnation to the negative. Our good friend and brother in madness, Doctor Googily-Eyes was there in his YESness and was dealin’ the healin’ at the Underpass. If you were there, you probably still feel the YES vibes reverberatin’…

Thanks to all our mad bruthas & sistas who came to witness on this holy-1st-Wednesday. Praises to ALL ye mad poets & musicians who cameth to participateth, appreciateth, & supporteth the holy YES!

Here’s a shout out to all who graced us with their words, their songs, their divine madnesses…

photos courtesy of Dan "the man" Rodriguez

Hosts:
Johnny O
MH Clay

Feature:
Reverend Brother Elder Swirl the 7th
Brother Deacon MH Clay
Opalina Salas
Kerseymere
Chris Zimmerly
Hep Kat Mama
Carlos Salas
Brett Ardoin (videographer)

McSwirve:
Gerard Bendiks
Chris Curiel
Ed McMahon

Photographer:
Dan Rodriguez

Mad Cast:
Tamitha Curiel
Maggie Smith
Paul Koniecki
Vic Victory
TA2
Three Actors
CJ Critt
James Barrett Rodehaver
Jen Bochenko
Gabriel
Lindsey Yarborough
Tom Bannon
Danielle Brown
Nick
Abagail
John May
Anthony Hayes
Fatima
Daniel Frank
Lindsey

HUGE thanks to Swirve for keeping the beat til the wee hours of the night. We got taken to another dimension of time and space on the wings of their jazzy madness!

More HUGE thanks to fantastic photog Dan Rodriguez (he captured these scenes) for graciously sharing his mad eye and giving y’all a taste of the night’s YES mic madness.

Thanks to Mike & Leo at The Underpass for opening up this fine establishment to us mad ones and making us feel right at home.

And finally we would like to thank ALL of you who freely shared their hand claps, finger-snaps, hoots and howls with all the mad ones who got up on this sacred mad swirlin’ mic.

Can I get a YES-MON?! YESSSSSS!

••• Mad Swirl Review •••

It is always a pleasure to see our Contributing Poets have their work published. Here is one worthy of note, published last Fall by Bobtimystic Books from Brooklyn, New York:

Chem Trails (Collected Poems: 2008 - 2014) is a compilation of poetry by Quinten Collier, one of our Contributing Poets since 2010. Many of the poems in this volume first debuted on his poetry page.

This collection contains old and new works in a single volume; The Mind a Fractured Circus (2008), Visions, Asylums & Encomium Paintings (2008), Out of the Ether (2008) and new works in Chem Trails (2014). The three earlier collections have been available on Amazon. But, this collection, combining all four, (also available on Amazon) can be purchased directly from Bobtimystic Books on their site.

Read Chem Trails cover to cover, in one huge consuming gulp (you'll survive a better soul); or, pick and choose, like a big buffet, nibble here, slurp there, eat and ideate. Either way, you'll find you need a bigger hat size when you're done. Pure fun!

- mh clay

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Takin' Off,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.” ~ George Jean Nathan

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Undressing Moonlight” (above) by featured artist Bill Wolak.

We here at Mad Swirl just can’t get enough of Bill Wolak’s symmetrical sweetness! This time around, he treats us to some splash of color and even allusions to nature – branches of trees, green leaves and flowers. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying I can look at each piece time and time again and again and feel like I’m looking into some new and mysterious. And we think that’s exactly what Bill wants! Have a look-see for yourself and if you like what you look-see, look-see again and again and… again. ~ Madelyn Olson

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we stepped into infinity with pleasing inconsistency; we celebrated Lefty Bell, big leg hot water dance so well; we were washed in a wave of wonderment, unable to make a wish; we found everything, soft and hard, here in the sleeper's sward; we whispered a mystery for the keeping of knives; we locked regrets in frozen rain, a rapid passage to laugh at pain; we danced to the beauty of life, to the beat of a drum. Be it different, or just "Ho, Hum." Dance the anesthetic, dance to the drum. ~ MH Clay

Shaman Drum by Steffen Horstmann

Rain falling on Tibetan roads emulates
The percussion of the shaman drum.

Born of the melody
The Tingri winds hum.

Born of the kamala trees
where gold hornets thrum.

Born of the stream rushing
Beneath a wild plum.

February 13, 2016

editors note: Nice beat, different drummer. – mh clay

bitter apology by John Sweet

sick of sorrow and forgiveness

sick of winter

grey sky, grey hills, the bodies of
animals left by the sides of
saltstained roads

the days all shaped like funnels

a need for oil, for transmission
fluid, for antifreeze

let the gears grind

let the houses burn

no more heroes, okay?

no more angry gods

and i sat there thinking i
should say something, but
there was nothing to say

had known her twenty years
earlier, when she was
beautiful, when i was still human

what happens is never clear

all hearts are clocks
running backwards

all moments are lost

why wouldn’t you laugh at
the pain this causes?

February 12, 2016

editors note: Not even a chuckle, when you’re chokin’ on crow. – mh clay

The Moon is Still Awake by Jonathan Hayes

The young girl walking by me along the cold hard levee
Crying, crying, crying into the night, as she passes.

“The knives are in the cupboard.”

She whispers.

February 11, 2016

editors note: And the moon has the key. – mh clay

Graveyard Swag (v. i.) by Randall Garrett

Trying to say something smart when there’s nothing to add to the conversation.
Trying to practice equanimity, to remember this illusion, our own creation.
Beginning to hate, questions and doubts, beginning to love, more questions, more doubts.
Beginning again, again, again, twist and shout, echo, echo, faint, ever fainter, fade out.
Swagger wearing a scary mask, that hides a lack of self-confidence.
Swagger inspired to the task, that loves to flaunt it when you notice.
There is no need for you, for true, when I see my flag in the wind unfurl.
There is no me, there is no you, no place for art in this righteous world.
Power that pounds on your door, complicit, no sense of irony.
Power that gives itself away, that hates its place in history.
Violence, a pendulum that swings faster, in an ever quickening cycle.
Violence that cuts through flesh, through blood, words slicing, a revival.
Love that looks its enemy in the eye with an open heart and a smile.
Love from the sweet bye and bye, ready for the kill, or to hold you a while.

February 10, 2016

editors note: What a thrill for a love that kills. – mh clay

Wish by Gilbert Franco

my hands are freezing out in the november sun
here marks the end of something i wasnt so sure would’ve lasted to begin with
i was just trying to live in the moment and give each day a purpose
but i always believed the days had purpose and i always believed in god
i always had too much hope in my heart
or in my head
but they’re both deceiving and nobody will ever convince me otherwise
the stars in the sky shone so brightly last night
and while i sat on my window sill
i could smell lilacs
and i watched one single star fall out of the sky
and i was so mesmerised by its beauty that i couldnt even make a wish
it was like that with your eyes

February 9, 2016

editors note: When wishing is just not enough; stars and eyes shine forever. – mh clay

Afterwords and Beyond by Gayle Bell

This is the soundtrack for the life and times of
Lefty Bell. 57 years
the dust still hasn’t settled.
My inner selves seated at my honors table
praised for their resiliency,
smart/toughness
Couldn’t/wouldn’t break
Walk w/ dignity through these streets so mean
So mad
Soul De La soul Fela Kuti
wild out music revolution
On the make/semi retired
Loving me immovable
Put the panty drop song on
Sway on the tip
Sway on my thigh
Sway my body
Sip my lemon tea lime
Subversive head
Circa LaWanda Page listening to Wolfgang
pierce the marrow of my heart
Luna sweet like my AfroCuban soul
Big leg hot water sweet potato
honey sticks Smokin hot
laughing at the shadows
big 6
deuces
twenty twins
Snapping snapping
I dance the pain out
I dance the pain out

February 8, 2016

editors note: Every after has an ever. Dance to your music… – mh clay

ONE CHANCE TO LIVE by Bradford Middleton

I step through the centre of my mind’s eye
And into the near future of this life
I don’t know where I am and for that, well
Just grateful to have escaped
Glad to be somewhere else
Whilst I experience even more
A whole life of inconsistency
That always seems pleasing to me
This life is meant to be lived
So take it now and do what you will
Because this is the one chance you’ll get
At this craziness called living

February 8, 2016

editors note: We all live it; take it or not. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? Got some munchies for some mad words? Good, 'cos we got a tasty bud of a tale for you to toke! This week's featured nug comes from Contributing Writer, Austin Brookner. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about it: "Not everyone can be a rock star, but that doesn’t mean every one shouldn’t try to party like one."

Here's 420-ish tokes of "One Billion Stoned" to light your fire:

(photo by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter)

So it goes like this. My good friend Morgan and I assumed the driving duties. Our other good pals Justin and Nick were in the back seats tripping their balls off on mushrooms saying how beautiful the trees were. Morgan drove the first half of the trip from campus and then we switched and I took over for the rest of the way. But somehow we miscalculated because Morgan only drove for four hours and I had driven for like eight hours and we still hadn't reached the border. When we finally did, the security was so lax – they just checked our passports and waved us through – that we figured all the cautionary tales we were told was bullshit.

Then it was like another two hours after crossing the border until we actually saw some signs of a city. I was so fatigued and fed up with all the French street signs which I couldn't understand, plus it was dark, that I mistook a pedestrian walk bridge for an actual bridge. I retired from my driving duties shortly thereafter.

Though we escaped from that incident without injury to man or car, though I don't remember how, we had a much closer brush with danger later. We were on our way back from Canada – driving free, blowing smoke, and feeling good (which is basically all we did when we were in Montreal).

Passing into Canada was such a breeze that we thought nothing much of the border patrol. So when we drove out of Canada and into upstate New York we were gleeful and were smoking our brains out.

I didn't even understand what was going on at first. I thought it was some highway construction holding up traffic. By the time the Texan border patrol dude in a funny hat asked us to roll down the window it was too late. We had the wrong driver behind the wheel.

Justin, bless his heart, was fond of wearing his McDonald's marijuana shirt. He wore it almost every day of sophomore year in college. It's a red shirt with a big yellow McDonald's "M" and underneath it says "Marijuana, over one billion stoned." Justin would wear that shirt in class. Hell, that crazy fucker would light up a bowl during class while the teacher had his back turned and wrote on the chalkboard.

Justin and I were both economics majors and so we shared a lot of classes together. If he wasn't getting baked during class he was definitely stoned before and after...

Now pick up the proverbial bong, flick your Bic® & move that cursor here and inhale the whole tale!

••• Mad Swirl Blog •••

(photo by Johnny O)

Calling All Mad Poets! Here's a lil somethin' thing from the blog at Mad Swirl that all our poets ought to read... a chance to attend "The friendliest poetry festival in the world."

Read on...

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Makin' Madness,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“The sun is gone, but I have a light.” ~ Kurt Cobain

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Open As an Amulet’s Eye” (above) by featured artist Bill Wolak. To view more of Bill's twisted images, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we spared no spat with a priestly pratt; we gave spare change for a brief exchange; we made no fuss o'er a headless nobody on the bus; we sought to be kind from a fire in the mind; we spurned suburban spawn for normalcy in a green lawn; we pursued our peace of brain from blue sky and end of rain; we were drenched in rain again, washed away life's stains again. Cleansed in the virtue of verse, made new and none the worse. ~ MH Clay

THE RUST AND THE RAIN by Derrick Gaskin

Darkness everywhere when we open our eyes
To tears in the tide’s never ending song.
Oblivion everywhere before we could think
Of being oblivious to right or wrong.
Beauty everywhere until we lose
Our souls, stolen before we can blink.
Silence everywhere, as stars burn
Not for us as we never learn.
Innocence everywhere as their animals kill,
Not for food, just for the thrill.
Freedom everywhere as they forge our chains,
Blood, rust and tears washed away in the rains.

February 20, 2016

editors note: Emancipation sans achievement; being without having been. Cold are the stars from this deep dark. – mh clay

That Rain by Gregg Dotoli

crushing rain woke me
hours after midnight
each drop a flat note
pinged off this leaf or that stone
earth’s white noise
caused a natural claustrophobia
shrinking my mind space
inducing fear
knowing I can’t escape
until it wanes

February 19, 2016

editors note: Reverse effect; occlusion over cleansing. Rain, go away! (We welcome Gregg to our crazy congress of Contributing Poets with this submission. Read more of his madness on his new page – check it out!) – mh clay

Suburban Bourbon by Bradley Mason Hamlin

sometimes
when I’m stuck
drinking with other men
they try to drink more
or quicker
or weirder

they begin to slur
talk shit
and stare
at my wife’s tits
while telling
their own wives to fuck off

they want more
they want something
they think
they don’t have

but they’ve never
been inside the E.R.
with a bleeding ulcer
or behind the bars
of the Navy brig
or in bare knuckle
fights for life

there are
no easy shortcuts,
just ice it down
and make sure
the lawn
stays
nice and green

February 18, 2016

editors note: For those burb boobs who take “thou shalt not” as a dare. – mh clay

Fire by Arun Budhathoki

There’s fire in my mind
A bright one
Colorful
Bursting early morning
Burning brighter than anything else
Even the winter looks dull before it

My girlfriend asks me
If I can be uxorious towards her
I laugh laugh laugh
Like sweet winter of Kathmandu
There’s snow here
No snow to cover me up
Cover up my heart and body
My parched hands

My face becoming brighter again
I look for places to gormandize momos
And what I eat instead
Saddening faces and hearts blocked by dusts
And blockade

I have no oniomania
I am penniless like before
Am I depressed looking at the situation of people?
I cannot see people in rural areas
Of struggling Nepal

I don’t see hungry people
Or shivering children
I think of doing pandiculation
Stretch this heart
Stretch this mind
And everything else

Perhaps this is a nocturne?

What you say?

An apology for having a bigger belly
I have loads of books
Call me a bibliotaph

Check my mind please
It is burning
Burning
There’s fire on my mind

February 17, 2016

editors note: A consciousness conflagration, sparked through awareness of others’ plights. Fan the one; extinguish the other. – mh clay

OL’ JIM by Ricky Garni

He was the Headless Horseman. But he lost his horse because his horse ran away and of course he had no head and could not find him. So he become The Headless Man Without A Horse. He stayed that way for quite a while and everyone called him that. Eventually people forgot he ever had a horse, and people called him the Headless Man. Eventually, people forgot that he ever had a head in the first place and so he became Jim. Eventually, everybody just called him Ol’ Jim. “Isn’t that Ol’ Jim?” They would say. “I do believe it is. There goes Ol’ Jim, always riding the bus to somewhere or other.”

February 16, 2016

editors note: Affix no name to obvious affliction; making it real, demanding our attention. – mh clay

CHANGE by Helen Harrison

‘Can you spare some change please’
He said; as she walked briefly past
‘Sorry for asking’ the remark that
Made her turn around and start
To rummage through her purse
For available odd coins; even
Staying beside him a while
To enjoy a brief exchange.

I wondered was it good?
Manners that had brought
On a sudden change of mind
And if there was now a new polite
Way of begging in cities these days
Where the average human population
Have delayed reactions to a fraction of
Society that is so different from the norm.

February 15, 2016

editors note: What we can spare for those who live sparely. Say, “Please.” – mh clay

A RIGHTEOUS OBSTACLE by John D. Robinson

I had some business to take
care of in the hospital and as
usual made my way to the
nurses station and I knocked
on the door and a guy maybe
a few years older than me
opened up the door;
I didn’t recognise him and
I couldn’t see his I.D. badge
as it was hidden beneath
his waistcoat but I knew
he was an outside
visitor from some piss-poor
do-gooder service and I
explained myself and he
appeared awkward and
guarded the office and began
to tell me that he had some
work to do and he began
to point with a limp hand
at some chairs scattered
in the corridor opposite
the office where I could sit
and wait and as he gestured
I said loudly “Pratt” and
then I slowly turned and
walked away and found
somebody helpful;
the following day I
learnt that the guy was
a hospital Chaplain and
he had been rather
shaken and unsettled by
my apparently menacing
appearance and attitude
and I thought, fuck me,
I had been soft on
the pompous old bastard
and next time maybe
I’ll do the right thing and
I’ll clench my mouth
and go find some place to
smoke a cigarette and
pray silently for my
treacherous soul.

February 14, 2016

editors note: In the way, or in the Way; obstructions abound. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? This week's featured story might make you look at "an eye for an eye" in a completely different way...

Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week tale "Midas Eye" by Yves K. Morrow: "No one wants to see into the future but we can all see it coming. The eye of the swirl claims all."

Here's an eyeful fer ya:

I am aware of the fingers clutching my jaw, the green eyes that incarcerate my shrinking visual field. He won’t come with me, not this time, this time it’s a rite of passage. He blows the smoke into my mouth. I feel my uvula shudder.

Today I become a man or I lose my shit trying.

Leaves and slicks of mud slow my passage. The air is full of bone fragments. Each inhale is pitiless. I drop my nose inside the collar of my leather trench drawing in lozenges of moist breath. The sky is split like an oyster, specks of pearl dust igniting within haunting procession of chaste grays. The traffic lights read as eyeless sockets, there are no cars only paper cranes skittering across the tarmac like disembodied teeth.

I turn into a coffee shop after I hear carnival music gearing up in the distance. Any minute the clowns will take to the streets. I fucking hate clowns. The barista is a heavyset man in his late 40s with an unfolding lotus tattooed on the crest of his scalp. The delicate pinks don’t suit his mystique but it’s not really my business. He has no tongue so instead he just hands me a mug and points to an alcove rimmed with books. There is an old couple in the cafe but they are immersed in conversation, the woman is anyway. The man hasn’t spoken a word. Never will if he’s careful.

The titles twist beneath my gaze like amputated lizard tails. I pluck a book from the frame and behind it bobs a gold eye, I put the book back but it’s too late I am aware of his presence. One by one the books retreat until there is a space only slightly larger than a human head.

A cane emerges, a heavy black boot, a trousered leg, a black t-shirt that reads “Don’t eat the meatloaf” and a head of immaculate silver hair. All 7ft of a not quite human male comes from a space adequate only for a newborn. He steps down onto the bench and takes a seat across from me. I can see the mechanics in his left eye but the right is a perfect halo of gold. He points at the jukebox with a slim finger.

“It’s your turn.”

Eye bet you can't stop reading there. Get the rest of your eyeful right here!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Shinin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“All things must change to something new, to something strange.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Kisses Restless as Wildfire” (above) by our repeat featured artist Bill Wolak. To view more of Bill's mad-nificent canvases, along with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we made no wish on snake or fish; we had our say on self-made take away; we declared our independence, all wrapped in your resplendence; we tried filling silence with sound, got it the other way around; we extolled poetry, the beauty in making it (hoping inside we're not dilettantes, faking it); we climb the ladder, rung by rung, would skip a few, to speak god's tongue; we donned a coat, a tattered cover, handed down from one to other. We are clothed in our company, formed from our family. Selah! ~ MH Clay

Father’s Tattered Coat by Johnny Olson

Father’s hand-me-down coat

sits heavily upon slouching shoulders.
Weights in its’ tatters.
Slows the maneuvers of
the son’s wayward feet.
Weaving down midnight’s pathways…

He, burdened with what
was never asked for.
This coat, he inherited.

After too many years,
the son’s tailor hands
and artisan’s care altered
the too long sleeves,
darned the moth eaten pockets,
sewed the weather beaten collar,
reinforced the cuffs with
leather and wool.

He keeps out the cold now,
shivers no more.
Yet suffers in summer heat
in beads of sweat and tears.
But still, he wears
father’s hand-me-down coat.

With the humbled pride
of a rehab’d hobo
who has finally accepted his lot,
he is his father’s son.

And now, with care,
father’s coat hangs right there,
biding its’ time
to be handed down again.

February 27, 2016

editors note: The magic, mythical family mantle, passed from pater to progeny – perpetually. (read another one of our Founder & Chief Editor’s mad missives on his page; a real squirrel hunt – check it out!) – mh clay

a sign of getting older by J.J. Campbell

i find
myself
each
day
trying
harder
to
listen
for the
voice
of
god

just
my
luck

he
speaks
a
language
that
wasn’t
taught
to me
in high
school

February 26, 2016

editors note: God-speak as a second language? Can’t find that in the classifieds. – mh clay

SO LIQUID! by Saloni Kaul

Like words fixed in time on empty page,
Some images tucked away that only we see,
The mind that writes sees all at every stage
And streamlines all till taken is all space free.

A blank sheet, like a pretty face, beckons
Intelligence to give it life, calls for pen’s gold
And the writer a tale to tell that reckons
It’s time for beauty hid to be extolled.

Keeping old fleeting dreams tidily at bay
To get on with the act, there’s a purpose implied;
There’s scarcely any point procrastinating day
When the sun’s overpowering as perfume or high tide.

At such times one wonders, is endeavouring the essence,
When poetry spontaneous has so liquid an omnipresence.

February 25, 2016

editors note: We are soaked in our grasping; trying to swim or, at least, tread water. – mh clay

August Journal: Saturday, August 10, 2013 by Don Mager

The sky lays dim slate above the trees.
Looming silhouettes breathe in blackness.
Air exhales cool damp silence. Stillness
in the trees echoes cool silence back.
A few lone Cicadas call from edge
to edge. Their erratic dry clicking
makes the shape of silence palpable
like, just before a song begins, breath’s
intake holds the upbeat. Out of
the silence, as awareness takes shape,
crossing by crossing, a train’s bleak howl
approaches. Silence holds its breath. It
waits the train to pass the street end. It
forgets to breathe. It goes back inside.

February 24, 2016

editors note: Silence occupies all vacancies, but pays no rent. – mh clay

Mother triangle by Patricia Qi

with your head tilted slightly and your eyes closed
you listen to my independence declaration which you
have a suspicion lies anchored in your existence you wait
for the future hope someday to witness her when the time
comes reach for my hand and face the heat waves together

you
complete space roll up sometimes
wistful to complete anything yet
together with you
my thoughts touch the rim of the sun
you
run through my veins it feels
like a light itching as if something angular
makes its way through my perception to breathe
the mother triangle turns over her every face
restlessly she tries to bear the right version of me

from your mouth I arrived behind this desk the lamp
glows the November day bleak and you repeat with
self-destructive logic it’s not all that bad you balance
above the figure that once cast your body without
virulence I hear your words and think of history of
helpful anonymous romantics of death no longer
hidden from your life defied

February 23, 2016

editors note: It’s not so much the face we show as it is the face they see. – mh clay

Poem 5/23/15 by Joseph Elenbaas

We are so
perfectly lonely.

We forgive
pulling on a wishbone

standing in the corner
of the kitchen.

The faltering
zen of epigrams

land with wonder
at your chest.

Who can make me
when there is nobody

to take away
from me?

February 22, 2016

editors note: Only one thief can steal self-confidence. – mh clay

when you tell us the next lie by Ayoola Goodness Olanrewaju

when you tell us the next lie
remember we know a snake from a fish
and the truth is not a costly buy
when you tell us the next lie.

to chase the stars is not a do or die
this heart knows it is a wish from a wish
when you tell us the next lie
remember we know a snake from a fish.

when you tell us the next lie
remember we know a snake from a fish
and a laughter near from a far cry
when you tell us the next lie.

to bridge a truth a lie cannot make a tie
this heart knows to eat stars is of a patient dish
when you tell us the next lie
remember we know a snake from a fish.

when you tell us the next lie
remember we know a snake from a fish
and a tsetse from a house-fly
when you tell us the next lie.

to mix a truth a lie makes a true-lie
for we know the good from a pile of rubbish
when you tell us the next lie
remember we know a snake from a fish.

February 21, 2016

editors note: To constant true-lie (snake or fish), “We’ve stopped listening!” – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? Do we have a hot and steamy story for you this week! Be aware: This tantalizing tale is not for the uptight and/or prudish. "Permission Slip" by Ty Vossler tip-toes on the fine line of erotica yet it also has a big ol' heart on it!

Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week story: "Decide! We all do it, either with our bodies or our brains. We decide to share ourselves. Only the luckiest have a conversation about opening their body for someone else–a stranger, a friend, or vermin."

Here's a tasty teaser to get your own heart on:

(image: "The Dance" by featured artist William Zuback)

I, __________, do hereby grant permission for my wife, Lucia Lopez-Costner, to have discreet sexual adventures with other men (or women) provided she agrees to the following terms and conditions:

1. Lucia agrees to have protected sex unless provided with current STD test results.

2. Lucia agrees to make clear that their business is strictly for pleasure, and nothing else can or will develop as a result.

3. Lucia will choose partners carefully—no coworkers or such that may cause future conflict. Absolute discretion is imperative.

4. Lucia agrees to share with husband, Wyler, about each adventure before or immediately after it has taken place, so that their healthy, honest relationship will be preserved.

5. Lucia’s signature on this document infers that her husband (Wyler) is also bound to the above terms and conditions should he choose to have sex outside of marriage.

I, __________, do hereby agree to the terms and conditions listed above.

Date: _____

After reading the terms, Lucia returned the permission slip to the nightstand next to the bed. Our daughter, Rita, was at preschool and my beautiful Mexican wife and I had taken a rare morning off from work to partake in a good old-fashioned uninterrupted lovemaking session. We lay side-by-side, kissing and slowly undressing each other.

I loved the way her short, dark hair framed her face—those lovely almond-shaped eyes and her full lips. Her body was short, compact, thick around the thighs, and swollen tummy from child birth. Still, she had an undeniable aura of sensuality that didn’t go unnoticed by other men. As Lucia pulled away from a long kiss she asked, “Should I sign?”...

If you've hung this long, you best get the rest of your tease on right here!

••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••

Join Mad Swirl & Swirve the 1st Wednesday of March (aka 03.02.16) as we continue to swirl up our open mic madness at our NEW Open Mic home, The Underpass Bar!

This month we feature Poet Quinten Collier all the way from the Rocky Mountain HIGH state of Colorado. A Contributing Poet to Mad Swirl since 2010, Quinten will be reading from his new collection Chem Trails, as well as some of his newer works this next first-Wednesday.

Come on out, one & all. Get a brainful of Swirve, share in the Mad Swirl’n festivities, & if the spirit is movin’ ya get yourself a spot on our list. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to swirl-a-brate!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.” ~ Frank Norris

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Startled by Unfamiliar Perfume” (above) by featured artist Bill Wolak. To view more of Bill's mad-nificent canvases, along with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we asked the wind to dance, flew into the face of chance; we smiled foa da camera with incarcerated teeth; we bathed in bloody love, sprung from the war of wills; we, to uncommon love, were hand-cuffed fast, so pleased to see, 'Oh Yes, At Last!'; we tried to push eternal rest, caught in the funnel of an antlion's nest; we clung to love-lost memories, hoped to hold a passing breeze; we heard a conversation to make of us a GUNly nation. Snapped out of our revelry by rampant fear and devilry. Let's write ourselves free! ~ MH Clay

The Gun of the Brownshirts by Chuck Taylor

The GUN is always waiting… waiting for the hand. It sits on a shelf hidden from eyes, so quiet, so patient, yearning for the hand that understands what’s needed. Without the hand the GUN feels cold and lonely. It won’t take any hand. The GUN wants a hand that senses down in its bones all there is to fear. Fear is what keeps a person from becoming great. The GUN knows the hand wants to settle things, here and now. The gun knows it acts as a seed when it marries the hand. A new time begins when the gun is taken. Terror dissipates and the fearless man walks forth. He carries now the answers the world doesn’t know it needs.

March 5, 2016

editors note: Sick and sad is the nation engaged with GUN in conversation. – mh clay

The Garden of Wild Jasmine by Amy Barry

The past survives
in the sweet scented
Jasmine.

She walks
under summer foliage.
White hair,
soft as the clouds.
Her features caught
in time’s net of wrinkles.
Warm remembrance
swept.
Memories roam,
in sunlight – a blue tit logged
all it saw.

Her search,
real or unreal is not known.
In the passing breeze,
rimmed with tears,
eloquent with pain,
perhaps, it is here –
in the thick softness
of greens,
flowers and soil,
like the end of a warm dream –
in the garden that breathes –
She wishes to enter
and disappear.

March 4, 2016

editors note: All is memory, sweetly sustained; if only we could… – mh clay

THOUGHTS AFTER A WAKE by Terry Severhill

What can be said or written that
could ever comfort the dead or
the mother holding onto, clinging
to the barest shadow of faith that
her beloved may escape that
which stalks us all? Forever is an
awfully long time yet it seems not
long enough to grieve to release
all hope. Remembering is not life,
not reanimation, still she will go
through the motions, repeating
prayers, rituals and random
conjurings in faint hope that her
faith, her will, can evoke a
different outcome. So it is, so it
has always been. We should feel a
connection to our shared past but
we don’t. Hundreds of thousands
of years, thousands of
generations. Bones laid to rest
with furs, flowers, stone tools,
jewelry, food stuff all bear mute
testimony to our shared hope,
shared failure. Amen.

March 3, 2016

editors note: We go through these motions; hoping to create a different future. – mh clay

I’m Dysfunctional Just Like You by Paul Tristram

So let us join forces
and create a beautiful mess together.
Mentally handcuffed
to that cellar radiator
side by side.
How very uncommon our love will be,
I’m neurotically
swinging from the chandelier
just imagining
the magnificent affray
we will be causing
by our un-requiting
Convention’s silly airs and graces.
I love your outer scars
and imperfections
(it’s all but oil on canvas!)
and your inner fractures
make me gasp aloud
in ‘Oh Yes, At Last’ wonderment.
You are perfect,
from your insecure fidgeting
right down to your
OCD structure making
(Touch that door handle again
just one more time for me, baby!)
We’ll get married at Midnight,
when all the ordinary every day folk
are in bed asleep and out of the way
and honeymoon in Merthyr Tydfil
(It’s genius, they’ll never find us there!)
And we’ll have the
‘Hookah Smoking Caterpillar’
from Alice In Wonderland
to vicar over the magical proceedings.

March 2, 2016

editors note: It’s a match made in Wonderland. “We’re all mad here…” – mh clay

mouths drawn like swords. by James Rodehaver

in the lion-hearted morning,
we roll over in bed,
exposing daggers hidden the night before.

we arise to a love like an arms deal,
you will die painfully,
i will die painfully,
both of us rich,
both of us at war,
but this pact will stiffen my spine,
exacerbate your zeal.

there are empty planetariums spinning galaxies for no one,
and here we are, unable to look up,
hands at our sides,
our mouths drawn like swords;
a whole universe wasted by the dilation of your pupils,
and the bated breath that comes with an honest emotion felt between liars.

the only way to make anti-venom is with venom,
and so there is hope in the dna of betrayal.

i do not trust you,
nor you i,
and therein lies the promise of a bloody alliance,
but still,
we break pacts like hearts in the night.

we circle and swoop like falcons,
talons out,
razor wings,
this will end badly for both,
one will die on top of the other,
but no one will live to claim victory.

warriors thrusting sun shields,
hiding gleaming swords behind our fear,
we retreated until our backs met,
and then we entered the truce of a new dawn together.

if i die with my dick out,
know i was not unprepared,
i am an opportunist with my time,
and i know what’s coming.

in the field at late afternoon,
you are my crown,
and my assassin.

because no matter what,
you’re both on my mind,
and in my head.

we dance around each other
like fighters in a death waltz,
we play chess with body parts,
and we play to win.

love happens along the way maybe, for a while,
but the goal is to dance with your opponent,
and know your place is with them on the battlefield,
because to love is to spar on equal footing.

seasons are not enemies,
but burned-out cycles of orange and green,
of color and decay,
working together to inspire us,
to ensnare us,
and to kill us.

so do not forget, my honored adversary,
my wounded viper,
my snarling love,

passion
by another name
is war.

March 1, 2016

editors note: With mutual victory and defeat assured; truly, all’s fair… – mh clay

SMILE FOA DA PICTURE by Joe Puna Balaz

Let’s hear it
foa anadah candidate

to be considered
foa da Stupid Crooks Hall of Fame.

He wen post
wun selfie photo of himself

holding wun large amount of cash
on social media.

Dat wen help da authorities
to quickly zero in on him.

Da money
dat he wuz showing off wit

wuz part of $45,000 he wen steal
in four armed bank robberies.

Wun informant told da investigators
dat he wen spend some of da cash

on wun old Corvette
and wun root canal.

Da television news

focused on da work
dat wuz done on his teeth

and da viewing audience
taught it wuz kinnah amusing.

