Neil Ellman

FOUR EKPHRASTIC POEMS

Ekphrasis or ecphrasis, from the Greek description of a work of art, possibly imaginary, produced as a rhetorical exercise, and is a graphic, often dramatic, description of a visual work of art. In ancient times, it referred to a description of any thing, person, or experience. The word comes from the Greek ek and phrasis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, verb ekphrazein, to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name. – Wikipedia

Exquisite Cadaver
(after the painting by Salvador Dali)

How exquisite your cadaver
how fine the space between your ribs
and emptiness within
how glorious the in-betweens
of your mind and skin
how perfect you seem in death
complete.

I love you now as then
when I loved you no less than more
and you were less than
than the sinews and bones
you have become—
how exquisite you seem in death
how perfect and sublime.

Blast I
(after the painting by Adolph Gottlieb)

Not a word
but a primal scream
not a syllable
but a particle of sound
echoing out across the void
it begins with an answer
and ends with the words
that question the reason
they ever were made
in a blast of infinity
from a fissure in the mind
comes the sound of infinity’s end
as inarticulate as the space
it is within.

Skull
(etching from The War by Otto Dix)

Nor memories
containing nothing
but its own disease
a patriot
condemned to die
without a cause.

glory comes to this
grey bone, dark animus
from convolutions
of the brain
the fire in its eyes
consumed by war.

Alas, poor warrior
we knew you well.
who died for the victory
that no side won

I Need Yellow
(after the lithograph by Helen Frankenthaler)

Yellow peonies
yellow earth
yellow suns released
like spreading spores
on ribbons of yellow wind
my life in yellow flame
the color of the end
then purity of death
in yellow waves of light
I mourn the yellowing
of my days
I crave the blush
of golden youth.

© Neil Ellman 2014

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Rhysling Award. Many hundreds of his poems appear in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.

Harris Tobias

THREE POEMS

A Ship of Bones

Lay the old man down, lay him down
His wretched bones are dry and worn
Give the ferryman a coin or
Let him drown
These brittle bones won’t walk again
Lay him down lay him down
Make paddles of his hands
Use his skull to bail
Rig his thigh bones for a mast
And his skin to make a sail
Weave his hair for cordage
Use his knuckle bones for dice
Kiss him once upon the lips
And kiss his eyelids twice
Let him go, let him go
He’s done with life

Lay him down, lay him down
The old man’s gone ahead
To that strange shore
Where the beach is dark
Where the dead are moored
Let him go, lay him down
He cannot help us anymore

Monkey Shines

If people were like bonobos
Or so at least the story goes
We'd all live peacefully in trees
Eating fruit and picking fleas
But humans, filled with genes recessive,
Have evolved much more aggressive
Behaving more like chimpanzees
Driving rivals to their knees
Our aggression knows no bounds
In the air or on the ground
And if you think we're not that simian
Just ask any Palestinian
Bombs and bullets on their heads
Drive them from their Arab beds
You see them on the evening news
Firing rockets at the Jews
Just another struggle sadly
A case of monkey's behaving badly

Tangerines

Whenever I am despondent
And wondering what life means
I sit in my recliner
And peel some tangerines

Now I know that life’s a mystery
And more senseless than it seems
But somehow it’s not so empty
When I’m eating tangerines

I used to sit and ponder
Why God is messing with my dreams
But now it’s not an issue
I just worship tangerines

Now you may think me a blasphemer
Someone wrapped in petty schemes
But I’m nothing but a dreamer
And not given to extremes
But if I needed a redeemer
I’d choose tangerines

© Harris Tobias 2013

Harris Tobias, one of MuDJoB's most frequent contributors, herewith helps us celebrate our third anniversary.

A.J. Huffman

THREE POEMS

Watching a Waving That Might Be a Drowning

I wade in the shallow
[end] of your subconscious.
Holding
onto my sanity and the salt-
ed waves trying to break
my head. Hurts/fears/falls.
Black is not the shade
of any sun I choose to remember.
[And yet] There you are, back-
lit by embers I gave up
understanding. Bathed/bowed/bouyed
to a memory that may never have been
more than a flicker-
ing thought, we rise. Together,
breaking the calm
that echoes like glass.

