Why One Should Avoid Criticising Bad Music Online. By John Doyle

 So anyway, this guy from somewhere behind the former Iron Curtain

is giving me lip in a chat-room for my disparaging comments about Uriah Heep's

1980 opus of shit, namely Conquest :

I explain that even though I'm open-minded

and resist musical snobbery, there are some things that

need to be nuked or sealed in a vault, preferably both;

he gets more colourful in his tone and expletives,

and in the blue-aired threatening haze

emerge underground tunnels where fathers and husbands called Pavel

said do svidaniya

to their stoic wife and shivering son,

and I think maybe he was one of these sons,

his universe beginning and ending

behind a blood-stained biscuit-tin lid;

Pavel

clung one handed to barbed-wire fences,

one-eye glazed and half-open,

his rain-mac concealed in a tributary of West-dribbling blood.

He looked like Warren Clarke staring towards God in Firefox,

starlight and teardrops

a cocktail his boy Oleg smashes right across my face - right now -

Ken Hensley

raising the flag at Iwo Jima

and me stricken at half-mast.

"Bollocks to good taste then!"

I sign off, and hear the German Shepherds'

howl echo through scattered unconquered-starlight,

the mucky squelch of KGB feet

trampling a biscuit tin like it was a Romanov rib-cage -

a falling copy of Conquest at the mercy of their cocked and loaded grins.

Shit; sorry Oleg

John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch. 

He is based in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. All he asks is that you leave your guns at the door and tie up your horses before your enter.

Ryan by John Patrick Robbins

Miles will always separate us my friend and drinks shared in that emptiness speak volumes.

It's all in the words but this friendship I will pen simply that which stands a constant truth.

No matter how it ends I cannot express my gratitude. 

So I will simply toast another empty night as in some shared thought I hope you will do the same.

I have known few friends as I eternally shall count you as one.

                                                 This round's on me.

                           

                                                               John Patrick Robbins

Is the editor of Drinkers Only , The Rye Whiskey Review and Under The Bleachers .

His work has been published with.
Ariel Chart, The San Pedro River Review , Mojave River Review , Blognostics , Sychronized Chaos , Outlaw Poetry Network, Word Dish , Ramingos Porch , Red Fez , Angry Old Man Magazine , Punk Noir Magazine , Horror Sleaze Trash .

He is also the author of Smoking At The Gas Pumps from Soma Publishing .

His work is always unfiltered.

Sugar Coated Shit. by Jon Bennett

It used to bum me out

seeing an old man

alone with an ice cream cone

maybe in a park

maybe on a bench

I'd think

this old man knows

ice cream is

the weakest consolation

for having no one left, or

no one ever

Last night I ate

two pints

and this morning

made sure

not to

look in the mirror.

Jon Bennett writes and plays music in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood.  You can find more of his work on Pandora and Spotify or by connecting with him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jon.bennett.967.

Abandon Ship! by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

I can’t stay here any longer.

I can’t live like this.

With you.

All you do is sit there in your underwear and drink

and write dirty poems

that get rejected.

Or you sleep all day

while other men work.

You don’t like my cooking.

You don’t have to say anything,

I can tell.

And you never talk to me

anymore.

You just sit there in the dark.

Drinking, and arguing with the walls.

You think I’m sleeping in the next room,

but I can hear you at all hours.

I can’t live like this.

I won’t do it any longer.

I tried to get the Rubik’s cube to work,

but the colours wouldn’t

stay together.

Well,

aren’t you going to say

anything?

I tossed the Rubik’s cube on the couch

and went to the fridge

for a beer.

More drinking,

that’s your answer for everything,

drink, drink, drink.

Well, I won’t have it anymore.

She grabbed her suitcase by the door

and slid on her sandals.

Just as the rats

of a sinking vessel

abandon ship,

I’m out of

here.

Does that make you a rat?

I asked

pulling my head out of

the fridge

to peer around

the corner.

