Beans and Bread

If we sit and talk of beans and bread,
death without hesitation,
will you remember me, Joseph,
radio-electric, standing in cold
drum-apple rain?

These things will die
in our silver-water ears,
eat piano colors before they
reach our sputtering eyes;
they are vaseline covered mouths,
snap-necked and blue.

This day is scribbled browns,
yellow leaves porch-dead,
velvet lined bird throats;
still, we refuse to speak.

First appeared in Lily Literary Review, Jan. 2006

Michael Paul Ladanyi

Almost Sounds

Alone, this dada-ism room is empty,
4 hazel shades of wood and glass.
Blood flows crooked down
the muted TV,
falls like eyeless warbirds,
yellow in red November fields.

I want to be a dead brother,
aluminum-limbed and vacant,
finger-blue to fit inside this room
like sharp machines canning pears,
silent/open/mouth/scream mechanical dogma.

The black cordless phone,
the one with the answering-machine-woman-voice
that almost sounds human,
has not pop-rang in days,
mocks the table we once laid
against in good sex.

Michael Paul Ladanyi

Erased Like Perfect

Erased Like Perfect

thursday morning again,
aluminum-green and matted,
dead though listening for sophia
to click-step the short hall,
orange and erased like perfect pacifism.

she won’t come again after today,
vein-gnawed and mealy,
ceramic-yellow,
hum-broke/plaster/wounded.
i will miss her.

thomas called at 9, his voice thimble-bushed,
hazel-doored noise murdering
simple words in machine-red rows.

he asked what i was reading.
i answered honestly; myself, sophia and cigarette packs,
things that taste like almonds and warm glass.

sophia, you have gone, your winter-mouth
is pouring chicken bones---
your lovers are drowning;
i am crying in your sizzle-blue ears,
listening to beautiful violent colors
of your wrist-snap literature.

(First published in my chapbook, Two Strophes for a Stain Bleeds Her Lover, co-written with C.E. Laine, published through Little Poem Press, Oct. 2006. (C) Michael Paul Ladanyi.)

Open A Copper Pouring

(Open A Copper Pouring was nominated for the 2006 Pushcart Prize for Poetry by the Editors of Arsenic Lobster Magazine.)

Open A Copper Pouring

they say, come now down
the violin-welted and finger-drunk sky,
painting a winter-bark mouth,
ceramic-blue-mad-scratching;
angela and sylvia are humming
clay-sparrow crimes,
7-4-3 and its reverse---

where thigh-dress country roads
bird-pop-chatter and fork,
way down where white-washed
spellings of god-crossed words
are acoustic hymen painted fish.

their house is hazel frost,
crows and bees,
venus-glass-beautiful---
scallop-plain men now gone,
apple-oil a shelter
of daubing mud and dabchick birds.

come down, come down,
electric and violet salmon-green sky,
open a copper pouring,
angela and sylvia are crane-tooth-whispering,
keeping forked secrets from dog men.

(First published in Arsenic Lobster, 2006. (C) Michael Paul Ladanyi.)

Den Mother

SCIENCE LIKES MY EAR

the month pulls and the month is at first glance
make the girl whisper so minimum
insanity in her world

made in a certain whisper
chop this year when it has become skillful
reset the girl, what kind of plastic horse is safe

purchased form america
i address the thing when
it does not have popularity

o salary which shatters
the world of my eye
she makes the shriveled world

loves the united states
of science likes my ear
father makes language

and mother grasps u
look for the first time
father to pull the world

this year is a place when it changed
your eye is newly built noise
science likes my ear under my fingernail

mother grasps u to become her
u is possibly my ear
world requirement certain fathers

handing over the crunching fritter skillfully
make the girl with any type of plastic horse
u are sure to buy the usa

pure wages to destroy, good popularity
duh of the world, using the duh of american
im in love the usa, its u

o red grass, manufactured recently

donna kuhn 2006

Bird Falling (Poetry, Michael Paul Ladanyi)

sophia feels the need to cry,
watching crows gather like horse-rain,
liquid under telephone lines.

she needs their witchcraft--
they have her curtain-drawn face,
she sees the rest of her life
in their split-pressure mouths.

sophia remembers being burned at 9,
staring like water stones
at yellow sun; how her arm
was almost beautiful before the pain,
as bone-cored birds falling,
gray sculptures singing with dead eyes.

a zebra-coal sky is listening
like a hostage for god,
is tangled fish in tar,
rubber-trembled,
long, scream-dark music.

sophia burns quiet like perfumed thighs,
one coma hand tracing her face,
chasing chatter-asthma
ghosts through brown hair.

(First published in Ash Canyon Review, July 2005. Later published in Other Voices International Poetry Project, Nov. 2005. Soon to be published in my upcoming chapbook co-written with C. E. Laine, which remains untitled at this time. Copyright (C) 2006 Michael Paul Ladanyi.)

