“When I say artist I mean the man who is building things. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush, some with a shovel, some choose a pen.”
Jackson Pollock

featured poems

RENTED ROOMS

I go home and I’m all alone
No one to greet me or tell me that they love me
My entire adult life has been like this
I spent all that time flitting from one room to another
And evidently they are all the same
Rented rooms

Acrid surfaces that haven’t been cleaned
Dirty carpets that are plain obscene
A lousy bed that I can’t get out of
An overloaded ashtray that says I haven’t got long
No space to feel at home
In rented rooms

Rented rooms are all the same
Whether you’re in New York, Frisco or even London town
They all seem designed for that lonely insecure man
Who has been driven slowly insane by the idea that he will never escape
A life in rented rooms

- Bradford Middleton

(1 poem added 02.02.12)

editor's note: I think my body is mine, owned outright; but one day the landlord will evict. Might as well let the ashtrays overflow. (Let's welcome Bradford to our crazy confab of Contributing Poets! See his other poems on his new page.) - mh

A PAD OF HIS OWN

Beneath the old pier, a hand scrapes
Wet sand into sketches, carving artistry from
Within him, pulling the crowd, who watch
Over the rail and throw into his bucket
Their coined applause. A metallic clap for this
Still life, culled from a husk of the sea.

A hulk of a man, never showing his face,
Bent over his work, he oscillates
From boot to boot. From hip to head,
A woolly thick knitted spine suddenly collects
Its wages and then with meticulous timing,
Vanishes, just before the ocean spawns;
A shifting glaze, through which
The artist’s visuals can still be observed.

His London Skyline becomes
The Underwater City, its muffled churches
Stifled by a pulsating angelus of waves.
The etched mane of horses and the wet fur
Of dogs, cats: these drown quietly
Under bubbling ripples.

And then surging from the deep, thick
Opaque slices, slabs obliterating
Each deliberate line. Mouths and deeply gouged
Eyes shut forever by the shapeless being
Lunging at the beach. Ordinarily incredible,
Hard to imagine, this liquid body being dragged
By its tail, thrown back in a heap.
Yet this is the way of it.

When the quiet industry of a beaten surf
Rolls out its shores of yesterday, as if...
As if there had never been, mistakes, fools
And foolish dreams, you could
Almost believe that this, then, is life:
A smooth unending slate – wiped clean.

- Derrick Gaskin

(2 poems added 02.01.12)

editor's note: Each day we start tabula rasa. The rising of the sun lights an empty page; yesterday's scrawl wiped clean by the waves. (See another one from Derrick on his page - it's a jungle out there.) - mh

Absent

The story of your life begins right now.
The components of this tale are missing.
Its characters got lost in the confusion of my style.

I await the perfect morning with a picture perfect sky
to start writing the story of my life.
I'm right here right now waiting for the temperature to go down.
Holding on to my dreams with nothing but insecure hopes.
Dried up tears from the day before remind me that love fades away
just like the beauty you hold in your youth.

Sarcastically I ask for your forgiveness and you accept my apology.
I disguise my hatred with impure pity.
I hold you close to my heart but very far from my soul.
I salute your lies and embrace the confidence you possess.

- Michelle Camacho

(added 01.31.12)

editor's note: Your life and this tale are at odds; yours started, this other arrested. It's a survival manual for dreamers in a totalitarian state; friends close, enemies closer. - mh

Birds

They all came from everywhere
A-flying high up through the air
They landed on my little tree
And whistled to the world we’re free
Never could I express with words
The sight I saw, a thousand birds
They flew into the parking lot
All landing there in a small plot
Then back into the sky again
A mighty cloud of flying wrens
Then around the yard they all took flight
And vanished mysteriously from sight

- Eileen McNeal

(added 01.30.12)

editor's note: The amorphous moving shapes they make are some kind of cosmic code; god talking to himself and laughing. - mh

Paradise Tasted

True partners-in-crime
Let’s take the honey and run!
Making Love rhyme all the time…

Coupled together with a tantric, hypnotic blaze
Tested in this fire, we certainly have been
So deserving of our wonderfully chaotic daze…

Never having a moment wasted
While sharing our wasted moments
A kiss from you is paradise tasted.

- Michael R. King

(1 poem added 01.29.12)

editor's note: Now, that's lip-smackin', soul-whackin' goodness. Think I'll take another bite. - mh

THE VIEW FROM ABOVE

The view from above the cityscape is vast. It moves
and feeds my spirit. Yet my hazel eyes look south
and touch the elongated Void, an unbearable emptiness
mixed with metallic dust and human debris, rushing

toward my private mansion like never-ending waves of
desert dunes; and soon my house and I will be buried

alive.

So I look north, away from Yesterday’s wasteland and
the eerie, ineffable images imprinted in my psyche;

I look away. Yet still, I see swirling particles, once
human, sailing through the toxic air, plummeting to

earth. I can’t bear to see such evil.

I saunter off on the High Line, a defunct railroad
structure resurrected as a celestial park above the

streets of Manhattan.

My journey begins after sunrise on a sultry August
morning. I stroll across a walkway surrounded by

wildflowers.

From time to time, I stop and reflect. The freight
trains used to run here decades ago. Now, a

glorious landscape of greenery replaces the
antediluvian rail line.
Lost in reverie, I walk for hours and swallow

2

the divine dreamscape. Half-a-day seems

like a lambent flame brushing across my face
before vanishing.

I drink effervescence. Time no longer exists.
And yet, after meandering through the

labyrinth of my mind and across walkways
and promenades, I turn around and head

south.

I stop at the Chelsea Market Passage and sit
at a table. It’s almost sunset.

My eyes drift toward the Hudson River.
I wait.

I anticipate a glorious sunset. Yet
surreptitiously, I gaze at the

Manhattan skyline.

I see what isn’t there. The emptiness
eats my spirit.

The view is vast and devastating.
Each time I look back,

I die again.

- Mel Waldman

(1 poem added 01.28.12)

editor's note: The view is amazing from up there, but the air is thin. It's hard to know if what we discern is true vision or oxygen deprivation. - mh

BROKEN

I am lost and on my own
Disconnected I stand alone
A fragment of what was before
Severed and joined as one no more
The missing piece has been and gone
Detached from where it should belong
Separated, dichotomized
From what it previously occupied
I'm now a part of something new
And I can't be fixed with crazy glue.
The sharp jagged edges mean a lot
hurts deeper than a paper-cut
Desolate I roam the land
Like broken glass tossed on the sand.
Segregated, there I lie
Like pointy splinters cast aside.
Disengaged so many years,
Holding on to shattered tears.
Torn apart, I've learned to blend in
To what are now my surroundings.
Divided, I long for the days of old.
And to what made this broken man,
Whole.

- Arthur L. Seymour

(added 01.27.12)

editor's note: Encouraging couplets! "Really?" you say. When you're standing in the middle of such a pile of pieces, there's nothing to do but pick'em up! Encouraging! - mh