Denis Robillard

Medical Exam, age 38
　
The doctor’s office is
a somnambulists soliloquy
revolving in a gelatin eyeball
not fit for Necromantics.
I’m half naked and strapped to “the chair”.
Waiting for my own little execution.
Doctor’s exams, I’m told
are always cold and impersonal.
In a few minutes,
a man whom I don’t know,
wearing a snow white smock
will be asking me to cough
and grope at my manhood
in the same impersonal manner in which
he was reaching for his morning
cup of coffee
his dreamy stethoscope
impinging upon my shy skin
searching through the fat folds
of my stomach and burrowing deeper
than my embarrassing
mechanical meat gurgles
that have remained at the surface.
“Pathump, pathump...”
The shy poet’s heart echoes back
flipping and turning inside
the monitor like an abused weather vane.
Dolphins at Marine land.
These irregular aortic lines
resemble a star cluster of fighter ships
joining a vast robotic fold
against a black hole backdrop
I’m lost at sea on this cold, cold
chair
the black prow of the
white liner looking
for open water.

*************************************
Eternal Snow Globe
　
I’m tired of wearing glass slippers
all the time around you and
having to account for
everything I say and do.

Take these words back with you
like a special delivery package
lay them gently upon your lap
and unfold them word by word

until you arrive at the beginning
again for the very first time.

I want everyhting to be an eternal
money back guarantee Christmas snow globe.
Forever.
****************************************************************************
Burning Beauty

With the machinery of day finally quiet
I ponder the moments, these days
become a postulant of heresy
break all the values in
my magnanimous heart
barter my old habits
in exchange for skin
throw ballast
into the frugal wind
become a participant
in the timeless adoration of your looks,
your Lux, appreciate
the weapons
of your beauty for what they truly are.
I flounder before you
like a vestal crab pinch
at the blue Kryptonic air
reach for a simple truth
found on your perfect body.
I’ve already thought of doing secret things to you.
The bush telegraph of desire makes holes
and my ganglions do not lie.
Burning, burning.

Your beauty
is the imprint of a newly minted coin
that I must learn
to circulate again.

********************
ROADING WITH RIEL

Roading, roading, roading
Wheels turning stones
Over back seldom used roads
Eyes roaming fields
Scanning for Riel and the boys
Another Frog Lake Massacre in the mind.
Gentle mind roaming at points.
Undefined.
A dry compass to pin prick
And hover into water.
I’m thinking about her clear blue eyes
An unseen lake never found.
A magical intersection
But sometimes only detritus and dirty leaves
But I must go
Re-orient my memory to solid land
Or go forever insane off roading.
**********************************************

James Babbs

Places I Remember

the Woolworths restaurant
in the mall
right next to the store and
no matter how many times
I asked my Mom
she never let me
eat there

the backseat of
my parents’ car
on our way home
gazing at the places
passing by the window
trying to remember them
wanting to come back
and see them
again
some day

the baseball diamond
next to the old high school
after dark when
no games were being played
and I sat in
the visitors’ dugout
beneath the falling moonlight
dreaming of
some other place

your house on the corner
the front door with
the knob on
the wrong side and
I always knocked
where the hinges were
waiting for you to answer
not too many years
before you moved away


Blue

I remember
how every wall in
her apartment was white
except the section
at the end of the hallway
that somebody had painted blue
I didn’t know
if that was suppose to
mean something or not
I never asked her about it
and we stopped seeing each other
years ago
but every now and then
I catch myself
thinking about
that blue piece of wall
but I never seem to
think much about her
don’t get me wrong
she wasn’t a bad person
it just didn’t work out
between us
for one reason or another and
maybe
if you went and asked her
she’d tell you
the same thing about me


His poetry collection, Dictionary of Chaos, is available from www.xlibris.com and my chapbook, Another Beautiful Night can be found at www.lulu.com.

Broken is Beautiful Falling by A.J. Kaufmann

in unconscious fascination
while floods go planting the city
and girls hum themselves as hope
pulling in small street tails
west-end truths
intervals of the homeless
and damaged deals
take the cabman where
consternation creatures
wild on the road
involuntarily
attach agonized tears
of neglected, vanished
blocks
to illustrated
remains of eyes
taking the city
by hurt
where broken
is beautiful
falling

Impact by Mike Meraz

those who are afraid of love
are the ones
with the most ability
to love
for they know
the height and depth
of love.

those who do not know
how to love

get married.

Leaving Galveston by Len Kuntz

We could hold our breath for hours, lifetimes it seemed.

Throughout the short sprawl of our youth we’d practice,

goofing beneath the canopy curled like a cocked trigger,

our eyes popping light bulbs,

tears running jagged down our chins.



That trick won me a way out, a swim scholarship.

I medaled and majored all because I never had to come up for air.

Now, I’ve sunk under the warmest water

and I can see through the thin-sheeted surface,

watching you color your lips and flip your hair,

knowing where you’re going

but not when you’ll return,

if ever this time.

Nanoville Altered by David S. Pointer

Nostril bound
nano-particles
crossing blood
brain barriers
wandering the
stress cracked
streets of her
thoughtshop
polluting invisible
head highway