Blue Plums

sense of found within a tragic longing
born of hiding the sources you muddy

the water anything you wouldn’t do
nearly there, nearly there
to welcome strange hands shaking

in the sweat of palms hold blue plums
and what the sum will be of delusions
how a why makes any what bearable

and comfort in random expressions
have your way & this way is mine

they are not delusional those who dance
to music you can suddenly somehow hear now

---

A U M

Communion
releasing regret

stuck in a loop
deepening a whole

stumbling back
exit the apartment
shut the door

hear it through the door
feet first in the garbage chute
roll away

hooves
screeching

Barnyard spirituality
mirrors reflecting infinite versions
money doesn’t absolve responsibility here

toxic fumes
sneakers
garbage is dinner

flat line
syringe

grief
the conductor
reaches in

pulls out nothing
air tastes of metal
fish belly up

study tree
NYC skyline

detaching from horizon
leaf feather giant
memento mori

---

The moon will change your mind

high school seniors coming down

off orange sunshine bummer trip
people’s park drug market palace

not so beautiful now depressed all year suicidal in winter
everyone got too high freaked out
now a week or two of not talking about it

4pm rick wants to hang out calls his friend
donny works at taco bell has anxiety attacks
controlling parents it’s raining he’s into it

let’s call sean he’s got a car a known reckless driver
five kids pile into car drive to bay street mall

hang out where kids like to go down at designer row
donny splits gotta get home before his parents know
he’s not at work now it’s rick kristen sonya and sean

where do you wanna go anywhere but home
5pm rick calls eli says no
just wanna drink listen to the cure and wallow in depression

convinces him to come along, what could possibly go wrong?
6pm sean picks up eli drives the group to remote

rugged point near the bay
sean screws around behind the wheel scaring everyone
sean accelerates

break-neck screamin’
clashes with fence
wedged six inches

from sure death
eli’s hurt the worst

7pm all walk away from wreck
for miles in disillusioned dark
leaving sean with ruined car

9pm rick and eli stay up all night
cover life like shades
sun rises orange sunshine

bummer fades
yesterday was yesterday a nightmare of my past sipping on another cocktail from the same glass

is this what it feels like not to die?
ordinary boys
happy

knowing nothing
happy
being no one

but themselves

Deborah C. Segal is a writer and diy publisher, gratefully living with her partner Bruce, where we are delighted daily by the birds, clouds, and trees we encounter here on unceded Ohlone lands known as Berkeley, California.

TOUCHING BLONDE

She was a touching blonde.
Yes, she liked touching
and, afterwards
douching, bathing
and turning herself into cottony kittenish candy
again
so she could be eaten all up
by the big bad wolfs
and then through a short regime of bath and powder and war paint
and transubstantiation
she could become a part of the Goddess again and again
a little twinkling star among’st the stars
and not herself at all— almost— anymore and most importantly—
full of woe and anger —
cursed by a wormy womb
and an even wormier brilliant brain
with little tunnels eaten in it
where you could just go round n round going mad— which she did—
and that’s why they treated her so— like shoddy goods—
that and her lateness on set is why. No—
the wolfs aren’t enchanted, not by her, and they weren’t priests, either
for all their pretty speeches and their holy arty airs.
They were more like candy makers pinching pennies behind counters.
They put her in pretty wrappers
of both her and their design.
That’s just the show businesses in general, it’s retail—
and they pimp her out like she’s the raciest sugar high:
“5 Stars!” — Of All Time!—
… And that’s how she becomes the original M & M
before they pimp her out again after her final fumbled scene
remaindering her for now and all discount-time
as the Simone Weil of our dreams…
instead of as a Gretel who got lost in the forest
and died in a gingerbreading accident
which is what she probably really was and is.

