Coal & Gold

Today I reached for the coal
instead of the gold
; today I split the baby in half. No
one seemed to mind the vivisected
baby, it was the knife they spoke of
on the news. a curved blade, pilfered
from the local slaughterhouse.

meanwhile— all this
time all this long long time
? did I say dawn I must have said dawn
the mountains echo the sun’s ventriloquism
its sonorous booming rebuff of silence.

*

I had a vision of this prologue
more than once, pierced
fontanel of the sun leaking bloody
light all over my bed.

7.8.-8.11.2005

The Church

is going broke.
Priests are selling out
to save the stained glass
from foreclosure.

Bingo cards are being
brought up from the basement.
Relics will be raffled,
splinters of the true cross
auctioned off at bargain privces.

Statues of saints
donated by winners
are scheduled for the block.

We all pray Christ
will come off his high horse
cross his palms with silver
and invite the money men
back into the temple
to call off their mortgages
like guard dogs.

Holy water liquidated,
icons shipped to museums,
pews for firewood,
hymn books and bibles
to lending libraries.

Everything goes
as people prepare
for the madness that follows
unbelievers to an empty grave.

SOMETIMES COOL

Sometimes Cool
is the word you use
in place of Silly
when you want to be silly
and don’t want others
to laugh.

Sometimes Cool
is the word they use
in place of Silly
when they want you to buy Silly
so that others
won’t laugh.

Sometimes Cool
is cool
just cool
but rarely.

If too many knew
the difference in these three,
there would go
the economy.

YOUR BALLOON IN MY PICTURE

As I try to put a frame around this picture of a life
I can’t help but smile and smirk,
because these memories are all I have left of you, dad,
you who never stopped smiling.
My smile in our portrait seems fake and surreal,
while yours is as real as my distance from you.
You stood behind me, so close, yet miles away.
As I wipe away the inch of dust on the glass plate over our family,
I can’t help but have an envious smile,
one of luscious guilt and grief.
It’s too late to redeem you now, though.
Far too late to introduce myself to you for the first time.
Just as impossible to redeem the happiness you once had.
Happiness is a bright red balloon,
one which you carry with you as a child.
When you have children, it’s taken from you and passed on,
but, even in your later times, you clung to that balloon.
You tried your hardest not to let it go.
When it was floating, you were floating with it,
far and away from me.
Yet I was the one careless enough to blow you away,
hiding behind false smiles and laughs.
And a rip in this picture of a life leaves me out,
leaves me behind.
Left with a self-inflicted broken heart
and a heavy conscience drowning me.
In the tattered portrait, through the dirty glass,
I see the father I could have had
now that it’s far too late to redeem you.

art by Eric Bonholtzer

POEM FROM THE METAPHYSICAL SALVAGE & SCRAP LANGUAGE YARD (SILICONE CULTURE)

Silicone culture toxic enough
to give this planet cancer

Snarl
Gnash
Spit

my ugly angry face
is a mask that protects me
from a psychic ozone layer
that has been eaten away
by a neon apocalyptic religion
proselytized by Botox-faced killers

that is why there should be mug
shots of mannequins
on the FBI’s Most Wanted posters
while the former profiles
and head shots of thugs
and criminals should become
the heroes on your children’s trading cards

and on the back of each grainy gangster image

should be their crime statistics and notable
moments in their delinquent and outlaw histories

like the one for Friedrich Nietzsche
who pulled at the loose seam
of civilization

until there was no more hypocristy left to hide how Heaven
was a nursing home and God the formerly violent but still
straight jacketed patient suffering from Alzheimer’s

He’s still alive but in a ward
where everyone else is not
except for the rats who climb over
and nibble on his deteriorating grace

And on occasion breaking in the junkie
or poet who need to draw further decay because
the divine has now become a narcotic

while the junk food language
kept alive through artificial injections
has become too poisoned
to produce anything that is not mutated

Spit
Gnash
Snarl

--whatever it takes to write

whatever it takes
to pull back on the lids of eyes
in a reflection

that you thought was dead

(he drives)

jamie and i, we ride
in the car for moments
and moments listening
to ocean sounds of air
coming fast in the windows.

