A girl we used to know on a beach, the former beach bunny
Carol Andersen was her name, and we knew she hated fishing.
When young she had all the old perverts with tongues wagging,
from Port Macquarie and everywhere else she said she was from.
She was a lost soul, yet who would ever really know?
She was a beach poet, with hearts in sand, and blades hidden in the castles.
She wasn't the only one, many young, many too young for the button-down Bukowski blokes that looked at a woman and never wondered more than what they could provide them.
A painfully shy star bred from the Tropic of Cancer, and often reading the "The Great Gatsby" by the waves, trying to avoid the invasions.
Remember Carol Andersen, confused, quiet with a debilitating grasp of heart, can she trust the creeping shadow bearing gifts?
Unknown followers in flower shops, tying themselves to her lips.
They gaze at her hips. And they slide away into a beach wave and smile.
Over a martini she hides in. In the prayers she fades away in.
They glance over her cup, to watch if she drops a sip.
Rebellious longers, siphon the gasoline, attend the beer festivals, joining Ponzi schemes, and use her for amusement.
I was held away from the spine of her book. Her name and image to my heart. I would bleed my prayers over candlelight hoping for her hand's touch.
Carol was here, in the sand, a shy smile, a flirtatious smile.
Then she went away. So now I’m hunting Bukowskis down with bottle cap bitten teeth and long mopped hair.
They all want to be the respected, unkempt island scholar. I can read their fake identities and watch them slide into caves and braid their sociopathic caskets.
The beach hops with sounds of bells, melted metal, and smells like Sour Mash Bourbon and shoes that have plastered manure soles.
Hard Rain Poetry Anthology U.S. Link https://tinyurl.com/2p938cy8 International links on this page.
https://feversofthemind.com/2022/06/23/hard-rain-poetry-forever-dylan-anthology-available-today/Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey WrenPoetry from David L O’Nan in the Famous Poetry Outlaws are Painting Walls and WhispersCurrent bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.
For KSL
You sit in the corner of my room
Beside my bed
Your sweet blue eyes sing a mournful song
Our song
The nightingale sings a song too
It’s about you but I can’t hear the words
I ask you to slow down
You ask me to keep up
We tumble through our little lives
Like the roller coaster full
Of falling down and rising up
We find love at every station
Along the way
To listen to speak
To stretch beyond imagining
To find the time to have a beer
To tell the storm to go away and
Leave us alone
Cabaret
The Weimer Republic began in the midst of several major movements in the fine arts. German Expressionism had begun before World War I and continued to have a strong influence throughout the 1920s. A sophisticated, innovative culture developed in and around Berlin, including highly developed architecture and design (Bauhaus), a variety of literature (Doblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz), film (Dietrich Der blaue Engel), painting (Grosz), and music (Brecht and Weill, The Threepenny Opera), criticism, philosophy/psychology (Jung) and fashion. This culture was often considered to be decadent and socially disruptive. The mystical arts also experienced a revival during this time in Berlin with astrology, the occult and the esoteric.
it was a rainy sunny moody day typical of the neglected mouldy muddled heart of the artichoke the entrée the layers and layers of dinnertime gastronomy
they could not find the dressing that filled the spaces dressed their lives smothered their faith with herbs and fetta folly
she was sitting right here beside her woman
they sat at dinner demure
their eyes smelt garlicy lusty
should they leave the table
that is sodden with goodness
get out before the mass
avoid the confessional
clutch their starving hearts frolic naked in the herb garden smell the basil the thyme place rosemary garlands in their hair suck the undergrowth read banned books joyful forbidden lesbian sex
commit mortal sin scatter dead flowers smother the fainting night while taking a bow with Marie Magdalene
slide down their river ride
over and over
and over again
The Foetus
I noticed the familiar boy sitting outside the pharmacy – actually between the pharmacy and Woolworths. I could see that he walked that fine fucking line between life and death – that delicately fine line, a whisper, a tiny breath, a riddle, a question. Walk the line with your head held high, slice the pandemonium, check the mirror, check the corner, the cops are on the prowl.
Sebastian supposed the day disappearing around him
he could head back home to the helter skelter shelter
it was a very long walk and he had no shoes no coat
no money for fun
a twenty would get him through the night
into the morning
without having to endure the blustering confrontation of the boys next door
they came in handy sometimes when he was feeling horny or hungry or both
He wanted to see his mother
soak in a warm bath,
slip into clean sheets and
smell the summer jasmine outside the window
relaxed with lace and silk
he wanted to be welcomed not turned away
for his filth and neglect
not reminded of his unfinished PhD
He wanted to sleep like a foetus
floating inside a dream balloon
to be called down for breakfast
to cut some jasmine for the table
to sing the song of eternity
beside Bach or Bartok his old friends
paint his mural on the gallery wall
write the haiku for the old church
remembering the floating arc that spoke in whispers
and made sure he was naked in his ministry to god men
he wanted to ride his dirt bike down the track
and roar into the river
Finishing the weed, he fell into bed with impotent Fred, to dream the river, the jasmine, of finding the twenty for tomorrow and of the next pandemonium.