It wuzn’t too funny foa da thief
wen he wuz arrested dough.

Most likely he wuzn’t smiling eidah

wen dey wen sentence him
to 18 years in prison.

Tings going change foa him now.

He going have free food
free uniform
and free room and board.

To top it all off
da buggah going have free dental.

February 29, 2016

editors note: When crime doesn’t pay, you get health care. (A pome in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin English, “Foa da fun of it!”) – mh clay

the green balloon by Laura Minning

excerpt from “a verbal collage,” november 2006

I watch the wind
with earnest intent,
and ask it
for a dance.

It takes me
by the hand
and sets me free.

February 28, 2016

editors note: A successful search for that elusive Helium of the soul. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? This week's featured story, from Contributing Poet/Writer Arun Budhathoki, isn't a cheerful one but if vengeance and comeuppance is your thing, this one just might put a smile on your face. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this pick-of-the-week story, Killing the Rapist: "Just as day births night, violence births violence. Just as stars, hate becomes is endless and hangs over our heads, and rarely is it justice."

Here's a bit to get you started:

He buried his corpse in an open field. The evening was filled with utter silence and no living person passed the site. The sky looked perfect pale by the rays of glowing moon. Ajay dusts off his hands clapping strongly, lifts the shovel and starts punching the mud to flatten it. After finishing up he stands unmoved, overwhelmed with pride, and shouts: “You bastard, this is what you deserve.” He spits at the grave of the rapist. Phone rings.

“Yes, it’s done,” he speaks proudly.

“Good job, now get out of there quickly before someone sees you,” an unknown voice orders.

He carries the shovel and gets inside the car. As he moves away from the murder scene Ajay tweets: “@ajaythekiller: rape is a crime and the criminal needs to be killed.” Soon after he tweeted a score of tweeps reply, retweet, favorite and quote it. But no one knows that it is for real...

Get the rest of your read eat on right here!

••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••

Oh what a night it was in the land of Swirl’n mic Mad-ness this past 1st Wednesday! Mad Swirl featured longtime Contributing Poet Quinten Collier all the way from the Rocky Mountain HIGH state of Colorado. With the help of the interwebs, it felt like he was right there with us at The Underpass. If you were there to toke the poetic smoke he fired up, then you know how delicious his set was!

Thanks to all who came out to help share in their delicious madness. What a night of the beat-utifullest poetry and music it was! Here’s a shout out to all who graced us with their words, their songs, their divine madnesses…

photos courtesy of Dan "the man" Rodriguez

Hosts:
Johnny O
MH Clay

Feature:
Quinten Collier

Swirve:
Gerard Bendiks
Chris Curiel
Tamitha Curiel

Photographer:
Dan Rodriguez

Mad Cast:
Suza “Hep Kat Mama” Kanon
Sean “TA2” Buttram
Opalina Salas
Roderick Richardson
Vic Victory
Carlos Salas
Paul Sexton
Vic Victory
Jen Bochenko
James “Bear the Poet” Rodehaver
Harry McNabb
Jay “Holiday” Gomez
Sean St. Stevens
Nadia Wolnisty
Gabe Mamola
Anthony Harris
Anthony X Haynes
Griff “Warrior Poet”

HUGE thanks to Swirve for keeping the beat til the wee hours of the night. We got taken to another dimension of time and space on the wings of their jazzy madness!

More HUGE thanks to fantastic photog Dan Rodriguez (he captured these scenes) for graciously sharing his mad eye and giving y’all a taste of the night’s YES mic madness.

Thanks to Mike & Leo at The Underpass for opening up this fine establishment to us mad ones and making us feel right at home.

And finally we would like to thank ALL of you who freely shared their hand claps, finger-snaps, hoots and howls with all the mad ones who got up on this sacred mad swirlin’ mic.

Who's featuring in April? Dallas singer & songwriter, Kelly Nygren! Stay tuned...

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Truthin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“The whole mad swirl of everything tho come began then” ~ Jack Kerouac

••• The Mad Gallery •••

New Madness Hangin' in our Gallery!

“MOVING AROUND COVER” (above) by featured artist Chuck Taylor. To view more of Chuck's mad snaps, along with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

If the name of our newest featured artist rings a bell it may be because he is no stranger to our lil Swirl. (He also has no affiliation with the American basketball player and shoe salesman/evangelist who happens to share his name… as far as we know;). We bring you Chuck Taylor, Poet, Writer AND Photographer! Chuck recently presented us some visual treats, so specially flavored that they need to be shared. Though the subjects in Taylor’s photographs can at times seem simple – a mailbox, some railing, feet on pavement – they don’t make us feel very simple by looking at them. If anything, the nature of his photos – the contrast of light and dark, hard and soft – stirs up something more, something deeper – and there’s nothing simple about it. We’ve got a feeling that’s just what Chuck intends when he points and clicks his photographic eye, though; all we ask is that he keeps it up, we’re hungry for more already. Are you hungry? Then get your photo feast on! ~ Madelyn Olson

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we washed in water, no more to roam, saved by the hope of home; we searched far and wide for the place where childhood heroes hide; we wouldn't full moon waste to find out how freedom tastes; we lost sight of love to gain a wider view; we sought new light through doors walked through; we left the worst of us, engaged in wholesale exodus; we validated our existence, couched in divine coincidence. Come see, come saw - seven come eleven. ~ MH Clay

PRAYER LINE by Roderick Richardson

The older I get,
The longer this is.

Wanting to save,
Comfort,
Heal,
Them all.

But I’m no god, you
Can say I got it
Ass-backwards.

Bound by the chains
Of reality. Looking
Across a field of hope,
Fenced in the end
By doubt.

So, I look up and I…

Howl.

When (if) there’s good news,
My soul lifts with
Foolish pride.

As though I had
Something to do
With it.

March 12, 2016

editors note: Get him on the main line, tell him what you want. (Damn! No signal out here.) – mh clay

DRZAVE, PARDON GRADOVI by Sabahudin Hadžialić

STATES, PARDON ME, CITIES

In the little town
across the seven seas
lived a small nation.
This nation could fit into one city.
and nowhere else.
At least that’s what little nation’s Emperor thought.
Pardon, Duke.
And one day some people left the city.
They were the first to leave.
Followed by the second.
And the third.
Emperor, pardon, Duke
was left alone.
…
The name of the city ?
Look around,
perhaps this is a story
of your… city.

March 11, 2016

editors note: Had enough of city, state? Pack it in, expatriate. – mh clay

Darker Doors by Ken Allan Dronsfield

You may live within the storm;
repel the harshest rains.
Dance through it all
feeling less of the blame.
Walk through brighter doors;
unveil a light once again.
Love yourself through it all;
impervious to pain; feeling no shame.

March 10, 2016

editors note: Open the door! There’s light on the other side. – mh clay

Growing by Scott Wordsman

You have
the most beautiful
house keys. You leave
me just enough
awake to watch
you leave.
– from Poem with Pepper Spray and Bottle Opener by Graham Foust

I’m still in the process of moving,
she said, out. My reply must have

been something like fine because
what other words has a shrug

learned to say? In high school
I fixed my geometry gaze

on that wave of flesh between
belt-loop and back, an ocean

of ivory smashed by a coast
of red or blue or the hue

of the day, sharply enhanced,
because I wore glasses

that I didn’t need––fifteen
from Wal-Mart, dollars

I mean. My stare, though aged,
has not traveled far. This

morning I watched her, storming
and mad, shoving her under-

wear into a sack, followed by
shirts, then all of her books

and a grimace reserved
for what I’ve become, mistakes

I have made; and sad as it sounds,
I would ask for it back––

the protractor days,
uncomfortable lust, and why

I insisted on trying to love
a creature whose penchant

for resplendent lace
I would dream of for hours,

curled up in the shower.

March 9, 2016

editors note: What we can’t call back becomes our growing. – mh clay

2:30 A.M. by Jasmine Davis

The train’s whistle is echoing past my window
and I can’t help but wish it would take me away.

Take me on a one-way adventure, Mr. Conductor.
Get me out of this town.
I want to follow the tracks until we come to an abrupt stop.

I want to watch familiar faces get off at their destination,
as unfamiliar ones take their place.
Look out your gray tinted window at those views!
The sun setting, the moon rising, the countryside.

Let’s spray graffiti across the siding and call it a masterpiece.
We’ll tear holes in our seats until there’s enough to represent our hearts,
And then we’ll bandage them back together again with all our broken parts and call it one.

We can climb to the surface,
Proudly proclaim the wind as ours and let it catch our hair.
This is what freedom tastes like.

Take me away.
Show me all life has to offer
and all it doesn’t.

March 8, 2016

editors note: In those early hours, eager are we to hear the call. “All aboard!” – mh clay

Po by Archita Mittra

In that red-bricked house we don’t call home anymore
There was an attic, where I and my Po
Would play all night in the dust with a brass telescope.

These midsummer nights were long and star-ful, filled with
Orion and Canis Major and other secret names
We made up, that I won’t tell you.

Besides, there was a trunk filled with old and magical stuff
Like a transistor, broken china dolls and some carefully folded things-
Love-letters for someone who never knew how beautiful

Their names could be. Anyway, in that sepia-tinted other world
Of me and my Po, I was a princess of the clouds in a
Dusty gown and Po was whatever my story wanted him to be.

And one day, when he was a Merlin-y magician
In a crumpled top-hat and soiled gloves, I told him
To bring me the moon. And out of the thin golden air

He conjured me this shiny brass telescope. To see the twinkling
Little stars and the castles in the clouds and spy
The wheezy old lady on the moon at the spinning wheel.

Even as my Po spun tales of battles and trenches and starless
Skies and monster rats that ate up all the dead men
In black boots but never ever my Po.

Even as I dreamt of my own secret no man’s land
Among the trail of the stars and smoky nebulas
Over my dust-scented attic sky, just for me and my Po.

So when the smoke rose up, swirling around us
And the rat-flames ate up all the love letters
And my Po became a phantom because he couldn’t run

Fast enough, it was only the rats and mustard gas
I was thinking of-those greenish-yellow fumes and the eating
Of all my Po’s friends but never ever my Po

Because he was invincible. So when my superhero
Died, I waited and I waited for him everywhere, all the time
Day after day, but there was never ever my Po

To claim the eagle-headed walking stick or the paper
Cards I would make or teach me what the golden-little
Button-knobs of my brass telescope did

When I turned them to search far and wide,
Like a knight searching for his distressed damsel
For all the lost things I never ever found.

And even when we moved into new rat-less places
I would say my prayers, like a sincere girl
Dear Lord, please don’t let the rats get me ever..

Forever and Ever. Amen. And then add a post-script
I want my Po, for Christmas, if it’s okay with you
I got A in Arithmetic and didn’t cheat from Sophie

Except the last answer because I really couldn’t spell e-phe-me-ral
And I promise promise never to cheat again if you give me back
My Po from whatever dungeon You’re hiding him in.

But somewhere we all lose the war
We lose the places we’ve called home before
We keep on losing ourselves

And we don’t know if we, at all
Belong
Anywhere, anymore.

And brass telescopes don’t always open up to
The castles and the kingdoms in the clouds
Where my Po is surely trapped, waiting for me to save him.

So I count my stars in my dreams,
That no men’s land of colour and fantasy
Of hope and wish and memory

Where I drown myself over and over again –
A child trapped in a woman who can never give up
Who can never stop mourning.

Even as shooting stars pass me by, I am listening
To a transistor playing a broken tune
Till something switches off.

March 7, 2016

editors note: Rescue our childhood heroes, so they can rescue us. – mh clay

WONDER WORKING POWER by Brian Wood

On any Sunday morning in your mind,
Probably in winter, a man steps in
To a large baptismal font, or as we
Much preferred, tank. “The old now cast away
For the new. The old ways of sin now purged
For the new life of grace. Baptism just
An outward sign, but a sign nonetheless.
Let us pray.” The rolled up shirt sleeves, in lieu
Of his normal jacket and tie, tell us
That today a few of us will put on

The incorruptible. “Jason, join me,
Would you?” Jason we have known for years and
Works part-time at the local Petro Can.
Nervous at first, he tells us why he’s here.
“When my mother drank too much, we hid. My
Dad left early. He could not take it, so
My sisters and I, we kept hiding. Jill
Got married and so did Laurie. It was
Just me now, hard to hide when there’s only
You. I came to this church because….” He points

But doesn’t need to. “I… Greg invited
Me.” He motions his head shyly towards
Greg, in the same pew eight years, with the same
Yellow brown tie. They exchange smiles. “This church
Took me in and cared. Nobody else cared.
No one. Then Jesus took away my sin.
It rolled away… and now I am, now I
Am—” “Free,” our pastor whispers into his
Mic, in tears himself, as are many. The
Hurt of only knowing slightly, when you

Should know deeply, stings. A few seconds pass,
Very still. On a nod, Jason pinches
His nose and tilts his head, the pastor taking
Him in his arms, and after he has said
“In the name of the father, the son, and
The holy ghost,” briefly dips him in the
Water. Once Jason is back on his feet,
Winds whip up high. “Praise Jesus! Thank you God!”
He bounds out of the tank and we can hear
A soul leap free forever. A child sees

This and sees the hand of the Lord wiping
Away all tears. Later, when age gives what
You hope is wisdom, you think you’re either
Lucky, born into a family who
Cares, or you have Jason’s mother, in which
Case no sleep is ever sound enough. They
Don’t often baptize at the old church now;
Like speaking in tongues, or singing “There’s pow’r
In the blood of the lamb,” people have moved
On. Perhaps corruptible was always
A better fit. Or they’ve lost the eyes of
A child, who saw grace falling all day
Everywhere, as snow deep in winter.

March 6, 2016

editors note: Salvation in sanctuary. All god’s chillun jus’ wanna be safe! – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? This week's read you need comes from prolific Contributing Poet & Writer, KJ Hannah Greenberg. We think Short Story Editor Tyler Malone nailed the perfect tease with his editorial comment:

"Greater than any other pleasures, art is endlessness with passions and poisonous to any person that wants to peek inside the hallow heart of it. They can just fuck off."

(photo by The Second Shooter aka Tyler Malone)

Bam... there it is! But if THAT's not enough to get you reading, well then this story isn't in your "need" category anyway. But if it did get your "need" interested to read "Milk Thistle and Fenugreek" then here▼ ya▼ go▼

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Swirlin' Madness,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“All art is a confession.” ~ Gaston Lachaise

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Just You” (above) by featured artist Chuck Taylor. To view more of Chuck's mad snaps, along with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we wandered far in a big car; we studied the suit against thoughtless fruit; we pleasure pilfered from rain, not silver; we gave our best to be the guest; we searched the land for an authorized hand, got self-respect to join the band; we viewed freedom from a balcony, compared boredom there to boredom here; we sought a golden bird instead of eggs and turds. Good for me or good for you. To get both good is good to do. ~ MH Clay

Seeking The Golden Bird by Joseph Farley

There is what you want,
And there is what you settle for,
The bird you try to catch,
And the one that winds up
In your hands.

One may have borne you
On its back,
Across seas and summer fields
To its eyrie
In the peaks of your desire.

The other, well,
It sits there,
And maybe gives you eggs,
Or just turds,
But it is yours,
To feed and care for,

Or pluck and eat,
If you think you are
Still brave and nimble enough
To grab golden feathers
In the wind.

March 19, 2016

editors note: In hand or bush; eggs are for eating, flying is for birds. – mh clay

Nuor by Nika Sabasteanski

the son
of the son
of the lion
is spring,
waiting for dumplings
soaked in eggs and cream,
folded, stirred, and served
by the swollen hands of the lawyer.

the thick winds that tousle his bangs
smell of fifth floor aubergines
swimming in humid tomatoes.
our ankles wade
through the typhoid bathwater
that also cleans chickens and babies.
a wooden sword severs the stream,
dragged along the halls
by a Thumbelina warrior.
the cleft river smooths itself.

and the lawyer takes me to the balcony,
to speak of constitutions,
and babies in snowy playgrounds,
of dying eyes
and dying,
and infinite boredom
cradled in new flats.

