THE OCTOPUS REVIEW, vol 1 Summer Solstice 2017

Friends,

Here it is, my first attempt at sharing other peoples' work in the space I've occupied alone for so long.

I don't know why I love poetry, but I do and I won't apologize. Dylan Thomas and Jim Morrison kept me sane in high school; Ginsberg, Cummings, Jeffers, Whitman, et al kept me company amid the fraternity/sorority gazes at college; Plath and Sexton kept me real in those unsurvivable 20s; and now I devour every contemporary anthology like it's a HowTo manual for doing neon telekinetic tricks for the unsuspecting public.
With the internet comes the visibility of …just about everything, including poetry. I am blown away everyday by how many of us are writers, and really good, insightful ones at that. I always thought my love of poetry made me special, and that someday I would not just be a poet, but be THE poet of the century. Well…
….I'm pretty assured of my mediocrity at this point, and instead of mourning my own voice, I want to celebrate the many voices reporting on this world w/ their very own tone/pattern/intensity.

So please enjoy:

***************************

This spiral-of-consciousness by Tim Anderson

SLIDESHOW MUSIC

Scar tissue is not always visible.

I was whistling, 

walking the double yellows

down the road to perdition.

At the crossroad

I strolled into the bar

only to find dead ends. 

The waitress strolls up and

sits a bottle of scotch down ,

asking if I would like the

combo platter. 

Served hot she says, 

two whores

a needle

a pipe

with a side of grim.....

sunny side up.

I embrace the shame of life,

the desperation,

the slow desperation

that forces coughed laughter,

buried 

in  the shadow

of neon candle light,

wistful at the depravity 

of Gods lack of a

comprehensive dental plan.

The tighter you hold hands

 with the devil

the closer you feel heaven.

Till you have died

and come back

you can’t truly feel alive.

                                                          

I’m a buy here pay here.          

you work you ride.                             

muthafucker

rent to own

sumofabitch. 

Dreaming 

 next to an ocean,

tossing beans in a pot,

trying not to confuse it

with my ole friend

 Voodoo Karma.

What a day

not to be face up on a gurney,

watching fluorescent lights

rush by,

while being told to

stay awake.

No denying

peace thru acceptance.

I’m busy

tap dancing thru the graveyard

kissing headstones

alone in my thoughts,

sitting on the curb 

of the 7/11

eating hot dogs 

drinking Busch beer

watching cars pull in

and out.

Content with the idea

their thoughts 

are not mine.

**********************

This quandary-of-consciousness by Nate Maxson

Observations Of The Psychic Nosebleed (en media res) 

A continent-sized ice rink,

From orbit it would look like a mirror

Our preservation

Like the pyramids

My parents got divorced in a snowstorm

To clarify,

This backwards reaching riddle

It’s like walking through a tunnel and finding aquarium-cool glass at the end

Blue light piercing the deep swim

Which side you’re on is the second most obvious question that comes to you then

But take notice 

The Minotaur is blind, goggling white eyed and tapping his horns on the labyrinth walls

Wide open

The process,

As a child the big unbeing growls behind you

Its breath the wind on your sails

And then one day you’re set to drift

Where are you?

It’s too bright here

Where is that lingering night-taste of honeysuckle floating in a plastic blue swimming pool?

I was promised

A last swim

I think,

Someday it will begin

To sing me back towards it again           

***************

This stream-of-synesthesia by Tony Moonchild Egler

The Day Breaks

What sound does the Morning make when you do not want to wake?

Is it a drone, or a sigh? A whimper or a cry?  

The Sun is no help. 

It’s light whispers around the curtain and shouts at the floor until it is a cry for help.

I hear the Cats playing at being quiet.

But it always becomes a ruckus romp that demands an eye to open and a shout to bellow.

The Rain tries to sooth with gentle patter on the window and roof.

Until the wind and lightning crescendo in symphonic rage of tempests full and loud.

My Mind drifts in and out of consciousness trying to shut out the world.

Unable to find comfort in the loud pillow as my stubble sandpapers on it’s wooden surface.

