nowheresville

by M. P. Powers

past midnight, in this dark room
i inhale a cigarette
and wonder where you are
as a splintered piece of moonlight
floats along the floor
and climbs up my pantleg
my nose is burning
and i feel like lord alfred
tennyson's corpse
caught in a pale dream
i feel like all the dud fireworks
in the world and i walk
onto the balcony;
it creaks below me, despair
disguised as a dog
is barking somewhere; a slender
thread of purple
smoke loops
around my fingers, this silver cloud
eats silently the moon
as night drowns itself
in darkness,
i take another drag
and wonder where you are

Nadaspeak

by M.P. Powers

he's reading his poems
to a quiet audience, a tame audience.
a little light falls over
his baldness and dances softly
about his ears. his hands
are delicate and trembling
little flowers. perhaps
they are nervous. perhaps they know
what he's not yet ready
to admit - that there's
something lacking in his formulaic
verse. that his mfa degree
is trash next to soul. that there's nothing
in the way he rolls the precious
verbiage around
his palate that will save him tonight.
no matter how many careful
images he ties together;
no matter how many iambs, dactyls, tetrameters
he exhumes from the grave,
it will never work; the muses shit
on him, the night goes
limp.

The Wisdom of Poppies

by M. P. Powers

If as Marx says religion is the opium
of the people, then it seems only natural
that the heartbeat of this latest war
of faiths
pumps out of mountain hollows
where fields of blood-red
poppies burgeon.

The provocateurs, however,
have not come here to reap the harvest
for opium.

They have reaped instead Scriptures
sewn by age-old saints,
having
themselves become the yield
of this spiritual
pay dirt,

their interpretations
furnishing them with hatred and guns
that bark of righteousness.

This then is
the lay of the land, the way mankind
marches forth in brutal
mobs
whose convictions never age.

This then is
Afghanistan in bloom, as earth churns
up new epochs
as the seasons pass by, fresh empires
wage floundering wars
for false
ideals.

Only the poppies here remain
faithful to truth, prophesying as they
always have
eternal sleep
for all who come.

Rose-tinted

by M. P. Powers

my father
whose father was a drunk
wasn't one
his drink was greed
he played the lottery, stocks, slots, craps & poker
he played with money that wasn't his own
and lost it
it's not like he didn't plan on paying it back
- he planned
but kept playing anyway
with his compulsion
while mounting more debt and juggling poor
excuses

my father
who never considered seeing a shrink
needed one
but wasn't one
to bother about his own soul
it was too dark in that abode
and too sunny outside
among birdsongs & lies
thinking about the next windfall
that would never come his way

hope broke all the promises it ever made
to my father
who spent some time in the clink
for an S & L wrinkle
and sank my credit
with a smile
pardoning himself with his reassuring baritone
and its creamy inflections

my father
whose wife and son (see: me) were pessimists
wasn't one
he saw the good in greed
- he kept it light
& liked to think his luck would change
that sunshine would crawl up his legs once again
and somehow
seep
into his soul

din

by M.P. Powers

at least 3 families
live in the section
8 house across the street.

2 mothers in great
smocks of tyrianpurple
are sitting on fold-out
chairs at the top of
the driveway. 9 kids leap tumble
bumrush through the yard.

the agony of their din
has been assailing
my eardrum
all afternoon,
as I sit quietly here trying
to compose somethingorother.
I turn the radio up a little.
nothing doing.

the music is invasive.
the muses
are unresponsive.
the door opens; my girlfriend
is standing there like
a tyrant.

I slump down in my chair,
close my
eyes and resign
myself to her ever so
pressing thoughts: something
about someone she knows
at work.

something about a book
called "night." something
about something
else and finally,
finally
she says, "you're not even
listening, are you?"

I stretch a little, look back
at her. "fine. I'll
go away!"

the door closes,
hard.

the clamor
of the neighbors continues.

this poem
was simply bound
to fail.

life in the small-press

by M.P. Powers

I am eating two pieces
of once-frozen salisbury
steak for dinner
while sifting through
my poems
wondering where
the next
batch is going to go

my inbox bears
news that I have just
been coldly
rejected
from one of the most shitty
quasizines that ever had
the nerve
to grace
the cyberlandscape

I have also found out
that two journals that have accepted
my work
have gone belly
up pre-publication

one of the editors
didn't even bother
telling
me

I mean, why bother?
right?

"as if it matters..."

I slice into my "steak"
chew
chew
chew
and swallow

but it's not
easy

Biblical

by M. P. Powers

the fat equations of the evening
have found me here, lying in the probable
bones of someone else's
dream, living with the red wraiths
who've cramped my sanity, and never beg
pardon or say excuse me
for leaving gaslights burning in the attic
all night, or when they stole the virgin-
colored roses from me one spring...
i should've known, three or four years before...
living in this profound caricature
i affectionately call my own

against whose throat the bedsheets
are guillotined... while the rain weeps
upon my memory
for the one night in the world i was christened
a sinner, and given no chance for an acquittal...
it seems only natural then
that after all these years, every
springtime finds me again, listening
to footsteps upstairs and the haunted screams
of my daunting fervor...

with beer for my tears and a black-
rose in my hand,
my heart holds onto death religiously

Incommunicable, Me

by M. P. Powers

i could talk to her on the phone
that wasn't a problem
but there was something about seeing her in person.
all she wanted was to kiss me.
so we met under the lime trees.
nothing doing. we met in the shade of the cathedral.
nada. i couldn't even look at her.
so we tried again at my house, at the bottom of the staircase.
something wasn't right.
i was only ten
and eventually it became all-too tormenting
for my ten year old
brain. so i gave her the old heave-ho
even though i was in love with her
i wanted to concentrate on other things
like baseball, figuring out how best to pretend i was tough,
and the dukes of hazard. a couple of years
went by. in the meantime i was still in love with her, dragging
my feelings around. i remember hugging my pillow
and pretending it was
her. and then all the love songs that reminded me of her.
my first feelings of sexual frustration
were real. but still, something wasn't right.
i wasn't ready.
so when i saw her in the gymnasium
she was sitting in the row behind me with some friends
and i was with a friend and started feeling
the pressure again. my brain's blood
was thumping. so to save myself, i intimated she was
a whore.
had to be. it was some kind of hollow victory
which undoubtedly hurt her
feelings. but still, i think i felt just as bad
and probably worse
walking out of the gymnasium afterwards.
still in love. knowing i was a coward and a phony.
still with my pillow waiting for me at home
and more love
songs, which promised even more pain
when they came along.