GUY KETTELHACK Guy Kettelhack is the author or coauthor of more than 30 nonfiction books. His poetry has been featured in Outstretch, Van Gogh's Ear, Melic Review and New Pleiades. A poem "Alter Ego" was selected as a quarterfinalist in the 2004 Lyric Recovery Competition and two other poems won awards in the IBPC Competition (January and May 2004). He lives in New York City.

Marking the Clay © Guy Kettelhack The infant universe is certainty arising out of fear: shadows near, and shock, then make a breast, a yelling brother, frowning aunt, erupting plant you later hear from 'daddy' is 'a tree.' Constricted vowels and consonants turn into sanguine language - integuments that form a veil of domesticity. But soon eternal fixity implodes: and walls you thought immutable, unscalable, reveal themselves as arbitrary loads of brick: now thick is thin, an ether spinning out and through, compelling arbitrary rhyme from you - by reflex to fix order on a vacillating gas. Until unutterability transmutes into new mass: you see your hand is in the form, is part of it; with strange autonomy you hold the dark at bay: and find your prints illuminate and mark the clay. rorschach test © Guy Kettelhack a flake of wallpaper - with faded curves of white, tan, red and grey - its shape defies geometry of any sort I know. Although I'd say turned upside down it's like an elfin boot. Turned slightly sideways - an effrontery of cape on some Atlantic map of coast, Cape May perhaps, or Cod. Lost fragment from an ancient dream, it stays flat, dusty on my desk - my childhood bedroom wall betrays its secrets in this scrap, this torn off tiny thing - as if amazed at being here not there. But there's no there there left today - there's only here - new dream of coalescing home, quite far away. where to put things? © Guy Kettelhack oh, the transcripts of a life you take away from any home in which unwittingly you've left yourself more deeply than you'd known. I framed two sheets of newsprint, covered in my father's careful backhand script - all captions for soft-pencilled drawings, sectioned off in horizontal strips - as if Da Vinci'd been to the Art Students League. "Have a clear conception of what you want to draw," my father wrote. "Sense the nature and condition of the action, or inaction." He sawed the page into a manifesto he would not have understood, witless from Alzheimers, at his octogenarian end. But - framed in black in a bright blue mat - hanging on my bedroom door - he's lucid to me now Midnight Cowboy © Guy Kettelhack Slip into a chat room on the Internet and smell the cyber-sweat of fallen angels, each of whom yearns to make room for unimaginable passion - in the hell of finding out (eternally) the itch cannot be scratched: there's no transcendent match - there's barely a caress - and that felt only fleetingly. Go to Mass, observe the angel eyes around you swerve, evade, retreat then peek out, press against impenetrable corneas - stawky starving children at a Christmas window, locked out, looking in. Milton's Satan is the human soul, a Midnight Cowboy: wants you in his bed for pay, and longs to give his heart away, and can't.

PHATTKAT Phattkat resides near the Bay in Southern New Jersey, and is a Special Educator, teaching Emotionally Disturbed / Behaviorally Disordered teenage boys. Phattkat also writes poetry, and has been involved in web based poetry publications at PoeticVillage.com, a site dedicated to poets World Wide, and created by accomplished poet Roger Worley, better known by poets as The Quill. You can contact phattkat at http://www.phattkat.com/

