Dumpster Fire Press

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Nancy E. Campos

SUICIDE

You say it’s the easy way out

Shut your mouth, you have no idea what my pain is about

The feeling of being out of control

How every thought digs a darker hole

Thoughts you can’t escape you can’t erase

The anxiety makes you sweat and your heart starts to race

I have nowhere to run nowhere to hide

As I sit in the dark and begin to cry I start to ponder it “Suicide”

Please make it stop make the darkness go away

I’m tired of always feeling this way

If I can just make it stop and catch my breath

Perhaps I can stop contemplating death

It’s an obsession of mine

I think of it all the time

How sweet the eternal slumber would be

To just let go and oh to be free

Then the memories crash my thoughts

Of all the small battles that I fought

How at the end of the day

I didn’t allow death to have its way

Today I won, victory is mine

As my head rests on my pillow and I can close my eyes

For those who pretend to understand

You don’t know shit till you’ve felt the pain

You tell me have faith, trust and leave those thoughts

You’re not making sense I can’t connect the dots

I’m looking for relief a way to forget

So I won’t do something I know I won’t live to regret

You tell me you’ll pray for me to get better

But all you are saying in my head sounds like chatter

You wanna know how it is that I think

I couldn’t tell you I confused even my shrink

Hush , don’t say those words

Believe me there is nothing I haven’t heard

I have to fight this shit everyday

I know I can beat this! there has to be a way

Don’t tell me it’s easy that you know I can do it

It’s not your words but my will to commit

I will beat the darkness

Even if my methods seem heartless

For this battle I have fought alone

To the loneliness accustomed I have grown

This is one battle I refuse to lose

For at this moment it is Life that I choose

Suicide isn’t the best option

My battle to fight win and my victory is sure

OUT OF MY HEAD

Can’t get it out on my head

It’s there in the morning even when I go to bed

The sadness the dark gloom

All I want to do is hide in my room

Sleep is how I can shut the world out

This fear makes me want to scream and shout

In my chest I feel the hole bore within

As this depression chips away at my soul

I need a break I just wanna fly

Leave all this shit behind

It’s love that keeps me tied

How many times has it’s cruelty made me cry

So many times have I willed myself to try

Just to get tired and push it all aside

This feeling of impending doom

I can hear it clearly as the gun goes boom

The darkness I have to fight

Every day this battle to stay alive

The pain is real, it cuts like a knife

I don’t understand this thing called life

What is real what is imagination

For death I have a crazy fixation

I have to let it go put it out of my mind

This rage I feel it must be a sign

I need to scream I wanna cry too

But when I open my mouth nothing comes

I don’t want to feel this pain

Will it be washed away if I stand in the rain

I can feel it like needles in my brain

The thoughts hitting me all at once like a freight train

I need it to stop, please make it go away

I don’t want to live my life this way

I ask myself every day why

When would it be the right time to say my goodbyes

Then I break down and begin to cry

I remember all those I will leave behind

How would they face life

If I chose to die.

BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY

Dedicated to my daughter my Beautiful Butterfly

The one without limits

So beautiful so gentle you live your life

To be the best version of yourself you strive

Never giving up on your dreams

A beautiful soul a loving being has been your theme

Pushing yourself for those that you love

Shows all the strength and what you’re made of

Like a butterfly through life, you soar

Loving and touching lives wherever you go

Loving embracing the journey you face

You except life’s challenges with strength and such grace

Instilling beauty, love, and compassion

You inspire as you live life with passion

Beautiful Butterfly go fly, fly, fly

For you, there is no limit, not even the sky

From where I stand I can see you above

My beauty, my little one my very own love

BEAUTIFUL GYPSY

Dedicated to my daughter my

Beautiful Gypsy

Oh beautiful soul, beautiful child

Don’t ever change stay true stay wild

Let your essence always shine bright

For those of us who get lost in the night

Speaking words of wisdom beyond your years

There to give advice things we need to hear

Knowing that the truth you will always speak

Encouraging us when we feel lost and weak

You’re free you get lost in the dance moving your feet

To your rhythm to the tune of your own beat

Never allowing your energy to stay in one place

You live you thrive to fill with light and joy any space

Beautiful Gypsy child of mine

I will love you till the end of time

BEAUTIFUL DREAMER

As I watch the moonlight dance on your face

My heart is filled with love, you take my breath away

The rhythm of your chest as you breathe the evening air

I love the way the light softly touches your hair

I’m mesmerized by your beauty in the evening glow

I feel you, I honor you as my tears begin to flow

You are the one, your essence completes me

It was spoken, it was written, it was our destiny

Our souls agreed to stand the test of time

I would be yours and you would be mine

The lessons we knew we had to learn

Together we’d master when we returned

Here you are as beautiful as I remember

When I first laid eyes on you that blissful day in September

As I looked into your eyes I was finally home

The universe brought us together. I’ve found my soul

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Shane Allison

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Stephen Whitter

Old Man, New Books

The Old Man I visited in a ‘care’ home loved to read, but not he said, new books.
He didn’t speak too well and I don’t hear too great so, i got a grip of the wrong end of the stick.
Perhaps it was the new style, or un familiar authors that he objected to, but no it was purely the newness, the hot off the press-ness that with his Arthritis he could not deal.
The springy nature of an unbroken spine, the curved pages his misshapen fingers could not render supine.
“Why can’t books be made on a spiral like a horizontal reporter’s note pad ?”
I said I didn’t know but guessed it would be down to money and people are precious about their books .
“Well they make em’ in large print for folk that can’t see”
I had to agree yes, yes they did.
And so I ended up reading books of which I had no intention,
at first I thought my allocated Old Man wanted me to read the
the books to him but no, he wanted to read, he just wanted me to
turn each page of each new purchase, to relieve the springy nature of the book.
After a moments’ surprise that suited me fine as I realised I was
getting new books to read, well if I were to turn each page?
Some were a revelation, how brilliant they were and some exactly the opposite, the fact I read them the Old Man soon realized and agreed it was ‘fair’.
But i couldn’t get the Old Man’s opinions out of him, he spent a fortune on these volumes but did not want to discuss them, not with me at least.
I even went to the length of checking with one of the staff, perhaps he had a literary friend with whom he shared his thoughts but no, i was his only visitor
So, we never discussed the thriller with, I thought no plot, or the ‘beat’ book that was anything but.
I even smuggled onto the ‘to be read’ pile some work from my own pen, an act i almost instantly regretted.
As usual though no comment was made, well, at least I fared no worse than Hardy had or Joyce or some new ‘young gun’.
On my visit today a victory, I noticed my effort was not on the towering ‘Charity Shop’ pile, where many a bestseller had landed.
Agony that day hiding my prideful smile, that fact my book was
‘a keeper’, to be re’read though not a word was said it was, ‘one of the few’. To me, from that old man.
As significant as a Times Literary Supplement rave review.

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Jon Bennett

He Just Took It

At around 25 yrs old I called Dad

and yelled at him out for an hour

I don’t know what I said

all I remember is

he didn’t protest

he just took it

I think most of the internet

is like that

a younger generation

screaming

Sometimes I might

have a question

about an acronym

or a new noun

but I keep quiet

they’ve got a lot

to get off their chests

and would love to find

a dad

any old dad

to lay into.

I Am With You

We get along fine

me and the man

with the mangled face

“School turns us stupid!” he says

I nod, I agree

and he is my brother

Lately, I’ve come to see it

all the mangled faced men

all the nieces and nephews

who can’t decide if they’re

nieces

or nephews

all the obese shut-ins

aiming guns at themselves

all the girls and the women

and the boys and the men

sobbing in the mirror

I am with you

my outside

doesn’t match

my inside

either.

Cheap Shots

“I’ll start with

a bald-faced simile,

see if anyone

swallows the hook”

I always go for the easy joke

the simple sentiment

the simpler moral

I give no fucks about truth

and I don’t know

what you mean by ‘beauty’

but that’s not to say

I don’t cry over these

all the same.

