"I have a city to cover with lines." - d.a. levy

submissions

june 28, 2009

clevelanded

i was never shanghaied
i was clevelanded
moondogged by alan
stoked by carl
perked by ralph
singed by the cuyahoga
houghed by the riots
gouged by reddy kilowatt
big chucked & houlihan’d
as well as lil’ john’d
mr. jinglelinged
captain pennied
gomer hodged
10 cent beer knighted
pigeon married
ghouled until I turned blue
zingy zingy
to the sounds
of screamin’ jay
gabe balled
pete franklin’d
gary deed
flashed and jeffed
boned, thugged & harmonied
not to mention barnabied
impounded by kassouf
defaulted
foreclosed
forsaken
yes indeed
thoroughly
clevelanded

--brian dorsey

june 21, 2009

money is a three-headed beast

i have nondual coins
and acid-free paper in my pocket
and purse

i render to Caesar.
i render to God.
in the market
in the church,

distinctions are
a three-headed beast.

i ride back into Cleveland
on an ass,
smiling,
palm fronds
stuck in my teeth.

-- anna ruiz

june 15, 2009

Parma: Spring 09

Sun glinting off a blue jay
gliding to a shady glade
beautiful as any tropic bird.
Such blue on Ames
to startle the Aztecs
or the Maya.
Like some suburban Quetzalcoatl
I rejoice amid the mailboxes and basketball hoops
the one on one of the grass singing its knowing song
and the trees flying their colors and drink
the breath, the eternal return.

--dan smith

june 1, 2009

Burning

Midnight.
I walk down to The Flats
with a book of matches,
light them, one by one
and toss them into the river
hoping for a fire,
a real one this time,

a fire that could conjure the ghosts
of ancient river sirens,
the hottest of flames

or one that will ignite the entire length
of the Cuyahoga's serpentine form
until it grows wings of fire,
soars like a dragon,
sears the rustbelt rust to dust
and leaves the city shining,
orange and bright
 
or an even hotter blaze,
eternal, chemically-fueled,
pulsing like a beacon
to let the universe know:
"We were here.
We were here once
and we mattered."

This night, the matches just fizzle out
leaving me alone in the dark.
But, I'll be back
tomorrow
and the next night
and the next. . .

if there is one.

-- j.e. stanley

may 25, 2009

The Usefulness of Rain in Cleveland Ohio

when it comes to rain you
can't hold a candle to the
boys and girls of cleveland
with great names like fitz
and truth and budamir they
run for cover they run for
cover and they wait until
the sunshiny day comes
back and they drink and
they grin like hart crane
wandering out of a movie
theater in his sweet rubber
boots with a sailor on one
of his arms he is enjoying
the sunshine like the time
he came out of his daddy's
candy store where his job
was to jerk soda water all
day and it was all he could
do to stay indoors so he says
to nobody in particular it is
springtime dammit i'm through
working for that son of a bitch
well old hart crane he wasn't
through working for that
son of a bitch at all no! he
took a good look around
at the scenery smokestacks
rubber plants brick walls not
to mention rain starting to
fall like cherry blossoms in
a black and white movie and
he says to his companion of
the moment my friend i do
believe it is time for us to say
farewell time for us to reconsider
this relationship of ours because
cherry blossoms may fall but it
doesn't prove the uselessness
of rain and just like that old
hart crane dumps the sailor
in his tracks and ducks back
under the big green awning
he came out from under
he returns to his daddy's
candy store like a dutiful
son and recommences
jerking that sodawater.

-- George Wallace


BIO NOTE
George Wallace is editor of Polarity, Poetrybay, and Poetryvlog, and is the author of eighteen chapbooks and two CDs. A frequent performer not only on the NYC scene but nationally and internationally, he has appeared at such venues as the Beat Museum, Woody Guthrie Festival, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, Rexroth Festival, Insomniacathon, Howlfest, Shakespeare & Co and the Dylan Thomas Centre.

may 18, 2009

Cleveland

I can't sleep when the moon
is ripe with indecision
but it's Spring in my city
glorious
insatiable Spring
glaring at me
with moonglow and
strange persimmon eyes
charming me into
submission
as if an act of contrition
for the dead of winter
when my city and I
lie buried

and I
like a penitent novice
promise to leave
before the last trembling
Sycamore leaf
falls
shriveled and sorrowful

and I
like a whore
persistent and patient
needing a
sheltering embrace
in anonymous arms
am bittersweet with
signs and barricades
sifted measures
rocks and stars
early morning dew

Cleveland,
you'll  be
the death of me,
I know nowhere else
to go
to fall in love
again
to rise above
your consuming temptation,
blazing,
inspired
exotic,
utterly crushed.

