Oft on a still summer evening I take my doggerel for a long, long walk
looking for rhymes in all the wrong places.
I bring with me a small, beige, plastic bag; when I finish the poem I’m composing I place the poem in the plastic bag and deposit the bag in a trash can deep in the forest
a trash can known to all the local poets a trash can where moon always rhymes with June a trash can where clouds are as fluffy as mashed potatoes.
The challenge over at earthweal is to write about ‘wild stillness”. So this is a poem about an attempt to write a poem. Check out earthweal here for poems that actually meet the challenge!
Scenes from a Restaurant in the Time Between Variants
the guys from finance hold their wine glasses by the stem and every now and again they do that swirl and sniff thing
the girl in the tight dress is two drinks away from feeling comfortable
a couple out on their first date have discovered too late that they have nothing to say to each other the long evening yawns before them
the bathroom door bursts open two bros wearing dark suits and built like refrigerators emerge, their eyes pulsing with guilty energy
it’s happy hour
cocktails are fifty per cent off and all the cocktails have jokey names Insane Moose Milantini Rogue Zamboni
nothing on the menu escapes description the Market Crashin’ IPA has a dry hopped finish with a touch of citrus the Failed Priest Sauvignon Blanc is full bodied with gooseberry and melon grace notes and that beet and feta salad we’ve ordered just happens to be a personal favorite of our waitress she loves that hint of sourness the cheese brings to the dish
she’s a dancer, by the way, lived for a while in Saskatoon.
NaPoWriMo eleven days in and I have nothing to show last night I rummaged through abandoned shoeboxes in the dusty attic of my mind (I apologize for those last two lines) and there’s nothing there, bro there’s nothing there………bro I’m moving in slow mo I’ve lost my mojo my get up and go I have met my Alamo or is it Waterloo? I’m running on empty no quid pro quo NaPoWriMo NaPoWriMo nineteen days to go nineteen days to go.
irritable vowel syndrome
arrhythmia
pain in the assonance
acute enjambment
inflammation of the lower case
latinnittus
typographical dysfunction
fear of sonnets
halibunions
grammaroids
rhymetism
pundruff
the irrational fear
on entering a room
that someone is going to recite
The Lake Isle of Inisfree
in a plummy, orotund
stage Irish accent.
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal.
Your cell phone rings but you’re not listening because you left it in The Fox and Vixen behind the cistern in the last stall on the left next to the condom machine and now it’s 4 am your wife sleeps soundly beside you, in the corner of the room your hangover squats sorting a tray of instruments.
It all began with a few beers, some Christmas Cheer so how did it get from there to here?
Slowly you remember or think you remember….
Did you really poke your boss in the chest and tell him that you know better that you know best?
Did you really down three shots of scotch grab Mark from marketing by the shoulders and proclaim “I love you bro” over and over ‘till he begged you to stop to let go?
And why, why, why did you call that shy Dutch girl from accounting “sad-eyed lady of the lowlands” again, over and over?
You groan inwardly you groan outwardly
and just when you think it could not get worse your hangover stands up and crosses the room carrying what appears to be a small mallet Zooooosh, he enters your head and proceeds to knock on the inside of your skull with that same mallet all the time chanting this manic mantra “deck the halls with human folly Fa la la la la, la la la la”.
Four hours later your wife is shaking you Up you get, she chimes It’s time to do some Christmas shopping! Joe Fresh opens at 9!
We got off the train from Machu Picchu at the Ollantaytambo station, walked up the station road to the town square and came upon this: Mother’s Day in Ollantaytambo. It went on all day – entertainment, raffles, prizes, politicians’ speeches. The ladies seemed to enjoy themselves, although they never clapped once.
Later that evening, we had dinner in the restaurant down at the station and walking home we witnessed this haiku-worthy scene.
that’s what Myron’s mother called him – a reasonable facsimile , of his brother, that is, in that his brother was preternaturally unreasonable if his brother was the weather his mother said he would be deemed unseasonable his actions were incomprehensible reprehensible, irredeemable so based on the principle that no praise is too faint Myron was amenable to being called a reasonable facsimile of his brother.
up on Dunbar Street the barber shops are empty a guy smokes a joint
and laughs hysterically at the blank screen of his phone
when asked if the melon is ripe the girl behind the counter at the Chinese-Canadian Deli sniffs the pale green globe, shakes her head and pointing to a small beige circle, says:
this is the melon’s bottom the melon is ripe, when the bottom smells sweet.
outside the traffic stalls on Dunbar Street
Sherry over at earthweal asks us: “Tell us about the places you hold most dear in the corner of the planet where you live. Share them with us; let us see them through your eyes and your words”.
I live just off Dunbar Street and to be honest, the street is more than a tad prosaic, even if the real estate pamphlets call it “bucolic”. But if I don’t put Dunbar in a poem, who’s going to? So these are two slices of Dunbar life. By the way, for some reason, there are more barber shops on Dunbar than the population could possibly need.
As I watched Oprah, Harry and Meghen standing among the chickens standing at the epicenter of an event that sent shock waves throughout the free world I asked myself this question:
Is a rescue chicken a chicken that has been rescued by people or is it a chicken that rescues people?
I then asked myself another question:
How many Royals does it take to change a light bulb?
and a voice answered:
It’s a journey. They must first acknowledge that the light bulb was the source of the light that previously flooded the room then and only then is change possible.
