It's All Fun And Games Until It's Not

 

—Poetry and Photos by John Patrick Robbins, 

Knotts Island, N. Carolina

HER LOVE IS LIKE WINTER

Cold and unforgiving and beautiful all the same.
Sometimes I feel her icy embrace caress my thoughts
As I feel a sting in the space that once held my so-called heart.

I believe she stuck the needle into the doll just a tad bit deeper.
Her passion for hatred seems to far surpass that of compassion.

Her heart is like a frozen lake, often walked on and fragile just the same.
Always listen before you step, for it always gives warning before it breaks.

Her love is like winter, beautiful in the sense it can never love in return.
Consider yourself lucky if only to survive it, let alone live to kiss and tell.

 

 

 

 

 

MASTER OF NO ONE’S COMMAND

Death does not scare me.
For death is peace and the burden of existence is simply just a waiting game.

My life has gone largely unfulfilled.
I consume everything I can only to fill an endless void.

I have no remorse, nor do I beg for forgiveness over my past choices.
For they were my own and suited my desires.

Many read something into the lines of others.
Guess, where they only have to ask to receive an answer.

Never place men upon thrones treating them as Gods.
For the view from any perch is lonely.

Power and influence are meaningless tools, when the vessel this title is placed upon is as hollow as an old dead tree inside.

Never envy the Gods, for they are alone in their pain.
And alone is all I shall ever truly be.

 

 

 

 

 

IT’S ALL FUN UNTIL IT’S NOT

The blood flowed more often than not, every time I puked.
Sometimes I question why I put myself through this.

Then I awake in redneck paradise, trapped due to lack of finances and realize.

The other side probably doesn't get cable or CMT.

I may not be able to afford a handgun but I can certainly afford a refill.

Get it?

 

 

 

 

ROSE WATER

I will never be the safe bet to see tomorrow.
But I will never pass anything off.
That's not a hundred percent me.

The drinks aren't to escape, they are simply to maintain.
The drugs are just there and sometimes that beats nothing at all.

Self-destruction in art is a bit sick when you consider.
The onlookers all praise your demise.
You're the whore, an empty vessel, nothing more than a product of empty streets and bad choices.

Chase the end and, eventually, you too shall find it.
It's not cavalier, it's just how it is.

Fools worship where others simply remain silent.

A kiss of tragedy is beautiful as a pathetic truth stands hollow.
The mirror reflects, as so do I.

There is nothing more to see here.
Goodnight.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

—Charles Bukowski

___________________

Welcome back to the Kitchen today, John Patrick Robbins—all the way from North Carolina—and thanks for the fine poems and pix! I'm so glad I found the Blogspot glitch so I could get his post up here today!

 

John was first featured in the Kitchen on June 5, 2019; see medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/search?q=john+patrick+robbins/ and scroll down.

—Medusa

 

 

John Patrick Robbins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world, including
that which was previously-published.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!

LittleSnake, Hung Over

 

The Ocean's Calling

—Poems by John Patrick Robbins, Knotts Island, NC
—Anonymous Photos of Knotts Island

SPEED-DATING FOR DUMMIES

We sat there at the bar.

It was after a reading.

I was getting sloshed as usual ‘cause how else would a man sit through people
 rambling through their feelings?

She was beautiful and everyone took notice; her words didn't matter with a rack
 that any true hunter would take pride in taking home.

I had her laughing and that was always my most resourceful tool.

That and the fact I could afford my own drinks and didn't give a damn to talk
 about poetry.

She told me she was single.
So I kept her talking and bought her drinks.

She told me about her life.
Then asked me what time was it.
Then informed me she had a kid at home and her sister was watching her seven-
 year-old son.

I asked if her sister was single or had any kids.

She told me she hated kids and was a total slut, and slept with anything that
 had pulse.

She also said she would like to see me again.

I handed her a pen and a bar napkin, asking for her sister’s number instead.

She told me to go fuck myself and stormed off.

I watched her head out the door, surveyed the room.

Spotted a women half-lit, drinking alone in a corner booth.

Looks like I was onto another round of speed-dating tonight.

I NEVER CLAIMED TO BE SMART

She was a forbidden pleasure
 and I never could resist a good time.

Nights are best kept secret,
 but with writers, nothing between you and the page is sacred.

And no matter my efforts, every
 thought was only a twisted highway between her and my ever-so-bad choices. 

I poured the drinks and she
 set the trap.

I may have known it was doomed
 to begin with.

I may have been many things.
When it came to her, smart was
 never one of them.

WORDS NOT TO LIVE BY

I prefer to have strippers for
 breakfast and a side of little regrets and maybe a double shot of Jack Daniels for     
 my coffee.