-- anna ruiz

may 11, 2009

if d. a. levy had the flu….

he wouldn’t be sleeping with his muse
that is certain
he’s thrown her out
valise in hand
blonde hair flowing
blue dress askew
put her out at W. 25th & Lorain
for her to catch the afternoon bus to Barberton
she’d already compromised herself
in his eyes
being more enamored with the 450-thread count sheets
they purchased as a steal at Goodwill
a real travesty in his eyes

more likely to find him at Adele’s Bar
working out the problems of the Universe
with a few mediocre teabags to sooth his weary eyes
a fifth of scotch to cool his fevered brow
FUCK THOSE COMMIES anyway
Damn…. you KNOW it is a conspiracy
when they pack swine flu in on camel back
by  way of the Mexican mafia
rubbed  & mixed together
with a dash of mentholated hashish
most likely a message from  OSAMA

FUCK THE MUSE
she’s just a fat-ass whore anyway
a fickle tantric partner
that just as soon go garage sale shopping
as write poetry
all she’s ever done is measure his poet’s worth
in dime store plastic Buddha’s
the only time she’d every really let him write
was if he’d finger her lips and made her come
then she’d return the favor
but she’d be gone as quick as that
Fuck she is just dangerously
unreliable.

at 3:40 am. draped in a fevered stupor
he might want more but wouldn’t get it
she is toga trailer trash
thru and thru
she’d return now
only
by crawling back into his dreams
through the side door that opened onto Savannah Ave.
the one that ran down the near side of East Cleveland
down to the railroad tracks
eyes glazed & mind reeling
mark of Shiva on his forehead
maybe it isn’t the flu after all
likely just a scorpion bite
a prick
delivered on the backs of the
suburban patrol
Cleveland’s wide-eyed wonders
clueless riders on the ghost train to nowhere
they’d run the Blues out of town once before
no wonder they’re under suspicion
the gestures of holy men
are always under suspicion in East Cleveland
especially
seen cast in the street light glow of after hours
libation
I don’t think now it is the flu
just some leftover 20th century karma
wrapped up in an old copy of the Cleveland Press.

-- c.m. brooks

may 4, 2009

St. Colman Church

"Beautiful and terrible machines." I once thought.
"Terrible avenues of indoctrination built in ornate towers"
"Whores." I thought.

And then he said, "Close!
Board your windows and empty
Your sacristies and sell to the highest bidder
And build gymnasiums or condominiums in
Their place."

And I was broken.
Lost. I never believed a bearded populist
Who got bored with his day job
And decided to preach his ideals
With practical parables
And instructional allegories
Was the one true God.

But I surely am quick to worship the
Words that emerge from
Her mouth
As we gather two hundred
Tired and broken and sweaty and smelly
Almost foreigners to have their daily
Bread.

And I was lost. And many angry voices
(As is part of our American tradition)
Gathered around the simple principle
That long appeals always win something.

And there were letters and publicity
And more public outcry
And in the face of all righteous indignation
I was sure that these protestant words
Fit nowhere in the realm of
The idea of church.

And in spite of everything,
Two green capped towers
Remain lit and praying
On W. 65th
To not the bearded populist,
Or the simple mouthed bishop,
But to the simple idea
That feeding two hundred almost foreigners
Twice a month in close quarters
Is the closest thing to divinity
We can be a part of.

-- Brendan Joyce

april 27, 2009

night more precious than its absence

after markk

night more precious than the moon which defines it,
night more precious than the breath of stolen angels,
night more precious than the black river's steel reveries,
night more precious than the wild diamond mind,
night more precious than the sun's pyschotropic tempest,
night more precious than the third and final life,
night more precious than a non-euclidean prospect,
night more precious than a purple-hazed sky,
night more precious than a cloudless clime's infinities,
night more precious than blue moon dragon scales,
night more precious than grendel's sad lament,
night more precious than the blood of thirteen stars,
night more precious than the maiden's counted sorrows,
night more precious than the conqueror's honed blade,
night more precious than the songs of lost city sirens,
night more precious than tesla coils arcing through the naked abyss,
night more precious than these eighteen lines,
night more precious than its absence.

