I return to spike the live-long morning
Dull brained, mush mouthed, drunk in dread
For burn bright egg goo gore made burn of morning here and now.

What yellow is this morning?
Buzz bomb, vibrant, fuzz fused hum
Of lusty malcontented heat (for me)
: The nothing, stillborn, nil and null.
Of blue-gray splotch of absent goop
Un-enlivened by this tempest morn

Whose but burden does this day provide?
Possession all of fancy, this, a rude red shine of vibrancy

Scream stiff insisted honesty
from one
who lulls
And fights to dine
alone into the night.

Geoff Stevens was born on the 4th June, 1942, at West Bromwich, in the industrial midlands of England that is known as The Black Country. It was at that time a mixture of industrial, post-industrial, and countryside in minature, a unique rich admixture. He was initially a successful pupil at school, but his later schooling was for boys only, operated six days a week, and was both constrictive and restrictive, and he rebelled against it. On leaving, he got a job as an industrial chemist and studied part-time for academic qualifications. Chemistry was to be his occupation until 1995, and he worked in the chemical manufacturing, paint making, electroplating, bicycle, and closure industries. Local history and custom was also an interest and he began to write about those and on other subjects for journals and newspapers, and also became Director of Industrial Archaeology for The Black Country Society. In the 1970′s, inspired by local versifiers, and then by reading Dylan Thomas, he began to write poetry and to submit it to magazines, until he was eventually succesful in getting it published. He also began a long interest in reading poetry in public. 1976 saw the inception of his own poetry magazine, Purple Patch, which passed its 100th. edition in June 2001 and celebrated its 30th. year in 2006 Other magazines he has edited are Purple Pastiche (poetry and art), S-Fest Ltd. (U.K. Editor of U.S.Lit mag.), Micropress Midlands Poetry, and one guest issue of South magazine. He was a founder member of Spouting Forth poetry performance and publication group in the 90′s and, with Brendan Hawthorne, started the Poetry Wednesbury group of poets in 2002

WELCOMESVILLE
by Geoff Stevens

Battered red raw with the cold
beaten and tattered by the wind
the neon sign bleeds its blood
into a rare roast-beef sky
winks Cafe with a nervous tick
the uncertainty of electrical connection.
It mouths to unidentified objects
and receives light signals back
from things that cross the sky.
Beneath the sizzling sign
chromium hisses steam
a fly buzzes in an empty display case
and a little green man sits on a high stool
reading a book on cordon bleu cooking.
Cars pass-by rapidly on the darkened by-pass
like asteroids racing around a lonely planet
in the universal backwaters of existence.

i hadn’t seen her in two years when she came
over on thanksgiving.
it was glorious and foreign and awkward for me
all at the same time, so my best shot
at succeeding
was to be myself and cross my
fucking fingers
and pray to the gods that i could do things right
for once in my life.
and for the most part i did;
we joked and told stories about the old times.

when you’re young, the twisted feeling in your guts
heals itself like a shallow papercut. the lump putting
pressure on your throat disappears in an hour. i miss
those days.

when i was young, i was conditioned for emotional
numbness; before i knew the definition of apathy, it
had defined me. my mother taught me to
believe
that loving relationships were based on a certain
standard.

my mind was very fucked up.

at 18, i would sneak out between my classes and snort
shitty cocaine off of a frisbee golf disc. i would peel the
coating off of oxycotin pills, and boil those fuckers down;
i felt no fear as i was putting those chemicals
into my bloodstream with my diabetic
friend’s needles.

i never learned if the coating to those pills was made out
of plastic material or some kind of hard rubber. it felt like a mix
of the two between my fingernails as i scraped the
extended release portion of the pill off and flicked it into
the carpet of my car’s floor.

the last time i called her was the night after senior prom.
i felt like i was the executioner
at the edge of the guillotine, pulling the lever that made
the blade fall. i wonder if any of those men ever felt remorse
or thought about the evil inside of them. i hope not; i don’t wish
that pain on anyone.

she pulled up on thanksgiving in her mother’s car. she flashed
an all too familiar smile as she strolled towards me. i froze.
my heart asked me,
“is it okay if i stop now?”
i told him, “not yet.”

the rest of the night was easy – laughter, eye contact;
i brought her drinks like i was
trying to save a parched rose garden with a thimble.
i walked back and forth between the kitchen and the living room
with tumblers full of vodka-7s again and again.

we were sitting on the floor.

“let’s go.”

i’ll never forget her saying that as long as i live.

fuck.

i walked her backwards into the bedroom and we fell on my bed.

now, almost a week later, both of my cats are crawling
over me as i wonder what went wrong
between then and now.
there is an indescribable pressure behind
my eyeballs in the front of my skull.

i haven’t looked at this poem for a day between
the last line and this line. i look out
my window and see the dim glow of the stars as a collective entity in the sky.
“shit, i’m bummed out,” i think.

i miss driving in the country, and my grandfather’s smile.

when will this catastrophe seem irrelevant?

she left the day after thanksgiving at 9:00 am and
we hugged goodbye.

i walked back into my apartment and loaded
a bowl in my pipe.

what the fuck else was there to do?

It’s been days since I’ve eaten anything
and still I sit on the pot
and the sound of absolute silence is
fucking
deafening.

The latest issue of that poetry rag I’ve been reading
is the only thing
that keeps me company
as I expel the remainder of last night’s binge
from what is left of my bowels.
Which according to my GP
isn’t much.