---

EVERYTHING IS SPLASHED

i tickle the electric lamp
where it likes it
by its switch
i relieve its frustration
and it comes like a moon shining like a tiny sun
who’s just been let out of a prison
after a million years
and it just keeps coming and coming and coming
like it’s a very big boy, or a woman
until everything is splashed with light
and now i sit down and read
techno-punk pornography— tech tech tech
William will willie Bill William Gibson
as the morning combs my hair with the air
and the whole world seems like it’s a crackling radio voice
having a conversation with its echo, echo, echo —
with our little old lonely “‘i’s” bouncing inside of it
like life is the inside of a sea shell
and you, oh, mythical reader, you— are the ocean
that’s roaring all around, all around, all around in the waves
that keep lapping like an orgasm that never ends
at least
until you turn the page

David Earl Williams is the Absurdilachian, a writer of absurdist anti-dada dadaist poetry. His latest collection A.I. YOKOHAMA YANKEES TWELVE, RIO-ATLANTA DANTES 36 LONG 12″… MYSTERIOUSLY TIED AFTER 9… Or, “The Sock Puppet Melodrama” is available for purchase  @https://c22press.wordpress.com (under open editions) only $10 per copy— order 11— it’s an easy mistake to make— !  Or, download a free pdf.

Diorama Melodrama

They say Charles Atlas
ain’t got nothing on me
or is it that I’m nothing
like Charles Atlas.
As a shortsighted pupil
I addle these items
more than the labyrinthine
rules of English grammar.

Looking for a guiding
light after not finding
the coupon in the comic
book, I went to a blind
auction where I spent
my life earnings to buy
a mirror reputedly
owned by Oscar Wilde.

Unwrapped it at home
expecting to see
a face and physique
macho enough to repel
any sandstorm on
the beach but the damn
thing cracked, spraying
the room with rainbows.

The hazy purple
ambiance of a Pink Floyd
light show sucking me off
into another dimension
of space and time
where I’m walking
twisted arm in twisted
arm with Syd Barrett.

Lugging pieces of mind
while seeking a wizard
beyond the Mecca
of meth and her valley
of death for the most
hallowed of hallucinogens,
orgasmic and tailor made
for a bolder brand of sanity.

---

Drain

Cupid’s drunk
in the shadows
of a sanguine moon
but he still got game.
Piercing arrow letting
poetry gush from pen,
like blood from a femoral
artery, a Shakespearean
crime scene of passion
with plasma pulsing with
four letter word themes
from fear of loss,
to how your sexy
apex of love and lust
bust into the very best
fuck ever made me come.

As if your vowels a scenic
bridge built on salvation,
not edge of seat suspension,
to get my cliche of consonants
to go from a lost continent
of dearth to one of rebirth.
But magic fleeting, as a lyric
written in red ink and forgotten,
leaving only a ghost of melody
with five letter word themes left
to spin in my head, like my last
pair of worn and torn Calvin Kleins
drowning in the suds of a Maytag
washing machine, trying to distract
myself from the way we once
were with the wordle of the day.

---

Pounds

The sunlight of thousands
of days once born so bright,
seen only secondhand through
the cubicle’s cracked window
facing a circle of dead cypress
trees surrounding a pair of rusted
dumpsters and a rotted wood
picnic table deep in pigeon shit.
The room awash in a fluorescent
glare where a tense spine wobbles
in a threadbare swivel chair.
By the middle of a numbing
afternoon, the creaking pain
in the ass and other pressure
points ramp up in sheer volume
like the weight of a cut of bloody
roast beef increased by a greedy
butcher’s fat thumb on the scale.

Tony Pena is the former 2017-2018 Poet Laureate for the city of Beacon, New York.

His prose and poetry have found refuge recently with Dear Booze, Death Wish Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, The Literary Underground, Trailer Park Quarterly, and Witcraft. Also, Best of the Net nominations in 2019 from the Rye Whiskey Review and the Dope Fiend Daily.

A volume of poetry and flash fiction, Blood and Beats and Rock n Roll, is available at Amazon.

A chapbook of poetry, Opening night in Gehenna, is available from author.

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Tulips vs Agaves

Tulips won’t grow amongst agaves
Nothing will grow amongst agaves.

But tulips were his favourites
so he climbed up high,
balanced on the stepladder
and painted one
on the wall.

