Spielspeak

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Arthur won't be coming home this year

Elsie's meringue weeps more than she'd like today.
She hasn't lost her touch for turning it the perfect golden
     nor stacking it a proud four inches deep.
She hopes one of the grandkids will drop by for a slice
     of lemon pie on the way home from school.
She sure could use some company.
Rolly is her favorite--he takes the time to admire
     her collection of black glass knick-knacks.
She has so little left to her name.

Her kids sold off the farm and most of her possessions
     to pay bills when Arthur passed--
     then moved her into this tiny shoebox house.
They'd said, It's big enough, Mother. Grandpa won't be
     coming home no more.

Arthur won't be coming home this year--or next.
     Or next.

Elsie wakes each morning thinking she's been robbed.
What's happened to her coalpail, her pitchfork, her mess
     of baling wire for fixing things?
She devotes her time to marking everything she possesses.
She embroiders Elsie on her undergarments, scribbles it
     on every card in her Canasta deck, even somehow manages
     to scratch it into her kitchen dishes.
Though one might well expect to find the odd lard mark
     here or there in anyone's cookbook, in Elsie's
     Household Searchlight Recipe Book,
     the pages are smothered with her name--
     and on one page, she's written,
     had one cookbook stolen, want it back.
She smears her name with lipstick on the back screendoor.
She carves it into the arm of Arthur's platform rocker
   as she stares dumb-eyed at the snowy TV screen.

Arthur won't be coming home this year--or next.
     Or next.

And then she starts another pie.
If one of the grandkids doesn't show up, she will dump it
     in the backyard and watch the squirrels make a meringue
     circus of themselves.
She whistles Swing Low Sweet Chariot.
And one of these days she needs to get around to finishing
    the pages of her bible.
The paper is too skinny to write on.
    It rips when she applies pressure with her pencil and when
     she uses her blue fountain pen, the ink blobs
   and musses her dress.
She wouldn't be in this predicament if Arthur hadn't passed.

She's afraid to ask one of the sons to try to fix the snow
   on the TV.
Maybe it's her eyes and she'll be forced to spend money
   she doesn't have on new glasses.
She drops her favorite heavy brown ovenware bowl as she beats
     the egg whites.
One less bowl--and this was the one that had been the most difficult
     to scratch her name into.

Her upper lip rattles--oozes shiny balls of sweat--
     then goes hard.

She prays if she ever gets to the other side
     she won't bump into Arthur.
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I might’ve told him

Mark Saunders and ten others
made the Honor Roll
on national TV.
All of them Americans
under the age of twenty-seven.

The famous news anchorman said:
“In silence, here are eleven more.”
Like always I started counting
uniform pictures of proud soldiers
and wishing they were not dead.
You don’t expect to see somebody you know.
Then oh my god
there was Mark’s picture.
More like a crummy snapshot.
Him looking kind of high
leaning against the cockpit of a jet.
I had to stare at his hometown name
to believe it was him.

Mark never knew it
but I fell in love with him
after Junior Prom
after we dumped our chicks
after we didn’t get laid
after we jerked each other off
after we hooted it up
till sunrise
after we went for a mess of bacon at Denny’s.

That’s when I fell in love
with Mark Saunders.
I should have but
never got around to
telling him
he had amazing hands.

(c) 2006 the poet Spiel
From Spiel chapbook, 2006, come here cowboy: poems of war.

A 2004 variation on an image originally commissioned as a silk screened Mardi Gras poster in 1992. That poster was signed by Taylor as"Tom Thom" another of his several pen names.

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deceit

we live
our lives
in mirrors

(confident)

our reflections
will not
bleed

(c) 2004 Spiel
Previously published by: Free Verse, Skidrow Penthouse,
King's Estate Anthology, Pudding House Publications,
Chiron Poetry Review. Also appears in: it breathes on its
own, the Spiel chapbook, available on the Spiel Books page.

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"jar"

An anguished self-portrait, the first full painting done by the artist after a long period of reticence as a painter which followed the 1996 revelation that he was soon to die from life-threatening illness.

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breaking rules

breaking rules robs energy
i do not have the will to spare
      i make my own instead   do so
      not to appease your familiarity
but cast in light
to disrupt the core
      of discomforts
      we may share
for what we share in common
in our darkness:
      the burdens of our closets,
      is where we lift our care

(c) 2005 Spiel
From it breathes on its own
a chapbook by Spiel, published by Pudding House
also, previously published by Abbey
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"Everything will turn out O.K." 57"h x 68"w x 13"d

from The Quintessential White Bread Exercise.