I have never felt this fear, I say
and the lawyer is incredulous
no?
her lazy eye widens
and appears to glance at mine for a moment
no.
never?
never.
the swollen hands pour me more orange soda,
sifting through the bowl of chocolates
like sand

the son
of the son
of the lion
sits on the floor building bridges,
an engineer of reverie
in his trundle bed.
The swollen hand arrives at his mouth
with a forkful of Pierogis,
wiping his lip with its finger simultaneously.
He listens to our conversation,
to the lawyer’s fear
her dying freedom.
Who must I be to him?
Some shard of childhood
he’ll store and resurrect
when he becomes a writer.
the day, they brought me
on the tram to Krasno Selo,
through the shortcut,
tripping over tumbleweeds and bricks.

March 18, 2016

editors note: What he will be to us builds on what we are to him. – mh clay

Self-Respect by Pijush Kanti Deb

I have a drum
which is grammatically well tuned
like of yours
as per the universal norm of sweetness
and as usual I long to listen its sweet sound
beating it
dancing and singing,
traversing each and every cavity of human sense
but unfortunately
I have a weakness too
as I lack an ethically authorized hand to beat it
but in the process
my young heart permits me
to purchase the authorized hand
in exchange for
my beloved money and self-respect both
but my old soul restricts me
saying
“No self respect means no life in a life,
so let your drum be beaten by others”

March 17, 2016

editors note: What it means to be beat? Looking for an “authorized hand.” – mh clay

Us Muslims by Arif Ahmad

This is our circus, our monkeys.
The question begs us how to best respond to all this.
Blame everyone else to the hilt for our ills.
Stay in our shell, shocked, shy, never to step out, never to mix.
Keep our eyes closed and pretend all is kosher.
Or wait for some other divine miracle.
Where each one of us is a brand ambassador, I believe for a Muslim today just showing up is not enough.
This is the time to step it up without apologies or excuses.
With smiling eyes and heads held high, at work or play, crawl if we have to go that extra mile.
To reach out, help out, love, impress.
Create some magic, make some good news, lay ourselves out to excel and embrace.
Step out from behind those walls.
Leave our surrounds a better place.

March 16, 2016

editors note: What “we” make “them” do to live with “us” makes “them” the better. – mh clay

Bridging the Gap by Bhupender Bhardwaj

The self-possessed person who takes pride
In twirling his mustache, adjusting the bow
Of his tie, in patting his wallet like a pet
Is the poorest and the richest person is
The one who derives utmost pleasure
From not collecting the silver coins of the rain
That shower down incessantly from the
Mint of the sky but from watching its
Darts hit the earth’s board and his heart
Which is its bull’s eye.

Why is it that one does not see that the
Grave edge of reason can bloody the
Face of happiness, that pretentious behavior
Can lead to ruination and that a stomach ache
Can dissolve one’s ego, pride and possessions?

After it has finished raining, pools of pristine water
That contain the sky, newly born trees and the turtle
Floating downslope across rills say to us, “Only in
Proximity to us, can you gain your lost self.”

March 15, 2016

editors note: Can’t fill a pocket full of coins with freedom or blue sky. – mh clay

To Eat the Rowan’s Fruit by Marianne Szlyk

The rowan is the sign of the thinker,
its fruit as bitter and seedy as thought.
Thin, orange pulp barely covers the pit.
Birds and deer avoid the rowan’s berries,
eating them last, after the frost.

I once knew someone who claimed
to have eaten this fruit.
It was something to tick off his list
like the juniper berries he smoked
or the rainforest he later visited.

One must boil the fruit, strain it
through cheesecloth, sugar it,
ferment it, or serve it
as a jelly with gout-giving game.

But he never mentioned
how bitter
or seedy
the rowan’s fruit was
as if he had gulped it down,
without thought.

March 14, 2016

editors note: Tasted better or tasted worse; before you bite, consider your source. – mh clay

THE BIG CAR by Roger G. Singer

I got out the big car, the flashy one
where you’re absorbed into the soul of your seat.
We turn on the black roads with no names
past road signs peppered with bullet holes
and other signs pointing each way to towns
and places somewhere to go.

The moon plasters a gray canvas like my
single headlight, beaming a path of night.

Cold and flat, suspended and smoking the
old car slips past cemeteries where we tip
our hats at the crossroads where tales of
life changing like Monday morning sheets
turns the heads each way while praying.

The road is hard as it surrenders the lost
and curious at deserted rest areas where
carved initials in picnic tables tell a story.

March 13, 2016

editors note: Smooth cruisin’. A story to tell, pocket knife ready. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? Good, 'cos we got a beatific read for you.

Once in awhile a piece will come across our mad desks that we have a hard time classifying. Is it a poem? Prose? Or perhaps a Beaten prayer? All we know is that this week's featured poem/prose/prayer, "The Brooklyn Hallelujah" by Contributing Writer Hannah Frishberg, raised a holy Awww-man in us! Here's what Chief Editor Johnny O had to say about this tasty tale: "Deities come in a multitude of diverse forms. Who is to say which one is holier than thou’s? Ultimately, whatever gets you to the holy Hallelujah is all that matters. Can we get an Awww-man?!"

Here's a few verses to get a rise outta ya:

(photo courtesy of Hannah Frishberg)

I’d like to thank God and Long Island and the Dutch for giving me the Hallelujah of naked sunbathing 300 feet above Red Hook with Russian dicks and rooftop fellatio atop century old abandoned warehouses with their apathetic dock workers, black netting condemning the building and freeing our nights to watch the sunrise, to camp out in this cement sanctuary closer to the precinct than our parents.

Because who could sleep when there are empty airports at the end of Flatbush and forsaken sugar refineries in Williamsburg all calling my name Hannah Hannah Hannah.

We, the forgotten hulks of Kings County!

And the Prospect Expressway sounds like the Atlantic if you close your eyes.

And Ocean Parkway is all Sinatra in my grandfather’s Lexus, all Jay-Z in my dealer’s Hummer.

And there is a freight line which runs from Canarsie to Bay Ridge, didn’t you know? I can take you there, it’s overgrown with weeds and needles and we’ll climb to the tops of locomotives and stare across the East River.

And barefoot street races in Bensonhurst bring color to the midnight luminescence of the pre-dawn streets as lax mothers watch our drunken hula hooping from the porch...

If this holy sermon is raising up an Awww-man in you too then get the rest of this confessional on right here!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Confessin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.” ~ Tennessee Williams

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Holy Nature Mailbox” (above) by featured artist Chuck Taylor. To view more of Chuck's mad snaps, along with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we reminisced o'er a parking lot kiss; we lamented affection lost in another; we briefly expounded on love confounded; we served up love to a devouring lover; we kissed a crazy, then were left alone to turn to stone; we were made lonely and sad by a classified ad; we surrendered our volition to a love like demolition. What a love-ly week! ~ MH Clay

Beautiful like Demolition by Jen Bochenko

Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it. ~ David Foster Wallace

I am a one woman wrecking ball
I am the Genghis Khan of love
I am Gozer the Destructor
An unabashed motherfucker
A woman to get rid of

I am Death, the Destroyer of Worlds
I am Time which destroys all things
I am one who destroys all hearts
And rips them all apart
Thread you with these puppet strings

I will crush your will
I will steal your soul
I will drive you into an early grave
Death is all I crave
Leave you rotting in a hole

I will wreck your hopes
I will wreck your dreams
I will wreck your innocence
My presence is that intense
Live life in all extremes

I am a beautiful mess
I am tragedy
I will draw you in
With original sin
Leave Eden with you always hating me

I am a beautiful mess
I am tragedy
I will capture you
With this enchanted view
Make you fall in love with me

I am the Queen of Hell
I am a sweet siren of the sea
I am the Wicked Witch of the West
And this is me at my best

You said and I believe

March 26, 2016

editors note: Full disclosure here; eyes open, shields up. – mh clay

Love me by Athena Stickseed

In an alternative rag’s alternative
personals, you paid for this: Heat-seeking
missile — and received three cash offers,
two replies, one consisting of a phone number
for the women’s rape crisis center, the other one
garbled word salad ending in the obligatory
call me, and a full-court investigation
by The Department of Homeland Security.
You took on the schizophrenic. You
won. Why does the small head always take
the big-headed down like oxen

felled by an elephant gun? You only say you
need love. The test drive runs you like
a perpetual motion machine, though you prefer
battery-operated bunny rabbits that choose
the incredible vibrating hand of Wing Wang Dung.
This is always Greek to you. You wrote

another: Love me — for a credit card deposit
(imagine that) of sixteen bucks just because
those you use are nothing but the best
automated teller machines: the in, the scan,
the out, the get out, I’m done. You got one
odd reply — from the Iron Wheel Missionary
Baptist Church. You circled “Missionary”
and sent it back postage due, but the alpha mail
returned three years later. Something about

enough and never enough never meets at dusk.

March 25, 2016

editors note: Love by classified ad. Caveat emptor! – mh clay

The Statue by Chrissie Morris Brady

He takes her hands in his
she is warm to his touch
and smiles though she has tears.
He leans forward and kisses her

tasting her mouth, salt on her
face. He is hot, she is soft
as his tongue is aflame, his
stomach ablaze. Snow falls

as she steps back, smiling again.
There are flowers to gather and
snow flakes to catch, she mustn’t
miss her bus.

He stands as she withdraws her
fingers from his fire she turns
to go, he is rooted to the spot,
water running off him as she

catches snowflakes in her basket
and poppies in her hair. She sings
softly a lullaby to herself. He is
planted where he stands, watching

as her hair fills with crimson, her
basket with cool white. Slowly
she makes her way, as his blood
turns to stone in him and he

will never move again. She steps
aboard her bus, she gazes toward
the statue that she touched. It is time
to return to the asylum.

March 24, 2016

editors note: Stone cold love or hot delusion? Get back on the bus! – mh clay

THE MASTER OF NOWHERE by Gina Nemo

I decked those walls
With lots of honey
Smeared across
Paintings of yesterday
Licking my way back
To sweet sanity and tears
So I could go on

Falling for your
Screwdriver of pain
Evil driven torture
Dark sleepless
Scary waterfall nights
Exploding into my
Broken dreams

Love lost under
A pillow of time
Ripping out my guts
Yelling at the walls
Begging a higher power
For yet another year
Of hell on top of hell

You won with words
Dear master of nowhere
You made me die inside
Like I was supposed to
Born and bred to eat
Hungry for love
I let you devour me.

March 23, 2016

editors note: Sometimes love is dog eat dog. – mh clay

Untitled 2 by Anila Zaidi

From a distance,
your adoration confounds me

Not like the Great Pyramids of Egypt
Not like the Stone Faces of Easter Island
Not like God himself

Like this sock, missing its pair

March 22, 2016

editors note: Together by choice, not by static cling. – mh clay

The Longest Kiss Goodbye by Michael R. King

I saw it in your eyes the moment it happened
When the light shining upon our time started to dim
Escaping through the edges of an elemental kiss
Neither one of us knowing it might be the kiss goodbye…

Now, it has come to this-
Finding a way to let go of what we know
Holding back the desires to touch, to clutch
Affections galore to be given freely, no more…

I want you to know that it will just be a show
Continuing on, as if our time is not gone
There is no way I cannot Love you each day
You know me – I will always dream away.

March 21, 2016

editors note: Dreaming to shape a harsh reality into the opposite of goodbye. – mh clay

Thanks for Lunch by Logen Cure

I remember you always paid for me
in cash, every time, untraceable, clean.
You bought my lunch that day, and several beers
you drank like water. It had been a year
since I’d seen you. You were just the same —
your crooked smile, your dirty charm, unchanged.
I can’t recall which lie I told that day
to see you, but I remember I prayed
we wouldn’t run into someone I knew
who’d want to know just why I was with you,
across the table leaning on elbows
and laughing. After a year it still showed.
You looked at me like you thought I’d taste good,
like you’d find out if you could,
if I’d let you, if I could forget her
long enough for these things to occur,
these things you said had never left your mind.
You never liked her, said she was unkind,
said you could treat me the way I deserved.
That day, with you, I was looking to swerve.
I let you kiss me in the parking lot
like it didn’t matter if we got caught.

March 20, 2016

editors note: Forbidden love; a secret desire to be caught in the act. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? Good, 'cos we got a beatific read for you.

Need-a-Read? Good, 'cos we suggest you have a close look-see at this week's featured tale, "Regular Maintenance" by Justin Eells. Look under the hood, check the fluids, kick the tires, and scratch your head. Better yet, hear what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about this ditty:"People should like ovens. When was the last time you traded an oven for a newer oven? Love what you have. Love it until it’s useless, then love a new one. A shiny one until it’s no longer shiny."

Read this teaser and see what you think:

Over the weekend my wife’s Honda wouldn’t start. I went out to the garage to tinker under the hood but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Monday morning, she said she was taking my Pontiac to work and I could walk.

The bus stop was just around the corner from our house but I had to get off at the transfer and take another bus, so walking probably would have been faster. I was a half hour late to work and spent most of the morning online in my cubicle, looking at how-to sites, trying to figure out what was wrong with my wife’s car. When we were dating I told her I used to be a mechanic when in fact I used to be a service technician at an oil change place. She found it sexy that I knew my way around a car, and I wanted to satisfy her expectations. Her car had never had any troubles before that I knew of.

When I got home that evening I was surprised to find my Pontiac was not in the driveway. In its place was a big silver Audi.

“Honey,” I said when I walked in the door, “whose car is that outside?”

“That’s George’s,” she said. “He let me use it.” She was wearing a silk dress I’d never seen before, looking ready for a cocktail party or a dinner date.

“Who’s George?” I said.

She looked at me with a smile, but she was not smiling at me. “George is a man I work with,” she said.

“You took my car to work this morning. Where is it?”

“Couldn’t get me to where I was going,” she said, “so I had to trade up.” I waited for her to say more, but her smile told me her mind was not in the room. I shook my head and went to the garage...

Wow, there might be a bit more going on in this one than you initially thought! Get the whole diagnostic lit check here!

••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••

(original photo courtesy of Bobby Hilt • firebirdimages.com)

Join Mad Swirl & Swirve the 1st Wednesday of April (aka 04.06.16) as we continue to swirl up our open mic madness at our NEW Open Mic home, Dallas' Underpass Bar!

This month we feature Dallas Singer/Songwriter Kelly Nygren! Her groove is sure to move us in the most mad-licious of ways.

Come on out, one & all. Get a brainful of Swirve, share in the Mad Swirl’n festivities, & if the spirit is movin’ ya get yourself a spot on our list. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to swirl-a-brate!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Lovin' It,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“I am an artist... I am here to live out loud.” ~ Emile Zola

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Going Up” (above) by featured artist Chuck Taylor. To view more of Chuck's mad snaps, along with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we gave our best as a proud bird's nest; we sought silence in the midst of noise; we trod a trail through silence singing, rain on leaves, the springtime bringing; we smelled the trees and flowers sexing; we hailed the moon with the crash of spoon; we asked "what for?" the wreck of war; we danced to the band of our DNA strand. Amino acids placid while birds sing, rains fall and the dish runs away with the spoon. ~ MH Clay

Long Division by Scott Thomas Outlar

Most people,
you’ll find,
can hardly handle,
if at all,
the shit
from their own childhood –

and you expect
the masses
to deal with
thousands of years
of ancestral DNA
swirling around
the synapses
of their sub consciousness?

Come on!…
I came here only to dance –

April 2, 2016

editors note: Here we are; still rockin’ to the hits. – mh clay

Reason’s Lament by Robert Ippaso

What kind of men who cannot stop
Wholesale slaughter in the making;
Where little children cry shrill tears,
While their very world is shaking.

Where’s our compassion, empathy for others,
When guns replace the word;
Why jockey for position
In a race that’s so absurd.

With brother versus brother,
Tearing families apart;
A differing religion,
A rupture of the heart.

Does God not see this wanton murder;
Can one believe that He approves?
Are we so blinded by our anger,
That no just reason can disprove.

It’s not too late to stop the bloodshed,
Let all the warring sides unite,
To end this endless conflagration
And bring the peace so long denied.

April 1, 2016

editors note: So sad that, for many, this is just unreasonable (no foolin’). – mh clay

The Spoon by Tricia Marcella Cimera

You used to tap, tap
your teeth
with this very
spoon
while eating
indifferently
in our dead-calm
silent dining room.

It’s night, the moon
is out. I scrub, scrub
the spoons’
silver face,
then hurl it back
into its place;
I slam the drawer.
The glasses shiver.