   

But she was already gone

and there was nothing

left to do

but

wonder.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, The Rye Whiskey Review, Outlaw Poetry Network, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Dope Fiend Daily and In Between Hangovers.

Boxing With Life by Mendes Biondo

the dear ol’ bukowski was right
stay down
breath
let things go
drink a sip of your own blood

the dude with oiled muscles beat shit out of you
the dude with the red gloves is called life from the folk
that fucking folk claiming his name
it’s life man
it’s an hard motherfucker to face

the dude with those fancy colored boxers will dance
around your body
so stay down
till the gong does not sing its heavenly song
till the hang over is not high into your head

the dear ol’ bukowski found the way to stay sane
you can become a killer
or a rapist
or something really bad
if you don’t stay down
when life hits you with red gloves

most of the time is because of your job
but it could be also friends
or women
or people censoring your works
or folk calling life
while your face is a fucking pollock painting
and you’re trying to stay on your feet

the footlocker will save the situation
you said once
but that bastard is there watching you
and licking his lips every time a sip of blood
of your one
that’s quite obvious
come out from your face like the squirt
of a smashed orange

so stay down
breath
let things go
and open a new bottle of wine
it’s not the key to solve your problems
but it works
while you’re looking for the final gong

Mendes Biondo is an Italian journalist and author. His works appeared on Visual Verse, I Am Not A Silent Poet, Literary Yard, Angela Topping Hygge Feature,  Indigent A La Carte, The BeZine, Scrittura Magazine, The Song Is, Poetry Pasta and other magazines. He is one of the editors of The Ramingo's Porch along with Marc Pietrzykowski and Catfish McDaris. His first book Spaghetti and Meatballs : Poems For Hot Organs,  Is published by Piski's Porch  and available through Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Spaghetti-Meatballs-Poems-Hot-Organs/dp/1948920107

Do You Ever. By Helen Doogan

Do you ever feel
Life is no longer for you
When everything that’s black
used to be blue
When everything that was light
has turned so dark
that night became expected
while waiting for a spark
Like a piece of trash
walking one hundred feet
caught beneath another’s heel
crushed beneath their thundering beat
Like a waste of space
equally taking up room
while others could possibly
only assume,
that it’s you
only you could ever feel
what is so disturbed
that you sit alone
along the curb
Waiting for a chance to go by
Catching all the worlds deep sighs
Asking if reality should feel
All along, holding fake as real
Do you ever feel
like there’s no one there
No one to stroke your hair
No one to kiss you, to hold your hand
No one to understand
Do you ever feel like you should hide
No one should see what’s going on inside
Do you ever feel the need to hide?

 Helen Doogan

Is a true wine enthusiast and a Australian based poet who's work has been published in.

The Rye Whiskey Review,  The Dope Fiend Daily , it can also be read at Hello Poetry.

Growing Up by Scott Simmons

There used to be days I would hope my brains would splatter on the pavement.
And I’d take any drugs that were handed to me to see if I finally got lucky.

In all honesty it was nothing more than teenage angst bullshit and a bad childhood.
I was just one of many ungrateful hormonal idiots in the world without a father.

I lashed out at my family and often got into intense arguments for the pure hell of it.
And the more they hated something it was all the more I loved it.

There was hardly anything or anyone that I didn’t resent for little or no reason.
I was just reflecting the constant pain that I felt burn so deeply inside me.

It steamed from my parents leaving me, every friend that I ever lost, a young love that died, and a life that I could never have.

The only true difference now is that I’m far better at internalizing it.

Scot Simmons is an aspring poet and humorist from Houston Texas. His works have been at The Rye Whiskey Review, Under The Bleachers, The Anti-Heroin Chic, Horror Sleaze Trash, and Medusa's kitchen. He is also the editor of The Dope Fiend Daily and the co editor of The Rye Whiskey Review.His "artwork" can be seen at instagram under deranged_Texan.