Do nothing until the sun sets
 then make the bars as usual.
Make others laugh and a few
 cringe with some very inappropriate jokes.

Burn the candle at both ends
 and maybe burn a little something extra too.

Stagger home and rinse with
 a little hundred-proof and probably forget to feed that dog.

But I'm sure he will enjoy whatever
 I splatter upon the floor.

As I pass out alone in hopes
 to not see another day.

Sharing my vices and if lucky
 that night, sharing my bed.

It's a cruel cycle I must repeat
 but I have to party for those less fortunate fools who embrace the grind and know  
 a wife and kids.

It's a sacrifice but I'm a selfless
 bastard.

Prosit my friends.

POETRY BY NUMBER

We all crave something.
A drink, a fix, a simple release
 from the bullshit of living this so-called life day to day.

Practice is for the piano.
And although I been chasing
 ass most my adult life, I have become far from an expert.

The next round sounds far more
 desirable than a second-chance sweetheart.

Maybe I'm getting too old or
 maybe common sense is finally kicking in.

I will keep watch over the whiskey.

And allow others to chase false
 hopes with little chance of a happy ending.
Whoever believes all poets are
 secretly romantics clearly has never read me.

Cheers.

NO SCREEN NAME NEEDED

I have sold books, been published
 in just about everywhere.
I never needed a stupid screen
 name or a gimmick to hide behind.

Course I been writing longer
 than most, living life instead of making it up.

Drinking far too much and convincing
 myself that the good times weren't more than addictions in disguise.

I didn't run workshops and didn't
 care for the novice opinion.

I had isolated myself on every
 level.
And lost everyone along the
 way.

I never hid behind a screen
 name.
Cause if I didn't believe in
 something I wouldn't have written it to begin with.

Don't be a novice.
You can't swim in the kiddie
 pool forever.

The ocean’s calling.


_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

—Thomas Gray

_____________________

Thanks, John Robbins, for your poetry today from the beautiful Knotts Island in South Carolina! John Patrick Robbins is the editor of both The Rye Whiskey Review and Under The Bleachers. He is also the author of Sex Drugs & Poetry from Whiskey City Press, and Once Upon A Nervous Breakdown from Soma Publishing. His work has been published in Ariel Chart, The Mojave River Review, The San Pedro River Review, Red Fez, Punk Noir Magazine, Blognostics, Romingos Porch, Beatnik Cowboy, The Dope Fiend Daily, Blue Pepper, Piker Press. He says his work is always unfiltered. Thanks again, John, for your visit, and don’t be a stranger!

Clive Matson holds many workshops in the Bay Area; this one is called “The Beat Aesthetic: Why We Need It Today” and is on-going, held on the 2nd Saturday of the month at Omni Commons, 4799 Shattuck, Oakland. (See www.meetup.com/Crazy-Child-Workshops/events/njpttpyzhbpb/.) The date on that flyer is for May, but elsewhere I see that they will also meet this coming Saturday, June 8. Don’t be shy about jumping in; it’s drop-in, with a $5 donation.

Poetry Off-the-Shelves will meet tonight from 5-7pm at El Dorado Hills Library on Silva Valley Parkway in El Dorado Hills. Scroll down to the blue column (under the green column at the right) for info about this and other upcoming poetry events in our area—and note that more may be added at the last minute.

—Medusa, celebrating the tough words of poetry that burns

 John Patrick Robbins

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Out of the Maze

 

—Poetry by Neil Fulwood, Nottingham, UK

—Public Domain Illustrations

 

“TO DO” LIST

Day off. Lie in. Wake to the morning
half gone, the percolator, the coffee
you should have woken up and smelled
hours ago. Wake to a lazy outlook
twitching its death throes under the weight
of everything you intended to do,
everything you’ve been procrastinating
for weeks, everything you’d meant
to clear the decks of by lunchtime,
leaving the afternoon free for what-you-will
and how’s-your-father. Your day off:
a collapsed building. Your fingers raw
scraping through the rubble, 
unable to scratch a single bloody X.

 

 

 

 

 

COSTUME DRAMA

Filmmaking as comfort food. Cinema
as checklist. Take a Penguin Classic
adapted a dozen times before
and done better for TV; hack at it

till the screenplay’s contingent
with a two-hour running time.
Who cares if a little irony or nuance
is jettisoned, if the most finely

drawn romantic heroine of her age
is reworked to accommodate
a smoky-eyed American ingenue?
Here’s what you get to compensate:

Oscar-bait visuals, a soundtrack
sparkling with imitation Haydn,
set design porn, a supporting cast
assembled from the RSC’s finest.