March 31, 2016

editors note: Cleanliness is next to raw remembrance. (With this submission, we welcome Tricia to the raucous ranks of our crazy congress of Contributing Poets. Read more of her madness on her new page – check it out!) – mh clay

Adolescent Spring by Linda Barrett

As Winter’s heavy cold fat melts away,
Spring approaches
tentative from under still hard earth
shy and awkward
with its few brave blossoms
crocuses reach up
like clenched hands
tightly holding treasures
so they won’t fall out.
Naked trees erupt in red buds
Skinny boughs shake
In trembling teenager fashion
Red buds slowly unravel
Do they come out in white acne pustules
Or blossoming sexual organs?
Green grass sprouts
reminiscent of beards and body hair
covering once barren skin
The sun shines later and later
nurturing the earth into adulthood
with its gradual and understanding love.

March 30, 2016

editors note: Springtime tempts every plant. Raging hormones, flowers out of wedlock, growth and glory; no shame. – mh clay

Beneath A Cover Green by Dave Kavanagh

Beneath a cover green
forest silence. Loud!
The song of heaving life
the chattering crowd.
The crackle of feet
crunching on litter
The scatter of life
creatures a skitter.
The breathe of air
sighing through laughing willows.
Rain drops down
on chestnut, trifoliate pillows.
A cessation of song
in the canopy
the death of silence
no more cacophony.
Then music of water
singing rapids ahead
relief for burning blisters
burst and bled.
Limp on new walker
hikes almost done.
Trees will give way to.
blue skies and sun.

March 29, 2016

editors note: A march through March; blisters and blooms alike, all new. – mh clay

The Freeway Sounded by A.J. Huffman

like a distant ovation
in an arena where games never ended,
where life and death struggled
to survive, to find meaning in eyes
that blued like evening skies.
The sun reflected
this strange anonymity
against windshields
of cars moving but not passing,
a thousand bright silver bullets
blinking at once,
and I was the silence, the breathing
moment released before everything reopened.

March 28, 2016

editors note: Gridlock in the middle of gridlock. – mh clay

DESOLATE by Ogana D. Okpah

A pigeon rests a grain of
wheat on my head
in the dead of summer,
planting her dreams.
This bird is my heirloom,
a stray bird –
she is my kin spirit.
A peacock, startling
my pride in cowering.
She has the colours,
mournful colours of right.

March 27, 2016

editors note: Plumage presented in the color of right. How proud is that? – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? If you're feelin' a bit beat by life (or even if you're not) then we got a most uplifting peaceful piece for you.

This week's featured read, "Letter to Myself" comes from Trigg Edwards. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about this ditty:"Fatalism isn’t embracing the horrible and hopeless, it’s seeing the inevitable end and inviting it into your house, kissing it, undressing it, and doing what you please with something repulsive while laughing into madness about what it’s really doing to you."

Here's a lil bit of this lit to get ya started:

photo by Tyler Malone

Hello, Nearly Departed:

Death has visited you, but yet you still remain. Death has no sting, only a stench. I am writing you to keep the light of life burning bright in you. I wrote this to myself after I was nearly murdered two and a half years ago. Here is what I wrote for all of you, who like me, have tasted death’s residue, but managed to still remain...

If that doesn't tempt you to keep readin', you may wanna check your pulse and if you still got one, reconsider and click here!

••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••

(original photo courtesy of Bobby Hilt • firebirdimages.com)

Join Mad Swirl & Swirve the 1st Wednesday of April (aka 04.06.16) as we continue to swirl up our open mic madness at our NEW Open Mic home, Dallas' Underpass Bar!

This month we feature Dallas Singer/Songwriter Kelly Nygren! Her groove is sure to move us in the most mad-licious of ways. For proof of that claim, visit her official FB fan page. And maybe even give her a thumbs up while you’re there!

Come on out, one & all. Get a brainful of Swirve, share in the Mad Swirl’n festivities, & if the spirit is movin’ ya get yourself a spot on our list. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to swirl-a-brate!

P.S. We look forward to ALL the m-adventures still yet to come! Stay tuned for MH Clay’s “Mad Angstful Rant” comin’ up in May!

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Livin' Loud,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.” ~ Charles Baudelaire

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Gothic Tree Sky” (above) by featured artist Chuck Taylor. This one will close out Chuck's feature showing but we bet he'll be back with more snaps sooner than later! Til then, to view more of Chuck's mad snaps, along with our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we greeted poets fond, speaking by a lily pond; we planted in a pot of timeless sleep; we cut to the core of a faceless bore; we caught a cat, eyes open, lips chapped; we bullied by the spider to the fly; we ran in the race of the closed (still open) case; we ourselves did see by St. Martin's tree. Birds, blue sky - all with words to tickle our eye. Read and blink, read some more... ~ MH Clay

The Tree at St Martin’s by Trier Ward

I’m in the trenches,
on the streets.
I’m smelling shit
and smelling feet-
but the eyes that look
out at me are the
most beautiful
I’ve ever seen.
They are crazed and bright –
looking past the sores
on her face –
looking past the hood
of her dirty coat.
God, I think there
is shit caked on her back!
I think I am going to gag.
But she is a human being.
Maybe born on a
bright spring day
into clean sheets.
No, I’m not going to gag.
I’m not going to leave.
I’m going to stay here
and say how are you today
I will help feed her like
I came here to do.
Not look at her funny.
Not pass a single judgement.
Because who the fuck am I?
I’m a derelict poet.
Am I better because
I’m educated?
So recently sober?
Because I smell good today?
No I’m not better in anyway.
God brought me to this
exact same place.
A humble grateful place
where like
a tree I will grow from
this shit, dirt, and rot-
where I will use my
energy and strength to
send down roots and reach
out branches and so will
my compassion
for every human being grow-
The dirtiest
The smallest
The loneliest
The most desperate
until I reach the sun.

April 9, 2016

editors note: Every person is a mirror; every mirror tells the truth. Take a long, hard look; she dares us. – mh clay

Closed Case by James Brown

Get down, Got-Dam it’s a homicide forty-eight hours, murder case still subsists, fatal blow incited from the inside, proof easily unlawfully baptized and we the people darker in color are capsized by an unsociable justice system with a breed of unlawful bobbies turning homicide into a hobby.

Cold day.......

Cold hearted.......

Cold chase.......

Closes the case on an unlawful murder rate, new wave modern way of hate, fuck the debate, we the people are ghosts in plain site they assassinate, that’s the mandate, remember these names and dates

Medgar Evers, 1964.......

Fred Hampton, 1968.......

Harry and Harriette Moore, 1951.......

Malcom X, 1965.......

Martin L. King, 1968.......

Now can you relate?

Closed case.

April 8, 2016

editors note: The blind lady’s scale tips to the twitchy trigger finger. – mh clay

Bullies and the Wimp by Donal Mahoney

They laugh at him
because he’s weak
by their standards
but they don’t realize

they’ve signed a
contract with him,
a lifetime guarantee
for recompense.

It will be fulfilled
perhaps tomorrow or
maybe on a wedding day
or years from now at

the funeral of a loved one
when they’re as vulnerable
as he appears to be
and for the moment is

but they don’t realize
the spider in its web
looks slow to any fly
circling overhead.

April 7, 2016

editors note: Minimize your deficit with a healthy respect for all. – mh clay

ichor by Andrew Chmielowiec

from my mother, i learned
to be the cat
at the top of the stairs
watching;

to lick my lips chapped,
and how to heal them;

to speak less, say more.

i learned a lifetime
of bracing yourself for impact
leaves permanent indentations
in the steering wheel,
handle bars,
your wrists,

and every mark
is a badge of honor,
on your face,
in your palms,
deep in the pit of your stomach,

if you wear it so.

i learned that oranges
are meant to be peeled slowly;

that a watched pot will boil,
but everybody’s afraid
to take the time to see it,

and,

that somewhere,
right now,
always,
the sun is rising
without ever needing to move.

April 6, 2016

editors note: Patience and positivity. Yes! – mh clay

Apple-Face Speaks by Neil Fulwood

(after Magritte)

This is not an apple.
I am not wearing a suit.
You are mistaken
about the bowler hat.

Whether this is a canvas
and I am paint
is open to discussion
but only when

you’re ready to admit
this is not a poem,
you are not a reader
and – empirically –

I do not have a face.

April 5, 2016

editors note: This is not a spastic, ekphrastic poem. Nice! (Inspired by the picture, Son of Man, by Rene Magritte – check it out.) – mh clay

You, the Potted Plant and Me by Curtis Emery

What tree
what pebble
what peak

what lake what silvered
skyscraper,

what fleck of ash, what potted plant.

These things move with me
through time
and remind me of my death.

What morning
what noon
what coming of age what dusk
what seasons of fields of fleece.

All these things time keeps—
what fragile light, what timeless sleep.

April 4, 2016

editors note: What? What! – mh clay

A BROOKLYN RENDEZVOUS WITH MYSELF AT LILY POND WHILE SITTING WITH THE BEAT POETS by Mel Waldman

(on reading Gregory Corso’s poem – Hello)

And
I return to Lily Pond again

to
meet myself

inside
the oval mirror of my mind

&
say hello

once more
in

a sweet rendezvous
in

the sacred garden
of

&
say hello

&
say hello

by
the soothing waters

&
say hello

to
the familiar stranger

swirling
in

phantasmagoria
&

rushing slowly

in
the mirror of glittering reflections

at
the center of my chimerical omphalos

&
here

inside
the oval mirror

I
return to Lily Pond

&
sit with the Beat Poets

Corso, Kerouac, & Ginsberg,
phantom companions

of
my inner landscape,
a necessary illusion
within

the flowing opalescence
of

my brainwaves
&

suddenly,
the rebel-ghost Corso

rises
&

leaps toward Lily Pond
&

shrieks hello
&

his raw visionary voice
drills

a hole
in

my dream-mind
&

opens
it

to
metaphysical malaise

&
I say hello

inside
the echo chamber of my dreamscape

I
say hello hello hello

&
meet myself again

&
whisper in sweet susurrations –

Who am I?

&
shriek soundlessly –

Who am I?

inside
a dust devil

&
an unholy silence screams –

Who am I?

within
my swirling nowhere –

my everlasting existential question –

Who am I?
Who am I?
Who am I?

unending shadow of a shadow
of

my phantom
soul

that
follows me to Lily Pond

where
the rebel-ghost Corso

peers
at his fathomless fragile self,

a wounded deer,
&

reveals
his trauma his truth a bestial shattering

here
at Lily Pond

on
the Brooklyn College campus

circa
summer 1965

&
I gaze into the mirror of my mind

&
touch the broken glass of

the merciless shattering
of

the self

&
hear shards of my apocalyptic past

exploding
into my mutilated eyes

&
I mourn all I have lost all that is gone

all who have died
I mourn all the death I carry inside

&
I say hello hello hello

at
a Brooklyn rendezvous with myself

at
Lily Pond
while sitting with the Beat Poets
&

I say hello

April 3, 2016

editors note: “I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello” – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? And do we got quite the read to feed your need today. Be aware, this one might make you think & just might cause some internal debate. But that's what we've come to expect from Contributing Writer and Poet, Donal Mahoney.

Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about "Dr. Chapman's Insight":"Life is life. It goes on and on, by the will of living, by the hands of death."

Here's a dose of this medicine to get ya goin':

photo by Tyler Malone

Dr. Chapman had been valedictorian of his class in high school and college but had finished second in his class in medical school, something that still bothered him after 30 years of successful practice in a small city. Many patients traveled from all over the state to see him.

Over the years, he had hired a number of practical nurses to assist him in his practice and went out of his way to hire those that might have had trouble being hired elsewhere due to discrimination. He was proud of his record and didn’t have much turnover in staff.

Between patients he and his nurses would often discuss weighty topics of the day, delving into difficult subjects such as religion and politics. Most of his nurses had tried at one time or another to get him to vote their way and they always tried to convince him to go to church, even if it wouldn’t be the church any of them attended. Dr. Chapman was always polite but always resisted their efforts...

Don't stop there! You'll see why. Here's where to get the whole story!

••• Mad Swirl Open Mic •••

(Photo courtesy of Rosie Lindsey. To see more of her mad mic pics, check out here FB page here)

Oh what a night it was in the land of Swirl’n mic Mad-ness this past 1st Wednesday! Mad Swirl Open Mic was honored to feature Dallas singer/songwriter Kelly Nygren! Her groove sure moved us in the most mad-licious of ways. Her smooth smokey blues are still echoin’ in our mad minds…

Thanks to all who came out to The Underpass & shared in this collective delicious madness. What a night of the beat-utifullest poetry and music it was! Here’s a shout out to all who graced us with their words, their songs, their divine madnesses…

Hosts:
Johnny O
MH Clay

Feature:
Kelly Nygren

Swirve:
Gerard Bendiks
Chris Curiel
Tamitha Curiel

Mad Cast:
Chris Zimmerly
Desmene M. Statum
Carlos Salas
Maggie Smith
Sean Gregory Buttram aka “TA2”
David Crandall
Opalina Salas
Rob Dyer aka “David Parham”
Cj Critt
James Barrett Rodehaver aka “Bear the Poet”
Jen Bochenko
Jay Gomez aka “Holiday”
Paul Sexton
Nadia Wolnisty
Harry McNabb
Anthony X Haynes
Reverie
Tom Bannon
Gabe Mamola
Anthony Harris

HUGE thanks to Swirve for keeping the beat til the wee hours of the night. We got taken to another dimension of time and space on the wings of their jazzy madness!

Thanks to Mike & Leo at The Underpass for opening up this fine establishment to us mad ones and making us feel right at home.

And finally we would like to thank ALL of you who freely shared their hand claps, finger-snaps, hoots and howls with all the mad ones who got up on this sacred mad swirlin’ mic.

P.S. Comin’ Up May 4th: Next month we feature Mad Swirl Poetry Editor, Poet, Playwright, Actor, Musician, mad co-conspirator, and all-around an all-around top-notch soul… (catch breath)… MH Clay! Join us as we launch his new book, Angst! He’ll be joined by the musical madmen of Earthlinger and Angst Artist, Jeff Skele Sheely! Come join all of us as we experience a Mad Angstful Rant! And buy you a book of this mad-licious collab-creation

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Devourin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.” ~ Anatole France

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Mom at the well” (above) by featured artist Maria Valentina Sheets.

Months ago, we here at Mad Swirl were swept off our feet by artist Maria Valentina Sheets. This time we’re not quite back on the ground, lifted by her gifts once again. Once you see what she’s got for us, we’re sure you’ll get what we mean – Sheets’ stained glass pieces are like something straight from a cathedral…. but not. The juxtaposition of the traditional and sacred nature of stained glass with the modern and edgy mind of Maria display sky-lit images we’d definitely put in the windows of OUR Mad church, and we’ll bet you would too. Don’t take our word for it though – check out the glass-terpieces here. ~ Madelyn Olson

To view more our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we ran a reel to real and back again; we scratched an itch, inflicted, no doubt, by a witch; we gripped a gun, shot full of verse, looking for the safety; we listened to life through a "veil of cheese"; we danced with an angel in a holy place, salvation glowing on her neon face; we reveled in riffs from a jazz man's horn; we wrote nothing for free, not even our verses. Words wish wonder while talk is cheap. Add your own value. ~ MH Clay

starbucks coffee brands by Carl Kavadlo

bold is stronger
taste
less caffeine as
the roasting burns
the buzz.
pike is a stronger
buzz
less roast
as
preservation weakens
taste.
so you
get a nice high typing
in the morning if you
systematically
arrange your sequence
at a reasonable
price too, without
the cabal murdering you.

April 16, 2016

editors note: The price we pay for free wifi. – mh clay

BE-BOP STATUARY by Jay Passer

like bones clattering in cloudbursts
I attempt
a clumsy blues riff
tap dancing in the claw foot
bathtub
after washing away the death of
a great jazzman with
sucking sinkholes of ancient lava
along rotgut rivers of
chopstick vodka
nearing crescendo
riding oak leaf rafts
yeah then
lucking out
electrified in the metropolis of
pulchritude
more blood than Dracula squared
and a hot date with the new waitress at
Yummi Korea Snak
maybe just
slept with her
at worst killed her off
video arcade style
another ambitious barkeep
she crooned like a minor
Venus
couldn’t keep her arms to herself
conch drops to the linoleum
so long Ornette

April 15, 2016

editors note: Jilted, maybe. Jinxed, likely. Jazzed, forever… – mh clay

On Meeting you at the Taproom by Scott McDaniel

My church
is lit by neon, not candles.
My sermon
is a drunken philosophical rant blanketed by the singing of a jukebox.
There is wine,
but expect no body of Christ…
there is only your body, dancing
on a bar stool as you smile and lip synch
while waiting on the drinks.

