Job Hole dot com
Heydi-ho! Heydi-hee!
Let’s jump atop our white degrees
Like a magical carpet ride
where you’re down on your knees
Ooooooeeeeee! Look at all them jobs
What’s your desired salary?
Roll a three and you’ve got a career
In ophthalmology
You’re an actuary
Work in an apothecary
Raise baby dromedaries
Reality is merely secondary
To your future as a secretary
A gas jockey
Another part-time full-blown half-wit two-bit
Burger-flipping, basement dwelling
Success flunkee social junky
Third tier, class two
one-tonne mop monkey
you silly silly monkey
with your silly silly lamp
You can rub all you want
but the glitter just comes off
Now you’re trapped inside the bottle
Thirty years with nothing but wishes
Waiting tables and washing dishes
If someone would only set you free
you would grant them their three wishes
Answer yes to all their questions
Jump through hoops at their suggestion
But the joke’s on you because their cousin
Was already awarded that position
Is this a life or nothing near it?
Screaming loud so can you hear it
Sticks and stones may break your bones
But these chains will take your spirit
Used to be that salesmen only sold you widgets
And maybe x-ray glasses to go along with it
Now they’re middle men along the way
to the bottom rung of a step-less ladder
When did job hunting become an industry?
Or ambition a treacherous cemetery
Call me a political indignitary
But I came to say that free will is fantasy
Yes this is fantasy land.
You know there’s no steering wheel
on a magical carpet, right?
You know that, right?
You know that the genie
always twists your wishes
Right?
You silly, silly monkey!
Surrounded by assholes
First born son
To two professors
I felt the burden of excellence
upon my shoulders
and laboured hard to carry it afar
displaying the intellectual plumage
that was my birthright
Until I realized:
I’m just another asshole
In this sea of assholes
Floating, ramming, cramming together
Poking, biting, scratching each other
Every asshole thinking they’re better
than the asshole one over
Got something more to prove
more to say
Every asshole for himself!
God forbid
we come together
Fight for the common good
Of all assholes
Assholes unite!
But no, no
Can’t happen
Won’t happen
Because
We assholes have turned this struggle
into a race
the human race
where everyone is his own
unique, individually wrapped
utterly alone
asshole
Note:
Leopold McGinnis is a Canadian writer & the
founding editor of the e-zine www.redfez.net. He
currently lives in Toronto, but he’s been
everywhere and could be anywhere right this
moment. Even behind you, so smile as you read his
work and then visit www.leopoldmcginnis.com.
----------------------------------------------------------
We Sleep in Empty Mountains
by Corey Mesler
“we sleep in empty mountains,
all heaven our blanket, earth our pillow.”
Li Po
To roll over, to spin.
To take the dream by the armpits
and pull.
Just at the point where it all
abandons you,
just when the darkened lane you
traverse is at its
loneliest, the spirit talks to you
in soothing tones.
It says, you will awaken into a
new world, one
you may have dreamed of, but
one, also, which
will challenge your every fidelity.
To accept the sleepscape.
To honor its intentions.
To take the dream back with you
to the humankind above.
A garment, handmade, as lovely as you.
To kindle. To spin.
To take that road and call it a path,
one path.
Notes:
Another chapbook, Dark on Purpose, is just out
from Little Poem Press. And another, The Heart is
Open, is due from Mayapple Press in 2005. My
forthcoming novel, We are Billion-Year-Old Carbon,
is also from Livingston Press. I've been a book
reviewer (for The Commercial Appeal, BookPage,
The Memphis Flyer), fiction editor, university press
sales rep, grant committee judge, father and son.
With my wife I own Burke’s Book Store, one of the
country’s oldest (1875) and best independent
bookstores.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Africa’s Ample Vendor (aka-nchawa)
By Ukonu Binyerem Samuel
Clarinets resounding,
Tinkles of fairies,
Mottles of chuckles,
Yeah, daub grimaced,
A dame’s demeanour.
Letters visualized,
As orifice unbars,
The doings, ‘tis a sterling vendor
Gazing Mona Lisa’s eyes.
Fragments of a shadowy
Sanguinity… resides the core
As prospect’s hem appears
Less of a mirage…
Permeating reality.
She spreads her arms
As drapes of good tidings
Pervade her wee palms.
May these colossal crumbs
Be split amongst
Her heirs.
