BLUE ANGEL LNDING Volume one. Issue one. Contributors Poems Amaranta Kurka ...................... Anima Voom ........................... blissDK Constantine ............... Bobby Goode .......................... Dov Whiteberry ....................... Huckleberry Hax ..................... Hypatia Pickens ...................... Jilly Kidd ................................. KeyKey Underwood ................ Klannex Northmead ................ Kolor Fall ................................. Leighton Quandry .................... Manx Wharton ......................... Matthew Hyacinth .................... Morgue McMillan ..................... Mykal Skall .............................. Nancy Redgrave ...................... Persephone Phoenix ............... Romie Vella ............................. Secundo Dharma .................... Selene Freenote ...................... Serene Bechir .......................... Shara Levenque ...................... Stephen Laird .......................... Sverien Oldrich ....................... ToryLynn Writer ....................... Vedas Enoch ........................... Vudu Suavage ......................... Wolk Writer ..............................
40-41 5 16 16, 17, 38 3 6-7 41 10 25 17, 18 39 26-28 20, 21, 36 30, 31, 32, 33 13 24 38 19, 28, 37, 43 35 37 14-15 12 4, 11, 39 8, 9, 23 19 42 22-23 9, 12, 29 15, 43
Images Filthy Fluno .............................. Huckleberry Hax ..................... Vasiliki Khandr .........................
cover feather photography paintings 2-3, 29, 34-35
Volume one. Issue one.
Welcome to the premier issue of Blue Angel Landing. We're pleased to present work from some of the best poets currently writing and reading their work in Second Life. The poems you'll read here have all been read live at the open mics held each Sunday evening (5pm SL time) at the Blue Angel Poets' Dive, owned and operated by Persephone Phoenix. We've accompanied the poems with visual art also created by SL artists. Take your time to peruse this issue inworld (just wear it to open it) and join the VIP list for upcoming web and print links for this volume. If you'd like to have your poetry considered for inclusion in a future issue, plan to read (or have your poetry read) at a Sunday open mic and let one of the editorial triumverate--Persephone Phoenix, Shara Levenque or Huckleberry Hax--know which poems you'd like to submit. No more than five poems per issue, please. Contact any of the editorial staff via SL instant messaging if you have questions or comments. ~ BAL Editorial Triumverate, Persephone Phoenix Shara Levenque Huckleberry Hax
Š 2009 Blue Angel Landing. All poems and images are copyrighted 2009 by the author/artist unless otherwise indicated.
Blue angel open mic poetry All of the poetry in this volume has been shared at the Blue Angel Poets' Dive, a virtual space in the context of Second Life. The poetry in this section is assembled as a representative sampling of poetry read aloud at the Blue Angel Poetry Open Mic which has happened each Sunday evening since late 2006.
Prayer Before Blank Paper painting by Vasiliki Kappa, (email: vasilikikappa@hotmail.com)
Dov Whiteberry Wipe that smirk off your little white face: one word from me and you’re finished. Your blankness is a child’s ruse, the dog that ate the homework. I see you under the microscope: a tangle, a scribble, spaghetti. I could chew you to wads like a wasp and stick you inside my desk. You are the unmarked skin of a girl getting drunk for her first tattoo. You are clean snow on the doorstep. I’m coming through the door.
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Not heckel or Jekyll Shara Levenque
Not Heckel or Jekyll those personified cartoon reductions perched elbow wing leaned on a cane, bird mocking dissuaders of flight, but predatory instinct brushed on the sky or the distant hooded oval of inhuman eyes. My imagination is imperfect,
a snowflake fleeting in a momentary melt. If they spoke to me I heard only shiny memories departed once upon a naked tree.
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To the Cat that Lived Anima Voom The other day on the way to the park between the back door and the street, my girl and me on the driveway's crumbling arc and me still in my bare feet, we saw this cat at the sidewalk's edge. It met my eyes and dashed away seeking shelter in the hedge across the street and over away beyond Number 112. A red pickup, the kind you see driven by angry boy-men with ballcaps and emblazoned with a boy pissing on this or that, entered stage left like a blind force and the cat denying the form of this poem passed between the wheels, paced it for a long nothing and out again, safe, safe and out of our witnessing. I gasped and was the cat and my daughter felt my fingers clutch her hand and cried out at what my fingers said: that malice descends to Elm Street as it does to Snow White's door and doesn't care that you're a pretty thing and if you make it safe across it's because you broke in a stupid panic at the ghost of a shadow when it was the punishing black wheel you should have been minding.
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Snow Day Huckleberry Hax On Snow Day, the Internet gets turned off. We look up the frequency of local radio, tune in for the first time in eighteen years, attend to the list of schools shut, tut at elderly listeners phoning to say a bit of snow never stopped the world from turning in their time (and your money was safe in banks back then, too). We assess the road in thin light, make our minds up, call in to work. We await exclamations and hurried feet on the stairs. Out in the street, the neighbours are talking, making out like we actually know each other. “Did you hear some guy drove into one of the holes they're digging in the road?� We spread the word; we head on down, passed by a rescue truck. At the yellow tape we spend time discussing it with our fellow strangers. There are those who talk about the lost art of braking; others assert it was a hole just waiting to be filled with something, and maybe they should have thought about the forecast before digging it. The boy watches the crane at work. Just the other day, I was driving him back from gymnastics when some idiot on the radio started talking about hoof prints he used to press for his son at Christmas, in the night. Is it too much to ask for a little thought of a Saturday afternoon? Do they just assume no child in the land will be listening? He's not the only man in the world who's noted an extra use for the rim of a grande cappuccino mug. Luckily, just then, a white van in the oncoming traffic cut across me; I was able to cover up the revelation with loud cursing, tossed in a CD whilst I swore. Even so, we avoided looking in each other's direction after that. I got told last year it's time I stopped trying to prolong magic now, accept that nine year olds don't need to believe that any more.