Sue

I wrote a song

and named names

whether the names I named

were actual names

or made up names

I’m not at liberty to say

I’ve made many dimes

off music

all told

after expenses

and thirty years

5 or 6 hundred

dimes

Now, at night I lay in bed

my jar of dimes

under it

and quail at the thought

someone will sue me

the lawyers will take

my jar of dimes

smash me over the head with it

and remove what little

sanity I have left.

Opiates are the Opiates of the Masses

I liked it at first,

they killed chickens in the bathroom

it was ‘exotic’

but small, so small

just me and my laptop

So I found pill corner

and coke corner

and all the other corners

lined up easy

as Tijuana pharmacias

just another lonely loser

like all those

popping pills in trailer parks,

pick-up trucks, penthouses

living in

an American dream.

EYE SCREAMS

RQF! DFP!

Dumpster Fire Press is proud to present our first August release

Ryan’s Quinn Flanagan’s latest poetry collection EYE FLUSHER

A new RQF collection! Dumpster Fire Press! That’s all you need to know! Powerhouse poet Ryan Quinn Flanagan like a machete wielding cross between Bukowski and BB King does not bow down before the Eye of Horus but is the elastic eye of the divine god-king himself through portraits of ordinary madness in a realm of anything but sane,tempered by a shaky social contract. Your optic nerves will be flushed from a whole of delusion in this one, setting the dumpsters of stagnant existence aflame!

Never Shit Your Own Pants

Heidi came running down the hall

and said that Frank had done it again.

Amy was charge nurse,

responsible for the entire building.

And all the residents at the Guildwick

Home for the Elderly.

Sam was sent with Heidi to deal with Frank.

He did the same thing at least three times a week.

Went into other residents’ rooms

and stole their pants before shitting in them

and walking around the ward.

The smell was horrible.

Even for seasoned nurses and staff.

Ok Frank, pants off!

said Sam.

Heidi stood back to avoid the splatter.

Don returned from lunch break and laughed.

Ah Franky, I see there was an accident!

Frank said nothing.

An acquired brain injury had left him

largely mute.

Sam double-gloved and ran off to dispose

of the pants.

Leaving Heidi and Don to clean Frank off

and get him ready for bed.

Whose pants do you think they were this time?

asked Heidi.

Who knows,

laughed Don.

Frank kept cupping water in his hands

and splashing it against the wall.

His wife had died six years ago.

Frank had no one now.

Just a power of attorney who lived

in a different city and couldn’t care in the least.

It’s pretty smart if you think about it,

Don said.

What is?

asked Heidi.

Never shit your own pants,

Don said.

Look in Frank’s closet.

He has at least twenty pairs of pants,

but never shits in any of those.

Heidi looked over to the large brown wardrobe

across the room and laughed.

So you think Frank is some kinda genius or something?

Heidi laughed.

Crazy, not stupid!

Don said.

I think you’re going to steal other people’s pants

when your time comes,

Heidi nudged Don jokingly.

I’ll have my own gig,

announced Don.

Shit really isn’t my thing.

Are pants?

joked Heidi.

Just then,

Sam returned to check and see

how things were going with Frank

who kept grabbing at the towel

as Don dried him off.

I need you to go check on Natalie,

Sam told Heidi.

She’s up and screaming bloody murder again.

Heidi ran off to check on Natalie.

Amy was at the nurse’s station.

Having already begun the paperwork

on Frank’s latest incident.

She said I looked like Dimebag Darrell

and I told her

I didn’t know

who that was

and she told me

he was this big metal

guitar god

who was shot

and killed

on stage during

a show

and I wondered

if I looked

like poor old Dimebag

before or after

he was killed,

but I didn’t ask

her that

because I wasn’t

a complete asshole

yet.

