Jennifer Thompson
Tom Savage
Sam Vaknin

Jennifer Thompson

Lead a Normal Life
after Peter Gabriel

You rest
imprisoned
above the Pacific's obeisance,
green and white, frigid,
slavering over the rocks
at the tower's foot.
You can see whales from here,
says another patient.
Your mother denounces this lie.
You lie still in your cot,
bag of books and clothes untouched,
head and jaw aching
from the twenty-fourth current
to stream through your blackened brain.

Deaths and flawed resurrections
mark off the days.
Some darkness bars your way back,
blotting out the memory of the night sky
and the cold, salt-laden air.
Your soul lingers in restraints.
Trays pass; you choke over them.
You trace patterns on the yellowed wall,
cringe from the spitting scream
of your inner Stalin.

You want to lead a normal life.
People say, with a certain facile philosophy,
"Well, what is normal, really?"
Not this ache, these walls,
the ocean with its harvested whales
seen through shatterproof glass.
You want to slip between
flesh-and-bone bars.
You want to hold a knife
without longing to cut your throat;
You want hunger, desire,
to want at all.

Copyright © 2005 by Jennifer Thompson

The Meteorologist

Her mood swelters, oppresses
but does not break.
Hours ago she slung the worn bedclothes
to the floor.
His face is flushed. Sweat trickles
between his shoulder blades
gathers at the small of his back
his briefs are unpleasantly damp there.
The waistband strangles his bowels which
clench a warning.
She drifts from the bedroom
but then just crouches
actually crouches
by the window
not at all like a bird
like a mad naked scrawny woman
hair knotted with curses
gaze fixed on the closed blinds.
She rests her chin on her knees.
He feels her hating the blinds.
The walls themselves glow with rage
disappointment.
As the sun sets
he watches thin bands of light
slide across her cheek.

Copyright © 2005 by Jennifer Thompson

Three West:
A Psalm

You forced the bud. Yellow stamen-dust
gilds your fingers. I, decked in purple
long to fall.

Your gifts and thefts alike are arbitrary.
You have gathered to yourself all that is good
fruit-heavy and sun-warm
and I -

Steal my spirit, thief. My tears are warm
on my warm cheeks as I pray to be taken
here as I lie.

Copyright © 2005 by Jennifer Thompson

Contributor's Note: I received my Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Irvine, and am currently an assistant professor of humanities at Embry-Riddle University, where I teach creative writing, Holocaust studies, and world literature. I was diagnosed manic-depressive in 1997, and the attached poems represent some of my attempts to come to grips with the disease.

Tom Savage

The Thief of the Heart

The sands of Mecca shape a rose.
The horny unicorn climbs a tree.
They drowned her and carried her away.
But he clasped the rose tree in his right hand.
The Caliph awaits his suitors.
There is no such rank or title.
The moon tips the cypress of proposal our way.
Who calls himself a prince has hunted down
The violinated commandments of the rose.
Seek him our with scimitar-shaped thorns.
A pearl to every guard who fishes on the air.
Through a tigers' tunnel there's a key to seventh heaven.
The rose persists. Turned lilly-white or carnation-red.
Build me an army inside your walls by casting your clothes aside.
At the Cavern of Enchanted Trees
The Valley of Fire sends out smoke signals
On the flying carpet of your tongue
An old man of midnight sees.
At the Abode of the Winged Horse
You can dry off from your fight with that undersea dragon.
If you feed a magic apple to a fisherman, he'll sprout roses.
At the Citadel of the Moon,
We all have but one moment to live.
Out of the clouds comes the courier of the dawn.
 

-Written while watching The Thief of Bagdad, 1924. Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

Copyright © 2005 by Tom Savage

Woman Without Camelias Breathes

If your life is a circus
When is the elephant ballet?

Don't write this line again.
It's already in front of your eyes.

Stars eat their lights out
For the night.

This poem doesn't end here
Whether you like it or not.

The line endings are on strike.
You'll have to invent your own
Enjambments before arrival.

The poem is a young, male lover,
Neither your mistress nor your wife.

This poem is obsessed.
It's author has taken a vacation.

The poem wants you
To make up it's mind.

This poem's double
Refuses to be reborn.

The content insists on
A divorce from its form.
Can you oblige, quickly?

The ink and paper are here.
Just sign them, please.

Copyright © 2005 by Tom Savage

Contributor's Note: I've had eight books published and appeared in many magazines. Ten years ago, while recovering from brain surgery, I committed myself briefly to a mental ward while suffering from involuntary hallucinations partly under the influence of a medication called serzone and partly due to the surgery aftereffects. My poetry has appeared in the New York Times, Hanging Loose, TheWorld, and many other places.

Sam Vaknin

The Miracle of the Kisses

That night, the cock denied him thrice.
His mother and the whore downloaded him,
nails etched into his palms,
his thorny forehead glistening,
his body speared.
He wanted to revive unto their moisture.
But the nauseating scents of vinegar
and Roman legionnaires,
the dampness of the cave,
and then that final stone...
His brain wide open,
supper digested
that was to have been his last.
He missed so his disciples,
the miracle of their kisses.
He was determined not to decompose.

Copyright © 2005 by Sam Vaknin

Contributor's Note: Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101.


Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com