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Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Happiness is Hard

                                    © Janne Karlsson


I want to write but I’m
Too damn happy.
Sure, I’m depressed and
I have a shit job and
I haven’t seen a payrise
Since before we all saw
Kim Kardashian’s cunt
But I’m happy,
And it’s hard

I need to be able to write
Without the dove-shit white
Page gradually turning black
I’ve no way to let the
Beast out.  The madness out.
My condition will remain caged,
Locked up and prowling
Inside of me, eating
Whatever’s left of my soul 

-by David Louden


Belfast native David Louden is the author of the roman á clef neo-beat novels Lost Angeles, Bone Idol [bohn ahyd-l] and the novella-short story hybrid White Mexicans chronicling the life of his alter-ego Doug Morgan.  His major influences in literature have been cited as Charles Bukowski, John Fante, William S. Burroughs and Brendan Behan. At present Louden is developing a Noir project for television set in Belfast which he hopes will go into pre-production within the year.


Art Courtesy: Janne Karlsson

Janne Karlsson is a wildly prolific Swedish illustrator and writer.



Sunday, September 20, 2015

GUIDED BY REMOTE

the hands are claws,
oyster-cloying genitals of beasts
star-bound.

we are wards of space
like rock’n roll
bound for the unconscious-

destroyers of practical
management.
the hands melt down,

physics scowl,
dreams, molten lava
and music-

given you got
tablature,
can’t match Resurrection or

prepubescent hard-ons, amongst
the awkward dust of the
Tonka truck.        

-by Jay Passer


Jay Passer's work has appeared in print and online since 1988. His most recent chapbook, FLOWER OMELETTE (also including the work of Misti Rainwater-Lites) is available through Lulu. Passer lives and works in San Francisco, the city of his birth.

Painting Courtesy: David Balilty

David Balilty is an Israeli artist with North African roots. He was born in Jerusalem in 1971 to a family of artists and musicians. In his most recent work, David has combined three mediums of  visual artistic experience for his abstract painting.
                                                                                                

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Karlsson's Korner: Breakfast at Tiffany's

                                         © Janne Karlsson


                                     Janne Karlsson is a wildly prolific Swedish illustrator and writer.



Sunday, August 30, 2015

Kolkata Kolkata!!!


Photo Courtesy: Debdatta 'Riju' Mukherjee

Debdatta 'Riju' Mukherjee lives in Kolkata and barely survives his insufferable job as an IT professional through poetry, photography and whiskey.



Friday, August 28, 2015

Winter Coverage


The night before the aftermath
I had flurries of my own.
Tasty juices from that labia,
those warm drips
thawing my crave
to rip your flesh with the
tip of my tongue.

The cold winds, howled last night
an extent number of frozen granules
collected in snow drifts,
exhausted shovel fulls.

The erupt shuddering,
took us by storm.
Our calls for an end, go unheard.
Echoing throughout this globe,
of winter coverage.

-by Donald Armfield


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
Donald Armfield. When his minds decides to leak out words, they sometimes make interesting poems, stories, or whatever. He is a coffee fueled family man with a passion for reading and writing. He has been published by Rooster Republic, James Ward Kirk, Dynatox Ministries, and more to come.

Painting Courtesy: Ekaterina Grechani


Ekaterina Grechani  was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia and graduated from Higher Arts Industry Mukhina Academy in Monumental Arts and  Painting. Her works are also found in private collections in Russia, Europe, and America.



Saturday, July 18, 2015

To The Editor Who Asked For A Poem

                                                 © Henry Denander


Haven't you heard?  I moved to Utah and died.
No...no...I don't think I died
Well maybe I did die
I am not sure
Leaving for Arches tomorrow
If you still want poems
In five days
I will send
I will leave your
Face up
To remind me
Or maybe this
Is a poem
If you can tell
Use it
One never knows
Now days

- by Linda King  7/6/15


Linda King, rasied in the wild country of Boulder, Utah.  The last place in USA where mail was delivered on horseback. Author of Loving and Hating Charles Bukowski, a humorous and wild record of women's lib and romance in the 70's. Author of numerous poetry books and a novel Mad Ouija. Lives in St. George, Utah.

Henry Denander was born in 1952 and lives in Stockholm, Sweden. He is an artist and a poet and his latest book “The Accidental Navigator” was published by Lummox Press. 
He has a website with poetry and art at www.henrydenander.com.




Monday, July 6, 2015

pain and mistakes

   

© Rafael González                                                                              © Rafael González

I am recovering from this open surgery
I am recovering from this pain and mistakes
people make even at the cost of a life
to them we are just fucking numbers.

They almost got me by pushing insulin
when i never had a history of diabetics
and I started shouting when I realized.