Buddha Losana, art by Xanadu

Behind me now

I play jump rope barefoot
amongst the tossed razors and syringes
and once I used a Ouija board to find out who
he really was
inside of me.

I lost my echo
when I checked the pulse
and found my shadow
when I discovered that wine
came in a box.

,/TR>

Artwork by Nicole Aimiee Macaluso

I caught a tiger by the toe once,
and his teeth were like the needles
I’d later fall in love with.
My mom would cut my peanut butter sandwiches
into triangles
I would try to invent a potion
that would make me a mermaid.

I could roller skate better than anyone else my age
but when I turned tricks
everyone looked the other way
I used to cheat at cards
against myself
and I still always came up
being a loser.

No one ever told me not to swim in the deep end
and no one told me that I could never be a mermaid.
These things you learn early in life
stick to you

Like the gum my cousin put in my hair
when we all went to Six Flags.

I stood on my sand pail
and tried to hang myself with that jump rope once,
but all I got was a scratched knee
and failure and sadness
that would stay with me forever
as I realized that sometimes there really is no way out.

Prisoners act like prisoners
and I feel like I should be singing the blues
Put shackles around my ankles
and perhaps my behavior would make more sense.

I just wanted you to know
That I still want to be a mermaid
And that jump ropes
Ain’t good for a hangin’.

© 2005 Frank Anthony

© 2005 Frank Anthony

Acid Ocean, artwork by David Matson

Reality TV Stars

The crew’s cameras, lights,
lure them out, like heat lamps sus-
pended above trays
of seeds, exteriors split
as they reach for the same thing.

Face Explosion, artwork by Nick Brazinsiki

Red Alert

Static on the highways
Congestion on the phone lines
All systems down
Be prepared for take-off

The rebels yelling, “Massacre!”
The pundits screaming, “Genocide!”
The New York Times is out of business
EverybodyÕs gone to bed

Oh, for the good old days
Of oppression and the iron boot
But everyone in Kansas knows
The Milwaukee Brewers stole all the beer

When will this end?
Oh my, what will happen in the final reel?
A capitalist hanging from every tree?
Or just Sundaes at Haagen-Dazs, writing poetry on napkins?

5/19/05, 5/20/05, and 8/16/05

THE DEATH OF LIFE

Life is for the living, yet none are living.
Rather, we walk as the dead would:
Tormented by unfinished business and lasting agendas,
Praying for deliverance when we should be enjoying
Perhaps this one time that we have to walk the earth.
We fill our days with toil and work towards the night,
Towards sleep—our refuge.
And I wonder if—when we reach that endless sleep

ALL HEALTHY MEN

I came upon a man
On the ledge of a bridge
Looking down at Death
And a steely vessel passing by
Where the water peeled, folded, and churned
Over its skin agleam with rivets and porthole eyes.
I said: “Do you truly mean to do it, friend?”
“I do not,” he answered;
“But to know simply that I can
Is a comfort.”
So I climbed over the rail,
Stood on the ledge beside him,
And waited for the solace
To roll in with the tide.

9 G, artwork by Christine Sorich

THE SUN CRACKING BONES

ice water at
ten a.m. stranded in the desert beans for
breakfast the sun cracking bones
like a hungry dog growls work out
from beneath the mottled gums Old Meth-teeth
smiles from a porch on the
trailer across the alley there’s no latrine breeze but
we’re happy that air’s moving at all charm grows on
you without rain
we must imagine
it all we want is to finally know what we
really need

Digital Modification 01 and 05, art work by Mark Graham

The How-Lost? Man

A stroke – the pip in blood
a fanged foredawn’s a shining godlet.

