At night curves in the road multiply when there are no street lights on those posted- 25 miles per hour and they mean it two lanes Excessive drinking is what the young and the feckless islanders do tourists as well willfully riding their motorcycles rented mopeds ATV’s dune buggies without helmets where none are supposed to go Their roadside memorials are everywhere homemade paint chipped white crosses losing their luster Death Comes to the Harborside Historic turn of the last century hotel and lounge’s self-immolation produced smoke and flames visible on mainland miles away We wonder what happened to the speakeasy ghosts the good time girls flappers and spirits of the murdered and those who died of natural causes Days later numbered striped cue balls are found unearthed from rubble along with a long forgotten floor safe Marked cards inside Tally sheets and chits IOU’s dated and signed 100 plus years ago A community of crows gathers in yew trees bordering the inland cemetery The oldest headstone date back to 1700’s but the crows are timeless By dusk there are hundreds of them silently inhabiting the trees Surfing the Hurricane A few 12 packs and surfing the storm seems like a great idea a plan “Oh, man, look at the swell” The rip tides and the submerged rock the killer waves The Chainsaw Artist works nights in a barn lit by flickering kerosene lamps Such an uncertain light for carving dread beasts never seen anywhere in this world except in his mind When they are finished the artist hides his creations amid the clutching brambles the decaying drooping trees where hikers come upon them in unexpected places Unearthing these creatures instills the kind of fear that can never be erased leads to illness and despair The woods feel haunted now alive with unseemly beings wherever the artist has been We can hear incessant tolling of church bells from the far side of the great salt pond where no structures are Such a mournful sound propelled across the surface by a steady off-shore breeze We listen wondering why we are being summoned from so far away
Category Archives: CHAOS
Poetry from Xavier Womack
inheritance
i see you, my child
taking after your father.
the way he yearns
to care for everything
except his own mind.
all you wish is to
be loved the way
that you love the world.
the way your heart moves
is a cry for help
i watch your eye twitch
just like your dad’s
when he is locking away
his own mind into his
own form of purgatory.
he is jailed, sealed
away from the warmth
he desperately needs.
i love you, my child.
let your soul roam
free into all the wonders
this world can offer.
Poetry from Sayani Mukherjee
Village A lonely cottage by the river wall The sun scooped daisy under my beige wall A pointed facade a long overturn over there To mend and bask the town Meadows As I lay dipping in the river I hear cascades over my rimmed lens A lovely blossom it was, it lied open dust The moonbeamed sun is lowly now To hung the home grown lilies The blue painted carpenter singed a choir A thousand lullabyed biddings For the village was aglow in the pure love.
Poetry from Mykyta Ryzhykh
Lost
Grass or hair
Very close
Sickle-covered hands
Cut by the clouds of the decks
Sailors’ souls or sailors’ corpses
In the ocean of time
In the ocean of the soul
A void stirred by the storm
A void moved by the wind
Catch me
Raw are matches
Keep me warm
Hands are broken
Anchors melted into cotton candy.
Sails soak up the screams and become heavy as metal
No one remembers but the seagulls
Death by ship
A ship that tasted death
No one knows where the corpses go
Ice beneath the feet of slipping death
Cast-iron milk of tastes and sunken eyes of noses
Nobody knows how to compose a proper serenade
Nobody knows how to die with rhyme
Nobody writes dead poetry
Nobody writes poetry for dead people
Nobody knows how to write and read
Strange seagulls look everywhere with their beaks
Poetry from Lan Qyqualla
EURIDIQUE COME BACK ONE DAY!
(dedication to my late wife)
Eurydice, come back one day,
that my song for you does not stop
prayer to Hades touches ancient crystals,
my muse invades Diana’s verse,
I will not turn my head back
that I am not Orfe.
Eurydice, take the fairies’ journey,
come to visit and don’t stop there to see
the children have grown up. Teuta walks
your traces in Grammar,
Fly like birds in flight,
Lali stays calm like a meteor pillar,
cold winter has fallen on me
I have snow everywhere on my head.
Eurydice, I wrote you a letter,
in which paradise do you rest,
sorry i didn’t have an address
and started the journey without a visa,
no passport, no goodbye
and how do we wish this year?!
The Sun’s Tears
I do not trust
the sun’s
tears
and Lora’s
love
I do not trust
theweight
ofher word
or the longing
I have for her.
