With All The Slimy Bases Covered A Review of : Tales From A French Envelope (Catfish McDaris & Craig Scott) By: Frankie Metro

… If money is an iguana eating a jackalope, as Catfish Mcdaris suggests in the short prose piece: Jackalope Condoms, then free books are either named Ana or Jack, and have furry horns sprouting from their scaley spines. Allow me first off, to thank Craig Scott for the new bundle of joy I received in the mail today. Children like this live in the French Envelope Catfish & Craig left out to dry in the deserts of the Independent Press Community.

Warning: Don’t approach this book looking for new spiritual landscapes or cognitive plateaus. Instead, floss your gums regularly, start now if you have to, and be open to a series of prods and pokes.

As you progress, there is a pungent smell of burning meat, or a burning sensation, possibly in the pubic zone if you’re that type of person, that follows you around the house, even after you put the book down. Sometimes the meat is sweetly rancid:

Deep & Deeper
(C.M.)

“The Commanche was fanning that burning meat and chanting. Before long I felt this strange sensation. You know how your hemmorhoids burn, after too many hot peppers? That’s about as close as I can come to an explanation…”

Sometimes the burning is painfully familiar:

Fuck You
(C.S.)

I’m a suicide.
You’re my letter.

You don’t care for responsibility.
You never inform the authorities
of my death.
You meet some douchebag in a bar and
elope to Vegas.

My bones mail you
my middle finger.

Catfish McDaris’ poem:

Willy Gets Chilly

is like a stash of retrospection, finally discovered bobbing along in the reservoir of your toilet, or a dopemine rush that’s justified, tried and true.

Creepy Uncle Willy was the last resort,
but my parents had to go to a funeral,
getting into my pajamas, I noticed girlie
books in the bathroom, I was soon
walking the monkey, Uncle Willy yelled

You naughty boy, now I’m going to spank you…

Blood exploded from his nose & his eyeballs
rolled white like hard boiled eggs, the cops
came & called my folks…

Everyone’s heard the creepy Uncle story; some have written the creepy Uncle poem; (C.M.) exorcises the creepy Uncle demons:

…the preacher asked if anyone
wanted to say a few words, I stood & said
he was right, it did hurt him more than me.


Page 43’s poem:

Godzilla Doesn’t Play Butler
(C.M.)

makes the completely ludicrous seem completely feasible, and not only that but also tactfully orchestrated:

I took off all my
clothes & stroked
my lizard until it
resembled Godzilla
stomping Tokyo

Walking into the living
room I set the cake
on the coffee table
I heard a woman
say “Damn”

I asked “Anyone
want meat with
their cake?” a few
hands went up…

while Catfish’s: Tiger Skin Blues is a place where the only difference between magic squirrels and tree rats is the size of your twig & berries:

“Cruz’s heart was broken into a million pieces. Her tears could’ve filled the Gulf of México. Antonio couldn’t survive on ordinary cat food; he hit his eighth life quick. Cruz had him made into a rug and there she slept, until she died of boredom and a lonely heart.”

Ah, Southwest Catfish Cassady & The Bob Dylan Pig Truck Blues…Catfish seems to always be in a race with death; not the death of the body, but the death of the self-image, immersing himself in pig shit and hot sauce on occassion, and hauling ass to Tucumcari or bust.


Taking Down The Shakedown
(C.M.)

is vigilante justice/México City standoffs on public transit/bagmen/cold earth/a hot day/and no supervision:

The México City pickpockets
worked the luxury buses in
wolf packs, razor blades
concealed between fingers

Swift dips of eagle talons
into purses & wallets,
handing off to second men
the watchers ever vigilant…

On page 55, you find that

There’s No Cure For True Love
(C.M.)

and this is an adverse reaction to domestication; an unspayed, unneutered, ill-tempered jackalope, with two hyper-active sex organs, who cares nothing about the topic:

“You ask what would reduce a man to such worm like behavior? Did she have beauty, intelligence, a great body, a pleasant personality? No, an emphatic no, to any of those good qualities. She was a cunt in every sense of the word. She squandered his hard earned money, cheated with every man stupid enough to screw her. She had body odor and bad breath…”

When you’re finally:

Face To Face

with his contribution to this book, the color coated, hairy flavored slime trail it’s left on your tongue is hard to describe, but in the company of Catfish, you find out Jeffrey Dahmer’s been standing across the page, and you’ve traveled just a stanza or one paragraph too far down a dark alley.
* * *

You turn the corner, and Craig Scott’s portion starts off like a free dance at the strip-bar, followed by a private show wth no panties or bra.

