Dumpster Fire Press returns with an early release of our collaborative poetry project RAZORVILLE…
Razorville is a unique collaboration between poets
Shannon Lynette “Poetry is a beautiful sickness” and Mike Zone “Poetry…painting with words, mass psychosis with a shotgun” along with fantastic visual contributions by UK artist Paul Warren.
Poetry on a tight rope guided by razors going on a series of schizophrenic travels in the mind’s eye. A frenetic love-song? Masturbatory self revelry?
What started off as poetic correspondence turned into a tiktok video series now see it fully presented as it was meant to be… Words and art collide in a delicate balance of worlds between worlds.
this is part of a new series which may or may not last very long…depending on who wants to be a motherfucker…that’s right calling out motherfuckers in the small press as it no longer applies to my personal life and other aspects of this brief mortal struggle…
say, Mike why are you taking a piss on ST AUGUSTINE POET FEST this year?
Well, do I have an answer for you…
Chris BOdor dry drunk narc
This is Chris Bodor…who submitted to DFP previously. We collaborated on a few things which led to him inviting me to St Augustine Poet Fest last year only to leave me high and dry
What?
What does that even mean?
Well, Chris Bodor is one of those motherfuckers that is a virtue signaling dry-drunk. His sobriety a badge of honor as he dutifully attends church so you know he’s a good guy but guess what? He’s still an addict. Still needs that ego stroked. Needs followers. It’s not even a human, a narc is empty and dark inside and desperately cloys at you like an infant for something that it is missing to get high on its supply. A strange sort of mammal it is.
So after paying him to sponsor a show and sending hundreds of dollars of free DFP merchandise that motherfucker/dry drunk narc…didn’t pick me up from the Jacksonville airport…alright no problem. I ubered…only to get to my hotel and realize my phone was dying.
His reply “Can’t someone else help you at the hotel?” Apparently being 4pm he had to have dinner and go to bed early for the big day tomorrow.
No offer to take me to a cellphone store. Had to uber everywhere to find a charger and eventually got a new phone when someone outside of a department store gave me a ride. After my complimenting my CBGB shirt and smoking down with me.
End of story? NOt really. Had to use my old dying phone along with the hotel clerk’s late night into early morning as my new phone was programmed with the wrong password resulting in my being locked out. Eventually the hotel called to get me a cab to get to the right place to pay even more money to unlock my new phone.
I repeatedly tried to get in touch with Bodor throughout the night and early morning with him complaining about his bladder issues along with “document these adversities Henry Rollins would be proud”
THe next morning
No one reached out. Just are you going to be here…later in the afternoon. When I was supposed to have a solo reading, be part of a discussion panel and such.
What did I do instead? Went to book stores. Hung out with a one armed uber driver who gave me a homemade edible who was once the world’s potsticker champion (go figure) and crashed at the airport for 14 hours because my time was shit there and all I wanted to do was get home.
So yeah that makes Chris Bodor a dry drunk narcissist motherfucker.
GEtting ready for our 2023 relaunch on April 2nd 2023 which is when submissions will officially open up along with the launch of four other titles…
Also new business plan…as EIC I used to sink about a grand into DFP a year…not anymore…it is now up to the readers to decide how long Dumpster Fire Press runs whether to the end of the year or in a matter of months, as long as readers support the press through purchasing our titles we will remain.
However this doesn’t mean DFP is going to rendered totally extinct, every so often there will collaborations where things need to held to a certain standard (or rather non-standard) you won’t find anywhere or else, so every so often we may rear our ugly trash filled heads.
But enough of that here’s a preview of what we’ve got cooking starting in APRIL 2023
WEEK 1
RAZORVILLE
Written by Shannon Lynette and Mike Zone with art by Paul Warren
What started off as a series of back and forth poetry posts in the Dumpster Fire Pess group turned into a TIktok video series described as a schizophrenic love song…or is it? What was each poet working out at the time? Who else made subconscious cameo appearances in this beautiful sickness of poetry painting with words mass psychosis with a shotgun and accompanied by UK artist Paul Warren’s visions from the splinters of a mind’s eye.
SUSPICION
Written by Kathleen Yearwood
A memoir? A novel? A slow-burn thriller? Throw all the labels out the window. Call it creative nonfiction or a surreal beat testament of growing up hard, living hard and waiting for death trying to salvage some sort of meaning from all the tragedy. Canadian folk singer/artist peppers this gripping yet contemplative page turner with her very own artistically hautning photography. Think Albert Camus, in Canada without privledged upbringing directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
WEEK 2
POST-DEPLOYMENT
Written by Matt Borczon featuring art by Dillinger
One of the small press’ heavy hitters Matt Borczon delivers a gut punch to the soul and gives the reader a uniquie psychological trip into the world of being an afflicted veteran. You can’t just come back from combat and start grilling hamburgers like nothing happened. Sometimes group therapy helps, sometimes nothing helps. An illumination into the struggle and the loss of learning how to live once the parade stops and flags stop being waved. Each poem monoku format…a one sentence haiku. A unique journey inot the complex world of combat PTSD Featuring a cover and interior art by DFP cover artist Dillinger.
