Prefering to "lean and loafe at his ease," Alan Britt is troubled by the corruption and ambivalence that permeates the Great Experiment, so politically speaking he has started the Commonsense Party, which ironically to some sounds radical. He believes the US should stop invading other countries to relieve them of their natural resources including tin, copper, bananas, diamonds, and oil, also that it’s time to eliminate corporate entitlements and reduce military spending in order to properly educate its citizenry, thereby reducing crime and strengthening the populace in the manner that the Constitution envisioned. He is quite fond of animals both wild and domestic and supports prosecuting animal abusers. As a member of PETA, he is disgusted by factory farming and decorative fur.


ALAN BRITT: Library of Congress Interview:
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/media/avfiles/poet-poem-alan-britt.mp3

​Mucho mungo, but wait, these rattlesnake storm clouds rumbling like bison over present day Albuquerque. Not that present day Albuquerque needs assistance, but mangoes fell like baby alligators from the mangroves inhaled by Great Aunts one month before. Not that Albuquerque needs assistance, I'm saying, but just as a carnival organ ignites porcelain white stallions with golden bridles swirling space time continuum around me like lonely quarks at a pie eating contest, blueberry fragments plucked for months from the boiled skin of logic, leaning forward on a Black Forest cane, asymmetric, but leaning with shrapnel blue map of earth tacked to the walls of a 1940s lighthouse blinking domino waves, the only waves Harry ever knew.
 

​Time held on until time rusted.
 
Mule hooves, or burro, regarding your canon,
while Texas brands scald the foreheads
of 7 families scrambling for continents
worth scrambling for, & we thought
Occupy Wall Street was a plastic figurine
in a Happy Meal®.
 
Shame on us.
 
Slugs move faster than antidepressants.
 
Welcome to the machine.
 
May your mortgage mature & your guzzler
breech 200K before breaking the bank.
 
& may your housekeeper & mine refrain
from that insane tucking. Turns out I'm
a no-tuck kind of guy.
 
 

​Moth.
 
Oh, you were thinking button?
 
Okay, say it is button.
 
 
 
 

​White rubber, Black Forest cane tapping Venus & Mercury, for a change,
sending debris all the way to dirt floors of the Old Testament. Nothing
surprises us, anymore; nothing even comes close↔nothing I tell you but
that white rubber leaning on a Black Forest cane tapping, tapping for the
blind <<<<―—>>>> She arose, hair tinted steel blue inside an iron
furnace, shoulders like tortured ashes as her aquamarine toenails upset
anxious angels scheming new ways to win their wings.
 
 

Snowy tents,
red rusty guy wires,
billowing bellies
of brown tents,
staked to the ground.
 
Waterboy Jones
under the filtered sunlight,
green as a grape,
smart as a whip,
slips his penis
into Joan, the stable girl,
slaps pony with hand;
it runs away.
 
A couple of quick pokes,
pushing her against a pole.
 
Alone Joan,
alone on the grass
walks with Jones.
 
Sun,
press him,
press her together,
just for a while.
 
Late afternoon,
pumpkin yellow, the sun
colors the landscape;
 
hand in hand
Joan Jones walk homeward,
surfeited, but unfed,
muttering away the somehow
sadness of sexual congress,
the disappointment at the end.
 
In all ways, in all fields,
on all planes, climes,
times, tides,
whatever the place
and circumstance,
 
the circus, their circus
is done.
 
 
Published previously in the fourth issue of Cold Creek Review (Dec 2017)
​

A desert is no home
A wilderness is no Palace, 
A sea is no empire 
A hell is no heaven, 
A war is no victory. 

Silver or gold, I have not
But I can work for you, 
I am a freeborn 
The green dream of Africa, 
For what is oil without man
And gold without him? 
For I am a liquid gold
And a concrete oil.

If you see Gaddafi 
Tell him, there is a tsunami, 
A war warring for a war
Upon loading a war. 

If you see Gaddafi 
Tell him, no dollar nor euro
No pound nor currency can buy Africa. 
 
And for the tens they torture
The dozens they maim
For the scores that drown
And the hundreds they rape, 
For the grosses they exploit
And the thousands they starve, 
If you see Gaddafi 
Tell him, there is a war. 

They roast, they auction, 
They mutilate, they jail
They kill, they enjoy
If you see Gaddafi 
Tell him, the war is on. 

Tell him, there is a disaster 
A war, an unfathomable one
Beyond age, beyond time
Beyond humanity, beyond wonder,
Beyond the border we ponder.

If you see Gaddafi 
Tell him, slavery is timid
Archaic, primitive and backward
Ungodly, unjust, cruel and absurd 
Inhumane and carnivorous. 
Tell him of an era, new and generational 
Free, free, free, free and free freedom. 

