Poetry Victims

Volume 8, Issue 4

2011-10-02T01:14:00.000-07:00

two blue trees - zzbaggins

ZZ's Introduction

We want to thank all those who bent themselves inside with creative conviction and submitted their work to this issue of Poetry Victims. We continue to promote all those who seek publication of their passion and expression and also greatly appreciate the quality and distinctive presence that has moved Poetry Victims to continue evolving and publishing. Thank you to all who find a love of poetry, art, and breathe in it life.

--"Art is literacy of the heart."

Elliot Eisner--

Iron and Wine

913 Victims to Date

Our featured guest poet in this issue is, Heather Lenz, whose prismatic work has genuinely inspired and moved us in the passion for poetry that is raw and full of magnetic emotion. Her work is a pinnacle of inspiration and her talent embraces unique, and genuine human expression. We honor and admire her contribution, as well as, all others who contributed.

Telepathy

If you can hear me at all,

kick a wall for me.

Throw a vase

through your window.

Tear down another

set of lights. Burn another

candle and scream.

Clench your fists tightly.

Rip out the cords

from the outlets.

Speed down another

rain-washed highway.

Smash the cobalt glass.

Darken the moon

with your loneliness.

Fill your blood with the

weight of wine and tears.

Heather Lenz

Tired

I am full with you. Fed-up and guilt-scarred

like all things lost. Lost children know what

to sing. Shadows prevail.

Save my steam in a jar for whenever

you need to scream. About nothing.

Save any evidence of my spirit for times

when you feel I am not good enough.

Photographs? Save those also, they are

easy to burn when the time is right.

Then call a shrink and tell him

you are preparing to burn them.

Every day when I wake up and rise

to reason, I trip on your burdens and

bruise. Time shatters glass.

Memories like granite. Annihilation.

Heather Lenz

--"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."
Henri Matisse--

holding on - zzbaggins

Seven Stanzas to Christ

I wove these smoky dreams for you to weep on

Though at the start I had no such intent,

To be so dark in thought and decision,

To sear the sacred meaning of the Lent

Devils marred the roads with cults and money

Judas friends cemented pain and hate,

Lovers wandered off to other cities

And fists of wilting daisies sealed my fate

Still there is a fragile candle burning

A window of crimson glass stained with truth,

Of precious words that long ago I clung to

When kneeling at the alter and the booth

Sometimes a see a Gabriel or Mary

The blood dripping from her golden hand,

Then scarred arms remember something hidden

At the river in the grass and on the sand

The holy train has carried you uphill now

To where the water pours out over stone,

I do not understand how you could die

For each of those who left you all alone

Now the trestles rust and timbers burn

The valley mountain trembles deep within,

All the drunkards play the lonely jukebox

Like the trend of causing death is setting in

Far from there I weave my smoky dreams

And though you weep I had no such intent,

To become a pillar of salt or Doubting Thomas

To be so dark, so bruised by malcontent.

Heather Lenz

Harmony

Morning rain,

dark of autumn.

My hands are stained with

acrylic paint and it is time

to sleep for a while.

You are beside me, as calm

as soft notes from a piano that

move through the room

The rising and falling of

your breath is a song for me-

your eyes, harmony.

For years this concerto

has kept me alive,

and the rain on the roof

heavier now, drifts me slowly

into a dream when I first held

you. It was then that I learned

the depth of melody, and for

once in my life dissonance

did not prevail.

for my son

Heather Lenz

she - zzbaggins

i cannot see what flowers are at my feet - zzbaggins

Season's Ending

This middle house, first one on the right, she sits. Mist from

the far-off Smoky Mountains calms her in the eves of summer's

loneliness. She accomplishes a smile through the day, hands of

the children present them from their hearts, boldly crying for

attention. A dusty guitar and a departing sun strain her curiosity.

She wonders how he would laugh or greet her in the morning, but

the children distract her almost-enough.

