Van Gogh

There’s a man who looks like Van Gogh cartwheeling through the sky again.
I said what brings you here.
He said I get bored in heaven sometimes.
Everything is taken care of.
All the chocolates, all the paints,
all the books, nothing on TV of course.
I want to come closer to all the scurrying people.
Rushing quickly as though they could outrun death.
I used to take all day to feel what the peasants felt.
What the crows were cawing at.
Life was simpler then but still so hard.
I knew someday I’d make a living but I didn’t live to see that day.
If you knew Vincent, why?
Knowing and actually seeing for your own eyes,
Its such a chasm.
No it’s more than that.
I was lonely. The colors I made.
red yellow blue
became orange green purple
I could make one color disappear into another.
It was seamless.
I thought my loneliness was like that.
Some other feeling would mix with it and I’d have serenity.
But my palette was a little short.
I don’t know. It goes sometimes like that.
I made good use of my time.
I’ve had a long time in Heaven.
Vincent, are you saying this to make me feel better?
Well, yes and no.
I wanted to know the Earth more.
So I come down on the biggest playground slide God ever made and look at life each week.
Once a week I feel everything on Earth as thought I were still human, more than spirit.
I used to come down every night. Now once a week is all I can take.
The 20th Century was more than I could bare.
We look at you from Heaven.
You’re living in Guernica. Picasso agrees.
We thought you’d learn from the Inquisition, the many Joan of Arcs we don’t know about.
We thought you’d become peaceful.
When I say you I mean your species.
He spat the word and I knew exactly what he meant.
World War Two
We were dead so we went to the camps to say prayers for our breathren.
There are people who refused to go back to Heaven for a few years after seeing what went on there.
They painted shrouds.
They painted landscapes inside their eyelids.
Many went crazy.
Heaven is not just cotton candy clouds, harps and angels.
We watch you.
Yep, you are our movie of the week.
We don’t want you more than once a week.
Even the dead need peace now and then.
I said Vincent, did you ever find love?
There was this day the print in my favorite book began to dance with me. I took it for love.
There was this day I heard the music the birds sang and I became a bird but more I became music.
There were many days.
Yes that love I found.
Suddenly I said Vincent
Are you my guardian artist?
He said yes.
He said all I needed to know.

(From the chapbook Praha and the Poet (2006)

Ellyn Maybe has performed her poetry all over the country, including Bumbershoot,the Poetry Project, the New School, Taos Poetry Circus, South by Southwest, Lollapalooza, Albuquerque Poetry Festival and Seattle Poetry Festival. She has also read in Europe at the Bristol Poetry Festival, on the BBC, and in poetry slams and readings in Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Stuttgart. She opened the MTV Spoken Wurd Tour in Los Angeles. In addition, she has also read at USC, UCLA, CSUN and Cal State Fullerton, among other colleges. Writer’s Digest named her one of ten poets to watch in the new millennium. Her work has been included in many anthologies, including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution, Poetry Slam, Another City: Writing From Los Angeles, Poetry Nation, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and American Poetry: The Next Generation. She was on the 1998 and 1999 Venice Beach Slam teams. She was seen reading her work in Michael Radford’s (Il Postino) film Dancing at the Blue Iguana.

http://ellynmaybe.com/

A Poet in your Age

What secret do you hide where others touch,
what part of me do you grant at all hours,
how much am I the flower in your flesh?

What could I give or take without your gift,
how much of you is given when I touch,
or hands that touched before how much?

Away from me what hands can touch,
who enters now with arms or hands,
what space in you is still untouched?

Cry up tensions teased from flesh,
guard for me nothing that can’t be kept,
give to me nothing but what I show,

summon meaning with your effort,
tell me nothing I have heard but know.

Mark Chandos has spent his life in contemplation of poetry. His present work is a result of a profound dissatisfaction with current poetic trend. There is no market for modern poetry and there are no poets known to the man on the street. There are no legitimate, authoritative personalities in the Poetry of our time. Poetry, in effect is invisible in the modern world.

