Disconnection Notice #44

by John Rocco

 

Maybe there’s life

in failure

I think

with the envelope in my hand

pushing the bar door open

and seeing them there

packed

drinking

dead

self-inflicted

in a million dumb sad ways.

There’s beefy-faced Hem

boxing a 300-pound tuna

and hard-gut Mishima

fingering the steak knives.

There’s bridge humping Hart

falling past Spalding

jumping off the ferry.

There’s Hunter stealing the elk horns

and Virginia going swimming.

There’s Sylvia cooking.

There’s the Infinite Jest guy

not joking.

There are more lucky unlucky ones

worn down by a crushing

sequence of catastrophes

or nothing

like them all.

I order a gorgeous

martini

giant green hollow olives floating

and rip open the envelope.

It’s another disconnection notice

from Con Edison
my favorite writer

who always is there for me

telling me things like

they regret it but they are

turning the power off again

soon

unless I pay them

which seems unfair

until I leave the bar

without paying.

Igor!

by John Rocco

 

I’m sorry my soul bro, Bartleby

now shoveling it in

stuffed with

Heaven’s thick stew

with kings and councilors and Poe’s girl

but Igor makes me want to believe in

humanity.  I know it sounds like bullshit

but really, I swear.  His story

makes me want to live, to actually

accept the fact that human beings have

SOULS.  And shit on their shoes.

Did you read the paper today

oh dear dead boy

in neverneveraliveland?

It was pretty clear in its story:

He’s the greatest bicycle thief in history.

That Italian movie had only one bike stolen.

He, Igor Kenk, stole 2,865 bikes.

Igor holds the world’s record for most bicycle thefts.

And he is the most hated man in Toronto.

Igor stole so many bikes

that when the police came to his

used bike shop

the fire department wouldn’t

let them in

because it was too dangerous with all the bikes.

They actually don’t know what he would have

done with all the bikes:

melt them down for scrap?

But the cops are thinking money

but I know Igor was thinking art

because along with the 2,865 stolen bikes

the cops also found cocaine,

crack cocaine,

15 pounds of pot,

and a stolen bronze

sculpture of a centaur fighting a giant snake.

 

He was obviously working on something.

 

Igor!

You are my hero!

Steal their bikes!

They should be happy to be in a work of art

like a painting, or drunkenness, or her,

and the stolen sculpture says it all.

You are the centaur

half tortured man, half muscle horse

fighting the giant killer snake

and it’s Apollo

God in a thick horny reptile

using prophecy and hot pussy

to strangle your

business.

 

Oh Igor!

I am with you in prison!

I am with you in Toronto!

I am with you in stealing bikes!

I am with you in the breaking of their chains and riding them away!

I am with you in fighting the slimy

giant ugly killer snake telling us

everything is impossible

and everything can’t be ours.

The 60’s Have Been Over for a While

by Dan Provost

 

It’s not going to be peace and love this time, because those traits come at a hefty price.

 

You must be willing to emotionally express yourself…to the millions, to the non-believers…to yourself;

Yourself mostly.

 

So peace and love are great ideals…idolized in song and words…

But it’s not going to be the solution…

 

If you don’t believe me; look out the window—anytime, any day…

See neighbors hating neighbors…city walkers never acknowledging each other.

 

Everybody is so fragmented today, so Peace and Love…no…not any more.

 

It’s the battle for number one now,

two and three are gone.

 

Buried in another time

Headstones overwrought with long grass and never visited.

grovel pig

by Karl Koweski
 
the small press attention whore
sends constant emails
hi, how are you
equates to
acknowledge me, I exist
three a day
to a grocer’s list
of thirty wannabe writers
 
each message
each existential crisis
each spat with her lover overseas
or her subsidiary lovers
closer to home
every suggestive photograph
every depressive note
appended with the notation
this is just for you
just for you
just for you
and you
and you
you too
but not you over there
I heard about you
and that other
small press skank
 
she’s the queen of the underground
 
thirty beams of light
erases shadow
thirty mirrors reflect
the literary image
she desperately cleaves to
 
a secret divided thirty ways
isn’t much of a secret at all
 
but of course
that’s the idea, isn’t it?

Honorary Uncle

by David Bates

when he grows up

he wants to be a UFO pilot

he tugs my sleeve

and his father reminds him

to be careful

not to spill people’s beer

 

go inside

his father says

this is grown up time

 

can I play your

Playstation dad?

 

No. Leave my shit alone.

 

I imagine my friend

on his beerstink couch

with a video-game pad

plugged into the base of his boy’s skull

thumbing him around the room

like a remote controlled

vacuum cleaner

 

the kid looks at me

and I shrug

 

earlier

he’d asked me

if I was born with

tattoos

 

and his father said

don’t be stupid

before I could tell him

 

yes

as a matter of fact

I was

 

***

 

Bio:

David Bates currently resides in Austin, TX. He is the co-founder and editor of My Favorite Bullet (www.myfavoritebullet.com) and Interior Noise Press. His work has appeared in FriGG Magazine, Underground Voices, Whiskey Island, Thunder Sandwich, and Zygote In My Coffee. He hosts the Ruta Maya Poetry Open Mic every Tuesday (www.rmpoetryaustin.com) and will buy a beer for any traveling poet who cares to read.

Go visit my OPIUM POETRY 2.0 zine.

Ross Vassilev’s homepage.