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But today, on Snow Day, he declares himself my personal plough, instructs me to walk behind in the path he clears, makes engine noises with his lips. Sings. We roll a giant ball of snow together. He plays until the light is nearly gone. We take a night-time walk and look over fences, complain about unused snow “going to waste�: there's a snowman in our garden who could use some of that. We chat. The Snow Day has blown open a closing door, and I am grateful. Let me watch. Let me look at him one more time like this, as I always thought he would remain.
Ice Huckleberry Hax For the ice outside stays perfect. A week ago you'd have never guessed the burning at the centre, the private grief at loss unknown, that there was anything to lose in the first place. A single crack could be the top of a slippery slope. It is extraordinary how no-one seems to notice, particularly in the morning, when there is a slight melting in the two corners.
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Harbour Main Stephen Laird The lexicon of waves is filled with the marks of whispers and deep pauses – to learn the speech of waves is to sound each one, fathom by fathom Their accents deafen our doors – if only we could lose our grammar we might, in salted conversation, have something to say to them, to each other.
Con's Hill Stephen Laird You can read these hills in translation but to capture the thrill of their speed you must hold your walking stick against them like this, and allow the squandered rain to roll from their backs with gossip. These hills are sly and playful they reach under seas when the seas least expect it they tickle the waves, they clown around at night, at great vitesse you can hear the pitter of little foothills – A con, all of it. Listen. At first light a silt of conspiracy slows them to a fraud. Benders. Injurers. Deliberate. You can murmur your lovely prayers from the book of stones, but how can you trust a thing that moves this slowly and still moves?
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If I Had an Accent Stephen Laird Published in "Charlatan" by Ronsdale Press.
If I had an accent things would be different between us. Your interest would be piqued. I wouldn't have to speak loudly to be heard just slowly to be understood. Your familiar English syllables would wax and wane undecidedly on my tongue like an unfamiliar view of the moon rising and falling over rooftops at Kowloon. My cadences would rock you slowly the movement of stone over the stone over time and the off-rhyme, misplaced and mispronouced, would make you want me to speak over and over the slow mesmerizing words of love -all this and the true beat of my heart if I had an accent, and yes, a scar!
Haiku Vudu Suavage Wise dinosaurs wing singing, all and one above mice grown so clever.
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Piazza Bande Nere Adele Ward AKA Jilly Kidd (Milan) Saturday 1am. It’s just you and me again, sister, with seven storeys between us. My baby can’t sleep so I hold him here on the balcony where mosquitoes love me. At your post by the kerb you’re a goddess – black skin gleaming against the red flare of your dress in lamplight, moonlight and approaching headlights. The wives are already one month gone to holiday homes by the sea. There’s no need for your pimp to linger moulded to that tree trunk on his time and motion study. You squeeze the short red tube of your dress into a production line of Fiats. I worry over your empty slab until your stilettos cross it and you squat by a tree, roll up your hem like a stocking and clean out the last client. 2am. I put my baby in his cot then stay here with you. My husband expects me awake. The throb of the lift and jolt of the lock is him, jarring the silence. He will pull out a wad of notes from his shirt – count half for me with a licked finger. All week they’ll give off a sweet smell of sweat passed to them from the hands of men and women and the hot damp pockets they’ve lined. This poem is from the collection Never-Never Land published by Bluechrome
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Chambers Street Shara Levenque Storky got busted, nabbed right in front of his variety store of cigars and news, sundries in dingy cases, on splintery shelves. In the back the boys sit, drink grappa, play the numbers. Storky got busted but maybe we'll get ahead, glide past factory mornings that unfold on gray streets. Maybe no more cardboard cups from the Kwik Coffee truck, no more nickelplate grind through years of Camels rolled tight on Daddy's white t-shirt shoulder. Daddy says Storky's alright. He just tries like Gino with his no speaka English gold-tooth smile, or the gypsies who wear gold chains and flash their eyes at me. JP brings me Italian nougat candy. Andy the strong man, the carny has just two yellow teeth. He rips a New York phone book right in half, lifts a kitchen chair with two fingers. Daddy says they're ok, just poor slobs, working stiffs. Sometimes they buy 20-dollar gold pieces from us. Andy lifts me high on his big hand, the gypsy lady says I'll travel, I'll be lucky in love. Gino gives me a free slice, Neopolitan style, and a Coke.
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Freedom Serene Bechir In the arms of a strong man, lifted higher. Out of my self pity Into his control Tamed by the subtle Implication of chains. Why fight it, when I don't Have to take the blame? Freed from the pressures of mundane life. It's nice not to have to Make the decisions Shown great and terrible things. Facing fears within The safety of submission Price paid for Imagined evil. Soul's pain released In screams. Life became a 747, scraping its nails across the sky.
Summer Elegy Vudu Suavage
Roof litter, so slowly, that used to be a bird descends, so slowly, that used to slowly be so a bird, descends. The monthslong rustle eases trees to bed so, slowly, roof litter that used to be a bird descends.