Mark Chandos has found the source of our alienation of language. Modern men live under the shadow of a secret and superior language in our culture: the secret language of occult science. By exposure of this subversive language he discovers a means to overcome its debilitating influence on the modern vernacular English. Further, Chandos has identified that story is no longer a means to translate our highest human concepts. The specialized Western sciences do not contain human stories, they contain only specialized words that chase their own tail. Consequently, he has written a philosophy to correct the defective nature of modern Western perception: Story Theory. Story Theory has identified all the alien themes of Western literature – seldom recognized by Western society. The philosophy, though a separate achievement, introduces each of his books of poems. He has written a severe epic poem to unite all his concepts in a story of value and importance, that once again, poses the question: What is man?

http://www.markchandos.com/

Ballets

An artist admiring intently, for days without sleep, a painting of the Holy Family eventually identifies himself with Christ on the cross.

In one of his opium dreams, the sleeping choreographer meets an angel who introduces him to other dancers already resident in ballet heaven.To initiate him into their different world, the other dancers imitate poorly his signature moves.

Two children of quarreling farmers meet at school and fall in love, necessarily leaving their homes, though underage. They secretly board a barge heading downstream, hiding beneath sacks of grain harvested from their families’ farms. When it sinks, they die.

The spook of a murdered woman returns to dance with her husband, who, in honor of the occasion, suddenly appears twenty years younger.

When a pilot who dies in an ocean crash returns to his fiancee as a ghost, she agrees to follow him to his submarine cave, where they are wed. Consummation becomes impossible, given their inhabiting different realms, until she too becomes a ghost and an infant is born.

Thanks to effects possible with videotape, we see on the small screen a man, obviously exhausted, continually climbing upwards to heaven and repeatedly passing a sign marked only with an infinity symbol.

Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz’s work in several fields appear in various editions of Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Directory of American Scholars, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in American Art, NNDB.com, Wikipedia.com, and Britannica.com, among other distinguished directories. Otherwise, he survives in New York, where he was born, unemployed and thus overworked.

http://www.richardkostelanetz.com/

Rabbit Punch

All three following images from Rabbit Punch

The History of Lightning

details from The History of Lightning

Details from The History of Lightning continued

Titanik Ink

Titanik Details

Titanik continued

The Tempest

Tempest Details

Carnival of Curiosities

Ophelia

David Delamare was born in Leicester, UK but lives in the U.S. His paintings have appeared on numerous book and album covers, in television programs and in films. He produced concept work for Warner Bros. Animated Features and Francis Ford Coppola, and designed sets for the American premier of Trevor Nunn’s Peter Pan.

Delamare paintings have been purchased by museums and appear regularly in the prestigious juried annual Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art.

Delamare has illustrated ten books: a retrospective, eight children’s titles (one a collaboration with singer Carly Simon) and an adult alphabet book. As a writer, he adapted one fairy tale, produced two original children’s books, and co-wrote Animerotics: A Forbidden Cabaret in 26 Acts.

His artwork decorates the walls of a dessert parlor in Singapore and a beachfront restaurant in the Hamptons.

Currently David Delamare is working on four new illustrated books, including a unique version of Alice in Wonderland. He is also composing music, and working with his publisher and partner Wendy Ice to produce his first music videos.

For more information on his work please see: http://www.daviddelamare.com

The Arsonist

Christopher Carrion Rising

Clive Barker best known for bringing the world Hellraiser and Candyman has gained acclaim for his work as an author and director. His work dealing largely with fantasy and horror has delighted fans for years. Barker’s creations as a visual artist are every bit as delightfully dark as his writings. These and other examples of his artistic renderings can be found at http://clivebarker.deviantart.com/.

http://www.clivebarker.info/

Home, Sweet Home

A mouse in its nest inside a moose skull
     looks up at miniature icicles
          dangling from cracks in the bone
     above her head,
Silver icicles inside a moose skull
     as darkness falls
          and the cold wind howls
     while the mouse feels
          safe and warm —
     home, sweet home.
But one night she froze
     and come spring
          there was a mouse skull
     inside a moose skull
          and inside the mouse skull
A spider spun a web
     and lived all spring —
          home, sweet home,
     and when it died
A tiny mite moved in
     inside where the spider’s brain was
          and lived all summer —
     home, sweet home,
          before it died,
So there was a skull in a skull in a skull in a skull
     causing a poet’s brain in its skull to think
          isn’t the Earth in the Sun’s skull
     the way his poems
          are in his head?
And the Sun in the Galaxy’s skull
     and the Galaxy in the Universe’s skull
          and the Universe in the Big Bang’s skull
     and the Big Bang in Eternity’s skull
          and Eternity in Infinity’s skull and . . .
Home, sweet home.

