Read & Destroy

More on the way...

2011-01-26T18:38:00.000-08:00

Weve got a few tricks here and there up our sleaves, we do.

PRESS RELEASE: The Biblioclast

2010-06-17T19:55:00.000-07:00

IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THE PUBLICATION OF
LUDOVICO DE MEDICI'S

THE BIBLIOCLAST
is the first volume in the up and coming "400 Drunken Rabbits" series.

The collection contains six poems designed to

be read in order, out of order, in utter disorder, all the time or not at all.

'The Biblioclast' is available in your choice of yellow or azure

for $6 directly from

Read & Destroy Press
P.O. Box 1572 Pleasant Valley, New York 12569

Send all orders and inquires to

read.and.destroy@gmail.com

A reinterpretation of the cover-art will be released with each subsequent print run.

About The Author
Justin Parrinello (b. 1989) is a poet, playwright, visual artist, essayist, and publisher.
His poetry has been published in Home Planet News, Chronogram, Breadcrumb Scabs,
Uni-verse, Spread-Head and The ARTery to name a few.
He is a member and sponsor of the Academy of American Poets and is
the creator and editor of Read & Destroy, an avant-garde publishing outfit dedicated
to printing, posting, publicizing, and circulating poetry, fiction, and art to the public.
He has authored numerous chapbooks under the pseudonym Ludovico De Medici.
Some of those works include “Bodies/Galimatias” (2008) and “The Hair Falls Out in Clumps of Languages Long Dead” (2009).
His poetry, thoughts, musings and babble can be found at
http://www.notadeadtree.blogspot.com

Read & Destroy @ 2010 Albany Word Fest

2010-03-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

The Albany Word Fest will begin Friday April 16th at 5pm at the UAG gallery

and will run until 7am Saturday April 17th.

The event will kick-off with a special youth reading before moving on to the monolithic 12 hour open mic. If you're interested in participating in the open microphone you can sign up at http://www.albanywordfest.com/

Readers get around 15 minutes to perform their work.
There will also be a wide variety of featured readers

performing for much longer on the second day.
Admission is based on donation.

Get Infected!

2010-01-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

“Bug” is on open-ended ongoing ”exquisite cadaver”
moving from inbox to inbox.

The "Bug" strikes indiscriminately and demands a single sentence as payment.
The “Bug” will infest both the poet and the layman
and will grow in size with each infestation.

When the “Bug” is satiated it will reveal its true form
for all to revel in splendor and sublimity!

Will you be among the infected?

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an exquisite cadaver/ divine corpse/ cadavre exquis?
A exquisite cadaver is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence.

What is bug?
Bug is an exquisite cadaver that utilizes the internet as its canvas manifesting
in form as an email reply.

How does bug work?
You get bugged (receive an email containing the entry that preceded your infestation)
If you want to be hip, chic and dandy
you then contribute a few lines and send it back to the sender.
In turn the loons at Read & Destroy Laboratories compile the works in one sitting into a single assemblage and post it. Bugs growth will be broadcast as it develops at on Read & Destroys website.

I think this is f**king stupid and I want nothing to do
with you or this bug thing! What do I do now?
You simply don’t submit.
Additionally,
If you’d like us to remove you from our mailing list,
send us an email with “REMOVE ME NOW’ as the title and consider it done.

What do I write?
A bit of poetry, a philosophical musing, a tasty chunk of prose or fiction, a beautiful thought, some babble…
Pretty much anything goes with the small exception of hate speech of course.
We also prefer things in English but won’t delete entries submitted in foreign languages.

How much do I write?
As much as you desire!
No less than a sentence and
no longer than the sum of William Shakespeare’s Complete Collected Works.

Who’s behind all of this?
The Government.
We’re kidding,
Bug is a literary experiment perpetrated solely by Read & Destroy press.
You can check us out here
http://www.readanddestroyit.blogspot.com
Scroll to the very bottom of the page for our mission statement etc.

I haven't gotten bugged, but would like to participate. What do I do? How do I get involved?
Send us your entry in an email marked "Bug Submission" and we'll see to it that your materials are included. Send your entry in the body of the email, no attachments please.

UNI-VERSE SNEAK PEAK IV

2010-01-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

The fourth sneak peak installment of our ongoing UNI-VERSE anthology has arrived.

Breadcrumb Scabs, editor-in-chief

Lena Judith Drake graces us with her poem "Not B.S."

The poem is available free as a pdf at
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/uni-verse-%5bnot-bs-by-lena-judith-drake%5d/8155401

Visit our storefront at

http://stores.lulu.com/readanddestroy

ALL SYSTEMS FULLY OPERATIONAL

2010-01-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

We're ecstatic to declare that we have recently acquired a brand new Hewlett-Packard laptop and Epson 3-in-1 printer to add to our growing collection.

This marks the end of our three or so month epoch of sluggish post activity

and grueling publication setbacks.

We have alot of great stuff in store for the new year.

The first issue of our unusual magazine The ARTery shall see the light of day quite soon;

As well as a follow up to last years Cerebral Infatuation by Nicole Hargraves,

Doug Smith's Reactor Meltdowns & Butterfly Parasols,

Ludovico De Medici's The Biblioclast,

and of course the remaining segments of UNI-VERSE.

Thank you all once more for reading, for your support of us, verse, and the arts.

Rock on!

- The Loonies at Read & Destroy Laboratories

3rd Installment of UNI-VERSE Out Now!

2009-10-27T19:19:00.000-07:00

The newest sneak peak installment of our ongoing UNI-VERSE anthology is now out and available for free download.

This installment features Laura Lonshein Ludwig's poem

"Reflections on Life and Art."

http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/uni-verse-%5breflections-by-laura-lonshein-ludwig%5d/7841365

Download the Poem (pdf)

http://stores.lulu.com/readanddestroy

Visit our storefront

We Regret To Inform You

2009-10-12T20:48:00.001-07:00

To our readers, our fans, our friends and the rest of you keyboard cowboys

We regret to inform you that our command center recently experienced a partial system crash.

We are currently recovering from the afforementioned damage, repairing and relocating our archival works and data to other personal computers for safe keeping

and so publications can resume shortly.

We will continue to accept submissions, manuscripts etc.

both for UNI-VERSE and for other publications.

However, minor to moderate computer errors

have led to publishing setbacks and limbo deadlines.

Expect a little less activity in the coming months as we are working diligently to restore everything to its original state.

UNI-VERSE, The ART-ery and future publications will resume when our systems are fully operational.

We will post updates periodically on our activities and on the publications progress,

so stay tuned!

Thanks for your support and understanding.

