A Poem by John W. Sexton

Arriving at Platform 7

consciousness
locked in the ground
mudfish

             leaf-veins . . .
             Shiki perceives the folds
             for an origami universe

Lucifer climbs
the in-pipe . . . attaches
a gerund to is

             the Originals
             were burdened with souls and God . . .
             clones reclaim Eden

its thoughts light
its voices quickened
. . . the helium mind

              a storm arriving
              at platform 7 . . .
              we board the rain

John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is the author of five poetry collections, the most recent being The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry, 2013).  He also created and wrote The Ivory Tower for RTE radio, which ran to over one hundred half-hour episodes from 1999 to 2002.  Two novels based on the characters from this series have been published by the O'Brien Press:  The Johnny Coffin Diaries and Johnny Coffin School-Dazed, which have been translated into both Italian and Serbian.  He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem "The Green Owl" won the Listowel Poetry Prize, 2007.  Also in 2007, he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

A Poem by Michael Lee Johnson

Tequila

Single life is-tequila with lime,
shots of travelers, jacks, diamonds, and then spades,
holding back aces-
mocking jokers
paraplegic aged tumblers of the night trip.
Poltergeist define as another frame,
a dancer in the corner shadows.
Single lady don't eat the worm . . . beneath the belt, bashful, very loud, yet unspoken.
Your mind lacks verb, a traitor to your skin.




Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era:  now known as the Illinois poet, from Itasca, IL.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 750 small press magazines in 27 countries.  He edits 8 poetry sites.  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  From Exile to Freendom (136 page book), several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 70 poetry videos on YouTube.
Links:  http://poetryman.mysite.com/
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/promomanusa
https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos
http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000058168/The-Lost-American.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-American-Exile-Freedom/dp/0595460917

Two Poems by Ken L. Jones

The Meaning of My Work is

Midnight was just barely a teenager deep below the midsummer nights
Simian fathoms screaming in pain as its blur of neon got into my bones
Until all was graffitied and weightless even as it turned on the tarnished TV
That I used as my inky spirit guide as I dreamt about horses and fragments of all kinds
In my zombie spacecraft that made all the MacDonald's become abandoned in a good time



Let's All Start at the Beginning

Eggs become a moonlit desert with just an imperial wave
While sprawled seductively upon a floating castle
That is tethered to a giant serpent
Until we are ushered to a poolside of limp clocks
And butterfly, butterfly train wrecks
With the help of gravity where morphine
With a whole lot of moving parts becomes an old story
With so many moving parts told by empty hotel room mug shots
That are a thing of beauty that is until they foam
And turn into the kind of absinthe helicopters
That can take us to the mermaids in the reefs
Where I will ride bareback on my dolphin like astonishment
While talking on the phone with the day that my life loses its lease



For the past thirty-five years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of poetry.