VOLUME 2 / 2018
LeTTER FROM THE “EDITOR“ Spit Poet Zine is a community publishing project and an opportunity for writers to express their realities, connect with peers, and expand their reach as artists. It is my greatest hope that we can come together to celebrate the words that move inside each of us and that this can serve as a record of how far we’ve come. The goal is to showcase the work that WE want to publish, that we are proud of, and to give the power back to the poets! I hope you find a copy of this in a cute cafe or someone gives it to you as a gift. If you bought it, thank you so much for supporting our art! However you get your hands on it, please keep passing it on, leave it in a cafe or give it as a gift, do whatever you must to keep the hype alive. Promise me you wont let the fire die out! All that said, I present to you the twenty nine dedicated humans of Spit Poet Zi n e Volume 2! You’re gonna need a towel to handle all this new spit!
Special thanks to Nikki Nichols for front and back cover art! Find her work on instagram @nikkinichols_cr
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JETHRO McCLELLAN
Time slows just enough to catch up to my body. I re-enter both.
something lingers from another - age? Then the pen SLIDES between my fingers toward an empty page.
pull myself up?, check (against) myself, and SELF spills out typewriter or piano: the play’s the thing! Bang away! Bang away!
Obliterated Atoms Home, Sickness. Global DisEase. Message in a bottle. Return to sender, Please. Dream Child. Reach for Freedom. Roam. You are Free To play dumb. Reach. Reach higher. Higher Higher Higher. The Cosmos' Eternal eye, Wise Beyond Existence, yet Golden Godheads blind. Go. Flow. Forsake the "I" To lead Auspicious Resistance.
Offend me. Say it again And again and again... I am you, Kindred foe. We cannot destroy Without creating Renewed energetic Connection. The reverberation ripples Through the battleground Of space and time, Gradually regenerating a temporary Extension of its own infinite brilliance. "I" willl cease to observe But the light The will of life Lives on, Even in a glistening tear drop Falling from the duct of a tiny blue eye Suspended Like the belief in our own humanity to survive this time around, Rejecting once and for all our species from her bosom.
LORNA ShANNON
I.
i got high wednesday morning and talked to god while leroy slept in the closet, it wasn’t praying because i wasn’t on my knees and i didn’t clasp my handsi got high wednesday morning and thought god would talk back but he didn’t, so i thought about roller skating instead. i got high wednesday morning walking down green street, i yelled at the pavement, i yelled at an elderly woman who didn’t pick up her dog shit. and i wasn’t so much yelling at her, or yelling because i was high, i was yelling, because nobody cares, because i could yell without being noticed on an open street. i got high wednesday morning while picking sprigs of lavender, i tucked them into the seams of my dress and i hoped the lavender wouldn’t stain my clothes, and i hoped my roommates would like the smell. there is nothing glamorous for us anymore. i got high wednesday morning after breakfast, after my second cigarette. i got high wednesday morning, after my first cigarette, and suddenly it was winter. it was 30 degrees as the soles of my feet dug into the concrete floor of the patio in pain while false benedictions rested heavy on my tongue as i scavenged for the right person to preform my resurrection. i got high wednesday morning and bought three yellow raincoats off amazon, a flood light and 6 cases of water incase of emergency. my brother is terrified of the apocalypse and i am terrified of everything.
II.
leroy got high wednesday morning and talked to god while i slept on the closet floor, leroy got high and tried talking to god but he didn’t talk back leroy walked down green street, yelling at the pavement to listen. leroy isn’t praying leroy doesn’t care.
