When you question the basics
There's only one conclusion
That we're all separate parts
Of the exact same illusion
(Jerad Hannum)


Sometimes when she sleeps
I trace an outline of an angel wing
Onto her back so when she forgets
What she means, we can sew
On feathers from this city's streets
(Nic Alea)


How many lifeless bodies will we cradle?
How many tears choke back?
Before we are women?
(Dusty Rose)


desire is a silent twist
you're in joplin missouri
the structure unfurls like a broken newspaper stand
the man who once held it
lost everything
(Sam Sax)


I was seduced
I was seduced
Handed what I knew
They said, "thank you for your silence, but now it's time to go."
I was saved
i was saved
By my own memory
I'm anti-sentimental, accidental, it's simple
I forgot what's most essential
(Marika Maypop)


Alone on this lake
We drink the spirit of time
Becoming complete
(Jason Whitacre)


Empires crumble
Like the crumbs from the Cookie Monster's mouth
Poor little puppy
Didn't know how sick he was
Chasing his own tail
Til he found found the scent
Of his doghouse again
(Charlie Getter)


I bounce back
High into the air
As if I'm soaring
But not without
Pushing off the particles
That dare to stand
In my way
(Lindsay Bernard)


From this point forward
My heart is not yours
My organs deserve better
Than to be your awards
(Alex Black)


Sweet sounds of industrial
Waste echo off my pink laced
Satin door opened and closed
By those who scream
Nevermore!
(Toph Baby)


Roll away the stone of your security
And resurrect the poetry
It's coming at you every minute
Death is dumb, there's nothing in it
Lots of books are dead on arrival
We depend for our survival
On the spoken word
You vocalize
It turns into a bird
(Steven Gray)


Poetry is dead: 
consume its corpse.
Rhythm and beats
a dead horse.
Concrete, pissed in
16th Mission
streets
take back the streets
take back the streets
by force!
Don't postpone it
own it this moment
decode it like morse.
Accessible, resurrectable,
scream 'til the throat's hoarse and coarse
of course the inevitable emerges
those urges
to squish spiders,
to pull gum from beneath the seat in front of you and chew it,
to punch somebody in the face because they smell like bleach and burnt rubber,
to shriek at passing cars and at doppler-effecting echos,
to spit,
to laugh,
to cum,
to cry,
to burp,
to flinch,
to sneeze,
to shit,
to eject everything at the same time,
to claw your own eyes out from the inside with little fingers -  scratch - dangle from their sockets and bob up and down, then collapse, mouth open, in the gutter let them kick you, let them kick you, in a puddle of rain and drool and puke growing mold from stagnancy and moisture and buzzing fly's wings and honking horns and pecking pigeons and clicking coffee-and-cellphone-and-cigarette-on-the-way-to-work heels and snapping muni bus lines electric already roots rise from street cracks around the parisitic shadows spread you are spilling pedals wilting and unable to pick them up again and bring the vermin in with you even the fog is angry and so good mourning
let them kick you
let them kick you
you are flowers
left as symbols
of memories
on poetry's grave. 
(Guenivere Q.)


I always buy too many eggs at the super market. Aiming at an unnecessary target, I dream of cotton candy filled fish bowls. 
Perplexing, perpetrating perversions. I seek diversions in compacted cars. Traveling from near and far, how can something so big become a tin can? 
Runaway shoes force a delinquent chase. Aspiring to catch soles, perspiration on my face. Hoping they won't stop running to an unimagined place. I pick up the pace. 
Studying the groovish labyrinths on your fingertips, I swallow your future with a dry throat. Adventures advancing, yet you never forget the footsteps of your ancestors. I end on the bitter sweet note.  
(Sash Tivetsky)


Sip rum with the devil
on the back patio of my mother's porch
it's the only way to understand the boundaries
of good and evil
test the limits of reality while kissing his hand
through plea bargaining
sell my soul for a rewind button
with no return policy
hear the sizzle of humanity sync
to the creaking
of rocking chairs
on wooden planks.
(Estella Barboza)


You say poetry isn't a confessional yet
Why does it feel so good
To drip black drops of sin
Upon repentant pages?
(Maureen Blennerhassett)


How long has it been?
Seems like years...
Since you lay in my arms
in tears...
You're so sorry you said
in my bed
You never thought you'd go back,
but you did.
You did...
Now I walk in my pain
feeling disdained
Sometimes sleep
in the park, hugging
the dark-
ness
There is no one to
talk to
No one who loved me
more then you did
No one who understood
quite like you
No one I trusted
more than you
How long has it been
since you went back to him?
Often I wonder how
we might have been.
And crawl to my bed
feeling insane
and wake in the morning
so ashamed
and stand at the window
watching the rainfall
and asking:
How long has it been
since you lay in my arms?
How long has it been
since you lay in my arms?
(Alan Kaufman)


We have reached the atomic state of being
And there we go to smash
These illusions and delusions
Fine, spidery cracking
Into little shards
They will make you bleed
But I know how to sop it up
Mend it with toilet paper and tape
Give me your hand now
(Ginger Murray)


All poetry is discord with the world
The only beautiful thing anymore
(Evan Karp)


Forget yourself for a while and focus
on the symphony
of minds shining with the light of
flimsy fantasies
set on fire
(Nicole McFeely)


Slit a few throats to keep your hands in
Do what you feel
Do what you must
1,000 coats are still too few if you are still too cold
We are still here.
Hands over ears, Hands over eyes
and say that again
1,000 mouths won't be enough
if they are still not hearing
poetry is dead
(Chris Peck)


Secret Silliness (silence) Enhanced for Secretarial Porpoises Per San Francisco Bay

Don't give up, we tell ourselves

We tell ourselves lots of things

Sitting in these North Beach dungeons
Tongue tied to the roots of our teeth
Fascinated by fractured fingers
Flinging our impoverished selves
These telling technologies digging ditches
In the midst of apocalypse
(Charles Kruger)


We've dug deep our heels
in the last unsilenced basement,
Turned it up louder
when implored to speak easy
Sat huddled 'round
the smoldering last broken pieces
and dared dream this spark
might set the city on fire
again.

Here at the confluence
of threadbare ambition
Between cheap intoxicants
and dispassionate professions
There's real work to do.
And it'll take a lot more
than our ordinary deficit attention
To cut through the white noise
of competing intentions,
A chord to ring out
Shattering sleep from dead eyelids,
And a word printed bolder
than the blackletter headlines
this morning
that claim poetry is dead.
(J. Brandon Loberg)

This is an unsung song
Sung from the severed tongues
Of the children born on the Eve of Adam's bomb
Who say that poetry is dead
Poetry is dead and gone