Ablutophile

I think about it, even as I sit
at my desk, juggling phones, files,
faxes. I hear the antique, claw-footed,
ceramic basin calling me
home. I walk straight through
the front door, up the stairs, shedding layers
of clothes and stress as I go. The sound
of water, warming, filling, is intoxicating.
I add a handful of salts, watch them
dissolve. Sunlight dying behind pulled
curtains calls for candles, lavender, the scent
consumes the room and my mind. I cannot
think as I sink into the welcome embrace
of the tub. Ardorous nothing flows
through me. I am at peace by the time
the sponge caresses my skin.

Stopping for Tea
for Aleksey Chernyshov

near the corner prayer station, I was
pondering the meaning of randomly tagged string
bags steeped in questionably sanitized water, when
I met a man who could be perfect
ly cast as a teen vampire dream if he lost
his tan and his mind. As it turns
out, he was an angel in a daddy suit, bulging
from slightly weighted wings. He flew
through the drizzle of everyday on the rainbow
of his daughter’s smile. The affectation of their journey
was palpable. They held
their own gravity. Showering sparks of genuine
warmth into every anonymous shadow that happened
to cross their paths.

© A.J. Huffman 2013

A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has previously publishedsix collections of poetry all available on Amazon.com. She has also published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. She has is the editor for six online poetry journals for Kind of a Hurricane Press. Find more about A.J. Huffman,including additional information and links to her work at Facebook and Twitter.

Mike Finley

THREE POEMS

Toothbrush

My brother and I peed into the toilet,
our streams dueling one another,
the amazing hydraulics of a 7 and 9 year old.

Then we brushed our teeth and Pat bumped me
and my toothbrush sprang into the unflushed water.

If we flushed away the evidence it might
break our grandparents' pipes.
If they came upon it they would surely be annoyed,
and I had made up my mind
I was not going in after it.

Grandpa Lawrence, thin and diabetic,
stood in the doorway and without a word
knelt and retrieved the dripping toothbrush.

We'll get you a new one, he said quietly,
and rinsed his hands.
We didn't know he was a farmer and lived his life in piss.

But we gaped at each other, the way kids do,
realizing someone was wholly on our side.

Kansas & Arkansas

Spring flows all around us or ought to
each field of corn is taut
with arrows and bows
Our hands can't contain
the gifts we are given

We subsisted on shucks
and gathered in sheaves

Blind as corn and armed
to the eyes
Stethoscopes hang from every ear
Everyone craves
the combination

In all this flatness we
keep needing to jump

Dukkha
in Buddhism, the inevitability of suffering

Some folks have to live in shit
Others live next door to it

No escape and if there is
The 'suffering of no suffering' is his

The pain of unfeeling, not being at all
A cavity that swallows the soul

So do not envy the next guy's grass
Everyone gets it up the ass

© Mike Finley 2012

Mike Finley is a Pushcart winner -- not a nominee! And he lives in St. Paul, where he operates a small foundation helping Mpls punks in trouble

John Grey

SUDDEN DUST STORM

In the particles of dust, some of the face
gathers filthy pink and grubby-blue-eyed.
The day is willful. Human flesh is on trial.
A tempest hums inside this fog of dirt. Shards
of petal, waxy and green, surrender to the
imposition of some distant desert. In dead of
lake, water cries out to be saved. Wind whips
up the haze. Skin croaks froglike. The
earth crouches back inside its hovel of oxygen,
refuses to remember the better days. A solitary house
disappears in a powdery flood. !f only it would rain
but moisture has been warned off. The sun is cruel,
joins the rampage, rides roughshod over shutter
blinking air. What happened to paradise? Eden fights
for breath, its lungs clogged. Sorry, it says. I never
meant for this to happen. The map just laughs. You never know
what's coming when you live next door to the devil.

Inside, you frantically shut blinds, tape windows,
as if the weather's coming for you. A bad dream
finds itself with feather duster in one hand.
The determined gray splatters the bedroom,
screams underneath the kitchen door. It knows
no human laws. Brows knit with grit. Appetites
cower before the mighty horde. The artificial
perfect lawn is the first to go. Roses die, praised,
at the end, for their shriveled candor. 'The world
convenes as an army of whips. Drunken ash grows wings.