When you return, your hair is backlit by the neon;
as angelic as “The Archangel Leaving the Family of Tobias”

I do love the neon…

There is something sacredly decadent about a neon sign as it pierces
through Marlboro and Camel smoke
lingering together with drunken, fumbling kisses
that taste like Jack and coke.

Give me neon or give me death.
Give me dead bumpers on a pool table with 50 cents stacked on the rail.
Give me a bar back mirror, stained by the smoke of spirits.
Give me vinyl covered stools with holes both picked and burned.
Give me a shake of bones; loser buys the next round.
Give me a shady character in the back that makes all feel a bit nervous.
Give me a bar. This bar.
Give me a woman. You.
Give me, my church.
Yesterday’s church was the taproom.
Tomorrow’s church is you.

April 14, 2016

editors note: Angels, angels, everywhere! – mh clay

Incoming Transmission by Jada Yee

Behind the choir of dial tones, live cotton rounds of provolone,
busy lines of thin-sliced swiss camouflage all that we miss.

Our sensitive ears are layered with but a veil of cheese,
transparencies for elegy…

An old record player scratching its way to life,
sculpted lyrics, falling through a jagged tunnel or cracked drain pipe.

Don’t strain your ears to listen, there’s no reward or commission,
to decipher an ill-received language is to reapply a wet, peeling bandage.

Are ears a better fit on the deaf or on the blind?
When no one listens, can they charge the harshest fine?

How did we allow the intolerant ear canal
to lead such a negligent life, such a waxy cover on the butter knife.

If only we’d give it a turn
to widen our eyes.

April 13, 2016

editors note: Bass tones through cheddar, treble through swiss, volume through thin provolone. – mh clay

MOLON LABE by Jhon Baker

here we are at two in the morning
2.16 to be precise
and sleep is in the past and far from me now
I eat Reality Sandwiches
and drink coffee, black, out from a chipped mug

I seem to be the target of spam lately
and with this I admit to the digital age
fully with handheld computers
and online dictionaries and
the classic writers thesaurus

and I read Bartlett’s book of anecdotes
to substitute for any actual experience
which is a lie
though I sleep away in relative safety
next to a loaded revolver

MOLON LABE – out from my cold dead hands
and of course I speak of poetry
long looks and bedroom post-coital whispers
it is not enough that the sun should rise
in a few hours but that the moon is full

April 12, 2016

editors note: Wouldn’t touch it; much less take it . – mh clay

Supernatural by Catfish McDaris

Sorcery and witchery still flourishes
people need protection, salt strewn
around an encampment helps ward

Off demon attacks, corn meal mixed
with gall of an eagle, bear, mountain
lion, or skunk is potent medicine

Witches live along the Rio Grande,
they steal Mexican sheep and cause
death, beware of shape shifters

Brown and gray corn known as maiz
de brujeria should be avoided, healing
elixirs are mercury, Gonzalez herb,
guayuli, and powdered turquoise.

April 11, 2016

editors note: So many cures for what ails; nothing for what doesn’t. (This one comes from Catfish’s new book, check it out here.) – mh clay

Fantasy by Lily Tierney

A fairy tale in the mind
creating such beautiful
pictures on a reel of
imagination.

Eventually it runs out
and reality takes over
in black and white.

If only you had more
film.

April 10, 2016

editors note: Keep it rolling till the director says, “Cut!” – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Happy Need-a-Read Day! This week's tasty tale comes from Mad Swirl's previous featured Artist Chuck Taylor. Did we mention he's also a Contributing Poet here at Mad Swirl? Yep. A Mad trifecta-ist!

Here's what Short Story Editor, and another Mad trifecta-ist, Tyler Malone had to say about Chuck's short story "Diane":

"Love! Madness! They’re one-in-the-same, we all like to hope as the beat of our hearts drives us bonkers. Sadly, so say they want the the world, but they want someone else to give it to them."

If that endorsement doesn't tickle your curiosity bone, here's a few nibbles for ya:

(photo "Garbage Roses" - above - by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter)

The way I see it, Diane, you know, I did her a favor, the way things were going I hate to say it, but I would have needed to kill her, reporters flying in from New York and Los Angeles to interview her and write her up in magazines, she got her colored picture in Gentlemen’s Quarterly, couples we knew were dropping by asking advice on their troubled marriages, all the lesbians in town thought she was some kind of sage superwoman, oh everybody loved her in 1976 and she had kindness and charm, she would take confused boys into our own home and feed them hot meals and let them play with her grown son’s old drums, and street men who smelled like death would crash in the living room and she’d never ask for money, she believed in white magic and prayers and did rituals, curandera she thought she was, but I was her man and knew the dark bruja inside and the arrogance I saw that others didn’t see...

Now go and get the rest of your read on right here.

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Path Walkin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“Every day I feel is a blessing from God. And I consider it a new beginning. Yeah, everything is beautiful.” ~ Prince Rogers Nelson

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Hard to get a signal – John and the ladder” (above) by featured artist Maria Valentina Sheets. To view more of Maria's beatific works, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we saw art as life and capricious wife; we rooted as little ran one up the middle; we ran another, from 1001 daggers into 3 hot cups; we an injured cajoled to laugh and roll; we chimney swept for spills not wept; we found inspiring a climber climbing; we were old uncouth to kick at youth. Live it like you mean it, every minute. ~ MH Clay

That Thing You Kicked In The Knees Called Youth by Samantha Hawkins

Remember when every prayer you drew
through gritty brown lips sounded like Alleluia
and tasted something like watermelon candy

Remember you were never the brightest of gems
but you shined like a diamond anyhow
Where the light danced off of your facets

Remember your edges felt lovely to bask
in the brilliant commentary of the sun

Remember you had teeth for soul and bone for spirit
and you ran all your relationships through a grater
purely for the thrill of flesh-colored confetti

Remember you were once the frustrated virgin
with a week’s worth of borrowed lunch money

Remember the world was your massively endowed hooker
you raided her Victorian secrets like they were candy
and left gaping holes of red through her fishnets

Never mind the shortcomings and contradictions
life was all about the contractions

Remember being drawn to questions that laid more questions
which in turn mated with question marks
but you often ran out your welcome with the ellipses

Remember the sky was not your ordinary dead end
just another mile marker on your highway

Remember you and the angels engaged in heavy pillow fights
made hammocks out of the cumulus clouds
then played hopscotch over the contrails

Remember in the morning you awoke to the slow swish
of windshield wipers clearing the mist in your head

April 23, 2016

editors note: When that thing kicks back; don’t dodge it, grab it. Never let go… – mh clay

Climbing Mounts by Gene Barry

In memory of Joan O’Leary

Life is running around in small shoes,

is seated with groups of the elderly,
the retired, the pre-op, the post-op
and I see that door with Push and obey.

Over the child screams and laughter
a penury of happiness is sidelined
and I feel myself pallbearing as
sibling sounds fill my emptiness.

For Joan is that popular Sherpa,
a mist tampering with my heart;
I have assembled her future with
shavings from her workshop floor.

I am helplessly drawn to taste
the fruit of her stories, am held by
the enveloping of a conveyor
of her summits and peaks.

Meanwhile the shy are out-there,
the out-theres more quiet,
the tone deaf are pleasing ears,
new safe hills are being climbed and

I am a well tended field of roosters
awaiting her hands, an unloved
belly swollen Kenyan child
who has just fallen in love.

April 22, 2016

editors note: From summits of remembrance we bring our dead to life. – mh clay

Multifidus by Leilanie Stewart

They’re lined up in rows
but still uneven
It offends the eyes, the mind, the soul
The tip of the iceberg…
Brown and red – maybe yellow,
you’d be a fool to argue,
let the chain of thought slide down
the flaky guttering
into the bowels of the-
dug-out,
hollowed-out,
empty chimney

It’s a vessel, only a container
for part of that which is dead
and free
Still, the angles left
on the hollow shell are irregular
and it torments, even blisters
a life fragmented

Don’t even try to understand
what has already been
and passed,
emitted into the ether
like a puff of smoke.

April 21, 2016

editors note: Chimney sweeps; pushing yesterday’s soot into piles of understanding. (It’s a stretch.) – mh clay

Intransigent land by Lakshmi Ganapathi

I sit there watching
The grains of age-old earth
Displaced into mid-air
By bare little feet
Running skipping and hopping

A brief reprieve
from selling their wares
for a game of catch
As business is slow
this time of day

The tourists have retreated
to their sheltered coves
where over beers
they would post
the day’s photos
receiving a hundred likes
from across the globe

There he sits
His arms as thin
as the rusty wheels
of his chair
His eyes dart
ever so intently
tracking the footprints
his friends leave
on the intransigent land

Then she walks
by his side
tracing the scar on his cheek
down which beads of sweat file
She cajoles him to join

And off they go
Her tiny hands pushing
Their laughter piercing
the silence that is creeping
through the ancient cracks
of the temples that once again
recede into their solitude

Till tomorrow dawns.

April 20, 2016

editors note: A friendly difference of opinion; laughter wins over pain. – mh clay

The great wall of China at -19 by Luke Ritta

My brain is thumping.
My face is burning.
My mustache has frozen over.
My thighs feel like slabs of marble.
My body feels like it is being stabbed by 1001 daggers.

But then I see a sign! A fat white cat is sleeping next to a window inside a cafe. I run in and drink three cups of hot green tea.

My organs.
My senses.
My bones.
My blood.

They all very slowly come back to life.

April 19, 2016

editors note: An ancient formula for rejuvenation. At -19, add 3 to 206; reduce 1001 to zero. – mh clay

Little Slot Boy by Robert L. Martin

Little slot boy that you are
Running through the middle
Lost among those big ferocious giants
Who eat little boys for breakfast
As lions eat Christians
And missiles overpower spears

Life made giants for football
And made you for knitting sweaters
Don’t venture onto the gridiron
Life is short enough
You are up for the kill
Stay home where it’s safe
Little slot boy,
Where are you going?

Oh no, you’re lining up in the slot?
Or hiding in the backfield?
With all those giants all around?
Now you’re getting lost in the middle
And they can’t find you
When they see you, you are dead
You, you little needle in a haystack
You little Speedy Gonzales around the bend
You greased pig, you invisible little brat
You’re in for a great big spanking
When they find you if they can
What is that you got in your hands?
Is that a football you’re carrying
Across the goal line?
Hurray for little slot boys!!!
Hurrah, hurrah!!!

April 18, 2016

editors note: Underdogs everywhere, arise! Hurrah! – mh clay

Art by Wayne Burke

no kids
no wife;
sometimes it seems
as if life
is not worth
the living,
and like I missed the boat
somewhere
but then
whenever I start to write
I think
this art is what
I have to love:
as fickle as it is
as un-glamorous in the
morning
as moody in the night
as meaningless as it
sometimes seems–
in all its flaws
and wrinkles
it still comes through
for me
still there
whenever I reach
for it,
from the dark
or from the most desolate
shore.

April 17, 2016

editors note: Fickle mistress though she be; can’t live with her… – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Happy Need-a-Read Day! We got a fine read to feed your need on this fine day. Here's what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about this slinky story:

"Darkness for many is celebration. It is life. It is love in infinite blackness, where the only light at the end of the tunnel is a scream."

Here's a few morsels of "Serpent’s Tale" by Andy Tu for for you to sink your fangs into:

(photo "Giver of Knowledge" - above - by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter)

My eyes are like diamonds, finely cut in the mirror. The outlines of my face waver, melting into the cracked walls behind me. My tie represents who I am. Neat, perfectly-strewn, nice. Together.

There is no image in my head as I drive through the night. No faces of my dead mother or vanished father, just the recurring voice of that waitress.

You want fortune cookie?

Today is my birthday. I have celebrated alone at this restaurant. There is no family riding in on the trains from out of town, no friends decorating my apartment while I’m away. There is just me, and this smooth paper that remains from the cookie. I rub it in circles between my thumbs and index finger as I steer toward the address on the back of the paper.

367 Eastbrook Ridge

The trees along the sidewalks point at me with their branches. Look, they say, there he goes again.

This is where the address would be, if it were real…

And with that cliffhanger, we leave you to slither your mouse on here and get the rest of your read on

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Worshippin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“Everything starts as somebody's daydream.” ~ Larry Niven

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Saint Francis at Northpark” (above) by featured artist Maria Valentina Sheets. To view more of Maria's beatific works, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we wet dry thoughts with green and water; we traded Byron for balls, but still loved it all; we embraced our beast in a free fall feast; we grabbed a piece of light on lease; we flew fancies in fours and fives; we walked a cold road in the vertex of snow; we wrestled our demon for love from our ghost. Yes! Robin must love. ~ MH Clay

Chatting to a spirit in the garden by Michael Holme

I can’t hear you
calling my name anymore.
It used to be as fresh as dew
from my breath;
a stream
dried up in silence now.

The panics have gone.
I sleep nights without sudden
sprung awakenings.

Forgive me,
I’ve moved my wedding ring.
Who would want me
with mind and body unfit
and with no capacity to provide?

Lucy puzzles me.
She didn’t seem to recognise you
in the home where you passed.
She’s missed you before;
on your long infections absence.
She’s only a dog.

What would we be doing
now it’s summer again?
selling up?
living in Morocco,
drinking gallons of mint tea in Marrakesh?
Joking, my parents wouldn’t bless that.

Incidentally, I didn’t go to church today. I might
have fallen out with them again.
I’m trying to accept
we all share this destiny,
but I’m only forty-five.

We’ve had a robin and a wren
nesting this year. I sit outside
watching the parents.
They fetch grubs.
I wish you could see them.
Maybe you’re here
a second ahead?

You’re listening.
For the first time
I don’t feel odd about being alone:
hope it’s Okay,
I’ve got a “Bestie” on Facebook,
like a sister you understand.

I’ve still got my problem with work:
honesty. I can’t present
a mask, it leads to pain.
Love should ALWAYS trust.
It’s not easy when everyone
is happy to kick sand
in your sun-blistered face.

Robin keeps landing on the washing-line;
a silhouette against a cloudless sky.
Even planes leave no trace.
He’s been eighteen inches away
once or twice.

Robin must love.

April 30, 2016

editors note: We all have ghosts to catch up with our time. – mh clay

What Does A Vertical Line Form by Bhargab Chatterjee

the morning
is snow white,
only snow.
grass blades
are as dead
as her skin,
converge at the corner
of the nearest road;
other roads
have merged
with the dense forest.
measure me
from the nearest road.
i know,
the distance
remains in the vertex

below snow.

April 29, 2016

editors note: The shortest distance between two points is too cold. – mh clay

Haikus 1 & 2 by Shirin Hasrat

Haiku #1

Thunderous clouds
Flashes of lightning
God taking selfies

Haiku #2

Leaves gossiping
Breeze spreading rumours
Storm in a tea cup

April 28, 2016

editors note: Then post both to social media (thumbs up, smiley face). – mh clay

Dark fortnight by Hem Raj Bastola

Spring
Is hindered
In my garden.
Waxed by winter
Freezing so pale.

A furrow…
Did plough
In the ocean of my heart
And the current
An electric shock…

My eyes are blind
Meteor from the heaven
Freezes.
And galaxies not seen
None of the milky ways
move.

It is so dark.
And dark
Where is the light
You took on lease.
Goblet of your dew
Collecting.

In a dark fortnight
How am I to satiate
My thirst…
Without your face.

April 27, 2016

editors note: Spring; sprung in slow sips from a light goblet. – mh clay

Feast by Ursula Barretta

The restless thrill of living
blasts into my face
like a funnel drops from an Oklahoma wall cloud
and wind sucks the breath out
of my lungs and thrusts me on my back.

