SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS STILL ON THE GLIDER ON THE SCREENED PORCH by Lyn Lifshin

before traffic was no
more than a soft lull
beyond the elm trees,
ice clinking in frosty
glasses, my mother
still in 4 inch heels.

Willie Lepers by Norman Ball

Funny Music Video

The Baby by Jeff Crouch and Christopher Woods

Artwork/poetry

1 out of 6 by by Rob Plath

bukowski said
he punched out
one great poem in
every six

those are pretty
good odds

that means you gotta
keep banging them out
shitty or not to
get to that 1 in the 6

suffering and its proximity by David Mclean

they write that our awareness of the suffering
of others is deadened by distances
and i agree, you really have to see it
for it to be funny, that's why we have
TV

The Recipe by Emme Hor

1. keep on my knees
2. look him in the eye
3. rub his ego all night
4. cook up his soul

Sometimes Suicidal by Aimee DeLong

SPIDER BITES

I am Spider.
In 1960 I learned
to crawl.
In 1940 I woke up
with spider bites.

Last Night at Southport by Justin Hyde

tell her i'm a butterfly
with sixteen wings
beating in
succinct
anarchy.

microwave popcorn haiku by Pete Lee

pop. pop. pop, pop, pop,
poppoppoppoppoppoppop
pop, pop, pop. pop. pop.

 

Mother's Day

After Madre informs waitress we're not a couple
Inane hag!
Illegible poem bleeds onto napkin from Logan 's
Semi-coagulated
Lighting the ballpoint
Shaking the pen
Beginning again
Eavesdropping on Wally World coworkers
Both venting about their manager's approach
Blonde waitress slips me her number
With lipstick print
I look away
Light a cigarette
Fold the napkin into a paper football
And kick the ball into imaginary uprights
Trying not to fall prey to a migraine
Utterly annoyed by the strobe light!
As I walk into the sunlight
I shout
Happy Mother's Day!
Comedic Genius 
The worst stretch I've had in eons
Switching jobs
Running from ghosts
Untimely passing of friends
Frazzled into a stupor of deadness
By chronic nightmares
Utter exhaustion
And bottling plant re-acclimation
Combating sleep
Lost to actuality
Oblivious to any and everything
And you pop back into my world
At the most inopportune time
It should have been the apex of my existence
Reciprocal adoration of scribes
A rarity in this mad world
Transcending the realm of abstraction
But I was hardly touched by the light
Trudging through a path of obscurity
Until the fog lifted
to warm me with the luminosity
of a million flickering candles

 

Chameleon Plant

Every glimpse is a nuance
And each shade is a world's demise
Her face is a myriad of novel reflections
Nightly vanishing into the cerebral abyss
Yet every dawn she blossoms anew
Stemming from the depression of an infinite soul
Always compelled upward into the sun
Displaying her ephemeral colors

 

---

Biography

Clifford has previously been published by litchaos.com, you can search his work on our archives page. Also, he has a book out at lulu.com that you can check out. It's called A Painter's Ghost

 

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