Volume One, Number
One
October
2009
Joseph
Fonseca
The American
Century
Memories of a Life
with the Whore of Babylon
Lola
Nation
Id
Directions to
Revolution Blvd
A.P.
Chambers
Plasticine
Brandon
Whitehead
Bogie
Amber Victoria
Tudor
One More
Letter
Leo
Joseph
Fonseca
The
American Century
The numbers make for cold calculations and
lazy embraces
I'm in your house, on your couch,
beached like a whale
You've been giving your kissing
disease, again
Spread your keys among the guests
of your party
One to the cellar, one to the
front door, one for your safe
And one for your chastity
chest
I watch the bottles of liquor
drain to the carpet like seventies shag
Feet dancing, change jangling and
the silence shattered
We're pretty ugly, but you make us
beautiful
Just by the glancing touch of your
glass fingers along our cheekbones
With all the grace of Gatsby
giving in to the bullet
I can see it happening before the
fire can suck away our air
You crumbling down the stairs of a
black and white movie
Shimmering like a blood diamond,
you're bleeding from the mouth
While they stare and gawk and
check their watches
I've got your head in my lap like
so many hearts in your purse
Mark one, powder and blush, sell
the story to the tabloids
Sad Boy Falls For the Fallen Star
of Hollywood
You don't make eye contact, the
world looks at you
Even if it comes at the cost of
your lungs, you'll have last laugh
Last affairs, last mistakes, last
exits and last cigarettes
Your sweat has soaked through my
pant legs before I realize
Even now you're still using me, a
pillow for your death bed
Memories
of a Life with the Whore of
Babylon
It
was the critical reception of your failed masterpiece that sent
you crawling into my bed
The notices in the paper made promises you couldn't keep and
analogies that didn't read right when taken out of context
I caught you on the phone with your mother, she of the ignorant
persuasion, telling you about father and his brand new luxury
sedan
You couldn't even look me in the eyes
"This is my life" you said and I thought, it had better be,
because you're living it, getting it all stretched out in all
the worst places
You won't forgive me my narcissism but all you want is a pretty
boy on your arm
"Sugar, honey, sweetie," you say, giving me diabetes with your
insincerities while trying so hard to make it through an entire
evening with me and my empty bottle of wine
"Do you think?" You ask me, leaving the holes in your
inquiry for me to fill in with praise and adulation and other
synonyms for your vanity's nourishment
I step out of your doorway so your silhouette can greet the
world of flashing eyes looking to see how the puppet dances
without her strings
But the tethers of your master never truly release you
Not as long as there is someone willing to write in their
review, "Say what you will of her talent, but it cannot be
denied, the camera sure loves her."
Lola
Nation
Id
I
have met you in various traditions
stroked you distinctly in belief
that you were mystical
till you lay quiet and meditate
myself,
unsatisfied
You
associate yourself between
mind and time
Both lost
as far as I am
concerned
When catering to your degrees
of separation, self-knowledge
enacts itself in a lonely crazed
world,
calls lack of desire an epiphany
near nirvana,
with no understanding
your here, my now
offer no
enlightenment
Trapped in your illusion
a false dichotomy
manifesting in mistakes
defining physical attribution
to consciousness,
the skull of the plot to
dim lit
perspective
What does one do
without a common denominator
among society,
the ultimate identity
more powerful
than area to zip
codes?
Transcending between perceived reality
to obnoxious insecure senses
of forefront
consciousness…
Your mental architecture lacks
building blocks of psyche
necessary to brick and mortar the
reservoir of energy
of all mental
mechanics
Sadly,
still leading to one solemn place
where we can share in the same
primary skill of
sex
I
wonder who loved your mother more
Was it the boy in you
or the father who left for fear
of not being man
enough
How
many years of repression did you suffer
trying to uncover the super hero
in your family
for lack of father figure,
society
Did
it make you curious
Unhappy, or
confused?
Directions
to Revolution Blvd.
He
calls me late at night
He’s drunk, I bet he’ll stay up
Till the dirty sun makes its debut
Over Tijuana
puncturing the comfort
in his line of
sight
He
tells me there’s something about me
haunting him
full of regret,
he sloppily spills his remorse
on the table
Slurring promises
Drifting away
coming back again to
say
“There’s something
about you”
He
says I know it’s true
He’s not the only one
To have confessed this
He says he doesn’t know what it is
Then, contradicts himself
saying I deserve to know
what it is that makes them all
love me so
He says it was my eyes
Captivating, feline - brimming in
the color of envy
He over saturates the compliment
By saying, he wants to be in me…
My silence folds him again
with regret,
If I just go to Mexico,
he promises, he’ll repay the
debt.
A.P.
Chambers
Plasticine
Meagre sightless
Tiresias,
I dress him in his paper suit-
Of Ochre.