Sometimes she takes off around midnight in a truck with the

windows long gone, listens to the voices of arrogance and hostility,

and knows, that it is not her garden- that David and Job did not plant

seeds here; and that in her efforts would spring up weeds that soon

would fester all around her. Yet she stays on, maybe to learn or

gain reason to scream.

In the view of the sunset she feels peace, imagines the freedom of

freeways and back-roads to the river. This reminds her of other

dreams, the ocean's speed of waves, the outcry of lightning and rain.

She goes on swinging in silence. It has been a long, short day. The

night becomes a couch of therapy, and at the same moment a pit of

lowness.

She turns her eyes to the light of passing cars and feels alone. Summer

is departing; soon the autumn leaves will give new mood to the land.

It's times like this that she, too, may change.

Heather Lenz

Al Leaf - Michael Crowley

Orphan

She felt like burning herself

with a cigarette or diving

headlong into a train.

All the hours of grief whirled in

her head like engines or the

memory of her father's saw blade.

It was dark and the snow

was creating trails under street lamps

like slow-motion tears in a dream.

She'd never make it back to Oregon-

stuck like a stump in a bone-yard,

like a piece of garden statuary

cast in a lost pose.

Eyes that see too much.

All the fires like shooting stars

on a canvas inside her.

Long lost mothers, distant fathers,

abort your melancholy children.

Do not expect them to surge

into sunlight laughing

when the doors of your house are silent.

Heather Lenz

--"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses, that is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. We are all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up to discover what is already there."

Henry Miller--

Coy Crowd - Michael Crowley

life line

i pinch some of what is life between my fingers
it boils down to the seasoning i think
maybe
a rush of curry might be in order
or sea salt or peppers or something of considerable
import
perhaps
a little sage to go with that
perhaps
some articulate accidental fire

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

the
poet

he loves words
he loves how just
like animals or children
no manner of calling
whistling or screaming
will bring them to him

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

may showers for hours and hours - Amy Kohut

sometimes dreams dont come true

my dream was never really fame/or fortune/or

notoriety for what i had the/balls/vanity/to write/or

say/or do/or create/or imagine

my dream was never to be on my knees

my dream was easy

but naive

it was a dance to the step of a stay home dad/a

constant presence is what i hungered to be/a

light house/a domesticated god of fire and truth

and love and life

my dream was no secret

my dream was no surprise

my dream was to never allow/this/this/

wall/to be built between my son and myself/

between myself and the world/

between my father/s) and me

i/i/i/sold my dream to the highest bidder

for the sake of some peace and quiet and hope

and some purpose since passed me by

my dream was never to punish myself

and those i love relentlessly

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

regarding this

sometimes what takes us

what carries us away
past the anticipation
past duende
and the realization
of rationalizing
petty revelations
or pretences
of ego
of sorts
or the hot red reckless
abandon
of presuming to know

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

Rimpoche Pimpoche - Amy Kohut

To begin...

yellow tirades escalate into excess, congregation of blaring trumpets,

playing the blues, as spirits linger lightly on the walls....

maxim of distance unending.

Nighttime meetings with madness, causing our great mother earth sadness,

believe what you want about our pretty little world,

sub-worlds inside....

for with this time i do declare a state of nothingness

and nonetheless accept your ridicule-

for scapegoats of divine intervention, made into a fake jewel;

duped once again by life's ultimate diversion-

that which causes shape.

Step out of the conservatively bound square, and reel through the air,

lose control against the life giving fire;

lose track, forget....

the lively darkness gives identity, that which is

non-existent;

no name, no numbers

words evaporate as water in the hottest hell.

Spin furiously in the cool night breeze, find

volcanoes of heat within,

as shadows shed light on self indulgence;

understand...comprehend....

ALL shall find disappointment in death.

No wind blows the same twice,

as churches mock the ground upon which they occupy-

insult after insult we inflict, without a second of remorse.

Beautiful prairies defy the human logic-

buildings, cars, smoke and smog....

this is our chosen course.

Deploy naughty thoughts into granted actions,

what am I?

Whatever my mind desires, stir the coals of life,

make them burn higher....

trapped on this world. stuck in this room.

