What So Far is the Significance?                                           

whatever; with deep pressuring up from under the sand pits all the while.

Then, up to bed.

The pills keep the sand pits down, but the pressure’s always there. But no, understand, not literally, no—not like a hand inside a glove, but almost like that. Almost. 

Aden? We do not fly to Aden. Sorry.

Dig that stack, you’ll find something to use. Dug, hit nothing; nothing; found no such picture. Those pictures must be long gone. Surely hope those pictures are long gone. The photographer went down in the nearby barber shop. What? To have my hair cut, in a man’s barber shop. A real man’s barber shop. Bud’s barber shop, where Bud’s a tall fat man ‘nna tight green shirt, like a bodyguard. He spoke harshly to the customer in his worn-out barber chair. 

You ought not be ‘n this barber shop. This is a man’s barber shop.

Their reply was curt; no rules ‘n the animal kingdom; stated, as Bud cut carefully around the small earlobes. Bud normally would be a’laughey and a’jokey, but not this morning. The bodyguard raised a hand, saying, What? Are you trying to say we’re animals here? We’re not animals—I am not an animal!

I’m here only because my father said to be here, said a boy sitting by the door. He don’t tolerate no long hair on a boy. He’s always telling somebody or other what to do. The boy sat in shorts and a hygiene shirt.

What the hell is a hygiene shirt?

It’s a—a shirt. That’s all what’s known. That’s all he calls it.

Well, said the bodyguard—all you kids ought to be wearing hygiene shirts nowadays, the way the world’s going.

What do you mean, said the customer, as Bud’s scissors snipped, and his clippers buzzed. 

Short—real short? Said that? Did you?

Yes. 

Nodding, he set his lip to the task. Long brown tinged with grey piled up underneath. The scissors snipped, the clippers buzzed, loud they were, in this small barber shop, it being an addition tacked onto a frame house with the sign BUD’S BARBER SHOP across its front window. Bud lived in the frame house. He was never far from work. He at last spoke through this that pause in the clipping.

What makes you want to get a haircut like this? he said idly, trimming around an ear.

It’s somewhat different. It is good to be somewhat different. 

Yah. Think I get it. Buzz. 

Snip.

Buzz.

Yah, funny you should be here, said a tall green checked flannel shirted man across the chair from Bud. He seemed just another customer, usually, but was always there, and always restless; he paced the shop hard talking at whoever might seem to listen.

Why do you say that to my customer, Jack, said Bud, as he expertly used the scissors closer still on the customer smiling in the chair, with a twinkle in their eye, watching in the mirror at Bud and Jack’s banter.

Because it’s just unusual, said Jack, then stepping to a young man in a leather chair by the door with a deep stained tackle box hung in his hands.

Why are you here today, Rennie? Your hair’s not long.

I’m here because my father said to be here, said Rennie. He don’t tolerate long hair on a boy. He’s always telling me what to do. He dresses me in shorts and a hygiene shirt. See them?

Yes but—hygiene shirt? What the hell is a hygiene shirt? said Jack loudly—and there’s more to know about you, Rennie. You are no boy. Why’s your Father still dressing you?

Bud and his customer in the chair smiled, listening. 

Yeah, said Bud, pausing his work—like he said—what the hell is a hygiene shirt?

Everyone laughed, but Jack really wanted to know. Rennie put down his tackle box, opened the front of his sport shirt, revealing a shiny black t-shirt stretched tight underneath.

This is a hygiene shirt, he said. It keeps clean. My Father said it does. As long as you wear this kind of shirt you never need changing or washing. That’s why it’s a hygiene shirt.

What? snapped Jack. Your father said that? That’s ridiculous!

The whole shop smiled, listening to loud Jack. Jack and Rennie were always good for a laugh ‘cross the whole shop, once they got going.

The barber is erased, the monkeys have it.

Go the greasy way.  

Gusts of wind blowing. Blowing the gusts. 

Lippincott—but.

Class! Everybody! Stop all!

Yes? 

Bud. You first. What so far is the significance?

Bud: motionless, but for his hands. Writing in the dirt. It said Hansel. And very nearly, Gretel. But he ran out after pushing out the ground, angry at having been buried beneath what he wrote—Joseph came down the trail, gun in hand, dead pheasants in back of his hunting jacket. The license in the middle of his back made a great target. 

And? That’s all?

No. The house is an evil house stinking of ghosts down the cellar up the attic ‘cross the whole damned thing. The man sits innocent with evil run through his past. He sits trailed off behind his long future lying spent and dead behind him.