Bio.: Born in 1982 in Owerri in eastern
Nigeria. An architect by profession, with
published poems in eternal portraits by
International Library of Poetry. Ukonu
Binyerem is presently collecting his poems
for publication, by February 2006, and also a
novel, to be published end of next year. His
Website: www.binyerem.faithweb.com
--------------------------------------------------------------
Departures
by Julie Bolt
My mother cleans each inch of the house
Dusts under clay pots from other countries
My insignificance is average, though at
Moments I have touched stars
My mother wears long flannel nightgowns
She wears a robe and moccasins for slippers
The stars I have touched burned my hand
But left no scar to prove the journey
My mother was an actress but needed money
Because she had a child too young
I have other scars, imperfections on my body
I could have never been an actress
My mother worked late hours in an office
While my father pursued his dreams
The stories of my scars are average
I looked for stars in New York skies
When my mother left my father
She found another man who left within a year
Hungry, I fled New York at age fifteen
For Caribbean shores and the vastest skies
My mother's body glows bright white
Like mine -- she wants to dance
In Jamaica there was dancing every night
When I'd left my father still dreamed at home
My mother is always reaching
Withdrawing, pausing, reaching
Stars everywhere! My white skin shining
Not like my father's skin that's almost brown
When I returned my mother told me
In the kitchen
He is gone
and the other one is here
She wants to dance
(She cleans)
I want to dance
(My hand burns from the stars)
Author's note
Since I'm in the animal issue, I will consider this a
poem about the nomadic human animal. Currently, I
am departing Los Angeles to return to New York
City, where I will teach at Bronx Community
College. I'm bringing a kid, a husband and two dogs
with me, as well as lots of unfinished stories and
poems. Recent writing has appeared in The Fifth
Street Review, Radical Teacher, Slow Trains
Literary Magazine, Puerto del Sol, Nupenz, and
Apollo's Lyre. I'm a big believer in the internet
publishing world -- very democratic! And hey,
check out my website:www.juliethebolt.net
-------------------------------------------------------------
The Walking Aborted
by Clifford Watkins
the realest word is pain
motorists steeped in a traveler's brain
easily annoyed
an angry convoy
death is the new porn
awake reborn
flowers wilt
a blend with the earth
come again
what's it worth
one sin
dancing strangers
temptation
danger
flawless whores with no reason to entertain
spotless floor
just come again
does the orgy end
and amid this lunacy
fools on passenger trains
feasting
breeding
searching for something
without this heaven is nothing
eager road is dust full blown
towering tunnels
a vast cemetery
and liberation never known
enter the civil forest
examine
contemplate
and complain
wisdom is the silent chorus
accept
relate
and remain sane
some things can't be explained
maybe outer space is god slamming a door in our
face
forgotten beings
maybe we've been misplaced
rejected
or snorted
Maybe we're the walking aborted
bio: Clifford K. Watkins, Jr., is a thirty-one-year old
writer/lyricist/animal originally from High Point,
North Carolina. He currently lives in Jacksonville,
Florida.
by Thomas L. Vaultonburg
The head on the TV
Says There' s something
You can do with a Golden
Globe you can' t with
An Academy award.
Hollywood legend
Jack Nicholson, wearing
A red, silk robe
Poses in front of the
Mantle of his upstairs
Bedroom. The steely eyes
Of four Oscars and
Perfect reflecting pools
Of six Golden Globes
All beam back that
Devilish profile. There
Must be something you
Can do with a Golden
Globe you can' t with
An Academy Award, he muses.
Meanwhile, still in halflites
In the background,
Two Hollywood vixens,
The stars of this year's
Coming-of-age comedy,
Decorate Jack' s bed.
Their combined ages
Sums less than Jack's
When he won his first Oscar
For Cuckoo' s Nest.
Jack' s concentration returns
To the business at hand
And that legendary wry smile
Flashes across the billboard
Of his face as he realizes:
Godammit, the IS something you
Can do with a Golden Globe
You can' t with an Academy Award.
Cut (and print)
Next shot: the starlets
Have hit their marks expertly,
As if they've been doing this forever.
Their perfect asses raised
Invitingly, side by side,
The redhead has a tattoo
Of Betty Boop on the small
Of her back.
Jack kneels between them
Like a charioteer at The Coliseum,
His Oscar for A Few Good Men
In his right hand and
His Golden Globe for As Good As It Gets
Gripped in his left he hoists them
Above his head in a triumphant
Pose
& Yet Jack's little Oscar
Remains disinterested.
