Contact Of An Angel’s Hand

Felt the slight contact of an angel’s hand
While lost and alone in a pitch-black night
Life is a windstorm blowing in the sand

Trail can be hard to walk or even stand
When lost in the dark with no guiding light
Felt the slight contact of an angel’s hand

Sometimes the signs are hard to understand
With most of the answers hidden from sight
Life is a windstorm blowing in the sand

This mysterious globe is an island.
When the stars winked in response to this plight
Felt the slight contact of an angel’s hand

Blowing fields of grass cannot see one strand
The great herds can block the message from sight
Life is a windstorm blowing in the sand

As beacons throb from high above the land
The secret pathways are hidden from sight
Felt the slight contact of an angel’s hand
Life is a windstorm blowing in the sand

While Denny E. Marshall has had art, poetry, fiction or articles recently published and rejected. Recent credits include poetry in Scifaikuest and art in Carnival and Dreams & Nightmares. Denny does not have a Facebook page or Twitter account but does have a website with previously published works. http://www.dennymarshall.com/

The Corner of Desolation and Waste

Rundown like the toothless gums

of an apple doll left under a tree

last Christmas and missed until

Easter, the Veteran’s Hall stands,

a gray bunker of square brick, some

of the windows blocked off, no sign

of life and no cars outside…the men

who come here to ruminate and

reminisce are the old ones; only

their baseball caps or the odd patch

on a jacket gives you an idea of

what they would talk about –

if the words that populated their

nightmares would come forth to

the living in daylight and heal them.

The only time I saw my grandfather

without his walker was when he

hobbled his way to the counter

to get coffee, probably made during

the very same war he was in, with

powdered creamer that stayed stuck

to the stick like unbrushed teeth.

He’d smile and chat on the way,

methodically turn the black to

skin-colored beige with the focus

of a neurosurgeon, then chat

on the way back, to fall into

his favorite chair, sip and think,

until I helped him home for supper.

I came most days for a while to visit.  My

grandfather was always in the same

chair.  I never had to scan the sadness

or smell that peculiar smell of old

for very long.  And when we’d go home

until tomorrow, we’d think without words

that we both hoped the same men

would be there, because to think

any other way would be so horrible,

you might as well be back in the war.

Tobi Cogswell is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. Credits include or are forthcoming in various journals in the US, UK, Sweden and Australia. Her fifth and latest chapbook is Lit Up, (Kindred Spirit Press). She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.sprreview.com).

Ashes and Pause

Beckett was a fraud.

No style.

Know nothing.

No nourishment.

No company. No tenants. No money.

No obligation. No art. No mention. No hero.

No No.

No defense from shadow as an ally

By calling a bomb darkness or Blake

Or an impulse

Soot as imprint and blood

You shit on the floor

Because it takes your mumbling

Causeway to a cracked tooth

When you wander or sleep in an agenda

That door opening and closing in the dark

Without fingers or wind

Again and again

Anger in light

Scratched record in the dance music

Old voice in acetate

Scratched dissolution

…A knife… A knife… A knife…

A butcher in the radius

An attack by a ghost whose entire body is also a fraud

Can become anything it wants to

When its skin comes off

Written in the language of bread as if it were a bed

Gathering evil as a shimmer in the static—

You were upset long before meeting Joyce.

Inappropriate laughter beneath the floor

A little tremor with a sailboat

And a clean wound

Read the history backwards

As an unfamiliar culture

Until it is interior in pieces

Back before embracing failure and sketch

To where Dublin was impervious

And could only be attacked by its preservation.

Tripwire in the imaginary sand with contempt

Breaking all those bones in a lion

As if it were a metaphor inside ambition

No hero. No woman could wait that long.

No way back. Say goodbye.

