The universe at its right angle
changes you into
day. Yet again, next year
you will look the same—  

unpunctuated

line of zodiac
in easterly motion
makes its highest path to
you in winter.

Sunlight pours down to earth from every angle.
You emerge with your mouth.

The universe’s only apparent movement.

a confessional screen
chambered in opaques
                        the pearly gates would sport
checkers sovereignty with grime
between myself
               and the other side of this poem

another acolyte had founted
             from our species-widened narthex-maw
                              the answer to the test
                                    the answer i have tested since
despite the veto of a roshi's sleeve

while adults justify in frowns and threats
commandment-etched
i am a child still
           aghast at drawing lines in sand to mark the living
                                           from the soon to die

one i knew who drew such lines                                  
             for whom a line was drawn to mark himself as well
not just in votes and homeland hate-speech
you see
he crossed the line
                        no unadulterated childhood can cross

he shot  his  own  face
                              or at least his face was shot
                when he was found
who can read the final lonely moments of another
                                                 when mistakes are easier than ownmost acts ?

bombing bullies politicking death
                 can sanctify the safe
unpunctuated traps
                     dividing moods in swallows
pills
swilled with undigested fear
                                   of nozzled death
mercilessly sudden





.

It's me you're looking for
according to Lionel not
quite falsetto but at least
smooth alto unpunctuated
to give your wonder freedom
to wander and wonder
who each of us is - poems
demand so much of us
for sure hesitant English
speakers add frequently,

Leftist poetry *****.
I don't want to behold your innards.
I don't want to be forced to view your organs.
I couldn't care less
about your perverted sexuality
or your identity grievances.
Your biological and socioeconomic reality
is dull beyond all conception.
Your unpunctuated free verse
is insult added to injury
and displays
your hatred of Liberty.
Your merely materialist analyses bore me.
There is no excuse for you.
You abhor all that is RIGHT.
You hate GOD, FAMILY, and GENDER.

You also hate the Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore you, in your rebellion against Divine Order
are DOOMED and ******

however . . . I will continue
to pray
for your sorry ***☺

There's so much I want to say
Though finding the right words can be so troublesome
A "but" at the wrong time could tear you apart.
An "um" can make me seem unintelligent.
And too many "I"'s may cause us to lose a connection.
The point could be lost at the misplacing of a comma.
And a crummy adjective can throw off our mood.
Though, if you manage to look past my unpunctuated lines
Or my sloppy placing of a rhyme
Or the misspelled words
Or repeating of a theme
You might happen upon something real
A heart conveniently on display
There may be no rhythm
Or Shakespearean resemblance
But each letter is history
And phrase is a lesson
Even if you don't understand
Maybe someone else will
And my version of therapy could be theirs
But God-willing I touch your heart
And be the change I'd like to see
And my words could hug your soul
And hush your inner crying child
Because we aren't alone
I just want my words to sit with you for awhile
I just want the page to be your shoulder
The situation you can put yourself into
And not feel selfish for seeing it as you
The friend you don't have to pretend to hear
Just to get to talk about your day
Let this one time be for you
Let your feelings show
Its the words and you now
Let it take you where you'd like to go

I thought that the end would be poetic,
like our favorite novels that end so cleanly.

I thought it would end with a period
or exclamation point, even just a question mark.

Instead I was left with a simple,
unpunctuated sentence, that was cut off.

I now know that happy endings
are supposed to stay in favorite books.

Life is more complex than
perfectly squared endings in neat boxes.

Life ends in the middle of a verse-

Dubious: charge
The deluxe program in. Obtuse angled and oblong animals. Mecca sexúal, discoverer pulling back the curtain tails in mimicry and peacockiness as the horizon shimmers itself out. Do not eschew unwieldy ostentation towards benign mid-weight colors in the sequel to Blahnik.

Offers in the hesitant, peak winds of Southern-Hemispherical Antarctic weather barometer losses. The ice is like a hive of nameless blue lily pad vessels, each a different magical shade of the water's blue.

She like the uncommon baroque grandeur in an hour of time, herself-

Summons the immense symmetry of her elaborate lavender macramès sheath and entomb her skin, exploding across her body like milk-white daffodils draped upon a morning  bow. Linseed and anise encompasses burnt sweet grass on the breadth of pine in a gentle pillow, anchored only by the veins of her red fruit nectar stitched at the grooves in her cool and unpunctuated lips. While anxiety numbing tufts of gentle satins wisp all the worry and turmoil away, pleasing every nerve, sensor, instinct, and exercise of glib humanity intertwined amid the pulse of our uncensored adultness. She glides amid the arcs of ebullient-molecules ribboned in winter synonyms, summoned up in her sensual and illustrious sublime, and the story of how like a horizon muted by organzas falling beneath her into that relationship she carries with her water God into something profound, immense, and totally ******* exquisite, yet beyond all imagining, she is always doing what has been the coolest **** ever to me. That becomes more magnificently indescribable like our amorous fire, incentivizing the luminous beauty of new stars to rush above us, and yet under us too, amidst the simple and perfected automany she so awesomely imbues.

Until the minutes are silenced in our heads and the days are warm with you.

For Sarah

♥☠♥

Lightweight free-verse exploration,
withered ghosts and wisps of phrase,
breezy unamusing musings
barely raise

a titter, tear or lyric warning –
fail to reach a middling height;
then subside to shallow murmurs
(not quite).

Teenage existentialism
cryptic, dull confessional mush;
suitable for a poker-faced
unroyal flush.

