NEW YEARS EVE POEM 11 by A.D. Winans

some things stick in your mind
like dental cement
like your first kiss
the JFK assassination
the wild years, a trip down
highway 101
foot stuck to floor petal
hugging the middle lane
at one hundred miles an hour
a wild tango that turns into a shuffle

I like five in the morning walks
alone with my thoughts when
the shops are closed
and people still sleeping
my neighborhood
a ghost town
still as a lion waiting
on its prey
the silence a monk in meditation
with no need for explanation
2010 gone…
the revelry put to rest

insomnia driven
I greet 2011 alone
with words that bleed
for company

A poem forms, nibbles
at my brain cells
a beggar hungry for food
but the cupboard is empty
as I retreat into the amnesia
of  yester-year
the lost treasure of my youth
a pirate with a graying beard
boarding a ghost ship
lisping aimlessly at sea

On the Strangest & Most Unexpected Nights… by Hosho McCreesh

Leaves dried up
and falling and
I’m caught hanging
in a lonesome night,
one spent wandering
past all the faces
I once knew,
and I tell myself that
I never knew them,
and they never knew me,
that we were just in
the same places
at the same time,
and that the things
we imagined between us
were not there–

On the Strangest & Most Unexpected Nights… by Hosho McCreesh

Leaves dried up
and falling and
I’m caught hanging
in a lonesome night,
one spent wandering
past all the faces
I once knew,
and I tell myself that
I never knew them,
and they never knew me,
that we were just in
the same places
at the same time,
and that the things
we imagined between us
were not there–

Everybody’s Seen Yoko’s Tits by Bradley Mason Hamlin

on
that album
two virgins

takes some guts
some crazy
unwinding
of mind
too

but
everybody
that wants to see
Yoko’s tits
has seen them

and John’s pecker
too

maybe
that’s called freedom
maybe
that’s called
some fucked up shit

or maybe
it really is
just
unfinished music.

The Thing That Hurts Most by William Taylor Jr.

And there’s that big dumb feeling
inside you that you can’t
quite find a reason for

everything so heavy
every movement
strained

you breathe in the late
afternoon sky

and breathe out
the loneliness of  time

all the faces and the voices
have nothing to do with you

and the thing that hurts most
is holding on to it all

when you dearly want
to let go, to dissolve
the anchors and the chains
of your being

and evaporate
into the divine forgetfulness
of everything.

Generation Fuck by Misti Rainwater-Lites

too cynical too fucking silly and self-absorbed to lose all to love and true blistering transforming ecstasy we fantasize and develop crushes on cartoons dressed up like humans my betty boop heart beeps be bop a lula for the emperor of low fat pina colada yogurt i thought it was mgm musical love at least a hundred times but it was me always all dressed up and no place to go but the kwickie mart

It’s Saturday & There Is Music & Laughter For the Taking… by Hosho McCreesh

You know, we spend
so much time
in the maelstrom of
our own stupid heads
that we forget
how simple
life
really
is.
Like now:

Art Garfunkel by Bradley Mason Hamlin

The beat
You think
It’s all in the rhythm
Hell, we’ve long let go of the
Rhyme

But, fuck poetry
The bongo men have it all,
Right?

The Things That Frighten Me by William Taylor Jr.

She says your poems don’t
make you holy

they absolve you
of no crimes

they don’t make you beautiful
or clean

you’re just as bad
as the rest of us

Jacksboro by Misti Rainwater-Lites

… It was all killer kewpie dolls soap coated tongue from muttering “motherfucker” root beer sno cones & daddy gone again hunting bobcats hanging out in honky tonks cheap motels & jail for kicking his boss’s ass. Then the name i do not recall the bland blank face from across the street took me shoved me into the texas teenage dirt made me his. Everything else is yellow wallpaper. Sometimes i lick it & almost come clean.