I WONDER IF THE POLLUTION

HE TACKLED YOUR EYE

the floor looks like excuses
i know fake footballs
abusive zebra amputee

2000 legs open your heart
tell people your eye wasnt real
your father is maps on the table

money cant drool in your eye
rain tackled a man
the man is a toy

the sun is a train
money is the executive
of money

rain drinks the mortgage
open your head
money is tape

open your heart
i dont open your goat
i was your scary rain, drink

float float, tackle the sky
time wasnt real
nobody wants to hear about it

nobody hears your train
your heart is like a toy nazi
your rain is money

your rain cant drool in the sun
open your toy excuses
father is an eye

he tackled your eye in the rain
rain knows mortgages
open legs dont want to hear it

the table drools
the money's in the rain
i am the executive of power

of money, or rain; drink the mortgage open
your money accounts for ribbons open
to your heart, do not float your terrible rain open

nobody is real, he wasnt
nobody feels there that
your train is your heart

such a toy, nazi
your rain she opens
youre in the rain of rain

know that it opens mortgages
do not want to feel them


donna kuhn 2006

Vine and Rattle (Photography) Michael Paul Ladanyi

(Copyright (C) 2006 Michael Paul Ladanyi)

Bleeds Her Lover (Poetry) Michael Paul Ladanyi

~For My Wife~

she steps many times through
smoke-drunk kudzu to find her lover,
through shallow-rooted rain
and more rain and water-stone
winds and more rain---
and her lover is bleeding.

artists and dogs and she,
climb wooden green-soup fences
to speak with crows,
to hear a drumming shelter.
she hurls round, angry stones
at spider-field words---
and her lover is bleeding.

through straw-break yellow on red water-color drizzle,
her swollen rain is sleeping,
mouth painted,
as wine on tasted tongues---
while shoulder-naked kudzu bleeds her lover.

(From the first stanza, words are graciously
adopted from poet, fiction writer and author
Patricia Gomes’ poem, titled,
Rain and More Rain and Winds and More Rain.)

(Copyright (C) 2006 Michael Paul Ladanyi.)

not everything i say has to make sense or have a name for that matter

i judged myself too harshly
by you
you never said a word
i know
i said enough to fill
your silences
didn’t know you had not
said anything
did you?
not to worry
no big deal
it wasn’t your fault
honestly
it’s not you
it’s me
good thing you
don’t know who
you are
else you would
read this
and think me
dangerous

(Copyright (c) 2004 Kristi Swadley. Originally appeared in Ygdrasil, December 2004.)

Color Deaf (Michael Paul Ladanyi)

and now you’ve had your fun---
so where’s your conscious?
1-2-3-4, your isms are standing blue
in fish-dead rows,

your piss-riddled nostrums
are bastarding our
trace-of-your-face children.
who do you love?

this public service announcement
to your red/machine/western/war-moon---

what

is

black

wetness,

is lost beneath your

adam-apple

feet.

who do you love?

your stammer-mouth ghosts are host
to everything you bleed,
are june’s sitar curvature.

what’s in your war-fucking name?

our acoustic every-where’s
are lost to your discovery;
we are in pain over song-sung
wove-n-spun days---

we

are

azure

pain---

sinequanon our eyes become color deaf.

(Copyright (C) 2006 Michael Paul Ladanyi.)

Universe Portals

GIRAFFES HAVE SHORTCOMINGS

toto, he is a chain in your dyslexia cloud in my teeth
everyday, no green photographers
im good politically with jabs of i have to go

force the race girl to chank this hassle spam
your fins hassle the beardless red zebra
i feed it rabbi sandals for good luck

your adverb was oceanography
your operas were torn
buy a fish in gods bathroom

fifty pageants dont matter
the toad sentences offended by the theme skies
babes belong to an overworked radish

whisper to my spore, whisper to chinese weather
beanbag hunk, blurred closet face polo

am i the chinese dog in your curlers?
blind in a car in the warfield
my thermometer trembles

the lighthouses roundest brunette
her measles witty helix snowing mumbling almonds
outsider giraffes have shortcomings as implants

dakota is shredding papa in your haircut beetle pushbutton

donna kuhn 2006

January's Needle (Michael Paul Ladanyi)

(Copyright (C) 2006 Michael Paul Ladanyi. Published in the January issue of Adagio Verse Quarterly.)

Ecstatic Chaos

AMERICAN HELLO (Donna Kuhn)


each horse has its complaint
the dolphin is the moon of pain

perhaps the error upsets the sweepings
the goat is in his nothing refrigerator

ocean theater of the lemon, your complaint is movable
i cannot dream yes of length dancing his manicure

it is beyond stipulated, american hello
beautiful cage-free woods

my laundry of the shirt, the sweat cooled off
collector of the desert emptiness

remove dust in the window from the baby
how it is normal, how ribboned the proprieter

of the moon is unpleasant crime of lovebird
gopher within the sky in a statue of the analyst

comma, happy dress, satisfied,ho
fine necessary, reserved

yes i am in the moon with the moon
i have ocarina, baby of the filet

that needs birds, what thinks this
dreams manicure, young neurotics

crack the plate of dolphin?
one of our upsets

the collector of the goat theater
what wind of the grass, ssshhhhhh

perhaps perhaps he dreams unnecessary rat
theater of lemon complaint is the mobile staircases

i will make u this to hang or bingo-test
the owner of the moon, the day of the lovebird

the baby of the ocarina net needs birds

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)