amphibi.us

she called up on the telephone
upset, halfway between rage
and torment

a prickly roost
I know well

she asked me to come out
I can’t, I said. It’s the Poem,
and I can’t get it. It won’t
come to me.

I’m empty,
empty as a rusted can of gas
I can’t light a fire
I can’t even crack a match
I’m just smoke and wind
falling over the trees

I’m young and pretty
some say beautiful.
I have a wonderful ass
a marvellous ass
eyes of azure
long blonde hair
almost razor straight
and wet lips that are
always parted,
poised to thrill.
you are an old man
come out and fuck me
I’ll give you your Poem

I can’t.
I have to get drunk
and work the Poem
it’s all I have left
to offer

I hung up
the telephone

I poured the Drink
3 oz. of Beefeater
a splash of bone-dry vermouth
half a shaker of cracked ice
and shake, shake, shake
until I cannot hold on
any longer

I started to type
with frosted fingers

I walked enviously past the cemetery again
today
watched the sun peel away the rain
and the supple grasses
bend and arc
and swoon on the solar winds
like a beautiful young woman
in the throes of
ecstasy…

© Jerry Bazinet, 2010

[others]

Hands that look sunburned
at first blush
count the silent ticks of a cognitive clock
grasping and releasing in stilted syncopation:
           one-two-three-five (must avoid the four)
           Did I remember to lock the front door?  Out
of bed—again—freezing feet tumble
                                down
               into slippers
awaiting the circular inevitability.  Again, again. 

             Pad, pad, pad:
light shuffling accompanies the one-two-three-five
pounding in the head; that mind ricocheted with worry—
worry about the front door, the evil intentions of four,
insidious germs and subsequent scrubbing-scrubbing-scrubbing
in bleach and Comet.  Pad,

              pad, pad to the front door.
It’s one hundred and thirty four steps, so take a baby-shuffle:
still avoiding the four.
Cold, unyielding brass knob.  Locked.

Deadbolt? Check.  Creeping black.
Chain lock?  Check.  Crawling germs.  Oh, god.

               Pad, pad, pad to the kitchen.
Clorox-fume greetings in the sparkling sink
from twenty-three minutes before.  Never twenty-four.
Clorox on the cracked fingers, blistering
out that imperceptible blackness I know it’s there
blackness choking, bleeding in the bleach.
Scrub brushes, pumice, and fingernail files
wear down the nubs where the blackness may hide.
“Shh” the steaming water soothes
as it stings, scalds.  “Shh.”  Burn it all out;
conclusion so comforting.  So predictably round.

This is the last time I can do this tonight.  Pad, pad, pad
                back to the bedroom.  Downey quilt beckons in lover tones,
                pleading pillows nudge against that head, that infernal head
                still panicking amongst the softness:
Did I remember to lock the front door?

© Kim Keith, 2010

over 30 working feel like I am outside time and
feel like this IS history and
I am meddling in lives and
am a water stained photo album
no one wrote
the
names
in.

she mistakes dead nerves for paranoia
and asked me how I feel but
you can’t SAY.
NEVER SAY
really
how
you
feel.

don’t know if I’m drinking to feel some melancholy buzz some love and soft enthusiasm
for nature in the broadest sense
or to kill feelings of crippling doubt
and the
mad emptiness
of
RIGHT
NOW.

leave her stained in the bed
go to the spare room I write in
get out a black hunting knife
run my fingers over
the dried fruit juices
on
the
blade.

80s MOR coming out the kitchen radio only moves me to miss themed video games* not the school discos
I
never
went
to.

too young I went to one one town over and alone and frightened I left and waited in silence on my uncles leather sofa
till
I
was
fetched away.

no one knew why and over 30 now I reminisce alone
mad enough to think
I’m drinking the tears of a
mermaid hooker
100
years
old
today.

© Ford Dagenham, 2010

I release the angry door, which jars into its frame with an impressive gale force.
We are both in the structure, in from the windstorm.

I was only trying out consideration, holding the door for a stranger behind,
that the wind might not take her teeth out with let-loose metal door.
There are no thanks, she is angry at my consideration.
I see the books she carries and it all slides into place.

Were she to speak to me, she might rather spit.

There will be no holding open of doors we might share, for a time.
She would rather us be philosophies than strangers, schools of thought
instead of humans that share oxygen and floors and structures and doors,

She might hope I become culpable for a manner of things
far outside myself.

© Ray Succre, 2010

Child safety
twist caps.
Locked away.
are those pretty sulfur coated nightmares.

I do not know if I want to feel
like Alice, constantly growing big and small.

Some will make me dull.
Some will bring me back down,
turning me into a slave.

Grey blobs?
They all swallow,
they all pop.
Even junkies need,
but resent their junk.

Water,
cool
refreshing.

Silent protests from my throat.

Gulp.
Gulp it down.

Silent reassurances and
mental countdowns.
Thirty maybe
fifteen minutes until
equilibrium.

Aliments
washed away in a swirl of stomach acid,
and what they tell me will help.

Take one,
five or
one hundred.
Medicate.
Saturate.

Looking into a mirror
I want to see me,
not a pill.

White coats,
white bottles and
black thoughts.

Recap bottle and twist.
Locked away.

Locked into
sucked into,
parasitic pills.

© Kyle Brett, 2010