The poem:

Bachelor Party Guidelines

reads as a continuously revised string of advice, completely unheeded of course, but unabashedly acknowledged all the same:

You can impregnate,
but make sure it doesn’t
come to term.

You can bring it to term,
but don’t claim it
as your own.

You can claim it as your own,
but don’t spend any time
with it…


The Other
(C.S.)

is a full scale model of the late Todd Moore in drag, a hairy kneed poem with silk stockings and a .38 Snub-Nose…holy, ripped, ready for action:

Don
was too
busy
staring
at Petal’s
tits
to notice
her pulling
the 38
snub
out from
under
the pillow.
One was
half
the size of
the other.
Her nipples
got hard
when she
shot him
in the
balls

Craig seems to pry his characters from the steel reinforced confines of oversized tuna cans in some instances; cans containing wet pink flesh, cans with serrated chew marks on the label, cans with chunks of stem cells… chaotic, suck-fucking hybrids that blame their idle hands, which never fully developed.

He sleeps with would-be assassins when The End is near:

“My left eye feels like a balloon filling with water. We fight and fuck and ignore the cat vomit in the bed…”

giving them the choice of either the crow’s nest or the wet spot in the bed.

By the time you’re left with the question:

Why
(pg. 156)

she is the only answer you have left:

why is it
she’s had tits since 12
known how to suck a dick since 13
how to eat pussy since 9…

why is it
you haven’t known her forever
but yet you have

She is tucked neatly at the slimy base of a French Envelope. There is still time to save her, before the glue really dries…

Simply Brutal Series featuring: Michele McDannold III. OF III.

from THE DEATH BOOK

POEMS TO CELEBRATE MY FRIENDS, PEOPLE I KNEW OR HEARD OF, AT LEAST ONCE, AND THEN THEY DIED OR WILL DIE AND I WANNA BE PREPARED:

“For your information gangsta poetry in this country isn’t Bukowski’s invention, it’s mine. I’ve been making this kind of stuff since 1970 give or take. And, it has nothing to do with Bukowski’s style or subject matter. Bukowski was the pornagrapher of pussy and a damned good one at that. I’m the pornographer of violence.”
-TODD MOORE-(www.m-etropolis.com/wordpress)

stop sucking on Todd Moore's Dead dick

ode to the bullet-wielding
gangster
dillinger dogma
poems I don't get
but ur take of them
is worse
or ur take of him is worse
I guess
I never knew him
or you
but feeling fully qualified
to pass judgement
in poetic form

I find it
sickening
pathetic
and sucking his dead dick
well,
it's just in bad taste
(end poem)

the corpse of Tim Murray

still has reddish hair
and wears glasses
like heaven in a cup
smells like pumpkins
and whip cream
don't judge me for
sniffing his sweater vest
i'm lost on the highway
between Popesville
and Agnostica
Broncho John
is weeping




when you're gone

let there be hamsters for all
and depends undergarments
just in case
may there be poetry grenades
sloshing around the room
til we're all sloshing
to that private tune
that drives Danny's Big Banana
I have never sent a poem that rhymes
to anyone else that matters
and when you're gone
I still won't tell
that one secret
but I can't speak for that
guy sleeping/not sleeping
on the chaise lounge
he
will probably tell

Simply Brutal Series featuring: Michele McDannold II. of III.

this bored housewife

plots death by poison on odd days
mornings only
when the kids are gone
and the crock pot's set to high

cuts the hair from your head during the full moon
binds it with duct tape to a piece of ham
while the street is dark
and the dirt is warm

handles
rather than controls
the desire for witch-inspired zombie sex

urgharghblah

this bored housewife
has a recipe book
that's time-locked
with a tequila switch

she's just waiting
waiting
waiting
til she can't anymore


Epic

my epic poem is a list of groceries
sorted by things I can buy
generic and not
the hero is a box of Pop-Tarts
because let's face it
nobody else can get the filling right
you get the picture?

next to my bed is
the stepford wives
ear plugs
and a basket of lubes, lotions
and creams
for not having sex
for not looking younger
for not healing
the hole in my head

Note to the Better Half

I miss the smell of mass deviation
of latino santa sweat
and artie's chronic n gun oil
I miss the pulse of drunk transit at 3am
black hookers in white wigs
and white pimps in purple satin
I miss the homeless junkies
and the rest stop houses
with sound systems
too big to fit
and fuckers too drunk to shoot, not fuck
I miss the rain that flooded my car
the stink that followed
and the body parts that washed up

yes, I miss being in love
on the run
and even pawning my only diamond
someday soon they'll be a note void of tears
and dinners in the icebox
that freeze a lot better than I do.

