THE WALL

On one side, evil
on one side, good.
But I could not always tell
which side was which of the wall
On one side, Devil.
On one side, God.
Sometimes I couldn’t distinguish
and sometimes not even wish to.
On one side, David,
one side, Ahab;
in their misuse of royal might
didn’t they both behave alike?
On one side Ahab,
on one side David,
putting their passion over prayer
didn’t they take what wasn’t theirs?
On one side God,
on one side Devil.
That wall less wall than saddle
when both sides I did straddle.
On both sides, good.
On both sides, evil.
Since no differences at all
I just demolish the wall.


NIGHT SHIFT

Last night I studied the sky from my porch,
Suddenly an ignited cosmic torch
burned and slashed through Cancer.
Even though I know my constellations
I continue to have doubts and questions,
but I doubt stars have the answers,

You, modeler of phases of my moon,
did you watch that spectacle from your room?
Our sections of the sky don’t quite rhyme,
our eternities look like different
patterns of buckshot in a canvas tent.
Whose Heaven’s bigger, yours or mine?


BARABBAS AND JESUS

Barabbas and Jesus
out walking in the sands
and along comes Pilate
wishing to wash his hands.

“Hey, Boss, why you so cross?”
the good Barabbas said.
And Pilate said “Herod!
John Baptist gave him head!”

“That’s mean!” said Magdalene
“Intruding on my job!”
Pilate: “Please understand”
(rehearsing for the mob)

“Someone must take the brunt,
it’s me or one of you.”
Barabbas thought and said
“Will nailing two thieves do?”

And Pilate said “My guy!
Indeed, that may suffice.”
But then they heard Peter’s
cock. It crowed only twice.

And Jesus wept. “The jig
is up. I’ll see you soon.
But first I’ll meet Judas
at the Last Chance Saloon.”

 
HIGH COUP

O moon, so distant….
I’m not smokin’ in Tokyo,
my poem will not fire.

“Revolution bursts
sunlight on stained stainless steel:
your yolkcolored hair.”

Night’s vaunted Shakespeare:
just flaccid Little Willie,
cold to geisha stars.

“Nestraw hair – egg’s eye
blue – honeyed limbs; trunkhugging
bearcubMe:     climbing.”

Sake enflames verse
(you say), arouses rhythm,
kindles rhymes sublime –

mine (old drunken whore) 
fires up unsuccessfully,
sucks relentlessly,

till we fall asleep.
And Basho a monk remains,
red raw poem limp, still.


LOVES I BEAR TO YOU

Addressing my allgirls class in Seoul 
(a sea of knees and eyes) – 
just whom do I cast my verbal net unto?


Miss J in her vast lostness of late adolescence


The mirthlessness of Miss O’s mercenary matrimonialism


The practiced spontaneity of Miss U’s blushes


Miss E’s patient burden of passionate virtue


The ancient futures of grown middleschool dreams



And then,
in midOthello,
the lights go




out




and in the sudden night
all that I can make out
are the pale fluorescent coral
of fingertips,



lips….

From Slim to Slimmer

When she

Walked out

On him

He knew

That his chances

Of becoming

A father

Had gone

From slim

To slimmer.

Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Rescue Dog,” his fifth book, was published in May.

Colleagues and Buddies                                                                  

Jim and I certainly weren’t colleagues. He finished a pharmacy degree, and I was an art school dropout – and couldn’t afford Kenyon. I drove a twenty-year-old Ford. He had a flashy new sportscar. He counted pills. I stocked shelves. He said, “That’s a pretty big word you’ve got there” when I used “pharmaceutical” in a sentence. Soon after he lost his ride, his job, and his life to cocaine, I signed up for classes and quit the drugstore. Despite his condescension, I was always willing to be Jim’s buddy.