Perfect tits

Cannibal in a mirage in Braille

Erasing one bullet at time

As a prayer to a target

Ashes in what takes too long to escape a mouth

Small coffin with big nails

It’s all mist longing for magic

J.J. Blickstein is a poet and former editor/publisher of Hunger Magazine & Press. Works as freelance copy editor, student and teacher of Chinese internal martial arts, and Tui Na (Accupressure) practice. Does not miss being a stone mason, loves good gin, gardening, herbal medicine, great music, art, film, a warm fire and good eats. Books in print include Barefoot on a Drawing of the Sun (Fish Drum Inc., 2006), a handmade artists’ book/CD collaboration with French painter, Jean-Claude Loubieres, titled Signs/Signe (Paris, France, 2007), Vision of Salt & Water (Bagatela Press, Mexico. 2002). In 2009, as part of a literary contingent, Blickstein journeyed to Cassis, France on a poet exchange and translation project sponsored by the Carmargo Foundation. POEM: Poets on an exchange mission (Fish Drum, Inc. 2009) is the resulting anthology. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. A new book-length manuscript or two awaits a home. He lives in Woodstock, NY.

Andrew Franck (born Andreas Franck in the United States) is a philosopher, artist and author. As a visual artist, Franck works with oil,latex and carbon on paper, mixed media and encaustic. His catalog contains over two hundred works focusing on metamorphosis in plant life, alchemy and the rhythmical aspects of negative space. His series of action art, collage, word art and assemblages entitled Two In One Eye examines physical shape, language and the decay of the art object. Franck’s larger works have been exhibited at Centerpoint Gallery and Paralux in New York City, Basilica Industria and Albert Shahinian Fine Art in Hudson N.Y. and Jio in Montreal. The newest work, Reassembling, is comprised of sixty-four blackboard diagrams illustrating the holistic imagination of Goethean science. Franck’s writings include The Transparent Bride, The Art of Porosity, Mantras and Musical Solutions, The Alchemical Circus, Excoriated Light and The Holy Bodies Circuit, Dreaming The Luminous Frontier, A Book of Dances, The Painted Trout, As Above Inside Out BelowandButohmania. He currently resides in upstate New York.

Terry Brooks is without a doubt a fantasy icon. Brooks has delighted readers throughout his career. With 23 bestsellers reaching the New York Times bestsellers list and over 21 million copies in print he is without a doubt one of the most iconic fantasy authors of our time. His original Shannara series led to the Heritage of Shannara series and the prequel First King of Shannara as well as other novels based in that land. He also penned the Magic Kingdom of Landover series and countless other titles. Terry later went on to novelize Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace and Hook. His latest work Wards of Faerie: Book 1 is part of a highly anticipated trilogy with sequels to be released every six months. His biography titled Sometimes the Magic Works proves that is often true.

http://www.terrybrooks.net/

To read more of our interview with Terry please see: Terry Brooks

(Please note this interview previously ran at The Damned Interviews, we will be saving as many of those as we can here. Thank you for reading.)

As It Were

As it were. You did not want to
be there. But you came –
I thought that nights like this
might re-ignite a flame.
Yet your eyes burned:
‘We have played with fire before’.
Cigarette light falters.
Finishes autumn. Night blooms,
a temporary death.
Prometheus. I grieve.

(From the collection Rain At Watford Junction (2012), David Stewart)

David Stewart lives in Glasgow, United Kingdom. Current pre-occupations are environmental journalism and the life and works of Ted Hughes.

Promenade in Dunlaoghaire

For Alessia

Your words sound and taste of old leather,

Like some deep wine they resonate

In my mind long after you are gone.

As I listen to their timbre

Certain geographical features of place

Become illuminated, like light

Reflected in rain-filled pools,

Or the sudden darkness of a morning forest

Which descends upon the sea-swept boulevards.

Such strange wanderings of the dispossessed,

I have seen so many of your eyes

Staring out at me through the darkness,

Like tiny pools of light, minute constellations

Of sound. Can you hear sight?

There, on those same boulevards,

I have also witnessed ships sliding off

Like rulers into the sea, their water table,

Where we too sit around and pass the salt,

The dried grains, the basalt, the hurt, the years;

Though, through the musk of your eyes, by the touch

Of your down, you can obliterate all.