Something handsomely mounted,
but inert. Less a motion picture
than an object, motionless, pinned
beneath glass or preserved in amber.

 

 

 

 

 

WAR MOVIE

The outcome of a last-gasp mission,
the strategic value of a location
or an asset—that’s what’s important
in this kind of big-budget bombast,

not the loss of life on a global scale:
a dam to breach, a bridge to destroy,
a mountaintop stronghold to penetrate,
some damned armoured train to derail.

 

 

 

 

 

QUITTING THE MAZE

You simply turn round, retrace your steps,
swap left for right, right for left,

re-emerge from the narrow straits
into the slightly waning light of day

and tell yourself you’ll not do that again. To
think the Minotaur crouched at the centre

wasn’t even a deathless slavering beast
but the oily likeness of your boss’s face.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

THE DOUBLE
—Neil Fulwood

I know who the other one
is. His name, his strange
designs, the nightmares
he wakes from with new ideas.

It’s me I’m not sure about.

____________________

Welcome back to the Kitchen, SnakePal Neil Fulwood! About his situation in the UK, Neil writes, “Here in the UK we finally have a programme of vaccination being rolled out. Because it’s being done by age groupings, I won’t get my turn till April; however, I’m still out in the thick of it, driving buses!” Neil will have a new collection out in June called Service Cancelled, which brings together the best of his pieces written in the first lockdown last year. More about that later.

If you missed the excitement yesterday, Blogspot and I got our feet tangled up, so the post was subsequently late. If you missed it, be sure to check out John Patrick Robbins' poetry and photos in yesterday's Kitchen.

___________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

Not to mention no masks...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos in this column can be enlarged by
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.

Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world, including
that which was previously-published.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!

 

 

 




 

Hope of Light

Luna's Café, Sacramento
photo by frank andrick

GHOST PIGMENTS
—Taylor Graham, Placerville

They say, through the Depression he worked
with brush and finger, mallet, chisel, earning pennies
for an applewood saint or a collage of scraps
of newsprint, ticket stubs and racing forms,
veined with streaks of chalk or crayon—whatever
he might glean from crevices and gutter;
colors he distilled from bark and flower petals,
lichen, sumac, goldenseal. When no one wanted
pictures, he roamed the woods gathering
roots and leaves to dry for herbal tea. They say
he starved on art and water. His eye lengthened
like a shadow, but not to trouble the living
stream of men who still had jobs, hurrying down-
headed past him on the street. And still
he painted, carved, and whittled, buyers
or no. Here’s what passed down to us,
self-portrait of a stranger, brittle now, but
transfused with backlight like a family ghost.

__________________

Thanks to Taylor Graham and Phil Weidman for today's poems (Phil's poem below is in celebration of the "Plink" group that cleans up the forest in our area), and to frank andrick for the photo of La Luna. Be sure to join us there this Thursday (10/30), 8 PM, when Rattlesnake Press’s “Away Team” will travel to 16th St. in Sacramento for a Double Feature—a release of, not one, but TWO SpiralChaps in celebration of Luna’s Café: a new collection of art and poetry about Luna’s and about writing from B.L. Kennedy (Luna’s House of Words) and an anthology of over 100 Luna’s poets, artists and photographs (La Luna: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café) edited by frank andrick. Featured will be readings by B.L. Kennedy and by other Luna's hosts over the years. That’s Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento, 8 PM. Open mic before and after.


Also in NorCal poetry this week:

•••Tonight (Monday, 10/27), 7:30 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center presents Meg Withers and Tom Goff at HQ for the Arts, 1719 25th St., Sacramento. Open mic after. [See last Friday's post for bios.]

•••Weds. (10/29), 8 PM (doors open at 7:30): d.a. levy Birthday Bash at Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento, featuring the reading of d.a. levy poems by D.R. Wagner, frank andrick, Gene Bloom, Patrick Grizzell, Robert Grossklaus, Kathy Kieth, Noel Kroeplin, Robert Lozano, Miles Miniaci, Crawdad Nelson, Charlene Ungstad, Terryl Wheat and Todd Cirillo. Music by the Downtrodden Saints. Hosted by B.L. Kennedy. $5.00 at the door. Info: 916-441-3931.

•••Friday (10/31), 7:30 PM: Los Escritores del Nuevo Sol / Writers of the New Sun present their annual Día De Los Muertos Poetry Reading honoring Those Who Have Gone Before, a tribute to Los Antepasados with poems, stories and songs featuring Francisco X. Alarcón, who will read from an upcoming collection of poems. La Raza Galería Posada in midtown Sacramento (1022-1024 22nd St.), (916) 446-5133; www.larazagaleriaposada.org/. Come and read your own poems to los muertos!

