Chris Butler is an illiterate poet scribbling gibberish from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. He has published 10 collections of poetry, including his most recent book “Beatitudes”. He is also the co-editor for The Beatnik Cowboy.
Family Time! Is a series that is aimed at educating, entertaining and inspiring children between the ages of two and seven years of age. It is intended to engage parents, teachers and children with stories that bring a healthy learning relationship among them.
Series Title: Family Time!
Subtitles
Grandma’s Place
Two-year-old Alice is looking forward to visiting granny for the first time in months. Her one-year-old brother, John, is excited. This comes after Peter and his wife, Jane, decide to take them out to her place, having been busy for a while.
I love my dad
Three-year-old Alice and Sandra, her cousin and age mate, are in the living room of Peter and Jane’s apartment, discussing about their dads. Two-year-old John is playing “Take me home” video game. He hears their conversation as Jane is busy in the kitchen preparing lunch and Peter is present at work.
Dad, Why Is My Name Alice?
Dad, Why Is my Name John?
Peter stops four-year-old Alice and three-year-old John yelling at each other over candies bought for them. Suddenly, Alice asks “Dad, why am I named Alice?” Seconds later, John asks “Dad, why am I named John”? Peter knows he has to give an answer!
Dad, mom, I want to ask a question…
Alice, five years old, and her brother, John, four years old, are in the house with their parents. Alice looks worried. John is watching his favorite cartoon network: so is Peter. Jane notices Alice’s mood. Later, Peter looks at his daughter and notices something wrong with her. Upon finding out what is wrong with her daughter, they are faced with the question “Dad, mom, I want to ask a question?” Peter and Jane know she needs an answer.
Timeless World
On an occasion, Jane warns six-year-old Alice not to read the book, ” Timeless World”, because she thinks it’s not good for her. However, Alice proves stubborn as she hides the book away from her mom to read it. It is in the process of reading the book that Alice later learns a lesson…
Regrets over recent long agos, in the winds and in the sun, regrets over the lost and missed. Appreciation of some pasts, nostalgia for the futures.
Wharf odors of salt and gutted fish. Paint and bait, oil and rust. Clouds scudding overhead, heat miraging up.
Channels’ changing, the bedlam of soundtrack evolutions.
Limbs and torso shake and stretch, my body hinges into starting block, toes knuckle against chocks, fingers pyramid on starting line to lift the earth on edge, ears alert themselves and eyes ahead; a gunshot accordions our tsunami of feet forward, bellow elbows explode intense rhythms in lungs and heart like heated Bismarck batteries firing from iron ribs. And. then. finish line. Momentum ends, and the broader world returns to regular order and the runners pant and slow.
Baby’s first words and steps, crushes explored and wrecked, defiance and surrender on every side, alliances of privilege and power shift from This to Tomorrow.
Geographies of hills and hollows / skin on skin, lips on lips and nipples, tongue on organ / the old cock and pussy polka to the strain of gasps and moans.
The Grand Canyon oranging dawn from rim to bottom. Frozen Niagara’s cinder mist.
INHERENT
Your universe is no anarchist,
absolute liberty is a myth.
So cherish the space among those chains.
Infinity also has limits.
So treasure your time in the gibbet,
embrace your inch before that flame.
Though existence may be flexible,
shackles, ropes, and fires are metaphors
for reality’s innate constraints.
YOU ARE DECIDUOUS
Your branches in winter
spider like wrinkles.
Where’s
your paper birch skin
with its inner pink,
your spring
-leafed hair?
HUNTERS
My bridge is narrow, but your park is lush.
There is a peril for the ones who rush.
A hundred hungry hunters got lost in your bush,
their thousand-throated thunder silenced by your hush.
There is a peril for the ones who rush.
My careful arrow finds your hiding thrush.