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Babel Morgue McMillan And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay which cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar. [Book of Jubilees]
Our towers are getting huge again. What are we looking for on the observation decks, with our telescopes and antennae, while we marvel at the universe in outer space, reasoning infinity with finiteness, in our earthy brains, in dualism, like waves and particles; confusing uniqueness with individualism; separating rich from poor, our hearts: poisoned - like our bodies and our world; our desires and hunger for more: endless - like our envy; while we pile up money, we pile up power, we pile up insurance; we save money, we save time; we do not feed the hungry, we give pills to our children; we proudly present: our design of a world we do not own, a devastated landscape also of ourselves; designated to BE the gardeners and guards of the park, we ARE the sorcerer's apprentice? The Great Designer has been discredited. We will cry by the rivers again, but this time the rivers will be dry.
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Why Bother Selene Freenote Trophy piece-everyone wants to be the silver dog or the race car. Or the thimble. Who cares about the going 'round and 'round. What matters is more immediate things-a man that will wrap his fingers in her greasy hair, shove a kiss into a mouth unbrushed and tasting of ass, force his cock inside the unwashed body again and again, because it's the soul inside he's fucking and it needs his touch more then he needs her clean. And for a moment, she is alive. And loved. And radiant. But then, like water leaking from a bucket, she empties again. And the shower she longs for seems just as cold, and empty and painful as it did before. She doesn't want her body, why should anyone else? But they do. Younglings with shrill voices and entropic movements, clamoring, vibrating with life begging Mommy to play, to eat, to move, to live. For them. With them. How can she look into their eyes and not be moved? Yet there she lays--a sad smile, a tired heart. They would never be the same. A living dead mom is better somehow, than a dead Mom. No matter what happiness comes to replace her--she is still gone. A hole leaks a life that is vibrant, willful and vital. So the dead mom lives, and struggles, and flounders like a fish wanting water. Only less so, because a fish out of water will struggle with every fiber of its being to get back to the wet, rushing depths that sustains it. And the Mom just sort of flails, clumsily, toward anything that can bring her a moment of of living, of delight. They want her, he whispers. She is beautiful, when she isn't all of her. Just her words, her intent, her desires, the expressions of sensuality that come natural. Her love of learning others, of studying them, because they matter. But not her body. The shell that encases all that is her.
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She is not beautiful. She is death walking, a constant struggle to validate her existance, cobbled together from guilt, conscience and the long-distance orgasms she coaxes from dicks of men she'll never hug. Some, she'll never even know their names. How empty is that? She is a whispered name, a fevered indulgence, a shadowy form that is animated, but not warm. She wants, she craves, she thinks way too much. But in the end, she fades when the X is clicked and can be ignored for days, weeks, without much trouble. She is a toy in a box, in a closet, in a house, that is locked and empty; A mind struggling to find the motivation to keep thinking, when all it wishes is to be a whisper that shouted for a time and then silent as if it never were in the first place. The least inconvienence possible. Easily forgotten. So tired. Tired of moving. Tired of thinking. Tired of trying. Tired of struggling. Tired of living. She wants the peace of a thousand unbroken dreams. Of an endless night of sleep. Of no more guilt or effort or clamoring hearts begging. Just the desire to be of no impact at all.
fly Wolk Writer I heard him sigh when he sat down; he didn't want to fly. He seemed a man; he was a clown. I heard him sigh when he sat down, while I was there up high. I was in blue; he stayed on brown. I heard him sigh when he sat down; he didn't want to fly.
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Entagled in Tangibles Bobby Goode The knickknacks are growing unruly, dear, demanding their own space and regular dustings. You can't compromise with mementos, they take over... tie you up with and down to the incarnation of memories. Photographs are the worst, with a Jewish mama's genius for laying on guilt trips. Look at this one: grainy, out-of-focus, who knows when it was taken, but surely that's Uncle Edgar's elbow, the back of Aunt Harriet's bouffant do... Throw it out?! Sacriledge! Though boxes of them collect and conspire against storage. Nomads knew better. Pack light. Be ready to run. Don't succumb to these anchors, the burden of ownership, the danger of decor.
Fresh Cut Flowers blissDK Constantine he sent me flowers that died before they bloomed some dried before they wilted and some just plain rotted they lasted longer than we did
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Action Bobby Goode As a child, impressionable, I never thought to leap, towel at my shoulders, "up, up and away" from a second story window. Why now, then, this craving... this strange kinetic hunger that tightens my grip on the steering wheel and demands a flying figure-eight, lightpoles for pylons, behind the theatre? If stopped, shall I tell them I sought warp-speed crossing the bay bridge, rusty datsun doing its best to impersonate a starship, and I, her entire crew?
Minds Klannex Northmead Minds are spill-proof keyboards that, backless, allow free passage of tannins or iced cola, thrown or knocked carelessly over. As drinks seep through, wetting knees, all excitement from life's mini bar they moisten keys, creating shorts in memory as persistent as the retained film of atoms that gives where our wills meet the keys, the tendency to stick. Minds are like spill-proof keyboards but, soaked in gin and tonic and covered in ash, the guarantee is void.
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Buddha Klannex Northmead Sometimes I sit like Buddha, with a wise and happy smile, but I am not enlightened; I just believe the Earth and sky are one and in perfect balance. Sometimes I sit like Buddha, as if my eyes percieved all, but my eyes decieve because the only place I see is in my head through a halo of desire. Sometimes I sit like Buddha, as if among absolute perfection, but in reality it's an induced dream with no place for things like cares, just me in my world of illusion. Sometimes I sit like Buddha: calm, serene, made of stone, but in my dream I am not placid; I imagine words like foundations, building palaces and gardens. Sometimes I sit like Buddha: silent, as if a single syllable might sway the world, but in my dream I yell out loud, hurling words from my mountaintop to please a single happy face. Sometimes I sit Like Buddha. Only stoned.
