guillermo By John Grochalski

guillermo

sits outside

on a bench

 

with his hard on

and his whiskey

 

talking to twelve-year-old girls

nursing an injured pigeon

 

don’t touch that thing,

guillermo says

 

pigeons have diseases

pigeons are nothing but flying rats

 

guillermo drinks his whiskey

and pulls on his crotch

 

he smiles at the twelve-year-old girls

 

he wishes he was as beautiful

as something like a flying rat.

John Grochalski is the author of the poetry collections, The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.

The Lord Knows Not A Fly by JPR

But the pain knows not an intrusion of verse.

Strangled is the falsehood our lives unmasked perverse.

Its deadline’s communion I guess I ultimately must face alone.

I abandoned all hope, a reward of my ego's facade.

Addiction is a serpent's strength in its promise to strike you down.

I've closed myself off enough, now I can't open my thoughts to anyone.

Help muted being consumed in every drink.

I am eroding as quickly as the shore’s embrace to the tide.

I am alone forever, not even within my final lost soul’s confession may I confide.

None has its  grace to confession foreseen me.

Forever extinguished, the lights glimmer.

For some there truly never was a chance.

I create art, not explain it.

JPR 

The Sunny Side Of The Lobotomy by JPR

 

Tied down, trapped within.

The instruments surround; the compassion can not exist within the ever-sterile environment.

The demon's external promise of hope and science is a bastard's promise soaked with good intentions and doused with kerosene.

All the pretty flowers painted upon the wall behind barred windows cries of a voiceless soul.

Let us play on the lesser children of society's unwanted trash.

No straight jacket needed or padded room's protection.

We are free to make our own choices as long as they don't question the constraints of a society's majority rule.

The hammers strike the skull's fracture.

No demons torment the empty spaces, for those helpful, studied hands have locked them all within.

A once thriving river of confused souls’ imagination is now locked within a nightmare’s perpetual labyrinth.

As the sheep of a higher learning all clamor eager to one day practice destruction under the guise of healing.

No need to trouble yourself, a bullet’s beauty seems a far lesser evil.

Bind your thoughts with your tongue.

Madness is within; let's play God to serve the ego and silence the truths buried in a fact.

There is no answer to all mysteries eternal.

Silence your thoughts and please do throw away this perpetual miseries key.

JPR is a southern gothic writer.

His work has been published in Svartedauden Zine, Piker Press, It Takes All Kinds Literary Zine, Fixator Press, Spill The Words Press, Sava Press, Fearless Poetry Zine and here at The Dope Fiend Daily.

You May Press The Reset Button Now by Wayne Russell

Time gallops away in rebuttal, 

the ocean is something of a 

sledge hammer in my dreams.

Youth down by the pulsating 

riverside, oceans undertow,

snarling jaws or wilderness?

Take your pick

My parents didn't want me,

my siblings I never knew, I 

was a toddler when the the

Sunshine State gave me a

brand new home in the lost

and found.

Time is a thief, and I am the 

candle, worthless; burning at 

both ends. 

Death awaits us all, just 

around the corner; a dilapidated

crescendo circus, a pantomime;

a joke.

Mad times running along with

her mascara, and smudged red 

lipstick, thin and trickling from

dead eyes, draining from mouth

agape, into the drainage of

opium paradise.  

We are all the fools wandering,

translucent, luminous ghost behold,

shanty town broken necklaces.

We are stains composed from shattered

whiskey bottles and shredded time,

wasted, wasted, and lobbed on down

the ghetto into the next generation;

press the reset button now.  

Wayne Russell has been published in many zines, magazines, anthologies, both online and in print. In his spare time he likes to practice his guitar, sing, creative writing, and photography. Waynes first full length poetry book Where Angels Fear can be purchased on Amazon. 

Bowl of Black Petunias by Michael Lee Johnson

If you must leave me, please

leave me for something special,

like a beautiful bowl of black petunias—

for when the memories leak

and cracks appear

and old memories fade,

flowers rebuff bloom,

sidewalks fester weeds

and we both lie down

separately from each other 

for the very last time.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL.  He has 284 YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 6 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 453 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/.

The 3000 Pound Poetess by Toni Parisi

Fell yesterday and it created a small typhoon in Japan.

This alerted Godzilla who upon taking one look at the source of this commotion told the Japanese government.

Fuck this job! I quit!

Toni Parisi is from Alexandria Virginia she does not consider herself a writer more so a hot-mess that tries to write.

At My 50th Class Reunion by Wayne F. Burke

no one mentions that

I was the Class President.

No one at the table has anything

to say; no one seems to have heard

anything I said--

the girl that hated me

in High School, hates me

still; the guy that wanted to punch me

out, still wants to, but

still lacks the guts; the

cheer-leading sluts ignore

me--as they had back when;

the class vice-President runs the

show, as he had wanted to 

in High School

(but lacked the savvy).

The ones who never left

town, are the many;

those of us who did

leave, the few.

Everyone I hoped to see

is elsewhere or

dead.

It is deja vu

all over again.

Wayne F. Burke's poetry has been widely published in print and online (including in THE DAILY DOPE FIEND). He is author of eight collections of poetry--most recently BLACK SUMMER, Spartan Press, 2021. He lives in Vermont (USA).