In short, I succumb to your Byzantine smile,

Which helps me forestall the further catastrophes of dawn

That hang like a great sheet suspended above this city.

Peter O’Neill has been writing poetry for over 25 years now. His works deal largely with the darker subjects of sex, alcoholism, violence, greed, and death.He has lived and worked in France and enjoyed reading Baudelaire, Beckett, Rimbaud and Proust very much.Dante is also one of his great loves.

Werner Horvath has been painting since his youth. From 1969 – 1975 he worked in the style of Phantasic Realism and has since turned his style to New Constructivism. Horvath works with the idea that reality may not be so real after all and that the world we live in can be understood as constructed by ourselves. His work uses vivid color and imagery in a way that only he can do. For more than 15 years Horvath was also a chief radiologist, specializing in interventional radiology in Linz. But at the age of 50 he decided to quit his job and since this time he is living and working as an artist in Linz, Austria, and during the summer in his studio “Villa Arte” on the island of Crete (Greece).

To read our interview with Werner please see: Werner Horvath

For more examples of his work and more information please also see: The New Constructivism of Werner Horvath

Come on, let me have it
Come on down to Hell
Come on, and cum again
Just keep on cumming
And feel it swell and swell . . .

So, well, kiss the beast
All horny in the choir
Pissed on our priest
It was bliss for the liar
Notice that scent so true?

Never expected to piss on
The anointer of you . . .
And it was the night before
His Easter sermon —
His black sanctity hung on the door

As he lie in the bathtub
After picking me up at a bar
Only to offer beer after beer
Till my bladder was full
Enough to piss into his abyss

The mouth that speaks for God
Berating all to get through
To what’s been taught to stick to you —
Hung on a cross? Hung turned him on
Though no one knew . . .

Hustler of instinct, what came across
Was the priest shooting his load
For the price that I cost . . .
Calling it Holy Water
My piss splattering his cross

Oh, clergyman of ignorant booze
Convinced of cheers from his pews
Man of the cloth, drenched and nude
Through SMS, let’s spread the news
That our preacher’s collar is a ruse

For I saw as I pissed on his eager face
The very waste from which the gospel
Would fall from his licking the taste
Of urine from his lips to our disgrace

Yes, as a hustler I learned God’s truth:
That God is never found in a church
Or a baptism of fresh meat or youth . . .
No, God (oh, God) is in your heart —
Or a Goddess, but consider this a start

Innocence

As I wake up from my dream

I walk into a world of misery

Blinded souls, lost pages

It seems that this was a big mistake

The media preaches filth and destruction

Violence portrayed on the TV screen

Those with the faith simply shun it away

Until they arrive to church that following Sunday

Hey there friend, did you see the game

It’s okay, put that black book away

Humans care the less for their own religions

Everyone likes to party the day before

They’ll sin and sin again

Such a sweet taste, that a Sunday service couldn’t take away

Sinning is in our nature

It’s so hard to turn away

Can you hear the sedated when they pray

Look at the beauty

Why, she’s so lovely

I wish that I could make her mine

Look at her on the TV

With her breasts so perky

My own wife means nothing to me

She’s nothing like this goddess on the TV

Children’s minds are changing all of the time

I can only wait until this species truly ends

Our government is more corrupt than most criminals

It’s a nightmare that I’ll never wake from

An eternal pain

Eric May has always been a strange one, but finally having the freedom to create his own worlds through writing might have been one of the worst things to ever happen in the entirety of the multiverse. The landscapes that he creates are sure to entertain, mystify and question the logic of readers, who seem to have been babied by the novel industry of late. It has now become an industry quite like today’s movie industry, that has been catering books and films that are more or less rehashes of what they’ve already read or seen before.

He also doesn’t mind making them laugh for long periods of time. “Laughter is the best medicine” as they say. Eric still lives on a cattle farm (that isn’t even his) smack dab in the middle of nowhere, in Arkansas. He lives unmarried, with no children and plenty of animals. As for the prospect of love… Well, we won’t even go there. But rest assured, you’ll see plenty more of his insanely interesting tales to come in the future.