You shouldnt write off just me
but everything-
the scraps of paper in the street
the grit & sand blowing in the wind
the dust cloud smudge on windshield
kitten prints
the dried husk of a squashed frog
the broken necklace on the ground
the toy forgotten until its found.
Nail in the coffin
shut closed buried and forgotten
no crack of light just a shoosh and thump of dirt
hollow booms in heart
burying in settling
deep inside cold descends
silence between the ears
between the years
silence the soft thump of still beating heart on auto thump
thump thump
no thought to live or breathe
no thought to live but there continues life
shut up inside
Write me off dont pull me out
leave me silent as stone freezing my bones
nail in the coffin
to rise or not time will tell to live or…
to be remembered or forgotten.

in the quiet and in the dark
everything is amplified

everything amplified
is amplified again

the depth of a breath
the beat of a heart

the shoosh-shoosh blood
rushing through veins in fits and starts

electrical pulses race back and forth
synapses fire at the slightest provocation

hurry up, wait
hurry up, wait

the endless bustle of an internal subway
delivering weary passengers to every destination

alone, in the dark
I hear their whispers

whispers drowned out
with white noise by day

slipping through the tiniest of cracks
running circles in my mind

The class echos disturbance,
     The teacher Tries to shoosh,
  The class Screams,
        The teacher cries, And runs out of the Room.

No matinee today
from my blackbird,
the robin too, is off sick
and the rain is so insistent,
that the shoosh of the wind
in the birch tree is just a whisper.

On days like this,
lonely people in lonely lives
give over and give up;
here in this gun free country
the gas oven, the dressing gown cord
and stored up sleeping pills,
are enough and enable the tired
to leave without saying goodbye.

The dead do not read obituaries,
are not here to unravel confusions,
to answer the question. Why?
to answer the question. Why?
to answer the question. Why?

Now there is one less setting at table
a bedroom door stays shut and
in the bathroom
the toothbrush goes dry in the mug.
The clean shirts at the dry cleaners
are picked up and  on their hangers
with the new heeled shoes in their bag
are fresh goods for the charity shop.

And in this big city village
no one cares
no one really cares

We’re going on a duck hunt; just granny and me!
We’re going on a duck hunt, let me tell you what we see.

We are going to the river, with a bag of stale bread.
Fighting off seagulls and pigeons as they hover above our heads.

We will pass by the riverbanks where grasses and trees grow tall.
Watching and listening to the river as it tumbles, rolls, and roars.

We will see flowers of different colours.  White daisies, yellow buttercups, blue cornflowers, covering the parklands in a dazzling display.
My Granny says seeing the kaleidoscope of colours makes her day!

We will pass by rabbits hopping about their homes of grassy mounds.
Every now and then pricking up their ears; listening to every sound.

We will pass by geese gathered in a gaggle.
Big bottomed geese walking with a waggle.

We will pass by swans gliding with their necks held high.
Several young cygnets tucked in and swimming by their mums side.

We will pass all these wonders of nature as we make our way to the ducks.
Listening for every quack and cluck.

We reach our goal with a bag of bread in-hand.
Throwing the bread to the ducks who say thank you with a “quack” and a “cluck.”
Before you know it, the swans are there too.  Then the seagulls and pigeons “shoosh, go away you!”

Ducks are the best of the lot you see.  They make me laugh; I think they are funny.
No particular reason but my granny says, “It is because I am only three.”

We’re going on a duck hunt; just granny and me!
We’re going on a duck hunt, to feed the ducks their tea.

Rinky-**** is how
they think and their thoughts are small
yet you heed their call

                                         Kelly McManus

Pursed red lips,
survey the silent scene,
educated intelligence,
barely covers oozing sensuality.

In this hall of knowledge,
all that I seek to know,
leans upon a bookshelf,
a shoosh, locked and loaded.

In her glasses panes,
I catch my own reflection,
caught staring once more,
I smile that of a predator.

Mine is overshadowed,
by the licked lips and grin,
of an apex, about to have,
their favorite meal.

She turns and heads to the door,
silver skirt sways, like a cats tail,
on the prowl,
I sit and wait.

I am the end of the student animal
as it slowly squeezes out the door,
I expect to just leave with the rest,
but the door closes and locks me in.

A waterfall of raven hair spills down,
I catch my reflection once again
words start to come out of my mouth,
a single finger touches my lips, shoosh.

The instrumental blows
Slow saxophone    
Accompanying my mood    
I tip the man with dip and shake    
    
Smoke and it's pillaring      
High and blue    
Like writhing tendrils    
Of the Medusa      
And her memories of when    
She was a beauty queen      
      
A thought occurs    
by tossed delivery    
However heavy my scrupulous resolve    
This kind of heaven is thick    
With indiscretion      
      
So one for my baby    
And one more for the road    
      
My bend of elbow      
Breeches slow slur    
My tongue takes on heaviness    
Ripe without pretense      
Formulation of rationale      
Dissolves    
      
My hands sticky      
With traces of me    
      
And my eye    
covers itself with hanging hood    
My view now comfortably obscured    
I am everything      
And I am nothing    
      
But hold on to this babygirl    
      
I am everything      
When not nothing    
      
The secrets of my skin    
Still feel beyond the numbing      
Goosefleshed and cold with fear    
Of the wide awake in darkness    
      
