Subterranean Blue Poetry: Current Issue

“cut sky night
golden sycle moon
taxi-cab singers . . .”

feel the heat through the night air and Mephisto Mercredi travels into daylight's ambulance “because we won’t do” cherry dolls cherry moon a hidden gun sink Eden for a day, Eden for an hour in the streetheart . . . roses Mexicalis au sauvage . . . the public gardens at the castle are open this Summer from the tower the bootleg corners the daylight takes away . . . my painted Gabriel moonlight the weight of sorrows the golden fountain on a bone cart in the arms of the night mystery mystery music Venus sings a broken statue of the goddess in the garden the silence silent nightsky of rien de rien
. . .
first they make us harlequins . . .

PLAGUE DOLL

by Meg Smith

She has burned,
and burned,
and now lies,
done, ready to sleep.
I lift her
in a bundle of cloth –
scraps of gingham,
and country flowers.
All is kept
in her eyes, unrolled, unopened.
What is it
she spreads, and grows,
from her dreams,
to my hands?
It must be
something more than mere
fever, or fright.
It must be
Something close to dreams
that ripen,
and erupt, until we wake.

TORRIN

by Meg Smith

When you said
your name
into the dark
lake,
and the waves
carried it
back to you,
I was your
witness.
A bonfire could
not
consume the
sound.
This lake has
taken
and given so
many names.
A desert dies
in me.
I know I must
let it.
I look to you,
and shadows
cover the tide.

SHINING DARKLY AND BLUE

by Diarmiud o Maolalin

caught on the hips
of some crazy life
while movement and music
spooled out around us,
and your hair was coal black,
and your eyes black like blackberries,
shining darkly and blue
the way blackberries do.

and your head rested perfectly
between my shoulder and my chest,
dipped in a little hollow in there.
and your hands
felt smaller
than I had expected.

you were something that could have happened
to anyone that way,
making life feel
for a moment
like just more music.

when I asked you to come home with me
and you told me no,
that was right, too.
some things should only happen for a little while
and be written later
by starry minds still drunk on them
before we get back to tying our shoelaces
cleaning plates
and drinking cups of tea.

you would have ceased to be what you were to me
and I would have been cruel to you
or you to me
or worse,
a person again.
this was better for us.

BLUE

by Devmalya Bandyopadhyay

To express how I feel in color
is like
telling you about the rush of
blood in your veins.
It is the spilling in your chest,
the ink stain on your cuffs
upon writing something
strange and sad, a poem.

I keep trying to imagine you in
a midnight café
at the edge of the city
listening to Miles Davis, after
everyone has left
you alone with your memories,
you alone with the moon.

There, you keep walking
from one solstice to the next,
waiting
for someone to rush in through
the doors.
Someone wearing a shade of
alone
who would know by heart
how the moon must feel,

dancing by itself to slow jazz
on the farthest corner of the
sky.

SMALL BLUE POEM

by Lorraine Schein

Daymares caused by my love of the pseudo-moment.
The ambiguous emotion of hair, of old clothes, of vague people —

I am trying so hard to forget
having been a dead child -
to stop dragging my soft corpse
through the dark hole in my eye.

THE OCEANDWELLER by Khashayar Mohammadi is an original zeitgeist in New Age progression. Influences of Imagist and Beat poetry forms present in the sorrow of broken within an idea of mystery, a flower that is beginning to open in poetic treatise. Khashayar Mohammadi(Poet, writer, photographer, translator) born in Iran, lives and works in Toronto. He has published Chapbooks and his debut imprint of poetry Me, You, Then Snow (Gordon Hill Press) is forthcoming in the Spring of 2021.

As an emerging poet, the work is exciting in original form, the truncated thoughts, the haunting images of flowers and ocean are annotated as if the long poem is a play. Within the body of the work lines appear in a different font, disembodied as if “stage directions” written in descriptors, a cut away of memory, (of the room the poet is writing in, people and places, music playing, the television on) as if weaving in and out of “reality” creating an interior/exterior monologue, a tumultuous reverie perhaps inside distaff. An underlying theme in this cinematic poetic offering is the story of a conflicted love affair.

