Category Archives: POEMS

colombine et pierrot

hey, tupelo mind
i strongly suggest you leave
i strongly suggest
you seek another mire
to plink your rotting lyre

hey, tupelo mind
i’ve scraped away your sweet songs
to find naught beneath
i’m allergic to honey
don’t make me your sex bunny

hey, tupelo mind
you cannot woo me
schtum, with roses ‘tween your teeth
do you believe i fancy
your phyllorhodomancy?

yeah, you strum and you jangle
in your bid to entangle
drying salty tears
with the hem of my slip dress
hey, tupelo mind

i don’t care if you have proof
please throw yourself from a roof
your love isn’t real
you just want to ride my flame
hey, tupelo mind

but love’s like a processed beat
chasing after music’s teat
come back, i need you
hey, pay attention to me
dear tupelo mind

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2019

GUEST POST // A gaze he had to meet by In mind and out

even in this crowded room
it was the type of gaze that filled the air
between them,
it swerved the corners of reality
with tangibility –
he felt it’s whispers wrap the shoulders of his fears
and write a message in the atmosphere
for him to see
the invitation that she
painted there,
in silken threads of space
that she pulled and interlaced with gravity,
electricity,
a reveal of fortune-cookie
destiny,
until it was a gaze he had to meet

by IN MIND AND OUT
© All rights reserved 2019

give & take

you’re god of the gaps
those damned aureate spaces
filled to loathly flush
with tithes from the one true fleeced
who’ve nothing more to offer

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018

TATI’s & TONY’s DEAD POET TOUR // The Quest of the Purple Cow by Hilda Johnson

He girded on his shining sword,
He clad him in his suit of mail,
He gave his friends the parting word,
With high resolve his face was pale.
They said, “You’ve kissed the Papal Toe,
To great Moguls you’ve made your bow,
Why will you thus world-wandering go?”
“I never saw a purple cow!”

“I never saw a purple cow!
Oh, hinder not my wild emprise,
Let me depart! For even now
Perhaps, before some yokel’s eyes
The purpling creature dashes by,
Bending its noble, horned brow.
They see its glowing charms, but I,
I never saw a purple cow!”

“But other cows there be,” they said,
“Both cows of high and low degree,
Suffolk and Devon, brown, black, red,
The Ayrshire and the Alderney.
Content yourself with these.” “No, no,”
He cried, “Not these! Not these! For how
Can common kine bring comfort? Oh!
I never saw a purple cow!”

He flung him to his charger’s back,
He left his kindred limp and weak,
They cried: “He goes, alack! alack!
The unattainable to seek.”
But westward still he rode, pardee!
The West! Where such freaks be; I vow,
I’d not be much surprised if he
Should some day see
A
Purple
Cow!

by HILDA JOHNSON (?-?)
Public Domain Poetry

(and god did nothing)

in darkness he went down
in a braille of feet and saltwater sand
to the sea awayed he
from the so-called promised land

who would be torn if not he for he
for the span of what was and never would be
his tears only added to the plan
a gram worth nothing, impotent man

in silence he laid down
under veil of nori and saltwater cran
to the sea awayed he
from a post-coital life spent in remand

who would mourn if not he for he
for the span of what was and never would be
his fears only added to the plan
a gram worth nothing, impotent man

child of god
he prayed for something good and true
slave of god
swallowed instead by the reckoning blue

in parentheses he drowned
into vale of drib and saltwater dram
to the sea awayed he
from the parochial feckoning hand

who would have borne if not he for he
for the span of what was and never would be
his tears and fears added to the plan
a gram worth nothing, impotent man

child of god
he begged for something good and true
slave of god
swallowed instead by the beckoning blue

child of god
into a sea of no avail
slave of god
to the reckoning sea travailed he

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2019