Sincerely,

Justin Parrinello

Editor

The Folks at

READ & DESTROY

UNI-VERSE: NUMBER TWO

2009-09-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

The second sneak peak installment of our ongoing anthology is now available for free as a pdf download.

Number Two features the poem "Mohonk Preserve Blues" by Robert Milby.

For the afforementioned download, free poetry and other goodies visit our storefront at

http://stores.lulu.com/readanddestroy

UNI-VERSE COMMENCES

2009-09-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

The first sneak peak installment of the thirty part anthology is now available for free as a pdf download.

Number One features the poem "14" by Teresa Marta Costa.

For the afforementioned download, free poetry and other goodies visit our storefront at

http://stores.lulu.com/readanddestroy

PRESS RELEASE: Gehenna

2009-08-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

READ & DESTROY

is proud to announce the publication

GEHENNA

by Ludovico De Medici

Gehenna can be ordered as an E-book (PDF) for $2.50 at http://stores.lulu.com/deadtrees

You can order a hard copy of the book for $5.00 from
Read & Destroy Press P.O. Box 1572 Pleasant Valley, NY 12569
Send all online orders and inquiries to read.and.destroy@gmail.com

The Busiest Bard in the Underground
A Review of Justin Parrinello’s newest book of poems, Gehenna

Love his verbose paradoxical contortions of unusual wordplay
and literary grotesqueries or not
experimental poet
Justin Parrinello has definitely set the pace for the intriguing,
the bizarre and avant-garde all at rapid-fire speed.

Gehenna, the newest collection under his longstanding pseudonym Ludovico De Medici,
is the follow-up to the eulogistic melancholia of January’s
The Hair Falls Out in Clumps of Languages Long Dead
and
the radical progressive approach to automatic writing and word salad exhibited in May’s
Complete and Utter Rubbish Compiled with a Goal of Generating Cash.

Gehenna is a collection of seven poems narrated in the same cryptic, prophetic tone you’ve come to expect, only this time around Parrinello’s abandoned the concept driven narrative framework of which he’s well known and has instead
set a series of potent linguistic landmines that detonate with power and purpose
one after the other.

The author himself described Gehenna in a interview with
Ellen Connelly of the poetry zine
The Ephemera Exchange as
“A series of night gallery episodes that all have a sort of romantic paranoia in common. There‘s something for everyone, There’s bits about dead sea scrolls,
a crank-lab explosion, the sephira,
booster-shots of flavor-aid laced with cyanide,
and at least one love poem for good measure.”

The book begins with an interesting piece entitled Strawberry Cough,
which manages to frankenstein the historical account of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination with the squirmy, scaly imagery you’d find in a film by
David Lynch or Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Pieces like You are Dead, Because the Lord is not Your Armor and
Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid help to reinforce Parrinello’s atypical technique and ominous discourse with a slew of occult allusions, and a slapstick tenor of topics ranging from the Tylenol Murders, drug mules, religious excommunication, tales of love after life, and the end of civilization as we know it.

This book is edgy, thought-provoking, and literally bleeds with mood and style.
It packs a plentiful and at times unsettling punch, but by the end of the final poem
Let Them Eat Crack,
it all becomes very clear that this exercise in alienation, surveillance culture,
and loss of god has been the authors intention all along.
Once you’ve finished the book you’ll find yourself wanting to revisit the strange balance of utopian and dystopian imagery and clever language patterning Parrinello’s so artfully devised.
Go with your instincts, you’ll thank me in the long run!

Review by Brian Hill
of the Outsider Writers Collective

PRESS RELEASE: Free Speech by Katie Alekseev

2009-07-26T16:01:00.001-07:00

READ & DESTROY

is proud to announce the publication of

by
Katie L. Alekseev

FREE SPEECH is available for $5.00 directly from R&D Press.
Email or orders, inquiries, etc. to
read.and.destroy@gmail.com
or
READ & DESTROY PRESS
P.O. Box 1572 Pleasant Valley, New York 12569

FREE SPEECH is the first volume of a three book set.
Each book deals with a different aspect of American military history, with book one focusing primarily on the inception of the civil rights movement.

The hard copy is printed on 27 lb paper with a glossy cover
and pro-stitch binding.

-BIOGRAPHY-

Katie L. Alekseev

Katie is a certified nurse's assistant by day,
novelist, activist, and performance poet by night.
She lives in Glen Spey, New York with her fiance and sphinx cat Vlad.
She enjoys kayaking, cooking, and travel.

UNI-VERSE [Update]

2009-07-16T18:47:00.000-07:00

It's been several months since we first announced the Uni-verse series,
so it seemed only right to update everyone on the project, its progress and the new deadline.

First and most importantly,
we're pushing the deadline for the website/anthology back to December.
We apologize for this, but promise that the end product will be well worth the wait!

As for the printable material,
the first block of hand-outs is scheduled for an August release.

We're very pleased with the work we've received so far and want to thank everybody immensely for their wonderful words and unwavering support for Read & Destroy
and the rest of the underground literary movement.

Stay tuned!

PRESS RELEASE: Complete & Utter Rubbish...

2009-05-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

READ & DESTROY

is proud to announce the publication of

Complete & Utter Rubbish Compiled

With a Goal of Generating Cash

by Ludovico De Medici

"Complete & Utter Rubbish"

is a discursive absurdist vers-libre sideshow

showcasing a unique assortment of

literary experiments.

From automatic and disassociative writings to word salad and the

the psychadelic reverse-engineering of altered states of consciousness.

Rubbish is

Guaranteed to uplift and unsettle,

to make many sudden turns to unexpected places,

and if at the very least challenge the stiff formalities and crass classification

of modern free verse.

This tasty batch of oddball wankery can be downloaded

as a free pdf file at

http://stores.lulu.com/deadtrees

or can be viewed online at

http://www.rubbish.cjb.net

A "Dead Tree" version can be ordered directly from the press!

Send all physical mail orders to

READ & DESTROY PRESS

P.O. Box 1572

Pleasant Valley, New York 12569

You can place orders online by emailing us at

read.and.destroy@gmail.com

The booklet is printed on 24 lb paper with a color cardstock cover

and saddle-stapled gutter.

This publication as well as hand-outs, broadsides, chappetes, mini-chaps, etcetera...

may be available gratis at select locations.

Check out the authors blog at

http://www.notadeatree.blogspot.com/

PRESS RELEASE: Cerebral Infatuation

2009-04-02T01:46:00.000-07:00

READ & DESTROY
is proud to announce the publication of

by Nicole Hargraves

A pensive collection of exquisite phantasmagoric,
yet readily accessible poems.
Poignant and expressive
with brilliant symbolism and subtle pace and delivery.