“I grabbed the key to sunrise
my wounds, a lantern in the streets

I had several directions,
to you”

And within the tome are romantic philosophic pathways on the history of the flowering Asuriq, the nature of heartbreak, of pain, the telephone, “that’s why the phone receiver smells of violets.” Running through the work, is the image of the window, something the acacia flowers have entered through the kitchen, white, in wedding dresses, a woman has her face pressed to the cold window, the symbol of the window often associated with suicide, an incredibly elegant presentation of loss.

As if a song in the throat, just emerging, a magical surreal weave of the beautiful in sorrow. A captivating work from an emerging poet, This Writer looks for more from this poet, THE OCEANDWELLER by Khashayar Mohammadi.

Available @ above/ground press.

A progression in Haiku, which celebrates absurdity (hai means humor or joke) 99 Poems to Cure Whatever’s Wrong With You or Create the Problems You Need by Sam Pink and CLASH Books is an American Generation Y event. Sam Pink is internationally published, in print and online and has been translated into multiple languages. He sells artwork from instagram.com/sam_pink_art. He has written seven collections of poetry.

Haiquesque, a guy-centric view of “young man meets planet earth”, outtakes from a day in the life – small vignettes, a series of short tight lines, inane and quirky. Somewhat enigmatic, a little dark, perhaps driven by a certain sorrow, an urban angst the small poems shine. The young man as ingénue writes “in my travels” in comedic form, repeated throughout the work is the line “The cartoon continues.”

“So Much Fun

I walked past a lake
where homeless people
were trying to lure
a squirrel off a tree
by holding out
a potato chip.
Some shit looks so fun
you just know
you have to get away
as fast as you can.”

Like unwrapping a new gift, a new genre in street poetry is crashing in, new and exciting. This gift of humor brightens Summer corridors. 99 Poems to Cure Whatever’s Wrong With You or Create the Problems You Need is a newly celebrated artform by CLASH Books, in the vein of the work of Zac Smith.

Generation Y inheriting the planet, as each new generation does, gives us new gifts, new views of the world, new art. A fantastical new form in Haiku, 99 Poems to Cure Whatever’s Wrong With You or Create the Problems You Need by Sam Pink.

Available @ CLASH Books and Amazon.ca.

“in the night of winter dark the trees quiet with waiting . . .”

he said “and you have been reading Plath again” peppermint tea tea in a garden of roses under a tree the places at table are set but no one arrives it is late afternoon . . . those that wear the cloth of angels all bar rummed and painted eyes dance dancing naked for the sun golden chains wrap around her ankle entangle and dance at the hangman’s court (beware the spiders the spiders are from mars) I am not jumping the roof not looking for strangers string light benefits it is too hard to be ruined you can’t cage magic imagine magic it just shines the maiden stone the Jubilee the Spirit not the letter . . . love is like putting on a dress soft and kind you wear it everyday get buried in it memories in a jar not taught to see in signs and symbols some young naked girl in a snow scene falls falling into light street cathedrals the inside of the kitchen free the doves free the doves from the cages to be free always to be free the little death la petite moule night opera demons no demons in the night gene karyotes for past wars how they make us dance innocents should never be hurt one who walks with angels cousins of the cloth the dispossessed your love affair is a community event the collective conscious a winter snow scene . . . the winter moon . . . for those that sing in blue . . . and the orange cat with the one golden eye sleepy watching preens . . . sleeping on the bed . . .

“holy, holy, holy the snow falling the bare boughs asleep . . .”

“rock the moon, Casson
                                               strawberry
                                                                            Summer champagne
                                                                            in the dark of night . . .”

and God beheld her in the dark night she is suspended in an antique birdcage above the city a dove with a blue heart in the dark night tower songs and distant talk, talking shill shock bang toys dolls in blue the moon blood and tears for those that don’t exist anymore for those . . . breathe in the tea rag store the blue existential day/night hospital sleep no sleep thinkbox read/write riots the secondhand supra the talk, talking in the rounds inside the broken city blue Metropolis Paris island the long dark night the pavilion house Christmas windows nocturne Christmas . . . skies and stars . . .

