Twice Around

Twice As Good

I tripped on my own bad leg
And ascertained that I wasn’t dead
So I kept on going my own lonesome way
Till I ran into you and begged to be fed.

You were plump, you were loose,
You were the best damn thing
In the house to boot! So how
Could I ever go away again?

You’re better than ever and twice as good
As you need be to make me stay,
Enough piss and vinegar to stick up for yourself,
And that’s a boon to all mankind (especially me).

rcs.
1st draft: 05/31/06
©2006 Ronald C. Southern

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Noble Nobius Hard At Work

Currently in print with various poets (including myself) are two issues of Calliope Nerve with nice poems, smartass sayings, and Wisdom Of The Ages. They are Paper issues, put forth by Nobius at White Rabbit-Black Hole. Write to him if your're interested and give him your mailing address.

He says: "Simply for the asking get the collaborative poetry and lit microzine Calliope Nerve issues I and II. Email your address to nobius AT gmail.com (no attachments please).

The debut issues feature works by Sheila Murphy, Billy Jno Hope, J.D. Nelson, James Dilworth, Ron Southern, and many more.

Now accepting submissions of unpublished and previously published works but again no attachments please/subject line Calliope Nerve submission.

Calliope Nerve is an ongoing zine featuring innovative short lit and poetry of all styles. Poetry is the air we breathe and the blood in our veins. All of our words are our children, God is in the ink."


He'll mail copies until he runs out of money or blood or ink, I imagine!

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Screw Me Some More, Mr. Yahoo

I recently made arrangements for high speed Internet access through AT&T/Yahoo and it has been a curious boon. The high speed access has been great, but this major corporation bundles it with options that I wouldn't offer to my worst enemy! The sons of bitches are so proud of their sbcglobal@yahoo.com entity that they have me signed IN to it and signed OUT of the regular yahoo account that I already had emails and addresses in. I slithered through their morass of non-therapeutic crap until I found a screen where you could upload your old email stuff from half a dozen or more OTHER companies, including AOL but excluding their own former entity where my emails are! In short, they provided more convenience to completely foreign companies that they did to their own cohort!!! How stupid is that? Very, I think.

Oh, sure, I ended up talking to them on the phone and they had this nifty explanation about how I hadn't clicked the right buttons while signing up for the obfuscating son of a bitch. I believe that, I understand it because I make mistakes. What I don't understand is why there were no good explanations of those boxes that LET me indicate the wrong thing! They ask you obscure-sounding questions while you're in the midst of signing up for a new service that's already intimidating enough, and it's my fucking fault for clicking the wrong box? I told the nice young lady on the phone that I didn't want any more explanation about it, that all of old Yahoo and all of the new Yahoo put together were not worth the aggravation they were causing me. I told her if I happened to accidentally figure out how to follow her instructions at some future date, that would just be manna from heaven.

They are lucky there is no simple way for the public to easily click the right box and send them all to hell, because that's one thing I can guarantee would SOON be done! Yeah, the lady on the phone may be nice, but the buggers who run the company and write the Internet scripts are all a bunch of unapprehended Ken Lays. (They're all so sweet and so honest and wouldn't do anybody any harm...yet everything they turn out is crap!)

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Playful Art

(Falling In Love With Your Friend)

Kiss me with your eyes closed
and I will dream again,
more true than any other
in love with love and you.

What prizes these all are!
To kiss again and rise up when,
to raise high hopes
of pride and joy in lust again,

to seek bright love by Braille or sight,
to ride that rigid razor's edge
(straight as a vibrant spear is thrown)
that only you could hone.

But, God, this long delay! The way that time draws out
yet curves away and draws your flesh
no closer to my own nor brings your voice to speak,
your lips express, the love of which I dream.

Dear one, your heart's my own;
your soul is mine, is home.
To kiss you now would but complete one being—
we are two halves just one-half beat apart!

The heart that beats in you so strong
and longs for love and wrenches wildly from defeat,
that heart could flare with crimson buds
like thick-leaved green kalanchoes florescing in the dark,

could reach for heaven past all that's grim and stark
and like a gray catbird could deftly sing a song so calm
it glides above and rings the unrimmed roof cathedral-wide
with psalms too sweet and clear for any cross-eyed church conceit!


“I'm fall-down blind in love, bright star,” he cried,
but every time I rise again,
you stand there and insist
you're not the woman I insist you are!”

“I'm not the moonlight you adore, that's true,” she sighed,
“or some wise repose or skewed white shadow of you,
not some maiden wide and warm, supine or going nova—
close kin perhaps—a friend—but not the kind you have in mind!”

Dear one, your heart's your own,
your soul the same, I know.
I court you on this page as if life and I are fair,
yet we both know we'll spend and end our lives alone—
at any rate, not together.

But, oh, this burst of loving you
wrings new life from the dead,
brings me up and flings me back,
confounding all that I just said!

Dear heart, the pain, rejoice!
To be awake so suddenly,
to come alive headlong!
To feel things right for once
after such a long time wrong!

But, God, this gone-awry unguarded ardent bliss!
Brave heart! Mirage! I'm dizzy and I shake
like that unslaked tail-winged butterfly that clings,
rhapsodic, quivering, drinking in all that
pistil-sweet solution in my yard I can't get in!

Here, kiss me with your lips apart
and I will ply you with this playful art
(“Let passion live and rule!” I plead),
more true in mind to this dim euphonious dream of you—

SHE does not lightly scorn bright love
like it's some luxury or stain
or claim she has to shun it
like she does cocaine—

more true in mind to one like you, I cry,
than any other fool you'll find
in love with love and you!


rcs.
10th draft: 05/27/06
©1982 Ronald C. Southern

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Crap-Detectors

I have to admit that I'm always amazed at how many blog sites there are that are investment-oriented or obsessed with get-rich schemes. I'm sure a lot of them think they're perfectly reasonable, though it all seems like clap-trap to me. They are fully engaged in having Adsense and other advertisements on their sites where if you and I click on the sites, the blog owner will be paid for each click. I guess it's because I know all the wrong people, but none of the people I know would be fool enough to be interested in all that garbage. Sorry, but that's it. How can I sell crap to people who always have their crap-detectors turned on? So, I'll decline the Adsense and other related items. I'll just sit here and count my pennies until I have enough for supper.

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Sick Bastard!

Okay, I know I'm cheating by writing less lately and just finding poems and "stuff" to put here. I've had a bad backache since unloading my damn new computer and it's not conducive to clear thought or writing grand pieces of fiction or observation! I plead being a sick person, which should come as no surprise to anyone who's been here before! Not to mention, I'm crazy as a loon most of the time anyway. If "they" come and take me away, you'll all be sorry. I think. I certainly will be.

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Job Security

Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."

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Dawn's Flung Gate

This winding way is hurling me
To heaven through descent,
My hopeless heaven hopeful
That I might yet relent.

Observe how what is frail will quail
At the opening of doors that were torn
In closing, will pale and turn unhinged
At dawn's flung gate thrown wide, exposing—

But wait! Wait for the more and the less!
Teach us: for whom did our martyr
Consent and confess? Oh, Christ,
This is not more, but less!

This hurtling way is hurting me,
By fault and by success;
Brave men here are haunted by
What men afraid repressed.


rcs.
4th draft: 05/26/06
©1980 Ronald C. Southern

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From the House of Mouse

I thought they already knew everything about DNA.

Mouse Finding Violates Laws of Heredity

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Friendship

Honore de Balzac: "Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other."

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