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.
*** Collective of the graves Black raven lost in white snow You remain silent The silence is still as ambiguous as before the funeral
*** Returning home is near Counterbattery fire Burst intestines are covered in painful spots Eat vomit because we all have eat and die They say war is a milky night mother After all one born from the night
Must someday return home to the darkness
***
I grow in the dew under the branches of the heavy arms of the forest I am the grass mown by time, rain, sun, hope you are a candle that burns only in the blinding heat you are the rain that waters the cemetery paths we can’t find each other we can only be snow and everything around is white as if nothing had happened and it’s over forever like a paper book about a felled tree the snow continues its path off-road
***
I don’t know why a graveyard crawled out from under my bed
I don’t know why all the flowers are tied with a mourning ribbon
“We bury the old world” – says the bird and dies
The agony of the cemetery bursts like a vein
Mothers sew dresses for their daughters from their vaginas
Daughters marry soldiers
Mosquitoes drink the blood of the universe
Cats dream of a bowl of blood with a drop of milk
Military pilots fly to the smell of blood
People are insects – at least mosquitoes
***
sakura is silent
calm bird drinks silence
***
spring is like a drowning
we drink damp heat
time to go to bed
***
the frog drinks from the bowl of autumn
water and air mix with each other
***
autumn colors stuck to the skin
the leaves underfoot beg for help
***
Getting to know silence
The clouds in the sky burst silently
The veins on the arm burst silently
The dead cry silently
Thunder rumbles without any unnecessary sounds
Fish heads don’t scream
Even mosquitoes don’t squeak
A military pilot prepared to drop a quiet (but only for the time being) air bomb
***
the existence of clouds for the sake of the existence of rain
the creation of man for the sake of the creation of god
I know everything in the world except the truth
***
The future is water
The future is a spit
I collect spit and tears
I pretend that the cemetery is a space rocket
I pretend I’m going to the stars
But in fact I’m picking mushrooms in the forest after an explosion in the forest near Hiroshima
***
Religion was invented for those
Who have not yet died
Each of us dreams of being Jesus Christ
Each of us is a baby
Вut where are the Magi
5 new pieces
*** lips emerge from the evening gloomy snow lights of blueberry nights teach the eyes to sleep
and if your face floats in silence noiselessly and invisibly then I will still draw your features in every rustle of a winter evening
I love you even though you don’t have a name you will be the black square of my triangular heart you will be immense and inexplicable and then I will run out of gouache and your face will be painted with my blood
from where do you get your name if I’m selling you to make money do I really love you if I sell your features for money ?
I don’t love you at all and I don’t know you at all no one cares for anyone in the snowy space
I teach your lips to sleep I pacify your lips your name is a black square we all live in portrait frames and only
snow
and only snow and only snow and only snow
*** The legacy of silence grows among the reeds of what is forgotten Life never ends and silence goes to sleep in a tired cemetery
A girl flies like a swallow through the concrete night painting time with a brush Too much water and the paint is completely stale and the teacher scolds
The orphanage speaks silently to the blizzard And on the next street, a retirement home sails into the sky with its sails spread
The final stop The final goal The middle silence
*** What’s hiding behind the window glass? The rain falls asleep. Red splashes flow down from top to bottom. The emptiness shines. Silence mumbles. Rifles whistle. The fires are raging. Warheads play with birds. Houses turn into bloodthirsty monsters and swallow the future. Explosions scream. The baby sleeps in a cradle and dreams. Window frames whisper to the walls. A window will never become a mirror for time flowing down like water into a toilet. And what, after all, is hiding behind the glass?
*** The bird does not know what silence is and sings songs with its cut throat
*** Tree looking for an apple The tree is looking for a child
The body is growing The body is getting old
The cell searches for the soul And the soul has died
*** What is emptiness In the hands of a beggar is an empty can of cola with change
What is loneliness This is when birds still return home from warm countries Аnd you look out the window and realize that these birds are no longer (none?never?) a flock
*** every evening the bird thinks about the sky every night the cell thinks about emptiness every morning feathers dream of flight every noon the beak begs for alms
every new bird day is a small escape from the past and present the shores play with the waves in sighs, cries of silence and knocks of inevitability the bird learns to walk again on the hot sand, but its legs don’t obey
every moment of wasted flight is an expectation of death a bird flies forgetting about its legs just because it can fly what is the meaning of flight and where does the water of time flow?
every bird hides a cemetery in its nest each leg hides cement in its nest every head hides meaninglessness in its nest every void expands to the horizon line and there’s nothing beyond the horizon