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Favorite Window Persephone Phoenix This window is my favorite. In its scale, even zombies can manage up the stairs before someone breaks the damn emergency glass on them. These people are my favorites of all those I don't know. So lovely like pressed flowers or black and white photos pinned on felt pages. I feel I'm in my element but which one is that? (Should've paid better attention in chemistry.) Iron perhaps? Do pardon the rust. Don't worry, I won't stain the jacket.
Daybreak at Sawgrass Pond Sverien Oldrich In they slipped on silent wings heralds of the dawn emblazoned against an embryonic sky soft splashes affirming arrival as shadows blended into darkness. Soon the feeding chuckles of hens gobbling a morning meal echo while the drake splashes dodging nips in his arduous advances. Indigo glows into rose as greenheads spread wings leaping into daybreak wings whistle into a new day's palette darkened by the thousands in a living cloud.
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How to Fly East Manx Wharton for Nestra, from 30,000 feet over New Mexico and for whom words are not enough
It is not a question of a new life when you turn for the coast of the haggard, the abandoned, the lame, when you embrace the weary luxury of a finished place. Neither is it important where you sequester yourself as a Sister Of Mercy, alone but for your curse-laden prayers blessing infants with forwarding addresses to costume shops As I hover in my clime above you, on a long stone's throw you turn to daily now, with a peer into the broad desert blue, so wide it reclaims unpaid parcels from the earth. But while I sit, encased inside a windy roar that rasps more, more, I wonder if you stop, and glance up at my vapor trail from your dusty interlude of half-built estates, And while you grouse I think I'm tired of the West, you mean more that your life of open skies only leaves you craven for the seasoned, thickened broth of savory chances. After all you abandoned and all those who lamely flew from you, you too may still take to heights. The bleached-bone plains preach that not only the dead gasp for the sun's next quenching blaze.
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The Gallivants on the Augusta Canal Manx Wharton for Magsey Petrova
Not all road trips begin as a mad dash out the door. Not all poems start with pithy quips. Not all days bathe in pinkish dawn. Not all love politely shines on first sight. But, as gravity tugs them down, tumbled through fissures and ravines like the wild Tugaloo, they gain pace and manner, and meander into the broad Savannah. They sweep, swerve, claim floodlands at will, and wise men confine mere business to bluffs. As our rush rises to a flow and winds past craggy shoals, small men dig fissures with pride and clamor to master the wild for gain. What the wise see, though-clawed into the ground, a brim of black honey, embraced in fall pine stands and hickory mantle-lies our gain itself, a calmer flow, held close as we walk its toe path, worn bare under donkey hooves and lockmasters' heels. We glimpse our images in the briney blackwater--not as more elegant gods, who adore one perfect moment as all-but as light itself on water,
in a split-second eddy on the long spill into full and formed beings who surge, swell, and roll with the unbounded sea.
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A Young Man's Blues Vedas Enoch We can’t possibly know the blues; the rhythm of worn leather shoes. We’re told when we read the news — (We only read the news.) We don’t bleed like old men perched on milk-crates singing Do-whops to Fates who long forgot ‘em. I’ve been told you’ve never seen a storm until you’ve see the fluffy white clouds reflect off the face of a coffin. I can’t possibly understand the blues, what? The sad shuffle of honeysuckle as a young man struggles to understand his divinity. After all at one point in time we were one point of energy and since the dawn of man we’ve struggled against this symmetry, buying into the entity of right and wrong, how about the mystery of atoms and song, for example where does consciousness come from, (if in fact we are all one) how does a child teach a man to become a son? What’s the sum of all nations, when only three hundred years ago we kept blood on the plantations, what’s a role model when we know these modeled roles so well? There’s even peddlers in suburbia singing we got souls for sell. Well, let me tell you about the Carousel I ride, the wide eyed look of children in sick yellow brick buildings where drug dealing is just a fact of life, let me tell you about the kid with crack-rock stashed in socks, while his head’s filled with Polo and Rebox. Let me pull my milk-crate up, so I can expose the hate and lust that spills from the cups of our souls onto a World that never gave a fuck about its people, I’m talking star-spangled Yankees inherited from European evil. Yet it doesn’t stop there, it seems greed’s been around since the time of Eve and is the common disease that infects all of us, black or white and all shades in between from African kings selling their own kind to Muslim
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royalty. I can’t feel the blues? I can’t see this division caused by faith, race, color? I can’t hear Martin Luther King Jr. referring to the white man as his brother? I’m not supposed to see politics ignoring the poor spectrum of culture, while the government sits on our carcass like a gold studded vulture. How about my sisters in God? Who get turned quick to hop dicks as quick as feet in hop-scotch? My sisters who confused Women’s rights and liberation with an excuse to sleep around and not protect her self? The same woman who could be Spring crowned with daffodils, but opt to be winter on a trash-heap. Peep my vernacular, my diction, my prism, peep my intellect and the graces of your divisions, peep the children with cell-phones stuck to their ears because they forgot how to speak In person to one another, there’s no such thing as sister and brother only the energy we’ve become. I can’t feel the blues? I don’t give a fuck. How does a child teach a man to become a sun?