The past is real the past happened its not gone at all its you the memories of.

Thank you. Now, you in the chair there. What so far is the significance?

The you in the chair there: the shadow tried hard to be but was just empty blackness—bu’, he could always see the man in the moon. Not everybody can see the man in the moon. Not everybody can see it. It looked down on him now.

I see you, said the man the moon—I see you.

Marie! The man the moon is talking to me! Talking to me, Marie!

Reaching down, he patted the cat ’til it threw itself down and began to purr.

He stepped around the cat went to the sliding glass door the dining room looked at himself from his—reflection.

What will be the last thing thought of? Surely not that—cannot be that.

Thank you. Now, you there. Boy by the door there. What so far is the significance?

The boy by the door there: just try, said the farmer, on the edge of his land with a shotgun. On the banks of the brook where the lily pads and dragonflies are thick. Hot. Hot the fucking boat. But. What insurance do you have? Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t take that. Not yet. No not yet. As a matter of fact, probably never.

Why do we roll these babies?

Because they will learn better that way. 

It’s important they be rolled. As the Hansel und Gretel’d rolled out away north, past the town of men, into the fields, bearing in deep pressure, their tiny box. Full of the beans cooked last week, it reeks. Big tumor of teeth and hair.  

Thank you. Now Jack—hey Jack, there. What so far is the significance?

Jack: small brown bird head darting about looking, looking—looking for what? No time! Fly! To cry out is the way of the land! 

Dry. Dry. Lop. Loop. Drip. Dry. Whole. Tonight is the big game. Oh, why is that so damned important?

Wow. 

And, also, turning away from the mirror takes the mirror away then makes the rest of the room appear inside; a dresser, a bed. Candlesticks. Wow. How that works!

It is time to go ask for a job. 

The face comes goes the mirror the room turns the door stands there. 

Out back the door, the keys hang the hand fumbles with the keys the door gets locked. 

Somewhere someone’s lips demand more; those lips always demand more. 

Thank you. Now, Rennie. What so far is the significance?

Rennie: yes on yes, he often felt he should be standing atop a great hill, high above them, shouting from a great book open in his hands; but he didn’t need a great book but as a prop, because he had it all up his head. Crap what the hell there, Rennie dear, my oh my, there’s a seemingly wide hole in that hygiene shirt; then, general hilarity erupted. 

No not that not that!

Yes! I’m here because my father said to be here he don’t tolerate long hair on a boy he’s always telling me what to do he dresses me in shorts and a hygiene shirt. 

See it?

Yes.

Lolly chucks the rolling pool of her offal down the stairs, fall. 

See it?

No.

Why not? Her gut’s all hot and pliable in my hand. Bloody, gross. But. 

Jesus Christ, if that were me, I’d get fired on the spot.

No justice. 

No justice.

Fully realized mother.

No justice.

Okay. Okay.

Now listen; Elmer’s a tinsmith. Thoren’s a machinist. There’s a bowl of hardboiled eggs between them. Put there by Thelma.

Elmer gripped up an egg. Thoren just sat with arms folded.

I don’t like hard boiled eggs, said Thoren. You ought to of fried them up.

Elmer began peeling his hardboiled egg. Thoren sneered.

You know you don’t really like those, he said to Elmer. You’re just kissing up to Thelma.

I like them fine, like them just fine. They’ll be good. Thelma, you make them good.

Kissy, kissy, kissy-face, sneered Thoren, to Thelma. He laid his hand flat on the table, saying to Thelma, fry up some eggs, dearie—be a doll. Make them like I like them.

Be a doll? said—dearie? That how you talk to all the girls?

Some of them, said Thoren, grinning. The ones like. Now fry up the eggs.

Elmer’s egg peel scattered around where he sat.

Good, he said chewing. Thoren, do these. They’re good.

Fry three eggs, Thelma!

Here, said—take this skillet. Fry up your own. Like Elmer here, better. He likes them like he likes them. Not like you do.

Nonsense—I won’t go hungry to work! Fry them up—I can’t do it.

What’s the matter? Too much for your little brain to handle, Thoren? said Thelma.

Nuts!

Thoren rose, announcing, Okay, Thelma. I’ll get something on the way to the shop. They make good eggs down at Solly’s. I’ll go to Solly’s.

Go to your damned Solly’s, said Thelma. I’ll be here with my Elmer.

Elmer looked up with mouth full, chewing. Smiled. He clutched half an egg. Thoren gripped down his coat from the chairback threw it on gripped up his truck keys from the bowl before leaving without a word. Elmer and Thelma looked at each other.