Cerebral Infatuation is available for $2.00 from
Read & Destroy Press
P.O. Box 1572 Pleasant Valley, NY 12569
You can place orders online by emailing us at read.and.destroy@gmail.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Nicole Hargraves was born and raised in too many place to name on this page. A girl with two "first" names and about seven pseudonyms. She'd tell you her age, but a lady never reveals it (18.) This is her first collection of poetry. Her talent consists of whatever "magic" rubs off on her from day to day. And she hopes that one day she will have a better bio than this.
You Can Contact the Author Directly at
NicoleHargraves@gmail.com

PRESS RELEASE: NEFASTURRIS

2009-03-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

READ & DESTROY
Is Proud To Announce The Publication Of

NEFASTURRIS

By Shanazar Edkirmendjian

Available in its entirety free of charge at

http://stores.lulu.com/readanddestroy

The text can also be remotely viewed at

http://www.redskull.cjb.net/

Nefasturris is a collection of surrealistic vignettes and short, concise blurbs peppered with mythology and focusing heavily upon the double-edged swords of love and war.

With the power of his poetry,

Edkirmendjian hopes to bring about recognition to the Armenian Genocide.

A hard dead-tree copy of Nefasturris is available for $2.00
from

Read & Destroy Press

PO Box 1572 Pleasant Valley, NY 12569

or email your orders/inquiries to read.and.destroy@gmail.com

The mini-chap is printed on 24 lb paper

with a cardstock cover and saddle stapled gutter.

This publication as well as hand-outs, broadsides,
chapettes, mini-chaps etcetera etcetera…
may be available gratis at select locations.

UNI-VERSE ANTHOLOGY

2009-03-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

THE UNI-VERSE SERIES
[Internet Anthology/ Hand-Out Poetry Initiative 2009-2010]

We’re currently gathering poems, small B&W artwork, micro-fiction, and prose

for a brand new pressing of digital and dead-tree style hand-outs

set to begin an early June circulation.

Poems appearing in UNI-VERSE will be published and made available for free in pdf format.

Read & Destroy will release several sneak peak installments leading up to the final release.

The poems will also be published on the printed page;
Each hand-out will feature a single poem, a bio and or other materials provided by the author.
The hand-outs will be printed on a standard 8 ½ inch X 11 inch piece of 22 lb paper folded in half to create a front-cover, two interior pages, and a rear-cover.

The final product will be circulated in the New York, Maryland, Florida and abroad.

With Read & Destroy all poets, artists, writers and parties involved retain the full
North American publication rights, copyright and creative licenses of their work.

There are no submissions, printing, or materials fees. Period.

All you’ve got to do is send your
poem (1-2 pages, preferably short),
a brief bio (with or without a photo),
and any other materials
(website links, contact info, causes, etc.)
you’d like printed with your hand-out to

read.and.destroy@gmail.com

We seldom reject and
will personally contact each and every individual who submits material and or shows interest in the UNI-VERSE SERIES.

Have Any Questions, Inquiries , Comments?
You can email the editor (Justin Parrinello) directly at
ouija.goat@gmail.com

PRESS RELEASE: Clumps

2009-01-26T00:20:00.000-08:00

is proud to announce the publication of

The Hair Falls Out in Clumps

of Languages Long Dead

by Ludovico De Medici

Written in a period of refrain from the tedious strain and commitment demanded by his up and coming narrative/anti-novel.

And the Hair Falls out in Clumps of Languages Long Dead

features four poems birthed from a state of nerve-racking discomfiture beget by the inability to constrain a clear, concise vision of the hermetic and at times claustrophobic subject matter.

In essence the material in this booklet is the byproduct of six bleak months of writers block.

If that makes sense?

This short collection of poems is available as a pdf file free of charge at

http://stores.lulu.com/deadtrees

You can also view the contents of the book at this address
http://www.somewhereelse.cjb.in

A “dead tree version” can be ordered directly from us!
Email all orders and inquiries to
read.and.destroy@gmail.com

This book is printed on 24 lb paper
with a color cardstock cover
and saddle-stapled gutter.

This publication as well as hand-outs, broadsides, chapettes, mini-chaps, etcetera etcetera… may be available gratis at select locations.

Check out the authors personal blog at
http://www.notadeadtree.blogspot.com

PRESS RELEASE: When the Apes & the Serpents Built the Sun

2009-01-08T00:30:00.000-08:00

Is Proud to Announce the Publication of

When the Apes & the Serpents Built the Sun

by S.F. Whitney

This collection of poems
is available for $1.50 directly from R&D Press;
email all orders and inquiries to
read.and.destroy@gmail.com

With When the Apes & the Serpents Built the Sun
Buddhist author S.F. Whitney presents to us the
beatific simplicity of nature through an eloquently written selection of concise verse and thought-provoking koans.

This mini-chap is printed on 24 lb paper with a full color cardstock cover and saddle-staple binding.

This publication as well as hand-outs,
broadsides, chapettes, mini-chaps etcetera etcetera…
may be available gratis at select locations.

PRESS RELEASE: Disco Biscuits Boney Legs

2008-12-10T20:14:00.000-08:00

Announces the Publication of

DISCO BISCUITS BONEY LEGS

By Jillian Ward

Disco Biscuits Boney Legs features potent sociopolitical verse by Portland native Jillian Ward. Original artwork by Brian Redding.

The mini-chap is printed on 24 lb paper with a color cover and saddle stapled gutter.

This publication as well as

hand-outs, broadsides, and chapettes (mini-chaps)

may be available gratis at select locations.

Disco Biscuits Boney Legs is available for $1.50

from the R&D press; email all inquiries to read.and.destroy@gmail.com

or email the author directly at discobiscuitz.boneylegz@gmail.com

For more information about Jillian's work visit her blog at

http://www.ephemeraexchange.blogspot.com/

The Winter Hiatus

2008-11-14T21:47:00.000-08:00

In order to accommodate current manuscripts for the 09 catalogue,
the offices at Read & Destroy will be closed for the winter.

We are still accepting submissions for consideration in internet posts and publications.
See the FAQ/Mission Statement for details.

The first block of E-FEATURES are tentatively scheduled for a spring release.

Publications currently in the works include:

"Nefasturris"
by Shahanazar Edkirmendjian

"The Unoriginal Works"
by various artists

"The Hair Falls Out in Clumps of Languages Long Dead"
by Ludovico De Medici

and

"Disco-Biscuits-Boney-Legs"
by Jillian Ward

Human Ruins

2008-10-16T23:28:00.000-07:00

HUMAN RUINS
by Elisabeth Gillon

Mural plane displaying chaos.
The red line flames across a like ground.
A human skull dissected.
Human ruins.
Man in an anthill.
A single seeing eye behind a gas mask.
Aura pixilating out to nothing.
Human ruins.
Child incapable of nursing,
Moon sails a troubled sky.
Color made flame.
Human ruins.

