MARK TULIN - POEMS

​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. .

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ECT

It’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 Dreams

​In 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 Tea

​Grandpa 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 Vinaigrette

​Every 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

​Bipolar

He 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.
​