Sea Fog at Sunrise Stephen Laird
Published in "Charlatan" by Ronsdale Press.
In complicated breakers a gull stems from a rock -things take shape and give up shape while I gather wood from the beach and the gull leaps from its shape
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Pandora Mykal Skall Pandora, show me everything, as I undress you, leaving nothing but the glass beads around your wrist. Hold me in your promises, your skin, your warmth, your eyes. Hot upon me, visceral, animal, ethereal. You the eraser, me the words upon the page. Your breath on me, the icy window, write your passion there. I taste you like chewing gum, remembering not to swallow. Colliding against your deepest secrets, you will never forget that feeling. I hold your neck between my hands remembering not to twist. Your lips glisten in the faint light, a new moon against the shroud of night. Your hands the tightening shackles on my wrists, as we come together. Don't call on God at this time, I'm not sure he led us here. Just collapse against me, a cold balloon, against the dew covered grass, forgotten by its passengers. Hear my heart, the timpani slowing for the overture. May they find our skeletons in this position in ten thousand years. Pandora, show me everything.
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Hubble's Constant KeyKey Underwood An expanding universe speeds away in all directions equally. “Where do you think you’re going?” I call it back, incensed, “There’s nothing in that cold expanse.” You recline in a chair that is receding with the room. Read your paper if you like, but the universe is swimming away from you too. I suppose, from your perspective, you are the eye of the vortex and I’m a bit off center, but that’s the thing about infinity, every point’s the middle. I watch you turn the page, decode the characters that dot your field of vision, cleverly find meaning between dark spaces and the light. Check the Science Section of The Times. Find some meaning there. Edwin Hubble has decreed that galaxies recede at speeds proportional to distance. The further, the faster. It’s old news, like light from stars. Orion, Cygnus, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor hurry off, pursuer and pursued, while we, in medias res, float through a void grown vaster.
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...Certain Unalienable Rights, Leighton Quandry that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit: of hyperspace, because I am in a hurry get to where I am going now—to heck with Einstein and his universal speed limit; of a haberdasher, because my hair is gone, my head is cold, and I need a hat— maybe a neat Hamburg; of a HandiMart, for nice trans-fat loaded snacks; of hallucinogens, because if you aren’t seeing things, you aren’t eating the right spices—bring on the nutmeg; Hey presto! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat; of heresy, because it's time to challenge conventional wisdom; of Harpo Marx, because we could all use a good laugh about now; of heartrending pathos, because we could all use a good cry about now; of honesty; of Heisenberg, but I am uncertain where, principally, to find him; of a haversack, or any old bag to carry my oats in; of harmonica lessons, because I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but have pockets enough for a mouth organ; of “Howl,” because it’s fifty years later, and there is still plenty to yell about. among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit: of houseguests, because I have not hosted in so long now, I have forgotten the rules of hospitality; of herringbone or hound’s tooth, because stripes make me look fat; of handlebars, because I need something to hold on to; de jalapeños y habaneros, porgque a algunos les gusta picante; of high-heel shoes, fishnet stockings, and Rocky Horror Picture Show, because I may be heavy and hairless, but I’ve still got the legs for it—Let’s do the Time Warp Again! of half-assed heroic couplets, but don’t make a habit of it; of high comedy, because most of what passes for funny these days is crap; of Happy Gilmore, because I bust seams when Bob Barker punches out Adam Sandler; of humility; of hard hitting journalism, because there is a war on and we don’t need hairline to heel bone coverage of some hagged-out hopped-up hotel heiress; of Hee-Haw reruns, because I can’t get enough Buck Owens and Grandpa Jones; of hide-and-seek, or horseshoes, or hopscotch, any game you like, just as long as we play; of Halliburton, for the billions of U.S. tax dollars in no-bid contracts for the nonreconstruction of Iraq, and because they deserve to do hard labor. these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit: of happy hour, with a half-price Virgin Mary and free basket of chips; of harem pants, because I love that loose-fitting look. Do they make them for men? 26
of a hard-loving, hard-handed, hard-headed lover, not afraid of hard working, who can hand craft hard-backed blank writing journal, no smokers need apply; of health food fast-food franchise ideas, because endless hamburger joints leave me bound-up; of hairless cats, because they must vomit hairless-balls; of hiring halls, because it would mean the union movement has turned itself around—and I hate job interviews; of the harvest moon, because winter is coming; of hayrack rides, because I can taste the apple cider now; of humor; of a strong hyoid bone, because I need my tongue well supported; of houseplants that can handle my inattention and survive infrequent repotting thanks to inquisitive cats; of hanging indentation, because sometimes my inner dialogue runs-on, I mean, honestly, sometimes the little voices just won’t shut-up; of holidays where workers have days-off with pay, and that are not just excuses for white-sales, paint sales, car sales, good-credit-bad-credit-no-credit that you’ll-be-paying-off-for-the-rest-ofyour Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit: of hydration, I don’t know about you, but I am getting a bit thirsty; of a Hurtz Donut, and other silly and somewhat sadistic playground games; of H.R. Pufnstuf, because I really dug Whilemina W. Witchiepoo—“Oranges, poranges, who cares?”; of the hypotenuse, because I like to cut corners; of Head-On, apply directly to forehead, Head-On, apply directly to forehead; of hendecasyllabic lines, because sometimes pentameter is just one sound too short; of hammer and hoe, because I hail from Cod Fish Hollow; of hammered dulcimer, ham-boning, and other hillbilly music, because I love a hoedown; of hope; of hand cuffs, and hand puppets—Oooo! Interesting visual place. Is it your place or mine? of hasen pfeffer, horseradish, halibut, haggis, honey-glazed ham, and hummus, lead me to the buffet; of a half-hitch, because you never know when you’ll need a good knot; of habitable inner cities with more jobs, fewer cops, and no absentee slum lords. Life: without hope of parole, forget rehabilitation, because keeping people incarcerated in privately-run prisons means more tax-payer funded profits for the Corrections Corporation of America. Liberty: to choose your own privately-funded health care plan, means government bureaucrats won’t have a say in how much care you get. Instead, that job falls to HMO bureaucrats who are only concerned about the health of stockholders’ portfolios. 27
...Certain Unalienable Rights, (continued) Pursuit: of horsepower, my Hummer is bigger than yours; of Halloween, because I have a bunch of great pumpkin carving ideas at the moment, like headless horses haunting hills and hummocks; of hedonism, because we all deserve a little too much fun; of hecatombs, because if you sacrifice one hundred cattle, someone is going to have a hell of a barbeque; of a helping hand; of a nice Hawaiian Punch; of harborage, any will do; of haiku— hyperkinetic, ho-hum hyperbolic hack: hypercatalectic. the Pursuit: Halleluiah, halleluiah, hal—le—luiah; Hah!