If you see Gaddafi 
Tell him the tales of Africa and slavery ,
Tell him that enough is enough.

If you see Gaddafi, 
Tell him Africa is not a slave. 
​

​People
roam around
shopping centers
and stadiums
and gas stations.
Beautiful young girls
do homework
in fancy
coffee shops
on pricey
Mac Books.
Clothing stores,
libraries,
college campuses.
Tennis courts,
24-hour
gyms,
and sandy beaches.
People spend all day
walking
malls
and book stores
and
electronics super centers.
McDonald’s,
Taco Bell,
used car lots.
All these places,
and the only place
I ever fit in
was the back
of a
seedy bar
at midnight.
 
 
 

​I go on
dating sites
late at night.
I talk to
stressed out
single mothers
with
drinking problems
and
bored,
lonely girls
in small towns
in the middle
of nowhere.
They are all
disenchanted
with life;
they all have
terrible
ex-boyfriends
that they
bitch about
constantly.
We talk
until
four in the morning,
then they
go to bed
to get ready
for jobs
they hate.
There are
so many
lonely, angry
dissatisfied
people
in the world.
Just look
at us:
we are
legion.
 

​ 
I met her
at a bar
near the campus
of F.S.U.
She was blonde,
voluptuous,
with big green eyes.
She had
a fake tan
and wore
a Seminoles t-shirt.
I told jokes,
tried to
impress her.
I kept checking
my hair
in the mirror
behind the bar.
We ordered
a series
of beers
and shots.
Eventually,
we made it back
to my place.
I pulled out
a bottle of vodka
and we drank
on my
dirty futon.
We got drunk
until
four in the morning.
Finally,
we made it
into my bedroom.
We made love
until the sun
came up.
When I went back
into the
living room,
the bottle
was still there.
I took a swig of it.
Someday,
we will both be dead
and nobody
will care
that we were alive,
or that I fucked her,
or that I wrote
this poem
about it.
 
 
 

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.

Time has a value different from 
other portions in life; once gone,
it cannot be regained.  While the
statement is simple, the concept
seems as difficult to grasp as
mortality.  We live as if both
time and death were abstract.
We value relationships, tangible
items, roles we play in careers.
‘Next time’ is a catch-phrase often
elevating a disappointment. Time-
zones, daylight/standard, Greenwich
Mean setting universal clocks, 
birthdays, affixed rituals create
memories or markings but mentally
there is always more, just waiting to
be used.  While alive, there’s no
way to comprehend it is temporary.
​

E. Martin Pedersen, a San Franciscan, has lived in eastern Sicily for over 35 years. He teaches English at the local university. His poetry has appeared in Alexandria Quarterly, Frigg, Muddy River Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and others. Martin is a 2011 alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

​I was dead
            but I could still see
I saw blue skies
            and I waited for the crash sound
It didn't come, only a bump
            then I was born
You held me so gently
            my only feeling was fortune
I slept against your skin
            warm and fragrant like toast
Every day someone watching out for me
            for a change
For the first time --
 
Delicious new life of wonder
            and to think
I was dead.
 

Shine your light
Shine your little light
Shine your little light on me
 
I’ll have an evacuation cocktail, please
One part rotten fish heads
One part swamp water
A dash of copper mine trailings
shaken not stirred
Then I’d like to sit down please
Sometimes I feel like
an exploding sack of
s. ampersand hashtag t. exclamation mark
So explode man, share, out of control, guts everywhere
Then later, when I’m tired of all that
fed up (I wish)
I’ll lie on my left side
and watch television
Discovery Channel
              Hey look, that’s me
              I’m a little star.
 

​My daydreams and nightmares have the same plot
with different protagonists or the same
people from my past life passed over on the other shore
people (see above for their real names) showing up on my doorstep
now that I finally have a doorstep
the horror and the joyous pathos
 
Wither they show up or not they do
in the playhouse up here
torment me as a hint
as to after many many years
I need to step out of the bath of my past self and stories
face the mirror
wipe off the clouds
not be afraid.
 

​All day I wanted to finish
my book of a thousand poems
but now that I have, I'm perplexed
what's next.
 
Reading my book of a thousand poems
how many left to go, the number and percentage
calculation
bear down.
 
I look constantly away
like reading while waiting for a friend
that I want to see
before she sees me.
 
Was my brain damaged in excesses of youth
that it won't stay put on the page
I'll read you again the first time
I blinked.
 
Will I mature as an individual
eventually become an adult
and have powers and abilities
to burn holes in poems.
 
They were difficult and reading them twice
wasn't enough
they flew like summer starlings
around my temple.
 
