truth – Cajun Mutt Press

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 05/15/24

May 15, 2024 James D. Casey IV

The Pale Horse with the Marble Eye

All things considered
I would take the Gambit of
the pale horse with the marble eye

He slipped silently from the fog
on the periphery of my field

Marking the little time that we have

Thanks for the update you say
As I go about our day
and I’m lost on the on- ramp
Waiting for the excuse to cut in to the line
Of human succession

A blinker should do
But
Is that right?
Or is it left?

Not knowing the weight of the day I put on the hazards
Just to play it safe
And yet
I have managed to go no further than my
Driveway

I am stuck
along with the oil stains
wishing to be

Gone
without a trace

no spark

No idea
As to what makes us human
Makes us move forward

We are the generation of promises
The generation of easy
The first family of peace

And
We suffer for it

We are not defined for defending
We are not defined for freedom
We can not see the absence of war
Entirely connected

And yet
Lacking the ability to say “Hello”

NO,
We are the ones that know how often death can be

And yet,
fail to grasp the consciousness of the day
We are your parents lost generation

There is no denying it

The truth is
We can have no authority to what America is

We have landed in a reality that betrays the word

And we can not unite
And we can not understand the truth
Only the differences that we are

We have lost the Great Dream
The Great Experience

And we are too scared to do anything about it.
Forever the in between

So give me the Gambit of the Pale Horse
with the marble eye

And we will slip silently back

into the fog.

**Brother Holland reading “Johnny Depp is Not Coming” at Gonzofest 2023**

The new face of the seeker in the crowd, Ben Holland has traversed the globe in search of many things – mostly himself. To now reside in Kentucky after having been chased out of Camelot (some may call it Connecticut), surviving tours of duty in as far away and exotic places as Iraq and Kuwait, is what could be called a small miracle. Belonging now to tribe of transplants that is Louisville, he finds himself square amid a life that is once again evolving into something more fit for his creative spirit. At the urging of his lovely wife, he is finally pursuing an active writing career, and it starts now!

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 09/17/21

September 17, 2021 James D. Casey IV

Downward Dichotomy

What the drugs do
is render you hopeless
then helpless till you
spell nihilism and ennui
backwards in your sleep.
When your real thoughts
come primal as beatings
in high school or at home,
where the drugs render
you numb enough to
stumble through the
lost and preconceived
until bloodied fists in
a botched drug mugging
go worse than sideways.
Sirens swallowing your
Fate while guilty and unclean
you watch the ambulance
cart your victim to hospital.
The cop says get in the car,
headed to lockup straight
wishing you were high or
could afford a good lawyer,
but you’d buy your high first
and save your life second.
It’s what the drugs do.

From Lower Depths

Too many ways
to drown with
someone you can’t save.

Wearing as much
sadness as any
beautifully masked face.

While getting high
in alleys with others who’ll fall
as hard from the lower depths.

Yet with each
unwrapping she still remained
outside the box.

Her bordello smile
welcoming me to lies
I preferred to truth.

Until she stole from me
precipitous amounts too often
not to be for narcotics.

I left her to memory
unable to forget
all she wanted me to.
I stay now in shadows
dreams telling me I’m closer
to finding a new lost cause.

Of Joyrides

Her loud carpenter, with hammer
driving nails tells me
the sex will be hot.

She takes her shirt off
slower than most strippers do
With the same junkie marks.

Pierced in more places
than the slain matador’s bull
before the dying red sun..

Her conversation
excoriates ex-husband
who stole her car.

For a meth fueled joyride
ending in a crash without
insurance or a driver’s license.

Her lips do their worst
and me no good,
as much as I like it.

No preliminaries
like we’re used
to avoiding.

She wipes black
lipsticked lips with
back of her hand.

After swallowing
there’s enough truth between us
for a false confession.

Count my twenties,
like a pit boss,
says “later baby.”

When she leaves
I can only think
later will be soon.

Rp Verlaine lives and writes in New York City. He has an MFA in creative writing from City College and taught English in New York public schools until he retired. He has several collections of poetry including Damaged by Dames & Drinking (2017), Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers (2018), and Lies From The Autobiography: Vol 1 Seany, Vol 2 Natalie, & Vol 3 Dawn (2018-2020).

Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 07/16/21

July 16, 2021 James D. Casey IV

Introduction To Apocalyptic Fiction

Violence is the bloody afterbirth of an ubiquitous
they. It hasn’t the slightest idea how to dream

nor begin anything new except maybe logic’s next
beating. It locks Empathy behind closed doors

where it can be heard scratching and whimpering
with its weaker sister Compassion in nothing more

than a liars’ game waiting out that gas-filled hose
of loathing threading its way through the keyhole

to kill them both off before they can rise up and
find the guts to fight their way back to us. The they

are we and we are truly out of luck if we don’t crack
through that truth soon. What waits grinning for us

on the other side is so horrific to think about that
it petrifies all our shimmering tomorrows when the shit

will really hit the fan and we might just come to forget
what all this self-vindicating justification was all about.

The author has been published in The Talking Stick, Open Arts Forum, New Verse News, Waymark, Tuck Magazine, Dark Sire, the anthology Moving Images: Poetry Inspired by Film, upcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, and frequently in his favorite daily breakfast treat, The Drabble.