In thought-flow sleep, atrocious scraps,
rigor mortis is sourbellied eagles
all arteries
are transitory, cut short.

artwork by Eric Bonholtzer

maybe

in church there is abandonment,
the absolute faith of the believers,
the need to find an explanation in the heavens,
never seeing the stars,

to completely surrender to,
believe in,
something so imaginary,
to trust the writings of people,
too ignorant to understand
the mechanics of rainfall*,
to sing and pray to,
bow down to nothing,
something that
could not be omniscient
and therefore could not be
(look around at life
and its hypocrisy,
its inhumane-ness)

according to buddha
once you know you are nothing
life is nothing
and then you are free
and happy;
the bible says
thou shall not kill,
but most people arenÕt listening

she believes life is nothing
but beautiful and ugly
kind and horribly cruel,
she does not kill
any of godÕs creatures,
she is humane
and tries to be omniscient

maybe she is god

* “too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall” accredited to Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

SUBURBANIZATION

The wayward consumer
constructed a strip mall
on every block,
packed to the brim
with everyday needs.
I wonder if downtown
misses her gravel banks
by the marshy swamp.
Ducks soon became fountains
and picnic benches.
Now the water glistens
like a hallmark card.
The reef spray painted silver,
sports memorabilia,
and I pulled teeth semiannually.
Ample parking concerns
Dominick’s more.
Mom and pop tombstones
found in frozen food’s aisle.
Starbuck’s sponsored
the township library,
please read corporate ethics
with a mocha cappuccino.

A lack of hills exist
in the Midwest,
but we had our own,
expending burnt horizons,
tumbling down the grassy knoll,
collapsing each dandelion,
one at a time,
face first into man-made forestry.
The architect must have roped
off the root and planted.
Snakefly trails measured
one hundred yards,
and a conduit edifice
hums incessantly.
Why does business
shake hands with gardens?
They are not meant to negotiate.

Do Not Enter!, art by Cheryl Townsend

Age, artwork by Edward Michael O’Durr Supranowicz

BREAK THE MIRROR

In the bathroom
I am able
to change.
I break the mirror.
I use the glass
like a brush.
The deeper it
goes in, the more
color comes out.
A brilliant
crimson oozes
out of me.
I suffer for
my art. The pain
kills me.

Self-Portrait in the Dark

It lives in a cave and does not see out
If you can call it living hunched
In the dark with its tender folded skin rubbing the rock
Like a treasured gift from a brooding mother-god;
An eggshell in which it is always wronged
And never wrongs;
And the darkness is a yolk on which it feeds

Coffeehouse Sonnet (15)

The light didn’t glint in his eye:
it shone on the voluntarily bald head
stuck squarely on his shoulders
without benefit of neck
as he gracelessly waved his plate off the table,
probably inadvertently,
the crash compelling
a few seconds of stunned silence,
until, unapologetic in word and deed,
he left,
and left the little pieces of his mess
for someone else to clean up

BackLit, art by Mike Hovancsek

Friday With The City

Robert Shields

It just sits there like an apple caught
in the mouth of a boar, its buildings
like shackled widows, a little bit cynical
a little bit ready for death.
Erie, nothing but small black thicket
that litters the fallen snow.
Erie the torn sleeve of a little
girl with cupped hands, the black shoe
that a woman removes to fix her stocking.
Erie means old people sleeping
in waiting rooms and children
playing with gun shaped hands.
It stirs in its stomach a tanned
sort of nausea, the kind that blinds
you on the freeway interchange
the kind that slams down the phone
on its dying mother.
Erie, the other colored paint
that covers graffiti,
the word furniture
on the side of a building
smeared by rain, a broom cradled
in the hands of a man
walking onto a lake
to the place where the shadow
of two women meet. It has
the taste of raw whiskey and fish
and old fools turning to piss into parades
and cloth roses that forever wrap
around its grave and plastic babies
and it just sits there, drunk
in a second hand suit
watching hallways
with its clouded
peephole eyes.

Brooklyn Siberia

I live in Siberia
In the very heart of Southern Brooklyn
In the mornings people are flocking to the taiga of Wall Street
Returning in the evening barely alive, frozen, stock-bitten,
Bleeding from computer-bug wounds
Some disappear forever
Mauled to death by the bears of big corporations
Or buying houses in New Jersey
In the spring I see their corpses
Inviting me to follow the same path
From the pages of respectable publications.

