Clock Dancing (Michael Paul Ladanyi)

i don’t need a fucking mouth---
i have realized that speaking as animal spit
is like yellowed ropes around the neck,
sofa-spider basements.

shannon says that my back is brown vine splinters,
methadone eyes, a vacant urge to spin like clock-dancing---
long and raining warm.

he likes to hear the phone ring,
self-inflicted pain,
skirts and thighs,
men’s liquid arms quick like
bird stepping---

he was the first to show me
that my mouth was not a need.

in the pantry, cans of corn
and beans fill lower shelves,
they are blue copper-fruit---

they know that jesus is milk,
fuck-torn and crayoned.
shannon says that i am half of this.

i need a brush that writes
like living cardboard ladies
tasting hazel, bones capsized
in sun-china water---
because my mouth is no longer a fucking need.

(Copyright (C) 2005 Michael Paul Ladanyi)

Breaking Up Via Bukowski

I woulda fucked Bukowski
yeah yeah you heard me
I woulda always been on top
though
don't ask me why I just
said that
could be that whole control
freak issue
whatever

I can't stand beer
and I have to be in the mood
for Mozart which I
never am
but the whores
now them
I woulda asked to join in

he woulda fucked the both of us
and then left us alone
while he took a good beershit
maybe he’d come back out
masturbate while we
went at it

but also
we woulda butted heads
sure
two poets?
what do you think?

we woulda brought out
the worst in each other
like you and I do now
only I don't
love
you

(Copyright (c) 2004 Kristi Swadley. First published by The Redbridge Review, August 2004.)

December's Mouth (Photography, Michael Paul Ladanyi)

You Missed the Elephants

TORN WINDOWS BALANCING HORSE SPEECH (Donna Kuhn, 2005)

throb in your airconditioned ozone
idiot cactus jelly for the bobcats

salty fire in your gecko tuna parade

russia is fire of gecko bread

china in cult light

salty disco edits japans chisel

raisin balcony needs water
walls are candy, airconditoned hopeless
shaving kermit church

torn windows balancing horse speech

egg rose raging

nazi kindergarten
airconditoned man at the throb parade, velvet

barbies meltdown was self-centered

need candy ozone in the torn throb parade

velevet water walls japan
rose in hopeless ice

popcorn loves china

china needs a tuna church

throb in your cactus fire
torn kermit light
phone candy disco
edit nazi, whatever, man

balcony bill at the leopard raisin kindergarten
absolved

Water Bellowing & Red Lines, Poetry (Michael Paul Ladanyi)

~Two poems for my brother,
Billy, (Joseph William Ladanyi lll)
whom we lost in 1997. Miss him like hell.~


Water Bellowing

Gutter-leaf rain is clack-smacking
a basement sidewalk somewhere.

In a hornbook corner,
spiders are holding rust-lid
jarred tomatoes hostage
on penumbra skinned petrified shelves,
as child-hid, glyph-deaf church tinsel.

William would take the gun out
of his mouth long enough
to hear these things,

but swollen vanilla sun has rested
in the gordian brain,
a moon-fisted,
bushy water bellowing.

Windows fingernail blue,
color of snow at 1am,
rain still tap-scratching;
I’d hold your hand, William, if pillows
were not your ocean washed birds.

(Copyright (C) Michael Paul Ladanyi)


Red Lines

There are swirling wraiths
in William’s closet, they trip
over skulls, beautiful war, cancer;
he understands their silver-crush rules---

that things must die and dream,
a mirror hanging like dead horses,
purple-doll crow painting.

The crooked hall is tangled and blind,
William does not need eyes,
thigh-taut faces,
white/melt/fish/suns.

He opens his feather-want city,
dogs gnawing baby teeth,
star-thumping, plastic thighs---
he is pelvis-cotton, pain that taste
like yellow sandpaper.

The street corner is boxed apples,
red lines that throw themselves
at blue jeans, fever-stones spinning
because mountains are hollow,
are all white clay,
river-swirled closets.

((Copyright (C) Michael Paul Ladanyi)

Mirror Self-Portrait (Photography, Kristi Swadley)

Field In Fog (Photography, Michael Paul Ladanyi)

Plaster Relief (Michael Paul Ladanyi)

~A Letter to Shannon in November~

Words are spider-prayer lullabies,
orange and cream tongues written
on the bed-sheet face of what we
have done to ourselves,
methadone rainbows eclipsing my spine,
bold aging thoughts that smell
like chocolate and pain,
pouring brown gravy, soup spooning.

Shannon, my stomach is hungry
stick figures, I am living in
despairing ghost-tap windows,
walking the green-brown hall
as a match-struck thing in plaster relief.

If I have ever heard laughter
like yours, it is now.

I’ll bathe eye-weight circles in shadow,
steal art to hang on my face,
phone you through a forgotten
stereo-tone number,
and listen to click-paper whispers
you call words, telling me
I can’t do this forever.

(Copyright (C) Michael Paul Ladanyi. First published in Laurahird.com, Feb. 2005. Later published in Laurahird.com Showcase, March 2005. The piece is also a part of my chapbook Suburban Fairy Tales of Brilliant Ash and Blue Sins, co-written with C. E. Laine, and published through Little Poem Press, March 2005.)

"Who Is To Blame?"

SHAPELY COWBOYS

the western hemisphere is well-meaning
the earth has a good reputation

rainy or rainy to to roll the rubber wept
use my car, soft enough to hammer

weep cloud, the vault of him
a beetle sings well to live well

the meat is weightlifting
kindly intentions, wolf

skillfully good in spite of age
shapely cowboys, well-spoken
dish of melted cheese
went westward

derogatory enthusiasm
to go ones way in a wetsuit

donna kuhn 2005

Autumn Is Staying For Dinner & Apparently The Night At Winter’s (Kristi Swadley)

in in in in in in
I am still bound by these inner walls
despite progress, knowing better, early days
scanning the landscape I know it is ever
there, waiting for crunches underfoot

seasons may be ending or beginning
I wouldn’t know, yet I do, I’m just waiting
twiddling thumbs & should be marking
passage of a different time, but does it ever
really change?

the jury is out on whether the glass is
half empty or half full, a verdict could
be reached if the foreman would just stop
urinating on the evidence, defecation
written all over his face, the others
drop their heads into hands

cooking shows make it look so easy, but
I’m not one gasping for gossip, I’ve got
my priorities straight, I never could keep
the ice cream from melting before the
ticker went off, startling me out of my canisters
tell me, are you surprised?

(Copyright (c) 2005 Kristi Swadley)