Fumbling, while he caresses his
Coffee into lather.
He tells me in his
mystic tone,
“The milk has grown old, fetch another!”
I gaze into that face,
Spider webs stretch their way-
From his eyes and across his face
And down his arms.
They race to his long nailed fingers,
That stir his coffee, absent mindedly
With a silver spoon.
Knowing my eyes
are on his face,
A voice: whispered
in bitter chocolate,
“Please don’t stare at me with that look.
I have known it on every face.
The pity, the confusion.
The self importance, the delusion.
It won’t earn them a place at god’s side”
Eyes squinted; I
look at him this being,
Who has been both man and woman.
He who has lived many generations,
With both fear and adoration.
“You know that I told him,
The little man in a powdered wig,
“Everyman will have fifteen minutes.”
And I was right for even he,
Turned that upon me.
To ensure that he had his own, for being-
Both a prophet and an illusion.”
To the vaunted
heights of fame,
To the painful obscurity,
And I would do anything to rekindle
The fire that was so easy to put out.
I have read in magazines so full of
Glossy pictures, of fame without talent.
I could so easily take that just to see my
Name lit on the walls of tower blocks.
Knowing I am no
good,
I am no good.
I
go.
Knowing I am no
good,
I am no good.
For I have watched
Ophelia drown,
From a vantage point; of coffee cups and broken saucers.
She wailed and she thrashed.
Pretty pale features, eloquent but in gloom.
The only weight on
my conscience then-
Was my plasticine children,
Whom I could crush with one hand,
Like the brave and the
foolish.
Tiresias said they would
die!
And for what?
A
flag of, stripes gently starred!
Or!
The idea of people oppressed?
My dear Plasticine children,
I am no good,
I am no
good.
Should I go for milk?
Perhaps I am not even able for
that!
I am not able, nor am I any good!
And Tiresias waits, blind and
cold.
His paper suit of stars and
stripes,
Burning. His paper suit of Ochre
fading.
And my Plasticine children in my sweaty
palm,
Crushed like mulch. Like poor
Ophelia, I watched drown.
I am not able.
I am no good.
He is no prophet.
And I am no god.
To the cavalcade,
To the
cavalcade.
I lost them there,
To the fanfare and the
drums,
Their jubilant pretty
faces,
Sun burnt and scarred.
And Tiresias waits, blind and
cold.
His paper suit of stars and
stripes,
Singing hallelujah,
hallelujah.
He has just been visited from god
above.
Their jubilant and pretty faces,
Sun burnt and scarred-
I made them with my own
hands,
From old bones and old
lust.
My plasticine children for whom-
I was no good.
“...our affection for them grows
faint,
Because we ourselves are
dying.”
My children, scarred, deluded-
I lost them in
confusion,
To war and the cavalcade
moving.
Tiresias said I would lose
them,
And to what?
Nothing that I myself couldn’t
have concluded.
Pretty faces, I take them back.
Summer sun, sultry
afternoon,
The beach, the sand, the sea so
blue.
My plasticine
children...
And Tiresias waits, blind and
cold.
His paper suit of stars and
stripes,
He tells me in his mystic
tone,
“The milk has grown old, fetch
another!”
I gaze into that face,
Spider webs stretch their
way-
From his eyes and across his
face
And down his arms.
They race to his long nailed
fingers,
That stir his coffee, absent
mindedly
With a silver
spoon.
But
I am not able.
I am no good.
He is no prophet.
And I am no
god.
Brandon
Whitehead
Bogie
See me sayin’ it like he would-
eyeballin’ you over a
toke
on the stub of a Lucky
Strike
hangin’ from that crocodile
smile:
“If you took every page
out of every notebook
written by every poet
from the beginning
to the end of time
and stacked ‘em all,
right up to the moon-
all you’d get is a
handful
of gray
dust.”
Cause poetry
is Humphrey Bogart,
baby-
500 feet tall,
grinnin’ like a wolf
while he slaps the sky
with a backhanded
smack,
grabbing the heavens
by their fancy lapels
and shakin’ ‘em
till one by one
all the stars fall
out.
Amber
Victoria Tudor
One More
Letter
Just press
pressure
Dance
play
press
press harder
just one more letter
you infinite
alphabet
press
When you miss
eyes that
move like mirrors
press
One more letter
press
press the letters
and
send
Leo
A man
Among the
Kings of
Your
kind
Tempestuous
Felines
Alluring
Leos
Wanton in
Security
This is your
Mortal
Flaw
Amongst these
Cats
Those
Who know
Their
destiny
Unabashed
Of Who
They are
Without being
Cankered by
The need of
Validation
Game
These
Are the
Men of
Fixed
Fire
Who
Always take
the
Crown
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