Translated by Igor Satanovsky and Mike Magazinnik.

Lurk - Nasty, art by Joel MacGregor

Lenny as Avenging Angel

Grab a bottle
by the neck,
drive down
any street,
and hurl it
hard
at a mailbox
or a tree
or even
some asshole
if you don’t think
they’ll catch you
or are too drunk
to care.
And the explosion
it makes
as it hits its mark
is what
divine retribution
is all about.

    Hello, and thanks for tuning into Scars Internet News. Like cc&d magazine’s News You Can Use, this is the news you’d like to hear more about in today’s world. Now for today’s top stories...

Japanese Television 2004

as reported in the New York Times:

one new television show in Japan
boasts young women in bikinis
who attempt to smash aluminum cans
in between their breasts

another television show in Japan
brings a young boy on stage
to tell him his mother
has been shot and killed
to see how long it takes him
to cry

I wonder what they’d think
Married With Children
or THE SIMPLE LIFE, with the likes of Paris Hilton

come to think of it, I wonder
if Anna Nicole Smith
would ever be sober enough
to smah aluminum cans
between her silicone breasts

come to think of it,
with reality TV,
and Jerry Springer...
maybe I shouldn’t complain
about the television in Japan anymore

bizarre sexual stories in the news

The Good “Doctor”

Brown later led potential patients to believe
that he was a licensed doctor
and people allowed his transgendering surgeries
because of his low prices

but John Ronald Brown
was not only a doctor for transexuals
but also those who got sexual gratification
from having an arm or leg amputated

in one case, a 79-year-old Philip Bondy
paid $10,000 to have his leg amputated
in Brown’s Tijuana Clinic

after the surgery,
Bondy was taken to a
San Diego Holiday Inn
for his recovery
but he died in the hotel
in less than a day

so John Ronald Brown, 75,
was charged with murder
and practicing medicine
without a license

after his arrest,
homicide detective Gary Stovall
found in Brown’s San Ysidro apartment
a bloodstained couch, and
bloody towels soaking in his bathtub,
as well as blood trails, medical supplies and
his surgeries on video tapes scattered about the floor

Inside Edition even videotaped him
performing a surgery
though you could still hear the patient during the surgery
moaning and howling in pain

a northern California businesswoman
witnessed Brown operate
on an HIV-positive patient once
and in another case
Brown used too much erectile tissue
to construct genital outer lips for a transgender patient
and as a result,
whenever the girl got excited
her labia got hard

people went to Brown because he was cheap
cheap enough plug silicone injection holes
with crazy glue
and because he technically wasn’t a doctor,
he never asked questions,
and you could have the operation
you always wanted... done

Atlanta-based transgender author
Dallas Denny said that transsexuals
knew him as “Table Top Brown”
because he operated anywhere from kitchens
to garages or motel rooms, and some
patients even woke up in parked cars,
and everyone knew there was no screening
and no aftercare with Brown

which may explain why no one watched over
the ailing Philip Bondy

after his Saturday morning operation
Bondy was happy at first
though he later said he felt
Brown “sawing” on his leg

Brown’s office was in Mexico
to avoid American law,
but right after the operation on Bondy,
to hide the evidence,
Brown drove 15 miles out
into the desert toward Ensenada
throwing the leg out the window
for the coyotes to eat

Bondy was left at the Holiday Inn
in San Diego Saturday evening,
and was found Sunday morning
lying half on the bed and half off

the wheelchair was turned upside-sown
the phone was tipped over
the sheets were pulled out

and blood was oozing from the blackened
and gangrenous remnants of his leg

for you see, he was infected with gaseous gangrene
a fast-moving flesh-eating bacteria,
which eventually stopped the heart

so in October, a San Diego jury
found Brown guilty of second-degree murder

but people still have their fetishes
and someone will always be there
to take advantage of them

couch potato

Emergency Medical Technicians
were summoned in August to a home
with a grossly overweight woman

But not only were the doorways
too narrow
for this four foot ten
four hundred eighty pound woman,
but
she had not moved from her couch
in several years.