ON THE DEATH OF LUELLA

Something huge and luminous fell out of the sky,
The earth surrendered, somewhere in its oceans.
Lower depths ran for their lives.
The sea-bed rose like a sudden heaven-bound tide.
You sat on your veranda, watched the bleak horizon
fire hoses at the stars.
The harsh red of the following day flung itself backward
against the bars of night's dark dungeon,
exploded in a scream of strontium and blood.
The moon dripped like a wax candle.
Orpheus gathered everything he could
from the crumbling underworld,
streaked across the wretched firmament. .
And a great tsunami headed your way.
You were on your third rum.
Your chestnut hair did nothing to discourage
your throat from sighing softly.
It was that night when it happened.
Your lips lay like a lovely child
in the cradle of your mouth.
Your eyes were at the height of their ascendancy.
And your skin announced to all and sundry pearlers:
dive here.
But your dog licked your fingers
like no man could.
And you laughed at the belligerent burst of water.
The sound of your voice did nothing but tree you.
Long after you were swept away,
you poured yourself another rum,

THE DRUMMING OF THE ETERNAL

Eternity lacked blue eyes and long blonde hair
despite what the nuns had told me.
Sure, it stretched farther than any time had a right to

but it was missing the touch of a soft hand on my wrist bone,
the attentive breath inches from my ear.
And if feeling couldn't see reason, then what could reason feel?

First Communion threw up its hands at all physical law.
Gravity? What is that? Evolution? Who invited it to the ritual?
It was wafer and wine or nothing. And there I knelt,

all body and blood and, despite the priest's exhortations,
unable to taste the likeness.
And there was eternity, the ultimate reward,

the payback for the childhood bullies, the dud romances,
the lousy jobs, the pain in the gut.
But what of those who lived among equals,

who loved the here and now, who wrote for a living,
whose health ticked blindly on.
Heaven, for all its scrubbed walls and floors,

its blissed out angels, was more nursing home than shining apogee.
I still had a life to lead, a good one. It would be nothing compared to all of time.
But something sure could learn from nothing.

© John Grey 2012

John Grey is an Australian-born poet, who works as a financial systems analyst. Recently published in Poem, Spindrift, Prism International and the horror anthology, "What Fears Become" with work upcoming in Potomac Review, Hurricane Review and Pinyon.
http://www.carcinogenicpoetry.com/search/label/John%20Grey

Kenneth P. Gurney

First November Tuesday

sold
its offspring for a handful of silver coins

and a substance that blotted out the moon
so dreamers would have to face
their auctioned reality

and a cube of the masses’ hunger
that fit easily in a box for next day shipping

and the rejection of an amazing woman
who chose not to have her face
added to Mount Rushmore

and a small breach in the universe
that let the finches fly
to a happier place
before the back room seamstress
sewed it up.

We Took a Slow Walk to Paris

Your statement
The ocean is a field of Daffodils.
allowed us to cross the Atlantic.

We entered the train station
moments after the Orient Express
departed for Istanbul.

I always wanted to interrupt
Hemingway
at Thirty-nine rue Descartes

or tip a cauldron of hot wax
for Robert the Strong
during the Viking siege.

You simply wanted to sip coffee
at several unnamed bistros
located on a leisurely tour

of cobble streets
while in search of a colored pastel
active in the hand of Degas

or settle for the magic
of a steady rain shower
in a movie by Woody Allen.

Usually

Sometimes, I find myself wondering
about cantaloupe moods
and how their moods change
from green to ripe to rotten.

And whether they like
being set on the counter
adjacent to oranges or apples
or honeydew or a buttered piece of toast.

And if in any way they say farewell
or shalom or aloha or ciao
with the first incision of a knife
that penetrates to their hollow core

or if they simply fear for their seeds
going out into the world
and how birds and ants
might end their vine.

Usually, I grab the vanilla ice cream
and fill the natural bowl
of the half cantaloupe
with two or three scoops.

© Kenneth P. Gurney 2012

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, USA with his beloved Dianne. His latest book is This is not Black & White. To learn more visit http://www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html

Rusty Kjarvik

Another worldview

Law
at dawn's sacrificial wading

a groove sweetly prized
as the relative truth of our frantic, overgrown hallucination

in sickening respite
from the earliest lame vanity

before the show appears
as human death

powerless to the mold
resounding to an inner frequency

deranged sad laughter
groaned thick in a sumptuous tumult

under the prying talons
a delectable fire answers in blues-swing hoodlum homes

temporary as the submissive
upbringing of one purifying lash

rending the nerve-wracked fingers
of torturous warring
within the Nile’s tantrum phase

skinny, lingering smoke fix
and we eye the 99 names

to the moment's reaching up
to the negative female symbol

comrade against these forbidden culturati
timed to the arrival of the outdoor preacher

worshipping the lost dead
world of stone and writing.