Mumbling mental Mantras, calm is restored as sleep’s song plays gently in my frontal lobe.

The brutal clock ever waiting for it’s moment rejoices with it’s demanding call to arms “THE BATTLE HAS BEGUN.”

Stumbling from Bed my feet hit the floor and I am up and ready.

All is quiet  now as the past rain drips, drips in the dim light that shines on slumbering cats at peace now.

****************

This stream-of-clarity by Jill McKee

I thought I was wandering lost for too long. 

Not ever knowing where and when to be whatever it is that is me. 

Surely, I cannot stay in this skin always. Skin is easier to shed then soul. 

My soul is bursting to get out. The taking years are over. 

Let my spirit pour out for all who seek. 

Just don't leave me dry.

***************

If your eyes are getting tired from reading, feast your ears on 14-yr-old Shaya SLAMMING IT here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPJXNaYB9rY

*************

These jabs-of-consciousness by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Skiffle

starting a skiffle band

I strolled down the avenues running a spoon

over a washboard I had found at a garage sale

for nothing 

and the sound was intolerable 

many residents running out to tell me so

how they did not want to join my band

and that I would never amount to anything 

as I played along to their many words of encouragement 

so many singers that no stage 

could ever hold 

us.

Mao Say Tongues

cringe

and your shoulders tighten

you become closer to yourself 

eschew facial reconstruction on principle 

cast spoiled ballots into the waiting 

bone-sex sea

Mao say tongues 

that have yet to be cut out

of willful mouths

this is what I share with you, 

forgoing the handshake 

where fingers meet:

badasses don’t die 

they live on in their work,

confronting the thunder 

of things

with a timeless stalwart

grin.

***************

And finally this clang-of-consciousness collaboration by Lois B., Viktor B., Christopher P., Jessica B. and Hashim P. [aka The Tea House Poets]

I

Rhymeless skies and patient face,

Rhymeless face and patient skies…

Eyeless face and Haitian pies,

Headless lace and shouldered cries,

Breadless case and moldy ties.

Eggless waste and muffled sighs

Telomerase and zipless flies

(when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie),

formless grace and your disguise…snail’s pace for Sons that rise…time and space will recognize…rats who race don’t win the prize.

Tethered wind and watered eye,

Ineffectual chase and disenchanted spies,

Feckless chase and hapless spies,

Hapless chase and spangled guise.

The helplessness they felt their feet / move to food, make of need / the rats who race and win the prize / O graceless chase and spinning wheels / O corner of your copia / O mangled guise and given pause.

II

Fum Fo Fee Fie.

Dyslexic giants now untie!

3alarmfireandthebillygoatskinheadspacemanhoodwink, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, O slimeless guys! O toil! O trudge!

Omunkyspunkandfudgeforthwunkytrademymonkeyforaclunkycarthatsjunkybeerthatsskunkymunkymunkymunky…

tethered, grinned, and soldered I.

Weathered, spinned, and moldered dry.

Walk, don’t run, don’t make me cry!

I’ve got tuna in my eye!

III

Eye to eye and sly and shy

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a guy!

Tethered poems cannot fly!

Loose the panties, don’t stay dry!

Kiss the earth, and ass, and sky!

She had testes! Why God, why?!

IV

Moons and goons and pizza pie, meohmeoheohmy!!!!!

This, the whirls that make me cry…how to make this poem die?

Great Cthulu in the sky, dropping things from way up high…Angry shoggoth can’t wipe his eye, for he’s blended with Cthulu pie!

(Meanwhile Christopher is away, meticulously crafting a telomerase poem)

And the Swedish Chef is somewhere, ridiculously crafting a tiramisu poem!

Hashim Todd Pease has gotta go, g’bye, g’bye!

Urrgrie ferrggen herring pie, Swedish meatballs, let ‘em fly!

Bye bye Hashim, bye and bye.

V

Lest Isaac’s chance of return is high, tomorrow night we’ll all say “hi.”

(Hugs, no petting, at least, I’ll try)

Gushy fountains of my eyes!

We’re adorable, don’t deny!