Komorebi

Drugless eyes on the space filter,

the people of Lemuria in my Komorebi head –

by penchant, by perchance, we need a byline;

some way to understand why the leaves have curled

like busy cigars, a question of light before

everything else, William Blake’s The Ghost of a Flea

forever on loan and that spunky hockey man

who calls teeth “chicklets” working the PA down at

the arena with a thrilling wasabi pungence:

my time in no man’s army is up,

night cap invitations go unanswered as fog horns

while splinters of a dying allegiance cut across

the lattice fencing, all fury melts away like

some sticky cold season lozenge.

Skin Motels

She says

we should find one of those

skin motels where half the known world

seems to park outside,

but no one ever stays.

One of those hobo joints

along the side of the highway

where the kid at the front desk

seems a little slow,

gives you a single mattress

and a scrambled television

for the week.

The curtains pulled over

like stand-in eyelids

you never once think of

again.

A sink of brown water

to throw over your yellow

nicotine face.

Cigarette burns

through the angry tartan

comforter.

Her screaming drunken legs in the air

like a mess of migrating birds.

Hoffa Makes a Comeback

They just started looking for Hoffa again.

Searched this old Jersey landfill last week.

You have to think they got a pretty credible tip

to go digging through all that garbage.

Waist-deep in the worst from the worst.

Some guilty catholic deathbed thing

with the priest and the whole deal.

Or someone pulling a laugher.

Fucking with the Feds like so many times before.

Spinning yarns over the wire.

So they can hear their own voice

played back in court.

An army of news vans lined up out front.

All those long antennas.

Like fly-by-night water towers

of lipstick, ratings

and rumour.

I’ve Never Once Been a Man Who Didn’t Have it Coming

Some things are deserved,

the rest is peddled as dopey bait shop knowledge –

I’ve never once been a man who didn’t have it coming,

that slippery uppercut nestled under glassy jaw,

the book thrown at you with an entire library

of clunky adamant hate;

my filthy doomsday eyes forever on the blood shot,

a slave to skinless, boneless puppy mill science

so that the words become bodies,

one long annotated excuse

of cries and explanation.

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Paul Warren

Manequincide

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: Joseph Farley

Better Lies

Tomorrow I will tell better lies,

ones that are fit to wrap around the truth.

You can’t serve up just the facts.

That would be too cold.

No, you must warm it up,

add spice, distort it,

so not even you can recognize

exactly what you are talking about.

Practice

Every day I practice at being nothing.

I sit or stand or lay on the ground

and disappear into air and silence.

Those who walk by ignore me

as I ignore myself,

my value less than a bug on the wall,

a stain on the ceiling,

a sliver of cellophane carried in the wind.

I work at it. Work so hard

that my knuckles bleed in the snow

while a thousand miles away

my toes drift senseless in the ocean.

One day, with luck, I’ll achieve

all that is, all that ever was,

and know how little I am

and how little any of it was.

Somewhere in the middle

There are things I do

that I shouldn’t,

and things I write

that I should not.

Ah, we are born perfect.

Someone said so.

But others have said

we are born flawed.

It is only natural,

since we exist in nature,

that I should be

both good and bad

and all that is in between.

It is all there on the graph,

the bell curve

of human behavior.

The comedy, the tragedy,

the horror,

along with all the mundane

that makes up most of the story.

Doing what we must

Poetry won’t stop bullets.

It won’t stop grief.

It won’t stop humans

from being beasts.

It does make life and death

and the stuff between

sound better, read or said,

than wails and screams,

and the thud

of lead and fists and rods

into luckless flesh.

Words must be said

for the dead.

Tradition dictates so.

Make that final recitation

ring of heaven, fate, change.

Then begin the real prayer,

the one you and I must live,

day and night until the end

of what has been with us

from the beginning

of words and men and need

for this or that,

or just more,

and more

of the needless same.

VOICES FROM THE FIRE: R.P. Verlaine

Crack Vials

A song for the eighties

Users

use once

then useless,

Gutted,

open like a wound,

or junkies’ vein,

or treatment center doors

for rich boys with cash.

Visiting Harlem,

doing the stop and go

to cop and blow, then

drive near slo-mo

back to Jer-Z

at 55.

But users

don’t stay tourists long

and end up doing

life on the lifestyle

24/7 on the crack vial.