The fabric had adhered to her skin.

They transported her
and the couch
to the hospital, but
she died
during their attempts to free her.

warren stories

and didn’t notice when it lodged itself
among her folds of fat. years later,

when she felt a sharp pain, and the doctors
couldn’t figure out what it was, they opened

her up and found the pork chop, and realized
that her skin just eventually grew over it.

John Stories

The men left,
but she soon realized
that she was not at her her,
so she found her car
in the parking lot
a few minutes later.

Feeling bad for what she had done,
she drove to the police station
to let them know what happened
in that grocery store parking lot.
As she told the story to the police officer,
he laughed, and pointed out
the four black men at the station
reporting their car jacking
by an old white lady.

No charges were filed.

God Will Save Me

I Wanna Be Like Jesus

The Hands of a Handyman

William Bartron, a 25 year-old handyman,
was sent by his employer
to a Bethlehem home
for a basement renovation.

While using a miter saw
(a cumbersome circular saw),
his concentration faltered,
as did his aim.
As his attention slipped,
so did the saw,
which then
sliced off his hand.

We’re sure he was depressed
that he just lost his hand.

Because losing his hand
must have put him into a
downward spiral,
as he then decided to shoot himself.

In this client’s basement.

So yes, William proceeded
to shoot himself
in the head,
a dozen times,
with a pneumatic nail gun.

Now, this homeowner went downstairs
to check on the progress
of their basement renovation.
The basement seemed empty,
but their dog
discovered William
curled in the corner,
without a hand,
and with nails coming out of his head.

Just imagine this:
You hire a handyman
to remodel your basement,
and you see him
after he hacked off his hand
after he then tried to end his life
with one hand
by trying to nail his forehead to death.

They called the company owner
and he came to the scene,
he found William’s hand,
put it in a clean plastic sandwich bag,
and took William
and his hand
to the hospital.

The homeowner apparently
encountered an unfortunate delay
in their basement reconstruction

but there is a happy ending for William:
at St. Luke’s Hospital
in Fountain Hill,
doctors pulled at least twelve
one and a half inch nails
from William’s head
and reattached his severed hand.

airbags - for security and defense

car-jacking is common in South Africa
and the law is permissive with liberal “self defense”
which allows “lethal action” for danger to personal property

because car-jacking is common in South Africa
security systems for cars have included
poison gas
acid showers
flamethrowers
and even automatic gunfire

but one security system used an airbag,
but it was located in the car roof
the driver had to disable the airbag
before starting the engine,
or else the airbag would inflate,
hitting the potential driver in the head
with enough force to knock them unconscious

that happened to resident thief Pieter Niewoudt
who, pistol in pocket, tried to steal this car
the airbag exploded
but Pieter thought the noise was gunfire
shooting at him for trying to steal the car
so he instinctively fired his pistol twice

while it was still in his pocket

one bullet hit his knee
the other lodged in the base of his penis

there was no report on if the airbag
ever hit him to knock him unconscious

Bad Tricks with the Cue Stick

Cigarette Butts are Lethal

Running Toward Your Demise

Choose You Fate:

By Knife or by Car

After a car chase, the third, only living,
thief pulled over and leapt from his car.
Instead of fleeing into underbrush where
he might be able to hide himself,
he ran into the highway and tried to
dodge heavy traffic. Within seconds, the
third knife-wielding slaughterhouse robber
was run over by large truck, killing him.

<

Too Many Guns

Let us remind you again that this hold-up was
taking place in a gun shop, where he walked in
and fired shots.

So after the would-be robber fired his shots,
the officer and a clerk fired back, as did
several customers with guns.

The robber was killed, but no one else was hurt.