I WANT TO EAT CHINESE FOOD OFF YOUR ASS AND OTHER POEMS
Written and illustrated by Shane Allison.
We’ve been wanting to do this for a while…Shane Allison one of our most prolific contributors to VOICES FROM THE FIRE, GODS GUNS GLORY & GREED and BEDROOM ANATOMY LESSONS takes the gloves off with giving us one of the most raw, vile and well written literary collections ever to be released from DFP which is saying something. A majority of poetry, a bit of prose and fantastic art by this one man army who will make you believe that you…yes, YOU TOO CAN EAT CHINESE FOOD OFF ANOTHER PERSON’S ASS.
WEEK 3
SCREAMING IN THE END
Written by Mike Zone featuring art by Paul Warren
The final collection of poetry and prose from EIC Mike Zone. Burned out from the small press, now content with just giving poetry and prose away randomly on random sites and within random publication as he switches artistic gears. Features a spectacular cover by James Maj
Luckily we’re still on hiatus. and are indeed planning an April relaunch…it’s been a thrill putting together a team of editors and in-house talent and I looked forward to aligning all of that with the live TRIGGER & IMPLODE shows to create a nifty counter-culture multi-media niche…
Dumpster Fire Press was first concieved as an avenue to which I made amends while I was working with Rouge Wolf Press under a person known as “Wolfman” who basically had fucked over a few writers and not wanting to damage my reputation in the overly volatile environment of the small press realm, took on the burden of inheriting a dumpster fire.
SO over sixty titles later along with a website and tiktok channel, where does it go from here? I’ve considered pulp titles that actually pay and dividing the money evenly among all the contributors and the deeper I get, the more this becomes a job and less of a passion.
The small press I feel is also a toxic environment, need I elaborate anymore? No and I won’t, we all know there’s a horde of fools out there screaming “WORSHIP MY NARCISSISM”. Individual author projects for the most part have evolved into combat with time-vampires…not to mention aged out narcs from my local area trying tell me how to operate a press which was just a passion project .
As Editor In Chief and mainly as a writer, I’ve come to reckoning in my personal life regarding the direction I would like to go creatively and existentially in the ordinary world engineering a life I don’t want to escape from and as soon the press started becoming a struggle again, I realized something…
My time in the small press has sort of stopped. I believe I’ve gone as far as I’d like to go with this particular endeavor.
I will always continue to write and contribute whenever I can but as a publisher and prolific contributor…i After ten volumes of work, as well as well as editing, formatting and contributing on close to 100 projects…change is here…for the better.
2023 will the last year of Dumpster Fire Press.
DEADSTAR: CONTROL will be our final release either at the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
Honestly.
There will be no coaxing.
It’s time to evolve and move on to a different era.
It’s been a hell of the last two years here at Dumpste Fire Press…
We’ve published over 65 books, including 12 volumes of VOICES FROM THE FIRE of which you have the final volume from the first phase of DFP UNBOUND…
So what’s next for DFP?
That’s a good question…while I’ve been the solo editor for the last two years wanting to slit my wrists and laying most the artwork in the anthologies as my art director for some reason doesn’t have the proper tech…there’s going to be a few changes.
Additional editors such as a poetry editor and an associate editor. Announcements will sporadically come through as I gradually tweak the site to reflect that.
We’re still still sticking with several thematic anthologies a year. VOICES FROM THE FIRE will return. There will be more of an offering of pulp titles and graphic novels down the line.
OUR OFFICIAL TAGLINE IS TRIGGER & IMPLODE…we are a counter culture movement.
Hoping to expand locally with nomadic pop-up open MICs on a monthly or even weekly basis called TRIGGER & IMPLODE along with maybe some other media ventures but enough of that…
I have a novel to co-write along with a collaborative poetry collection with LADY CHAOS PUBLISHING a joint venture with DFP.
But most importantly if it wasn’t for our contributors and audiences there wouldn’t be this flaming pile of wasteland accomplishment (can we actually call it that?). From the poets, writers, artists and readers…YOU ARE ALL DUMPSTER FIRE PRESS!
It’s been surreal…
AlSO THIS IS A SPECIAL VOLUME OF VOICES not only paving the way for PHASE 2 in the evolution of Dumpster Fire Press but featuring some of our more prolific contributors…
Stephen Whitter one of the most charming and personable writer’s I’ve met who really doesn’t give a fuck about awards and writes whatever the hell he wanted profound philosophical pieces in an understated manner.