Law enforcement lies

alibis drugs are on the slide.

Not true, drugs revive

with more lives

than a Vampire’s wives.

Yet Government won’t legalize

just build more jails

as city after city dies

thru shootings, holdups

and drive-bys.

Burying in

low level dealers, riff raff,

or victims like school kids

every morning

seen skipping by

crack vials.

A Bar Conversation

Then what do you do?

she asked.

     As little as possible

and then more

      or less the same.

At what?

       Hard to say even harder

       to describe without

       a painting.

Ooh so you’re an artist

      she said, solving the mystery.

Absolutely not. I hate the smell of paint,

artistic or otherwise.

Then you… 

       Yes i  am retired

but you look so young!

Yes, yet I’ll shoot a gun

out the window at 3 or 4 am 

when streets are empty

but need watching. I’ll steal money

from vipers, pimps, or whores

if they leave their marked

cards on the table long enough.

Under a blazing full moon

I’ve turned to a werewolf more than once.

I have half a dozen pairs of women’s shoes

in my closet left by those

who dared not return. I’ve been arrested,

have a record but never sang

to the cops. I’m working on a blueprint

for my revenge against the world.

Yet still I smile and yes I’m retired.

She looked at me blankly

said excuse me, got up and left. 

I ordered a new drink,

with hours to go before 3 or 4 am,

to shoot at the moon I keep missing.

To Be Found And Found Out

I have daddy issues,

she whispered

in my ear after

sitting in my lap.

Decades younger,

not yet damaged by

a world more cold-blooded

than a child killer

smiling when he sleeps.

My luck with the ladies

remained or had returned,

but of course, the price

would be paid later.

What does a blind man

do when given the 

steering wheel

with a loaded

gun to his head

smeared in lipstick?

It worked for a while,

but that first night

I took her in every room,

including the bath.

I thought it would work,

she said months later.

I told her it did

’til it didn’t,

but I knew I was already

torn in half by her leaving.

Sleep’s impossible now.

Too often I say her name

with the fool’s dull whisper

questioning all, even jokes,

laughter still born as

I pound the walls with fists

’til broken like everything else.

The Devil Waits

Husband’s at work

or in the bars,

at a ball game,

or looking for stolen

cash, coming home drunk,

dangling in that precipice

of one of many acts

to commit to forms

of unique regret.

Time measuring failure

like a suit or coffin while

giving his wife moments

to consider the mail man’s

wide welcoming smile,

long looks of store clerks,

or shirtless men kicking a

ball or putting it through

a hoop with sweat’s

fingerprints all

perfect in their one

gold moment

in the sun.

Married eight years,

their chasm wide

as the circus clown’s

nightmarish grin.

As time slows

to eventual

outcomes leaving

death as a jaded

raconteur with all

its shadows of

Subterfuge, waiting

to deal with them,

flaunting that smile

they once knew,

or assumed they did

when first in love.

At The Resort

The former fashion

model left bulimic

with a taste for

coke and foreign men.

She hides behind shades

but can barely

see her future

and 25 is her past.

While the rich divorcee

who circled a prenup

with the art of blackmail

sleazy photographs

a vault won’t let breathe

asks me twice why

I don’t believe in love

you have to pay for.

But it’s the French girl,

Simone, dubious.

With a counterfeit

smile she circulates

in shady deals with

real estate rich.

Men she lives to 

bankrupt and degrade

since those entertainments

are hard to come by.

At the hotel bar I feel

a chill when she says

for me she has plans.

Tonight, it’s a woman

I’ve met before in noir

films and spy magazines,

whose bed I’d call home

if it belonged to either

of us. When she leaves

it’s an escape

as she puts her wedding

ring back on and calls

the concierge for a car.

Outside darkness deepens

between street lights

and a shadowy moon.

I open a dime novel

and I’m almost settled in

between a murder

and an innocent

outcast framed by a 

smoking gun…

when there’s an impatient

knock on my door.