Jack blames the Academy
For their sycophancy and the
Movie-going public for their
Slobbering adoration, but mostly
He blames the thousands of
Starlets, divas, cheerleaders,
Waitresses, strippers, producer' s wives,
Film students and makeup
Artists for just making it all
Too damn easy and removing
All suspense from the
Surprise ending.
But a mere moment
Before the audience loses
Interest the Master has
A flash of inspired genius:
He's Al Pacino in Scarface-
He rams the Golden Globe
Into the brunettes pussy
And cunningly eases his
Oscar into the redhead s ass.
Betty Boop gives him a wink
And they both howl and
Writhe in ecstasy
As Jack' s hands pump
Like a two-fisted gunslinger
Until he screams Say hello
To my little friends
And spurts enough genetic
Material to satisfy both
Girls' inexhaustible hunger.
---------------------------------------------------
Two from Christopher Mulrooney:
fantasmagoria
in blue turtlenecks we have needles
to ply our trade with on the cutting
room floor
give us this day with panbread in
our Dutch ovens that our nicely
creased slacks and suits may remain
strictly speaking on the hanger
standing at the salad bar
give me the rhubarb on a round plate
not the intimate kind the hard
you can bounce off walls and still
eat lettuce off of with curlicues
of fringe and carrots and kidney beans
with a choice of dressings and nuts and all
tubs and tubs and tubs and tubs of it
-------------------------------------------------------------
JUST WORDS (Zimbabwe and the bulldozers)
by Christopher Major
Jack Straw the British Foreign Secretary:
"We will continue to support
all those in Zimbabwe,
working for a return
to a democratically
elected and accountable Government."
"We will continue to support
all those in Zimbabwe,
############o o\areturn
########################o o\ ly a t l
elected and accountable Government."
--------------------------------------------------------------
from Duane Locke:
REFLECTIONS IN APRIL 21
At his funeral, a quasi-stranger to me, very few
came,
Among the few were those who never knew
The man who died, never knew his
Carnival barker ceased face,
His twisted Wall Street lips,
His eyes, a platform brown surrounded
By broken bleached shells.
But now he had a rice-powder dusted face,
His skin resembled painted smoke,
And his lips were copied from a Magritte.
A man who when alive had the appearance
Of Everyman and was considered quotidian,
Now after the undertaker
Appeared mystic and someone never seen before.
His wife did not recognize him,
Shed tears, for she regretted
He did not look this mystic when alive,
As she thought her life
Would have been exciting
Living with an otherworldly
Bohemian attic and aria type.
I surmised these unknowns who cried
Are among those
Who find aesthetic pleasure in expressing grief,
As an actor does in a drama.
Those unknowns gave the appearance
Of being the saddest among the mourners.
Their grief so well expressed was abstract,
A purity as sought by Kandinsky
And abstract expressionists.
These unknown mourners
Did not know not anything about
The embalmed, transformed thing
Before it was in an a funeral parlor open casket.
So their grief was without object,
Thus grief was autotelic and ardent.
I thought I heard Time’s Winged Chariot
Hurrying near, but at this funeral,
Death could not be conceive as riding in
Such exotic, mythic transportation, for today
Death rides in a Volkswagen or Honda.
When I am engaged in a Bingo game,
And suddenly realize during the game
I have become a few more minutes nearer death,
And due to my despair I mishear the called number,
I see death coming towards me as a hitchhiker,
But every car stops to offer him a ride.
Death waves his thumb in a charming manner.
REFLECTIONS IN APRIL 23
All that remained except a yellow brown stain
Shaped like a stem that grow into chemical
container
As those used as background décor in horror
movies
About mad scientist who were trying
To made a perfect musician was
Two long black lines that curved due to the fading
Of what once represented two black suspenders.
It was useless to scrutinized the surface,
Even with high-powered magnifying glasses
For only a few black specks of uncertain origin
Could be found. The human urge to identify
And classify was frustrated; every attempt
unfruitful.
There were other photographs in the drawer
Whose bottom was speckled golden
With leftovers from termites whose
Requirements for existence had hollowed
One side of the drawer. One of the photographs
Was of a Chinese poet with a feathered pen
And a blank scroll. He was sitting
Under a willow with oxen horns
Protruding out of the mists behind the
Leaning willow trunks. The discovery
Excited our curiosities: why was a photograph
Of an ancient Chinese poet among
Other blank photos that came from
A world of black suspenders. Why
Was it the only identifiable picture
In a stack of blanks. We left the farmhouse
As we entered the porch on a step ladder,
As the steps had long ago disappeared.
