Entangled Strides From Ghosts by Will Alexander

The Occident, aligned by retrocausal psychic debris, created through campaigns of slaughter and mental mis-direction has arrived at its intrinsic denouement, as a cunning she-wolf looking into superimposed directions of blankness face to face with its own moral evaporation, unable to kindle its own presence and lift its force into the future. Unbeknownst to itself it has regressed to inflamed fragmentation solemnly nourished by exponential tribulation and tenacious spillage from protracted global thievery. This circumstance can in no way simply embrangle itself to basic ideological function, or to didactic wavelength burning with psycho-physical alteration. 

All of the above subtended by European aegis, by its crudely inflamed psychic-superimposition via argumentative dominance, with the human collective thought of as abstraction squared according to partially elevated debris. Our day to day existence maniacally maimed by carnivorous toxins, sired by trans-generational neurological decay. The climate akin to sand blown fissioning, as if we were hyper-dimensional camels who carry loads and now perish from thirst. We persist as a populace general and scattered, as a maimed institutional flock marred by uranium spotting, weary, constrained to remain unnaturally condemned for that which amounts to the unceasing. Because the half-life of uranium supersedes the future life of the Sun, we remain condemned in spite of the glittering effect of partial convenience. The latter, remaining as our daily opiate, as our lateral obfuscation where our transcendent property remains obscured to such a degree, that the individual can only cast his or her image into a mirror of numbers, so that it reflects as a distorted form of cobalt, or a referential ray curiously bent as if the general psychic image had been bent not unlike rays from poisoned tantalum. 

A disfigured species bent on carrying it's general misuse onto planes that exist as Proxima B. The latter condition is not the honest silhouette of a Bedouin trading partner searching for wares in exchange for perfect properties from salt. Humanity has become a hyper-ventilated species haunted by every geological outcropping, by every dazed and increasing shadow that ruminates via inversion. This becomes a distorted lens by which the cells now focus so that the gullies of being now hallucinate as the eye that forms demonic guidance. The collective mind now functions within a tornado of wrath embellished by hyper-dimensional goiters, that can be called nothing other than dysfunctional grammar, nothing other than the entangled strides imprinted from ghosts. 

As ghosts, we circle the abyss and only assuage our minds with a repetitive form of calculation that can only let us rest at a former plane of haunting. Perhaps, 1953, or 1976, when damage was not so blatantly conflated with our universal outcome. When one looks at collective respiratory lines in Mumbai, or the hanging breathing over cities in China one is not evincing an ideological concept or summoning up Christian superiority that gloats over the fates of the condemned. This remains a staggering amplification of our collective circumstance that now reaches beyond the calculation ascribed to galactic distance that presently haunts our understanding of the unknown. Let us say that collective DNA has now become conversant with its aftermath and now assumes another language that presently susurrates with itself as another form capable of tenancy with unimaginable forms that cognition can never attest to. 

Will Alexander- Poet, novelist, playwright, essayist, philosopher, visual artist, pianist, who has authored over 30 books and chapbooks. He has read at venues stretching from Rotterdam to Los Angeles and is currently poet-in-residence at Beyond Baroque Poetry Center in Venice California. In addition to this he is a Whiting Fellow, a California Arts Council Fellow, a Pen Oakland winner, an American Book Award winner, as well being both a recipient of the Jackson Prize for poetry in 2016, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Beyond Baroque Poetry Center in 2018. He resides in Los Angeles.

Selections from Spirits In The Albino Hotel (throwing antlers), Part 2 by J. Karl Bogartte

The Guardians by J. Karl Bogartte

All that is lost to interpretation, she becomes a passing moment for a panorama, a blind assassin fondling the wind that leads to your entrance.

*

She let you in, to the mirror, the fiction, into shadow. For her you were seahorse and Saracen, tail first and cabal, pool-like and sleight of hand… 

*

A mumbling savant keeps the chronologists at bay, takes apart those lost Huron consternations, planting morning glories for clarity. A lovesick girl who is perpetually lighting candles… A sorceress without mercy, with training wheels for archival balance. Your transparency enables that luminosity of over-riding concerns, being seen through, for a vast landscape that doesn’t know you. Imagines you. But who you are. The absurd brilliance of re-inhabiting your body with no precedent. Mumbling… Imprinting…

*

The mind is a handful of golden dust, a grand gesture to imitate the storm, challenge dissolution.

*

The antlered guardian is a tiptoed dwarf veiled in royal chemise, espionage, dipped in ink and wolf-shaped. To be torched into transparency.

J. Karl Bogartte is an artist/poet and involved in international surrealism.

His writing has been included in Paraphilia Magazine, The Fiend, X- Peri, Diaphanous,

Numéro Cinq (online) and Peculiar Mormyrid, Analogon 65, la vertèbre et le rossignol (in print). He has published 11 books of prose poems and Antibodies a surrealist novella. His most recent books are Auré, The Spindle’s Arc, And Still The Navigators… His newest collection Spirits In The Albino Hotel throwing antlers will be published in the summer of 2019.

