213-

“Love’s boat has smashed against the daily

grind.” Mayakovksy. Not the TV show.

The suicide note. Not Fantasy Island.

Russian Roulette. Did you used to watch

those TV shows. Do you watch them now.

Why. Explain. The Deer Hunter. Christopher

Walken with a pistol in a gambling den.

Not a Clue card. A scene. From the movie.

Back in the VA. Stateside. A  hospital tray

table full of cash winnings.  You can only

win at Russian Roulette a finite number of

times. As final as the game of Life.

                        214-

Stillicide. A continual dripping of water.

A hard rain’s a gonna fall. In the still of

the night. A bend in the river. Guerillas or

gorillas.  Word crimes. Mine. Yours. Ours.

Misread the phrase: Legal Suicide this way.

Should be: Legal studio this way.  Not a

Stillicide. Water. Torture. Chinese. Like

checkers. With a Cap. Nixon’s dog. State

secrets found in a pumpkin patch. Not water

rights. Highly classified stuff. Water rights

were what Chinatown was all about.

Whittaker Chambers. Or Alger Hiss. Both.

                        217-

You only live twice. No live and let

die. Nancy Sinatra. Not Linda McCartney.

Not Stella either. Her boots were made

for walking. Naked in Playboy.  Or was

that Joan Collins. Not for the Interview.

Not for Andy Warhol either. He didn’t

like girls. That way. Though he lived

with his mom. Until she died. Don’t say

Norman Bates. Andy lived twice. Being

shot and dead on the table. And revived.

Then a routine procedure and he died.

Go figure.

                        218-

Contribute. To the Gregory Corso Memorial

Bocce Tournament. All major. Accepted.

It’s too late. To fall in love with Sharon Tate.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Happy endings.

To tragic stories. That defined a generation.

Not the Vampire Killers. Though she was in it.

R rating in some iterations.  Brief nudity. Violence.

Stupidity. As disappointing as a broken toy

in a Cracker Jacks box.

                        219-

Twitch and Shout. The affliction.

The memoir. The movie. God didn’t

give epileptics a fair shake. In the

cemetery where Al Jolson is buried.

Who’s your surrogate mama. A terry

cloth monkey instead of a flesh & blood

mother. Science or cruelty to animals.

There’s a lot at stake. Just ask Joan d’ Arc.

Apostles of the covenant. Apocrypha

or Dogma. A three dog night.

I Might Suppose That 
        ------------------------------------




          I might suppose that
Healing will not pass
    the faithless desire
        immediately
            without a transform
                 to encourage faith


A path mends the already known
    to Belief in the moment


                Wishing  -


the formless rides the moments
    Creations pulled to creations
         Lets grounding
             catch up with
                  just


         Being Yourself


               Wishing  -


When Cravings to see
    Say never Be


         A detour
              to offer


          Being Yourself


           
   the Simply
                Knowing


Lets the Wish Release
    Wishing falls to Bow
         Respectfully


          Being Yourself


found worthier
    than the first taste


      I might suppose that
Liking draws the unknown
    for the worthiness
        is Both
            forceless & infinite


Belongs
         Accepts
                  Wishing  -


Time is the Lens
    to see now better
        Releasing to comfort
            adrift to the future
              Letting
                 Be


    And here We are

Prayer

Prayer remains a reflex

even after all these years

of silence – wishes ungranted,

questions unanswered

puzzles unsolved

a reflex, a response when one of those

moments strike

the sunshine on a cold morning

catches our eye, or

bad news from television, this front or that

a diagnoses we didn’t expect

a phone call in the middle of the night

the doorbell

someone asking for help you can’t give

then they ask you to pray

and you remember the words

string them together

a hiccup, a reflex

something you try to perform

in the silent theater of your life.

List of Deceased Classmates

First thing I thought of when I saw it was

my college yearbook off there somewhere

collecting dust in some box, on some shelf.

Yearbooks make sense at first, fresh faces

of classmates, some you recall, then others

you think you recognize from their pictures,

formal picture of each one, then activities,

clubs and teams. They goes on a shelf, then

disappears into the years. Everything ages

we know, everything we know ages, even

the classmates frozen in time in yearbooks

age, live lives after then, do great things or

little things, careers and families, the stuff

that fills obituaries or are hinted at in lists

like the one I got today, the list of deceased

classmates. The list seems long for a class

that was fairly small – I count forty-four

and know there’s more out there, or should

I say not out there, more names, more dates.

I should find my yearbook and look at faces

and names, all of us, before that list began

being compiled.

 An Ache

The pain in my right elbow this morning

reminds me,

puts a bit of emphasis on

the hold my body has over my mind,

how time has brought the two

to cross purposes.

My body says one thing, complains on and on

about this pain or that,

about a weakness in that or that

a shortage, a soreness, a stinging,

while my mind moves on, runs marathons

sprints, sets records and ambitions

does all the things it did back when even

my elbow didn’t ache and the physical part

kept up with what I was thinking.

