welcome to
mad swirl 's poetry forum. we have collected poetry from the maddest poets from the maddest corners of the world and have showcased them here in the forum just for you. catch the flowin' swirlin' madness from some our fellow mad ones ~ johnny olson, kirstin kestner, justin hyde, cheryl anderson, sen rivers, kenneth p. gurney & craig caudill...
I am doing what I can to be a real man.a true man
a kind man
a feeling man
a dreaming man
a baring-of-my-soul man
a whole man
a rock & rolling man
a don’t-have-to-know-everything man
a questioning man
a seeking & finding man
a peeking-thru-my-fingers man
a speaking-thru-my-actions man
a walk-the-talk man
a strong-yet-bending man
a man-with-a-plan man
a go-with-the-flow man
a show & telling man
a shuffling after man
a leading man
a behind-the-scenes man
a humble man
a rough & tumble man
a man’s man
a good man
a great man
a best man
a mate man
a sensitive man
a dad-of-a-daughter man
a true blue-eyed soul man
a man-of-many-colors man
a diverse man
a poet & painter man
a Renaissance man
a speaking-from-the-heart man
a pre-dawn praying man
a meditating man
a tolerant man
a 9-to-5 man
a trusted & trusting man
a thankful & grateful man
a living-in-the-moment man
a man-of-many-multitudes man
I am doing what I can to be a real man.
- johnny olson
(added 01.13.08)On ParadeI am an exhausted costume on parade
and the music is old and I am tired of
the avenue. I am tired of the faddish pace,
tired of wearing someone else’s face.
Yet I go on, aching on the two and four.
And then you,
an artist from out of the alley—you with
rotting tooth and scar and word-cracked
lips, you who would not hide—you paint
my secret pains on the empty canvas
of my eyes. You paint grey skulls on
my glass pupils. You put my insides in sight.
It is death you have drawn on my eyes.
I am branded Halloween.
I am left with your true tattoo.
I go on marching in this crowded
city of parading. I pass windows
with who I should be on display.
But now I know there is a glass between
the decorations and what is really me,
between who I am and what I should be.
It is a thin mirror of honesty that reflects
my skull-painted eyes, that reflects
how much I have died on the inside.
And I cannot help but realize that I
am a frighteningly dead thing on display.
I am death on parade.
- kirstin kestner
(added 01.11.08)the poemfalls from
the sky,
cracking your skull
like a load of
frozen bowel movements
discharged from a
jet-liner.
you chisel it
to the essential
with heart
and intellect.
too much intellect
and it's
straight
philosophy.
too much heart
and it limps
down the drain
with the
complete works of
mitch album.
getting it right
is a subtle
balance
essentially
devoid
of
any
discernible
merit.
- justin hyde
(added 01.10.08)Introduction:12 baktun . 19 katun . 14 tun . 14 uinal . 4kin
I am not interested
in the flights of false gods,
the carrion of magazine covers, shiny pretty toy drummers,
slick-haired, pinned-up angels whispering barely heard breath
through thick begging bangs, smoke drum machines,
thick cock guitars, pleading spotlight.
I am not interested
in well-dressed dolls, Aphrodite's discarded minstrels,
life-blood and vocals wasted on a perfectly healthy robot.
Give me a scream.
Way I see it,
we're in the end of things, the crossroads, the nether-parts
and this wheel's been turning long enough.
I knew it was a Tuesday
when I saw the Bearded One at the supermarket.
He bought a pound of flesh,
a copy of the Inquirer, a pack of Camels.
I bummed one for conversation.
As the smoke twisted his eyes
I asked him the time,
realized he was mourning it;
this nine-to-five salvation-on-the-clock gig
wasn't treating him so well.
He said:
Whatever kid you got left in there
that hasn't been entrenched in 12 month cycles,
six week report cards, state tests at 8 (no talking),
fear of next month's cramps, or fear of not having them,
Whatever kid you got that's interested
in getting out of town, riding a bus to no where
getting off in Vegas, heading west,
Whatever kid you got in your tangled hair,
your mismatched socks, your pain of abandonment,
your torn adolescence, tattered doll-friends and sad dogs:
Don't let them get interested in leaving.