I’m new then as my tired body slips away
like a snake sheds skin
as I see the earth around me.
I thank god or Anybody for the feast before me.
What does one do with this dangling on the edge –
this free fall of wanting to
feed ravenously on the world?
I eat like a wild animal –
devouring warm flesh,
crunching bones and licking fat,
spitting out sinew until
there is nothing left to rot or pilfer
and in the end
I am mindful not to choke
on the enormity
of such a big catch.

April 26, 2016

editors note: Those newest to the feast feed fastest. So much to swallow, so much to taste. – mh clay

Takeoff by John May

Suppose I spelled “LOVE”
On your bare stomach in cocaine
And quoted Lord Byron?
I mean, I don’t have another bump to my name,
And I’ve memorized Byron
Like I’ve memorized the wrinkles on my balls…

But the love is still there, right?

It’s all that we have left,
And we’ll trip our faces off on that stuff
Raving through the night
Until our swirling hearts
Separate like grease and water…

Love for years and years or
Love for three hours, forty minutes, and
A fifth of Bacardi:
I love it all because I love you.
Monday’ll still come,
Even if the flight is cancelled,
And I’ll still take off from
That airport, where blue lights
out the small window, past the wings,
Mean goodbye for now.

April 25, 2016

editors note: An erstwhile philandering Lothario with love in his heart and frequent flyer miles to log. – mh clay

Shall I wait for dawn to come by Ilhem Issaoui

Shall I wait for dawn to come
And bring his fragrance
To the thoughts dry
Like a jejune land
The night is amarulent
Cacophony penetrates it
I shall close the eyes
Perhaps, tomorrow
There shall be green and water

April 24, 2016

editors note: Dry night, dry pages. Bring a wet day, like ink and tears. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Happy Need-a-Read Day! This week's featured twisted tale of love comes to us from the land down under by the hand of WJP Newnham.

Here's Short Story Editor Tyler Malone's take on "In Vino Veritas":

'These are the moments at the tips of our fingers, on the tips of our tongues. Uncork, undress, find yourself exposed and drink.'

If that editorial commentary didn't grab ya' where it counts, here's even more of a tease for ya:

(photo "Future Drunk Love" - above - by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter)

I hit the bell boy up for breath mints and on the way up to the bar in the lift and finger combed my hair and repeated my drunken mantra which I believed would allow clear speech:

A proper cup of coffee from a Proper copper coffee pot A proper cup of coffee from a proper Copper coffee pot A proper cup of coffee. I hit the bar and ordered myself a bracer.

She didn’t take much locating: she was the only woman in the deserted bar. She sat by herself at the end of the bar.

I drink my bracer and take her in searching for an opening line, a gambit, some leverage that will allow her to see beyond the human Hesperus that I had seen whilst attempting to groom myself in the mirrored lift. I order another bracer and this time tell the bartender that I would like to meet the lady at the end of the bar. He agrees to book introductions conditional on a fine bottle of wine, suggesting an Australian vintage: ‘05 Grampians Shiraz. He winks at me as he quickly précised a review for me with full-bodied and perfumed given innuendo. I agree and he opens a bottle for her explaining that it was from the gentleman who wished only some convivial conversation.

She puts down the novel she had been reading as the barman brokers the suggestion of booking with a fresh drink. She looks to me and smiles and gestures that I should join her.

She smiles again as I seat myself next to her and raising glasses we toast each other with cheers; clinking rims and drinking deeply...

If you think you know how the rest of this drunken love story goes, guess again. It's a thicker tale than you may think. Get the rest of your read at Mad Swirl!

••• Open Mic •••

Join Mad Swirl & Swirve this 1st Wednesday of May (aka 05.04.16) as we continue to swirl up our mic madness at our mad micness home, Dallas’ badass The Underpass Bar!

This month we feature poetry editor, poet, playwright, actor, musician, mad co-conspirator, and all-around top-notch soul…MH Clay! Join MH & musical guest Earthlinger as we celebrate the release of the newest publication by Mad Swirl Press, ANGST

(ANGST is 40 pages of poetry by MH swirled up with art by Jeff Skele Sheely. Come join us and experience this "Mad ANGST-full Rant!" and buy you a limited & numbered edition of this mad-licious collab-creation)

Come on out, one & all. Get a brainful of Swirve, share in the Mad Swirl’n festivities, & if the spirit is movin’ ya get yourself a spot on our list. Come to be a part of this collective creative love child we affectionately call Mad Swirl Open Mic. Come to participate. Come to appreciate. Come to swirl-a-brate!

P.S. If you're on Facebook, get on the pre-list at our event page.

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Dreamin',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“Imagination is the eye of the soul.” ~ Joseph Joubert

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“Two Dagger Tony” (above) by featured artist Jeff Skele Sheely.

Mad Swirl is mighty proud to introduce you to our newest featured artist, Jeff Skele Sheely! Jeff brings us colorful collections of chaos – all perfectly portrayed in the patterned faces of often grumpy (or at least totally uninterested) characters. Skele’s use of color and line, his attention to detail and the otherworldly subjects in his works of art are all reasons alone to love these manic masterpieces. And yet still, there seems to be something more, something deeper to them – that our eyes just can’t get enough of. A certain something that we think you need to see for yourself. So step right up and enter the twistedly dark yet colorfully hopeful world of mad contradictions from Jeff Skele Sheely! ~ Madelyn Olson

To view more our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we sought to embrace a shivering heat, in a rained out theater with front row seats; we sucked love's lemon, turned sour to sweet; we dickered with the devil for depraved sleep; we got nothing to get in old regret; we bunker birthed an indigent life, not beast nor blessing, absent midwife; we saw a seductress in search of story; we fondled our fit to the primal tit. Suckling infants all we are. ~ MH Clay

Tits by Becci Goodall

look at my tits
look at them
they’re wired to my brain
and i’m a logical person
i get it I do
so look go on
get it over with and look
ya happy now?
you are aren’t you?
i’ve done my homework
my rand my freud
my green eggs and ham
i do I like them sam I am
i like me some tits
with my green eggs and ham
i like me some study tits
the philosophy of tits 101
thank you doctor wagoner
thank you doctor katz
tits on the velvet couch
thank you jeffy
tits up at the ritz
thank you rich husband
tits on a stick
my god damned tits
shut the fuck up
about my god damned tits
lemme tell ya a story
so there was this guy
with a basket
with a very nice basket
but I got past it
I went straight to his brain
he was the engineer type
all angles and planes
and pencils to draw with
on drafting tables
and sometimes poetry
and that lasted for a good solid
mother fucking week
until I said why do you like me
and he said oh your tits they
they are amazing
they just stand out
and up and the nipples
the nipples are perfect
the way they move in my hands
like he was sculpting aphrodite
and I said like putty?
like plastic like what?
like the madonna in cathedrals like what?
and he said super sweet and sincere
i’m just a boob man honey
they feel like tits
like really great fucking
great tits that stand out
and then he said i love you
to my tits
and right then i started to appreciate
the power of tits
because bitch I got tits
and I am not your bitch
and these tits
these tits right here
well they fed my babies
these tits right here
well they rocked the cradle
these tits right here
they kept the electric on
they brought home the bacon
they fried it in a pan
and these tits right here
well believe it or not
but these silly fuckin things
have a masters degree
i mean can you really
fucking believe that shit?
and lemme tell ya somethin else
these tits right here fed jesus
these tits right here fed ghandi
these tits right here fed
a god damned revolution
look
at
my
tits

May 7, 2016

editors note: Tits without end, amen. – mh clay

The Wild Women of Wongo by Ace Boggess

Jaywall Productions,
Wolcott Productions, 1958

Watch the dragon priestess dance,
aware in the passion sense
she celebrates the god she sees,
spasmodic as at a party on the beach.
“Dance,” she says. “Dance!”
An orgy of motion erases what stories
fur-clad forms were drawn to tell.
Bodies shake, twist, pulse like pricks
in the endgame. Omoo, ginger princess,
sates lust from her knees. Holy,
holy: bacchanal of forgiveness prayers.
I savor my times observing from distance
a woman boogying when she feels it,
wears the music like a tender pair of hands.
Here, it’s more like eavesdropping
from outside the confessional,
close enough to hear the guilt,
repentance & release, yet not
in time for the nitty-gritty,
so nothing like a story’s in the way.

May 6, 2016

editors note: Nitty-gritty now, story later. – mh clay

Midwives Wanted by Santosh Kalwar

Whoever challenges freaks should notice
that in the method he does not mature into a beast.
If you stare too deep into a depression,
she also stares into you.
Bedtime, the foundation of a smashed house
atomic bomb orphans blubbering in the shade
not a sole light between them
the fragrance of lifeblood
the redolence of separation
the sickly-sweet fume of declining mankind
the moans the sorrows.
Out of all that, abruptly, miraculously, screams:
“The baby is moving inside the belly.”
“Is the Baby coming out?”
In the diabolical bunker, startlingly,
a juvenile mommy had undergone stress.
In the darkness, lacking a matchstick,
clambering to her side,
overlooking their own.

May 5, 2016

editors note: Miscreant madonna bears child in concrete creche as indigents look on. – mh clay

Regrets by MH Clay

Gently lift the quivering quelled
Slowly peel the shivering shell
Expose the wound
Raw revealed
The hurt inflicted
Mercy appealed
But not granted

Pain long borne
Long dulled, forgotten
Actions bent
And misbegotten
Scars, bled badges
Spoils spent
Benefits rotten
Moldering
Wizened wisps of smoke
Long smoldering
Now stanched

The air is dank
And thick
The deeds darkened
No more quick
The rain-washed slick
Reflects
No more
The light of avarice and greed

What’s dead is dead
Indeed

Now, move on

Or be still

May 4, 2016

editors note: We can wallow in our sorrows but in the end all we get is a whole lot of grief & bottomless regrets. Best to do what Poetry Editor MH suggests & move on… ~ Johnny O

Depravity by Mary Bone

The sleep I craved,
Came to those depraved,
Whose thoughts enslaved and engulfed them.
The night wore on, with its own kind of gravity,
Leaving me alone with thoughts of depravity.

May 3, 2016

editors note: These fall asleep counting atrocities; whatever it takes. – mh clay

EACH LEMON by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Each lemon
I bring you
is a rose,
a symbol
of love. I
bring you a
bagful of
lemons. I
bring you eight
or seven.
I lost count.
Each lemon
is a kiss.
It is a
message of
love to you.
I want you
to know that.

May 2, 2016

editors note: When love gives you lemons… – mh clay

Rain On Theatre’s Roof by Kushal Poddar

In the hall next to each other
miles afar we sit and stare
at the screen, so big, bigger
than the wall, world.

Your cold skin hands me
a good fever, and it rains on the screen,
two figures running inside the garden
to find the fountain of clouds.

We forget each other’s name,
forget this theatre is an abandoned one,
gutted years ago. I run inside
the garden of rain, drag you
with me, so much silence crackling,

your hand so far from my reach
and tight in my grip. Who said
anything about madness?

May 1, 2016

editors note: Love fever garden movie (not) madness. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Happy Need-a-Read Day! This week's featured tale comes to us from Dan "the man" Rodriguez. If that name rings a bell, it's because Dan is the mad photog who captures our Mad Swirl Open Mic scenes every month. Who woulda thunk that Dan also had a knack for spinning a tale? Mad Swirl did, that's who!

Here is what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say about Dan's tasty tale "Smells"..."In an instant, the world can go up in smoke. The only way to rule over the ashes is to be the highest person on the planet."

Here's a few tokes of "Smells" to get you buzzin':

(photo "Jesus Shotgun" - above - by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter)

Working at home, I decided to take a smoke break. I started a doobie and after what seemed like hours and my coffee smell stale I decided to go out and get a beer. At 7-11, I smelled hotdogs so I got the twofer, it was getting to be lunch time after all. I added some onions some mustard and some of that smooth flowing chili and headed on home with my beer and hot dogs.

I was smelling the hot dogs and onions as I drove home and was already savoring the taste. I drove slow to savor, and because cops patrolled this area regularly. on my last left turn towards home I noticed a car coming to the stop sign up ahead. As I made the turn I looked, the car did not stop and speeded up instead of slowing down and hit me head on, engine to engine, our grills smashed.

Out of my car, I waited for the person in the other car—a woman with a glow on her face. Her body seem to tingle with a smile on her face but that was soon gone as she saw what she had done...

Inhale. Hold it. Hold it! Exhale & get the rest of your buzz on right here!

••• Open Mic •••

Oh what a night it was in the land of Swirl’n mic Mad-ness this past 1st Wednesday! Mad Swirl Open Mic was honored to feature poetry editor, poet, playwright, actor, musician, mad co-conspirator, and all-around top-notch soul… MH Clay & his newest book, ANGST!

(ANGST consists pf 40 pages of poetry by MH Clay swirled up by Mad Swirl Press with art by Jeff Skele Sheely. If you didn’t get you a copy at the open mic, it’s not too late! Find out how to get you a copy here!)

MH Clay and crew put on quite the poetic mad-licious collab-creation! This multi-media’d show highlighted the artwork of Jeff Skele Sheely and was backed by musical guest Earthlinger.

Thanks to all who came out to The Underpass & shared in this collective delicious madness. What a night of the beat-utifullest poetry and music it was!

Here’s a shout out to all who graced us with their words, their songs, their divine madnesses…

photos courtesy of Dan "the man" Rodriguez

Feature:
ANGST: MH Clay & Jeff Skele Sheely

Earthlinger:
Hector Ramirez & David Fargason

Hosts:
Johnny Olson & MH Clay

Swirve:
Gerard Bendiks, Chris Curiel, & Tamitha Curiel

Mad Cast:
Opalina Salas
Sean “Ta2” Buttram
Vic Victory & Phil Brewer
Roderick Richardson
Poppy Xander
Paul Sexton
Suza “Hep Kat Mama” Kanon
Maggie Smith
Brett “BA” Ardoin
Kristine Spinner
Carlos Salas
Jen Bochenko
Kelly Cheek
James “Bear” Rodehaver
Gnadia Wolnisty
Randall Garrett
Christopher Stephen Soden
Harry McNabb
John May
Ely Sellers
David Agasi
Conner

HUGE thanks to Swirve for keeping the beat til the wee hours of the night. We got taken to another dimension of time and space on the wings of their jazzy madness!

Thanks to The Underpass Tavern‘s Mike & Leo for opening up this fine establishment to us mad ones and making us feel right at home.

And finally we would like to thank ALL of you who freely shared their hand claps, finger-snaps, hoots and howls with all the mad ones who got up on this sacred mad swirlin’ mic.

••• Mad Blog •••

ANGST: A New Publication from Mad Swirl Press

We were pleased so many or our local Mad Ones came to The Underpass this week to see the release show for ANGST. But, did you know ANGST is more than a show?

Yes, ANGST is also a book (poetry by MH Clay, art by Jeff Skele Sheely); our latest pub from Mad Swirl Press. If you missed the show, you can buy the book to enjoy your own private read-the-poems-look-at-the-pictures show.

Here’s what a Dallas writer has to say about the poems:

That the wages of witness are poetic is a proposition both certain and surprising. One of the admirable qualities of MH Clay’s ANGST, however, is that, as it surveys the bounteous wasteland of contemporary mores, it resists the silky allure of the evidentiary for (as he images them) the rock, crag and jagged nail of faith. Clawing against the petty and the merciless in all their guises, these poems oppose power with power: the muscle of refrain, the corrosive power of anathema, the simple yet profound grace of “we” and “our.” ~ Joe Milazzo, Writer, Dallas

Here’s what a Dallas artist and gallerist has to say about the art:

Jeff Skele is one hell’uva force to be reckoned with. After coming to my attention just a couple of years ago, I thought ‘Wow, this guy is crazy, busy, nuts, but somehow pulls it all together every time.’ Having shown his works at Kettle Art these past few years, he never ceases to amaze and astound viewers on a regular basis. He naturally exudes creativity and insight to his other worldly being. ~ Frank Campagna, Kettle Art, Dallas

Our good friend and poet, Paul Sexton bought a copy and has this to say about his read of it:

Knowing Michael Clay, I was not surprised that his poems were sharply written pieces of wordplay painting vivid images. Good, solid writing. What did surprise me was an almost counter culture undercurrent. A barely suppressed anger floating just between the lines. It’s not overt, but there is a palpable frustration that the poet has with the culture he finds he must exist in. A social commentary in which the poet shines a light on the world and finds it less than it should be. A theme that I personally can relate to quite a bit. The aptly titled “ANGST” is a short read, and well worth the time. I highly recommend it!

