Volume II, Issue I

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'Volume' II, Issue I of Midway Journal is now up!

http://www.midwayjournal.com/

This issue marks the very first issue of the new publishing year.We are proud to be featuring works by well known authors Bob Holman and Diane Glancy.We also have a wonderful interview with Thalia Field by Francis Raven.If fiction is your thing, spend some time with "Wolf's Hard Times," a delightful new look at a very old story. Read "Mild Vertical Drifting," or "Life is an Inconvenience, but so is Death."

Catch installment two of the Impotent General.

Or, if you would like to reminisce, spend time with our first year back issues.

Finally, we have made some slight changes to the Submissions page, the About Us page, and the Contact Us page, as well. Please stop by there, also, when you have the chance.

Cheers

The Editors

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after editors there are no one left  ~

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Homage to Antonin Artaud

Migration

There she is, coy:
a bird whose song
is early, hopeful, perfect.

We've seen her before,
a shadow rushing past,
rushing forward overhead.

How homesick must
she be to leave us
living, breathing, wanting?

When summer ends,
birds turn westward; we
can hardly bear the absence

of their voices.

Man versus Man

D i s m i s s e d // o u r s e l v e s

We are telling stories to ourselves, telling stories to other people, stories that aren't ours but we project our own identity into these stories, onto these stories, as if we'd lived them, deeply, deeper than any single experience in our own lives.

Heave the hagiography out
the stained glass thermometer

from St. Staphylococcus General.

The discharge leaks through his bandages

and where he stepped poisonous lilies

and crocuses grew, livid yellow or

shrunken green, poxy orange suppurating

along the gravel road—if “get-back-to nature”

is what you had in mind, then this treatment
is not going to be for you

More saints die of complications from stigmata

than the print media affiliated with

the Papal See has allowed to get out.

a shamefully negative comment about another poet *

*redacted, of course

Good Artist's Household Hints

The Rough Earnestness Of A Curious Enlightment

The Red Ball Between The Husling Of One Another

The Jazz Symphonic ....

page 419-426

Go pass the primitive poetic ecstasy of the tender putrefying flesh of an soon the be dead language dying on the tongue of an astonish atonement that have putted its trust in poets who break open their mother tongue to know what it means when the sharp edge of tongue lashing words cut the skin of the tongue and words of disuse confused and drunk of their own beauty fall through the faithfulness of their meaning where is found the fertilize ground from which they grow words of long ago golden with grief except their antiquated sleep with an antipodal grace they wait the wanting of new usage on the tender tongue of the young each generation bring to the world of words a new meaning a twist and turn on the old reliable paper for the crisp paper bills dope for the giddy good crib for the home of your heart yo bro poets be pimping in the wilderness of words shordy for children crunk for drunk the crazy way that words work I am tanked on the breath of worldly words swallowed and rebirthed with their many meaning strung on the tip of my tongue I smoke a blunt by the bay sitting in the morning sun I wave deep in the smoke of my watery thoughts swimming in my head of no other here in the methamphetamine state of Missouri in small countries and back woods the labs are set to produce the manufactured high of getting by come fly with me die with me ride the wisdom of being high in the haze of a light buzz be it weed or Colt 45 open your mind to the wonder of your preferred drug make me your poet of the buzz for I embrace the attentive mind of drugs and make no bones about it my breath smells of a roach rich and deep smoked in the midnight hour to inform my dreams I bear no sane shame I hide not my meaning named it is said don’t bogart that joint my friend pass it over to me and I agree when my tears are high on weed when my mind fly in the high smoke of a deep breath toke when the warm face of laughter thrust itself forever into the face of violent and the whole sky torn and loudly tatter splatter itself into a wounded scream insolent to tare at the enormous spasmodic triumphant river running through the regal river of machine anaconda and sycamore roots permitted to overflow the banks of an open nightmare henceforth the liquid beauty of destroyed water rush and ride the solemn nocturnal serpent with his public apple of indulgent that if eaten will divide the saints from the sinners the awesome antique passion from the newly born visible voluminous mutilated middle contour of the invented notion of love forever cut into the lingering light of the moon closer then the stars of a damning dream collapsed by the forgotten words that answer the forgotten question of the trade winds deep within the invented time infected by the motion of an intention to do as the moaning flayed and dismembered nocturnal triumphant that rule the rotting roost where pigeons play with the tail wind of their wings where homing birds are seeking for the lost paradise of a far away exclusive heaven fit only for the righteous who believe in the one beloved God of Abraham they shall meet him there once set free from the holding place of souls waiting for the second coming of the holy ghost waiting on pins and needles scented as pines growing on their own accord up the mountain rocks of the Rocky to the krummholz stunted alpine timberline