Uncomfortable in these clothes. secure under these blankets.

willed into this skin.

Taught values discarded, fallacies now transparent....

the natural course of nature has been disrupted;

prepare a statement in defense.

Diversity's rare touch..........bless me.

Anthony Glumac

Found poem based on: I'm Broke

it's the car again

unexpected

deserted houses

tonight's story will focus on

or the dryer

these things happen

any reason why your payment was late

even with the deductible

I can't loan you a hundred, fifty maybe

stimulus package (several crude, but funny jokes)

I got your stimulus package right here

gave themselves bonuses

we needed that money for

man, can't even afford generic generics

family owned business

unpaid furloughs

selling their

no time-and-a-half no overtime

brother can you spare a

come to our attention

abandoned pets

so if we get the car fixed

buy one get one

this bill will be late

get me out of

can you loan me

late

Cindy Stell

--"We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."

Dr. Seuss--

Katie B - Michael Crowley

Layering

The oil is vanilla and jasmine

and a bit of pepper

The pepper is a surprise, isn't it?

and while you're searching for the elusive pepper scent

you become aware of the vanilla

not so much that you are reminded of cookies

something edible, but not cookies

here is the jasmine,

a crazy floral, really

alone,

then it slow dances with the vanilla

and with a throw of pepper

now and then

you have to be careful

you can get lost

Cindy Stell

Love Connect

My wandered in search of love

the sultry vibration

has become the life line now.

With a majestic move and graceful smack

Loneliness has become a sweet companion!

His pulsating fondle

Brings solace to the queer of the soul

though ethereal

Transported to a groovy existence

At last I dare to laugh in the face of life

shaking the tresses loose

the spirit is elated

Resonating the craved strength

Sandhya Tiwari

Catapulting Nostalgia

Machine-washable love,

continually laced with sensory spices,

brewing into nostalgic catapults of

when you stood on time's shoulders,

and made deals about the infinity of your

protection.

About how far it could go,

and how long it could carry us,

until we eventually fall,

and claw away at the walls

of our own will.

Sarah Martin

Ephemera and Soap

You could say what she had experienced

Was a bout of magic;

A strange ephemeral burst of wicked

Confidence that could seemingly give one the ability

To blow dozens of shiny, prismatic bubbles without a wand,

To make billows of smoke dance when the incense

Burns too quickly,

But there wasn't anything magical about it

It was the stroke of a guru

A transient cluster of divinity's guise:

A lie,
Cloaked.

Sarah Martin

the dreamer - zzbaggins

The Performer I

An octave prickles

the tongue which

cradles it and

buds bust into bloom

as a need for projection

is expressed with

a single

coo
Yesterday failure fulfilled you

lips lubricated with glue

the thousand-headed

monster of the crowd

lies ravenous with

its eyes cast on

you

The Performer II

Into a tree you carved

a message with a knife

"IF FACES ARE TOPOGRAPHICAL

YOURS IS A RAVINE

SITUATED SOMEWHERE EAST

OF MY COMPLACENCY

WEST OF WHERE I DREAM

NORTH OF ALL THINGS WHICH ARE NOT

BUT PAINSTAKINGLY SEEM"

And you walked back to your car

dead leaves flying backward

beneath your feet

you drove all the way home with

the emergency signal on

singing the same song

your parents played

the night you were conceived

Sarah Martin

Madison bench - Michael Crowley

Fury

The before and after of a mortal dream

come true

The autumn leaves turn a crisp golden

brown and red

Watch as they fall to the ground and are

swept away

The cool breeze releases a new breath
Daylight breaks and unleashes a powerful

but calm roar

Anger lies in the pit ready to be purged

A man walking down the street in an inoffensive

manner suddenly lashes out with extreme ire

Raging red as the sun life suddenly begins

Watch the tiny buds of May bloom ever so

slowly

The colours illuminate the sky as tropical orange dances with

sea-breeze purple

A quiet dusty rose gently highlights the yellow sunshine

These colours will amalgamate to form an emotion

so strong not even the thunderous sky can impede

this feeling

Marcie Riel

per-spec-tive

caught

in a dali moment

just outside of wichita

just after dark in kansas

a ballerina of the cornfield

not far up ahead the

hot red hail of tail lights

just up ahead

a white tail deer pirouettes

in a puff of steam

just like this

as the hot blood trips

the frigid air

in my headlights

a strangely beautiful arc

of crimson red

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

--"We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and all our perfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life."