The Dinner Party
The baguette fell from the table
it hesitated for a while
rolled back and forth
the parmesan chunk toppled quickly
the Chateau Cantemerle
teetered
then exploded like an unpinned hand grenade
spewing its red lips into your black velvet
your constancy, your composure now exposed
the dinner party fills with absurdity
like the laughing giggles treading the grapes
the stylish carafes waiting to be served
the Bruegel falling off the prison wall
the grape vines
the mighty terroir
mother earth singing her cantata
accompanied by the voice of god
the scramble for folly fills the room
nakedness bursts through veils of constraint
card tables are upturned revealing the queens
dogs go mad
howling hooting at the moon
your mouth remembers the smell of the forest
remembers the taste of the undergrowth
the funeral car rings the bells of delight
Another Silent Vision
You wear the face of your skeletal mess
The scab on the edge of my face itches
I wear my pain of broken and shattered
Your wear the face of innocence
My cuts
my bruises
my eyes itch
they are healing now
they are calling you
black and blue and yellow
the surgeon’s careful lines of repair
will hold my eyes in place
you will take those stitches
and throw them away
my memory too
my scantily dressed hope
you will turn on the gaslight and furtive away
Bio: Jay Maria Simpson was born in Sydney, Australia. She worked as an English, Drama and Music Teacher for many years in schools, TAFE and the University of Newcastle. Jay has been a writer all her life. She moved to Perth, Western Australia in 2011 following a personal tragedy. It was then that her poetry exploded. In her poetry she explores reality, change, sorrow, sex, anger, love, escape and memory. Jay pushes the boundaries in her writing. She often writes from a dangerous, fearful place where you will find raw honesty. Her poems might also dance in a happy sexual fairy garden. There is no pretension. Jay loves poetry, art, music, satire and black comedy. She also loves reading poetry publicly. She is not a fan of Zoom.
She is the Creative Director and Author at 'Living Dangerously'.
https://livingdangerously618190523.wordpress.com/2021/12/21/poetry/
for Robert Aaron Salinas
Little Brother
I know you didn’t ask for an
Essay on poetry
But the mouse in my pantry
Needs exterminating
And we won’t do it—
Mom raised us with clean hands if nothing else—
Great poets would strain to describe that fur of
Protruding gray,
A color that, like poetry, becomes the
Word & little else—
You didn’t ask to sleep on my
Inherited couch, that velvet Panzer, trooper,
But Pops gave us a broad back if nothing else—
Things will start to change soon,
I feel it in my verse
Which is to say
A career balancing the innards of my skull
And when you send your pieces to review
I judge them not by punctuation or clarity
But rather how related our creature is
In a different house of bones—
Little Brother
The right lines are hard to come by
If one reads incessantly with sharpened preferences
And this game of penchants isn’t for everyone
But the next time you visit
When 2017 is a faint dream
I promise you’ll fall asleep on brand-new cushions
For a bed of roses cuts it only on the page.
Bio: Alex Z. Salinas is the author of poetry collections WARBLES and DREAMT, or The Lingering Phantoms of Equinox. He is also the author of a book of stories, City Lights From the Upside Down. His third collection of poems, Hispanic Sonnets, is forthcoming through FlowerSong Press. He holds an M.A. in English Literature and Language from St. Mary’s University, and lives in San Antonio, Texas.
The juveniles gathered around your blinds
They studied your silhouette to memory
Dancing like Ann-Margret around the room
The candles burning around a 1985 waterbed.
On New York city nights
one of the college boys in the alley
Looking for a clue and a view
You'd walk out slightly drunk,
smiling at crowds of boys
with eyes that were up to no good.
Riding a green bicycle to the Jackson Hole
your scent of sweet cigarette smoke and perfume,
leads the path to a perfect follow
Maybe I will come down and have a drink
While you chat about the news to some hipster folks
I see you flirting with them all.
Everyone laughs until we bruise
my heart just jumps like a petrified fish.
I have to walk by and say a hello
Although, there were more handsome faces in the shadows.
I hope to at least be more hypnotic than the stained spoons -
in this diner.
You say "I am Tessa, but I believe you already know that"
I introduced myself, she said "I've always liked your artsy hat"
We drank coffee 'til our stomachs bled.
And I was as shy as a detached bubble.
You carried the conversations, lead my hand
Picking flowers out of the cracked sidewalks near Brooklyn
Lead my hand, as we joined silhouettes
As the other jealous hustlers sat in the rain.
Lead my hand, through other diners with scent of burnt coffee.
Drinking our time away we would be catty, flirty & bitchy
Tessa, you really enhanced my greed and need
In nights I swayed with you
Nights we cried into each other's chest
Nights we drugged ourselves to nightmares
Nights we laughed until the extra strangers left
Now, in New York here I am
Long distances between the walks in all the boroughs
All the pigeons, drink at cold waters
the Statue of Liberty looks plagued.
Since my needs are old
When you lead my hand, to the bars
You lead my hand, by all the Harlem diamondbacks
You lead my hand, to you breathing your last breath -
on the back of my neck.
You lived your life for many,
but to yourself you hid away all your suicides.
Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren
Hard Rain Poetry Anthology U.S. Link https://tinyurl.com/2p938cy8
International links on this page. https://feversofthemind.com/2022/06/23/hard-rain-poetry-forever-dylan-anthology-available-today/Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.
Fevers of the Mind 