Mark Tulin was born in Philadelphia and currently lives in Santa Barbara, California. He worked many years in the field of mental health gaining valuable insights that often play out in his poetry and short stories. His poetry is noted for finding richness in the lives of the neglected and downtrodden. He has published in Page & Spine, smokebox, Vita Brevis, The Drabble, Amethyst Review, Amaryllis Poetry, among others. His poetry chapbook, Magical Yogis, was published by Prolific Press in 2017. Links to his work can be found at www.crowonthewire.com. . ECTIt’s a bright sunny day outside. Inside her childhood memories are slipping away, sinking deeper and deeper into electricity. In this burning psychedelic daydream, her cerebellum’s doing backflips and somersaults, spinning rooms with fading hopes. She sees the doctor’s dark eyes through the fog, his hand twisting her fate with every turn, her body convulses like a flapping salmon. She bites down on the rubber mouthpiece, her only anchor in this barbaric delight. Smoke rings rising to the top, brain cells flicker like a flashing traffic light, high pitched voices of opera singers, black swans floating on muddy rivers. Her body smells of smouldering rubber. Her soul tells her never to give up. Hobby Horse DreamsIn my mind, I’m still a little cowboy sitting on a wooden hobby horse on my parents' shag carpet. I could barely walk upright and only knew a few words like mommy, daddy and ice-cream on good days. I wore a ten-gallon hat, slipped into a pair of Tony Lamas, and pulled up my Wrangler jeans. I rode the dusty canyon path and played my guitar, heated up weenies on an open fire. I rocked my wooden hobby horse under a Montana full moon, down the dusty roads, up the rocky inclines chasing cattle rustlers and men on Most Wanted posters. I could ride forever in my mind, I could lasso up all the calves and steers I could find. I could capture all the bad guys, put them behind bars and still be ready for dinnertime. Grandpa Drinking TeaGrandpa puts a Lipton teabag in the cup and drinks tea while looking out the window in the house that he built. He told me a story about how he endured the desert heat, how he woke up early in the morning and supervised a hundred men doing highway work. Grandpa drinks tea while munching on a sugar cookie, looks out the window at his big, yellow flowers and daydreams about his long life in Spanish. He told me about how the dam once broke, how the water poured into the valley and flooded Santa Paula, how he survived the flood that carried many of his friends away. He told me about the Mexican woman he married in Arizona, how they won all kinds of money at a Las Vegas casino, how they drove back and forth in their Buick LeSabre. The story about his life is simple but honest. He woke before sunrise and did hard work, his fingers are old and bony where there once was strength. Grandpa takes the last sip of his tea from the cup, closes his eyes and daydreams about his long life in Spanish. Dreams Like VinaigretteEvery time I eat exotic food, I get weird dreams. It must be the person who prepares the meal, I determine. A short order cook, perhaps with wide hands and stubby fingers or the sous chef with a furrowed brow and a ponytail. The cook's life experiences: fears, family circumstances, relationships that have gone sour, successes and failures, crimes of narrow escape. Or perhaps those hot love affairs that have managed to enter my belly in the form of Swedish meatballs or a Chinese salad with a sweet vinaigrette. The food seems to bare the essence of the cook who prepares it, as if the person’s blood were circulating through the Bouillabaisse. The meal is in my dreams climbing up a steep wall, eluding entrapments, accidentally stepping into dark, forbidden halls. As the cook stands over the stove and tosses the vegetables into a wok, I could hear his whole life sizzle BipolarHe struggles to catch up
with those who seem to be further along, skims the rim of a cereal bowl, tiptoes across the yellow line. Up all night, awake like a blinking strobe light He slides down a slippery pole greased in his own body fat, trying to figure out the world through a plastic Sippy straw. Crooked eyes, frazzled nerves and sizzled hair the master of intellectual doublespeak, the world’s foremost authority comes up with the cure, writes the best novel, and has the answer to life’s most pressing problem. Cycling between good and evil, he believes he’s a God, a hero, a devil, supernaturally imposed. Conks out right on the red Target ball, believes that jumping off a cliff with paper wings and goggles would be a credible solution, retribution, salvation, absolution-- Even a colonic cleanse.
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Marc Carver writes poetry and tries to be nice to people because he can do very little else. SITTING ON THE DOCK OF THE BAYI listened to Ottis on the radio yelled out the song as people came past must have thought I was some kind of lunatic but I did not care the way I have always not cared even when I was at rock bottom some people do not get up but day after day up I get like the man off the cross nothing can stop me FAILURE I keep finding this poem on the floor it tells of a different time of a person sure he was different from everybody else So sure he risked everything I am not sure I am the same person on that page but at least I still believe ANGEL DANCING The woman came up to me at the party at which I did not have a ticket She asked me who I was asked if I was in insurance no I could never do that I tell her as I held her hand she said you walk up and down here not talking to anybody as if you were an angel. And for a second I really thought it could be possible she asked for her hand back shortly after that then I started to dance and the night really took off A BOAT AFLOAT there she goes the one with the big botty around and around she goes like nothing else or no one else. I find that with all women none are the same as another one perhaps that is why I want them all even at the same time would be good we could live in a skyscraper that touches the clouds but with all the doors and walls knocked out like a giant car park or a giant ark floating on the endless sea. Just me and my girls and all that love to keep us afloat I walked into the church a woman was playing the piano
I went over to her and told her that she played lovely She told me it was Tchaikovsky and then she told me her wedding was tomorrow and why didn't I come I never went to her wedding but a few days later I went back to the church and thought about playing the piano not that I can play of course when I went over to the piano there was no piano almost as if that magical moment had never happened
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