The Laughter Epidemic.

Laughter raised the roof off of a house while it rained. Everyone inside the house was soaking wet. Their champagne glasses refilled with rain water. They cared not. The fish tank became one with the living room. The water level raised steadily. Some women took the initiative and started handing out snorkles, and scuba gear, to those taking it all a little too seriously. Arm bands, and rubber rings, came out. A man started doing the doggy paddle in the shallow end. A row boat careered down the waterfall of the stair case, from the attic men dove into the down stairs bedroom. There was no a life gaurd to be seen. Neighbours came round to see what all the laughing was about. They cared not. They cared only for the the laughter, and the laughter inside of the house, for laughter is a house without a roof, alive with people soaked to the skin and happy to the bone.

Featured Poet McGuire Interviewed.

Tell us about your poems.

What: I am a playful poet but also a dark artificer. I write about everyday life, the hundreds of characters we meet, as well as psychiatric darkness. I write informal poetry, filled with flights of fancy, keen observations, philosophy — so anything that snags on my muse or strikes out to me in curiosity or unexpected coincidence. Erratic and temperamental, what I write is ignited with an almost nervous, kinetic energy, if my poems could jump or dance or be drank down in one gulp, they would.

Why do I write: because I once went into my mother’s underwear draw and discovered a letter at the bottom which revealed family secrets, real and true. This embodies my need to write and my long literary obsession with secrecy and honesty. I want to write what has been left unsaid, what has been hidden from sight; I want to find private letters beneath underwear smothered in private truth.

How do I write? Dare, I say, I take notes. I write rather slapdash and sporadically. That’s how I approach most of my writing. Write first, think later. I write in bursts of nervous energy, frenzied sessions of typing and diatribe, followed (perhaps days or weeks later) by precise reform and edit. I don’t like to butcher the poem with correction. As Sir Walter Scott reminds ‘many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity.’ I’m not saying I’m great or original simply that I like the unpolished feel of my poetry, down to earth, never seeking professionalism. I like my poetry like my prawns – raw.

-Read the whole interview please visit: One Night Stanzas

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Many thanks to Claire Askew for considering me and putting me up on the site. It was a rare and unexpected bit of exposure. Despite my rather long winded and rambling replies, I feel I managed to convey my tiny human dignity and my little flicker of soul-poem. Thank you anyone who reads and anyone who takes the time to care.

Grazie tanto! ;)

If I had to have a Christmas tree.

If I had to have a Christmas tree,
it would be as compact and inviting
as a log fire.

Understated yet bright and nourishing,
like a piping hot roast dinner on a
bitter Sunday winter evening.

īnfāns

Death is lurking somewhere in the maternity ward.
The nurslings scan the room and find a shadow
on the ceiling above their droning incubators,
what could be a shadow of black smoke.

They giggle, grab out, cry or curiously frozen,
look out wide eyed, staring in question, above the light.
Caught in neutral moment, cooing, caaing, ommm aware.
Like an angel chorus fresh alive with space and time.

Then, a live one comes in, a Mother of Sunday,
serenely calm in sleeping gown. Warm with affection,
She lifts one baby, her baby, a boy, swaddled in white.
Mother and Son walk into a corridor of nightingales,
make their way, a pair in pact, to the family room.

Parable of the fence

One crowd was putting up the fence
While the other was busy tearing it down.

Very little was achieved.
This went on for quite some time.

Concrete Irrationality

(A mental written collage, for Tristan Tzara, whoever he was.)

:)
:(

Sexual perversions disguised as poems
as you read, a hand slips under your skirt.

8000 attitudes later
and still this boy here!

1500 sexualities in this head alone.
All wearing identical smiles!
Pretending they don't notice each other,
pretending to be shy as they undress
for the 4800th time.

There are many Grey Chair people
who do nothing except let other people sit on them.

The boy who was a thief of consciousness
Stole someone's memories and took over their life,
and regretted it because it reminded him of his own mind.

The Great Dictator
who told all of his friends he hated them
while stripping them naked and flaying them
destroying their personalities, scoping out their souls
As they stopped to sip red wine and eat
delicately cook swordfish.

Several thousand light bulbs later,
And the light is still not any lighter.

Chrysanthemums picked fresh from the earth
deep fried and then dipped in olive oil,
Sprinkled with pepper and salt - Delicious!

A heart rolls out of the left trouser leg
quickly stood upon,
Shell smashed soul yoked all over the floor.

Take off your first clothes, then your second,
then your third, then your forth, then the bones you bare,
then the heart, then the second and third heart, all off:
Welcome to the House of Subgenius!

A Surrealist must avoid weightlessness:
words are arm bands, rubber rings, life guards.

Did you hear about the boy
who got nutrition from language
only if it was sung to him?
He died young of anorexia.

My Philosophy so far: the principle of deliberate irrationality, anarchy, stupidity uncertainty and cynicism and the rejection of the laws of beauty and social organisation. DADA IS GOD! DADA IS EASY! DADA IS ALGEBRA! DADA HAS TEN BILLION TANGIBLE SOULS! DADA SLEEPS FOR ETERNITY WITH EYES OPEN! DADA EXPLODES! DADA IS ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD! DADA IS HISTORY! DADA IS UNCONTROLABLE! DADA IS POURING ALL OVER YOU NOW - IT’S MYSTERIOUS CONTROL! DADA IS THE END OF NONSENSE AND THE BEGINNING OF NONSENSE! DADA IS NO POET OR POEM! DADA IS WIEGHTLESS ARTLESS DIATRIBE! DADA IS CATHARTIC VOMIT! DADA IS A PLAYGROUND! DADA MAKES SERIOUS CLOWN OBSERVATIONS ON LIFE AND DEAD TIME!