Saturday, December 28, 2013

Word Picture

by Kevin R. Carr

A man walks
 and stops

A man sees
 old shoes
 on pavement

A man strides
 early evening
 toward distant
 shadow trees

A man steps
 on grass
 gazing from
 deep places
 in thought

A man enters
 leafy shade
 staring inward
 and wonders
 what missing
 things are

A night stretches
 ever deep
 draws emotion
 from wells
 dead calm
 oil smooth
 iron cold

A man touches
 gnarled wood
 sagging branches
 humid soft
 waving heavy
 sodden weight

A man wades
 grasping weeds
 tangled feet
 slow advance
 intense quiet

A man sits
 watching weary
 halting movement
 feeling still

A man looks
 out under
 gray gloom

A man rises
 and walks


 KRC(1996)

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Note to Self

by Jefferson Hansen

when a wish
can fall to dust
and a cry spindles
up into the grey

my answer
needs to be —

I am here, now

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Two Drawings

by Walter Savage


Jazz


At First Glance

 Jazz was done entirely with Sharpie colored pens and At First Glance, pen and Sharpies. 

__________________________________

W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and artist who now writes and draws full time. He is the author of six books and uses his art to design the covers of each (wjacksavage.com.) Jack is a St. Paul native and graduate of Brown Institute, Mankato State University and received a Master's Degree in Telecommunications and Film at California State University Los Angeles, where he taught film studies for six years. He and his wife Kathy (from Edina) live in Monrovia, California.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

from "Espials"

9

by Felino Soriano

your capItalized logic
seers scented entropy
into paradigms of internal
signatures, the others’ and
their theories impose overweight
constructs immutable in
comparative concerts—the
tones—all very interpretive
interesting intimate as
the images of hands on
sounds, grasping communication
in the warming of interrogating
rhythms

___________________________


Felino Antonio Soriano’s work finds its foundation in created coöccurrences, predicated on his strong connection to various idioms of jazz music.  His poetry appears in varied publications with recent poetry collections including Of these voices (whitesky ebooks, 2013) Pathos|particular invocation (Fowlpox Press, 2013), Extolment in the praising exhalation of jazz (Kind of a Hurricane Press, 2013), and the collaborative volume with poet, Heller Levinson and visual artist, Linda Lynch, Hinge Trio (La Alameda Press, 2012).  He lives in California with his wife and family and is the director of supported living and independent living programs providing supports to adults with developmental disabilities. Links to his published and forthcoming poems, books, interviews, images, etc. can be found at www.felinoasoriano.info.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

The Altered Scale Blog Will Cease Publication on 12/31

The Altered Scale Blog will cease publication on December 31, 2013. It has served its purpose in terms of getting AlteredScale.com off the ground.

AlteredScale.com will continue as an annual. The next publication date is September, 2014. Submissions are open until the end of May, 2014.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

on top of ol' amoeba


by Jefferson Hansen



 

DeadBait & LiveMeat

by Dan Ryan

Desolate solitude
on the far side of something terrible.
Apparitions of poverty creep in.
Doubt creeps in.
Que es la vida – what is life?
La vida es dolorosa – life is pain (Noble Truth #1)

To make matters worse
     The dog ate my homework and the pig ate my pizza

I suffer from ortographobia
     Yet pursue inner peace through impulse purchasing

                                                             I fear all
good deeds lead to heaven which doesn’t
exist I’m worried about that Where
will I go when everything turns
black and I can’t lo       cate
my manifest destin     y
The church promi
ses a free gps pre
-programmed to
god               but
I don’t attend Do
I tempt fate Wh
at should I do
when you
consider
every
ones
fate
is
to
be
com
e a co
rpse ac
cording to
Kobo Daishi

                      ?  

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Concept Score #32



Concept Score #32

poem by Jake Marmer
piano improvisation based on poem by Alon Nechushtan


the line of thought
red
    clown-like
slips  if only
to embrace its diplopia
both hands
playing windshield, what
you, earnestly, discussed as ground
rules, arrangements, anonymity
                  chopped evenly with serrated
breath,
then
                  looking for ideas
you’re tracing
the backwash

like an oceanographer

___________________________


Jake Marmer is a poet and performer. His poetry-music-improv record Hermeneutic Stomp (Blue Thread Records) was released in 2013, and first poetry collection, Jazz Talmud, was published by Sheep Meadow Press in 2012. Currently a doctoral candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, he frequently contributes to the Forward and Tablet Magazine, and has recently co-hosted North America’s first Jewish Poetry retreat at the KlezKanada Festival. For more information, see http://jakemarmer.wordpress.com.

Alon Nechushtan is a NJ-based pianist whose album ‘Words Beyond’ (Buckyball Records) won the Independent music awards Best Jazz Album of the Year in 2012.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

The Empty Bell

by Howie Good

No spring this evening
It is indeed autumn that returns
Face diluted in water

The lights are all out
Nothing stays anymore
Not a footprint
Nothing but blue spots in the corner of a sheet
The color which night decomposes

Rise up carcass and walk



Source: Index of first lines in Pierre Reverdy, Selected Poems (1969)

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Kawa-uso

by Holly Day

the otter in the
water chirps soft
in time to the movements of  its
body as it holds tight with its nails
to the rocks to keep
from being swept away by the rain.

it has made its home in
the dark corner of
the river, here, where the rocks hide
long gray crayfish
tails curled beneath their bodies as if
to hide
the parts that taste best.

_____________________________

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes for the Minneapolis school district and writing classes at The Loft  Literary Center. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Slant, and The Tampa Review, and she is the 2011 recipient of the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize fromBarton College. Her most recent published books are "Walking Twin Cities" and "Notenlesen für Dummies Das Pocketbuch."

Terrence Folz Reading From "Bunt Burke"

  Terrence Folz's chapbook  Bunt Burke will appear from The Circulatory Press in August 2021. The above film features him reading some o...