-- j.e. stanley

april 20, 2009

night more precious than yr orphan smile

night more precious than ancient gold, night more precious than a fever, night more precious than a rainbow taste, night more precious than a silver chalice, night more precious than all cosmic time, night more precious than an infant’s dream, night more precious than invisible wishes, night more precious than sweet cream, night more precious than vapor trails, night more precious than vast cuyahoga forest, night more precious than twisted riches, night more precious than a raft of freedom, night more precious than an offering of color, night more precious than yr orphan smile, night more precious than remarkable triumph, night more precious than an emerald fabric, night more precious than a shimmering wreath, night more precious than all timeless bringing.

--markk

april 13, 2009

factory job

nickola limps out
the front gate
of a steel mill
in cleveland,
his spirit
unbroken, his
pride intact,

friday night
& he’ll return home,
metal lunch
box banging on
the cold counter,
face burned
from the fire
of his living,

back in 1953
a factory job was
an honest dollar
& food on the
table was enough,
he tries to remember,
(to forget is
a knife in the back)

-- markk

april 6, 2009

Wine on a Rope ( the Tremont visions )

for Joanne Cornelius

Oh, strange city
filled with the sorrow of crazed balconies
take off your pants! say hello
to gypsy dolphins dancing
balustrade ballets down Bolivar
beyond floppy disc flop houses
of your futures past
whiz through the gates
petting petulant paradigms
extant exultation of inadmissible
prior convictions in confetti parade
merciless mannequins
window shop eternity
hackneyed expressions
haloed transgressions
spin nude the trampolines
bus smile!
airport kite!
walkabout wanderers
faint shadows fade
feculent air!
electric shower curtains!
forgotten elephant graveyards!
AWAKE strange city AWAKE
drink everyday sun unhypnotized
bathe in rain quotidian
eat clouds!
piss ecstasy!
kiss angels!
hear unspoken poetry
drown in pools of melody
murder melancholia
dinosaur trombones!
bonobo trumpets!
glory the light of unterminal towers
be lightning rods
be green arrow targets
leave your ghost trains
ride typewriter dreams
awake awake to feckless fecundity
all your mornings have begun
waves of being splash
sunrise aftershave
breakfast bowl of song
philosophy omlettes!
love toast!
smoke coffee!
atomic church!
turtle choir!
poem sandwich lunch
be devoured for dinner
every minute is an offering
to wakefulness
the unhazed face
glow flow ships
incandescent river
golden spider web
skein of thoughts
natural as desire
wild as love.  
 
-- dan smith

march 30, 2009

Blue Collar Man (my Cleveland)

my Cleveland, I don't mind him
being a blue collar, few dollar man

don't need him all prettified,
gentrified, riverwalked,
starched, pressed and lean
I like his urban sprawl
his sports bars, sports cars, Ford trucks,
Great Lakes brew and bratwurst,
his rib fests and bare chests
he can put on a suit and tie
if the occasion calls for it
he cleans up real nice
he's no playhouse "square"

he's a comfortable fit

I like his long hair, level stare,
acting like he doesn't care,
blue jean and boots swagger,
his never-say-die attitude,
his rock and roll hammer
I dig the pensive, ponytailed, punkass
poet in him

I like it when he shows his
ethnic roots
and I don't mind his often gruff speech,
his questionable grammar
don't mind his broken english,
city slang or down-home twang,
his sometimes breach
of political tact and cultural fact

we have an understanding

don't mind his tough sidewalks,
his callused highways,
the clumsy fumble of his
tumbledown neighborhoods
don't mind the times his rough
streetlighting catches at my clothes
in the heavy dark
when he's running his transit
through my hair

at least, he's reaching out for me,
wants to feel me close against him

I don't mind the stubble
on his troubled streetcorners,
cold Lake Erie steaming his breath,
his bleary neon eyes,
his wasted wallpaper billboards
too many nights of revel
after long days spent
in steelwork, car shops,
west side markets and east side offices,
orange-barreled highway construction,
Clinic halls and University malls
working,
giving all he's got,
just making a living

I trust him; I know he has my back,
know he's looking out for me

he's an honest s.o.b.