LIQUID
I thought I was lucid in Patpong, though maybe I was hallucinating when I thought I saw this maiden blowing the vagina smoke ring blues. She came up to me when she was through and said, “Do you smoke?” and I said, “Well, not like you.” And then in my ear she whispered, “Let’s get liquid. Ooh ooh, let’s get liquid.” So we went to her pharmacy upstairs. She took my prescription and filled it.
She had that electric texture of velvet when rubbed against the grain, and I felt it.
The room filled with her flower and I inhaled it.
Lance shivered against shield as we tilted.
My farmer found her furrow and tilled it.
I opened her book and I shelved it.
Her passion a pink open pistachio, I unshelled it.
My sausage she fried in her skillet.
She made my Johnny Walker Red and then she swilled it.
She raced my engine and derailed it.
She measured my beat and she held it.
She climbed my steeple and she belled it.
She stamped my package and she mailed it.
She blazed my sequoia and she felled it.
I plugged in my tool and I drilled it.
I hammered her board and she nailed it.
She read my fantasy and fulfilled it,
applied my blueprint as she built it.
She fitted my Nino and she sailed it.
over the edge of the sea, she propelled it.
Oooooh ooooh I heard her shout it
(or maybe that was me)
and then our substances melded,
congealed together, we were welded,
but that was the moment we melted.
The orchid exploded and wilted.
And she slid loose, she slipped free.
And we drifted. Oh, we were liquid!
And I thought I was lucid in Bangkok. But maybe I was hallucinating.
1
crow’s feet
each year
closer to a murder
lag time
Shane Coppage
& Jerome Berglund
2
leap of faith
what kind of present
does an artist give
Kilroy
Shane Coppage
& Jerome Berglund
3
fiddlehead
joining the last place
to permit entry
no refunds
Jerome Berglund
& Shane Coppage
4
pink corvette
there are no wrinkles
in her skirt
orthodox church
Shane Coppage
& Jerome Berglund
5
Dr. Feelgood
ruck pack
Atlas eat
your heart out
Jerome Berglund
& Shane Coppage
Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga and haibun he’s written have been exhibited or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, Kingfisher, and Presence. A mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Fevers of the Mind.
Shane Coppage is a poet and artist. His poetry has been published in Prune Juice, Whiptail, Humana Obscura, dadakuku, Trash Panda, The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Wales Haiku Journal, The Wee Sparrow Press, and Cold Moon Journal, among others. Coppage lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with his growing family.
This composition started when I saw a documentary on New Orleans. I have never been there so I’ve always been fascinated by its culture and its history. And after watching the documentary, I kind of envisioned myself living there, the cast of characters I would run into, and the underbelly of New Orleans, but also the music and the uniqueness of the place, and that’s how I wrote Saint Street.
I brought in a 12-string and a mandolin just to give the music a colorful different texture, and that reminds me of New Orleans as well.
(Picture is in a comic book style and is a compilation of old fashioned city scapes, superhero comics, and a man with a lightbulb head appearing to the back of a naked woman on newsprint).
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
As a true environmentalist
I went looking through stables and corrals
Something true in defense
Of Artificial Intelligence
Extending my mind more and more
In favor of this overly long hoax.
I immediately thought I saw something
That would not disappoint the best of its scholars:
Among quadrupeds stood out
A lump of dried cow shit
Stuck on an electric cable
Which deserves so much appreciation
Of cattlemen
For it wrapped a half-cured cheese
Where white worms danced
Which were part of the same cheese
Being less inseparable than sex
Of Female and Male
Male Male, Female Female
Touching the sublime matter of Love
Eliciting historical gasps and brays.
That dried cow dung
She had the same idea as Artificial Intelligence
Because it looked so happy
As if it boasted of having been part
Of the men’ brains
With much interest and good wishes
In making known its importance
Little known theoretically until now
Because those who work in this field
Are nothing more than Donkeys who spread out
From their ears to their tail
Putting their physique and their morals
At the service of Nothing
In this amplitude of overflowing artificial erudition