But this morning I’m reminded of how

my mind rides around in a vehicle that’s

wearing out, piece by piece

is riding around in a body that hopes to 

at best, at least

limp across the finish line.

Chris Butler is an illiterate poet shouting from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. 

Belly 

The earth will become the oceans, 

when it succumbs to the froth of the waves replacing cotton ball clouds, 

where one can only swim in all directions towards the slithering glimmers of light 

and submerged to plug the hole at the bottom of the sky, in a no fly ozone 

surrounded by dangling tentacles with suctioning barbs and incandescent monsters. 

Whales with mouths, the stomach and the appetite to swallow whole souls 

only for an eternity of digestive processes that is a fisherman’s purgatory, 

until I’m born again out of the propulsion of whipping fins and the waist high entrails  

that one must wade through, unable to doggy paddle or stroke over tidal waves, 

along with the noxious smog atmosphere of salt water and dry air, 

untethered from the belly to spill me up and wipe me down 

onto the salted seas of sand that stranded the last of us 

on an endless palm oasis of ice water cubed in the sinking of sacrificial glaciers, 

pulling us deeper away from every surface.   

  

Carbon’s Footprints 

The path of carbon’s footprints  

across the beach’s sand, 

still will not wash away  

despite the tide’s undulating  

tsunami of vengeance.    

I am my own black hole… 

…as an astrological waste of space, lackadaisically laying in an inflatable tube down a lazy river of darkness, making my way across an endless nothing, occasionally waving a helpless hello as the stream lures me further down the weightless torrent. But then I am pushed and pulled by forces with such gravitas that their gloriousness simply goes by “gravity”, stretching my inert inertia until my muscles suffer from the slightest strain of atrophy to rupture any rapture, until I am down-streamed up and away from one bobbing gaseous sphere and towards an impending one of dirt. All kinetic and spastic energy is then expunged and redacted, causing me to curl up into a fetal ball to collect all of the dust particles with static shock, until I snatch larger and denser objects in my porcelain drain, tightening them in my grasp until the last atom pops.   

 

Each tongue has individual truths… 

Never mind the words, 

mind the meaning hiding behind the words.   

And in the end… 

Everyone will steal a quote from someone famous, 

because they never believed in the legend of themselves.   

 
 the window of the shampoo ice
  
 the kaiser roll of the sky is the law of the lake
 to eat a burger on the open norse day
  
 your old chewy ticket is the radio rock of the talon
 eating a hungry hippo with a marble in my mouth
             
 lending a measure to the crow
 the breaking clone of the door
  
 sleep is the rule of the great apple
 the sleeping hum is the cloud of the wall
  
 that walknut of the ironed face
 the street puppet of the moth
 
  
 the song of the lower limbs and the paint of the freezing face
  
 this idea is the paint of the globe
 this is the number of the roses and that is certain 
  
 to lake a lark
 to win a letter of the working duck
  
 the sinking fish
 the lizard of the jumble
  
 care for a chair (mcdonald’s coffee)
 in the cave of the parrots
  
 that coffee was in the shape of a rose
 answering my skull when I’m in the rainbow shoes
  
 the losing brick sauce
 the navel orange is the bat of the produce
 
  
 the household of mars
  
 that apple plank is the standard of the forest
 the bat’s head was like milk in the furnace
  
 the winter seed is the diamond of the cacao
 losing a worm to look for a wheel
  
 that normal eye in the chair
 the coin and that seventh myriad
  
 my sleeping head swims
 we are in the stomach of the goat’s raspberry
  
 the shadow rabbit is the coil of the present
 winning at the battleship game
 

bio/graf J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poetry has appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). His first full-length collection, entitled In Ghostly Onehead, is slated for a 2021 release by mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. His work has recently appeared in E·ratio, Otoliths, BlazeVOX, and Word For/Word. Visit www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Colorado

Division Street

This poem is for Autism Awareness month, which is in April each year.

Link to the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network with more information.

Division Street

A street divides her thoughts from her lips,

I see my reflection in the puddle of her eyes;

Still innocent to the decorated world around her,

Averting the sunshine of the faces in her skies.

Her smile shines on her colorful creations,

Her imagination holds the key to wonderland,

She cradles the many characters with care —

So please, imagine holding me in your hand.

Hush my sweet baby, I’ll sing you a lullaby,

Dream, I dream of the day we sing your song;

Hush my sweet baby, I’ll sing you a lullaby,

Dream, dream of the day we sing your song.

Her sweet, sweet hum echoes into my heart

As exploration takes her from dolls to doors,

From goldfish to gates, from swings to the stars,

Taking big, big steps gazing up from the floor.

The street which divides narrows each day

As moments of connection draw us closer,

And the song of our voices begin to harmonize,

So one day, we will cross that street together!