Three Poems by Jonathan Butcher

Retracted Pride

//Back when drizzle of rain, only heard, straight through

failing to break this. That false those statements, 

superiority we attempt, backs straightened with contact,

failing to break this spill over like broken so reliant upon

from rotting barrels.Those faces against grey mass 

of steel the pavements and promises of ill....straight

through the sober minute, they slowly echo toilet

wall, stifle vulgar patch-work in all-consuming flag;

they sit complacent, but we have now all of maintenance,

and float yet refuse, the shop doors to those faces tempting 

fate, each crumbling with mandrakes the cobble stones 

from pollen never redeemable.... weeping wound, that 

hangover soliloquies ring that tears without protest. 

now as dark as feet nimble, mounted tables decades 

was now slowly, brittle as still within homes, those 

flowers and walls recited, faulty ruse dusts over any

uneven by design, that light now basking; finally mastered//

Strewn

Back drop of tire torn green cross roads

splitting horizon, the steel balconies

clamped on orange brick new builds, 

black spray-paint not yet faded over

wood. Circular mud patches, chairs 

strewn heavily; wicker baskets empty

among holes, faded flag of carpet at 

half mast practising indolence; mattered

ends, melted blue plastic seeped out 

through concrete, cracked like lake beds

dry, ash like blue glimmer through twigs, 

brick turret unarmed, tires looped in 

carcasses as yet eviscerated without rot.  

Everything just about questioned outside;

can and bottle, melded aluminium harmony

without melody, warning in splashed yellow; 

excessive voltage.

Smudge of Ash

Embedded within favours

     pressure points in ribs

each finger caught in sharpened 

edges, that reach; muscles struggle

     at  the best of times. 

bulbs remain lit, remotely excusable

pernicious doctrine, related back 

     without haste. 

Jonathan Butcher is a poet based in Sheffield. He has had work appear in various print and online publications including: Popshot, Ex-Ex Literature, The Transnational, Sick-Lit, Drunk Monkeys, The Morning Star, Mad Swirl and others. He edits the online poetry journal 'Fixator Press', through which his third chapbook, 'Corroded Gardens' was published.   

Reciprocity by Sheila E. Murphy

Reciprocity 1

Reciprocity 2

Reciprocity 3

Sheila E. Murphy is an American poet who has been writing and publishing actively since 1978. Her book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland).  Also in 2018, Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory. Luna Bisonte Prods released Underscore in that same year, featuring a collaborative visual book by K.S. Ernst and Sheila E. Murphy. Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy is known for working in forms including such as the ghazal, haibun, and pantoum in her individual writing. As an active collaborator, she has worked with Douglas Barbour on an extended poem called Continuations. Murphy’s visual work, both individual and collaborative, is shown in galleries and in private collections. Initially educated in instrumental and vocal music, Murphy is associated with music in poetry. She earns her living as an organizational consultant, speaker, and researcher and holds the PhD degree. She has lived in Phoenix, Arizona throughout her adult life. 

Two Poems by Sam Silva

THE UNEXAMINED LIFE

Fat gut...pig head!

Fifty years that sink like lead

falling skin over a belt

which fortifies what hollow slacks.

Wrinkled sin

and facial facts

exude the pure fatigue within

like a huge unseemly welt

pressing on such necks and backs

for sixty years and on and on.

Oh what fools we children are!

We, the living! We, the dead!

Seeding fusion like a star

till we collapse internally

upon such grieving paths we lead

for seven decades of a song

and curling in dry wisdom, then

four score four seasons

like a pen

that never wrote

its inner poem

but dallied a brief time here

just long enough to leave

a note

to our beloved

and so journeyed home!

LESS THAN HUMAN THINGS

Nervous old cat

fringed with terror

in a yard near a shack

bordered by mean dogs

that glisten out back.

Love lets go!

Termites eat the logs

...Summer becomes fall

till leaves turn to snow.

What I see is "that!"

in the broken mirror...

Sam Silva has published at least 150 poems in print magazines, including Sow's Ear, The ECU Rebel, Pembroke magazine, Samisdat, St. Andrew's Review, Charlotte Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, and many more. Has published at least 300 poems in online journals including Jack Magazine, Comrades, Megaera, Poetry Super Highway, physik garden, Ken again, -30-, Fairfield Review, Foliate oak, and dozens of others. Three legitimate small presses have published chapbooks of his, three of those presses have nominated work of his for Pushcart a total of 7 times. He now has many books and chapbooks available at most major online bookstores and his spoken word poetry is available at the major digital markets such as Apple iTunes.