Chuck turned my colleagues against me less than a year after his arrival. Got me fired. All to move up in seniority and likely simply for-the-hell-of-it. I thought we were going to be buddies. I was counting on it. After I was gone, he was reprimanded for sexual harassment – for calling my replacement at all hours just after her first interview. He got tenure. She signed an NDA. I was the lucky one.

Andy wore aluminum painted shoes and rumpled thrift store jackets and hung vintage Soviet era posters in his office when he taught freshman English composition part-time. We invited him and his wife over for dinner – my chicken tortellini soup. (During the meal he made us aware he was a former sous-chef.) And he drove me to the ER once. Andy and I might have been great colleagues but never buddies. Sometime after he became dean, he began wearing crisp suits, unimaginative striped ties and expensive, polished loafers. That’s when he learned to equivocate, evade, and obfuscate. He exhibited a talent for exquisite prevarications. Now no longer dean, he’s back to teaching freshman English composition. Andy didn’t have buddies.

Jolene and I shared our passion for Thomas Hardy, but after listening to a vicious castigation of her husband over the phone in her office (I offered to come back later), I knew we wouldn’t be buddies. But Kate and I were meant to be buddies. We traded info on the best therapists and latest OCD meds. She tended my son when my daughter was born. But she proved to be an incompetent and sanctimonious administrator – the sanctimony a camouflage for the incompetence. Impossible to ignore. Out of spite over a slight, she destroyed my program in one swift stroke. Stress caused her to retire early.

John was a heck-of-a-nice-guy. We ate many breakfasts together before class, eggs over-easy for me, oatmeal and fruit for him. As our sons were the same age, we compared parenting styles and over-tipped Ellen, our waitress, because we talked too long. I gave him a tour of the art museum, showed him my father’s grave and the stained-glass windows at St. Vincent de Paul. When my budget came up in committee, he merely sat there saying nothing and doing nothing while our vindictive peers slashed away. John was a lousy colleague. But I forgave him. His son was sent to prison for five to ten for theft and drugs, over-dosed when released, and chose to die rather than see his legs amputated. John and I couldn’t remain buddies.

Todd and I never needed to think about how or why we were buddies. Todd was a good husband, good father, good colleague, an honorable man. Little kids wanted to sit on his lap. Our families gathered for New Year’s Eve and watched parades and fireworks together. He put a six pack on my doorstep after I pulled down the poison ivy in his trees while they were at church. (He was highly allergic.) He saved a very pregnant student during class with quick-thinking CPR. His only flaw was dying in the shower of a heart attack at forty-three. No notice whatsoever. It was difficult to forgive Todd for that, but I could not help but love him.

David Sapp, writer, artist, and professor, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.

***
despair syndromes
∞
myopia letters
~
silence of speech
¶
madness of meaning
¥
betrayal of consciousness

and everywhere cripples and soldiers 
***
Plastic flowers will cover the graves
The graves will grow on the lawn instead of flowers
Flowers will grow higher than graves

Everything around blooms and smells of death inspired by life
Loneliness is the lot of a newborn or a deceased
So the butterflies in my stomach announce the plan to intercept

(Editor's note: adult content below) 

 
Oh my gods he wants his asshole torn by big men
Oh yeah, baby, he wants to get talked about
Luckily he won't be picking up a gun
He'll earn his money with his ass, not his blood
He'll enjoy fucking, not dismembering
As silly as it sounds, he loves everybody
All people are beautiful, really
He especially loves those who are richer and more generous
Of course he likes to confront his complexes
Of course his stupid mother didn't approve (and then died)
The man who has been renting all his life is forced to pay
Paying for air in the form of strangulation during sex
Paying for everything else according to the receipt
Hungry children catch up with pigeons and take the birds' bread
I want everybody to learn how to fuck for bread
I want everybody to learn how to fuck for money
I want there to be no money 
I want to steal air without a monthly fee 
But in the meantime, after the rain, the cemetery grows
Hungry men take their fat dicks out of their pants
Death and sex is a perpetual motion machine
Money is a perpetual concentration camp

***
I want you but no one hears how the night ends with a shot in the iron of the head. Because of the nonsense, because of the lack of you -> because of the lack of yourself. How to fill yourself after the explosion of a hydroelectric power station? Water? By blood? With fur? Shit? Every day I remember how sweetly you hissed your eyes, brewed tea, sang like a perch in the net, only God knows a song.
Your penis was so beautiful that the morning ended before it started. The rain soaked the cemeteries and the ashes scattered.