John Lennon--

Meet Stela...

Please join us in welcoming Stela to the online world of literature. With my good friend and publishing partner Nicole E. Turiano as Editor-In-Chief and myself as Publisher, we are excited to share our new magazine with all of you. We are currently building our website, so please bear with us, but we will soon be ready to call for submissions. Please click on the link above and see what we are all about. Follow our blog, or our facebook page, or even twitter for updates... we are here!

Thank you for reading, sharing, writing, creating...

Poetry Victims

Luv ya, Nic and ZZ

Volume 8, Issue 3

2011-05-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

it was the spring of hope - nicole e. turiano, zz baggins

--“No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny

without leaving some mark on it forever.”

Francois Mauriac--

--"The way to love anything

is to realize that it might be lost."

G.K. Chesterton--

A Skills Feat Krafty Kuts

846 Victims to Date

Shadows

Becoming shapeless
makes them admired poison
Reaching theory through cracks and calculations,
Upon request
It's manipulative query slopes a greater need
for walking lines
Too narrow for proportionate profiles

Every man has thought of honing in it's mystery
Every woman learns to want it's sleek and redesigns herself in it's company
Of secrets
as the mirrors we keep hidden
By silent
And forward
Our gazes and of course
our steps

Is it a comfortable coincidence that they trail behind, mostly?
Os is it that our impression of light
is false
As if something more deceiving likens to be embedded in it's beauty
Being admired like such extensions of self
It should make sense to us only
Because they are often dependent
on days passing in them

And perhaps like the rest of us
Wish they didn't have to be
Unnoticed and forgiving
In a wake that sustains life
Like portraits of what we wish we were instead of our truths

Fading into the cracks on sidewalks and borrowing significance through windows that cast us in
Tombs of hours that Might as well have never been
Mortal as bodies they stem from

Nicole E. Turiano

ocean

because i have this mad desire to see
the lay of the land as a whole i will
always swim farther than anyone expects
and having swam so far from shore
there is nothing i can do now but float

this is what an ocean will teach you
in the end
how to float only

minutes become hours/then days
and weeks/months/years/a
litany of furtive longing
giving oneself up to the seduction
of water equates to an act of love

an act of love equates to life

J.A. Spahr-Summers

dying is a necessary act for living - zz baggins

River

Like a river you dispose of your love
through a valley of wandering tributaries
Within shallow cleavage of flowing gape
your tantric prose
Are random bevels of your past, and its wisdom bones

Petrifications
looming fragments
Lay like oracles of your historical intentions
Disguised in motion and memorable rapture
A hypnotic dance, weaves to pattern everything you embody
Only to leave it all behind

Secrets unearthed among shadows and scars
left for wisdom to kiss in
Your spools of inspiration,
white wept under the graves of unknowing,
and diluted divisions

Unwarranted droughts, deliberate passages of frozen limb,
Uncertain buckles of flood and tide
Have left mystery like a stage for your ghostly depiction
Your romance a pivotal caption in time, encircling
it's relevance
In the murmur of night, half strung in its hum
A hymn of existence precludes

This monumental lust

Like a throne for you to gage
where erosion of your heart will contain in pools
By gentle banks
Prisms of light to infuse your fertile moss stumps,
Faceted funnels of lucid spirals, and languid coffins
Leaving striations of beauty and color
like fingerprints against what is left to assume

At the mercy of your touch
Weathered by your ambiguity
Taunted by unpredictable moves

A passion distilled in the encryption, of your corrosive will
Far depth in a bed of wading
Floating passively - reflections of dark and stars
Upon mirrors of your soul pieces
Adrift your fate