III.
i got high on a wednesday three months ago and put on roller skates, i bladed so fast down sunset boulevard i thought my face was going to melt off. i expected to find the skin of my face in the palm of my hands. the horror exhilarated me and the exhilaration only drove me plummetingtowards a row of steel dumpsters at an accelerated speed - my momentum building. i thought maybe i would stop getting high and praying to a godless world after that, but i didn’t, i never did. i got high wednesday morning and talked to god while leroy slept in the closet, it wasn’t praying because i wasn’t on my knees and i didn’t clasp my hands-
RAE
LULLABY FOR A LOST GIRLl summer’s loose edges she is born in rain-struck tree tops of Oregon Whitebark Pines, cradled in the first exhale of evening thunder. half-moon child, hush-planted in mother’s hideaway woods, quietly nourished by sun-rose petals of dew, she grows tender, swells tall, sprouts red western lilies from her chest. wildflower woman: she plucks this name, berry-round on her lips. how easily it settles soft between teeth, under-tongue, ramble-spun, like the star-pulled chasing west. hair twined with lavender, she swims through bright juniper days. watch the thick lust of spring flood forward, delivering her vernal prayers to knowing rivers. tonight, grasswidow daughter dreams of knotted fire in her palms, of raw, hollow lightning and wide-open lullabies. like her mother, she spills over summer’s loose edges.
SARAH RODRIGUEZ
Punched by a protestor shouting Information The truth came out Your mouth A bloody tooth He always had a slow and dramatic distance The drone drops a dime to silver the damages It lands where Christmas bells ring A cage sings freedom Freedom is a moment Movement of anthem of a flag of a map Amazing luck of star spangled grace When the spine is there to touch Snap The emptiness falls out Spreads around uncovered edges A coffee stain and parking lot Toilet bowl, picture frame I want to run my finger along your jaw, Mr. Speaker Don’t stop speaking, Mr. Speaker I will steal this cadence for my next bass line I will carry your words in my gut for all of time Say it again Your microphone, Mr. Speaker The fist is stable in the wind It’s still on Words blow away Do you have nothing more to say, Mr. Speaker? So they say them again You are just looking at me Say it again, Mr. Speaker Is it my turn now? Does the father of the preacher Can you pass me the paper? have any more god in him? And a lighter? How many others have asked? I want to conduct an experiment How anxious were the answers? Whereby I write with fire Did you mention the cancer and mother? Do you read in ashes? How sure were the followers? I amended the body to reflect history Does the father of the preacher We reflected in its warmth all night have any more god in him? The police came I am so low I could pray to humans At the furthest moment I am so high I can see god in them between sunset and sunrise I am so bored I am willing to try A call came I am so broke do your fucking worst Call off the airplanes I am the new Mr. Speaker The sacred heart of santa claus Stage a ground game ear of the president At the climax of the play The atom bomb code Mr. Speaker came payoff to the payday loan He saw himself I am tick tick In the announcement Speaking The lines pushed forward Tock tock Aisles moved No luxury were fired Of nothing It takes a heavy shot to burn a suit I am the last Mr. Speaker Secret recipe for fabric And I’m not against peace He takes two ice cubes with his scotch I don’t wanna fight a war In a separate glass You are taking me with you There is a tragic spot on his throat We are going down Where age is exposed red Houses and titles by the sugar pyre He spends the profit on magic A raid on the national refrigerator And hasn’t saved none The highway is a nightmare Share in the cup of a retirement package The governor is at a funeral We got wasted on index funds and new habits The capitol exploded That’s interesting, Mr. Speaker There goes a shooting state Hiding with the seeds in the mountains Leave the lights on Incoming, incoming Administration That was a close one Under desks the floor is yours My name is Mr. Speaker I don’t know what I am saying this for
MATT CLIFFORD
WHEN HOME
HAS A HEARTBEAT Has anyone ever told you that you look like the night sky from the inside, but feel like the sun woven into a blanket? I came alive on your invitation, mama Your laughter is my earthquake I can almost touch your heart Your hum is my national anthem All I know is in you My three-course menu of water, light and soil My address is your name With your skin as my bulwark Nothing could ever hurt me But you
MARIE SCHMOLL
Our World (Libraries) I’d like to be your favorite library. You’d check out my stories and ...blow the dust from their spines. I’d be that space you spend hours wandering in to forget where you are Your eyes are so green I feel like I’m growing I can picture setting down roots and sharing stories with you. I know you’ve been places I haven’t imagined So tell me tell me it all Let me sail those seas with you Let’s put our hearts in a bottle and throw it overboard that our lives may mean something to others. ...but no. You’re no fool. I’ve got a flair for the dramatic and a habit of falling in love with people I don’t know very well. Let’s keep our hearts in our chests. It’s where they belong but please at least let us blow our kisses into bubbles Not the kind that pop at your lips but the kind that drift until someone ...pops them. Or keep drifting. You ever feel like an old sweater? You’re mostly there but if someone were to pull on the wrong string the world might call you a mess? See I use metaphor because reality has always been difficult for me. I’m always in my own world. Or someone else’s ...but never just ours.