This collapsing house was the only edifice
In sight, for all human dwellings, the tar
Paper shacks for share croppers
And migrant workers, the new house,
As it was called that once had a porch
With a wisteria vine where sparrows nested.
All were gone, even the smokehouse,
The pig pen, and a tree house
Except for a few boards that hung
Decaying on nails.
The rich farmer that now owned the land
Did not know anything about its history,
Had no concern whether a man
Who wore black suspenders and collected
Picture of ancient Chinese poets ever existed.
REFLECTIONS IN APRIL 25
The white gravel raked into circular groups,
Abolished the red spatters on autumn maple leaves.
Now I paint coral colored lips, a glow, and
controlled.
The rest of the face I cannot complete this day.
So I will paint in the background, the sky
Outside is gray, so my painted sky will be azure.
The reeds in front will have an oblique lean
So it will seem the wind is gentle, mild.
So now I sit with wine under cedars, watch
The waves of butterflies, their hovering
Overhead cast a whirlpools of darkness
To splash over the skin of my outheld hands.
Suddenly, I started to recall stains, stains
Placed by atmosopheric conditions on statues.
I saw again in my mind, the black stains
On the white saint in Salzburg. The orange stains
On the Venus atop the fountain behind the
Borghese.
These stains by uniting nature with carved marble
Made the saints more saintly, Venus more beautiful.
--------------------------------------------------------------
STICK YOUR TORCH IN THE AIR
by Donna Kuhn
a heart says sweat instead of sweet
some people are offended when i curse
im from new york, i tell them, this is how we talk
if i held your hand would it confuse u
dream about spaghetti annd salt
i dont use anything for its intended purpose
he was only happy when he painted
im beginninng to understand
a future star stares at the liquor bottles
lined up behind the bar
im still hiding in my pencil jar
peek out from beneath your picnic table
u were ancient with an american flag
over your head, the liberty bell hung
in the middle of nowhere
suspended in green sky
if i couldve kept u alive
i wouldnt write another word
palette please, stick your torch in the air
take in your foam cherries
hollow skulls on the skating rink
united we stand, uh huh
please $1, tell the corn god
god bless this mess
a ripe banana smiles, a blue lady bug crawls
i need your sandwiches, your bones
my animated face distorted
Note:
Donna Kuhn is a poet, author, artist, dancer &
Northern Californian animal.
http://www.onlinewebart.com
Left Column:
Thomas Vaultonburg
Christopher Mulrooney
Christopher Major
Duane Locke
Donna Kuhn
Right Column:
Leopold McGinnis
Corey Mesler
Ukonu Binyerem Samuel
Julie Bolt
Clifford Watkins
Official Animal of the
LitVision Press office
rabid Canadian animal!
His poems are at far right.
Bouncer/bartenderRetired).
Lover of Tab cola and zombie
movies. Former editor of Zombie
Logic Press in the sense that
Zombie Logic still exists but I'm
long gone.
stay the hell out of the water.
written poems and translations in
Los Angeles Journal, Chiron
Review, Segue, Burning Leaf,
The Drunken Boat, and Voices
Israel, criticism in Small Press
Review and The Film Journal, and
a collection of verse called
notebook and sheaves (AmErica
House, 2002).
animal! His poem is at far right.
England.Recently i have placed
poetry online at amongst
others:Remark,Poetic Voices,
Zygote in...,My Fav Bullet,High
Horse,Manequinenvy,Underground
Voices. Many thanks for reading
of this animal...
whatever the fuck it is
animal (read his bio to
figure out the joke, and
his poem at far right.)
animal of the Arts
Philosophy, English Renaissance
literature, Professor Emeritus of
the Humanities was Poet in
Residence at the University of
Tampa for over 20 years.
Has had over 5,000 poems
published. As of July, 2005
5,496 poems published.
Over 2,000 were published in
print magazines, such as
American Poetry Review, Nation,
and Bitter Oleander. In
September 1999, he became a
cyber poet, added over 3,000
poems published in E zines.
Is the author of 14 print books of
poetry, and in 2002, added 3 E
books, The Squids Dark Ink, From
a Tiny Room, and The Death of
Daphne.
Click here for some of his
artwork & complete bio.
with a cool name. Her
poem is at far right.