Meandering on to further endless
As where I've come to miss you
Consumed by what I find,
Remains a river
such as your love
Disposed in a valley, of wandering tributaries

Nicole E. Turiano

tree
for nicole

we could also say
a tree is just a tree
or
a poem is like a tree
never equating them to life
or what allows us to dream
or to the breath they bring us
or the flesh of themselves offered
in slivers to our want of rhythm

cut the fucker down/some
people actually say things like this/then
they do it/lets not
lets dig deep for water
or draw it from the delta
lets encourage the thing to grow
lets hand it over to life

J.A. Spahr-Summers

at any given moment heres whats inside my head - zz baggins

November

November is my mother's mirror
It's aged like she thinks herself boned
fragile
As cliffs receded from years of heavy rain
she has never forgotten
collecting their flesh rocks in each of every two of her pockets

She stands on their weak edges imagining depth
That is space between fallen and reborn
Her fingers to her lips
Because she wants to know what nothing feels like
Thinks its what makes forgotten ok to have ever been let go
She says November makes unknowing impossible
to be unwanted

she is plagued-says all us women must be
She can't be a man, can't not feel like a man, can't not piss without her skin at the mercy of cold, like a
man
Making her vulnerable, sick
Making her bleed
though she never wanted to have what her mother once did
So she rather desires not to
desire having
Wants not what wanting makes her rich with ache

She thinks she could jump to be without her loathing
If only she's been born
With a dick
Men don't have mirrors-they have nothing in their pockets,
Only, their dicks
Like kings, can only fuck with
And when they piss-they do wherever they feel like it
Kings never bleed, is what she tells us

November is cracked at it's frame
Through it's thick desperate layers
of time held hostage
By reflection and dreams
that have escaped her
in of her Fitted cage
she wears not like a mother
But Like a King,
dresses the rain in November

Nicole E. Turiano

white v neck t shirt and jeans

you asked me once what i wanted you to wear
when i photographed you/not saying/perhaps
something more obvious/what exactly/
white v neck t shirt and jeans/i know this to
be true because this is what i still find inside me
this river raging this river searching asking for
passage to the universe i know to be inside you

J.A. Spahr-Summers

while beautiful for all to see your true beauty lies hidden within - zz baggins

In-Stereo[ANT]isms (Classified)

Let us be more now than the pale coal
from regret is a perimeter of spherical fire
we channel our humility spread through aerosol cans
and wonder who
stoked it high by steeples compared to
open timbers lynching ashen pyramids

We immortalized prevailing smoke
Not just dreaming trails and hums
Slain opus mounds of word spread moss
like madness in the veins of Sycamore, and Creeper kings
burnt against fallen fences, September strophes

Let Monarchs lower trembled in tin cans echoed clamor
From our own hands, we drink rust and claim our ant castles holy
though we carried our queen to the apex
hungry shadows feeding upon

And where suffering adorns the apples poison stem we
wave its tiny green flag surrendered before giants
who lie to us the truth

Nicole E. Turiano

the truth
for nicole

is where i want to be and
this is where i hope to be
strap me down if necessary
make me look in the mirror
make me take a good look
i think that we are worth it

J.A. Spahr-Summers

Read This

the earth is like a child that knows poems - nicole e. turiano, zz baggins

Volume 8, Issue 2

2011-03-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

lonely - sarah herrington

--“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone.

Only through our love and friendship can we create

the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”

Orson Welles--

The Black Keys

421 Victims to Date

Rose

When it’s behind my knees
you’d have to fall to the
floor, lower your whole
body like horses in a field
to smell it. White Rose,
Bulgarian rose. I think of
sheets I’ve left my scent in
as if to stake a claim for
someone who could never
care for anything alive.
This Bulgarian rose,
spicy, pungent, rose as my
16th birthday party dress,
rose lips, nipples. If you
won’t fall to your knees, at
least, please, nuzzle like those
horses, these roses, somewhere

Lyn Lifshin

four fifteen a.m.