FORREST SPEAKS
Pieces by Sarah Ball Life is like a puzzle When we are born and just little babies everything seems perfect We have food, a place to live, people to care about us. Every piece of the puzzle is there, Flawless and in place. As we grow older we lose pieces, We lose ourselves. The older we get and the more experiences we gather, the more difficult it becomes to keep our own pieces, and we might want to steal pieces from other puzzles. I think that life is just our own big 1,000 piece puzzle, and the reason we live the amount of time we do i s to find the pieces we have lost and put them back together. Life is too short to steal pieces from other puzzles because we might run out of time to find our own.
To Sarah: I Wonder If by Beth Ball I wonder if you still dye your hair and if the stains on the bathroom door and sink will always make me think I wonder if your eyes still sparkle when your mind is full of mischief I wonder if you still love to travel and where your travels take you now I wonder if you still love to watch a fire and if you can start it by yourself I wonder if there is a day and night on the other side I wonder if you still love a midnight hike I wonder if you get mad when we get sad I wonder if you can hear my thoughts or if I have to use my words like I told you so many times when you were two. I wonder if you still hate it when I call you babygirl I wonder if you ever stop laughing when you see me dancing I wonder if you still snowboard and if there is somewhere that you can I wonder if you still burn your soul into the hearts of those you know I wonder if you still enjoy a shot of tequila and a bowl I wonder if you will continue to send us signs I wonder if the shooting star we see in the sky are you and Phutz learning to fly I wonder if I will always see rainbow orbs when I need you most I wonder if I will keep finding ladybugs inside my locked car I wonder if you and Peter are throwing your own version of Block Party over there I wonder if I taught you the tools you need to deal with life on Earth and if you even need those tools on the otherside I wonder if I told you how much I love you and how proud I am of you, enough. I wonder if souls crowd into your room and those on the otherside can hear the mumble of talk and giggles and Laughter of joy I wonder when I will see you again.
Open up. Take a peek. I’ll let me see you if you see me. So freeing What a feeling Peel me open Lay me out Explore the corners of my mouth The inside of my thighs Don’t compromise For less Than my best Give it to me and I’ll give it to you Rip off your shirt untie my shoes Squeeze and bite Until we’re black and blue Who knew Making love Was such an addictive drug When it comes in an honest way When you don’t want to run away But dive in deep Sensations So new to me Synchronicity Serendipity That’s me So meet me, in the middle of time Where unexpected miracles happen Where you light me up Like the breath of a dragon And we get to imagine That this Is what the Gods must have felt like When they created the earth Giving birth to pleasure Together Mutually Interconnected in a sea of Intimacy So lift me up As we fall to the ground Becoming found Rubbing dirt on our faces Like the animals we are I’ll become soft As you become hard And we will see each other Embodied Surpassing all limitations As we step into Righteous Sexual Liberation
What It
Can Be Seren
Dedola
Short haircuts no longer do it for me, because sisters need scissors to stay light on their feet. And short fingernails no longer do it for me, because cats without claws climb trees like logs: they don't, they are already cut off. I don't take offense to being called an animal, but if you put me in a cage, man I will take a hammer to the fence, and build a bridge out of your pretense. I am not an escape route, not love lost's substitute. Life and death are decided inside of me, and I will not be denied the right of me. I am not made of who has lied to me, or the dreams that have lived, died, and been buried alive in me. I am not made of the tears that have been cried for me, and I could not, even if I tried to be, your idea of me Although, sometimes it's all I see. I want to be all of me. What I never wanted to be was ''me, too.'' It's incomplete, but it's true. But, '''me, too'' doesn't tell me who I am Gives too much credit to the violence, puts all my worth in my pants, and takes me out of my hands. I never wanted to be ''me, too,'' because I wanted to be someone who decided to be who I became, not rose up and overcame, like I'm only as good as my pain. Just me, that's it for me, not ''me, too,'' and such a pity, not ''me, too,'' and still so pretty, like ''me, too'' just fits me. But, things happen, and that's when, we take out our maps and decide on our action, our destiny in our laps, then, and it's not a lapse in our reactions to be half of the bad thing when what lasts is the laughs we bring and the songs we sing. Because, it's true, the ''me, too'' isn't just for the ''me, too's'' it's for the ''it was you,'' and ''yes, I knew, I still love you.'' And, if you said, I want to get to know the real you, I'd say Yeah, I get it, I feel you. Me, too.