Looking back now to 2016 when the above was written, it’s hard to believe that slimverse was once an obscure 12 syllable (3-3-3-3) verse form, standing in the shadow of its older sibling, the seventeen syllable (5-7-5) haiku. Now, it’s 2021, year 2 in the age of Covid and slimverse is, well, still an obscure 12 syllable (3-3-3-3) verse form, standing in the shadow of its older sibling, the seventeen syllable (5-7-5) haiku. The above masterpiece was composed by Slim (Volume) and I in the early hours of the morning following “the Poet’s Circle” Christmas Party which was held at the Accomplished Poet’s house. It was a fun-filled night of poetic over-indulgence and excess. The Accomplished Poet (an avid gardener) read a poem about pruning as a metaphor for the editing process involved in writing a poem, it was tortuous but accomplished. The Upper Case Poet had a minor shoving match with our newest and youngest member, the editor of an edgy E-zine called “Capslock Off” – no prizes for guessing what the argument was about. Slim hung around the buffet all night like a dog that had come across a bag of pork chops while walking in the woods, then later insisted that he had an invented a new word : “tumultaneous” – when tumultuous events occur simultaneously. He was met with benign indifference. But that was all back when Slim and I were in each other’s pockets before our estrangement, our parting of the ways, but more about that later…….
Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
God is now on Zoom but his microphone is muted some would say and I don’t dispute it that his microphone has been muted for quite some time now okay, don’t have a holy cow that was a joke but honestly it’s been a while since he spoke those proxy sermons from earnest priests hardly count they can’t hold a holy candle to they don’t have the heft, the clout of his greatest hit the Sermon on the Mount yep, that’s the big one voted top sermon of all time by the folks at Rolling Stone a hard one to follow one that stands alone.
In this issue, our resident royal watcher, Georgina Shallowglass talks about the moment when she realized that corgis are real dogs. She also reports on the launch of Vapid’s new clothing line, DowdyThreads. Yes, now you too can relax like the Royals in our comfortable tweed skirts, twin sets and for those cooler evenings, wooly cardigans. All our tweed skirts have been pre-stressed by English ladies of a settled disposition. All garments have been treated with our trademark fabric conditioner, DampFug, which creates an odor which can otherwise only be attained by spending time in a draughty castle. Georgina reports that, all things considered, the launch went well, although the corgis just would not keep their masks on and in retrospect she should have walked them before the event.
The Crown
Jonathan Shallowpit has been re-instated (it’s hard to find people to work for the wages we pay) and is taking over as movie and television critic while Georgina is on royal duties. He has written a poem about the Netflix series, The Crown. Here’s the first verse:
I’m watching The Crown on Netflix man, those royals are emotionally stunted all the men are pompous pricks the women can only relate to horses.
Steady there, Jonathan!
He also poses the question: Is Wolf Blitzer a robot? Jonathan has observed that Wolf’s expression hasn’t changed in four years.
Travel
We are worried about our travel correspondent, Perry Patetic. We hadn’t heard from him in six months but just recently we got this cryptic dispatch:
I’ve been to Elo I’ve been to Elko What a difference a K makes.
In Perry’s absence, Jordan Shallowditch has taken over travel duties and provides a number of useful tips for those who miss airplane food on where to find salted pretzels and chocolate puddings.
All this and more in Issue 19 of Vapid Magazine where shallow runs deep!
All submissions should be single-spaced. Please use Arial font, Arial is one of our favorite Shakespearean characters.
If your submission is of a religious nature, you may use a Baptismal font.
Please do not use semi-colons, they confuse us.
Poetry:
Please submit a maximum of 6 poems at a time.
Simon Shallowpond, our poetry editor, celebrity watcher and gossip columnist has catholic tastes, but will accept non- religious poetry. He is partial to free verse. “Free verse”, he says, “let it roam, far from all rhyme and reason!” All verse published here at Vapid Magazine is of course “free” in that we never pay for it.
Fiction:
Our main requirement is that all fiction should be totally made up. Please keep it short, our attention span is limited. Endings should be happy.
Non- Fiction:
Here at Vapid, we believe that this category no longer exists.
Visual Art:
Yes, we accept visual art. Our Art Editor, Georgina Shallowglass likes to say “if I can see it, it’s visual”.
When to Submit
Unfortunately, we are not accepting submissions at the moment, our staff is working remotely because of the pandemic which means that they are not doing anything that remotely resembles working.
In these trying times, we would like to encourage all our readers to stay safe and keep it Vapid.
Well, a lot has been happening in the Lads’ Poetry Project since we last checked in, we have two new additions to the project, both from the UK, and both of a quality that the project doesn’t deserve.
First we have Sarah Connor who gives us the view from the other room where there is a party of a different kind going on, find out more here!
Next we we have Kim Whysall-Hammond who gives us the perspective of the only woman in the room (she uses the word “engineer” in a poem which is a fairly rare occurrence), find out more here!
Sarah and Kim are both fine poets, so be sure to check out their other work when you are over there…and remember the Lad’ Poetry Project criteria are simple:
the poem must start with the phrase (or some variation of it): “Me and the lads…” and the tone must be somewhat less than elevated.
The stars are out
luminescence rises
from the surface of the pond
I think of Tommy
Tommy Tumescent and the Hard-Ons
yes you could say
they were big in the fifties
yes you could say
they rose to stardom in the fifties
all pompadour and pointy toe
and to counter this puerile nonsense
I also think of iridescence
finesse
obsolescence.
This is one from the past, Taking part in Open Link Weekend over at earthweal
irritable vowel syndrome
verbose intolerance
arrhythmia
pain in the assonance
acute enjambment
inflammation of the lower case
latinnittus
typographical dysfunction
fear of sonnets
halibunions
grammaroids
the irrational fear
that someone in the room
is going to recite a Robert Service poem.
The prompt from Bjorn over at dverse is “lists”, I thought I would add this one.