Simply Brutal Series featuring: Michele McDannold I of III.

Cash Business

Don’t send it
the waxing poetic
is a stick fuck
if I imagined in colors it would be
black and blackblue
if it had feelers, velvet
and punk renditions of showtunes
it’s true that I paint it up to avoid reality
and it’s ugly like that
I suppose that’s the point
in the end
everyone pays for truth


Trick

We were loaded...
skimmin’ down Morton Ave.
at 4 am,
searching for the end of the fog
where the neon light calls
Takhomasak

you had a counter seat,
cup o’ Joe,
the crumbled-up bag at your feet.
laughin’ through your story
drop of coffee in your `stache.

“... so he pulls up and says
he’s got a bag of canned food for a date.
Ain’t that shit funny?
Check it out! I ain’t kiddin’.”

Juicy brown spit flying on pocket amusement.
(Flo caught it on her uniform sleeve, mortified)

A split-second, maybe a full-tick–
a moment between those two
like the liquid in the torpedo shaped plug in lights
blob o blob, floating, suspended.
Realization squirming up uncomfortable mechanisms
of fate blown anguish.
Curtains up. Omega!

I wasn’t sure who to feel sorry for.

disclosure

doesn't it just suck shit that I am not cool. I am not the idea of your black death suck. there is no breathing demon blood in vain. and, well we don't sell happiness here either. got out of that business long ago, but I do believe in magic and since I can find peace in that joy; silly will do. I think I'll be alright.

Black Friday Specials Featuring Bud Smith

SPOUT


i always wanted a gun
now i got you
and you're a beauty
i aim you at animals,
then drag them
into the fire
you set,
inside the cage
of my ribs

BY A FIRE


your cheerleader prayers
and your communion song book
adorned with medals of war devoid of bluebirds
i'm a dog of mud puddles
through my teeth slip a cry
that no museum preserve
that no cop shine his shine light
that no devil open like a can of tuna
to suck the fish water into a mouth wide cursed
your kiss of gold sets my skull into decision
that in this place i am settled
in this place i am yours
shake your pom poms on me
sing your song of God way out of key
pet my wet fur and scratch the fear
from behind my supersonic ears
I am a transporter of insects
and a sideline watcher of your gift of fire








DEFENSE MECHANISM


when things hurt it’s easier to be funny
than to sit there dying with everybody looking
all the glory of medicine and the threat of rain
the mice in the walls &
overtime parking fines unpaid
why does everybody have a balcony
to watch us waiting for them to leave?
why don’t we put up some iron ore curtains
to keep out the neighborhood radiation?
I get the feeling that if the fire is not in your apartment
it's going to be everywhere else
so lets just stay in and be private
rather than turn to ash.
when things hurt it’s easier to be funny
than to sit there dying with everybody looking

LOVE

I will be your only friend
if everybody else puts their hearts back in their suitcases
I'll still be on the lawn
with a space for you in my arms and a notch for you in my spine
I don't blame you at all
though it'd be easy to accuse you of rain clouds and extinctions
you're a comfort to me
when everybody else is a scab that I can't help picking til it's a scar
you know a lot about my dog
and I fed your cat while you were away even though I wanted him to die
love is a battery jumped by another car
that finds you on the side of the road
love is the frozen meat thawing on the counter
love is the search for missing persons after major disasters
though common sense says that they are dead
no common sense in love

I'll take/save the change out my pockets
and I'll buy you a bulletproof vest for judgement day stitched with roses
I'll paint the hospital bed your favorite color
and then I'll burn it so that you'll never have to lay down and squirm
I'll catch all of the birds and make them into a blackbird pie
but you won't have to eat it if you don't like. just know why.
you're a saint in my nights
when everybody else has devoured my birthday cake
love is the guesstimates that are somehow 100% accurate
& allow the sun through the fog to come back up
love is a broken window that we climb through
to get out of the goddamn rain
love is getting stabbed in the neck and having somebody
to close the wound with their mouth
so that you can never die.