Soon they stopped and got so angry that
they threw me out of the ICU.
I was lucky not to get into that
insulin-induced coma from which
many people could never return,
hanging midway like Artaud
during his last few months
between living and the dead.

-by Subhankar Das



                                                                                  
Subhankar das is a poet, bookstore owner, and publisher of Bangla experimental materials. He produced six short films that have been honored at international film festivals, and has translated the works of Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski in Bengali.

Art Courtesy: Rafael González

Rafael González is a visual and sound artist and he hails from Spain.



Monday, May 18, 2015

Beware! Mad Bulls are around.


Cancelmysubscriptions Return my submissions Hold your rejections Forget the directions Ignore my instructions T H I S I S T H E E N D




R O A D S

I remember times
When love and sex went hand-in-hand
When love and sax played counterpoint
When sax and sex blew crazy hot



I remember times
When Lady Jazz reached in my chest
And squeezed til joyous music played
Squeezed til music filled the void

I remember too
When love and hate both clashed and fought
When discord spun unwanted webs
The clash and crash of broken souls

Yet still all roads lead back to you

- by Bryn Fortey



First Night

It’s cold in here.
Is there a party outside?
I wonder what my sister’s doing?
It’s my first night.
My head is shaved and
I’m wearing orange overalls.
It’s dark.
Cold.
No sound.  