Go pass the slavery of a dictum dithyrambic diamonds polished by the daring darting death of vigorous villagers and the black war of black on black war on the finger of the bullheaded bride that’s the way it goes when war slip away and pretend to sleep in a photograph for seven years is it found guilty of unkindly killing but it was only fighting for its insanity for its murderous monstrous glow of feeling holy in war life litmus little leak out till moment memories is all that there is left memories held in the head of others when the bride see only the spirituous sparkle and bright brilliant of facets without a history without a struggler without sweat and bold blood in the darken deep mine where the spark is found once I loss my mindful meaning in a dingy way I beforehand forgot what I was getting at in the saying of something in the mind of my brain stepping out of the game playing without aim wondering through a though tide’s side of all found that fall from the furthermost form of the meaning of the running rhythm of rhymes once there was the tumble down tremor on the future as the red flower subduing the humming bird with its fragile beauty Gods smells like flowers like damp decomposing leaves like rain like human musk cupped between the arms some Gods with dirt between their finger nails are not afraid to dig in the earth some Gods keep their distance from man and wait to store their bounties only on the dead the worshiping is your to choose you have nothing to loose play it safe the brave have chosen to wait to get by without a God pity them not nor raise the rod concern yourself with yourself for yourself know that each alone must meet and make their peace with their maker one man’s God is another man’s demon one man’s demon is another man’s Shiva once encountered both shall burn away the spirit from the body burn away the desires of the flesh that can not enter into the haven of heaven can not be reincarnated the flesh is forever of the earth even in death the domain of nature she alone have use for the breathless body she alone can save with breath feed and fest upon


Go pass the sacrificing of human brotherhood for the remission of the sins played out in the segregated heart of a country staggering for a place in the perigee penitent of a manifest destiny where an elder Lakota nakota sits with sweat dropping to the dirt of a reservation where the White Buffalo Calf Woman calls to him nature for sure calls to him with the bat’s death and rebirth on a personal level the horny honesty of the bumblebee the moveable mobility of the caribou the swept swiftness of the cougar the followership folly of the coyote the mighty migration of the crane the personal persistence of the woodpecker the familial fertility of the tadpole the simplicity symbolism of the spider the cursive curiosity of the raccoon the dredging dreaming of the lizard the truly trust of the ladybug the far seeing foresight of the hawk the dreamtime illusion of the dragonfly the pride of the chokeberry eating elk the spiral spirit of a feather the knotty kindness of the dove the transmittable tranquility of the lion the assertiveness of the moose the attention to detail of the mouse all call to him to be one with them I am that I am one in the soup of life a man set not apart a drinker from the same earthen bowl the old Mississippi runs in my mid-life veins for nature provide the sudden discovery of an elegant element of a disaster against the low ceiling that the old have to go half my live is gone and so as all poets should do I keep no secrets from my poems I am done with the tummy turmoil of the souls I fit in my skin in this season of knowing all is well when we understand ourselves understand the irreversibility of speech understand the legality of poems the infinitude of language the theatre of the poem is laid bare each poem mean what you mean in reading it the poem is a conducting conduit in which you bring yourself to its aid without you it is just a pregnant thing waiting to give birth to its meaning slap this child on it bottom that it takes its first breath in your breath here it cry out in your heart poems are not innocence of anything they carry their loaded load to wrap you in the safety of critical force the poem’s ornament its luxury its blazing leisure between the unbearable waste of water its nevertheless music passing into the season of the ear it is a deliverer of things it sings the irreducible brocading musing of a mind gone mad and blind to get at the deep emotional longing sometime clumsily dreaming out loud like the wind wandering over a river wind without shadow wind sometime tender as the notion of a slender flower that knows not its own beauty sometimes roundly rough it thrust forward with force foundering flowers and brackish bricks breaking them down to red dust mixing with the wind of your breath it brush its unseen beauty by the innocence smile of a black child wild in the maze of the city in the wind driven dust proud of displacing the dry earth the smile of the wind can open the heart’s vault of a liar as it greet a God of wind blissful back blowing against my black blear my beam a God to glorify all the while meaning to meet on the early morning deserted street where the wind greet the sun cup your hands full of wind as if to pray that it will blow all your troubles away listen to it shake the leaves of trees as if it is a choir singing alleluias of please please please see it pushing trash alone the hunch back of the street as if it is an animal fleeing from you feel it caress your face as if it is a long lost lover recently rediscover from the tug of a jazz scented wind lost in the canyons of the city where the tall building spit the wind into an updraft fit for eagles to soar some broken wind whining down low to ruffle the flower heads of four o clocks blooming in the night the wind dost appeal to feel the strong long arms of the sun these knees of trees on their own success the bold hold by roots conceived the wind strain vein of leaves the heart’s forsook that look the rung tongue of Fall flame flung grieving for the wind leaving the older colder wind that can not lie can not sigh will not answer the question why so we who guessed to express what is this life that we have been given to long to know a God who will except and leave us all our wickedness forgiven forgive the brown down foam on the ocean of our earth the bound home frowning on the drowning in the waste that we make