@ Pirate, A Contemporary Art Oasis, Denver Colorado

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extension

no one dies
we all live on

miserably
beyond our time

the blessed curse
of unscrupulous medicine

and clinging loved ones
whose lives

are merely shadows
of our dreams

(c) 8/7/03 Spiel
From Chiron Review

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"Starry Night 1890/1990"

52" h x 36" w x 10" d

Taylor's 100 year anniversary tribute to the suicide of Vincent van Gogh with whom Taylor shares the fate of mental illness. This turbulent piece is skillfully drawn with unpredictable expansion foam. It includes bared teeth in the stars, a bulging moon and a pistol in the visceral area where van Gogh originally painted dark and weathered cypress trees.

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Try these links for online samples of Spiel's poems and stories:

"Chained Link"
http://www.unlikelystories.org/spiel0407.shtml

Go to page 26, and 27 here:
http://www.marchstreetpress.com/backissues/pdfPg18-01.pdf
to read "closed open," "her teste boomerang," and "Pieces of Blood."

"falsetto" http://www.zafusy.com/spiel.htm

"Mounting Meat" http://newversenews.blogspot.com /2007/03/mounting-meat.html (also at this site) "Returnee/ 5 Fingers" http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2006/09/returnee-5-fingers.html and other Spiel poems (use 'seek')

"no curbing" and "Searching Thunder" here:
http://www.thundersandwich.com/ts26/page57.html

Find Spiel short stories at these online links:

"Hard Come By" and "Nail Polish"
http://www.unlikelystories.org./spiel10206.shtml

"Slim Light"
http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/slimlight.htm (also at this site)
"Split Ends" http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/splitends.htm

"Couch Thing"
http://www.bcsupernet.com/users/ascent/Couch%20Thing.htm

"Biting Auntie Gin"
http://www.unlikelystories.org/spiel10606.shtml
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Spiel is published worldwide in independent publications such as:

Abbey; Alpha Beat Press; Anthills; art mag; AscentAspirations; Barbaric Yawp; Barking Dogs; Bathtub Gin; Big Intersection; Blind Man’s Rainbow; Bogg; Buckle &; Broomweed Journal; Chiron Review; Chiron Review Press; Cliffs Soundings; Covert Poetics; Cranial Tempest; Creative Juices; Dana Literary Society; Denver Post; Dodobobo; DogEar; Drama Garden; Empty Shoes Anthology; EnCompass; Erased, Sigh, Sigh; (The) Espresso; Eye-Point Press; Fight These Bastards; First Class; Four Sep Publications; Free Verse; Frisson:disconcerting verse; Gestalten; Gin Bender Poetry Review; Gloom Cupboard; Happy; Hecale; Iconoclast; Impetus; (The) Independent; Iodine; Jaw Magazine; jendireiter.com; King’s Estate Press; laurahird. com; League of Laboring Poets; Lilliput Review; Lost & Found; Lucid Moon; LuVER Radio; Lynx Eye; MadmanInk; Mainstreet Rag; March Street Press; Marymark Press; Muse Artist’s Guild; Muse’s Review; Neotrope; Nerve Cowboy; New Verse News; Nicestories; No Exit; Open Cut; Opium Poetry 2.0; Origami Condom; Oyster Boy Review; Patrick T. Randolph; Parting Gifts; Passport Journal; Pearl; PenHimalaya; Plain Jane; Poems-for-All; Poesy; Poetalk; Poetry Motel; Poets Against War; Pudding Magazine; Pudding House Publications; Pueblo Chieftain; Pueblo Poetry Project; Pueblo West View; P.U.L.P.; Quill & Parchment; Ragged Edge; Rain Mountain Press; Rejected Notice; RFD; Remark; Rocky Mountain News; Secret Press; Shoes; Skidrow Penthouse; Slipstream; Small Press Review; Snapdragon; Snow Monkey; Storyteller; Strangeroad; St. Vitus Press & Poetry Review; Sugar Mule; Thunder Sandwich; Touchstone; Transcendent Visions; Under the Banana Tree; Unlikely Stories; Velvet Box; WestWind Review; Winning Writers; Word Riot; World Poets Society; Zafusy; Zen Baby; Zygote in my Coffee; ZYX;

Go to extreme top of this page to click other Spiel pages.

Go to extreme top to click on other Spiel pages.