I am so afraid of the dark    
I have been made to exist    
under this neon light    
    
Somewhere inside it feels    
This heaven is not right    
My bliss is a traitor    
He might hang for these crimes    
    
And my soul    
She hurts    
My bridge is under fire    
The water boils    
    
And still I dip my toes    
    
Beyond the carnage and heat    
Still the sax man blows    
And lulls me    
But how I love this music    
I sink and I listen  
    
Until all around me shoosh  
Shoosh  
And ease into breathe  
Way to close for comfort  
So close to death
  
I raise my glass to my new companion
She stares with eyes
Of truth and beauty
their light I have never seen
nor hoped to
  
And still they shake me to my bones  
  
So much so and that ever after
The darkness has befriended me
And built me a home  
And kept my peace

can you even begin to grasp
the primitive nature of roman numerals?
      to have to share both
letters as "concepts"
                conjugated with numbers?
     a 6 would become a b,
                      sharpened mind you,
                    a 7 would become Γ standing
in a mirror...
                 2 that was actually any S
also in a mirror... later sharpened into a Z,
then hidden in either caron-like-halo
above it in the form of Š...
                                                    or ß...
ah... ****...
         concerning the extraction point of focus,
what is philosophy:
                     immediately some
claim it's an:                     art of thinking...
to me "philosophy" is:
                            a dualism / anti-Hegel
reiteration, host and parasite comparison,
              a morality with a narrative...
               there's the θought,
                            and there's the: ought i?
philosophy is such a tedious word...
             lover of "wisdom" versus:
               lover of applying the concept
of ensō (ooh ooh, ki-chu! /
                          kí chú)
                                           to a súdokū...
    or as the concession states
the narrative for man...
            you either paint... or you think.
calculus with roman numerals...
                 beck...
                        no, i mean beck's,
i.e. bremen...
                         trust the french
         to serve up diacritical usage as worth
an amputee...
                       germans are custard chemists
and english are shrapnel...
                                  or a nail bomb...
i've been looking for this jewish
formula all my life...
              to see it unravel in speaking
english,
                    what do you call an implosion
of Δ?              Y...
                               i.e. γ, god / gamma -
                           which is copernicus
doing a handstand with Λ...
                                                  a labrador
angel...               nicknamed Lucy...
                                       or as some would
like to call it: zee eckestein... or schtein...
             or even: ekkeschtein... shoosh!
    schtein-ffffRein-franken... danke...
                                **** me with all this
sharpening of "edges"...
                         more like keeping vectors
and: if we're not living in a time
when belzeebub re-emerged to peer with his
pixel eyes back at us...
              then i must have ******
off aleister crowley in his chamber of sleep
that's his grave...
               pass the torch mate,
we're going to visit haunted burroughs
   and fascist ezra,
                    and then we're going to
ohio... for a milkshake...
                                       which is probably
why i hold dear the geometry of YMCA...
  no, wait: YHWH (vowel catcher on one side,
laughter on the other)...
            and then... pin-point honing device (Y)
coupled with: do that squiggly line
            sine cosine (i.e. worm)....
                  beyond that: off my rockers,
or as some technical geeks would like to say:
ex... ponential...
                                  trig says: drool me out
a tangent graph...
         by now you can jesus christ almighty
all you want...
                                   i'm knocking
on a skull with bobby McDylan
                         gagging for a cliche's worth
of Hamlet with the question:
                                  you deaf, or is he death?
and to think...
        i read the last remains of pop Kant,
                    to produce...                     this.

THREE BROTHERS WITHOUT A BUCK

it was still mostly dark, with a crimson stripe
of the horizon, as my brothers and i trudged
into the thickets, ice snow chunks, crunched
under our boots as we tried to be quiet with every step
we felt our prey was close, a prized buck, we've
been hunting him for years without luck, when we spied
him a few years back and we said with each year
passing maybe this one, man against nature, as we wondered
who would win, yet each year, we came up empty-handed
so this year, we felt like luck was on our side, no reason why
it just was, so as we walked into the woods pushing branches
from this side to that, we pushed on, it was a couple hours now
as the sun fully rose, we still hadn't spotted him, we were
about to give up when my brother up head went shoosh so
we froze, both from the cold and the moment at hand, stock still
when a branch moved, it wasn't a branch,  it was him, the
prized buck slowly moving from side to side, it probably knew we were watching still it played along, none of us breathed except for the condensation  coming from all our all noses, in and out- it became a stand still none of us moved, neither man nor animal- it was a moment or possibly more as we stood that way- when the three of us took a step forward, one of us, which one, stepped on a dead tree branch that went  snap, as the three of us looked at each other in disbelief, not again, the  buck leapt forward over  a dead tree trunk and like that was gone, as we headed back to the car, no one placed blamed, we  were quiet each thinking what story we would use to explain why- as we all wondered to ourselves,  why we do this to ourselves year after year willing to leave our warm beds for  the chance to stand in the freezing cold, we created our
story of an animal made out of folk-lore status that grew from year to year

by Michael Perry

Dont let them shoosh you
or let them try to tell you
just whos town this is

               Kelly McManus