©Elisabeth Gillon

The Hearth

2008-09-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

The Hearth

Almost consumed
the huge log
holds together teasing
the flames that cling to it
curl round it, spit over it
into the hearth

The carbon seems solid,
last illusion of the tree,
and you, too, cling to it,
form so beautiful
you want it but refrain
from lifting it out

Still, it is great comfort
before it finally collapses,
no red giant, ending,
but simply our cycling sun,
its warmth that contains us

©Roberta Gould

Coming and Going

2008-09-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

Coming and Going
by Roberta Gould

Death is coming and going
carousing around or lingering
A face in the sky watches
smiles, knowing
this, too, is passing
All flags and storms
are no more than this saying:
Breathe. blink, pause,
follow the sound of your heart
still beating
patterning the morass
and chaos

©Roberta Gould

Ether Stanzas

2008-09-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Ether Stanzas (Ätherstrophen)
Written by Emmy Hennings & Translated by William Seaton

Now I must dive off the great ball,
while in Paris a festival reigns.
People gather in the East Side Train Station
a bright silk-bannered hall,
but I am not among them.
I run off to the enormous room.
I mix in every dream.
And decode a thousand expressions.
A sick man lies in misery.
His last look hypnotizes me.
We long to go back to some lost summer day.
A black cross fills the room.

The Dance of Death

2008-09-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

The Dance of Death
to the tune of “That’s how we live”
Written by Hugo Ball & Translated by William Seaton

So we die, so we die,
we die all the time,
because it feels so good to be put down.
Mornings spent in sleep and dream,
by midday we are there,
evenings already deep down in the grave.

Of war is built our house of joy.
Our sun is made of blood.
Death’s our trademark, our watchword.
We abandon wife and child.
What have they to do with us?
If only we could
leave ourselves.

That’s how we kill, that’s how we kill,
we’re killing every day
our brothers in the dance of death.
Brother, let me see you
brother, see your breast,
brother, you must go down and die.

We don’t mumble, we don’t grumble,
we’re silent every day
till the joint of the hip-bone turns.
Our bedstead’s hard
and dry our bread, the dear god bloody and begrimed.

We thank, oh, we thank you,
Kaiser, for your grace,
that you have chosen us for death..
Just sleep now, sleep soft and still,
until you wake,
oh, our poor bodies, covered by the grass.

Cells Constrict

2008-09-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

Cell's Constrict
By Shahnazar Edkirmendjian

As they broke me in the branch,
of warnings that imbued behind my naval gasps.
My salt coat bares the carp of the lakes that we fish,
Cells constrict, and Uriel revels in clean meat at sundown.

©Shanazar Edkirmendjian (October 2004)

Agnofinis

2008-09-07T21:38:00.000-07:00

Agnofinis
by Shahnazar Edkirmendjian

Of blackened wine,

White text on black screen serves passerby's emoticons in hints of delinquent machine.

And all but a single cricket continued in fields of endless hymstone,

softly stepping on panels of godless river as one by one they shrivel.

©Shanazar Edkirmendjian (June 14th, 1998)

Brothel Linens Talk

2008-09-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

Brothel Linens Talk
(pen, ink, and pastel)

An illustration by Brian Redding.

Nature's Untitled

2008-09-02T18:43:00.000-07:00

Nature's Untitled
by Gordon Riggs

Fountain streams; chorus themes of Morning doves, Nightingales, and whippoorwills.
Water lilies sparkle white and pink with flaxen-gold at the mornings rise.

Harp in hand by the pools of foam silver, coral, and earth brown.
Ebony chestnut, dark amber flows curled and wavy her hair.
Silkworm woven, sapphire-diamond her gown.
Pearl cream shin; enchanting like the moon.
And eyes of old forest.

Then laughter and dancing, singing and chanting the voices of brooks, rills, wind, and of
wild flowers. Birds of all feathers chorus along.

And then I called to her in voice, but it became projected thoughts of mind.
"Harken, my word, good tidings and greetings all around. Please by your leave;
allow me the pleasure, the privilege, the knowledge to your name. For now I am unsure,
I would deem this moment, but a waking dream!"

"Fear not curious one; Adam's son. Tis not a dream;
for my name is many, and I am no daughter of Eve."

"When the stars were young, and the ground, earth, and seas boiled, shook, and quaked.
I began the waking song the sapling trees in fertile lands; welcomed the pedals and flower
blossoms to show their faces. And witnessed the birth of the birds and the bees."

"But, surely you jest, and with no disrespect; for you look younger, not older than myself."

"Trouble not your mind, Adam's son. For there are many wonders, and mysteries that
people can not fathom in this world. Embrace what you hear, feel, and see.
Take the moment, the instant at hand. For what do your senses tell you?"

"Many things; they reveal great splendor, and great doubt.
Hence, I have been in long study of the universities of man: science, technology, and the economy are the sustenance of truth, they claim to be true.
Methinks, it is more so involved in the secret brotherhood of stock and trade.
I am a wanderer, a gatherer of art you can say.
And at times, numbed for the better, and for the worst."

"Come then Adam's son, walk with me awhile; open your mind, your spirit, your senses.
And then in time, ask yourself, "What have I to contribute?"

E-FEATURES ON THE WAY!

2008-08-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

Greetings Poets, Writers, Cartoonists, Novelists, Playwrights, Balloon Salesmen,
Dead-Head Chemists, Musicians, Cosmonauts, Hardcore Bloggers, Casual Readers, and the rest of you who for space and time constraints unfortunately don't get a generalized label and title.

We are currently working on a series of what we've been calling E-Features,
a special post highlighting an individuals body of work
(be it poetry, short stories, visual arts etc.)

The E-Feature is set to include a series of poems, pictures, chapters, excerpts, vignettes, as well as photographs and an interview!

We will begin official integration September 20th, 2008.

If you're interested in learning more or featuring email us at
read.and.destroy@gmail.com with the word "E-Feature"
somewhere in the subject line.

More on this as it develops!

Drink Me, You Triple Bastard!

2008-08-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Drink Me, You Triple Bastard!
by Jillian Ward

I'm still maiming the one night scraps of a prick-thorned solitaire,
obvious flesh and capital pussy framed in waters bought and sold by Rhodes thighs.

With armfuls of kidnapped campfire I flux and tongue-flick
to tame the spent and lonely heartbeat of a spirit stain drizzling off the trees roots, down the nape of my neck, my legs, down into the drain spiral to be forgotten.

No current fixation or obsession just an honest compassionate headcount or head-shot,
Custodial sperm count of Eden garden futures wasted on the preservation of parasites.