Terrorism Intelligence

his letter bomb came back to him
marked “return to sender”

Khay Rahnajet opened the letter bomb,
blowing himself up in the process

That’s our news for the evening, but we’d like to close with an editorial from this reporter.

What I Would Ask

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.
— Lao Tzu

I hear radio talk show hosts
like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity
and I listen to our religious President

I hear these radio talk show hosts
praise the life of an unborn child
or try to save Teri Schiavo on life support
I know some even run charities
or help natural disaster victims

kind people, these Republicans

then I hear that Texas
our President’s state
has put ten times more prisoners to death
than any other state since the seventies

I then even hear Republicans protest
the Supreme Court’s decision
that minors shouldn’t get a death penalty

when I heard about their love of life
then heard about their hatred of life
I wondered if I was the only one
who saw their moral confusion

so when I hear these radio talk show hosts
get on their high horses over the radio waves
downplaying anyone’s arguments
and galloping away on their steed
I’d like to call in
to ask them the question:

“Excuse me, I see that you Republicans
seem to revere life so much,
from the unborn
to those on life support
who need our help
so I have to ask:
how can you support the death penalty?
why do you revere some life
then decide to exterminate
someone who committed a crime?
I’ve heard you talk about the evils of abortion,
but why,
when its wrong to kill a fetus,
a life yet to breathe on its own,
why it is okay to kill people
who have been breathing for years?”

but hey, mister President
when our country’s now so far in debt
because of your “war”
maybe we could start to save money
by not killing prisoners?

I mean, the death penalty doesn’t deter,
and it costs more taxpayer money
when every man on death row
gets appeal after appeal
while every taxpayer
pays the court costs,
the judge costs
and the government-appointed lawyer costs
Hell, with the death penalty we still pay
for their food and keep in prison for years
so if we spend more money killing people
than keeping them in prison for life
why don’t we learn to be moral
and cut financial corners
to help out the economy?

but I’m sure those talk show hosts
would cut me off
discussing the heinousness of prisoners’ crimes,
but I’ll try to ask them
who made them the judge

I’ve heard death penalty supporters claim
that the bible supports the death penalty
though they don’t say where
I suppose that in the Old Testament
God killed entire towns, flooded the earth
but according to their religion
God is the judge
not them

I’ve heard these supporters say they’re religious,
Christian, like their wonderful President,
and then they say they support “an eye for an eye”
which is when I wonder why
they’re referencing the Old Testament
not that there’s anything wrong with the Old Testament
but they’re referencing the Old Testament
not their Christian New Testament
they’re not listening to Jesus’ words
when he told them to
ignore what his father said
but do as he does
and love one another

Jesus said to turn the other cheek
killing someone is hardly
“turning the other cheek”

I mean, where is their Christian forgiveness
when they sentence people to death?
and wait a minute,
do these Christian people believe
Jesus would support their death sentences?

it makes me think of terrorists
who support killing people
who don’t believe in their God, in their way
we find terrorist behavior abhorrent
and we sit here behind our mighty Constitution
deciding who lives and who dies

but our Christian President likes playing God
the Presidency mustn’t be enough for him

I guess President Bush is now running this casino
and he just keeps saying to himself,
because he has to be right,
that the House always wins

Kuypers is the widely-published poet of particular perspectives and not a little existential rage, but she does not impose her personal or artistic agenda on her magazine. CC+D is a provocative potpourri of news stories, poetry, humor, art and the “dirty underwear& #148; of politics.
One piece in this issue is “Crazy,& #148; an interview Kuypers conducted with “Madeline,& #148; a murderess who was found insane, and is confined to West Virginia’s Arronsville Correctional Center. Madeline, whose elevator definitely doesn’t go to the top, killed her boyfriend during sex with an ice pick and a chef’s knife, far surpassing the butchery of Elena Bobbitt. Madeline, herself covered with blood, sat beside her lover’s remains for three days, talking to herself, and that is how the police found her. For effect, Kuypers publishes Madeline’s monologue in different-sized type, and the result is something between a sense of Dali’s surrealism and Kafka-like craziness.