Migrants Persephone Phoenix In our separate Saturday schools, we glass gaze to the field beyond the pane and brick, where we will some day meet, our strapped books left at the edge of the road. We will wade in without pockets, just bare arms attending jumping bugs that dance the breeze pulled blades up high enough to drape us in evening’s hush. There, with your pipe, you can come out from your moustached mask, the sarcasm clinging to it but not to this new person with the thin skin, your anima shining shy and close. Our exhales will ribbon the night, rising against its ladder to our respective Gods.
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Fall Vudu Suavage Teased to summer's pinnacle, what can we do but hope to hit the drifts warm-hearted and slide through to cruel ease amidst spring's shoots, reaching.
painting by Vasiliki Kappa, (email: vasilikikappa@hotmail.com) 29
poetry showcase In this section, we showcase one poet whose work we would like to see more widely in print. These poets are invited to read 20 minutes of their poetry for a program occasionally mounted on Tuesday evenings on the Blue Angel stage: the Poetry Showcase.
Matthew Hyacinth Our first volume's Showcase poet is Matthew Hyacinth (Matthew Jolly in someplace called first life). Matthew teaches English composition, Southwestern literature, and creative writing at GateWay Community College in Phoenix, Arizona. His poems have appeared in New Delta Review and Phoebe. An interview that he conducted with David Wojahn was published in Hayden's Ferry Review, and it was subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA from Arizona State University, where he was the recipient of a graduate fellowship and winner of the Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Award in poetry. He lives next to a mountain in Ahwatukee with his wife Lauren, their son Benjamin, their dog Keegan, and Ebbilah the cat.
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The Ceremony Of Matthew Hyacinth Huge movie screens project the death beds of hospitals. At least one hundred dying on the walls of the ballroom. And there was my grandfather after his stroke without his words. We should regard them as strangers. We should wear dark glasses and watch them through a thick smoke. Later, there will be feasting. Isn’t this how it goes—the carnival we have for death? We check our teeth with the slender, nearly emaciated woman behind the counter. And our twenty nails. She hands us a ticket—oh, her smiling eyebrows. Where are the dizzying machines? Even the children look old—their calculated thin smiles, their ribboned hats nesting high on their foreheads. “I wept when my uncle died,” I tell a stranger. “I came here to meet chicks,” he says. “Huh, I didn’t know what to do,” I say “felt like I was supposed to.” Grandfather, I’m thinking, you died in your sleep. There you are, and I can’t tell what time it is in the dark room. Did I see your chest rise and fall— Or did the camera move? But I am talking like a ghost. I can tell she doesn’t want to smile when she reaches around and puts her cold hand between my legs. “You never mourned,” she accuses. I don’t turn around. “Let’s go to bed.” We navigate without ceremony the oak staircase. Hours—how many?—I don’t once look at her naked. Instead I watch her thin dress, that satin animal on the floor beside us.
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A Foreign Tongue in the Mouth of Water Matthew Hyacinth Water down a mountain carries— it doesn’t care what —itself, or the mountain. Beside this river we are in the landscape of live steel skeletons, the hum of their voltage. When we cast our shadows they touch the algae bed. Our whole lives, water is the second thing we ever break the surface of. In the valley, six miles downstream, Chagrin Falls’ local fortune teller, beside his neon hand—cups his good ear to the traffic of voices in the hush of current along the shale bank. Amplified in the finitude of reflections, they are a catalog of what sinks as much as the river is a vehicle for everything inside it. The conversations he’s tuned in to are the sieges of his evenings. In our palms our fortunes are the echoes of dying kings, the flickering shadows of a mad dance against stone.
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Hotel Lobbies Matthew Hyacinth In the middle of the night. I am a ghost of them, hiding in the lesser corner. Brahms is piped in and the clerk will offhandedly note the strange weather to the man waxing the floor— he’s stopped the machine to unfix one more button of his starched uniform shirt. He sighs something old at her and starts the machine again. A late businessman from a bar checks in, slurring his name. What’s here but polish? See how the clerk can’t see it anymore— the gloss, the same gloss, the same floor-wax man bent in that familiar position above the machine turning wet circles into the same dark floor. The second hand crawls across the clock face and she wanders into the back office to assess the place and returns to the desk and there’s the clock, still ticking. Even if they have radio instead of a taped loop, even if the businessman was wearing a yellow bow-tie. Even if someone calls for directions from a place with a name she’s never heard of and can’t pronounce. Even if all this happens in a single hour—will she smile to herself when no one’s looking? Will she move the furniture a little to the left?