 

​Charlene lived on the 17th hole
I guess that's possible
she had a cat
that untrained would walk out onto the golf course
and steal balls
approach the green on 17
as the kids giggled as
kitty fetched Wilson Topflite one by one
under the fence into the yard.
The balls were kept in a bucket and one day
when the bucket was full
some fat cigarman sliced one
over near them tricksters
looking through knotholes
they threw the whole bucket out onto the course
of course.
 
 

​    He remembers hearing the words
    we are not couples that fight all
    the time. He looks at his wife who
    is not speaking to him. ‘We are
who we are’. And thinks to himself
    that the sea is tired. Perhaps
    as forlorn as he is. He’s a man in the garden. He imagines the sun
 
covering the dark water. Cold to the
touch. He wonders what the right
language of love is for winter guests.
How to make peace with his wife.
He wants to embrace her. Take her in his arms
 
    as if she was a girl
 
again. Brush her hair out of her
 
    face with his granadilla hands.
 
Forget that he is in the autumn
of his years. He wants to forget
that he used to do this for a living.
He wants to know if his unhappy
marriage is on the verge of cracking up. He wants to know
if she’s finally going to leave him.
 
 
 

​    I make the telephone call
    even though I don’t really
    want to. I search for cool
    words, the right language.
    I’m searching for you but
you’re difficult to find. You’re
    not on any map and every
    road is covered in darkness.
    I imagine you (the golden
    breakthrough of you). The
    golden light of you that is
    only found in a museum.
    You’re a woman now. No
    longer a girl. Of all of you
that is so necessary to me for me to live
    and think of while I live and
 
    work in another city. This
is what I want to say. You’re so
beautiful. Yours is a rock
face. Twin flesh making me giddy.
You make me weak. There’s
a music school inside my head.
I think of you sitting down or
washing the dishes. Eating
a simple meal never understanding
how much I love you. How
much I need you in my life.
Your voice is tender and sweet on the other end of
the line. Your flame is bright.
 
 
 

​    I’m just this human body wishing
    on Paris. On the verge of cracking
    up. J.M. Coetzee’s daughter lives
 
there, I read that somewhere in a book or magazine or
    social media or article. Kafka had a
    tyrant for a father. I had a tyrant
 
    for a mother. There’s light in the
    salvation of the sky’s peacock feathers.
    My mother has dirty fingernails.
 
    Moses forty years in the wilderness
became my own. I am machine. A new leaf. I know
    how to restore my own soul. I don’t
 
    need a man, woman or child for that.
    If I had the money I would buy a
    farm where I’d spend the rest of
 
my days. Go tell it on the mountain. The
    The rehabilitation of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki after the war. The honey-blood, salt
 
    and light of the ocean-river that feels
    like home. I sing in praise of working
    women everywhere. The natural abundance of the woman of the soil
 
until I burn with weariness in my soul. The meadow is
    beautiful at this time in the morning.
 
 

​    I think I’ve changed people’s minds
    and a few hearts along the way but
    of course, mum doesn’t see it that way. All she can see is this.
    That I haven’t lived up to my full
    potential. That I am not as beautiful
    as my sister who always comes up smelling of roses. So, I take the hurt
    and mend it. Call the threads of
it enigmatic and prize-giving. I’ve wanted
    love all my life. Never been greedy
    enough to take it for myself. I’ve
    been lonely. Wandered through this
life careless. Made mistakes. (Have been unhappy.)
    Frightened that I’d live life that way
    forever and end up with revenge in
    my heart. All I’ve ever wanted is love.
    This is breaking my heart. Can you
    see that it is breaking my heart with
    every word that I write this. As the
afternoon sun sets I want to tell people.
    Don’t take the emptiness. Don’t let
futility rule your life. Don’t let loneliness overwhelm
    you at the worst of times. I look at
    my mother’s face and all I can see is
 
    her tired, sad yet pretty face. I look
at my father. The exposure of time in the lines and wrinkles
    and all I can see is this. Me ending
up like him. Obsessive. Overly sensitive.
    Bipolar and weak. Drinking cold
coffee with a cat on my lap. Left
out in the cold tasting solitude barefoot.
Drifting. Cast out into a pink-salmon
    world where paradise and heaven
can never survive. I think of the sea and
    place. The lightning and thunder
of the sea on a hot day ruled by Alanis Morissette
 
and the Irish band Ash. You’re
electricity, physics, chemistry. Survival.
Instinct. Biological. Environmental.
Your memory is vapour. A field
with layers of snow. You’re frost.
Veins filled with ice water. I’ve
gone swimming in my imagination again.
 