Your brother is an oaf, said Thelma.

Yes. Oaf. 

The rest of the egg went in Elmer. He grasped another.

Okay if have another? Okay?

That’s what they’re here for, sweetie.

Smiling, Elmer began to peel. But why’d it say inside it seemed to tell him I’m here because my father said to be here; he don’t tolerate long hair on a boy; he’s always telling me what to do; he dresses me in shorts and a hygiene shirt. See it—so he ate this egg faster than the first one because there seemed something odd about it. Plus he also needed to get to work. Thank God, yes, but—hygiene shirt? It was seven forty-five up all their mornings. Thelma’d be alone all day. Today was housecleaning day. 

What the hell is a hygiene shirt?

Elmer left, one step closer to knowing, albeit dimly, that all life’s just the shuffle of an endless deck of days, cards pulling out one by one seemingly all by themselves until 

Let’s Cultivate

Let’s cultivate life,
Let it grow into a garden,
Let dreams, love, passions,
Emotions and feelings
Continue to be cultivated.

July 5, 2020
 
            I had the strangest dream last night, and spent most of the day discussing it with my youngest son, because he was in it.  We were touring the country, and visiting various, large scale sculptures across the Rockies mountain range, the Smokey Mountains, the Adirondacks, all of them. In the dream, he asked me, “Why are there so many versions of Rushmore again, Dad?”  And I said, “Well, son, after Trump, the new administration parks officials determined that all of our former presidents were 'Rushmore worthy,' as it were, and so they commissioned large scale sculptures all across America to memorialize all of the presidents that were not Donald Trump.” 

            He asked me, in the dream, “Where are we going next?” and I said, “Up next is the one dedicated to Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding, John Tyler and Richard Nixon.”  “What did they do?” he asked me.  In the dream.  I said, “Not what Trump did.  That’s kind of the new litmus test for goodness, when it comes to the executive branch.”  He understood the lowering of the bar: “That’s like saying I should be an all star because I didn’t commit an error, when I was sitting in the dugout.” 

            “Yes,” I said.  “Who’s next after that?” he asked me, in the dream.  I said, “Well, after that, we go see the sculpture of Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, and Lyndon Johnson.” He asked about them.  I explained that Wilson was a racist, who sat on his hands while the Spanish flu raged, and that he could google that. I told him, “When you’re done googling coffin ships and want to learn about Hoover, google presidents who never held public office, and google the Great Depression, and when you’re done with that, you can ask your phone about the Vietnam War.”  

            He wanted to know what the deal was with Ford. I told him, “Oh, his inclusion is somewhat ironic, given Trump’s inspiration for the new sculptures.  You see, Ford was President even though he never won a popular vote.”

            We spent the whole day, in the dream, learning about presidents, and the next day, in person, at the kitchen table, between card games, learning about presidents.  We had books. We had his cell phone, my computer, his school lap-top computer for remote learning, google, and two sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica, since he and his brother are each inheriting one when I die, thanks to their great-grandparents.  

            It was like seventh-grade social studies class, only with dream interpretation.  So it was like psychoanalysis meets social studies.  It was like being in seventh grade again, myself. Call it home-schooling, because it was kind of like that, too. 
        
            It was like weirdness.

            But then again, no. It was not like weirdness. It was weirdness. And that was because it was like everything, now, after the great unmasking.

            That was my day, today. 

            The clouds were lined with the kind of silver they once used for coins bearing dead men’s profiles. 


 

Good Friday, 2021

             I turned on today and tuned in.  In the film it was sliding.  Or the word is slithering. It was long, muddy and strong.  One long muscle in jungle growth and hunger, operative,

was the motive I could discern.  No other reason for this.  Boa, they said.  “Hungry boa.” So focused.  A job to do.  The only job. Isn’t it?

            What is it to be without. Without thought.  Without thinking.

            Or without regret.

            I change channels.
 

            Winston Churchill sent his planes, the R.A.F., to bomb towns full of people.  Civilians, I mean.  Nazi voters.  Civilians. Not the top.  The base.  No military bases.  Just the “base.”

            He just knew this would stop the assault on what was material.  

            And then, British men & women & children who don’t fly and don’t fight and don’t build, manufacture, they call this, the tools of war, would be bombed.  Then airfields would be saved.  The strategy worked.  Brilliantly. Easily.  Hitler bombed locations without any . . .

military. . . significance.
 

            I left the English Channel.  