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challenge poetry One of the hallmarks of any writing community is the desire to spur writers on, to inspire greater, and simply more writing. Second Life literary communities often provide incentives for writing along a theme. The Blue Angel Poets' Dive sets a poetry challenge each week. The poems in this section were written as responses to poetry challenges in Second Life.
Calaveras
painting by Vasiliki Kappa, (email: vasilikikappa@hotmail.com)
Romie Vella Calaveras are skulls, eye-less, nose-less, grinning, skinless. We make sugar ones and decorate them like cakes. They sit with marigolds, and sweet pan de muerte, on altars with crosses and little candles glowing. The skeletal remains survive in picture frames, and favorite things. El Dia de los muertos, the day of our dead, is filled, not with fear, but with those who are dear and come visit again.
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Yet Stranger Fruit Manx Wharton I. ['It ain't over til we WIN.'] Bank Of America and Fedex. American, Continental, Delta-Northwest; Norfolk Southern, CSX. Coke, Depot, UPS, Exxon, Chevron, Georgia-Pacific, Wachovia, Mead, Tyson, Wal. II. [Pastoral Scene Of The Gallant South] When I was just a little boy, Standing on my daddy knee He said, 'Son, don't let the man getcha-do what he done to me --'cause he getcha; 'cause he getcha, nah-huh' III. [Old Times There Are Not Forgot] Shit, no You don't need a nanny and you don't need a state To tell you sweet tea goes with anything And you don't pull pork with a leash, And scattered and smothered ain't about the homeless, And hell yeah it sucks that papa's greeting folks at the Wal-Mart since the hardware store closed, but he gets good deals on pills and buffalo wings in bulk, and we save eight cents on jet-ski gas.
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Thumbtacks Persephone Phoenix I am keeping your thumbtacks in a jar. All of the red and silver, the blue, the bright green and yellow umbrellas have pinned me to the wall as surely as the notes you've left on my door. I am collecting you thumbtack by thumbtack, as if they were wild flowers. I put them in the jar so I can see them, so that I can keep my fingers from bleeding all over your love notes and anything else you place at my door. I collect your words, too, and sweep them up with a delicate broom. Then I open my mouth and chew on them like clean leaves. Oh how they sweeten the tongue! I am collecting you in pockets and drawers, what you give and what you leave.
Hypatia of Alexandria Secundo Dharma In the vast Alexandria library, where mathematica scrolls were unfurled, was Hypatia, the great scholar teacher a jewel of the ancient world. She was the high priestess of reason to christian mobs of 415 AD so they closed her pagan museum martyred, butchered this holy lady. The decline of the Roman Empire began with the killing of sages. The church got to rule for millenia; the rest of us got the dark ages.
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The Color Challenge Bobby Goode What Color am I? Blue, blue, blue! A wild wide rainbow of blues! Cool blue, cruel blue, deep rich, really regal, royal blue. Caribbean, Mediterranean, Cote d’Azure acquatic blue. High noon sky in june blue. Stiff and proper navy blue, sure, secure, and oh so practical blue. Bluejean blue. Winter shadows on snow cold blue. The blue in Superman’s black and Aunt Mary’s white hair. The blue of blood under skin. Blue grey eyes keeping secrets scried from midnight blue, dusty blue, blue steel and delftware, too. Topaz blue, baby blue, robin’s egg, and periwinkle blue. Blue spruce, blue grass, blue-eyed timothy blue, bluebottles, bluebells, blueberries, bluegills, blue buntings’ barely budging, tummies bulging at the birdfeeder blue, blue that’s been buttered till it’s hard to tell from green, and every other shade of blue I’ve ever heard, or thought, or seen.
The Moment of Addiction Nancy Redgrave
The line of objects rez before me slowly And I quiver with impatience The anticipation is fulfilled as Shiny shoes emerge from the gray I gasp....they are beautiful Lines and lines of patent leather Pumps and boots and what suspiciously Look like stripper shoes.... It suddenly comes together for me.... shopping! Shopping! SHOPPING! I can shop here.... I am lost
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Little Cents and Less Sense Shara Levenque Little cents and less sense, money your greedy face shakes me cold makes me anxious. I tear my life to fractions hating our symbiosis. Come to me, and go away forever. Money you Satan, you hide your evil empire behind Presidents. You sing a pleasing song. You tinkle and wrinkle and toss my I-Ching, make all these changes, you filthy lucre, Ka-ching, Ka-ching. The only time you ever made me happy I spent a whole coin collection on penny candy. The 1909-s VDB, a fare exchange for pastel dotted paper and waxen lips. Daddy, my numismatist, you were so mad but I was thrilled to be so sugar-rouged, so frantically enriched.