UNCHARTED WATERS © phattkat, 2000 Standing alone In the cool summer evening Looking out across the shimmering bay Reflecting beams of the first June moon It all comes back to me The smell of sea weeded wood Barnacled with age Wearing its salt coat like a crusty blanket Sheltering its creaking framework From further decay Brings a rush of sleeping memories Sweeping, fractured images That settle like a fine mist The harbor air, thick with foam Tastes of brine and salt spray I see the old Schooner now Rising fast toward the surface Rushing up through the murky depths Of the ancient bay waters Breaking free of the rusting chains That held her for so many years Casting off the anchor of her past Groaning as if giving birth To her newly found freedom She breaks the surface The gulls cry in startled recognition As the carved maiden rises Drinks in the fresh sea air, and sighs The Schooner settles into the soft swells Her bilges drained of silt and time Cargo long since strewn to the currents I was forsaken on that vessel If only in my father's dreams A sailor's son without a ship to call his own The old Schooner becomes my home And sinks back, into the depths of time SHANTY TOWN © phattkat, 2000 I walk upon cold cobblestones not finding shelter from the storms that rage within the black and smoky kettles of the shanty poor and all their splintered creaking wood framed houses that would pass for home except for lack of even simple pleasantries to call their own how can I face the vile and putrid truth that I am wading through if nothing that I see or smell or taste or hear or say or breathe can match the anguished utterings of beast like men or cries of children torn too soon from bloody womb to face the wretched fate that even those that brave the cobblestones would never think of really facing down around the Shanty Town the southern side of Shanty Town the side that evil came to know as its sweet lover long ago yes longer than the longest long ago before the white man or the black man or the colors of the many men that came before the start of hating color in the flesh of men or of their poor and broken Shanty Towns where crying in the night is all the welcome home that's left the bones of all the colored men who felt the hate and bit deep into flesh while choking on their last request Please let me go back to my Shanty Town where I can breathe in poor man's air and for a season just be left alone be left alone to walk upon the cobblestones the cobblestones I call my home in Shanty Town TEMPORAL CONSTRAINT © phattkat To Nikki, for what they did to you... Staring at the ceiling fan head sunk deep into the pillow wet from sweat, wet from sweat the rhythmic droning click and wobble hold him in hypnotic stare nothing in his world seems fair click and wobble click click and wobble click His eyes see through the passing blades beyond the pressured whirling waves through the eye of stormy deeds into a world that holds the key to his sweet recollection he moves in its direction the past is there he sees so deep memory disturbs his sleep things are not what he perceives there's stinking evil lurking there and he will drown in deep despair if he cannot confront his truth and rip it from the darkness come out, come out and play with me come out, come out so I can see too many years you've hid from me click and wobble click click and wobble click Now he feels the fiery blast he rises up to meet his past locked in evil's vice-like grip his arms are folded and won't slip there's no way to confound it he just can't move around it staring at the blood red eye hypnotic and inviting click and wobble click click and wobble click help me, help me, help me please I am lost and I can't see what it is that's holding me deep within the shadows of my fractured history please won't someone set me free click and wobble click click and wobble click Lost forever in the blades whisking all his thoughts away time now dear to get some sleep wake me if you hear me weep I will dream that I have gone to a land that's far beyond far beyond, far beyond click click click Sanity is mine tonight suddenly I'm bathed in light angels come all dressed in white helping me to find my past with their pills and water glass click click click I will wait until they leave suffer in my white room breeze someday I will make them see that the past is haunting me now I think it's time to rest tomorrow I will try my best to find what I was looking for looking for, looking for...... Staring up at bright red sky watching evil's whirling eye lost in rhythmic lullaby click and wobble click click and wobble click

Michael Paul Ladanyi Michael Paul Ladanyi lives in the foothills of the North Georgia Mountains with his wife and two daughters. His poetry has been published in hundreds of magazines and journals in the US and abroad, both in print and online. His featured work, interviews, reviews he has written and reviews of his work, have been published and featured many times worldwide. Michael has seen two of his chapbooks published, Spelling Crows of Winter, ISBN 1-58998-229-0, released by Pudding House Publications, Sept. 2003, and Palm Shadows, released by Purple Rose Publications, June 2002. His first full length poetry collection poetry collection, Humming Riddles in Naked Seasons, (72 poems) is due out in the late spring/early summer from The Sun Rising Poetry Press, a division of Sun Books, and is now available for pre-order through donette@sunbooks.com or Dale at: djungk@stjoelive.com and will be available upon publication through online and brick and mortar retail stores Michael is the editor and founder of Adagio Verse Quarterly and: The Bohemian Rag He maintains a personal site at Geocities.

Omens (Of 1966) © Michael Paul Ladanyi Brown weeds are leaning passively in November’s distinctive wind, I am bleeding against their hollow spines, curious at the sight of myself attempting to die as my own witness. I was born on elephant grass and mud, charcoal flesh--- pain laid out on tin plates left unwashed for days, with sucking lungs that sear themselves, fumble for breath. There is a fetus that lives within me; it will never die, waves its tiny hand through dead smoke of my cigarette, like fucked-up omens my mother used to whisper to the pillow-cased face of God. From Michael's latest chapbook, Chicken Bones published May 2004 by Little Poem Press (see end of poems for link) Chicken Bones © Michael Paul Ladanyi ~For William, written after a visit to his grave~ I have watched the vulturous dust of my corpse swirl then settle as dry specs of stale blood in country leaves, this has molded me into a rune-stone tower of ghosts bound by my tongue, words that fuck their mothers in shadows while shaking bags of old chicken bones. Yesterday, I opened the hands of my dead brother through etched marble that displays his name, placed crucifix shadows from the gutted sun into his palms. Behind me on burning city streets, cars crept over cracking spines of evening, naked skeletons with eyes of past insane penance. From Michael's latest chapbook, Chicken Bones published May 2004 by Little Poem Press Against Sea’s Tide and Nose © Michael Paul Ladanyi Against sea’s tide and nose, what I care for has written itself on my summertime shoulders, June blood dumb and leaven. Owls are on their dying meat, hazel love, you are my shroud and sex, directions angle-right and star puzzled, an age grief spoken. Walking through marsh and reed, clocks are only wood and gear; this March eye a coughing lung in the throat, sparrow-proud naked spelling, flesh finger suckled promises, in windy sheets maroon and green. From Michael's latest chapbook, Chicken Bones published May 2004 by Little Poem Press Price: $5 for the book, $3 for PDF. Click picture below to find out more...