my Cleveland, I don't mind him
being a blue collar, few dollar man


-- Dianne Borsenik

march 23, 2009

me against the word

when in cleveland, do as
the clevelanders do,
get drunk on poetry, steal
thoughts from unsuspecting
minds, jack up yr car on cinder
blocks in the front yard & drive
thru town, orchestrate a bilingual
revolution of the opposite sex,
tell me all the gory details,
i am like montgomery clift in
a place in the sun, set in shaker
hts., with elizabeth taylor reading
|the plain dealer and crying as
the verdict is read, today it
is me against the word, in
the beginning was the word,
& the word is not cleveland

-- markk

march 16, 2009

The Angle

Achill Island flotsam,
coffin-shipped
to Amerikay.
Not worth their salt,
but good enough to cut
Ohio and Erie turf
for thirty cents a day,
and a jigger of whiskey.
 
Potato-famined,
need-not-apply,
there-goes-the-neighborhood
Irishtown Benders,
wagoned off
to paddied cells.
 
Cleveland’s Irish Angle,
home of the
world featherweight champion
Johnny Kilbane,
middleweight contender
Jackie Keough,
granite-fisted
“Ice Wagon” Kilbane
school of hard knocks.
 
Great Lakes dredgers
docked in
angel-chambered,
flat-ironed cafés,
inns harboring
pistol-wielding
Mike the Russians,
Malachi’s cross
atop the hill,
glowing like Éireann herself,
in shades of
danny boy green.
 
Lakeview Terraces
overlooking
Whiskey Island bootleggers,
Patton’s thugs shimmying
on their way to Leavenworth.
Hulett claws fondling
Mesabi’s lode to the west,
Downtown Cleveland,
towering terminally
to the east.
 
Listen intently
to those bygone
Angle tales,
banshee wailing
from Clew Bay
to Glenbeigh.
Soon there will be
no one left to tell them.

-- brian dorsey

march 9, 2009

hydrogen cl=v=land

hydrogen encapsulated, GIANT TIGER
hydrogen huh! ummmmmm dupe
THE CORRAL under try & his lonely coop
the real kid friendly chip chop LAWSONS
virtual tomatoes, the dance floor on
the third level of hell HALLES i went to
see grrrrrrrrrrr *8* movies @ the state
theatre when it was a movie theatre
D'POOS, FAGENS, RIVERS EDGE, i am
yr trusted vigilante of love SWINGOS
hydrogen helium, hydrogen twisted
STERLING LINDER drink frank sink
my usual table at the corner booth
corned beef & vavoom DOOR MAGNET
hydrogen cl=v=land my lady of sorrows

--michael gabriel

march 1, 2009

blue galoot

bashing my head against walls,
the way the a door opens upon
the guts of the street, elevates
uneven memories, in the basement
of public hall, when i was a kid,
i watched the circus animals
laying on beds of hay, three rings
of chaos and mayhem upstairs,
there is a poster in the lobby
with a white-faced clown, a
red-lipped lady on the flying
trapese, what became of those
venerable ghosts, stalking the
corners of old brick and lead-
based paint, i never knew my
childhood would lead me to
here, wasted like copies of the
cleveland press, vanishing into
gloom & gust like a blue galoot

-- markk

feb. 22, 2008

The Ghetto Bible

For d.a. levy

We can no longer blame the government
 
It is our greed spoon feeding them barbeque
 
We can no longer blame the media
 
It is our perverted need for peeping keeping the television’s coffee filled with gasoline
 
We can no longer blame the devil
 
His existence is made up of nothing but our bizarre fear of beauty
 
We can no longer blame God
 
She is willing and able to take our place
 
We can no longer blame the artist
 
Our lack of wonder forces her to bleed creation
 
We can no longer blame our parents
 
It is our divine delicateness that overpowered them into a frozen state of poetry
 
We can no longer blame the kids
 
They are the apples falling from our skies
 
We can no longer blame the weather
 
We all have the ability to smile
 
We can no longer blame drugs
 
It is our psychotic desire for fame and fortune smoking social stresses in the collegiate alleyways
 
We can no longer blame nature
 
We are the salt challenging the sea
 
We can no longer blame religion
 
It is our horror of hell that created their heaven
 
We can no longer blame the corporations
 
Think about where you go when you want your family’s picture taken
 
We can no longer blame sex
 
It is our sticky pain that pays the powerbill for our oily obsessions
 
We can no longer blame the rich
 
Why would you want to hurt a fly?
 