Kid Says Something Kolor Fall Have you eaten your ... [kid says something] You haven't even touched it ... [kid says something] Try it, it is good for you ... [kid says something] You will learn to like it ... [kid says something] 39
Marcia Amaranta Kurka I decided to stop belonging to a family so I adopted a new name. I am nothing but what words allow me. Words are the mortar from which I am built. My personal history changes every time it is recounted. It changes with the words I choose to use each time and the history of the other characters who shared that scene with me, dramatis personae sentenced to the shade of the backstage in my subjective version of events, shrinks and stretches until it finds a coherent way to match my tale. Not even the past is certain. I wanted to be known as Marcia because it drums like war, it bleeds as a red spot pinned up in the sky sometimes visible at night. Because of my new name: Marcia I feel free. Pouring down from it fall all the actions I wouldn't be permitted to perform if my name were: Holy Sacrarium Conception Can you imagine a whore named Virginia? To name is a vain attempt to describe, to stop the continuous movement of things; to make them static, inert false and frozen in a single frame that enables my mind to convince me it is truth, the illusion that I can understand and control my world. When I was baptized I also got some limits. Yet luckily in my plot there was a spot so fertile and exotic pure uncharted forest metaphysical black hole where my imagination is fed.
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It was while exploring it that suddenly I stumbled across my new name. Of course new limits will come with it as well. As will new horizons and permissions too. When I get tired of playing the fearless role of Marcia; to react as only bold Marcia can behave; to perceive reality behind Marcia's beliefs, I will drop this name and adopt a new one. I am at the other side of the fence.
Rez Day Hypatia Pickens I am thin. I am hunched. I am a Middle Welsh poem. I was active, I moved my legs. I had a plan. She rezzed in March, she was happy she was in. I am a middle aged woman, I am hunched and thin. When she came into being as another name, A blank who couldn’t speak, who had a plan, I could trace the human features of a loving man With mortal eyes. Her body flies, while I sit and spin Her spells for a pixie world. She cannot touch. I used to sleep. I type too much, and hunger For my memory. In shifting woods, that girl Brewed up a forest witch. I am a crutch For her who never shows her need To fuck, to breathe, to eat, to feel his fingers On my hip. I feel his disapproving gaze. I sit too much. Who knew it, when I came, What it was to seethe within a virtual book, A build, a script, a plot, a hook. I have A house. She never eats, I never cook. Who knew, that day, what I gained and what she took.
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fuck me ToryLynn Writer
Previously published in the online journal "Clean Sheets"
Fuck me. Don't make love to me I don't want it passionate and tender. I don't want your arms wrapped softly Around me cradling my body. I don't need your coddling or your gentility. Fuck me. I want it hard and pounding The beat of my heart escalating As your draw out and thrust back And my breasts bang again On the cold marble of the bathroom sink. Fuck me. Take me and make me yours Prove to me that you own my body Make me kneel and worship The God that is your sex. Make me come...just by saying a word. Fuck me. Pound my soul with your thickness Because once I am wrapped deep around you I know where I belong. And that is all I need.
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mocker Wolk Writer Have you heard a mocker sing of rain and snow and ice in the halcyon days of spring? Have you heard a mocker sing against your advice after which the wasp took wing? Have you heard a mocker sing of rain and snow and ice?
Remember Wolk Writer Who put his memories in a box and left them sixteen miles out of town to slowly waste away? Will they take root if I water them and grow into sumptuous buildings? Or will they trot stolidly into a far receding and hazy oblivion? Will they be distorted into enduring parodies or linger quietly among visions and mystic terrors? Who left them here? Does he remember?
Putting on Shoes Persephone Pheonix The beginning of the hum is so faint fracturing at the edge of the air that your brain hasn't registered itself separate from its dream and then the day that comes presents itself and we rise to it or we fail. You are on time, love. Now swell your lungs with morning; each day is a paper ladder.
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the blue angel poets' dive
The Blue Angel Poets' Dive is Second Life's original literary bar, operating since August 2006. The virtual dive bar was inspired by venues for poetry open mics in New York City, predominantly Freddy's Bar and Backroom in Brooklyn, 6th and Dean. It is a place for poets to meet, read, commiserate, workshop and relax. Poets at all levels of skill and experience are welcome here and will find a supportive community of writers who strive to improve, share, and encourage each other. Anyone interested in more information about Blue Angel readings, workshops and other events can contact Persephone Phoenix at blueangelphoenix@gmail.com.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Windermere/224/193/34
BLUE ANGEL LaNDING Volume one. Issue one. Contributors Poems Amaranta Kurka ...................... Anima Voom ........................... blissDK Constantine ............... Bobby Goode .......................... Dov Whiteberry ....................... Huckleberry Hax ..................... Hypatia Pickens ...................... Jilly Kidd ................................. KeyKey Underwood ................ Klannex Northmead ................ Kolor Fall ................................. Leighton Quandry .................... Manx Wharton ......................... Matthew Hyacinth .................... Morgue McMillan ..................... Mykal Skall .............................. Nancy Redgrave ...................... Persephone Phoenix ............... Romie Vella ............................. Secundo Dharma .................... Selene Freenote ...................... Serene Bechir .......................... Shara Levenque ...................... Stephen Laird .......................... Sverien Oldrich ....................... ToryLynn Writer ....................... Vedas Enoch ........................... Vudu Suavage ......................... Wolk Writer ..............................
40-41 5 16 16, 17, 38 3 6-7 41 10 25 17, 18 39 26-28 20, 21, 36 30, 31, 32, 33 13 24 38 19, 28, 37, 43 35 37 14-15 12 4, 11, 39 8, 9, 23 19 42 22-23 9, 12, 29 15, 43
Images Filthy Fluno .............................. Huckleberry Hax ..................... Vasiliki Khandr .........................
cover feather photography paintings 2-3, 29, 34-35