ME TOO BY
BUCK LEE
Stayby Samantha
The smell of your hunger Change of your mind Green dreams Open to a waxing moon Sweat sorrow Cry fears Long slanted laughs Rumors lurk Copies of nerves, waiting A pleasure spill Pain circulating like newspapers Like your name Curve of binding energy Beyond boundary Every blank is Misplaced screams Threads unraveled into particles, dust Matters breathed in longing Ready to be more than memories ‌ Glitter Silver light of anticipation
Smoothed my tongue over the words I want to say Quiet nights where the moon stares with a crooked smile Air still and potent Black days Where I cry to the pounding of your silence Birds in shadows I enjoy your nudity your cold, raw, lack of personality Tension spread through my body Quivering impulse Guttural reactions A series of aches and stretches Tell the story of your own neglect Your own cruelty Your own crooked ability to hurt Stitched together with destruction Over drawn You treat people like dollar bills, disposable and not enough to get anywhere The moon is all her fault Killing off dreams Tease, please, beg me to stay
Albala
Too busy calculating lost time
.ON AND ON. it comes from the movement of "I could go on and on" I said
CLASHING As I went on and on The pattern of the universe Off topic and into a time signature Garish and vintage looking Of rythmic spitting When you make a bag out of it Floral patterns And you set it down on your desk, like talking in circles Covered in papers, covered in math, But talking in shapes and colors Covered in dust Wondering who fed me the lines Complete in all thier insanity That burst out of my head Begging for a look-see And up to the sky INTO THEMSELVES My excited tones touching the stars The self: simply, a word Like the tightened face of a drum For a concept so complicated Clapping against the eternal tapestry So large, you can't even see it Echo echo echo So small, that its non existent They say the vibration of one moment So tender it melts in your mouth goes on and on forever Selfishly pleasuring your buds AND I COULD Opening like flowers Just like the light from a star Each particle of happiness Meeting your retna MEASURED bouncing around Into neat little rows Inside your head That get trapped inside your body My existence is transmuted You are what you eat To the folding lines that create the Everyone who eats should know Image signature of this How to cook verbal light message: a word But each pea sized concept Il have a word with you, Dear That we deem self Just one: GOD Comes from a canned reality Roughly translated to the word That we thrust open destroying its FOREVER INTEGRITY So rough its burrs stick out Every notion that passes through us and scrape against Wil be transmuted Every idea we've ever had INTO SHIT When we learn, we hear its scraping We all know... shit breaks down into dust Every iota of information another and that dust breaks down into Creak in this invisible floor of ATOMIC PARTICLES Meaning: a word. Simply a word. that eventually break down into God is a feeling, that gives our life NOTHING MEANING Nothing which could only Be one huge... something But I could go on and on, and I wil We all wil And when we get there We wil know One word: KNOWING
*SAULTEA*
GOD IS DEAD suicide calls for us all i guess Just heat and ineffable ecstasy… Sway of brazen hips and untethered hearts Growling stomachs filled with ardor, Their roar rewriting the beat blowing out of oversized speakers Small talk and long embraces No time for anything but this lost moment; Instances when the world allowed lovers to lean in close, offering each other breath and body without the threat of ends… But it all ends, It must. Fading, feelings scatter into the immenseness of forgettery. Holy has forgotten how to heal, misplaced its place in this modern depravity…. The bass brings the partition to their chattering knees, needing something to believe in; This beat, these bodies, those burning desires Something , more than what comes in a night and leaves by the morning’s fresh faced fear to be but a child without a God… Or, A God without children... Though These carefree kids be their own kind of God. A new type, of contemporary cutthroat deities whose deaths seem nothing but the birth of new stars…. Shimmering, dead things decorate the heavens The remnants of remembered lost moments! Shards of new Gods gotten before their time. Nietzsche knows nothing of the burn of this modern man of God! Priests of the after party, Saints of the kick back, Disciples of drug abuse and loose kisses God is dead! The wake continues...