DEBASHISH HAAR I have both an objective and a subjective existence in this world—which are correlated up to certain extent! I have published a good hundred and fifty poems in my first one-and-quarter year in net; do a google search, have a look (40—50 are easily visible). I have written numerous poems in my diary, most of them are still safe on those pages where I maintain my own rule. Idea of writing poetry, more officially, was given by a very close friend of mine, a few years back, after I published a couple of articles in campus polities while doing my masters. People say I can write, though I am not convinced, and I don’t approach them for this acknowledgement. Published in Poetry Life and Times (thrice), once interviewed (March, 2003) when I declined to take the offer ‘coz it was the first month in my internet writing venture, but the editor of the magazine (Sara Russell) had faith in me, published in Autumn Leaves (have an elaborate list of about 30 poems to be published in next six issues), published in Wordswordswords and some anthologies here and there. Besides these I can attend any queries related to art…connection between Postmodernism and Impressionism, Nihilism and Quantum Mechanics et al. I have experience of editing for Elsevier Science in a massive project featuring some of the big shots of the world of Geochemistry. Now something interesting for you, I am also the editor of Mystic East Publisher, Currently working on a unique anthology project.

Pearls Were the Priests © Debashish Haar In this whirlpool of reflections inside the amphitheater The trapeze artist is the empty eye. Ideas are splattered in red, green and gold, Swarms of flies ate the colorless pearls. Pearls were the priests But now the colored swarms. All the priests became concepts, enormous chasms of bile. Then the idols exploded with the priests, The amphitheater became a dung heap— Disabled ideas sprouted cannibal deities! Dogs in love with their own vomit! The eggheads who were stained in ink, Spawn crustaceans that look like men. This house of swarm extracts Is shooting high up into the sky! Solitude © Debashish Haar You are naked like a violated corpse; They stole your jewels and your burial clothes. You were garlanded with poems, Your body was etched in writings, Your writings still talk and dance. I could feel the distance so close, I touch it with my thoughts— Night wanders like a nomad Stealing your grace and charm. The moment lifts me in memory mansions, scaling the fragile bridge of numbness. Time hungers for liberation, beyond me, somewhere— I am waiting for my arrival! Self absorbed hour Gleams on moments, Lets drop seeds of memory— Its fence defines hushed fountains! I am reading your poetry! Ink Burns © Debashish Haar On the alabaster skin of the morning, Beneath the cliffs where the wind retracts, The rising sun dances. I begin to draw the transfigurations Skimmed on the surface of inkwell, I set on writing my prose. A smoke covers up my writing, Issuing out of the ink! There is a forest in flame on my page! Flames leap into the boreal sky, Earth belches fire, Till sky falls to precipitate its anguish! On the drum of earth, Rage-broken downpour dances! You enter my porch, And cast your shadow in darkness. I can see your dimples, I see your pregnant eyes— That starves to flow. I am lost behind the broken bones of sun, I am looking into a pair of eyes, Eyes that lost their memory! I am burning in this forest on my page! This war is a proliferation of hatred in the name of love… © Debashish Haar This moment is a metaphor, This metaphor is a war, This war is a machinery of strife Its victims are those hands which sold terror, Its victims are those who saw their brothers buying this terror… Its victims are those who are innocent, Those who won’t know why this adrenaline of hatred Gushes in bloodstreams more violently than waters of Niagra Falls… Its victims are those who have to live the death of their lovers, Its victims are those who need to learn to live the death of their younger ones… Terror is a victim of the moment, This moment is a prisoner of this metaphor… The placenta of terror nourishes a womb Where love and peace can never be birthed… The air of terror stays air, and never solidifies to precipitate the wishes of the sky. The sky which liberated this air And lost its wind and freedom… This moment is a metaphor, This metaphor is a war, This war is a proliferation of hatred in the name of love…

           

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