dreaming of Gary GrayChild Star/Western Star

gray days

Things Made and Saved in Tins

His grandmamma gave him armfuls of coppers, some so green with copper-rust they left tattoos on the palms of his hands. She saved them up in the same Chockfull of Nuts coffee tin she made Christmas pudding in. She cinched an elastic-band round the mouth of the tin, the same tin she cooked beans and gravy in, to keep the copper-rusted coppers from tinkling out and leaving greenish green tattoos on the palms of her hands. His grandmamma made things in the same Chockfull of Nuts tin she made beans and gravy in, the same one she saved up coppers in to give to her grandson in armfuls.

Still Alone

Time is leaking away from me. I do not know where it goes, but it seeps from my every pore. Sleep feels like drowning most nights. My eyes burn as my eyelids sweep over them. I want endless hours, endless moments. Getting lost within your sheets is dangerous. Yet I long for such a time. Everyone wants to be worshiped, it is so true no matter how hard we try and tell ourselves otherwise. There are just times, certain days, where just being loved--perhaps even over loved sounds ideal. To be kissed all over, to be rubbed, and touched. It is not dirty, it is not quick and full of fleeting passion. It is worship. Slow and fulfilling, where you can close your eyes and just feel that warmth pooling in your stomach; feel that heat pulled over your limbs. Lips that pull slightly at the corners--not quite a smile.

'Quick Way'

quick



there 

Whirl of dim life or "Apologizing to Erik Satie"

Watching the news while addressing narrative conditions
(white varieties), human-A mates with the Fuchsia.
Even the reading of the present layout the taciturn whirl of dim life,
Consists outside the spreading conditions which also see
the noises of being with the juice of life
(without strangling myself by eating the fear)
(without revealing this transformation)
reading and reading and human-made regeneration

(reading takes place and transformation, articulation)

Simultaneously made human when eating the fat of means
hearing is weakening based, also transformation, (varieties),
I boil while I tunnel through coconuts,
and chicken cooked to address conditions and characters,
bones, the image consists of nine characters,
to never talk among dead animals,
that of being the address from inside
simultaneously the place that conditions characters,
the dark strangling mixed with the turnips, and the Fuchsia
it is white, eggs, the noises of this life,
the characters, that now bear witness, the characters,
simultaneously using the results that remain again

poem never written

Shakedown Man and Dogberry

The coxswain shuttlecock failed barrister at laws Charles (Chuck) Dawson dug-up the ass-bone of a red monkey and made claim to Piltdown Man; jawbone of an ass, the ass-bone of a jawbone, a simple inversion of scientific foetation. Chuck (Charles) Le Forge dug-up the pelvic-bone of a palaeontologist and made claim to a monkey; a simple anastrophe, or a simple inversion of dogberry and lime.