GWENDALYNN ROEBKE
WITCH HUNT NATHAN LOUGH
The first time I danced with you I remember that we both started crying You told me that nothing had ever Felt so natural Our full embrace took over my body And as we tripped over each others feet We still refused to let go. Perhaps that was our problem So entangled in the natural Flow of our energies That even when we tripped Into unhealthy behaviors We did not know how to let go. The dance of codependency Was in full swing one year Into our relationship Both of us acting as Anchor and God and punching bag For the other Not realizing it at the time Because steel and Gods don’t bruise. What started off as a slow dance Was now a rapid fire hurricane of limbs Us now only attached by chain and collar Me ready to listen to any command In hopes it would keep you close to me So when you told me to jump over the moon I listened. I spent the next year and a half Climbing to the top of trees and balconies Trying to reach the unattainable But no matter how hard I tried Trying was going to be good enough. So you cut my collar and Kicked me in the gutter Told me to stay there Told me not to bother anyone Told me if I loved you I would’ve made it over that moon. As I watched you dance with another I sat on the corner With a “FREE” sign As in, please take this I don’t want it anymore Too much work to maintain But easy to use. And when no one took me You burned me at the stake Spit in my ashes and left.
I AM white male
privilege
I'm fat, dumb, and not so happy. I'm blind too. I'm blind to compassion I'm blind to fairness, understanding and even to humanity. I play a twisted victim role while victimizing others. And I'm angry. I don't like; those that are different, those who's genitalia doesn't look like mine, whose pigmentation does not mirror mine. I don't like those who believe the creation of the universe was implemented by someone whose story I, is not and mine, the same that will perish from this planet, I was weaned on. as will you. I detest those who love There we will find with a convention that does not fit our equality, the checkbox of my ancestors. our commonality, I embody irony. our divinity. I embody hypocrisy. But like a child I speak loudly needing correcting yet when behaving badly, listen with a deaf ear. do not wait I control the monetary flow and to scold me, squeeze you in the areas of your freedom, to hold me accountable, except the ones that are truly yours; to show me your perspective, my own humanity, your intelligence, and yours. your heart, Save me from myself and your numbers. so we can all reap the benefits of cooperation and collaboration; like health, a healthy place to live, a healthy place to love. So as you see my myopic ways, please instruct me of the path I've long forgotten. We'll all benefit from your compassionate, corrective steering of my misguided thinking.
BRUCE
That, and a large dose of grace.
STERLING
TED L GARRISON I don’t know now if I’ll ever hear myself through the roar of diagonal traffic, confused as it is in the beginning—whereupon, as they say in philosophical experiment, to the moment before the big bang, when God then In The Beginning... I mean we don’t how you were there when it comes to duality, but tea becomes us in the thought of a poem before we actually drank it to writing... I mean you always have to imagine a reader [the other outside the membrane] when telling a story for meaning, though there’s an anguish in poetry found in the metal grating and the sick green bic lighter that only talk in Chinese melancholy. This comes with a sack and a slim chance of getting home early, though I’m not saying there’s anything but hope here. When hearing that voice under the dome of a skull giving orders to write about when...like a race or even a competition— get to the most immediate thing... not there but here with the pipe that can mean many things at once when Eve came through the bush and first talked to a-me... my mad sad history grackle home.
I’LL BREAK INTO SPACE Broadening the horizons no time for scrapes Widening the guidance as this world shapes
I'll definitely break into space Looking for diamonds no time for stakes Working for uprising as this world gapes
I'll definitely break into space Fighting with Lions no time for apes Grinding in silence as this world hates
I'll definitely break into space Becoming like titans no time for escapes Affecting like seasons as this world capes
I just realized I'm into space.