There's a Time around the corner that everyone forgot,
where the sidewalk failed to recognize it was just bubble gum
below a pretense of rock,
This Time, it hides in tunnels safe from smog-sad songs
a far cry from any house of rising suns
but it's a place, none the less.
You should come.
I told him I wasn't interested
in the nightmare, I've lost friends to junk
might lose more before Christmas.
But Easter deaths are always worse.
He shook his head and said, No honey,
This is where you belong.
And he took me to the ancient workers of song,
where they'd made a shack from a home:
three twisted trees around two rusted railroad cars, confused cats
drinking wine in the yard from yellow moon-skinned bathtubs.
A broken gate-latch
lets most of our ideas out at night, he said,
but if you come out here,
away from the light, everything turns two shades more interesting.
Check out the stars, he said, the way the trees tell time,
and turtles line the soft streams of fatewater with strong backs.
So on this porch of un-baptized wood
We kicked back.
on a cinderblock mantle,
waited for the wind to blow a train whistle night—
waited with the panhandling cats and the old caboose,
waited with my beggar's songs and my tongue loose,
waited while our minds erased sirens from this place
waited with
time
(it gets me through)
- cheryl anderson
(added 01.09.08)5th AvenueWinter time, I breathed deep.
Smoking a cigarette sucking in all the poisonous heat.
Beating my feet down the pavement to where we lived,
I thought of this morrow I thought of you.
So lost and broken in a sea of endless blue hue.
I walked past a dapper scruffian.
He had the darkest eyes followed by a ghost that barely held him there.
He wore a life jacket around his heart,
unknown to me for him this was the hardest part.
Maybe his name was Jean Phillipe or perhaps it twas nothing quite so neat.
His ship had sailed he had no fleet.
I crawled into my windowsill,
I can see the rain follow me still.
Keen and absolute, the warmth around my thoughts are curiously obscene.
Flowers, brought to me with many warnings,
for every pedal there was twice as many taken back.
Her name was sunshine, dont follow me here.
You'll grow old and wont have any less tears.
Be careful staring at the tree before you, branches dip and dive, roots so far beneath you.
The grass, cold wet and warm all at once.
I didnt stand a chance in this old haunted mansion where I once lived,
where I once died, where my father gave me no amount of pride.
- sen rivers
(added 01.08.08)MEMORY OF MIDDLE IOWA, CHICAGO, ILLINOISIt begins at the Trek convention
with the slim girl in the diaphanous blouse
who arrived with the conclusion:
this is the best place to get
the most guys in bed over a weekend.
Her rapture turns into a song
echoed down the hotel’s hallways
and is taken up as the new theme
for a boys-grown-old club
where, for twenty hours,
some guys think they are special.
But the numbness
that invades a marriage
dampens the thunder of orgasms,
until, really, it might as well
be the cough of a passer-by.
And elsewhere there is a guy—
a husband—struck by lightning,
as he puts the pieces together
from the convention blogs
after his business meetings.
She continues to walk
through the dark and dizzy nights
where the cliff-face is at hand
and, perhaps, she’ll fall off—
if not at the convention,
then when she gets home
to learn that it is now a house
with a broken furnace.
- kenneth p. gurney
(added 01.05.08)Here and NowIn the past
I was funny thoughtful and did everything I could to please anyone at any
moment. Never a day would go by I knew every bad joke ever uttered
which sadly I learned form my uncle
In the present
I was depressed lonely seeker of truth, I had a flash light which protected
me from dark spirits and those who wished me harm
The songs all sound the same and I never drank water through a straw I
only saw time as specks of dirt and I believed that bird people would one
day bring an age sorrow
In the future
I held a knife it was three O’clock in the house all the time and despots
always had their way with women. They were lurkers they were monsters
that stole purses and wore pantyhose over their faces, dirty pantyhose!
There is folkway stories told that the here and now are a myth as I has
suspected but was afraid to say anything. I felt in my old skin and felt the
past will never arrive again.
- craig caudill
(added 01.05.08)remember, this page is in flux, living and breathing, evolving and changing constantly...so please come and come often for the latest submissions.
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