The Story of Life and Death

... Jazz Syymphonic Glass Ear

Thought Rotaing On The Motion Of A Wheel

page 407-419

Go you pass the magellanic cloud of a cloudy eye sky
Focused over the phytoplankton life purloined and shackled in the sea’s season of the castigating acclamation that reckons my mounding members hidden by the avenger with his vigorous breath coming forth from the fainéant figment flam of the ancestors cries of dilated joy homage to thee my heart homage to thee Gods of the unconquered water of the wide open sky homage to thee God of my mother all will not wear you in their heart homage splendid name consumed and inundated twice by the charm that sit among the divine chiefs concerning coming forth by day after death the grey hair care of the washing air be you brave to save the earth with its heart-broke bone of hawling brawling swirling storms crucified by the daughter of the water and the fire’s glance that rest in the quickly thickly breath of the death of the rains combating the cheering appearing desires hearing its name echo in the rarefied refrain be one beyond your dug hugged name of the self-same game played by the odd God of a hasty heart torn apart by the mind’s faster desire to be master let your right eye see the why of a hidden night outright done in by the stain brain of the harvest heart at ease on the seas these tides on the side of the motion that outride the ark that glides and abides by the memory of water in finding its way back to the sea where the door of haven-heaven is a reward that no priest of the east can guaranty no western myth maker of the TV commercial dabbling in the psychoanalytic vulgate of western civilization of the citysacape of escapism the TV is the machine in the heart of your house it is the provider of the new myth makers that seeks to control the purse strings of your soul know that you shall pay dearly the physiological gold mined from deep within the phosphorescent of your momentary meandering soul know that the domino effect of man made wars shall fall one after the other when the Gods shall come to stand side by side and make you decide which way at the spiritual crossroad of belief that you shall go when the creations demand of the creators they become no better then demons dominating the landscape of the waken and forsaken motion of knowing which God out of the many that people the mind of men which will curse at their worse which will praise in a haze of knowing you the best and let your soul rest in the rarefied smoke that softly stroke your ego where the ruinous shrine of the mind of men contain the answers that acts as a key to the gates of heaven of the one Son who keep company with the pre-born angels that remember the great war that deplore it and he who bored it and was sent with thunder down under the heaven of the victories angels they are opportunists they feast on the goodness of man in war they starve and now there is a famine in heaven a famine of the star-eyed feather winged unfed the angels nest their heads within the thin sympathizing Godhood of the motherhood of the blessed mother Mary hail mother full of grace how dose your garden of souls grow was your son asexual did he have a flamboyant soul bent on knowing the wish of his God in his desert journeying alone in faith to find himself and know the way that he was predetermine to go as in days of old the rebel is sentenced to death when found out by the rulers of the society that wish to dismiss them to relegate them to the adulterous fringes of a rare miracle