Northern mind

lip sweet
and unfettered thought
swung music
intensified in the intimate romantic environment

ideal collection of the two-bodied
trailing waves in the ocean
of serene all-encompassed feeling

silently bringing the visions of the blessed to realized heights
in amnesic bliss
hearing only the fizzing of a tongue
sifting through the hydrated glory of a deep violet sight
darkly fixed inside the arborescent wilderness

to the foreign drum of an impenetrable toxicity
left unconsumed and needed by feet
lit under concrete sustained magic
of the urban disillusioned

northern mind
bringing in the steady rings of a consciousness
prepared as the instrument of a government culture
performing the theatrical stronghold

of minority no-release
a fish-burdened town of extracted marrow
through procedural temperaments
that go un-led and steam up
with chaotic strictures
that demean the meaning
of man and woman
or masculine-feminine time

Lonesome day of movement

grown thin with distance
as another hairy, greased band shines
reckless before the arrow spy
and his envisioned grave

who hails cabs
in the Siberian gruel of angry change
as we ransack the factories of uproarious disrepair
and the mechanistic bored train crashes
killing the meagre European glance
into the frantic rush of civilized absence

lonesome day of movement
through spider web sands
and drunken coasts
of blood red remorse
filing in by the pulp fiction pages
breeding scummy eyes that talk in kisses
and swoon on the porch of another early breakfast

groom who wails curiously at night for the pub dreary life
that awaits
after the cut string of golden dreams seethes and falls
to the ash of the smoky avalanche noon

in Canada’s hibernation mind
of the un-bloomed
and unborn

wenches who lament
the dry phantom queen and her uncaring cool sleeping high
with simple touches of the grave beyond
landing in sun croaked alien poverty

my first wishes grow callous
at the knock of a burnt vegetable gum
that sneaks into the cracks of layered skin
beaming with the color of a white night
turning in late with the last nest of wild being

unloved rhythms, fuming with uninspired dread
as we caress the lung wired cane
of bone sweat
carved merciless into the roaming wood
that answers in black hills
and a flat womb of earth

I’ve been taken, not today.

For so long now, I’ve been taken
But not today.

The spell of my urban hermitage has now broken
In a place where all prayers are spells
There is only one way out of this dream

I need helpers
A conscious community
To lead freely, without bickering for followers

My hermitage walls have given way to a translucent realization
Beholden with rage
I am disquiet and feed strength with tears

Tied in a knot
The way to get untangled is to create
Consumption has been a frequent spell in this broken palace of towers and rain

I hear the engines of folly
As they drain the black earth of all color and frighten the terrorized youth
White

Greed is suckling the thirsty mother’s teat
Her eyes are wet with separation
For your love has aged beyond the fruits of her chest

You are getting old now
Taste the milk from the divine
There is none sweeter

Cuddle close under the embrace of the absent one
She is inside
Your mind need not work to produce the fruits of her labor within you

Confront your pain
A ghost waits
At the top of the universe, hang on while it lowers you to grace

Death is not hate
Do not be short-changed by the living hell of the crackling incinerator
The hearse Earth vibrates to weak leisure and silly goals

Your tongue is the pith of all ground
Walk lightly upon its unchanging core
Spill your inborn need without ransomed poverty

Scale the cliffs beyond inhumane judgment
Your is one name
Unshared

Though you retain mystery
From the recoiling lore of intuition
Full as the harvest moon in your empty belly

Fast for the power torn from you
That it should bear more likely hands
To shape the instruments of friendship and respect with equal humanity

If I could speak...

If I had a voice...

What would I say to a stranger passing by?

To hold them fast in that moment
Against the confident pressure of my heart

What would I say to a new acquaintance?

To ensure they hear my voice
Balancing delicately over the thrifty ledge
Of a shy and battered mind

What would I say to a causal friend?

That they may lift their self to know me
To meet each other anew
At a higher and closer level than ever before
Recognizing our presence

What would I say to an old friend?

That I may say again at their funeral
With love in my heart

What would I say to each individual in my family?

To all, I will say:

“Speak!
And I will listen.”

© Rusty Kjarvik 2012

Rusty Kjarvik is an emerging writer, world music percussionist and artist. His poetry has been accepted in various online and print publications including 3:AM Magazine, The Body Electric Anthology (and/or), Steel Bananas, ditch, and Marco Polo Arts Magazine. He has also published short fiction in Haggard & Halloo and visual art in Maad Sheep. He performs music regularly with Vi An Diep and lives in Calgary, Alberta where he blogs at www.rkjarvik.blogspot.com.