Now like N Sync says, “Bye Bye Bye”

*************

Well…on that note….

We'll revert back to The Octopus Diary next week with more Adventures in Spirituality. But I want to do this again in the Fall (Autumn) so please get your submissions ready.

Adventures In Spirituality: Eye of Newton, Taint of Gecko

FRIENDS,

Before I regale you with tales of being a scary, sexy halloween witch I have to do my usual prologue of afterthoughts from the previous Adventure.

I told myself I could only write about my spiritual adventures if I could do it respectfully. I don’t know how successful I’ve been with that. Obviously my feelings about organized religion are at a low ebb. I don’t have much good to say about it right now, but I will say this—I’m all for what brings people comfort in their lives. And clearly Xtianity has brought much comfort to many people, otherwise it wouldn’t be so popular.

In my last post I mentioned my older friend who talked me into going to Catholic church with him. He was someone I met at work—a major retailer where no human soul should ever have to spend the bulk of its days—and I’m not sure why we gravitated to each other. He was a 43-yr-old Vietnam vet with severe bi-polar & PTSD and I was a 19-yr-old whose *wisdom* was quickly being erased by *knowledge of the world.*

I made him laugh and he made me feel important. As with school, it was hard for me to get along with co-workers my own age. And I think he felt the same way about the older guys he worked with in the stockroom. There was nothing *inappropriate* about our relationship, but everyone assumed there was, even his family.

If they’d known what we really talked about they’d have been sorely disappointed—books, depression, Vietnam and spiritual beliefs. His description of how the Holy Spirit helped him when he was battling the worst of his mental illness inspired me enough to give RELIGION another try. And though it did not work for me as it had for him, I could never begrudge someone their spiritual medicine.

Of course, when I opted out of going to church with him our friendship also fizzled out. I had to do what was right for me and it was a hard lesson in how spiritual bonds can be stronger than human ones.

*********NOW WHAT YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR***********

Adventures in Spirituality: WICCA aka Witchcraft

If you really are expecting tales of sexy, scary halloween witches, Spoiler Alert: there are none.

Wicca the religion is not like the witchcraft you see in movies or TV shows. No maniacal CGI-type special FX. Real magick is much more subtle and hard to detect. It doesn’t insult your intelligence, it defies it.

I was first introduced to “Witchcraft as a religion” by another friend with whom my bond was brief but had lasting impact. When I was still in high school I chose to walk everywhere instead of drive. Crazy, i know. All the other kids couldn’t wait to drive and I just wanted to walk & walk.

On one of my long walks this car pulled up next to me and the driver offered me a ride home. It was a guy who’d already graduated but I remembered him from school. I rode with him and we had a decent rapport so we ended up hanging out regularly after that.

On one of our hangs he introduced me to the big blue book of witchcraft which was probably the only book of its kind in print in the ‘80s. I took the book home and looked it over. I thought it was neat, intriguing, novel. But I didn’t take it very seriously. There was lots of how to do spells (for LOVE or MONEY); it was all about rituals and the use of props like candles & knives & bowls.

I didn’t see how any of this arcane stuff could be of practical use in the modern world I inhabited. But I liked reading about how magick was used by the pre-Xtian societies in Europe, and how Wiccans worshipped the goddess aspects of nature. And since a lot of people at my school already thought I was a witch, I thought it would be cool to turn them into frogs or slugs…

…but the main credo in the big blue book of witchcraft was The Threefold Karmic Law:

The pre-Xtian version of Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, with the added stipulation that whatever you do comes back to you threefold.

Seeing this repeated throughout the book gave it more plausibility but I still couldn’t embrace Wicca as a “true religion” like my friend did. He was pretty serious about it and would let me in on the spells he did — I remember one money spell he did that involved catching the reflection of the full moon in a bowl of water. It was lovely, and I think he even got the money he’d “cast” for,  but I still wasn’t convinced this was a sound practice. The things I wanted in life were far less tangible than money or love.

My friend & I had a pretty sad falling out (not over Wicca though). In hindsight I realize he was probably a trans female and I found out he committed suicide in 2010. But I’ll always remember him as hugely instrumental in my own quest for knowledge.