The Drawer of Forgetfulness
I locked you up
in the drawer of forgetfulness
as the crystalline water under the earth
and the crumpled writing on the gray sheet
proof of the time spent in the studio
I saw you
in the labyrinths of the faculty
where the Alphabet’s raytwinkles
your voice can be heard in each class room
in the workbook you
are piling up the memory years.
Lora
We wander through time
like snakes in the bushes
Lora and I
in the ecstasy of the painting
I gave her Mona Lisa’s smile
I drank water from Lora’s bosom
and I lost myself in adolescent dreams,
I gave Lora a life
I gave the sky a kiss
the sun seemed to be silent
and left a free way to darkness
the rainbow lightens my way
fiery I take the stars to the bosom
I hug the sun
to feel its tenderness.
Lora is silent
and she silently speaks
in her blonde hair
I touch the love
embers in the lap
white frost
he left traces
Lora is asleep
with the fiery stars
tickling her lips
in the corrugated crown
the sounds of silence
I put her crown
and I read under her eyelids
the novel I will write
Lora with her bosom as virgin snow
lures the Talmudists’ years
Lora crystalline meteor.
WHAT TO WISH YOU TONIGHT
I am drunken with craving
of cords of your voice
I seek the canary of love
in the labyrinths of the soul
the morning messenger is not heard
nor he knits the sounds cardigan of Monastery
you, the lost one in the waves of forgetfulness.
I glaze the pictures in the museum
I doze in present time
the verb love
I conjugate in first person
Because you loved me
I track in mirative form
the time passed in lucidity
what to wish you tonight as you forgot me.
Ah, with the sweetness of the vowels
Quivered even my lake
we, like two canaries in the mountains
loosing trails in canon
me, you and the voice
tonight brings me back to nostalgia.
Poetry from J.J. Campbell

---------------------------------------------------------------------- flutter and here comes the old timer a blackout drunk in the city that never sleeps has stories for days about hookers, heroin and whatever happens to flutter into his mind i egg him on from time to time, especially when he calls oprah the anti-christ how many black women have fucked you over? i stopped counting in the late fall of 1979 like a lost dog, he wears those puppy eyes like a scolded child ok, let's go to the bar he lights up a smile we get to the bar and ask for two old fashioneds and a shot of everclear the bartender asks are you two celebrating or looking to die the old timer mumbles under his breath what is the fucking difference i pat him on the back, reassuringly tell him there isn't any --------------------------------------------------------------------- imagine the fame watching the news recently has me rethinking all those dreams when i was a kid and i wanted to kill my father i sip on a whiskey and imagine the fame love letters on the wall of a prison cell, cracking jokes of course i try not to think who is claiming me as their bitch swimming in a river of apathy that never ends whatever greatness ever touched me has withered away by now a walking corpse a poem edited beyond belief even the shotgun in the corner has lost interest i think of my bed as a tomb and one day, i won't be jesus actually get to enjoy a few more hours of sleep ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- any sense of depravity a slow song as she rests her aching head on what is left of your soul it was never supposed to be this hard all the mistakes bad luck dressed as a devil in a three piece suit two dreamers left alone to suffer stretch a dollar past any sense of depravity this is what happens when the drunks realize a bon jovi song is never something to aspire to can't afford the good drugs anymore this is why you never burn any bridges with the homeless you never know ------------------------------------------------------------------------ when the holidays roll around embrace the madness like tomorrow is the hooker with a heart of gold some fantasy made up in a tarantino movie i suppose the nights get bleaker when the holidays roll around suicide is this tempting seductress showing just the right amount of leg she will give you a taste and you'll be fighting the urge the rest of your life i see the tombstones of my friends lucky fucks that made it out but who knows maybe some damsel in distress stumbles into my life i win a lottery or a ten team parlay and suddenly, sunshine is something more than just cancer waiting to happen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ something fondly sometimes i believe my death will solve everything and soon enough i will be forgotten my ego tries to make a point that the poems will last longer than any of us and there will surely be a woman or two that cries or remembers something fondly the realist in me laughs knows none of this matters or will come true the ashes will be spread into a flower bed where the dogs will piss every morning that part always makes me laugh fitting i always pictured my ashes being flushed down a toilet in a cocaine rage but pissed on isn't that far off hopefully the flowers will look good J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Yellow Mama, The Rye Whiskey Review and Mad Swirl. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights.