BY Swapnil Bansal EDITED BY Architta Tayal
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
Musa Starseed and M Rose Strugatz Parrots recite Shakespeare into the night Relax into the fire, don’t let the fire relax into you Insight awaits those with sturdy umbrellas Decide who you want to be, and realize you already are! Existentialist lions wear their pride like designer suits. Welcome anger for it is the fuel for the spaceship, just hopefully you know your destination Rape Mars like you’ve raped Earth, you sinful CEOs and pervy politicians! Atrocities show you your own reflection The avalanche mudslide landslide slipsliding into Nuclear goop-Hell is in the word Health, or I mean HEAL. Greatness Lives Under The Thunder thighs and lightening lips Over the rainbow, through the milky, past the asteroid belt, Next stop Nirvana! Youth want to see the truth. Slutty little two-toed critters Live on the edge of the wild side Or else!! The big bad baboon’s gonna getchya! Healing baboons with reiki makes me tax-exempt. Every hater got your picture next to their heart ANd I’ve got a picture of Allen Ginsberg naked on my altar Violent vegans plan to assassinate President Dump Yogurt is a dish best served cold on your enemy’s nipples. Lonely men masturbate because they have lost all hope Ugly prostitutes pull up their stockings on the anonymous street corners of Mars Sweet ladies have vicious teeth hidden underneath their skirts Trust your gut and you will always be led to your asshole. God created greed so we could be Redeemed. Christ died for your sugar addiction Executioners own Entenmann’s. You are what you Eat DO NOT EAT SHIT
Golden Gate we painted rainbows on the sidewalks of the cotton candy Castro we built a bridge, and then another so we can always come back home we are giants, and the whole world knows we won when daylight fades to starlight we are the last to see the sun red rust on our fingertips gold dust afternoon flying streetlight to streetlight all tires turned to you and every cable car line a steely silken bow on the city that you gave me crimson San Francisco we are giants, we fill stadiums with sound the wind our speeding heartbeat as we lift right off the ground city of dead poets’ living art let’s raise our pumpkin coffee and pretend that Tony Bennett finally found his heart and Harvey’s running for office again darling, I can hear you still laughing from the moonlit stage let’s build our lights into the hills and stand eternal 'cross the bay I love you in the morning chill twinkling in the misty rain I love you now and always will you are my glowing golden gate
By Zoe Plait
Alice fell into wonderland
like the way that starlight falls into a black hole
I
am a black hole
I am an all consuming hunger plummeting stomachs in to a voiceless void beyond
Drift
has nothing to do with space because in space
there's no friction to hold you back When you are free
there is no friction holding you back No arms sweeping up the broken and forgotten pieces that comprise the puzzle of your life When you are free
there is no compromise
as to which promise you are breaking Chains, cannot hold a breath Breath, is not a violent restriction Violence, is the only chain I know
a s i d e f r o m Love
and neither exist in a vacuum
Alice would tell you: my heart is a vacuum,
inhaling pieces of this puzzle like starlight (sterilized) from this once occupied hospital bed
so I can be born again and free up some space
for myself.
MADISON COIA
//Your
Room//
We kept on listening to “Sleep on the Floor” and soon we were in your tiny studio apartment. I’m not sure what got us there if it was a combination of your freckles and my anxiety or the city heat and our pride. You say that I keep falling in love with everything and everyone around me and it’s true. When all is said and done, I want my criminal handprints on everyone’s hearts. But on your’s, if they could just stay… please stay.