-by Gary Cummiskey




Photo Courtesy: David Balilty
Header Lines: Adrian Manning
Cartoon Art: Sub and Nil

~~~~
David Balilty is an Israeli artist with North African roots. He was born in Jerusalem in 1971 to a family of artists and musicians. In his most recent work, David has combined three mediums of  visual artistic experience for his abstract painting.

'Merry-Go-Round', Bryn Fortey's mixed fiction and poetry collection, was published by The Alchemy Press in 2014. His work has appeared in a variety of print and online sources over the years.

Adrian Manning writes from Leicester, England. He is also editor of Concrete Meat Press. He can be reached at www.concretemeatpress.co.uk.

Gary Cummiskey lives in Johannesburg. He is a poet, writer and publisher. He has had several chapbooks of poetry published over the past 20 years. His short fiction collection Off-ramp has been nominated for the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Award 2014.


Subhankar das is a poet, bookstore owner, and publisher of Bangla experimental materials. He produced six short films that have been honored at international film festivals, and has translated the works of Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski in Bengali.

Nilimesh Dutta lives in Kolkata. He writes very seldom, and writes in Bengali alternative little magazines.







Thursday, April 23, 2015

Karlsson's Korner: Coffee

                              © Janne Karlsson


                           Janne Karlsson is a wildly prolific Swedish illustrator and writer.



Monday, April 20, 2015

Little Sister

     © Arturs Akopjans


Little sister with your face full of lashes and your raspberry lips, you’re growing up too quickly in that house i left. Already you’re reading in my old uniforms, from a decade ago, yes you’re a clever little cookie still some things you should know. you’ll need to use those eyes of yours-- half moons to see when daddys coming after you. Haunt him, tame that wolf. you do not deserve that flavor of affection. laugh innocent, leave him be, reeling in the garden where i spent the night with Jesus and those stars, that moon will be counting you among those precious stones no man can throw, (you’ll know no ceiling).

And please remember me the way i will remember your face full of lashes, cheeks of rosehips. I had to had to save myself, grant me this wish, little sister.

-by Bree



Bree is founder of Green Panda Press (Cleveland, OH) which publishes poetry and art paperbacks, chaps and sundry of the small press. Her work appears in little mags. She is the author of three memoirs.

Painting Courtesy: Arturs Akopjans

Arturs Akopjans, born October 31, 1969 in Armenia is residing and working in Riga, Latvia. In 1996 graduated Arturs Akopjans from "The Latvian Academy of Arts." Since then he has exhibited in the best galleries in the Baltic countries, Germany and Austria as well as group exhibitions in Belgium, Lithuania, Latvia and Denmark. His paintings can be seen in private collections from Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, USA, UK, Norway, Germany, Armenia and Austria.



Sunday, April 5, 2015

Street Art in Germany : I


      Happy Rizzi House in Braunschweig, Germany

      Photo Courtesy: Urban Street Art



Thursday, April 2, 2015

Karlsson's Korner

     © Janne Karlsson

Janne Karlsson is a wildly prolific Swedish illustrator and writer.


Monday, March 30, 2015

KOLKATA : Street Calligraphy I


In this electric zombieland, this beaten land of wishful indulgence, the deathroll of the bureaucratic juggernaut buries the hungry body and mind. The writing here, is always on the wall.



Photo Courtesy: Debdatta 'Riju' Mukherjee

Debdatta 'Riju' Mukherjee lives in Kolkata and barely survives his insufferable job as an IT professional through poetry, photography and whiskey.



Thursday, March 5, 2015

No Mercy DD or A Piece Of Shit

      © Shota Voskanyan


I party hard and dance ‘til three
drink fine champagne as if it’s tea.
I fill my flute and gulp it whole -
may God have mercy on my soul.

I drink to keep the ghosts at bay
or else they’d haunt me night and day.
When you need bread I offer coal -
may God have mercy on my soul.

You know I’m just a piece of shit
with torrent words of stinging wit
and matrimony’s not my goal -
may God have mercy on my soul.

-by  Mercedes Webb-Pullman



Mercedes Webb-Pullman graduated from IIML Victoria University Wellington New Zealand with her MA in Creative Writing 2011. Her work appears online and in print (Danse Macabre, Turbine, 4th Floor, Swamp, Reconfigurations, The Electronic Bridge, poetryrepairs, Connotations Press, The Red Room, many anthologies, and her books  Ono, Looking for Kerouac, After the Danse, Numeralla Dreaming, Food 4 Thought, Tasseography and Bravo Charlie Foxtrot) She lives on the Kapiti Coast, New Zealand.

Painting Courtesy: Shota Voskanyan

Shota Voskanyan was born in 1960 in Yerevan, Armenia.  He Studied at the Moscow University of Arts and he is a member of the Union of Artists of Armenia since 1995. He did his personal  and collective exhibitions all over the world.


Monday, February 23, 2015

Playing The Game: Janne Karlsson


Janne Karlsson


H&P: Why did you take cartoon/comical form of art as your medium of expression? who inspired you ?
JK: It just came naturally, I think. It´s a convenient medium. Just grabbing a pen and a paper and getting on with the job. I´ve tried painting too, but I´ll never be good at it. I don´t like the process of blending, mixing, waiting and cleaning. I´m too impatient.

H&P:  Your four favourite writers  you dream to work with?
JK: I already work with the best writers. Can´t really think of any other. Ace Frehley, maybe? He´s a musician though. I´d love to design his next album ha ha ha.

H&P: Someday you see that all your arts are on fire – your reactions?
JK: I never save any of my drawings. They´re all made on cheap printing paper and wouldn´t last more than a couple of years. I throw everything away. I´d welcome the flames. They would save me the work of disposing them myself.

H&P: As a cartoonist/comic writer/artist, do you get proper space from people around you to express your views  to the extent you want? If not, how do you handle your social affairs?
JK: I´m a hermit. Though I consider myself to be a fairly social person I don´t really "hang around" with people. I prefer to be alone.
I get my social needs satisfied from day jobs, like the one I currently have, teacher´s assistant at an asperger school.

H&P:  The artists you follow.
JK: I don´t follow any artists, but I love J.J campbell´s blog "Evil Delights". He´s a great and under appreciated poet.

H&P:  Do you suggest a newcomer to take art as a full time art job for living?
JK: I don´t know really. I can´t live off my art full time myself even though I live under simple conditions. Occasionally I make it a month or two, but then I´m forced to take odd jobs and temps. I guess it´d be easier for someone who doesn´t have kids to support.

