Red Peter
November 2008
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Contents:
Seven Poems – David McLean page 3
Three Poems – Felino Soriano page 8
Three Poems – Karl Koweski page 10
Two Poems – Howie Good page 15
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Seven Poems - David McLean
# animals that move
animals that move can smell the world turning
and they accept it as everything feeding them
and nothing, a void entirely empty of the meanings
that molest us, that touch us tremulous as uncertain
priests or amateurish perverts. animals are predators
not murderers, except the ones who are meat
and made of dreams, that the lion might lie down
with the lamb forgetting his every sexuality
and pretending to be that what he is not -
that is what is evil, not his rending claws
and terrible teeth, not his reasons -
evil is placidity is what he feeds on
# medicine and psychiatry
medicine is still regulation
and punishment. even the pills
that discipline these unruly
bodies to forget their arrogant
self-assertive sin by being loveless
nothing a while, since salvation
is exercise and mindless diversion,
'til a patient reaches those peaks
of normalcy and purity
when she is anyone, just a cunt
on the market, a cretin who believes
that even these regulators, even the
hamster masters of this new society,
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this fraternal patriarchy of dickless rapists
and faithless saviors, that even these demons
know how to feel, that even they dream
# capricious god
night is a capricious god who devises life's
brutal devices, clawed fingers raking Sheol's dust
into tasty piles for these dry skulls to munch
when we decide to be that nothing
stored in piles of time and platitudinous
murders, psychopaths who bore their victims
dead with plastic axes.
the ravens on the god's sloping shoulders
are blind too, but lie so convincingly to him,
easy, they say, for he is but an idiot
and the muscles and thews of his love
bind him tight to our tortured bodies
for through us flow his orgasms
and only in our shattered hearts
can he mourn himself, this god
this self-pitying idiot, but we let him
do it, being benign
nit-wits
# ship of fools
the benches in this ship drunkenness
and delirium are wet with blood and fervent
sweat, they are ecstasy and our fingers
around the oars are empty as mourning,
they weigh nothing against the twisted
oars that tear the sea of normalcy we leave
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like sound that replaces the cathedral quiet
of life, the sinful catechism is a tool for heroes,
heroines, and murderers, we love to see
exhilarated children slashing the flabby
throats of policemen and other criminals,
priests, psychiatrists and other pedophiles,
so that madness may be a throaty hopeless
orgasm burning murder in the night -
a lot of deaths we need to dream today
in the name of life
# overpopulation
flakes of sky fall free above me
and turning float through the earth
we are, they are forgetful
of their night time duties but
heaven is still written over them
largely untruthful text that
promises forgiveness though no
absolution is proffered or
required, nothing judges
or is judged but
each iterated
judgment,
the crass obligation of
elective rejection
when we tear ourselves to pieces
because we do not believe
lies that never convinced children,
about sin and the pristine
hungering penis, totem
and fetish best wielded
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as weapon, swallowing god's
lead itself in all its blissful
nihilism, death's sweaty friend
that toils in the flesh-trench
until he vomits, spits his truth
in gobbets of bitter
oblivion, smaller and less deadly
than machine guns, but self-cleansing
and self-replicating, much less
deafening, they have germ
warfare as a less user-friendly and
secondary application,
and even serve an anorexic a tasty low-calorie
luncheon, they fulfill thus efficiently
so many functions,
though we forget them and us
in the self-serving categories
of selective affection,
wherein we apply these fuckers as undercover
weapons in orgiastic murderous hecatombs
and the womb's roomy suicide that fells night
tonight, the billion little death's that fill world
and earth with all this psychotic life -
it's not very nice
# of a stupid seminar
it was terrible he said that i stood there shaved head dressed all in black
and raped Descartes with the utilized resources of feminist object
relations theory because this was either a strap-on or a form of
psychoanalysis and Descartes had not read even Freud and i stood
there at a loss to see how my critique had been answered and damn it! i
was rapidly losing my erection Descartes could not give me head he was
obviously very dead had apparently even lost his unpleasant smell
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#bye-bye, smelly signifier
the signifier is no smelly fleshy phallus
today, but a nice plastic strap-on -
vampires and zombies are my fantasies
and good at chasing away angels
and nightmares. god does not care,
and that is fine by me. neither of us
is here, neither of us exists or is real.
mankind too, we forgot how to be lonely,
we have no reality to share. reason
is still all it means to us, all it seems -
just shit - too many memories
to forget, too many orgasms,
too many deaths
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Three Poems – Felino Soriano
Ceiling
Surface clarity upon resting silence.
Dangling construction bouncing
light shadow breezes back
into the origin of surrounding
hypothetical nuances. Collection noises
rumble distanced from peered
stillness, randomly allocated along
the distinguished homes,
circa meditation within outer
destruction. Forecasted overcast
blankets the preoccupied vellum
already covering existential exaggeration.
Essence of Self Denial
Late the climate change effectual happenstance
or predetermined motive understood
beneath ledges of verbalized worldly
opining. Said of essence peel its opening
layer delicate blend the visual with prior
night's dream connotation. Preference
width layer next advancing nicely perhaps
reflectional toward self sacrifice of prior
once. Walls surrounding apprehension
a denial to progress a denial of simplistic
hands to shape future monochromatic tomorrows.