Its body popped between two of my painted nails, some of my blood and its corpse on
faultless red.

©Jillian Ward (March 2nd, 2006)
*First published as "Drink Me" in The Bent Spoon Quarterly in 2007.

Witch, or Samhain Blues

2008-08-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

Witch, or Samhain Blues
by Robert Milby

She is no witch Wife! Which She will…
Witch she is not!
Regardless of birch groves and fire pit rituals.
Victuals are hotter when cooked out on coals,
but rich soil grows better plants than stage play,
hydroponics, or speculation outside a coffeehouse,
over telephone or internet elation.

She walks out of a kingdom of halls,
Into some odd Daddy marriage,
Like so many of her sisters—merely young women.
Reads poetry! But not Plath or Sexton.
Out from Christian fundamentalism,
To university wife, nurse, prison of matrimony,
To the animus of her animal husbandry—
juvenile urge dressed in tangibles of tenure;
gullible victim of censure, she bursts the mainframe of suburban slavery,
and takes up with a would-be tenor—
acolyte, thinner in years than the drears of the padded pedagogue,
but not anymore aware of the subtleties of female needs, so they weave a demi-bourgeois cloak of invisibility by hiding in Hudson valley bohemian thought ghettos,
and claim psychic, pop pagan preeminence, by memorizing the countenance of Crowley’s works, and some wiccan dilution, cover with alcohol and other intoxicants,
like spiritual mendicants at Jim Jones’ commune in 1978.

Weave! Weaver! Wivern driver to groves of lies where no young folks will fornicate,
As they should to desecrate the hours of stoking wood
In a large hearth where the only cinders visible
On Monday morning, will be the remnants of the cremated corpse
Of wasted Time!
Yet who am I to judge the young poet
Who can see into dimensions of indoctrination,
And unlike every other young person born
around the bonfire of the Reagan administration, who spent the breasts of corporate investiture, in perspicuous clarity, She was untouched because charity
Of ancestral spirits bestowed her with freedom and information
Which others of her materialistic, herding generation
Could not have possibly possessed!

Samhain’s ghosts surround her petty circle, grinning, sneering—
Threatening snow or burning to blow gusts of retribution for her encroachment,
For after all, she is not the rightful owner of these acres!

© Robert Milby (October 30, 2005)

Checked

2008-08-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

A groovy little cartoon by the werewolf himself, Mr. Carl Welden.

The Sentence

2008-08-01T15:58:00.000-07:00

THE SENTENCE
By Adrianna Delgado

The reality is I missed you when we were still together,Because our forever was fiction we were trying to writeBut couldn't find the lines.

We plagiarized ourselves and our peersSaying everything we knew we wanted to hear.Playing tear for tear against the truth of our fears.
The truth that we were both alone in every together we tried to create.

I equate your beauty with the shallowness I hate,
Inside myself it formed the love I thought I felt.
I sit here kicking myself for the kisses I tried to mean but only faked.
I can't let go, but it's the dream I can't shake.

That's the problem with dreaming while you're still awake, Never facing the day that awaits;
I create, I create...I create what's not real because what's not real always feels safe.
If I'm the villain and you're the victim or if I'm the victim and you're the villain
We both still behaved like children...Children who needed a best friend they could touch and fuck
And survive the loneliness if they had any luck.
I can't hate you for wanting what I wanted,
And leaving when you realized our hearts were haunted...Haunted by illusions of love fed to us like love is the only nutrient
That can sustain our stained souls as they pour tears as the sky pours rain.

I want you to be sorry as I am sorryBecause our lie to each other as we lied with each otherWas far from a menial crimeAnd my heart is still locked away, doing the time.

©Adrianna Delgado (July 2008)

Venusian Bride (in three parts)

2008-07-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

Venusian Bride
by Justin Parrinello

"Androgyne"

A scotch warming scab
Is worth 10 in the retina,
15 in the cockroach taxicab.
25 in the subatomic abdomen.

Softening the evidence of fingernail ruts up your back and the
voltaic output as you confidently strut upon the ceiling groins.

Overtones of unredeemed protein in your handwritten reprieve.
Licentious cyprians abrading their forewings in orange blossoms
and the viscous Anointment of the Venusian bride.

Mutating in the honeycombed chambers of the gangbang tabernacle,
Reciting Shakespeare as if it bred them class.
Halfway into the shivering springs of microwave fusillades.
Romping the circumcised hind-guts while roughing up the gaunt lady-boy bawd.

Plaster and egg-sacks in her blond hair dyed red.
An apple-bottomed dandy declares that your handwriting reveals
That you're out of your sappy tree trunk of a mind.
And up to your ass in carnivorous plants; double your body weight in ice crystals.

Isn’t it funny, that I only remember your maxims while having long strips of my flesh extracted with Martian equipment?

Maxims about seeding mulch with neon spurs and swamp gas.
Collecting hetero-sensual 12-steppers,
Who are always healing and in homosapien therapy.
Suppose you could convince me that you didn’t double-take
or wonder about the Souls of lifeless things,
Like the fluorescent light over your dank kitchen sink,
that labors to stay lit while we try to sleep.
It labors because it wants to live.

And I have suddenly resorted to eating gaff instead of quim.
One thing is certain, the leaves are quite hungry!

“All Things Sycophantic”

To night we go train-spotting,
From the witch water on down to the very breast that nursed the shadow of your former self.
To night we dine on the dainty fossils and binder of our juvenile carcasses.
And osmose the remains of tattooed acrobats;
Kodak ladies in fuck-me boots and rose beds.
Because we’ve chosen life.

We exacerbate these maladies in kilobytes,
Accentuate their melodies in remedies for tragedy.
All things sycophantic for the moody nanuq,
Scrambling for the antibodies amid fading permafrost.

Dead-ringers,
You’re no longer fascinated by human behavior.
You’ve convinced my sentience in the 4th
That as we restring your guitar, they triangulate our position and plot to twist our sex-parts.
And send what is left in deformed envelopes black-eyed with Indian ink.

I sent you my body in the mail, but your still not happy.
Back into the smoky shade where I belong.
Bedeviled; chrysanthemum pedals no longer rouse reveilles.
It’s clear now why dandelions are the death face of spring.

The drapes are out for blood!
And the shower curtain’s calling the shots…guising my murmuring heart.
Veiling all the pawns regardless of color while conceiving a new tool for pollination.

We whistle and chant limericks about the greenhorns and hive order,
While organizing the violent revolt.

“Devouring”

I am residue.
Breathing, shitting, eating, cumming, crying, fucking, backstabbing, lying, loving, cheating, stealing, breeding, bleeding, devouring residue.
Smuggling in the baritone,
Your piss tested positive for the green-eyed monster.