Devmalya Bandyopadhyay is a student of poetry, mathematics and everything life has to offer in between. He writes poetry because it has been his medicine for mayhem over the years. When not reading, he is usually adrift in cinema and music.

Rebecca Anne Banks lives in the New Age Renaissance Republique of Poetry. She has been writing and producing artistic content for 38 years and is the author of over 30 books of poetry, guides to the Holy Spirit, a primer on marriage discernment, a family cookbook, a book of children's stories, a book of World Peace Newsletters, all available at Amazon Stations. She has produced 3 CD's of Folk/Rock music and has 17 CD's of music awaiting production. She won an IARA Award for Top 55 Internet Airplays for Angel Song (2010). She is an Associate Member of the League of Canadian Poets. She is also the Poetry Editor at Subterranean Blue Poetry (www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com), CEO/Artist at Tea at Tympani Lane Records (www.tympanilanerecords.com), the Book Reviewer at The Book Reviewer (www.thebookreviewer.ca)and the Quilt Artist at Kintsugi Art Quilts (www.kintsugiartquilts.com.

Kristin Garth (Poet) has been nominated for the Pushcart & Best of the Net awards. Her specialty is writing exciting New Goth sonnets, an original in New Age poetics. She is published in journals, Glass, Yes, Five:2: One, Anti-Heroin Chic, Former Cactus, Occulum, Luna Luna, & many more. She has published numerous Chapbooks and collections of poetry, including The Legend of the Were Mer (Thirty West Publishing House), Pink Plastic House and Good Girl Games (Maverick Duck Press), Pensacola Girls (Bone & Ink Press, Sept 2018), Shakespeare for Sociopaths (The Hedgehog Poetry Press, January 2019), Puritan U (Rhythm & Bones Lit March 2019), Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (The Hedgehog Poetry Press April 2019), Flutter: southern gothic fever dream (IngramSpark 2020) amongst others. Twitter: (@lolaandjolie). www.kristingarth.com.

Diarmiud o Maolalin. The Writer says about himself: "I’m a graduate of English Literature from Trinity College in Dublin and recently returned there after four years abroad in the U.K. and Canada. I have been writing poetry and short fiction for the past five or six years with some success. My writing has appeared in such publications as 4’33’, Strange Bounce and Bong is Bard, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Out of Ours, The Eunoia Review, Kerouac’s Dog, More Said Than Done, The Belleville Park Pages, Killing the Angel and Unrorean Broadsheet, by whom I was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. I have also had my work published in two collections; Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden and Sad Havoc Among the Birds.

Khashayar Mohammadi lives and works in Toronto. Originally from Iran, he is a Poet, photographer, writer, translator). He has Chapbooks available including Moe's Skin (ZED press, 2018), Dear Kestrel (knife/fork/book, 2019), and Solitude is an Acrobatic Act (above/ground press, 2020). His first collection of poetry, Me, You, Then Snow (Gordon Hill Press) is to be published in the Spring of 2021.

Sam Pink is a Poet, humorist, artist. He is published in print and on the Internet, internationally and in other languages. He has written 7 collections of poetry, Witch Piss, Rontel, Hurt Others, The No Hellos Diet, Person, The Garbage Times/White Ibis and 99 Poems to Cure Whatever’s Wrong With You or Create the Problems You Need. His paintings are available at instagram.com/sam_pink_art.

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, Frozen Wavelets, Star*Line, and Little Blue Marble, and in the anthology Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from Mayapple Press: www.mayapplepress.com.

Meg Smith is a writer, dancer, journalist and events producer living in Lowell, Mass. Her poetry and fiction have recently appeared in The Café Review, Poetry Boay, Raven Cage, Sirens Call, and many more. She served on the board of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! from 1995 to 2009. Her news reporting has received awards from the New England Newspaper and Press Association, including first place awards for coverage of religion, social issues and racial and ethnic issues. She is the author of five poetry books and welcomes visits to www.megsmithwriter.com.