La Raza Galería Posada, a historic institution of local civil rights movements, was established on the belief that art and culture uplift, enlighten and build communities, education, and awareness about people and society. And for information about Los Escritores, call 916-456-5323.

•••Friday (10/31), 7 PM: Sacramento Poetry Center Halloween Poetry Bash, HQ for the Arts, 25th & R Sts., Sacramento.

•••Saturday (11/1), 12-4 PM: The annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival celebrates writers, nature and community at Civic Center Park in Berkeley with Robert Hass, Jane Hirshfield, Brenda Hillman, Al Young w/bassist Dan Robbins, Joseph Lease, Camille Dungy Avotcia, Mike Tuggle, Chris Olander, Grace Fae & Grace Tea. Open reading, environmental updates, art activities; River Village: literary & environmental exhibitors. Info: www.poetryflash.org or 510-526-9105. Watershed is a collaboration of Robert Hass (US Poet Laureate, 1995-97), Poetry Flash, Ecology Center/Berkeley Farmers’ Market and EcoCity Builders.

Also: Two pre-festival events: (1) A symposium entitled Creativity in the Face of Climate Change: The Role of the Humanities in Awakening Societal Change on Thursday, Oct. 30, 2-4:30 PM, free at the Maude Fife Room in Wheeler Hall, UC Berkeley (presented by the Berkeley Institute of the Environment; RSVP at bie.berkeley.edu/ccc); and (2) a Pre-Festival Strawberry Creek Walk (poetry & creek restoration update) on Saturday, Nov. 1 at 10 AM (meet at Oxford & Center Sts. in Berkeley).


A Poet’s Stamp!

The U.S. Postal Service announced last Thursday that Edgar Allan Poe will be featured on a 42-cent U.S. postage stamp on Jan. 16, 2009, marking the 200th anniversary of his birth. I did a little research (well, looked at the list on Wikipedia) and discovered that the first poets to be so honored were in 1940, which was a big year for poet-stamps (Longfellow, Js. Lowell, Js. Whitcomb Riley and John Greenleaf Whittier). Nobody got a stamp in the ‘50’s (too tame an era for wild poets, I guess), and only Dante got one in the ‘60’s (1965). Then apparently they tried to make up for lost time in the flower-child ‘70’s, with Dickinson, Dunbar, Frost, Jeffers, Lanier, Masters, and Sandburg. Millay and Eliot represented the ‘80’s, but then it dwindled again to just two since 1986: Marianne Moore in 1990 and Ogden Nash in 2002. Hopefully the next decade will do better by U.S. poets…!

__________________

FOREST FRIENDS
—Phil Weidman, Pollock Pines

You toss it, they retrieve it,
You dump it, they haul it.
You leave it burning,
they douse it until cold.

Name it (a mattress, refrigerator,
battered TV) they find it
and heave it on board
Doug’s trusty old truck.

Nothing is too big, nothing is too small.
Bullet-riddled cars are
pulled out of the brush
so they can be towed.

Beer cans, bottles and
shotgun hulls are tossed
into garbage bags
and loaded when full.

Steve, their Pied Piper
who scours back roads,
rewards his volunteers with
cold drinks and grub.

__________________

THE DAY PAST TENSE
—Taylor Graham

It’s dark. Turn off the monitor,
turn on the news. Still the image burns
his retina. That graph of fortune
on the brink of ruin, the not-so-divine
grape of ripeness on its vine, gone
to rot in rain. Act of God or Man?
His fingers tense on the control.

Turn off the news, forget the dying
green lines across the screen.

Turn on some music. Listen
for divine harmonies from thin
air rising and falling ancient-timeless
as Gregorian chant, so many voices
imploring, praising
in the only words they know,
a language he can’t quite understand.

__________________

LATE YEAR PARADIGM
—Taylor Graham

What became of him?
A bird flew out the window.

How could you forget?
The keys do a circle dance
choosing a partner, a lock.

Our old deaf dog sleeps
like stone, wakes up at midnight,
barks to hear a sound.
Our deep imaginings and,
in the night sky, stars.
The dark’s a fertile garden.

She kept her memories
in an album, leather bound.
A young girl writes down
dreams she knows she’ll remember.
Our Harvest Moon is waning.

Wild geese overhead,
one less than last year, one more
than a future spring.
The vixen howls from her den,
the old man’s at solitaire.

A blackbird’s shadow
on the pond makes ripples
but the bird is gone.