            I returned to the nature documentary.

            The snake, or muscle as I like to call it, had found its prey.

 
            I have heard that the German Philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach is the one responsible for the saying that we are what we eat.

            But I say – today, just another day, ever so differently – We become our enemy.

 

 August 1, 2022

             My country is insane by half and I actually considered running for office today.  I come from a long line of Republicans and I think I could “pass,” and pretend.  Maybe call for a 1,000.00 percent sales tax on firearms to address school shootings without taking anyone’s gun away, and with more revenue than cost.  Or maybe sell voters on the idea that a party that believes in small government doesn’t believe in one either big enough to police every pregnancy – at what cost, taxpayers? – or one small enough to fit into my lover’s uterus.  And then I picked up a National Geographic, looking for topics for this night’s poetry, and when I let it flop – as is my system – to an open page, it showed a skeleton.  And I remembered – “right.  That’s why I never ran for office in the first place, while serving as a public servant for all these years, these decades.  My skeletons.”  My skeletons are so many.  They are all very fun.  They party. There are enough of them to call it a party.

            I saw them all, as if in a reverie, partying here, in my house.  There’s one over there in the corner chattering away at a computer, laying down insults on former loved ones that include F-bombs and a kind of “suffer no fools” rhetoric that would rival the most frustrated members of Trump’s Whitehouse Attorney staff.  “Fuck you, fuck you, and you’re a fucking asshole” he types, and each strike of the key hits like a mallet on the xylophone.  It’s rhythmic.  Until deleted before sending. In another corner a skeleton leans down in front of the crotch of another one standing, gnawing in clickety-clack time on his pelvis, and the one standing wears a baseball hat.  That must be the coach from my adolescence at baseball camp – my inspiration for being so good at busting child molesters in my professional life.  Oh look, there are three of them in the bedroom. One skeleton squats on the skull of the one lying down, while the other skeleton grinds on its crotch.  Clackety clack, and the beat goes on.  That’s me on the bottom.  The one on top of the pelvis must be my first ex-wife and the one on the mouth must be her bisexual lesbian friend.  Bloomington.  A fun town. But I would not be representing them, so running for office takes another hit, when it comes to plans for life. Off in the corner, near the Secretary that I inherited from a Sunday school teacher, my grandfather, via his son and my father, another skeleton gives all of us a contact buzz.  Every time he takes a hit from that bong, gripped in his bony knuckles, the smoke just wafts right out from inside of his otherwise empty rib cage.  Sticks and stoners.  Bones and weed.  That’s a graveyard, right?  Others stand around with drinks in their hands, and the vodka, beer and rum just pour right down their bones onto the floor, and the cigarettes burn all the way down, and leave charred stains on their knuckles.  One is in the adjunct to the office, watching porn.  Funny, but everyone in the porno is a skeleton too, and it adds to the percussion if not the repercussions.

            It’s a shame.  I’m finally mature enough that I could actually see myself representing the wishes of others, my constituents.  Not let lobbyists and donors get in the way of doing what’s right.  But if my skeletons cannot hide, or run, or run and hide, then I cannot run either.  And they can’t.  (Bad knees).  And so it was, on this day, that I respectfully declined, in my imagination, the nominations for Congressman, Senator, Governor, and President.  Did I say that I had so many skeletons that we could throw a party?  Let me rephrase.  I have so many skeletons in my closet that maybe we can form a third party.  As if that ever succeeds.

            And I also realized, seeing them, why I chose this house in the first place: the closet space.

 

      I remember some theatrical 
films of newspaper leadership
 calling out,
   "Stop the presses!"
       Why?
  Well, because a great new
          headline was surfacing. 

        I think the awestruck tribe 
     of Earth Humanity is having 
   such a moment. 

      I guess my interest is,
What is that New Headline 
     that the Presses are being
         Stopped for?  
    What's the Story 
in the Silent Room?

       When I Read in front
of a Group, I like the 
attention that Silence cultivates
in the tribal convergence of
individual Attentions. We as 
individuals each have freedom
to listen or not. Interest 
is a choice. 

      Right now I sense 
a quiet and await
 the integral voices. I don't mind 
Good News or Bad News that leads to 
Greater Successes in the future. 

      Amongst the General commotion
I await that Sort of Voice which
I feel integral to Better 
decisions & Better choices.   