Mara Hasenstaub
type of word no more fettered hallway depths of breath the parlor is empty and dark whispers turned to twilight tye dye charmed dancing in backyards to glass animals glitter faced refreshed by the soft breeze those blues funk ambient weird waves weigh like thick honey in the air drenched in harmony and skin contact and warmth and heavy eyes that convey the weight of pleasures forgone twisting open the inward twirlings of the hope in the singing waging war on the air waves, Icarus shed feathers on the surface of the sun I keep in a glass display atmosphere is immersive like low lighting, quiet jazz, blue soaked dreamy ambience ballroom chandeliers above black velvet rip up your memories and make confetti blow out candles like a silhouette punch back against oppression and make your friendships into poetry. because when we're walking in an arcade, all I see is cinematography like that quiet and simple and pleasantly surprised "damn" that’s the type of word that haunts the halls of my mind, like a white mist phantom traversing the stairs somewhere inside me is the grey lodge where they make a damn good cup of coffee.
bring me fossils bone-deep osmosis just a pin prick to rival the speckle of your eyes no really. you hold the cosmos in your irises no really. I’m not being poetic you bring me fossils that won’t last as long as your smile burning sun spots into my skin I age like rocks for you hollow myself out to be a cave where the crystals grow you know the ones the deep glittering blue greens spiked with purple pinks. you know the ones they grow every time your laughter reverberates off the walls echolocate the vastness with which I behold you I just want to hold you bone-deep
yaelaed whyel
DANCING WITH DIVINTY I used to feel god in my legs. It was this surge of pure power that would rise to engulf my fingertips, my arms, my chest, my heart, my lungs, the bowed head of my soul. It turned my very being into divine fire that sought to escape through my screaming esophagus, but I held it within. Because if I let it out, it would take with it everything that was keeping me whole. I don’t pray anymore but that doesn’t mean that the fire has gone out. I realize now that it wasn’t god, but belief that set me ablaze. I used to spend nights watching the stars dance themselves into patterns that promised easy dreams and salvation. I would follow their steps but could never quite get it right. Something incomprehensible about their rhythm that told me that they held secrets that I would never know. I have never stopped dancing but I am done trying to follow their steps because the dreams have never been easy and right now, I am just not interested in salvation. No, I try create my own steps now and when I do I feel that fire rising, rising, rising, from my moving legs to my soaring soul. I may not believe in god above anymore but I do believe in the god that lives in between the notes of hymns without words. I believe in the god that quietly whispers through the trees and sings sweet songs with the rivers. I believe in the god that exists between kisses that explode like stars at the end of their lives. I believe in the god that exists between the words that convince a friend to stay alive. I believe in the god that resides inside us all, inside you and inside me. This is the god that teaches us how to dance and once I finally figure out my steps, I shall groove through life’s dense forest, open my screaming esophagus and sing a blazing hallelujah to the sky. I hope to see you there.
Thomas Rutherford
YOUTH LOST AND FOUND
We are the type of miracles who seem to burn out soon as we touch down beyond our heartbreak kiss the atmosphere. Say another prayer, make another wish, if anything we are a god given goddess, through the ribcage wings cupping pulse pitter patter halo. I feel feelings dark waters deep, similar to an octopus with all his focused ink blotter, BPD suction cup feelers. I grew up in treatment, not by choice but rather proxy and another successful wilderness kidnapping; rights out the window anything goes pre 18 adult hoodlum, dosed up high school dropout, suicide machine, Tyler Durden hostile takeover (Death Toll Zero). Lovely Sunhawk academy, sounds so prestigious and official, this year round prison house boarding school gave me all the tools I needed to ruin and reunite the ruinations lord destructor king lumination matrix. I can’t fake this, I am what Ive always been, similar to the junk sick dreams soon as the kid kicked his heroin hip, clean from the spit. Back then, I was just a scared kid, seeking purity through pixels and terminal bled dreamscapes, dragons and hunters monks and warriors, healers, magic marauders and leveling up to raid the kingdom. I was kidnapped for many reasons beyond being addicted to Everquest. I found Sarah and fell in too deep (as always and forever) I found girls who felt more than I could comprehend, their scar tissue kissed the insides of my lizard brain, burrowed in for a few years, only to come back out new found and unafraid of sharp objects, unaware of the consequence of a fiery blade versus a