__________________

FLYING FOX
—Taylor Graham

(after Vincent Van Gogh)

Stained-glass wings illuminated
by no moon at midnight—
they glow of themselves,
with the heat of leaves loosed
in October’s dying light.

By morning, littered streets
and gutters. But tonight, held
aloft by leaded arms and fingers,
these wings extend, a hope
of light.

__________________

Today's LittleNip:

LEAVE THEM ALONE
—Patrick Kavanagh

There's nothing happening that you hate
That's really worthwhile slamming;
Be patient. If you only wait
You'll see time gently damning

Newspaper bedlamites who raised
Each day the devil's howl
Versifiers who had seized
The poet's begging bowl

The whole hysterical passing show
The hour apotheosised
Into a cul-de-sac will go
And be not even despised.

__________________


—Medusa


SnakeWatch: What's New from Rattlesnake Press:

October is Sacramento Poetry Month! Be sure to join us on Thursday, Oct. 30, 8 PM, when Rattlesnake Press will release not one, but two SpiralChaps to honor and celebrate Luna’s Café, including a new collection of art and poetry from B.L. Kennedy (Luna’s House of Words) and an anthology of Luna’s poets, artists and photographs (La Luna: Poetry Unplugged at Luna’s Café) edited by Frank Andrick. Come travel with our Away Team as we leave the Home of the Snake for a brief road trip/time travel to Luna’s Café, 1414 16th St., Sacramento to celebrate Art Luna and the 13 years of Luna's long-running poetry series. Who knows what auspicious adventures await us there??

And check out B.L. Kennedy’s interview with Art Luna in the latest Rattlesnake Review (#19)! Free copies are available at The Book Collector, or send me two bux and I’ll mail you one (address below). Next deadline, by the way, is November 15.

Coming in November: November will feature a new rattlechap from Red Fox Underground Poet Wendy Patrice Williams (Some New Forgetting); a littlesnake broadside from South Lake Tahoe Poet Ray Hadley (Children's Games); our 2009 calendar from Katy Brown (Beyond the Hill: A Poet’s Calendar) as well as Conversations, Vol. 4 of B.L. Kennedy’s Rattlesnake Interview Series. That’s Weds., November 12, 7:30 PM at The Book Collector.


Medusa's Weekly Menu:

(Contributors are welcome to cook up something for any and all of these!)

Monday: Weekly NorCal poetry calendar

Tuesday: Seed of the Week: Tuesday is Medusa's day to post poetry triggers such as quotes, forms, photos, memories, jokes—whatever might tickle somebody's muse. Pick up the gauntlet and send in your poetic results; and don't be shy about sending in your own triggers, too! All poems will be posted and a few of them will go into Medusa's Corner of each Rattlesnake Review. Send your work to kathykieth@hotmail.com or P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726. No deadline for SOWs; respond today, tomorrow, or whenever the muse arrives. (Print 'em out, maybe, save 'em for a dry spell?) When you send us work, though, just let us know which "seed" it was that inspired you.

Wednesday (sometimes): HandyStuff Quickies: Resources for the poet, including whatever helps ease the pain of writing and/or publishing: favorite journals to read and/or submit to; books, etc., about writing; organizational tools—you know—HandyStuff! Tell us about your favorite tools.

Thursday: B.L.'s Drive-Bys: Micro-reviews by our irreverent Reviewer-in-Residence, B.L. Kennedy. Send books, CDs, DVDs, etc. to him for possible review (either as a Drive-By or in future issues of Rattlesnake Review) at P.O. Box 160664, Sacramento, CA 95816.

Friday: NorCal weekend poetry calendar

Daily (except Sunday): LittleNips: SnakeFood for the Poetic Soul: Daily munchables for poetic thought, including short paragraphs, quotes, wonky words, silliness, little-known poetry/poet facts, and other inspiration—yet another way to feed our ravenous poetic souls.

And poetry! Every day, poetry from writers near and far and in-between! The Snakes of Medusa are always hungry.......!

_________________

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their POETRY, PHOTOS and ART, as well as announcements of Northern California poetry events, to kathykieth@hotmail.com (or snail ‘em to P.O. Box 762, Pollock Pines, CA 95726) for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.) Medusa cannot vouch for the moral fiber of other publications, contests, etc. that she lists, however, so submit to them at your own risk. For more info about the Snake Empire, including guidelines for submitting to or obtaining our publications, click on the link to the right of this column: Rattlesnake Press (rattlesnakepress.com). And be sure to sign up for Snakebytes, our monthly e-newsletter that will keep you up-to-date on all our ophidian chicanery.