Self-Portrait With Pipe (An Englishman In Amsterdam)

1

Reveille blasts –

the Van Gogh Museum

animating smeary spectrums

as hallucinogenics roll

into abacus-beads,

a larva-lamp brain.

Artis Zoo wafts in ether,

cawing, whinnying, bleating,

splashy-sploshy

through trees,

daubs of surface drizzle.

An impenetrable

gingery five guilders

I scrape for fete

framing Rembrandt Park,

gentian violet

beetle-crushers,

then on

to the steamroom

and wriggling pool,

flesh and grunts

of tracking-shot sex

across the moviehouse screen.

2

Last post.

At the Torture Museum I crawl,

lick lips,

a crib of skewers,

Iron Maiden’s split ‘n’ spikes,

a grill for charring heretics,

I caress

the relics

of our last liaison…

gashed fingers

cringing before the whip.

By Christopher Barnes, UK

Septic Portraits

I’ll streak you like a hussy,

black-hearted to the false nails,

sacrifice your eyes

to the glare of cussedness.

Mothered of the dice

you shot and let slip, the irascible gimbals

of the head

like a flint buzzard about to rip

rags of lively flesh.

I’ll illustrate the bending-wire,

the lack of reins,

the very sag in your ligaments,

resentment in the nose.

And in your lips the crushing rebuke

of your worst, most insuperable blunders.

I’ll fight shy of my stunts,

their awful upshots and pretty-pretty slurs,

by blurting out the following trite remark:

I won’t permit your unworthiness

to override my tender heart.

From the Francis Bacon poems

Severed

In the creepered forest

her garbling head

swivel-blinks,

simpering to snore-stinging bugbears,

guggling,

nodding on slithers of flesh.

Bog tracks rise,

she slides into a swirling pit,

there to deadlock ravages.

          Brought back to Spring

on a coroner’s block,

drained, graphed,

body bones recemented

for 15 minutes of fame.

She used to be someone once

but no skulled brain remembers

exhibit 5002A.

Sexual Relations & The Class Struggle*

There’s psychokinesis/in balmy air,

the phase change of Revolution./53 Campville Rd.

Realpolitik teases/the art of the thinkable,/deadlock/

then three cheers/to the plausibility of change.

My house-warming friends are Polytechnic Reds,

with piled-on theatrics./The She-Artist,/yellow-black like a beautiful boy.

The pealing queen,/window-rattling with asthma

and the He-Harlot/with the hoodlum family.

The chemosphere tests summer/as we ripen ourselves

through incest,

run-amock loves/and distracting clothes.

‘You’re using this hutch as a fuckhouse!’

she said as she ushered in another man

while I/unzipped Malik to mahogany

a kaleidoscope of releasing hormones

through the grey matter of my head.

*essay by Alexandra Kollontai, Russian Revolutionary

who theorised ‘Free Love’

Shakespeare’s Dead

“Actors can go on serenely lisping

their nancy numbers, mincing the English

language into shrivelled murmurs.”

-                    Sean O’Casey

Yes please.  Play that bit again.

Furnish the lip with instinct,

sulk like DiCaprio, to order.

Be petulant for me, a carnal imp.

Haunt dreamily over mint and honey air.

Groan like a contralto

when I say I love you.

Sabatini’s is of enigmatic age.

A white-cliffs ceiling

hung with dangling fronds: ivy,

wandering sailor, punnets of bromeliad,

Chinese evergreen.  There’s a weak-willed pulse

of blue grass fiddle, sawing, soft

tongue-wagging.

On the cheroot-lacquered walls, specks

of spumante, infrequent portraits:

Engels in eggshell blue, an aphrodisiac-eyed

Kafka, and in the long-range gloom?

Is that Joan Crawford?

We eat our carbinaira, sip cokes.

Darling you were marvellous

when the wick slipped,

exclaiming your dramatic spiel

then your face cease-fired, suddenly old.

She Was Ganymede’s Daughter

Hyacinths melting

scumming glass

remind you that the heat

of late ’46

thickened blood

as it pumped

whorls to your heart.

Search for “Blue Prelude,”

black vinyl

brings forth fruits

rare hist of orange

bramble crumble

morello-cherry wine

jelly-bag gaunt,

changing lights,

summer on the hill.

Beads agonizing across a wall

in generations glisten.

Years counted by the string

row upon row gifts she gave

her lesbian of green fields.

By Christopher Barnes, UK

HAROLD

He worked for the firm

That cleans our building.

The night before he died

We walked the school together.

With amiable displeasure

I had shown him things

And we lamented

(Him an old school man, too)

Unstripped wax,

Unwiped blinds and louvers,

How kids are nowadays,

Trouble getting good help:

Someone else must make some sense

Of the notes he took that night:

The company doesn’t know

Who they’ll send us now.