firing squad giving in to the grave; I loved them and continue to love them all the same. So many faces to trace and pull out from the bog, so many names on the tip of my tongue, no pictures allowed and yet somehow I still snapped enough just toward the end of days. They took Sarah away, too afraid to tell her how much I really loved her, too late fade. Cocooned within the prisoners safety of these padded rooms and locked doors. The war stories washed over me, I swam and drowned in their glory, I learned how to be a drug addict rehab was my greatest gateway drug. I found my voice I found the voices of great Beat writers, reading on the road in the bathroom, luckily the nightshift was too sleep deprived to stop me so long as I wasn’t cutting or using, they left me to my passions and sleepless nights plugging away at various novels I almost finished an entire hand written book titled “Distant”. My people on the inside were colorful, creative, corrupt: each with stories as dark and full of bright bitter betrayal as my own, we were one great drug clan, all of us waiting in line and playing chess or the guitar to pass the time, so much time on our hands, of course we fought one another and fell to pieces or fell in love or starved ourselves just to impress the opposite sex, separation was never enough to really separate us. Ashes to matches, crushes like crutches, trust to dust. We are the type of miracles who burn out far too quickly, meaning our beauty is measured in seconds, not minutes or hours or days or years, but seconds cause each breath was a miracle into itself and if I knew how many were left I would weep until the new year tears. Some nights I fear I am the sole survivor. Say another prayer, make another wish, if anything we are the goddesses given gods, through the ribcage wings cupping pulse pitter patter haloes. First treatment, similar to first true love lays the groundwork for all our very nature neutral destiny manifest nevermore. Youth Lost and Found
kbo
cuts
Sightseeing Internalize, in t urn all eyes t urn inward and f ind dark ness. What a clever disguise. Discuss the qualit y of the echo of your voice of f your increasingly empt y ribcage with other present tense versions of yourself. Internalize, in t urn all eyes make t ruth f rom lies like t ruth is currency. Discuss quietly the qualit y of your inf inite ex perience with your atoms as your drif t, wait for your echoes to bounce. What wisdom have you found in all that seeking? Internalize, in t urn all eyes go blind or go blindly into the light. How bright could it be? Allow for the possibilit y that you may never see yourself again. Turn inward and f ind the glands that retain your memories at the center of it all. You are not the center, you are the universe. Shut your eyes, human child, you won't need sight where you're headed.
CAITO FOSTER
I remember when I was a rock patient slow to change buried in mountain broken free by crackling ice and ice cold flow
I remember when I was a fool Wait! I am still a fool. Going and getting and doing (not doing!) saying I will while feeling I won't starting and stopping dreaming complaining injured and healing and scarred and hurting Learning forgetting thinking not thinking
IRA G LISS I remember being a tree my roots pinched and cracked rock and stone in my thirst for moisture branches and leaves reached out and up thirsting for light At peace with my life in the ground, my thick trunk my many branches rising above
Wait! I am still a fool. (at least, that much is clear.)
Contagion As if I were sinking into the deep blue, my body swished and dragged, my mind plagued with want and thoughts. Haunts. Thinking about death. Optical contusions. Moving back and forth, moving back and forth. Engine rumble roars, pick my ear, flick the wax. Paralyzed by the fear. The fear. The fear. The thoughts I don't want to have. Playing a part convincingly. Shamanism and psychotherapy. Your lungs could explode. My eyes cave in. Blindness. Dark, shadows of dust, tornado springs up. Stale broccoli in the fridge. Can of beans, green bell peppers. I feel uncomfortable with the way this is going. I'm very anti. Not a coincidence. Not a conscious. By the end of the night, I will have died and come back to life. Getting down to the bottom of this pathetic lie.
Rodeo I left my socks at the rodeo. I took them off to do the do-si-do. Everything started moving real slow, I forgot them in the afterglow. The clowns make up dripped down from his face, from tears, from sweat, from blood. He didn't want to be there, jumping in barrels, performing tricks. He spent all those years in clown school, and he's drowning in debt. What's a clown supposed to do? He is ashamed of his shoes. Always bumping into things, they squeak when he walks. He can't take them off. He is tired of carpooling, With 40 other clowns. He is tired of pies and spritzer. He wants to be cool like the fire spitters. The clown covers himself in dirt and bullshit, takes a deep breath and dies.
Alexander White
SPIT THAT SH*T HOWEVER YOU FEEL IT AND NEVER QUIT!
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