Always tip the hypnotist, tip the cage dancer, waiter, sex worker and lamb.
Tip the synergist, tip the mixologist.
Throw your scathing Lincolns and Washington’s to 4 dismal years.

Can you hear me now?
Got royal jelly on her starched white shirt.
You’ve all overlooked us,
worried about a painful death but you're all already dead and buried.
Imagine that.

The power lines didn’t convince you.
Last autumn marked the usage of vomit inducers to quell the less than prepubescent swarm.

Her moisturized 6-pack coalesced with the telephone,
A frightful discombobulation of buttons and cords,
Teak from the table and white pages sinking beneath fig & lavender skin.

Smoke boxing the strumpet in her hip hugging blue jeans,
Granules of charcoal-cut clinging to her mucous membranes.
Watch her shadowbox my subsistence.

Malachite patterns sickness or hope.
Chlorophyll leeching trough April’s fool.

It may take a gentle lover to coax the mob,
But it always takes a violent temper to lure in the faithful and consume.

© Justin Parrinello (March 2007)
-First appeared in the Untitled green book
written under the long-standing pseudonym Ludovico De Medici

Hushed Awakenings

2008-07-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

Hushed Awakenings
By Jera Berkana

Night
the beginning and the end,
and at some rendezvous shade.

Past
the battered hills ahead,
slope down to the meadows bend.

Spring
comes round in blissful sleep
and once when we were sitting by.

Past
shadows with no replies, atop the insatiable steep.

It
may be that we pass them still,
on that battered hill.

WE
will take my small hand,
and we will lead me into the greens land.

Breath
to breath
Where our hushed awakenings,
we shall fail somehow before,
Death.

© Jera Berkana (2006)

Ode To America

2008-07-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

Ode to America
by Harvey Havel

I.
I see you once again, my life long friend.
Sated am I with your towering art
Your fertile gold plains and kin I must part
To forget about our troubles that offered no end.
When suddenly I came upon my best plans to leave
And had planned my escape, knowing full well
To an antique land I’d go, and there I would dwell
Pink clay ovens and ancient banyan trees.
The women in silk, their temples nearby
Other-worldly creatures, numb before altars
Believers who knelt and wept for their martyrs
The smog lead-thick, browning out white sky.
The chaotic thoroughfares of gaunt brown men
Burlap sacks on their heads and weaving through crowds
The stick-figured women squatting square on ground
Selling fragrant pomegranates, their chatter too foreign.
Their fruit stalked by flies, chewing next on the flesh
Of the naked corpse distended, the torments that shook her
Her eyes open-wide, her lips a sterile blue
Her head bruised and bloodied and a child at her chest.

II.
And was I so naïve to leave you, America,
With your swinging moods and unsolvable paradoxes,
Profits to protect, and your crippling detoxes,
Your grandest of achievements, a grief-stricken miasma?
But you must win at all costs
Even while beating yourselves
The bells that now toll and raging death knells
Rain the women and children and those you’ve lost.
And was I so arrogant to think,
With my criticism and anger,
The hot blood you withstood from this foul-mouthed stranger
Could change you and all with a magical wink?
My young mind rising much too quickly
Ripped from the mother who wept as she fed me
A Bible you shoved in, a text by Deuteronomy,
Eclipsing the Arabic and the prophet’s war-wizardry.
So I sucked in your chemical ablutions
And in that battle we both did learn
Through the stinging-thin needles and the electrode burns
That the blood you watered-down carried very few solutions.
And while wandering broke and penniless in your cities,
In the asylums where you then stored me,
Confronting ourselves in white rooms so ordinary,
Your ghosts in white uniform, their severity and pity.
And not thinking this well-enough through,
I sent my hate and anger through venomous fangs
Naively supported by violent street gangs
Hurling Molotov cocktails of yellow-orange hue.
Through bourgeois storefronts that illumined the faces
Of the brown-shirts that gathered and ripped out the throats
Of innocent shopkeepers who called my daydreams a hoax
Until my bare-knuckled hands relieved my good graces
By spraying sharp bullets into wandering crowds
Ridiculing the hypocrisy of your honor and justice
My stratagems upending, horrific, and tumultuous,
Severing blonde heads and then throwing them into mounds.
Such visions riddled me, my energies drained,
My conscience full depleted
My fires belched, and my nausea near-completed
Stomped on your good name and towards your vulnerabilities I aimed.
You merely fought back with your humane kindness
And a love that drives true dictators mad
Delivering me from the hell of the life I once had
Restoring my good name, by diluting insanity with mindlessness.
And you fed me sweet meats,
Your vegetables and potatoes,
Let me sow on your soil where the golden grain grows,
And won over my army now in full retreat
By teaching me eternal language
To ponder strong realities
Taking good care of my barest necessities,
My blunt anger subdued by philosophy and adage.

III.
But still I demanded more, as if somehow I deserved it,
Your stately-white mansions and your well-manicured lawns,
The respect that came without earning anything at all,
And your warm-blooded women and the graces they permit.
But you disallowed it, and so from there I did roam
To find bountiful women who loved me without reason,
My incongruent body molding to their treasons,
When you disallowed that after their shudders and moans.
Yet I cried for many more to cure the scars in my head,
My return to the womb met with fierce resistance,
Where they built stone fortresses to ward off my nuisance,
As I yearned to have each one of them alone in my bed.
They then cast spells to protect their sacred gardens,
Expelled me from the paradise that was their lot
Taught me the value of what I should and should not
As I haunted their irrationale with my stupidity and my nonsense.
My selfishness soon exhausted, and there I made amends,
The visages that I touched burned well into my brain,
Never to be cured through the wettest of rains,
As I can finally see how beautiful they’re made.

IV.
But to the machine they did feed me
And ran me through grinders
The cogs of work hours doing away with my remainders
Instilling sublime art and then imprisoning criminality.
And for this, America, you charged me nothing,
Not a penny, not an ounce,
As your bells that chimed high soon graciously announced
That the criminal was gone and had vanished with my flings,
And the cancer at my lungs, arrested by correctness,
My fat belly slimming to quell the ache of my body,
You showed me good health, not a moment too tardy
My fate suddenly lying miles away from distress.
My sanity restored, my mind working again,
Along with most of my guts and my shattered parts
My weak speech transmuted into tender art
And the doggerel cured by the angels you sent.
So the speed-trap on the freeway bothers me no more,
You saved a sorry, bitter soul from an early death,
My talk once so bellicose mattering much less,
And the hard work that fulfills me I do without chore.
You understood me completely,
Leading me out of the ghettoes
Where vultures hovered and the black crows flew,
Their sharp beaks picking at carrion so neatly.
You bade me drink from your clear rivers,
And found my family work,
Put up with my anxieties, idiosyncrasies, and quirks,
My heart opening up to those I thought killers.