Opened, it reveals

Simone with a smile

telling me touching herself 

and Russian Roulette are games

she can’t and won’t

play alone.

FORCE OF JULY…ROUND 2

Like APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX we got some more stuff for you from DFP…

first off VOICES FROM THE FIRE VOLUME 9

Still burning…VOICES FROM THE FIRE continues! Collecting poetry, prose and stunning visuals from the official Dumpster Fire Press, rolling e-zine VOICES FROM THE FIRE featuring wordsmiths and artists from here, there and everywhere in-between.

We will conclude the run to this ever popular series with Volume 12 in early 2023. It’s been fun but time to move on for now…actually burnout contributed to most of that…as for what the content entails…check out our latest entries from late May-late July…it’s easy, click on the VOICES FROM THE FIRE section of this site and scroll on through…pretty simple unless you’re from the Great Grand Rapids Circle Jerk and you’re unable to figure out anything that isn’t directly connected to your friend’s endeavors…LIVE LOCAL!

Next up we have the final chapbook from Editor In Chief Mike Zone…FUCK YOU: A FUCKING POETRY CHAP featuring stunning complimentary visuals by WORLD ON FIRE: PROPAGANDIE brain-child Paul Warren.

I lied…as Editor in Chief of Dumpster Fire Press, I vowed never to publish my own book…I mean a book written by Mike Zone, edited by Mike Zone and published by Mike Zone…how egocentric can one get? All of a sudden I decided I wanted to circulate my work for free through various venues but first had to make proper goodbyes dropping truth-bombs left and right so please enjoy the 42 pages of poetry with stunning complimentary visuals by DFP heavy hitter Paul Warren. If anything, you’ll be saying “Fuck you” too to the way things are, were and are still trying to be in the era of Sixth Extinction.

Dance, dance, dance

Mad titans

the death of magik

Putin dance club

in Siberia

dance, dance, dance

THE HOT ZONE

Sixth extinction

U.S. Fantasy

I want to marry

Anne Sexton’s ghost

phantom Allen Ginsberg weeping

holding Walt Whitman’s sausages from the grocery cart

I just broke the other stockboy’s heart

Kissing- bad makeup

drag glitter bummed

baby gurl

“my god”

that phrase- MY GOD

MY GOD- humble thyself before thee

I need your assistance

Your restoration

Taken aback

Give me understanding

MY GOD- I ask thee, let me plead with thee

A self-serving prayer

I cannot comprehend my misery

Divine nor man-made

MY GOD- whom I own

Do not mock what is mine

Do not question nor conflate this narrative

My god and I are one

Reflective of one another

Made in his image

We are the divine face

Of the divine face

Every knee shall bend

Head will bow

Tongue shall break

MY GOD-

it’s just all too incomprehensible

Bad sex (Lipstick mirror redux)

Last night really pitch black taking us to a bleeding sky sun rise

it could have been the pot

or whiskey

possibly the beer

we played cards and watched documentaries on castles and the Spanish civil war

you always pulled out the weird toys in an effort to convert me

claimed I was too vanilla

you always wanted to bend over the bed with the windows open with subzero temperatures knowing my dick never quite worked right in the cold

it was mostly uncomfortable with you

the inside of your vagina overly pierced

like a razorblade suitcase

you’d choke me

slap me

call me a “fuck” or “son of a bitch”

discovered my temporary secret kink

mostly it was awful and kind of bad

rushed

but there were good nights

when one of us would get blackout drunk

only not to remember

you ever so gleeful “You wrecked my pussy! Let’s get breakfast.”

Only to pass out cross-eyed

denying the validity of my semi sober recollections

shortly after

only to pass out again

wanting to cuddle

when I awoke

there was that oh familiar lipstick message on the mirror

I’ve written about

So many times already

“Some poet

Can’t get it up”

It was a common problem

With you

With me

Guess it never worked out

quite right

true romance

kink and rage

not included

Understanding power

Sixth extinction

Fun Police on parade

fighting staged struggles

half a century old

you’ll never have ultimate equity

nor advancement

allow me my fun

love and chaos reigns