I am preparing chicken salad
and while the meat cools
in the colander
in the pocket of the sink
I am cutting grapes
in half
another act of love
in the den
just off the kitchen
I sit with an orange bowl
in my lap a bowl
of screaming half grapes
such panic
I have never seen before
I have never
witnessed this before so
I coo to them
my little green sacrifices
my offerings
I coo to them like
I do to babies and
I think about
the women in my life

J.A. Spahr-Summers

ZZ Baggins Not Quite so Personal and Irregular Diary

hurricane - nicole e. turiano, zz baggins

Volume 8, Issue 1

2011-01-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

Philbrook - Elizabeth Ketrick

--"We are each of us angels with only one wing and we can only
fly by embracing one another" - Luciano de Crescenzo--

Creative Circus

421 errr Victims to Date

the wreck

you
are a car crash i can’t stop staring at
an enrapt and tangled
mash and mangle of metal
curving in places at once devastating and divine
i’m the passenger at the moment of impact
rippled and shockwaved
bones shuddered and splayed upon the concrete
the tenderest meat you will ever savor
as canines compress on concave of neck
shivers tracing torment down my spine
the lasting sting of the lash’s lateral lines
soap rinsing slowly over
every exquisite rip of back
recycling every second of the wreck
discipling me penitent
head pounding windshield
cracked and shattered
pulse punching holes
chassis rattled to bolts
spinning over and over and over
smashed splat against a canyon floor
crumpled and crumbling
wondering if i am dead
and i can’t tell
if the half drunk light
swimming into the room
is a streetlamp
or the smolder of a wreck
echoing fire up sandstone walls

what does it matter
at 4:36 in the morning
when a phantom speaker
spins paradise circus
playing dark fantasies
in the half light

your breath
dancing
mischievous sprite
a pirouetting bullet in the night
that demure assassin of sleep
steady hand taking aim
my dreams plié and relevé
an improvised échappé
muzzle flash
and vanishing smoke
hang low over your soft lift

your scent
like resin
penetrates where only breath has ever been
digs in
makes me an offering
a sacrifice
a wafer aching to melt at touch of tongue
take me in
consecrate this mess of man before you
convert this heathen prayer of wanton skin
lick every shadow its own ungodly sin
turn every muscle into madness
unleash chaos on every synapse
make me boon to your avatar

be soulslinger
wring me clean
and render me senseless
separate this wreck from its flesh
i am not afraid
martyr my life for your amusement
pierce these palms with pens
twist my tongue a tourniquet
to stop the poems bleeding from my lungs
until the gates become unhinged
and singe this world a burial beat
i am ready
my love if you must
my life is yours i swear it
just kiss me

Ian R. Dougherty

firestarter

because i give birth to silence

because i think
and because i feel

because i know fear

because i know bliss

because i have seen
the birth of stars super novas
meteorites

because i am inspired

because i ignite

because i lied

because i love the light

J.A. Spahr-Summers

Trap

life is just life - zzbaggins

Volume 7, Issue 1

2010-04-07T04:33:00.000-07:00

movement 4 -- anna maly

Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey

421 Victims to date

Where End Begins

Where shall Begin end? Begin shall end wherever Am

is. For Am, whether big or small, is the Why & the

Wherefore of Much. Am is the Yes that defies the No.

Am is forever of the Now; the To Be a

gainst the Not to be. Am is the this of That, the that

of this; the ever & ever of If. Who am? And

How Am? No one can say: one can make, one can have made;

one can begin to begin -- but one can not end where

beginning begins to end....one must continue On.

Some say Love; some say Like, but Like like Love wears

old, wears new, wears right & wrong more than less. And

what is Right will be left when what Was is no

longer Is -- when End begins where Begin ends.

SETH

con-trary

having known desire

having drank of pleasure

and purple pain

i stand in front of the mirror

a ghost stirring inside me

inside my musty mind

a hand and

suddenly a razor

rushing through me

one

day someday

one never knows

J.A. Spahr-Summers

what is left -- zzbaggins