And the black man was there
Nurturing me back to happiness,
The confused and mottled mess,
A breeze in the air.
And no, America, I never deserved this,
Your radiance too bright,
That forged harsh darkness into enduring light,
After such turbulent disturbance.
Yet tempers still flare over terror and oil,
The prices too high, the taxes too low,
The deserts damp with scorching hot blood,
And these children you raise fatigued with toil.
The wise men said that ignorance is bliss,
Not a war of ideas, punditry, and mayhem,
Hezbollah leaders vowing borderless revenge,
The news stories still providing all this.
But never in my life have I been so proud
Of this country of mine – right or wrong.
I fall to my knees and sing her great songs
Dancing in the ecstasy that will send our people home.
Because never have I been guided so completely,
Though still more battles and paradoxes to come,
Those grey lines and doubts yet to out-run,
Because I’ve finally found a country that tolerates me.
And I have been saved by America
From my own murderous hands,
And with thee do I dance in a Technicolor band,
With brilliant fireworks drifting over our proud home,
Over synagogue and mosque until peace finds her throne.

© Harvey Havel (2006)

Goldfish Sequin

2008-07-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

Goldfish Sequin
By Jera Berkana

Good bye
crystal gold fish,
crack the surface of blooming roses dew.

To whom this rose tear flows too.
Has love without wings try to carry
one more wish?
Brittle carvings on petals reveal,
in print chiming rhythmic hearts.

The very sight of which tears the vein.
Has words without conscience, flee the constant petal peel?

Heavy weighted silence abounds,
is seen in the dragon flies eyes.
Treasure the tears that follow the
carvings
for a soul of
remembrance
to never again

good bye.

© Jera Berkana (February 5th, 2005)

Alchemical Wedding Song

2008-07-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

Alchemical Wedding Song
(in the New World Order)
By Robert Milby

“Elegists are vulgar scum.”
-Baudelaire

In the age of Kali Yuga, it’s about MONEY.
The one in my parameters. The One between my…
It is about money!
Where they work. What kind of stock profile.
Whom they spend it on. How they spend it.
Where they get the fix…Shred it in a blender. Cook it on a spoon.
Shoot like diabetics or junked out street sheiks
Anywhere but get IT! Cast the churls before the DIVINE.
Mammon screams at the golden gates of the World Bank.
The State Religion’s priests are robed in it.
Children trapped inside INTERNET virtual prisons dream of it as means of liberation. The roots of all live trees that money grows on are expertly crafted from ink and watermarks and security strips and Masonic tricks all for sacrosanct—Money.
Cities and all manufacturing without any manumission for the soul, like DNA maps,
soon to be auctioned…online.
Mainlining…chains of Money.
Stand. Sit. Walk. Sleep. Shower. Shit. Piss. Fuck in your regional zoo,
Work. Work. Work, sheep reveries about money.
Eat only if you have money.
Starve as you dream about…Money.
Bills demand flesh sacrifice. Alas! The glowing blue ghost…at night,
After an exhaustive day extolling the virtue of money, Speaks to Winston
Smith of money…YENOM. VENOM. YAHWEH. HONEY. MONEY.
One Honey! Sweet Venom drink deep in fallow veins supplying money to
A heartless beast beating the Babylon manna out of mama Hosanna!
I’m the highest!
Ejaculating multiples of money! The sheets are woven with money as you
Place her ass on Benjamin’s face been jamming her case in the pestilent race
For the attainment, containment, maintenance of shot put portfolios
Adam Smith—great great great granddad of Winston SMITH, like their chairman
of the unconstitutional federal reserve…loves…
His whore. Terrific esoteric tricks: NOVUSORDOSECLORUM
Overdose on the New Order of the Ages, because the antidote
To overdose is Money!
Rings are purchased with Money! Wives are paid for in Money!
Bridal gowns and Tuxedos and eunuch priests in perfumed, flowing dresses
And bridesmaids and all the BEST MEN.
ALL the best people will be at your Wedding,
my dearly beloved beneath the bed, as we consummate our golden
Calf, is MONEY.
Reception halls cost money. Cakes, and bakes and dinner plates
And trite truculent disc jockeys and Limoneysines are only about: Money.
Her wedding gown—oh!!! T’was tailored and sewn with sheets of printed money!
Tens, Twenties, Fifties, Hundreds!
My dear! The groom wears condoms inked in greasy green money…
Will the Federal Reserve appropriate thy womb’s tissue?
When starting an extended family of finance, one must pay for a ring,
Pay for the dinner, pay for the car and gas to get to an expensive
Restaurant. There is a fiancé hidden in Finance!
If you buy a consonant, you’ll find her in Finance!
With this Ring, I thee wed to a joint partnership in the Odyssey for financial superiority.
A golden receipt for pussy. Another link in the chain.
Manna manacles! Such a parody! Such a Monody, on Freedom…