See, there on top of the lockers,

In the dust caught in the afternoon’s late light,

Three furrows

Plowed by the fingers of a hand which

Must have been his.

PRACTICING

Language, quixotic, carries weight

It cannot bear.

A boy spent hours in practice—

Tennis, piano scales, free throws.

Later he practiced medicine,

His sister practiced law,

Always getting ready, it seemed,

For something else.

At the restaurant

He thought of a bad pun

And made a note:

He also waits who only stands and serves.

HAIKU: AFTER LABOR DAY

Labor Day morning:

Sky in the west threatens rain,

Thinks better of it.

Vernal stream is dry,

Rushing waters gone for now,

Thomas and Beth, too.

After Labor Day,

Solitary hummingbird,

Left behind by friends.

Selling America and the Rest of the World Short

by Michael Levy

Oh! How the mighty have fallen, is a quote from the Old Testament that pertains to the collapse of past dynasties. In today's world, it deals with the downfall of the major infrastructure of capital markets in the USA and the systemic fallout all around the world.

The demise of Bear Sterns, Freddie Mac, Fannie May, Indi Bank are a few that has already caused disruption costing billions of tax payers money. Waiting in the wings of fiscal devastation are the firms such as,  Lehman , Washington Mutual, and Merrill Lynch, etc; whose shares have been devastated by speculative short sellers. The question is, have the media unjustly helped the billionaire short sellers achieve massive profits from the demise of major investment, brokerage and banking institutions. Also, have the financial institutions, in part, been hoisted by their own petard of greed.

Last month, one of the main financial TV channels had a billionaire short seller on their morning show for one hour, explaining a very cleverly thought of plan why the shares of Freddie Mac and Fannie May should go to zero. Perhaps if a professor of economics, that is not affiliation with any speculators, spoke about institutions that are in dire straits, it is acceptable. However, when a billionaire speculator is given an hour to deliver his schemes, with a self declared, vested interest in his short positions, it is totally immoral if not illegal.

This practice continues unabated. On Wednesday 9 September 08, on a popular TV financial channel, almost every segment throughout the day, had guests who were short selling speculators, talking about the demise of Lehman. The next day the stock was cut in half from already greatly depressed levels.

The same style of erroneous intellectual propaganda that drove house prices to unsustainable levels, that thrust oil up to $147 a barrel and other commodities to unrealistic altitudes, is now being spread, bringing about the premature collapse of financial houses, whose stock book values are worth far more than the current traded price. Top analysts have stated the prices have detached from fundamentals. It seems the themes played out on fear based emotions, all brought about by past greed, are driving down prices far faster than normal trading in past years, that did not have such powerful leveraged derivatives.

There is no doubt many companies in the financial arena have brought about their own destruction by their own avarice and greed. They dreamt up many derivatives and collateralized notes that were backed up with valueless assets. To cut a long story short, the bosses have been paid millions of dollars when they were kicked out and the common shareholders are left with zero. They are now been taken to the cleaners by the same type of derivatives they devised and traded ... Karma, maybe?

The government declares they are in favor of free markets and do not want to bring in the up-tick rule that would limit short sellers. They also do not want to stop naked short selling although some say it is already illegal. This means, without new regulations, the short sellers can take advantage of a bad situation and fast-track its demise with the help of the media who assigns them lots of free air space.

The founding fathers of America , built up ideas and blueprints to make it the greatest country in the world. In the past few years, sharp-witted, educated wizards have devised schemes that first of all over-leveraged complicated financial instruments. This in turn has fed the short selling vultures to sell America short and to hell with all who stand in their way. The greedy few get richer in money but poorer in spirit, while everyone else just becomes impoverish.

 Who is to blame for the farces in a USA comedy of financial errors ...

•                     Is it the bosses who allowed the greed to rampantly spread?

•                     Is it the short sellers who feed from avarice?

•                     Is it the media who will go to any lengths to sensationalize a story?

•                     Is it the government who allows it all to happen?

Perhaps all are all equally guilty and are doing more damage than any terrorist organization can do. However, they all have one thing in common... They are all extremely well educated with financial and business accruement. Lamentably, the education lacks wisdom or self respect that contains the real values and morals of humanity. If you want more proof of how obnoxious humans can sink to feather their nest, just follow the political campaign for president and observe how they degrade their fellow Americans from the opposite party.

The mighty have in-deed fallen short of grace, compassion, kindness and generosity. Negative slants have been programmed in the brains of media reporters and programmers and even the weather has become a vehicle for fear laden reporting. The quest for mastery by intellectual sophisticated, power crazed people knows no decent or wholesome boundaries.

There is no admissible truth, or acceptable wisdom, that power seeking people will correctly invest their time in, that can halt further decline into ... the slings and arrows of outrage misfortune ... Now where have I heard that before?