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3 poems by: Jason Ryberg

A LITTLE TOO MUCH TO DREAM
LAST NIGHT (OR, MUSTA THOUGHT
IT WAS WHITE BOY DAY)

with apologies to The Electric Prunes,
Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Ferlinghetti


She
with the ab-so-lutely hypnotic,
interstellar-black hair

and maliciously exposed mid-riff

(meaning that radioactive area between,
but also including,
upper-most hip bone
and lower-most rib)
asked me to stay
past last call, promising

to spirit me away
from it all (meaning, I suppose,

my otherwise meaningless life

of de-meaning, semi-skilled toil

and celibate drudgery)
to some as yet undisclosed,

but no doubt, exotic locale
for a volatile psycho/

sexual concoction which she guaranteed

would be equal parts intensive research

into the depths of human depravity

and dogged dedication to exhausting

my mental,

physical and

moral reserves.

Whereupon,
I immediately snorted awake,
hours later,
sprawled Golgotha-like
on my living room floor,
my moment of truth
too good to be anything but

a cruel, booze fueled dream,

an alcoholic alien abduction
leaving me
bedraggled

and discombobulated in its wake,
wearing nothing but

a t-shirt and a single black sock (with

big toe protruding through
as if to say “helllooooooo”),

front door and fridge wide open,

every light in the house on
and blazing

like a mid-day desert sun,

one hand clamped on some kind of

suspicious looking Dagwood sandwich,

the other around a half-full beer,

a movie blaring out
into the early morning dark

for all the good people
of the neighborhood to hear,
someone sinister saying,
"shiiit, he musta thought
it was white boy day.
It aint white boy day,is it?

"Naw, man,
it aint white boy day."




GENERATION “WHY ASK WHY”


Oh, by the way,
I ran into an incarnation
of The Buddha the other day
(and a strange variation, I gotta say),
with a mile-high pompadour,
razor-sharp chops and wrap-around shades.
He was comin' out of Davey's Stagecoach Inn
as I was walkin' in like it was fate that
we were somehow supposed to meet, there-in,
('cause I could see it in his eye
and I could tell he could see it in mine).
So, I said I'd been contemplating, lately,
the idea of entering a monestary,
at which he smiled, placidly, in that placid,
all-knowing Buddha sort of way, and asked me "why",
to which I artfully parried with "perhaps
you could first provide an example of what
a proper response might sound like"
but he just replied with "there are no proper
or improper answers, only
the questioning and the answering,"
to which I then said, "purple,"
at which he smiled again and, with what I'd swear
was a tear forming in the corner of his eye, said,
"very wise, little cricket, very wise."
So, of course I shot him where he stood
(you know, just to watch him die);
the Great Modern American Mantra repeating
happily ever after in my mind,
"Why ask why,
why ask why,
why ask why?"




I CAN NEVER REMEMBER EXACTLY

Sometimes, when,
for no reason at all, even,
I'll just bolt upright
(like I been on the road too long
and almost nodded off at the wheel
and then suddenly snap to)
from one of those
deep-freeze sleeps of the senses
that the modern man-in-the-street
seems to be so prone to,

somewhere along the tracks
of my (admittedly extreme) elliptical path
around The Creator's mountain-top tower,

I can never remember, exactly,

whether I'm supposed to be
playing the part of a mouse
in the eye of a falcon,
a falcon in the eye of a storm,
a storm in the eye of The Creator
(of all mice, men, falcons and storms),

or, the "I" somewhere near
the core of a poem
(about a guy, by the way,
that's dreaming he's a mouse
(that's dreaming
it's just some guy,
not a king, not a big shot, not a hero,
just a regular dude)),

a poem forever revolving
around its own foci
like a stake that it's been chained to,

a poem that, according to
the latest estimates and indicators,
will more than likely remain,
for the rest of its unremarkable life,

completely unnoticed.




BIO:
Jason Ryberg is the author of seven books of poetry,
six screenplays, a few short stories, several angry
letters to various magazine and newspaper editors,
and a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper
that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel.
He is currently an artist-in-residence at The Prospero
Institute of Disquieted Poetics and an aspiring b-movie actor.
His latest collection of poems is Down, Down and Away
(co-authored with Josh Rizer and released by Spartan Press).
He lives in Kansas City, Missouri with a rooster
named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe.
Feel free to look up his skirt at jasonryberg.blogspot.com