Dennis Hopper reciting Kipling's poem If on The Johnny Cash Show

For those who haven't yet heard, or seen... three great men combined in one momentous clip.

Featured Poem: Gun Crazy by Todd Swift

"I was always gun crazy, so good at one clear thing: hitting what I could barely see"

Gun Crazy

Against the world, just us.

Behind, a trail of gas stations,

small banks, the meat packing plant,

knocked over. FBI Telexes

clatter like town gossips across America:

Barton Tare and Laurie Starr, dangerous

and armed. How did it begin?

Neon wakes me, I peel back blinds

to jackhammer rain, shake a Lucky

from the pack, and light.

Behind, on the tangled bed, you are mine,

every inch of your easy hunger, your fear

cold and material in the night.

Where are we two going? When we get

there, how will we know we’ve finally

arrived? Mexico, possibly, but the bills

are marked and the Feds hot on our tails.

The first time we met, I shot six matches

off the crown on your head, at a carnival,

won five hundred bucks. The moment

the matches flared, I knew my bullets

would always be true, direct. You kill

out of a necessity verging on need, I

cannot squint the eye down to that degree,

my hand trembles at the sight of flesh targets.

Still, I’ll end up putting a bullet in your heart

up in the Lorenzo mountains, in the mist.

That first night I aimed and squeezed

I should not have missed.

You wake and call me over to the bed.

Then I’m down in your arms and kissed.

Your mouth sets off all four alarms.

How can a man be so made

from moments of early loss?

I was always gun crazy,

so good at one clear thing:

hitting what I could barely see.

I see nothing in the darkness now, only

one part moving on the bed, my body

pressed like a pistol

into the small of your cries.

Todd Swift is Canadian by birth, British by address. Born in 1966, he lived in Montreal, Budapest then Paris before moving to London in 2003. Formerly a TV writer/story editor for Hanna-Barbera, HBO, Fox, and Paramount, he ran the first poetry cabarets in Canada in the 1990s and wrote for Penthouse magazine. He is now a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University with a PhD in Poetic Style of the 1940s from the UEA. He has had 8 full poetry collections published in Canada, Ireland and the UK, as well as numerous pamphlets with titles like French Maid and Elegy for Anthony Perkins. He was Oxfam poet in residence and compiled CDs and DVDs of poetry for them raising over 50,000 pounds. He has also edited many international poetry anthologies for presses such as Carcanet and Salt. He now runs a small poetry press, Eyewear - named after his famous blog, which has had over a million hits since starting in 2005. His poems have appeared in Poetry (Chicago), Poetry London and Poetry Review, as well as Best Canadian Poetry 2012 and 2008. His Selected poems are forthcoming from an American press. His themes include male health, sex, love, theology, violence and pop culture.

'The God of Love is Stained' by Tiffany Anne Tondut

Introducing my debut poetry chap book, published by Silkworms Ink.

"Hedonism and sentimentality square off against each other in this dark, sexy and funny debut chap book from Tiffany Anne Tondut."

 

It's free. And there's plenty other chap books on Silkworms Ink worth checking. Here's just a few:

Jon Stone's Thra-Koom!

Bobby Parker's Holograms of Rotten Roses

Claire Trévien's Patterns of Decay

Todd Swift's The Awards Ceremony: Poems

Armchair/Shotgun

Roused by Armchair/Shotgun, I've decided to relaunch my blog.

I discovered this American counter-culture magazine through Claire Trevien's Sabotage Reviews.

They're currently accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photo-essays and other visual media for issue #2.

The title says it all.