Go pass the lost red rain the lost blue the lost yellow the lost green blood of leaves twisting in the hand of a city lost wind whining its worry weary way westward through the casual canyon of budding building whose footprints takes up all the land from nature’s gloriously growing its needs to fill up the earnest earth with its own feast of feasibility farewell to the foothills of bricks and manifested stones fare ye well far force forbeared and forefend in the end the land shall win over the desolate destructive nature of men in the end the embryonic enharmonic enunciate end the A flat and G sharp shall be heard in the emergence ear O hear the cries of the wild wilderness hear and hark to the hempen hard heart hasting its heroism heresy in being itself the self of an old mulberry tree that feed the self of a drop of ocean a fish will breathe the self of the air we need the self of the sun that bleed its warmth over land and sea see the one God that you can know one you breath in every day of your noble life one in which you are apart part of her art deep within her heart as the birds that dart you can not depart or restart from her she is the all seeing all knowing known Nature of the bird’s songs and subterminal worm’s home of the weeping willow weeping its leaves over-hanging a lazy creek running beside a row of cotton woods blowing their snow like seeds in a eastward breeze O my mother nature O my father sun O my brother moon O my sisters stars bless me as one in your breath one in your warmth one under your distant light let me be reborn in the salvation of your arms I as poet plead not to be undone in my champion of you I know the string of your strengths kept by a cluster of memories held in the fast track harvesting itself in the pure winds blended by the sheer storms ragging in the well arranged city of torn tall mulberry dropping its free fruits into the bellies of sparrows feeding on the bragging branches extraordinarily peasant with its raw bounty worshiped by the memory of bully birds beating their beaks on the grayish brown bark covered branches utterly complete in its unattended growth tossing its spoils to stain the concrete a deep reddish purple the landscape of the city is redden by the brick powder blown from houses of St. Louis hugging the river running its distant river-cut through the significance exhaust of cars crossing their way across the Mississippi’s muddy music with its historical meaning of a lie told by the symbolic plane of language’s descript structural where poets have killed the meaning of their poems stabbed them with their breath shot full of shallow yellow holes of a technique question invariably quicken illustration on the formational structured message text gradually drawn out of the poems written in sweat and blood frantic and full of the cannibalistic music of a monsoon soon falling humbly within the delicious vertigo imagined by the arcane force fill of the free odors of trees with their Fall tinted leaves falling from the lost green juice of chlorophyll flaming the imagined total encounter touching ancient cavernous unstable muzzle of the wind the long hair wind the beautiful humble vestige better bleat seriousness of the wanting wind the atmosphere flamboyant water of the tender touch of the anchor like wave of the wind the holy incantation of the wind cage quelled felled following wild wandering wind slender tender growing green ball of all the wind confounded grounded peace flock and flower encounter the rock-racked rural river running wind of weed seeds and rain water of growing grace that sway the dapper ear iris the yearning mums beneath the Fall harvest moon the aspens timbering twitching their golden yellow leaves in the finally free wind wind of crayon canyon and cannibal coast biting back the foaming sea wind waves wanting to fill up the needs of the breath bated and bothersome in the chest of open earth the wind is always serious playing it musical scale in the rueful ruffle of trees

Go pass the proxeological knowledge of people being people on the good and graceful earth in the good vein by the good fingers feeling in the warm red light of closed lids facing the warm excusatory excursion of a bourgeois need boundless by its bloated blue blunder full of the blood’s blind spot say not that the hot hands of the sun is a curses thing concern with its own burning away the gases of the God’s breath say not that the rot of a corpse is a wasted thing for nature makes no waste of bones and all is born to be consumed in life and death the meat of flesh is a sweet thing on the tongue of the living feasting in the wilderness of the flesh so feed with a gracious heart feed to a full belly’s satiating satisfaction feed in the body’s needs to consumed the concurrence consummation of your concerto grosso heart beat heard deep within the brow beat per minute gradation graphemic gravid willing to give birth to the music heard in the circle of the six movement of your largo dreams where the adagio semi-quavers quick questionnaire asking you which way to go to the music hall where your blood plays its gushing sound self-centered self-rhythmic in the cavity of the chest the way path tepid and taunting to tell the talkative teller tell sweeping over the half-light of a deserted path leading to the wilderness of wretchedness where some poets are lost with a heavy heart that illuminate the great fine strip of their filming the tugging hovering crawling from the found light of the moon like a lost insect flying around the light of a lit momentary gasp tugging the ferocious mouth full of the stubborn breaking of a wild winds dropping stones of time beneath the sun’s moon shedding its light on the untrodden path that the poets map to find their way as leaders of the common good of birds and serpent alike to find their way through the collapsed intimacies of a rough history that love the slipstream of a surviving nocturnal disaster dark in its heart conjuring up the forbidden caught persistence of the miraculous wisdom of the lost poets surviving the awakening push toward the common capitalistic executioner banking on the consuming cannibalistic guillotine that chop off the free will of phosphorescent skeletons burning the circle of resentment when the precise moment is born out of the farewell waving of hanging hands praying the primordial tongue of a rutting breath full of new found words whispering into the ears of poets that man have lost his way alone the possible display of the shadows of nursing clouds dropping milk of rocks each drops the size and shape of greyish-white butterflies each rock like drop refusing to break but protect the shadow of your future shattering into rare maternal treasures of narrow liberty found in the belly of your last moon moving in a puddle of stagnant water where grows the germs of life seeking to spread into the body of a line of maternal descent the earth is the poets’ mother he live in her bountiful body he nurse at her many breasts she will quite them when they cry out to be heard everything that they can imagine is toward the worship of her she offer you no deceit she seeks not to defeats but to lift your praying eyes that you be not boldy blind and see her for the true thirsty Goddess that she is to teach you that as long as you go thinking it so that you are the singler one among the many minded then none can deceit you to believe it oddly otherwise trust what she reveal to your inner eye spy on the Gods to tell why their have left us alone to do our demonistic duty the humaministic way of living our notorious lives where the non physical mind interacting and being act upon carry a rather mercurial meaning that can not reject the material physical body against the yellow stone of worn coins the blowhole of old faithful the memorable meandering of the colorful Colorado nature with her ancient eyes see down the depths of time eyes that writ the beauty of physical rhyme the harmony divine the elegant of the poet’s mind