99 Infinite by Rus Khomutoff

99 infinite pliable soul
tomorrowland love juice needle eye compulsion
evergreen simmer miracle moon zero escape
not my circus not my clowns
pardon want motion aero dialogue
encore of the redolent drop
warning mash interzone margin
the book of days
autumn thorn halo acid 
phantasm expresso glance
invisible empire hypnotic satellite
jungle crusade holy land prayer
naked galaxy gala walkthrough
There is a diamond part of us that is trying to emerge
paradox kink wild and wonderful
let it be civil wanderlust rampage
sentiment hollow love
renaissance extract delta
this portent stone of cosmic comedy
the other apocrypha
alongside the need to explain
porcelain corridors of the body poetik
the beautiful unspoken

My name is Rus Khomutoff and I am an experimental language poet base in Brooklyn, NY. My poetry has appeared in San Francisco review of books, Proprose magazine, Mojave Heart review and Hypnopomp. In 2018 I published my debut collection Immaculate Days (Alien Buddha Press)

Three Pieces by Heller Levinson

nostril ladder spittoon bathe lozenge silk

the leather

of

space

potentialities pucker for purchase

irregularity suds

mixed company

the fruit of

compliance

shadow stravage

unsealed                     unsubstantiated

         peeled from surface

gone askew            chortling

unstrung

a shadow unfolding     re-

composing as

non-affiliate

a lurk

in consummate

consideration

smoke lavender

jodhpur joust              rubs

          pleat periwinkle

skin-scented joineries,   , flush

with intimacy,  with

keyed murmuration . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

parcels congregate

embellish rotation . . .

. . .

wind as

suffix

Heller Levinson, the originator of Hinge Theory, lives in New York where he studies animal behavior.  His latest book, Un--, was published this Spring (Black Widow Press, 2019).

Three Pieces by John M. Bennett

crop yields

     megalithic cloud

      - Olchar E. Lindsann

clod shaped the ea rth un

last at ,was yr corner isolation

isolettric heaving in the lang

uid seas no more cities dr

own the b eaches deep in

where my templed headache's

crown deversed a burning

ladder beneath yr waves

the dream of an empty house

is a tree bursting with

leaves the leaves

dream a car turning on a

coastal road it was the

shattered coffee cup on a

kitchen floor you are a field

of smoking tractors oil palms

lean darkly in your distance

John M. Bennett has published over 400 books and chapbooks of poetry and other materials. He has published, exhibited and performed his word art worldwide in thousands of publications and venues.  He was editor and publisher of LOST AND FOUND TIMES (1975-2005), and is Founding Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at The Ohio State University Libraries.  Richard Kostelanetz has called him “the seminal American poet of my generation”.  His work, publications, and papers are collected in several major institutions, including Washington University (St. Louis), SUNY Buffalo, The Ohio State University, The Museum of Modern Art, and other major libraries.  His PhD (UCLA 1970) is in Latin American Literature.  His latest books are Select Poems, Poetry Hotel Press/Luna Bisonte Prods, 2016; The World of Burning, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2017; Poemas visuales, con movimientos con ruidos con combinaciones (with Osvaldo Cibils), Deep White Sound, 2017; The Sweating Lake, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2017; Olas Cursis, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2018, Sesos Extremos, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2018; and Dropped in the Dark Box, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019.  He is co-editor, with Geoffrey D. Smith, of two works by William S. Burroughs: Everything Lost: The Latin American Notebook of William S. Burroughs; and William S. Burroughs' “The Revised Boy Scout Manual”: An Electronic Revolution; both published by The Ohio State University Press.

http://johnmbennettpoetry.blogspot.com/

http://www.johnmbennett.net/

http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/avantwriting/

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/lunabisonteprods

Three Poems by Mark Young

the drummer & her colleagues

Children with slit throats have, histori-

cally, always been accused of witchcraft

by social scientists & anthropologists

hoping to suppress hyperchaos. A meta-

analysis of these trials reveals that there's

a range of different habitat types, & many

deposition or sputtering processes are,

however, the result of hair choice &/or

the negative sense of shaking off the in-

trinsic, epistemological value of missed

opportunity. Research papers on religion in

Hollywood movies help to create a working

functionality. Documenting offbeat music

may be the only time you try green tea.

is known as the terminal

Keep the windows open. The reverse

mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]:

for user 'root'@'localhost' will be returning

to Shortwave in the very near future. Many

phone users may rot while others clean up

& regenerate the Italian word sonetto. Images

have to change. The backbone of a mobility

transition is inequality, an altered sensitivity

that doesn't get into emocore. Like the

legendary camel, each mechanism can be

adjusted to turn the Yin-Yang adapter on

or off. Other accords penned include infinite

lattice, current case law, the Rite of Spring.

When are y'all coming back to North Carolina?

In the process of obtaining information

The reunification of Cyprus might

pose a major health problem in

Europe. The empirical evidence

shows a shift to nightmares: & that

means when one licks the envelope

& tries to smear the glue, or makes

thumbnails out of the messages to

be found there, spots from the mark-

et leaders in furniture will be visible

on your glasses. These are the com-

ponents of a barebones system of

collective civil disobedience, a kind

of self-abuse, one of the precursors to

the English big beat/breaks sound.

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry since 1959. He is the author of around fifty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. His most recent books are les échiquiers effrontés, a collection of surrealist visual poems laid out on chessboard grids, published by Luna Bisonte Prods; The Word Factory: a miscellany, from gradient books of Finland; The Perfume of The Abyss from Moria Books; & A Vicarious Life — the backing tracks from otata.

He is the editor of Otoliths.