Debbi Antebi

CHASING TIME

she lies still in bed
with heavy pillows placed
like a castle around her head,
looking perfectly comfortable
in the artificial fortress
but squirming inside
with restlessness and dread

she tries to chase time
like running after a thief
but calmly it slips away
without granting any relief
ironic, she thinks, how she spent
so many precious years
chasing short-lived passions
escaping her fears

what once lay ahead
like an infinite stretch
of dreams and possibilities
is now compressed
into the colored pills
lying next to her bed,
which she quickly grabs,
squeezing them tight
with a racing heart and shaky hands

© Debbi Antebi 2013

Debbi Antebi’s poems have appeared in Every Day Poets, unFold, The Bijou Poetry Review, Short, Fast, and Deadly, and The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, among others. She lives in Istanbul, Turkey, and blogs at http://debbiantebi.com/

Another Collection

Open publication

A Mike Handley title

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.

Joey Delgado

NIGHTSTANDS

i guess this is a testimonial
the room is too dark for it to be conversational
no angsty teenager here, just a grownup
a man of thirty, can you believe it
thirty, thirty, thirty, thirty
flirty thirty, dirty thirty
not me though
i’m wordy thirty
words in the supine position come easier
but they are difficult to read
believe me they are even more difficult to understand
the light from my Ikea lamp is dim
as dim as the memory of me buying it
or maybe it was a gift
speaking of nightstands with packed drawers
unspeakable things in the top one
junk in the bottom
the bottom drawer is speakable
courier bag filled with books propped up against nightstand
blocking bottom drawer
guess top drawer is most easily accessible
cigarette smoke floats past my screen
filters words these innocuous words
who enjoys that
don’t people enjoy meat
but i don’t have any meat to offer just steamed veggies
you like? steamed veggies cauliflower broccoli carrots
should i open that top drawer
you want to see the meat
i know you because i know me
okay let me snub out my ciggie
love the way it sounds being crushed against the ceramic ashtray
pulling open drawer
can you hear it sliding on those little plastic wheels
gonna close my eyes and reach in
pull out the first thing i grab
oh my
this one’s a doozie

© Joey Delgado 2013

Hey, my name is Joey and sometimes I scribble things that I like. Sometimes. I like this one, hope you do too. I try to write things that hit me emotionally, and hopefully the readers as well.
My Twitter address is @JoeBobsThoughts

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.

Harris Tobias

THE SAMARITAN

   I was wondering about the old man. I hadn't seen him for several days. He was usually as regular as clockwork walking that little dog of his. What was that dog? A chijuajua I guess. That would make sense since he was Mexican. Or am I stereotyping? That triggered a furious internal debate about prejudice and racial factors and how they influence our decisions. I thought about actually going over there and seeing if the old man was all right but that would mean actually invading someone else's space and I don't think I was ready to take on the heavy mantle of Good Samaritan without some serious thought.

   So instead of going over there, I sat in my thinking chair and made a list of the pros and cons of getting involved with strangers. That triggered a whole inner discussion about list making. I wondered whether I should list the pros first or let my natural pessimism take over and do the cons first. I have a tendency to favor the cons but then I feel bad for the pros because the mean old cons are such bullies. Then I had the idea of writing the pros and cons of visiting my neighbor on 3 x 5 cards in the order they occurred to me. That way I wouldn't be concentrating on the negative and influencing the outcome. It took me a day or two to get the cards but I was determined to do a proper job. It was worth the extra effort.

   After another day of scribbling reasons for and against being a good neighbor, the decision seemed weighted pretty heavily in favor of going over there. Then I remembered the little dog. What if the man needed hospitalization? Then I'd be responsible for taking care of the dog. That created a whole other set of problems which I had to work through. After several hours of thinking, which digressed into animal rights issues and a close examination of comparative religion, I reached a decision. I would go over there first thing in the morning and see if the old guy was okay.

   I got there just as the paramedics were loading the body of the old man into the ambulance. "What happened," I asked someone in the small crowd of onlookers.

   "It looks like he fell a couple of days ago. He must have been lying there for days. Finally he just died. They say he probably tripped on the dog's leash. The dog was hurt too. They both must have suffered terribly."

   Well, that was that. I felt good that I had made the right decision to help but I felt bad that I was too late. That got me thinking about the dualistic nature of good and evil and the nature of suffering itself. It was an exciting morning. I'm inspired to go back and blog about it. There are a lot of lessons I can teach.

© Harris Tobias 2013

Harris Tobias was raised by robots disguised as New Yorkers, and despite an awkward childhood he learned to read and write. He has published novels, The Greer Agency and A Felony of Birds, to critical acclaim, short stories in Down in the Dirt Magazine, Literal Translations, Electric Flash and Ray Gun Revival, and is a favorite here on MuDJoB. He currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.