It bled.
The agaves triumphed
after all.

---

Future Perfect

They gathered round eagerly.
They’d heard great grandad’s tale
many times before,
but still they listened rapt.

He told of a time long, long ago
when a great great grandmother
had been squashed by a boot
her hard skeleton broken
her soft body splattered
on the sidewalk
killing her
stone dead.

They were so lucky to live in a time
when there were no boots,
no human feet inside them,
no human heads to hate them.

So lucky
to live in a time
when only love
and peace prevailed.

---

Outside In

They didn’t know they were watched
as they placed the presents
carefully wrapped
in bright paper
in place beneath
the evergreen branches
decorated with shiny baubles.
Everything was ready now
in their house,
ready for Santa.
It was the last house
for Santa
for another year.
He raised his glass of sherry
and toasted his hard working elves
whilst the reindeers waited impatiently
nibbling the undecorated branches outside.

No one noticed the shadows they cast.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077

Phony Altruism

Man without a home
& the altruists are
getting restless.

Ten bucks for
a poor veteran—eases
the mind of those who
can quote vespers.

Sin? Throw that first
stone through a glass mirage.

The deprived Iraq soldier
just wanted a hug, someone
to converse with.

Maybe a bed…

Haughty praise from
the following
and a coin
in the collection
plate—loses its
ideals when the vagrant’s
beard filles with gnats.

Then the limp dies
without any remembrance.

---

A Place

The Chesterfield Gorge Trail is the stop where I ponder life. Where, I sometimes, glorify death. Wishing I was twenty years old again, playing Left Tackle. Jot down thoughts that fail to connect with whispers that predict senseless possibilities…

---

Playing Mini-Golf Alone in Mid-October

A long, dry summer has officially pronounced
its end… succumbing to an orange sun that now
fell in mid-October

In the air, I could inhale the imminent arrival of fall’s cold winds, chatter of early Thanksgiving plans among family, the harsh realities of another New England winter chill.

Driving alone along Route 29 in northern New Hampshire, the streets
are bare on a Tuesday, the only establishment open is a mini golf
course that has no patrons to call its own.

With nothing to do, I pull over to the parking lot, fixing to try my hand
at my short game skills…can’t embarrass myself to bad…I’m the only one here.

As I approach the wagon to grab my putter & ball. The man is busy packing up the rest
of the equipment.

“You’re the last one for me this season, mister.” He tells me, hurried to close the place for the winter. “Ready to get going to Florida after you’re done.”

“Can’t complain though, tourist season was great this year.”
I give him a nod of acknowledgement, and head to hole number 1, moving the cascade of
leaves in front of my ball placement.

I strike the ball, it takes two caroms, then settles at a right angle towards the hole.
It takes me two shots to sink my par. Which is what I did throughout the other 17 holes.

Finally, the last hole. I glance back at the man who is impatiently watching me to finish. I took my last shot, which, as every putt-putt veteran knows, is the final one.

The ball is swallowed by a big dinosaur head, and the game is over.
I take my putter back to the owner, who quickly asks how I did.

“Ok, I guess,” I answered.
He really didn’t care. Taking the putter from my hand, he threw it into the trailer, gave me a wave, and was gone.
While I was walking to my car, the carpenter company was already ripping the greens off the
course, filing down the boards—getting ready for next year’s players.

Now, I had to figure out what to do with the 4 PM darkness, seasonal affective disorder, Christmas & New Year bullshit, February Northeasters, and long, drawn out slow spring thaws that were on the horizon for the next four months.

While the Mini-Golf owner was counting the days until he was back in the Florida Keys, drinking beer on the beach, & laughing at New Hampshire weather reports.

Dan Provost’s poetry has been published both online and in print since 1993. He is the author of 17 books/ chapbooks, including two in 2025: Getting Your Bell Rung (Luchador Press) and Notes from the Other Side of the Blanket (Anxiety Press). His work has been nominated for The Best of the Net three times, and he has read his poetry throughout the United States. He lives in Keene, New Hampshire, with his wife, Laura, and his dog, Bella.