H&P: Where do you hone your knife when  it gets blunt?
JK: In a bottle of wine/beer/jägermeister or between the legs of the woman I love.

H&P: Can you create art if you are completely broke?
JK: Yes, I´ve been doing that since I was born.
I don´t know if I´d be able to create art if I had lots of money though....

H&P: When will you stop doing art?
JK: Probably the day when I experience perpetual happiness or the day I die.

H&P: Briefly let us meet your family
JK: Two sons aged 15 and 18.

H&P: What are your further suggestions for Hash n’ Pumpkins!!
JK: Keep doing what you´re doing. You´re supporting the underground and for that you deserve many readers and appreciation.


Friday, February 6, 2015

This is my love, my sweetheart

























 © Debdatta 'Riju' Mukherjee



i'll not tell her
that my lips were mad to kiss you
All I wanted was to hold your body in my arms and
let my body melt in yours.

Maybe she'd scream, or maybe she'd softly
loosen her fingers from mine
and sob silently.

her trees would whisper to me
GO AWAY!!
her birds would chatter to me
GO AWAY!!
her fishes would laugh at me
GO AWAY!!

and again I have to walk alone, moonbathed
while you give your husband a handjob
and try too hard to think of me

-by Nilimesh Dutta



Nilimesh Dutta lives in Kolkata. He writes very seldom, and writes in Bengali alternative little magazines.

Photo Courtesy: Debdatta 'Riju' Mukherjee

Debdatta 'Riju' Mukherjee lives in Kolkata and barely survives his insufferable job as an IT professional through poetry, photography and whiskey.




Monday, February 2, 2015

For Marisol, Who Said No

      © Shota Voskanyan


She’d borrowed my sister’s perfume,
smelling like summer at Huntington Beach—
drugstore lotion and cigarettes,
seaweed and oil drums
burning, smoke sick with fast food wrappers,
Styrofoam cups, plastic lids—
her black hair spread
over the white sand,
eyes pretty rinds of Tequila-soaked
lime littering an empty face.
She curled cute
little brown toes when she laughed,
adjusted her tits.
Her tan-line hips said
sex and Don’t touch, at the same time.
When she turned over, on her belly to sun,
untiedher stringy
tangerine bikini top,
time stopped and wound back. My hands
becamedumb white explorers
for Pre-Columbian treasure,
searching for warm doors opening into
the mystery of Yes,
the magic of lips and tongues
spun around as the serpent eats its own tail,
hopingKinichAhau
could sacrifice us both
on a star-golden altar of teenage ecstasy.

-by Michael Dwayne Smith



Michael Dwayne Smith proudly owns and operates the world's most unusual name. His poems have been around the block a few times and his mother (God rest) kept a switchblade in her bra the one year she spent in high school. Those two facts are parallel in the small universe of this paragraph. He lives in the desert. He is publisher/editor of Mojave River Press & Review. He is a meat Popsicle.

Painting Courtesy: Shota Voskanyan

Shota Voskanyan was born in 1960 in Yerevan, Armenia.  He Studied at the Moscow University of Arts and he is a member of the Union of Artists of Armenia since 1995. He did his personal  and collective exhibitions all over the world.




Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Bruce Hodder

        © Penelope Przekop


THE BOHEMIAN LIFE

Cheap toilet
paper
finger
caked in shit.



HAIKU

"I'm tired of my ego"--
Zen poet tells
300 friends on Facebook.

-by Bruce Hodder 


Bruce Hodder lives with his beautiful partner Michelle Askew in Northampton, England, from where he edits the online poetry magazine 'The New Beatnik' and writes the blog 'Suffolk Punch'. He has been placing poetry and essays for twenty years in numerous publications, most notably Bryn Fortey's legendary print magazine 'Outlaw' and Norbert Blei's 'Poetry Dispatch'. In 2014 he curated the Spoken Word Stage at the Woodfest Music and Arts Festival.

Painting Courtesy: Penelope Przekop

Penelope Przekop is a figurative expressionist American painter who spent the first half of her adult life writing fiction, and then began painting in 2008.  She is the author of five books, including four novels. Galleries in New York City, Philadelphia, Cleveland, California, Louisiana, Italy, and Central America have represented and shown her work.  It has been acquired by two Italian museums. The emotional content of Penelope’s work is influenced by growing up in Louisiana before moving to the Northeast in 1991, and all of the cultural differences between the two.  Visit her website and find her on Facebook.



Thursday, January 8, 2015

Eave of the House

                     © Suren Voskanyan


Sound of wheels on the gravel,
the light of early October spreading like honeysuckle
as cornstalks began to fall,
the lavender horizon waved like the drape of a bier
over a close girl changing in age
beneath a seeing lantern.
Hand in hand
we sat on the pale grass,
at dusk the red hawk curved behind the line of trees
taking a squirrel
to the eave of the house
dripping like a willow.
Thumb and finger separate the paper tape
of cedar sticks and sandalwood to burn for fragrance
I doubt will surround
nighttime fluid as the black creek painted stones,
then we will follow the cricket vibrations to sleep
becoming soon the fallow of this ground.

-by John Swain



John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Red Paint Hill published his first collection, Ring the Sycamore Sky.

Painting Courtesy: Suren Voskanyan

Suren Voskanyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia in 1960. He studied the techniques & styles of the masters of impressionism and post impressionism in Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. He is a member of  Realistic Artists Union in Armenia. He did exhibitions all over the world. His works can be found in Modern Art Museum of Yerevan, Armenia and OAC Spiritual Modern Art Museum of Crete, Greece.



Saturday, January 3, 2015

Cinquain




missed you
as I sat there
looking out at the rain
washing away yesterdays dreams
now gone

-by  Adrian Manning



Adrian Manning writes from Leicester, England. He is also editor of Concrete Meat Press. He can be reached at www.concretemeatpress.co.uk.

Painting Courtesy: Tina Vasyanina 

Tina Vasyanina  was born in 1973 in Artyom, Primorsky Krai. She graduated from the School of Arts in Magadan and Irkutsk State Technical University specializing in "monumental and decorative art." She is member of the Creative Union of Artists of Russia. Her painiting contains contemporary trends and tendencies, as well as the author's paintings, mosaics, tapestries and stained glass, applique fabric, installations, art objects. She has participated in  exhibitions around the globe. Her works can be found in galleries and private collections.