NOTES ON AN APRIL DAY

by David Chorlton

We returned a pigeon to the sky
where he belongs this morning.
Otherwise, it’s a quiet day

if we ignore the news
of the nuclear mouthed supreme
leader watching oriental snow
fall through his binoculars.
There’s fresh snow too

in the country we left behind
where spring comes in disguise.
Is it caused by climate change

or was the past like this
and we simply forgot?
It’s ninety degrees today
in Arizona, where the legislature
wants to take away civil unions
and give schoolteachers guns.

The mailman delivered only
the usual requests for money
while the same message keeps landing
in the electronic inbox
from a friend whose mind

we hear is becoming like snow
and melting away. What use
is information to her, from radio
or the press? Why bother
telling her the world she tried to improve
is refusing assistance? It’s better to reply

with a few words to say
how gently the afternoon has passed
and hold on to whatever peace
is ours to share.

David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978, and still sees his surroundings with an outsider's eye. This helps his writing projects, which include a new poetry collection, "The Devil's Sonata," from FutureCycle Press.

MY GUNS ARE NAMED JESUS

by S

Image source: Kind of Creepy

                        for Wayne and Ted

Before I slide between the sheets each night
I kneel and pray to my guns
All 352 dozing in the safes
I call them Jesus

I pray to them they'll never leave
I pray to them for loyalty and inspiration
To commit the be all to end all gun crime
And then I realize there'll never be
What anti-gunners call the tipping point
The tipping point will never occur
Too many people like me are out there

Jesus, why are you so beautiful
In blue and black steel
Home to majestic barrels of death
Why do you seduce me
With holy matrimony
Of terror and helpless innocence

My aunt told me angels of the Bible
Were men with girls' faces
That means they're devious monsters
That means you can call me the angel of mayhem

There is no tipping point
Never will be a tipping point
But I pray I change that
I pray to my companions of love
My instruments of evil
That I'll be the tipping point
The be all to end all

Allen Ginsberg called everything holy
Only the gun is holy
Its supplicants for war and murder are holy
The bountiful bullet is holy
The magazine is holy
The trigger is holy
I'm holy in my embrace of the tipping point

America go fuck yourself with your assault rifles

When I'm alone with Glocks and Colts
And Sig Sauers and Berettas and M-16s
I dream of the last day that'll bless me
With colors of flame and blood
I'd rather be with them
Than a woman who's kind
I'd rather stroke, clean, and wash them
In the oily rags they lie in
Stacked in the safes dreaming

I have too many heroes to mention
Granddaddy of us all
Charles Whitman in the Texas Tower
The two Columbine creeps
The Batman bozo from Colorado
The Newtown nerd baby blaster
Too many to recall
Way too many

When I was small my mother and father
Bought me play guns but never real ones
They gave me a Davy Crockett rifle
And a Roy Rogers revolver
A squirt gun I loaded with piss
A plastic machine gun from Company A
I had more guns as a kid than I do now
But they were fart jokes

I started amassing real ones
All dull steel and forged from sins
Of kind ancestors who earned this land
By killing anybody in the way
Of their manifest destiny
The more I shopped the more I wanted to buy
The more I stockpiled the lovelier they grew
I began to name each one a different name
But then decided they were the Son of God
So I called them Jesus

Jesus protect me in weak moments
Protect me against criminals and miscreants
Who aren't the same color as I am
Protect me against anybody that breaks into this mansion
Protect me against the asshole who pisses me off
Allow me to succumb to no one but you
Bless me with kind and gentle holiness
Caress me like dark women I'll never love

One day decades ago a slick punk pulled
A revolver on me and two sisters
They screamed and before he knew it
I slugged him in the mouth
Grabbed the gun from his skinny hands
And stuck it in his crotch
Pulling the trigger as he begged
When I smelled the smoke I smiled
That was my first gun and first kill
My first hallelujah of sweet horror

My guns are my savior
My guns are my life
I love and protect my guns
As they love and protect me
That's why I call them Jesus
The be all to end all

Two of my favorite gun scenes in movies
Are the Russian Roulette suicide in The Deer Hunter
When Walken wears a bandanna of blood
And when Stallone blasts away
In Rambo with an M60
Now those are righteous kills