I don’t wash my hands after I shit
because I wasn’t raised that way;
and I think about that and I go back and wash my hands
like someone is watching me make a fool of myself.

The sound of nothing is maybe the loudest sound possible
because it means the opposite of everything that is.
But I only hear it for a moment and then
the sound of my brain washes in again
and reminds me of the 12 hours I spent working today
and the miniscule amount of shit I actually accomplished.

There’s something to be noted about the feel of a 40 that’s half empty;
about how you can run your hand down the side and instantly transition
from room temperature to absolute, fucking intoxication
and still feel as bad about yourself as you did before the night began…
sitting on the toilet, reading poetry,
feigning intelligence like someone is watching you read poetry
while you drop a few unwanted pounds.

Mother
of
Montmartre
Mother
of
pearl
Paris is your oyster
Black waves
at
your feet
In
your heart
a shelter

Driving to the new dentist’s office
the slow drive of a new place
with the McDonalds that I don’t go to
on the left, the mall two miles away.
The Courthouse and the Old Courthouse
road signs that break apart, the fork in the road
that looks nothing like a fork or a spoon, in fact
at best, maybe a knife bent in a dishwasher
that leans to one side. And I know the dentist
will ask about my last visit and want to know
in months that I can’t say some time ago
and I know he will ask me about flossing
and saying when I’m in the mood won’t be
the appropriate answer.
He will call out my cavities
as if they were names in a class.
I brush my teeth before going in.
It’s like cleaning before the cleaning person
but I don’t want him to know I keep an untidy
mouth. That I am the type of person who shoves
things in the closet before guests arrive.

i lean back into a misting fan
and upgrade to leather

into my own thoughts

into root

the arrival of the pilgrims
the war of independence
then ghostly apparitions from another realm
arrive

or at least
it seems to go in that order
somehow

this huge cut on my hand
finally starts to scab over

i’m gapping plugs
in the sun
as the dog kills another frog
outside

the clothes dry
under overcast clouds
as i walk over to my neighbors
place
ask him
maybe
can she give me a ride
up
over
that way

to the liquor store

it ain’t that far

Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published

Unfortunately, when I hear this question, I know I’m dealing with someone who is at such a beginning stage that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

With this post, I hope to offer the most critical information and address the most pressing questions, as well as provide a starting point for more fully exploring what it means for you to try and get meaningfully published.
Have you just recently completed your book?

If so, honestly answer these three questions.

Is your book really done? Is it really the best you can make it? And have professionals (whether editors, agents, or published authors) encouraged you, because they see and know you are ready? Do you feel confident that it’s ready to submit?
Are you informed enough about the publishing business to understand where to submit the work, how to submit the work, and what obstacles you might face? Does your work break the rules of the industry? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then you need to study up on the industry before submitting your work.
What is your motivation for trying to get published? A little self-reflection might be in order before you chase after an agent or publisher. Read my post 3 Questions Every Creative Person Must Ask.

Are you writing fiction or nonfiction?

Novelists follow a different path to publication than nonfiction authors.

Novels and memoirs: You must have a finished and polished manuscript before you even think about how to get published.
Most nonfiction: You must write a book proposal (basically like a business plan for your book) that will convince a publisher to contract and pay you to write the book.

If you’re writing a hybrid work (personal vignettes mixed with instruction, or a multi-genre work that includes essays, stories, and poetry), then you will have a difficult time getting a publisher to accept it.

Getting published is a step-by-step process of:

Researching the appropriate agents or publishers for your work. (Here’s a list of free resources.)
Reading submission guidelines of agents and publishers.
Sending a query, proposal, or submission package.

Read the entire article here.

Wheel me down to the shore
where the lighthouse was abandoned
and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees
and see the stars flaring out, one by one,
like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray,
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves

and then stare into the dome
of a sky that never ends
and see my voice sail into the night.

Here’s what Kristin Berry has to say about this album:

“Made up of Lee Blackwell of Night Beats and the Black Angels’ guitarist Christian Bland, the UFO Club side delivers four tracks of great psychedelic rock and roll inspired by greats like the 13th Floor Elevators and the Velvet Underground. “Wolfman” is down ‘n’ dirty fun, and you even get a sweet cover of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” Carrying on the same set of psychedelic influences, “Hex” starts off the Night Beats side, immediately grabbing your attention with Blackwell’s soulful vocals and ripping guitar riffs. Basically, if you play anything from this band loud enough, you’d better plan on redecorating because the guitar sounds will peel the paint right off your wall. “A Night With Nefertiti” cools it down before launching into the head-bobbing “Drowning in the Nile,” which sounds especially great thanks to the blistering harmonica parts.”

Here’s what Davves says about this album:

“The opener, My Love is Waiting, hops along with 12-string leads and Blackwell’s raspy voice urging us along before we’re taken to another planet by a tremolo’d aural assault of guitars. Wanna hear something rad as hell? They cover the Ronettes classic, Be My Baby. Yea. Totally into these tracks they’ve dished out for us. Next, Night Beats come on with their groovy, sloppy, psychedelia. Night Beats killed it with their H-Bomb EP last year, and I’ve eagerly been awaiting another release from them. Things start off a little slow with the quick, dragging hit, A Night With Nefertiti, but they pick it right up with their next track, Hex. Rolling Stones-esque killer guitar licks, vicious guitar solos, and the ever intriguing vocal melodies of Lee Blackwell. Everything I love about Night Beats. He very well may have one of the coolest voices in the scene right now, and tracks like this one highlight his talent.”

Buy this album here.