    Away from you this time. I feel
endangered like the all the polluted rivers of South Africa.
    Up close what do you see, think,
feel about me. This is when love is not enough.
    When all that life signals is rain.
 
    Look out or burn! There’s a moth
    storm transfer of energy that is
    wasteland wilderness a-coming
    on a mountain. In place, seams gathering
    of blue light a swarm of place
and tide and current. Dark wavelengths
    of inspired-magazine hair. Coming
home from the sea there’s a window that’s open
    somewhere. A chill in the air. A draft.
 
I have to close it for the rain. And
as long as writing restores me to
sanity I will keep living towards the light of
doing good. I can’t love you. It is
not in me to love you. Forgive me. Letting it
 
burn in the end will cost me everything.
 
 
 
 

​    Stability sometimes has to make
    room for hunger. The spoils of
    war. Harvest sometimes has to
    make room for another harvest
in spring. The beating heart sometimes has
    to make room for another heart.
    The ripe suns in this galaxy and
    beyond have their own sense of urgency wasting away.
    Dementia is found there in the air.
Its clarity is specific. It has the concentration
    of the perfect image in focus.
 
The spool under a wishful current.
(of a poet-writer battling depression,
battling on to find sanity but no one
speaks of this anymore). To begin with, you flew away.
Your charm scientific. Your heart is
 
factual. You taught me that. The river falls.
 
You fall. A waterfall in your eyes.
Determined hush falls all around.
The pool is logical but also sinister.
Originally it was wild there and found in a
rural kingdom cometh. The soul
cannot change. Cannot dream. Cannot sustain itself
without the hive. The swarm in
union and within their solidarity
 
comes the wounded. An ill feeling of hurt
as dark as sea. I take the stitches
of this ballroom masquerade party
 
inside out. I don’t want to listen to
this. Hearing my parents argue into
the night. I follow the vibrations of
 
the news scribbling across the TV
screen. I don’t want your glitter. I
don’t want your pain, empty vessel.
 
    Even ripe flowers find a way to exist.
    Pollen and tension has a history that
chases down aural pathways in ancient history.
 
    You were unkind. You did not write
    or call when he went to rehab. I felt
    I could not dream, not sleep anymore.
 
    Had to take the appropriate pill to cure me.
In order not to pursue a road to madness.
 
 
 

​Everything in flight
a pelican,
a dragonfly,
seagulls and thistle seeds,
small
birds that look like swallows.
 
I am grounded
here
with the lizards
and the rabbits,
though at times
one of us leaps
or runs.
 
I am happy here
for a moment
even rooted
like a flower
sending out lavish
calls for attention
and offers
of sweetness
for anyone
who has use for it.
 
 
 

​From this cauldron of conflict
you believe
you have not chosen
you unfurl
the sudden wings of tenderness.

​Not born to be insignificant,
not born to be a servant,
not born to be a supporting actress
I watch this endless male parade
of worship and misplaced importance.
 
I notice at least gay men are affirming
the truth we all live, that men adore
each other beyond reason, pray to God
the father even as He will sacrifice his own
son, even as death and nirvana
are the pivot of all spiritual lives.
 
In my long life I have not met
a single man who has treated me
with as much respect as he treats
any other man, no matter how
uncouth or misguided. Now
we live in a culture that sanctions
a man in power who, married
to his third princess, still has license
to voice contempt for women openly.
 
I have heard over and over and over
again how women have only themselves
to blame. They point to Eve as seducer
when all she reached for was a bite
of knowledge and the wish to share.
 
And what of equally endangered
polar bears and jaguars or vanishing
trees that keep allowing us to breathe--
what have they done to deserve blame?
Were they perhaps too arrogant to choose
to be a part of this magnificent
and interwoven world?
 
All I know is how you would like me
better silent
about all this.
 

Keith Burkholder has been published in Creative Juices, Sol Magazine,
Trellis Magazine, Foliate Oak Literary Journal, New Delta Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Scarlet Leaf Review.
He has a bachelor's degree in statistics with a minor in mathematics from SUNY at Buffalo (UB).

Think about this for a moment,
We are forced to believe in religion,
By our parents and society,
Yet, when we are born we have no beliefs,
No beliefs in God and Jesus,
Religion is a choice,
And it should be,
I have never seen God or Jesus,
Have you?
Yet, people are still forced to have a faith in something,
When science is the answer to all of our problems,
Science is realistic,
Religion is a just one big story,
Even well educated people are on the religious bandwagon,
As I have said before, believe in what you want,
It is a free world,
Just try to give science a chance,
It answers questions we may have,
For as long time continues, science will have the answers,
For now just spread goodness when you can,
Or just mind you business,
We need more peace in the world,
Take care and let tomorrow be good to you any which way possible,
Carpe diem.
​