I have a room full of gun videos
The Sniper movies, How to Clean Guns Blindfolded
The Jackal with Willis remote controlling
His First Lady carnage
All of them better than titties and ass
And fuck video games because
They're not real enough to get my rocks off

I'm gonna be the be all to end all
The tipping point to tip the balance

I'll sneak into the Academy Awards a week early
Wait for days in a cubby hole
With bags of chips and cases of beer
Hide where no one sees me until it's too late
And pull out Jesus in their black beauty
And imminent destruction
Mowing down glamor icons of America
Hundreds of them in gowns and tuxes
Like the glory hogs they are
Their brains and limbs decorate the hall
Closing credits to end their stupid lives
And I'll own the fame I crave and deserve
More fame than they could ever have
Because I love Jesus with my heart and soul

I'll be the be all to end all
The final tipping point
Of all tipping points

The ultimate glory hog.

PACKING HEAT IN THE PEW

by Earl J. Wilcox

Image source: HotDogma

Arkansas Senate OKs concealed weapons in church --USA TODAY, January 29, 2013

If you don’t like the preacher calling you out---
sinners, fornicators, back sliders, whoremongers,
two timers, lukewarm Christians, dead beat dads---
responding to the Word is an altar call to arms.
Say Amen like the NRA and gun-toting patriots.
Answer the call with a bullet in the barrel,
blow the messenger to kingdom come.


Earl J. Wilcox writes about aging, baseball, literary icons, politics, and southern culture. His work appears in more than two dozen journals; he is a regular contributor to The New Verse News. More of Earl's poetry appears at his blog, Writing by Earl.

RAW STUFF

by Carolyn Gregory



Their guns become their dolls,
each with a girl's name on it
and carved tattoo
they caress and polish
like vintage cars

With summer on their hands
and nothing playing at the movies
after the slasher film goes
the way of its bloody machete,

they train on tin cans
popping off little soldiers
on a fence,
steady as she comes
before antlers and coyotes follow --
no time for sentiment

Back with their kill,
they puff up chests and strut
as they continue
making men out of raw stuff,
rifle in a backpack,
Glock in a leather pocket.


Carolyn Gregory's poems and essays on music have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, and Stylus. She was featured in For Lovers and Other Losses. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2011 and is a past recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award. Her book, Open Letters, was published by Windmill Editions in 2009 and her next, Facing the Music, in 2012. She has been working on a series about the history of guns in America for several years now.

GUN CONTROL

by Jonathan Flike



Revolution dreams every policy
opposed to red elephant values
Southern successions revisited
saving colors that don’t run
from freedom hating Kenyans,
change witch doctor huts to prefabs
justifying semi-auto ownership
and mass killing violence with
discount T-shirt slogans,
“guns don’t kill people
people kill people.”
Simple facts that baseball bats
murder less than quickly changed clips
on unsuspecting movie goers
temporary burdens on six
pallbearers carrying bodies
safe to the grave
the only safety guaranteed
soon forgotten by the masses.
Public discourse talks of
policy’s failure to divert death
in totality never touching
the golden cow with a
butt branded number two,
refuse the compromise saying
one life saved is worth more
than circular retorts
clouded necessity for
exploding shells
stashes of bullets
caches of guns
simply to hoard
till the day the Democrats
come to take it all away
failing to confirm America
lacks any form of
self-control.


Jonathan Flike is a writer, artist, and starving student. His poems have appeared in Viewpoints and Wilde Magazine. Jonathan’s first major collection of poetry, Tales from Room 225, was published in June, 2011. His second collection, It Gets Worse, is set for a February 2013 release date.

CIVILIZED DENTISTRY

by Caru Cadoc

We pay dentists to shave down our canines

nice and flush with the others

to help us dress up

and play humanists.

It's vain but honest.

They're such savage looking teeth.

And who needs canines anyway

when we have blow guns of chrome

Powered by powder more forcful than our little jaws

To project shards of metal designed to tear far deeper

Than our quaint little teeth.

Caru Cadoc is the lyricist for the Pseudosufis.  His work has appeared in Dead Flowers,The Boiler, MAKE, Jersey Devil Press, Word Catalyst and Storyglossia.