If you would like to buy a copy, $20 plus shipping, email the author directly mh@madswirl.com.

We look forward to publishing more books from Mad Swirl Press in the months to come – stay tuned.

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Seein',

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.” ~ David Byrne

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“God Less America” (above) by featured artist Jeff Skele Sheely. To view more of Jeff's twisted beatific images, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we found peace in a fine and dandy-lion; we bore life's shock, like paper on rock; we reveled in being rained on vs. rained out; we waxed away with words of Will; we wasted away in exile, our only friend an enemy; we recalled another, in time sublime, distanced but not detached; we bounced through the business of getting to YES! Madly maximize, all the way up to it! ~ MH Clay

RISE OF YES by Suza Kanon

affirmative consent has been acquired
initiation sequence activated
all systems go for liftoff
zoom zoom zoom baby
zoom
zoom

but how do we get to yes
from here to there
i feel your attraction
but do you care? & do i care?

really only one way to see
to move things up a smidge
let’s set aside some time
before water passes the bridge

needed to be certain you were certain
before i let you get in over your head
how sweetly surreal is love’s deep dive?
cause the one you choose is where you’ll thrive

yes isn’t always simple.
but come on,
it could be so simple
if we keep it simple.

uncomplicated, affirmative
supportive,
asking all the right questions
in just the right order.

setting the mood, stacking the deck
so when the time comes to pop the question
every need has been met

we know not to negotiate through a no
we accept your free will & let it go
but you’ve got to be direct. i’m a literal kind of girl
no good with signs & signals, this is a crazy crazy world

so before this goes any further
tell me, baby, where’ve you been
need to connect on a deeper level
before we take this for a spin.

how do we get to yes?
can’t we just let go enough
to feel that yes rising?
to let it well up deep inside me

till you can taste it on the tip of my tongue
sweet like honey, dripping from my kiss
take your time, but don’t take too long
cause that yes is such a gift

sometimes yes is a slow burn
you start slow & low
in your favorite cast iron
just so you know

its been sweetly seasoned
with love & intention
raising the heat just enough
to give the flavor dimension

so the sugar carmelizes
but doesn’t smoke or get bitter
stir stirring, letting it get so hot
as long as it needs to take to thicken

watch that yes come together
o you’ll know when it’s ready
golden sweet & too hot to touch

give it just a moment to rest
so you can catch your breath
so you can consent
so we can get to that yes

so do it already
no fun to repress,
much nicer to confess
YES baby yes.

So just say it outloud.

& if you can say it outloud
then say it with me now
yes yes YES!

May 14, 2016

editors note: Well, bless our yes. We say, YES! – mh clay

JUNCTURE for C.B. by Stefanie Bennett

Distance, how far away
You’ve wandered
From the maladies
Of attachment.

From the quiet room where
We read Kafka’s tribulations,
My head resting
On your chest,

The clatter of pine-cones
Scudding the roof
… And the wind
At half-mast
Soulfully singing.

Distance. A derivative,
Brought with it
An unbridled
Dark steed

To infiltrate
The yellow night.
The red comet.
The absentee –.

May 13, 2016

editors note: A distance crossed in the firing of synapses. – mh clay

LETTER OF EXILE by J.H. Martin

To you –
My dearest enemy

Even after all these years
I still remember

How could I forget?

When your rejection of my parole
Sentenced me with indifference
To remain imprisoned by the past

Yes
I know this letter
Is as pointless
As these memories that burn

You don’t care what I think or how I feel
You didn’t then, so why would you now?

No, it’s too late, I know

The days of working for a living wage
The nights of sleeping with a loving wife
The hopes of escaping from this locked room

All of them are gone

All that’s left
Are these yesterdays

The only way out –
To give in to their flames

That consume this empty shell
And intern the ashes of its anger
Inside the casket of these words

This final testament
To my will’s conscious impotence
That I address and leave to you –

My dearest enemy
The one friend that I have left

May 12, 2016

editors note: When those befriended have ended… – mh clay

Willed Words by Harley White

For William Shakespeare

Soft you now – what visions rise from that phrase
which sounds of hushabies and winsome ways,
or conjures damsels in enduring plays
with celebrated scenes that e’er amaze!

One maiden proffered columbine and rue,
yet could not tender blooms of violet hue.
To take is not to give – still ‘twas not true
when twisted villain gave a ring to woo.

The walking shadows tell their tales of woe,
before to dusty death they’re called to go.
Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps its pace
as time pursues us all in ticking chase.

Yea, pageants may dissolve or cloud-capped spires
and sweet birds sing no more in ruined choirs…
But soft, beloved Bard, abide in peace!
The wonder of your words will never cease!

May 11, 2016

editors note: With the anniversary of his death just past, Harley reminds us how much we are lovers of Will’s words. – mh clay

Personal Rules of Interpretation by KJ Hannah Greenberg

Personal rules of interpretation, like flattened leafy thalli,
Those foliose growing among cold rocks, usually yield little.
See, accretion requires, whether among persons or flora,
Simple, direct, functional choices to cull truth, survive daily.

Not possible to pay enough cottonseed oil or cornmeal cakes
To generate aesthetic norms, to ride the best merry-go-round
Horse, to pump hard, extremities burning, down a high knoll;
The sun fashions brightness and shadow, makes gusts pucker.

When clouds puff voluptuously, when sky cotton also drifts,
Raindrops get blamed for bollixing picnics, for messing with
Outdoor concerts, backyard weddings, volleyball games, jazz.
(Nothing’s said of the many sere gardens that bloom thereafter.)

May 10, 2016

editors note: Bust for one, blessing for another. How do you see it? – mh clay

Silence by John Najjar

I sit here tracing these words across this screen
Looking for other possibilities
That can slide beyond the measures of reason
These days my day’s measure is spent
Searching possible futures
That leave me stranded here
In this distant present:

Measuring each word written
I sit in a shady place
And pace each line away
Writing a last refuge
A prisoner pacing the yard
Each word a step
In this battle with meaning

Experience will remain
A mixture of loss and gain
I am torn between a head
That reasons
And a heart that knows

I trace borderlines
Weighing possibilities
One past with another
Looking for connections
Still experience remains
Wrapped by silence
I will not let this rocky world
Shatter me.

May 9, 2016

editors note: Paper wraps rock every time. – mh clay

Lion Of Peace by JoyAnne O’Donnell

Within the silver linings on a break of a wave
a white cloud crash
lifts waves on the moon’s pull
rain into dripping rainbows
colors with golden arches
keeping birds singing from the highest perches
God’s holy tree
Angel’s seven seas
Peace within time of the sun maiden’s charm
of flowers and peace fresh as a white daisy

May 8, 2016

editors note: Jus’ dandy! I’ll take an order of that with love topping. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Need-a-Read? If we've been doin' our jobs correctly, you do!

This week's featured tale "The Gun Shop" comes from Contributing Writer Ron Riekki.

Here is what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say this week's pick..."The heavy gloom of the human condition sometimes seems to lighten when we come into contact with one of those aliens we call people. The blood we all know we love to spill is all the more devastating when it keeps hearts beating through the experience of simple conversation."

Here's a few lines to set your sights on:

(photo "Lock and Load" - above - by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter)

The gun shop sign, I have to admit, was shimmering. Other than that, it was a piece of shit, but the sun blessed the thing when I drove up.

I was armed with statistics. My hands were shaky. I’d wanted to do this for a long time. I knew how many kids kill themselves with guns each year. I had citations for the number of housewives killed in Alabama. I knew how many accidental shootings, on-purpose shootings, gun show shootings, and every kind of shootings there were. In America. I didn’t have a clue about foreign country shootings. That was too much information. It took me long enough to plan for this.

It was the sign that drew me in. The quotes on it angered me worse than Geico ads. I just hated the place, the way it would sting into my mind with their gun puns and holiday gun greetings. Happy New Gun Year!

The door to the place seemed yanked from a factory. Inside, it was orange and empty. It smelled like a strip club. Don’t ask me how I know that. I’m no angel.

I expected customers but was very relieved when there weren’t any. Customers, I figured, would be the wild card. I just imagined the testosterone, the strange neo-con angry quotes I’d get back. What I got was emptiness...

Wanna know the rest of the story? Sure you do! Get the rest of your read on here

•••••••

The whole Mad Swirl of everything to come keeps on keepin' on... now... now... NOW! Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week, every month, every year, every decade, every every EVERY there is! Wanna join in the mad conversations going on in Mad Swirl's World? Then stop by whenever the mood strikes! We'll be here...

Down for the Count,

Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

“What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.” ~ Albrecht Durer

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“toxic” (above) by featured artist Jeff Skele Sheely. To view more of Jeff's twisted beatific images, as well as our other featured artists, visit our Gallery at MadSwirl.com!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week in Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum... we watched from above the blossom of natural love; we possessed no ordinary - starling swarms, mutant rodents, all extraordinary; we changed our expectations of snow bird manifestations; we let not love cease for the girl we gave gruff peace; we played the fool to the base of the gene pool; we lost all tolerance for "geldings," provocateurs of violence; we found some grace for those who fall. Falling is something we know, all. Take heed... ~ MH Clay

WHEN I FALL by Helen Harrison

Why is it that the path
Has to mist before
We see ourselves,

Cracks and roots exposed
To an empty ditch
To reveal a broken stem;

Vulnerable, collapsing
Covered in isolation
And open to pain.

Maybe it is necessary for us
To suffer occasionally –
For compassion to remain;

Like a stunted tree, a trapped
Fly, before we can see
Through another’s eye.

My path has been mostly clear
Or as far as I can see
Alone, but never lonely.

Not intentionally
Do I fail to notice
A troubled mind,

If you fail to see me
When my mist approaches.
I won’t think you unkind.

May 21, 2016

editors note: Yes, it takes pain to know pain; Compassion 101. (We welcome Helen to our crazy conclave of Contributing Poets with this submission. Read more of her madness on her new page.) – mh clay

ALUMNI #137 by Darren C. Demaree

How much time do you get
for threatening politicians

with more books of poetry
that call them “motherfuckers”

&“geldings”? I was hoping
I would at least get a vague

threat from some Koch thugs
for that collection. That book

brought me no response
& that was violent to my ego.

May 20, 2016

editors note: If they read what we write for them, no violence. – mh clay

One of the Bigs by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

There was this recent study published
by one of the “bigs”
that claimed there was a direct correlation
between intelligence and sexual activity

which made everyone mad
because it suggested that the smarter you are
the less likely you were to be sexually active

implying conversely
that people having lots of sex
with more than one partner
were less intelligent

and having it with those
of a lesser intelligence

producing offspring that
well, you guessed it…

which explains a lot

if you have ever tried to navigate
a Walmart parking lot on a Saturday
three weeks before
Christmas.

May 19, 2016

editors note: We seek a happy medium; sexy and smart. – mh clay

To Evie by Daniel Wade

O girl with arms open to the sunset,
Perhaps you belong to a gentler time
Where little provision existed for regret
Or the beastly memento of a crime
That I would bury from the dawn’s sight
In numb, February soil, and cower
From your disillusion, your eyes’ fine art.
Because my first taste of love was sour,
I let caution preside over the heart,
Leaving you to navigate this urban maze,
Where, in rush hour’s heated cough,
Headlights slice shadows, forked light tongues
Bridges, the sun beats its flammable hoof.
The canal bank is unshaven with yellow reeds,
Benches wear rust like an unsavoury crown.
Yet nature’s chequered framework lives on here,
Exhaling the leaves’ cool dialect into my ear:
O Mo chroi, corazon, inamorata, loved one.
I wave aside the smoke of commandment,
And the mirror of reparation cracks
By your tongue’s mellow writhing in my mouth,
The dark, droll dance of your eyelash.
O girl against whom I’ve held a gruff peace,
Should my eyes soak up all reassurance,
Or the voice that sung to you falls still,
Then may these words attest love’s burden,
Allowing our lives to once again be filled.

May 18, 2016

editors note: Getting over and through to get in. – mh clay

Penguin… by Paul Hellweg

penguin in a tree
live without expectations
more sunshine to find

May 17, 2016

editors note: Heed this advice and, when we see one, we won’t be surprised. – mh clay

No Ordinary (Mutant Rodents of the Third kind) by Polly Richardson (Munnelly)

Damp earth marinated with spruce mulch, waft and console
sinking roots in waves under silence stars,
Synchronized turning bodies roll – inhale.

Ghosts of bullocks mooing and welly-boots
jump hoops in windy whiskey seas,
And I’m white horse flying, flying till
Starlings awaken with rising sun, again;
like herds of mini elephants cracking bark
bursting eves of this creaking house to life.
No ordinary,

Nestling upon nestling disperse sleep, dreamy hooves
and his shouts of ‘get off tracks, train’s coming’
as he moves in between snores then spoons,
Even in slumber he saves this stubborn soul
No ordinary man.

Heavy eyes remain
roll in lids longing to doze.

I possess no ordinary (so I’m told)
In mind, in body.
Perhaps obsessions
of marvel explain gnawing disappointing pangs felt;
it’s not Mutant Rodents of the Third kind
or meta-human left behind by old Doctor who walked these aged floors
or The Flash in bird form vastly splashing shit bombs perfectly launched
when cat leaves by back or front door,

But extraordinary feathered spite fire Starlings – the mothering fathers stealing my dreams.
Ah still, there’s always the phantom phone ringing!
No ordinary
Spine tingling chill.

May 16, 2016

editors note: Extraordinary images to tingle ordinary spines. – mh clay

Natural Love by Manon Williams

Our love so natural.
So warm and comforting to my soul.

The way we look into each others eyes, but see only the colors of our souls and admire it for hours as if staring at a mind twisting masterpiece in the very center of an art gallery.

The way we look at each other as if staring into glass, nothing can be hidden. Yet also as if we were looking into a mirror at ourselves.

The way we trust each other knowing that this glass mirror can be as a deadly as the poison of love that once kissed the lips of Romeo and Juliet.

The way we sit in silence among the whispering winds as if they were whispering sweet love letters into our ears.

The way my smile becomes yours, and the way your smile becomes mine.

The way you trace every stretch mark and imperfection written upon my skin with your fingers like a continuing story, as if you were following the road to heaven, admiring every inch.

The way our chocolate brown skin melts together from the warmth of our hearts and we can no longer distinguish where my skin starts and where yours ends.

Our love so natural, as if it were meant to be. So warm and comforting to my soul.

May 15, 2016

editors note: Doing what comes naturally; a comfort indeed. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Happy Need-a-Read Day! Then you've "swiped in the right direction". And if you get that reference you'll dig this week's pick of the week, "Internet Dating" by Contributing Writer & Poet, Carl Kavadlo.

Here is what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone had to say this week's pick..."Play people like we play music. They’ll dance to it, too. They’ll sway to the art of lies: the way art lies."

Here's a teasin' wink:

(photo "I'll Steal Your Eyes" - above - by Tyler Malone aka The Second Shooter)

Mick went out that evening. There was the Purity Restaurant over on 7th Street and 7th Avenue. Mick was a little down on his luck, figured 7, 11…dice, numbers like that.

Walked into The Purity. The place used to be owned by a couple of Greeks and is now owned by a couple of Italians. It also relocated from Union and 7th recently in 2005 to 7th and 7th, changed the marquee from the color green to the color purple. The new sign is smaller than the older one.

Mick noticed a brunette woman, early 30’s, winking at him. The room was small. He could see her from the entrance at the back table on the left by the large plate glass window on the 7th Street side.

The luck was running for Mick. He walked over, slid out a chair, sat down, smiled, and faced her.

‘Mick?’ she said.

Before he could answer, she said, ‘I’m Ramona.’

Being a testosterone-fueled guy, Mick was ready to take his chances now.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Hi, Ramona.’

‘You’re cuter than your picture on the internet,’ she said.

‘So are you.’

He wondered if that was an appropriate answer.

She blushed…

This tale sure has some chemistry! Gwt the rest of your tease on here!

•••••••

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Johnny O
Chief Editor

MH Clay
Poetry Editor

Tyler Malone
Short Story Editor

Madelyn Olson
Visual Editor

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