Masonic superiority! See thy taxed dollars hard at work!
They are working while you sleep! As you gestate in the womb of finance,
Longing to be born into that Y2K retirement plan…
As you moulder in the paid for plot on land They think They own,
They are working! So, if your DNA…IS auctioned off to the highest
Bidder; if in the End, clones are made for limb and organ harvest,
The air is manufactured and pumped into the city dome because our no-man’s land countryside is withering on Hieronymous Bosch’s canvasses,
petroleum fields are graveyards for soldiers of the New States,
Then, will you epiphanize your routine, will you then wake up?
Will you…WILL your soul to the machine?
Who’s your Daddy? Warbucks, wars for the Bucks the patriarchal sideshow.
Starbucks—(They even want to own the planets!)
Is Moreau not behind the Sable stage curtain?
What about his brother, O’Brien?
Maitreya can’t replace Matricide, when Mother Earth is for sale.
Maitreya can’t erase Matricide, when Mother Earth is for Sale!
Look to the stars for a new leader. New lecher whose money trail is that
Bridal gown that Babylon’s babysitter puts back on when the Bourgeois
Parents are out to dinner theater…she thinks no one can see her transmogrifuckation
On the shag carpet of their living room floor, molt and morph and bones twist and gelatinous buboes explode, leaking the new skin; the exoskeleton, viper scales
And adder trails of serpent slime—a high priestess of Money is reborn!
Unlike her chitinous counterpart Samsa, the mama of Salambo slides into the Labouratory, wanting! Waiting, like a patient mechanized on Genome tables,
Waiting for the daily living skills and functional assessment
of the Citizen of the New States!
Repent ye who wish to be married! Prepare ye for Babelon’s Whore!
Consent thee to spend Fish Scales scattered in the Ruin of the Karmic City,
where the Wedding is to take place! Take your place for shedding of old
Piscean sociaLIEsation as those betrothed regroup for microchip wedding bands,
She’ll get an implant before the implant!
He’ll buy his implant like an intellect transplant!
Transubstantiation of the stone between his ears to a brain! Could that happen?
Could the clone be…more intelligent, than the imbecilic American man he was made from? It could be blown into a tissue; it could be sewn into the subcutaneous tissue
If the chip off the old blockhead won’t stay beneath the skin!
And the sages of Kali Yuga are about Money!
The prophet marginalizes the struggle in a formal declaration of his website!
Even after Saul became Paul, he still had to eat, didn’t he?
The market profit sizes the tsunami that razes all plots as the olde ice shelves
And frozen hell travels North, scrapping by; stopping to pay a visit to fault lines
Where those responsible for the Royal Scam, the esoteric sham, watch like Methuselah,
After he received the Light, under Mount Weather, after Crowley and Blavatsky were proven right and the Modern Prometheus’s closet is protected by surveillance cameras
And the Office of Homeland Security is revealed to be the Son of a Bachelor called Inquisition. For the Bull on Wall Street is really a mastiff howling all night
at the Good Doctor, who wasn’t hopped up on herbal remedies he’d used to treat Plague after all.
No matter! As long as the inculcation can be inoculated, the SmallPox vaccine is a great idea! First it is anthrax from the cattle to stampede the sheep! Now it is SmallPox from the sheep to lampoon the cattle. Soon, a national ID to wave at George’s cameras.
And the slaves of Kali Yuga are honey to the eyes of stock traders and human resource specialists and cards made from petroleum by products to keep the slave’s
Legacy enamored of some offspring of banks merging one into one, mating as ritual
To finance guns, bombs, depleted uranium, WMD’s for unification of the Anomaly, Globalisation, capitulation of the planet to Imperial America’s World Management Team!
In the Age of Kali Yuga, you do not need a Christ to return.
You do not need the beam ships to turn the tide of human affairs to intergalactic councils,
All you need is money, a brotherhood of adepts, one of their bibles to swear it on,
And the heliophobic addicts to create reality for you, as the Oroboros turns.

©Robert Milby (January 25, 2003)
*Alchemical Wedding Song first appeared on the website Muse Apprentice Guild in 2004.

A Poem (and a reminder) to Myself:

2008-07-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

A Poem (and a reminder) to Myself:
By Harvey Havel

Try not to confuse
Confidence for arrogance
Kindness for weakness
Individuality for selfishness
Collectivism for totalitarianism
Left for right
Right for left
seeming for Being
Caution for fear
Slowness for stupidity
Deliberation for indecisiveness
Patience for oppression
knowledge for Wisdom

© Harvey Havel

Aquamarine Valentine

2008-07-16T18:23:00.000-07:00

Aquamarine Valentine
By Nicole Hargraves

She was the Duchess of the Sea.
Graceful, yet, careless.
Not quite royal enough to be Queen.
But powerful enough to let her waves crash down on my life.

I can still remember the head trauma
Emergency trips to her bay at night.
The collection of mind porn...
Of her flooding my hopes and dreams.
She was accessible as the latter.

Her brain could work a two-by-four into your heart with a sentence.
And if you begged just enough,
She'd let you taste her lips of deception.

You get qualms in her presence.
You know something’s not exactly right.
But her beauty engulfs you.
And you begin to drown.

You trip over the simplest things.
The way she moves,
Her hair in the wind,
And the icy way her eyes tear you apart with a glance.
Oh those deep watery eyes of hers.
Keeping the sea unhappy.

Keeping the sailors entranced.
And always...

Keeping my head under the water.

© Nicole Hargraves

For Questions, comments, and feedback
Nicole Hargraves can be contacted at
NicoleHargraves@gmail.com

The Shore

2008-07-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

THE SHORE
By Adrianna Delgado

Sunburned and broken
Starless and deprived
I will not ask for what I do not have
Only to keep what I possess, cherish deep inside
Blistered and rotten
Breathless and contrived
I will not fight the battles that cannot be won
Only storm the shores to ensure love will be born
She never said goodbye
And I cried, but why?

Basing my tears on imagination
Illusions of thoughts
Words never formed on her tongue
Hung, clinging, gasping for the air that I choke on
The irony of agony self-inflicted
The clock ticking away the seconds of my tears
The wasted fears of uncertain tomorrows
Sums of anguish and sorrows
Equaling nothing, empty and hollow

Giving away dreams soaked in blood and sweat
And the clock, the clock ticking my tears
Grieving my years
The words all come falling down
Tumbling out of my mouth, down my body
Scattering into the aura around me
And these false, imposter colors do me no justice
Rushed this metamorphosis into this creature

Who fears the sun…Sunburned and deprived
Blistered and contrived
The lies in her eyes, the silence on her tongue
The war we did not fight but could have won.

© Adrianna Delgado

Ortolan Feast

2008-07-16T15:01:00.000-07:00

Ortolan Feast (From the bird's perspective)
By Justin Parrinello

The sweetness of this flesh and fat is the ambrosial god!
The pungency, call it bitter innards and viscera.
This is the suffering, crucifixion and ascension.

The small delicate bones lacerating your gums
as they splinter between your holy teeth.
The salt of your blood mingling with the richness of this winged mystery,
this is the holy spirit; three united as one.
Cruel and beautiful, and dinner ceases.

Net spread in neat canopy, take us alive! Take us home!
To the chewable vitamin remedy of plucking and blinding;
I love my small cage.
I love my oats and millet and those paunchy figs that you feed to me in the evening.
I love how when I haven't eaten enough you help me.
I love whelming in your brandy snifter.
I love my eight calescent minutes alone
(in the solitude of your oven.)

I love your lips hugging me,
enveloping my feathers and debility.
The tuxedo jackets lurk beneath those postcarded coves.
Alvine birds are ossivorous only,
and yet absinthial themselves when roasted tenderly without spice.

Bought for moments with the homeliest of twelve sisters, wherever sugared necks are sold.
We're bringing it all back---my lungs and stomach full of armagnac or not.

Is it not worth a wench to quench your petticoatted pedal lips?
Mincemeat weevily over dry-ice and chewing.
The body of rainwater and rowans,
the wheat of Morocco.

Salt of the Mediterranean,
lavender of Provence---but its all face down!
Yes I’m still faced down.

I love the shrouds and napkins
that all of you wear on your faces,
They're beautiful like all of you, as you altogether feast on me.
God can see your shame, I am not the soul of France.

© Justin Parrinello (July 1st, 2006)