Go pass the evidence of music heard in the mind of the gilled gifted grig that Gods have not forgotten to call upon in times of need as a pay back when the grievous gossip of the angles is sung to the sleeping poets conscious of the authorization dreams drummed into their psychological transformation where the lie of their art die the smart pale hail that forgo the flow of its glow with the bless stress that reconciled the miles to go for the child living within their still fulfill will of being one with words one on the outride water of the ark set sail by the great flood of an angry God feed up with the wickedness of man two by two the clean creature came to be saved from the degage deluge drowning the sins of men dose it follow then that all living men descend from the family of Noah if so then what more to show that we are brothers and sisters in his six hundredth year did the rain begin for forty days and forty night was the world filled with a watery light did the sea creatures survive the great flood tsunami set off from the sinking of Atlantis I thank you for the enterprise of your remembrance the triumphant instant of a such to see dying of the changeable dawn condemned by the bombs that sleep their awakening scaring of the wind I find myself filled with some knuckles full of pains a reframe of the condemned clarity of shadows blocking the fine tuned you that knows what life is for may the memory of the heart be in your hands where the wind blows cross the skin set to work out the last longing of your wayward motion come you bold into the dreams of my heart that looks over you come with all of your flamboyancies in tack my surprised night waits your arrival with a laughter that secretly know the soft insistence and solemn muzzle of the sheathe red of your batted breath I’m just a Christ looking for an answer a brother of the mother of the earth an oppressed sorrow with emotion in the wind a flower that open in the hour of a ruinous doubting that all will be O K I have been lost in the sniff of a moment of time held in the steeliest fist of a guitar’s anger the Congo and bongo beats of my heart grip the words in my stolen breath and I put a bullet in the chamber of my virginal slaughter in the name of peace it’s the strangest thing that I have ever seen a cease increase that will birth a new seen earth of peace I will be your chrismal criminal when the skies reflects in my eyes and your siege of your master that takes you as a prisoner of the music heard in the wilderness of words O go my beautiful knocking at the door of my gone to far and let us slip away when there is nothing more to say say that the divine is mine the found ground of God passing into the last name of the self same one son of the tree be white as the cross-wood of which the cross is made be the flower that bloom from the blood of your self-doubt and know that there is nothing new under the arms of the God that reach for their revolvers to assassinate the day of our disbelief held in a clinched fist that pound the very proud guillotine heavily smelling of the soft and clumsy peace of the heart that put off the waiting of being once like me if I go into hell I will wait for you to follow the steep steps of getting down to the knotty nitty gritty of being burnt to a cinder only to relight in the wisdom of a new born the poets are spies they ride your emotions when you fly the last way to go and in your heart know that they seeks to rest within you and show you the road less traveled they constipate your secretly held business they curse the avail evil that man can do but even God’s children has to die in the small town of their knowing even the cult of Jesus must be reborn by baptisms of the murky water of a Mississippi lake such was I against my young will was I dumped where the cat fishes swarm when do we take control of the responsibility of our souls each a journey along a solitary act to find the skin of the God that we can fit in to be robe enclosed engrossed to know the salvation of the solitary soul why dose some only seek the Sunday morning glow of the priest’s religion to know that they are saved from fire and what indeed is this thing called soul and what indeed dose it knowingly knows the desires of the flesh and how dose it control the spirit that seeks to glow within the trinity of the two-fold that it hold in tow the poets knows which way they should go toward the fulfillment of the spiritual beautiful and the fleshy bold man is three-fold the body the spirit the soul that which is born to hold the formers two in unity the spirit is God giver the body of the earth the soul of them both the governor the whole circle of the yin yang song sung in the wilderness of the wild