Former poet laureate of Milwaukee, Antler, is author of Factory (City Lights), Last Words (Ballantine), Selected Poems (Soft Skull) and Exclamation Points ad Infinitum! (Centennial Press). His poems also appear in the anthologies Poets Against the War, Best Gay Poetry 2008, Working Words, In the Spirit of T’ao Ch’ien and Comeback Wolves: Welcoming the Wolf Home. When not wildernessing or traveling to perform his poems, he lives in Milwaukee with his longtime camerado, poet Jeff Poniewaz. For more info, photos, poems, check out his website: www.antlerpoet.net.

Fall

A tender swelling comes at the still

Heart of things when petals lose

Their too-lighted life and fall,

Failing at their grasping, all

Swoon fading.

I watched, too,

The dimming of you, upbraided by

A vein, a flinty core, when blue was expected,

All bright winds, possibly a rising moon,

Possibly a too-near sun.

Tell me

Were we bettered by the sky or

Only impatient of patterns? Does

A petal matter at all hours or only

In a brimming darkness where you

Hear no fall, see no lost blush?

 
Gabrielle McIntire is an Associate professor of English Literature at Queen’s University, Canada. She is the author of Modernism, Memory and Desire: T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and her poetry and articles have appeared in journals and collections in England, France, Canada, and the United States. She has also written a novel that is currently in search of an agent.

Gerard Schaefer

GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN

I was at Belle Glade Correctional Institution in Florida visiting the great serial killer and sex beast author G. J. Schaeffer.

Who, upon first inspection seemed quiet and unassuming and nice enough, if even rather nerdish.

I told him I liked his story Spring Break,  the one about the guy who ends up murdering a wealthy high-class college student and that I too had felt that way at some time or another.

What I meant was that I too had felt a meandering dislike for the rich and bitchy.

But he did not take it that way.

He answered ” Oh so, you too have murder in your heart eh?”

His ghoulish smile, laced with an all-knowing creepy resonance left no doubt in my mind

that his heart had blacker spots in its depth than I could ever hope to fathom.

Justice Howard

World renowned photographer Justice Howard’s work has appeared in over 50 hardcover books and thousands of magazines internationally including French Vogue, Cosmopolitan, People, Newsweek, Jane, In Touch Weekly and Skin Two. Howard’s work has been exhibited at more than 60 galleries as well as many museums across the U.S. and Europe. 64 of the rooms in the upscale Lord Balfour Hotel in South Beach, Florida contain 30 foot wall murals of her art. The Tattoo Bar in Washington, DC also displays 30 of her pieces in 6 foot light boxes. Marilyn Manson, Billy Idol, Dave Navarro, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Dick Dale have all also spent time in front of Howard’s lens. Her subjects read like an “artistic wish list”. Nominated as one of the top 10 tattoo photographers, she has been compared to Annie Liebowitz and Herb Ritts and is often referred to as “the female Helmut Newton.”

http://justicehoward.com/
http://spattergasm.com/

Mourning Missed (temporary sanity)

I’m a stray bullet
a falling star
the long, cold winter
that makes you starve

your stigmata that begs to bleed
if you truly care, then suffer me

it’s suicide to be so loved
it’s such a tragedy…

you’re everything I’m not
everything I need
a soul that can’t be bought
temporary sanity

when love comes like a thief in the night
would you suffer me?
star crossed lust mixed with lies
would you suffer me?

I’m God’s mistake
the mourning missed
the cold steel razor
across your wrist

the sadistic haunting that never leaves
if you truly care, then suffer me

would you die to be so loved
it’s such a tragedy…

you’re everything I’ve lost
everything I’ve dreamt
all that I could ever want
temporary sanity

just like a car crash, just like a knife
would you suffer me?
blood, sweat and tears sacrificed
you will suffer me

Tug of War

He feels her slip away
pulls her closer
desperate to hinder
the chance of change

Lori A. May is the author of four books, including The Low-Residency MFA Handbook: A Guide for Prospective Creative Writing Students (Continuum, 2011). Her work has appeared in publications such as Passages North, Hippocampus Magazine, and qarrtsiluni. Canadian by birth and disposition, she now calls Michigan home. www.loriamay.com