      I like that.



by John Edward Culp 
January 24, 2023

The Thinker’s Last Thought

One day the world decided

they no longer are in need

of philosophers and poets,

those who defined the times

long after their demise

and gave birth to generations

of thinkers who are now

obsolete like stone scarecrows

chiseled in the form of forgotten

gods and fallen angels

despite their words and ideas

being occasionally referenced

by self-professed professors

to sound smarter than those

who they engage in conversation,

as the world indulges on dancing

sapiens recommended by their phones,

heads that once stared down

at the folded pages of books

with worn vertabrae and paper

used for fascist bonfires.

.

Did Nietzche ever lie awake

in bed and think the world

would have gotten so rotten

that they would decide that

his services were no longer

needed?

The first instance of skin to skin contact in years

Sometimes we just need a touch,

most will run far from where you are

even when you approach with arms

in the air, attempting to hug them

as the candied man in a van or diseased

beast that they assume you are,

and will scream about stranger danger

or unwanted touches in a scene to

escape faster if they think you are only

in need of a moment of human contact,

a single handshake, knocking knuckles,

the highest of fives, an arm clenched hug,

so you disguise your need for feeling with

a single bump into them and an exchange

of apologies, or a swift brush that

the distracted stranger doesn’t notice.

SHUT UP AND WRITE

One thousand chimpanzees,

chain-smoking cartons

of extra tar cigarettes,

seated on a wooden stool

chained to rows of writing desks

each with a manual typewriter,

bundles of flammable paper

and bottles of inhalable white-out,

couldn’t write everything that

artificially intelligent machines

without arthritic fingers or

a wasting mind could generate

without a keyboard

and a few keywords.

When All the King’s Men Never Stand Again

The men who use the world

as a chess board,

the only move to not lose

at the game of life

is to flip the board over

rather than quit or submit.

The Closed Door

A man sits in an empty room.

There are no windows, and only one door.

Closed.

He doesn’t move.

He doesn’t search for an entrance.

He doesn’t search for an exit.  

He doesn’t know whether it is locked or not,

or if he is trapped behind walls of immuration,

just because he doesn’t know whether he should

push

or

pull.  

the eiger sanka

thinking tonight
I am not this brain

in the darling garden
eating cowboy bread

in this underlined winter
I am the burrowing owl

scrabble tile: alpha
a noise now nothing


---



plum (understood)

combo

shampoo your skull

I use the same salt as the funneling crow
I am that old gold senator from the moon

combo


--


the promise of a new marvel team-up

the absolute reality

we were
went worm

para
keet

the moss inside
I went through the wrong door


--


crabapple could-be

& yes
I know

bio/graf

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poems have appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of ten chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including *Cinderella City* (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s first full-length collection is *in ghostly onehead* (Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. His haiku blog is at JDNelson.net. Nelson lives in Colorado, USA.

[surrea(list)]


 what if telepathic rain filled boiling cold cedar streams of dancing ash that rolled upward in incandescent tides to sweet fragrant sloughs of blood-black ammonia rimmed by deer sitting in beach chairs discussing ones-and-zeros in unpatterned rhythms with venomous violets in ancient Aramaic as ticks stalked great hawks mid pyroclastic flows while boldly grinning ferns with Marilyn Monroe hair hummed derisively in tangerine shade beneath turquoise gums dropping warm lavender snow during any season when snakes reproduced into laurel bushes bearing giant red acorns sprouting thorned orchids that softened the forest floor with pearls of conscience while being serenaded by schizophrenic gnats to the meter of pine bombs whispering in the silence of a chaos so loud that the sky deafens the leaves and betrayal was the norm until the belligerent sun separated into vapid sonnet-spewing starlets cheered on by the dumb and the thunderous applause of the handless as the world became a single-celled virus on the tip of a needle plunged into nothingness and infecting the void and what is real is surreal and surreal is so real that everything is relative and relational in an amalgam of disturbing perspective in perception subsumed in a line of poetry born on the wings of a great moment written between hell and whatever describing life and death and death becomes the purgatory of unfinished business and life reveals how stupid it all is and confirms that the poet is the prophet that will become one with the universe
****************************************************

[poetry]



singing in the silence of beats

while words

 

 spin

 

            on

 

                        trapezes

 

deliciously catching

                                    thoughtsinmidair

above uncertainties

                                     highwiring

without nets

 

miraculously

                                    afloat

 

until the roof

blows

off

 

and the fog

 

lifts


*****************************************************

[poetry]


finding lyricism in chaos

listening to the speech of color

seeing the shades of wind

feeling the tingle of time

kissing the memory of was

touching the excitement of is

sensing the truth of now

tasting the world of wow