We can no longer blame the poor
 
They believe our lies
 
We can no longer blame love
 
She is our only real inner satisfaction
 
We can no longer blame death
 
For we have always been and will forever be dead
 
We can no longer use the words nigger, faggot, redneck, kike, dyke, idiot, loser, bitch
 
Why criticize the place we hide
 
We can no longer blame the solider
 
He is at war over our ignorance
 
We can no longer blame the terrorists
 
They are clowning around in our classroom, crying into our arms
 
We can no longer blame the police
 
The only prison we can be locked in now is ourselves
 
We can no longer blame the murderers
 
They are after our blood
 
We can no longer blame our problems
 
For they are the valuable lessons we need to learn
 
We can no longer blame each other
 
We are the only ones who see separation
 
We can no longer blame ourselves
 
We have done nothing wrong we have only forgotten how to be honest

-- justin blackburn

feb. 17, 2009

haikuhar

i can't write haiku
about cleveland, i don't
understand anything -- 5-7-5

-- markk

feb. 10, 2009

the face of the wasted

they who sit in a litany
of despised emotions, tossed
upon vagrant waves of
faces in high rock, a man
in the doorway, the way
the past elevates to a new
dynamic, stoned on the
hip of the moment, stoned
beneath your own wasted
face, forbes magazine named
cleveland the fourth most
miserable city in the united
states, & it's taken a long
time to get here, my friend

-- markk

feb. 3, 2009

Who carves

Who carves the rivers
of silence through the
arcade of fire?

Who rings in the clarity
of truth as it meanders
through the body electric?

Who is wiser? The serpent
that crawls through the fissures
of Etna?
The owl with the ouroboros of time
in its talons of death?

I am Anna of Ohio,
our winters are the same ever-green water
Moses parted
we flow through the urban forest
into hands that dream

Yes to the love
that aches with being.

-- Anna Ruiz

jan. 25, 2009

sky

the sky over cleveland
is a frozen lake
so perfectly blue,
a robin’s egg
already cracking
with the breath of Spring
i love you as the
sky fits the earth
i love you as the
dreamer awakens
and the ocean is near
and the river of dreams
winds around our fingers
like starlight,
like dawn.

~~~

beneath the ashes and the cross,
the crescent city,
we are beggars here,
emptying our bowls
of all that remains,

I am the Lover
You are the Beloved

the wind carries
what is
beyond the rusted heart
where the ruby of indifference
shines

~~~

we are children here,
moon-faced
flowers

dancing
in the laughter
of the wind

-- Anna Ruiz

jan. 19. 2009

How Like An Altar Are Those Shining Moments

Your necrotic streets
with bail bondsmen
waving their pink warrants
and long barreled pistols
the homeless holding
their flower sweepings
like shields
or fighting each other
in the middle of the street
with sticks for swords
the gray light dull
on the dented pewter armor
of their withered dreams
everything submerged
in the arterial suffocation
the hydraulic push and pull
of a drowning in air
the weight of every lost particle
like the pressure on a bathysphere
in the Mariana Trench
this is the Cleveland
that can still accost your heart
and kidnap your soul
at every turn
( even after kicking you
in the nuts for years )
with the memory
of a perfect vision
in unfiltered light
when every flower
was a gift.

-- dan smith

jan. 14, 2009

and lebron james relented feats of magic

yes the air here is rarefied,
it speaks of twisted fallows
that will never bring forth
the sweet green of spring,
but there is pause for concern
in the houses of the maven,
our words fall onto scorched
parchment like the echoes
of the 1940s, the mist of
the 1950s, the final wedge
of the 1960s, we have donated
our time in return for nothing,
but lebron james relented
feats of magic, we watched
as he rose up like the headless
horseman of sleepy hollow,
careening down euclid avenue
in golden yarn & bear hide,
followed by carnivorous armies,
hell bent on trading dreams
for gargantuan diamonds &
pieces of sweet travesty

-- markk

jan. 7, 2009

presence

there is no blue
in the dark grey and
solemn black of
winter just before the sun rises
in Ohio

some never leave,
these wandering minstrals
of living joy
announce their presence,
how sweet the sound
of drab sparrow
common house wren
past my window.

-- Anna Ruiz

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