I always wanted to feel your body: incomprehensible, inapplicable. The body of electricity. Body of flowers. Fire body. Your appearance always gave me the creeps: you were so beautiful that the mud on your boots did not frighten me - I was not afraid when you touched my pants with your shoes in a cafe. We ate the rain. We drank views. I want to get drunk. I want to quench my thirst. I want at least your lips to drool or cum. I want you to charge me with electricity.

Cemetery with a sea of flowers. One person less. One less sexy ass - and it's unfair. How to fill yourself after this explosion?

My head swells and explodes like a coconut from stress. I can't fill myself with sperm or thought or lust or erection. Little beetles crawl оf minutes on the wall of my room. The stomach of the house is trying to erase me into the powder of moments.

How to fill yourself after this explosion? Flower pots in which there is nothing else to plant. And small carcasses of birds on the windowsill.
Cast iron death plays the flute. There are as many explosions as there are stars. There is only one God in heaven - but this is not certain. I so want to fill myself with love that I am ready to descend into hell - but alas, there is no greater hell than now.

Sphere of the Present

Long ago he sought

only fulfillment

of his wrath and

lust. Entitled. The

dog from El Norte shed

the insignificant. A

Mexican girl

died. The meager

love she thought

true, endless

for her and

their baby, only

careening toward

the end unaware.

Her voice pierces

time seeking

justice. It reaches

into the present

“Ayudame!” I hear. I

knock on doors.

“Listen! Stop the

White dog!” Barred.

Locked forever in

an insistence to let

sleeping dogs lie

especially dogs

from El Norte.

Hidden horrors decades

old no longer

matter. Only now.

The Sphere of the Present.

All of us tangled

together. A Rat King.

Locked in a futile

struggle to survive. All

there ever was

or would be until

the end. Her

voice fades. Never

ends. ayudame

ayudame ayudame

ayudame ayudame

ayudame …..

Blonde Boy

Meet the smiling blonde boy. Never makes a fuss. [Probably.] “Hi, hun. Love ya.” A subdural, cerebellar arachnoid cyst above the right ear. Developed during gestation. Useless bits of convoluted gray matter lie about. Shaken baby. [Don’t know for sure.] A funnel-shaped cell all the way down. Down to the reptilian brain. His accomplice, Hunger, incarcerated there. Let out at night…..to feed. “Yippee!” Grinning. Mayhem. Gnawing bloody bones. Dawn. Heads for home. Door slams shut. Moans, snarls, guttural growls. Awaits dusk. Smiling blonde boy. “Good morning, hun. Love ya.”  [Maybe.]

Wounds

The wounds of our

protagonist are deeper,

more profound than

I had thought. Inflicted

in infancy. An unloved

newborn denied

even a crumb

of care and

tenderness.

He was starving. Desperate.

His faux persona might be

loved. It is all

he has. Without it

he might die adrift

in outer darkness.

Alone. No one

cares.

He has no real

self to return to if

this one fails as

it certainly will.

The artificial

can never be

sustained.

He is a parent now. The

cracks are beginning

to appear. I had predicted

he would fall like an

imploding building

destroying only

himself. But that is not

the case.

In existential crisis. He

doubles down.

Screaming. Insisting the

fake is real. He is

becoming cruel.

He is terrifying

innocent children who

need the love

he denies

them.

And when confronted,

commanded to stop

the tirade,

told he is a

monster, he lies down

to nap curled up

like a small

child.