Must you set this stuff in motion
fizzling through our universe:
half-bright comets leaving trails
of boring verse?

Incoherent thoughts meander
through your words like fish through nets
unable to ensnare your reader.
One forgets

whatever it was you started saying
(weirdly spaced, unpunctuated).
Could it be such thoughts are better
left unstated?

You are twenty days late
In your response
Who do you think you are?
That I’d jump at your thumbspeak?

It was a passing thing

Thinking about you now
With your flecked baldness
Your Cheshire cat teeth
Glowing against
Your ***** black skin

Your disease
A foul smell
In the arid air

The long stretch
Of your tawny arms
That once carried
The weight
Of your insecurities

Your sweaty palms
Like milk
The sweat
In your back

Your unpunctuated sentences
And your shallow joys…

You are twenty days late
But you’ve lost me
On the fourth day

he seeped into my life slowly
and it was like being 8 again and
finding myself
suddenly carted 12 hours away
to a new life, one
that feels like brand new shoes

but suddenly it's broken in
& everything was familiar
& he was familiar
before I could even drag
my heels in resistance

he spilled words and ideas,
I licked them up like the coffee
that I carry, escaping onto its lid
and he is borderless

I am walking under a blue sky
unpunctuated by clouds,
it is endless &
the dopamine rush makes everything brighter

I look up and I am lost at sea
the sky is so blue
I am lost in his smile and his quirks
& God, he's so awkward

but I feel safe
like
I never want to leave
&
maybe I'll tell him everything
&

bitter coffee spills again on its lid

I sip it slowly

the sky is so blue,
so deep,
he is endless,
how am I not drowning

Her pursed lips hold back,
An Old Testament of curses,
Unpunctuated
And not arranged in verses.

Another wrong turning,
She dams a Noah's flood of tears,
A pillar of salt,
As she crunches the gears.

Then the offertory prayer:
"Perhaps I should drive?"
I have to walk home,
But at least I'm alive.

my brain vomited
onto the page
all squiggles
and misspellings
unpunctuated
heiroglyphics
a secret language
only i
could understand
not prose
not poetry
not correct
just me
my pen
wreaks havoc
on unruled
paper
i am errant
i am irritable
i am irreverent
i am making
my way

I took a deep breath and stared at the scorched moon,
inhaling the unquestioned equations, the slammed
sentences sinking, unpunctuated thoughts, scratchy
paragraphs chained, flamed, carrying devastated
vocabulary, nasty fiction, torturous themes, bruised
beginnings, brick blasting melodies, tasteless languages,
numb drums, quivering trombones, overdone saxophones
harboring unbridled crimes, soundless, dizzy lyrics becoming
smashed.  I was flooded with blurred scenes, *******
and twisted climaxes, ruthless resolutions, confused syllables
collapsing, gasping, falling off the radar into lopsided lands.
my throat was aching, breaking in abbreviated stages, my face
half shaved, yelling, writhing, discarded ballads, brainwashed
adjectives, damp adverbs, faulty clauses, astounded pronouns,
radioactive volcanoes releasing thunderstruck infinitives,
moonwashed novels, expelled articles, stiffened, unperfect,  
destroyed declaratives, separated, evaporated.

Assembled by Eli Williams
From quotes taken from works at poetry readings by Vladimir Swirynsky, Bob Olsen, Ray McNiece, Kathleen Gallagher, Joe Roarty, Eva Barrett, Russ Vidrick, Tam Polzer, Rosemarie Iwasa, Dianne Boresnik
Additional original content by Ryan P Kinney

I watched you undress like a stranger lost in a great city of hope
The problem of loving the same woman in different ways
And still love once more
This is my word in any language
So I cozy myself up to a murderer
So I can taste the infernal darkness
Too much white space, unpunctuated
No place for the demon to go, but further in
I'm a monster, I admit it
God not only loves a sinner, he prefers them
How long will I be playing to get by
Is it worse to be the one taken or the one left behind
Nothing is ever born again here

In the thrift store, the shelves shine dully with brass,
Old candelabras and cups that could serve in ritual,
If they were not made so poorly and marketed so cheaply.
I first found these thin, yellow, sheet-metal creations
Stacking the shelves in my grandmother’s trailer.
Under the grime, the settled oily sheen of air freshener, there rested
Chalices into which even a king would sneeringly spit the epithet “rococo!”
There must have been a hundred million other such trailers,
A hundred million places of honor for stamped yellow tin.
Why gather them up? Why give them cult?
The entire dragon’s hoard seems now to have found its way to goodwill,
While the real versions of these ghostly trinkets sit heavy upon altars and windowsills.
Volunteers must weigh them, each in hand, and make some distinction:
Did this aid in worship? Was this treasure?
Or was it only treasure enough? Butter-smooth placebo
For those who found themselves in an endless dry spell of weekdays,
Unpunctuated by the sort of holiness that Normal People
Crave and crave and never attain.

The beauty of writing is you can present
Your thoughts as free as your mind is
If you think in punctuation, your ideas
Will take shape into sentences
But, those people with unpunctuated thought
Flurry of words and fiery stream of consciousness
Are the hardest poets to understand
I think that's why I like those best
Because they beg us to understand them
Almost needing our interpretation

An unpunctuated sky does

          little for my soul.

   Diffusion and mist has a

sense of being enveloped

         in cotton wool.

  Furze bushes blazon our

              horizon.

   A can of blue and yellow

*WD-40 masquerades as a

     *Water Displacement.

But this is Ballydehob where

  wind transforms to drizzle

    lubricating sprays from

      Wild Atlantic Waves.