Like I said, the years between 18–22 were a pretty reluctant transition from kid to adult. I had my own suicide attempt, a stay in the hospital & it was recommended that I move back home with my family instead of remaining in vagabondage.

Luckily at that time a friend from ballet school had moved back home for similar reasons.  She told me the only thing keeping her going was studying Wicca with a group (coven) in Tampa. I told her I knew a little bit about Wicca and I started going to the Tampa group with her.

It was a legit group—I was expecting a bunch of goth kids with black lips & droopy attitudes. But it was a husband & wife in their 40s, and a few more people of varying ages and genders. The woman in charge (I’ll call her Esmeralda ‘cause why not) was “maternal” and eager to teach us all aspects of Wicca as a philosophy, a religion and a practice in the real world. And she didn’t charge money for it, which reassured me that it wasn’t some kind of scam.

We learned about spells, circles, tools and all the goddesses from different cultures and which aspect of nature each represented, and of course the threefold law was applied to everything we did. One thing Esmeralda specialized in was natural healing. 

We made healthy potions to drink and grew herbs to put in food & incense (this was before all that kind of stuff got heavily commodified by the New Age Industrial Complex, which I’ll definitely mention in a later post). 

Witch Craft is all about healing. It was ancient pre-Xtian medicine. When the Celts or Gauls or Native American or ancient Egyptian peoples were sick or injured, they went to the “witches.” The wise women & men who knew which herbs, flowers, barks, or other natural materials healed which wounds. 

I was initiated into the coven in a detailed ceremony on the Summer solstice. (1990 I think). After that I became more of a “solitary practitioner.” I was busy with work, school and social life but still found time to commune with nature regularly, and to channel my intentions for a better life through the 4 elements.

I would say Wicca as a religion was far more effective at lifting me out of a bad place and putting me back onto a more positive track than Xtianity was. It felt more real to me than praying to a big Daddy-o who thought I was a shitty little sinner, but loved me anyway.

Wiccan philosophy advocates meditations before any performance of spells or circles. Meditating was really difficult considering how stressed out I was back then, but with effort I was able to do it, and even able to reclaim some of the clairvoyant tendencies I had as a young teen. Wiccan meditations are short & direct, unlike the endless meditations practiced in Zen Buddhism (later post).

So the 20s snowballed along crazily, and I disengaged from the active practice of Wicca, but I still held all the teachings & philosophies close to my heart and tried to live by them. When I finally did go to college and had to take a lot of organic science courses, all the things I learned in my Wiccan studies helped me out. And actually Chemistry deepened my understanding of the scientific properties of witchcraft.

I guess all along I had this need to believe that spirit & science were not exclusive of each other; I didn’t need to understand every detail of their synthesis, but I needed to know it was there. It was too much to ask of me to “just have faith in the man upstairs.”  

My step father had jokingly called Tante Venice a witch, and though she never mentioned Wicca explicitly when I visited her, part of witchcraft is developing a divine sense. Tante Venice was a gifted diviner; her method of divining was one that we also learned at Esmeralda’s. 

[SPOILER ALERT: we all have the potential to get in touch with our own divine senses. It’s not a “gift” that only a few are “blessed” with. (have I ever said how much I hate the word “blessed”? I don’t know why, it’s just one of those moist, slacksy words that gets my goat) Anyway…we are all capable of being clairvoyant, psychic, intuitive at the very least. It takes some understanding and effort though.]

Wow, this is LONG. Sorry it’s not a How To Manual for using your magic powers to do neon telekinetic tricks for your friends. If you want to learn more about Wicca the religion see if you can find the big blue book, I’m sure it’s still out there. Or you can message me if you have valid questions. Just, please, disregard all the Hollywood B.S. you’ve been programmed with. 

NEXT TIME, in The Octopus Diary, more exploratory Esoterica, including meeting Moonchild & how much we had in common spiritually, my attempts at anger management through Zen Buddhist meditation, and a psychic safari. Stay with me, y’all.