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Movement Forgotten
Verbatim wind repeats its solitude
dragging alerted crawl hitherto
among the most impressive of invisible
beings, temperature cast about
net to gather flutter, conversational
data, the leaf of a cliché. Spirals
roam in the walk along sequence
of side sliding era becoming day ahead's
forgotten footprint.
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Three Poems – Karl Koweski
Brewster and Georgie
he calls it staph infection
the livid red camel hump
jutting off his lower jaw
like a pimple of Biblical
proportions
but I call it Georgie
and pretend it is his
twin brother unfortunately
absorbed into his face during
the last trimester of
his mother’s pregnancy
Brewster tries to keep Georgie
sequestered under a monkey
pile of pus-stained bandages
he refers to it often
yet refuses to imbue Georgie
with personality traits or
acknowledge Georgie’s needs
take the bandages off,
I tell Brewster
(I can’t tell Georgie
to take the bandages off
for Georgie possesses no
opposable thumb)
you’re stifling Georgie
he needs to run free
and breathe the air you
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so selfishly take for granted
but Brewster keeps Georgie hidden
as well as you can keep a
golf ball sized protuberance
on your face hidden
in the bathroom at work
when Brewster thinks he’s alone
he uncovers Georgie and
squeezes him mercilessly
you can hear Georgie’s
tortured screams and
Brewster’s contented sighs
when he leaves the bathroom
it looks as if they’ve
both been crying
Brewster says Georgie
is going away and won’t be back
the miracles of modern medicine
confounding imperfections
regardless of how beneficial
but I know Georgie
is only a dirty needle away
awaiting his glorious return
I imagine Brewster and Georgie
together again
a crimson and ivory tandem
for the leprous set
I imagine Brewster and Georgie
fighting crime
exchanging witty banter
and viscous fluids
I imagine Brewster and Georgie
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in an existential love story
exchanging passionate endearments
and bodily fluids
but Brewster imagines himself
free of Georgie, free of
the unwanted stares and
whispered jokes
no cop partner
no clinging lover
pulsating off his lower jaw
hanging on his every word
a captive audience
to Brewster’s shame
Cold Cash
if I were to paint Jordan
I’d daub watercolors on silk
to soften her skin
and ease her edges
I would paint Jordan
with her back to me
the curvature of her spine
dividing the words
COLD CASH
tattooed above her ass
in Jordan’s painting
she would regard me
from over her shoulder
with eyes like
two untenanted portions
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of space/time
I’d whisper my fingers
down the smooth horizon
of her watercolor hips
and recite the days
until the arrival of
my unemployment check
Sunrise
mom’s brains omeleted across
the breakfast table
body slouched in the chair
her head an empty cereal bowl
the gun’s in my hand
with the sense memory
of a pulled trigger
and mom’s dead
somehow it all ties in together
and I’m the knot
I sit in the chair across
I take the phone and dial 911
and tell them what I’ve done
mother’s blood seeps
into my shirt and jeans
wets my back and ass
I think how many times
we’ve sat at this table
me and her against the world
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how she’d do anything for me
work two jobs so that
Christmas wouldn’t be lacking
and then I think how
she was before I shot her
how she wouldn’t piss
down my throat if my
guts were on fire
well, my guts are on fire
and all I needed
was twenty dollars
to ease the inferno inside me
twenty fucking dollars
to get me to the end of the day
and just thinking about it
gets me angry all over again
and I tell the cops
when they come for me
better come armed
and loaded for bear
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Two Poems – Howie Good
Almost Home
Wait a minute. This is not my home.
I began much – the whirlwind,
the world whirlwind,
carried me and my work away.
Whose house is this? What street is this?
Hello. Is there anybody in the room?
I can’t sleep. Too dark. . . too light.
I am seeing things you know nothing of.
It isn’t so bad. Just a little dreamy anxiety,
which world you’re really in, that’s all.
Oh look,
see how the cherry blossoms fall mutely.
What does it signify?
How much longer will it last?
Four o’clock. How strange.
So that is time. Strange.
Hold me in your arms.
Time is short. Agony grows.
Hope lessens.
Softly, quite softly.
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Ungrateful Traitors
Twenty-seven letters! What is the use?
This subject is too much for me.
Everything has gone wrong, my girl.
The play is finished. The chariots and the horses!
I am not able to explain myself.
Don’t let the awkward squad fire over me.
Don’t let the children forget me.
Don’t sole the dead man’s shoes yet.
Nothing matters. Nothing matters.
Sing to me, if you have the heart.
Note: These poems are assembled from death-bed sayings attributed to
John Abernethy, Miguel de Cervantes, William Cowper, James M.
Barrie, Rupert Brooke, Pope Alexander VI, Ludovico Ariosto, Jacques
David, William Cullen Bryant, Draza Mihailovoic, Joseph Pulitzer, Sir
Charles Bell, Henry Morton Stanley, Victor Emmanuel II, Hideko Tojo,
William Allingham, Warren G. Harding, Stephen Crane, Sir William
Parry, Louis B. Mayer, Paul Verlaine, Sir Horace Mann, Irving Thalberg,
Louis Agassiz, Robert Burns, Arnold Bennett, Frederic Bastiat, Edmund
Clarence Stedman, William Eyton Tooke, and Tommaso Masanieollo.
They are part of a series of poems titled “Last Words.”
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