A genuinely unique voice…
I salute you sir and allthat you you’ve contributed to Dumpster Fire Press.
Sleep
I don’t sleep much these days, because I can’t do things because of my health that makes tired, Well fatigue, yes but that’s not the same as an endorphin flooded runner’s high which only ten years ago I used to enjoy. No fatigue makes you feel like how a fractious over tired toddler I imagine feels and then if you came across a fractious toddler, you could easily twist off it’s ear ears. And so I go to bed drugged right up , Diazepam or if you’re British and my age Valium. You remember the old Scaffold song we’ll drink we’ll drink to Lily the Pink the savior of the human race, for they invented ‘medicinal compounds’ most efficacious in everyway “. Well you might not remember the song but look it up, wastes ten minutes. So Benzodiazepines, wonder drugs, yes I’d agree with that if they weren’t horribly addictive and almost impossible to come off, now the even more hilarious part is when I was treated for Alcoholism I was prescribed Librium a Benzodiazepine ,’yes what you need to get you off Alcohol is a highly addictive drug’. And when I went on in my career up the addiction ladder and down the life drain I came off Heroin after the many happy years we had together . But I shouldn’t have worried because I was put on Methadone, stops you getting ‘sick’ and of course Valium , so ” Yes what you need son to get you off an addictive drug like ‘The old Brown’ or Diamorphine or to be blunt Heroin, Smack, Skag, Gear, is two even more highly addictive drugs “ Sounds crazy, but trust me….. So, now I’m approaching sixty years old and to put it mildly I’m pretty fucked up . Valium and all its benzodiazepine mates must be long gone, surely ? I mean you wouldn’t be able to get away with legally selling a highly damaging drug would you? No, course not. So what yo do is change it’s name, yeah that’s all there is to it ,no this isn’t Valium that highly addictive drug that has fucked up countless lives, no this is Diazepam and we have got rid of all the others too, Mogadon, that awful sleeping pill is now Temazepam, Ativan, is now Lorazepam. Trouble is that every Benzodiazepine they have called …..Pam something ending in Pam. So, no more middle of the night calls from ‘associates’ in Pharmacies, (must be those 24hr jobs I’m guessing) saying ‘I’ve lost me list, Mogadon worth having’? If it ends in Pam pinch it ffs. Yes, it’s been a funny old life, I remember being fifteen years old and spending all day trying to score a grotty bit of Moroccan Hash, now you get bombarded by the stuff even get prescription weed. But one man’s needs vary as much as weeds grow one is now ok, one still class A.
Shane Allison…a writer and an artist. Visions and voices. An unstoppable force that I hope never gives up his craft. An unflinching eye searing your optic nerves for the bizarre truth one shelters themselves from in a world not fully done away but buckling under the pressure of non-being…love this man.
Poetically speaking…Michael Lee Johnson is the craft at its finest.
December Holidays
December 24th
I find footprints
in this snow,
yours frozen,
with our
broken dreams.
Same with James Maj…words dull the statement of his work. Much love to this man for not only his selfless contributions but deeply caring words of wisdom dispensed whether sought or not.
Nor can we forget our fearless art director Punky Dillinger who kept my head on screwed straight when I needed and arted like never before…don’t worry this marvelous team-up won’t be letting up…as always we’ve got things in the works
Since that fateful day people have gone crazy. I’m not saying it became, but it has become, which means that those events continue to affect our present.
I have received one last mission, to cross the portal and spread the temporary powder.
But how?.
Before continuing with this story I must tell you who I am. i They just call me Zombie.
They say that due to that polluted air the dead left the tombs and the living flesh entered, seeking shelter. The vampires, yeah, I have a vampireskan rib, since they no longer had necks to tear out living beings began to engage in sadomasochistic carnal relations with the dead, and in one of those I was born. They say that this hybridity could be a divine sign and who knows how to take advantage of blood types could lead to the creation of the vaccine and the terraplanation-reedenization of our lovely planet.
They say, according to the legends, that my father, Count BAITAL comes from the past and that my mother, Lilith, from the future and by chance accidentally met in this parallel world.
Parallel world? What do you say?
Yes, no one knows indeed in what world we live. As if this were not enough, Human Carnage, YES, NO LONGER EXISTS THAT NORMAL HUMANITY, also has relations not only with virtual dolls but also with COVERED, people who hide their true wishes and faces behind a three-dimensional chip and wears a mask virtual condom that serves as a wall of protection against diseases.
They say that having these relationships can serve to better heal from contamination virulent left by THAT DISEASE.
But back to the present, I’m being chased by a pharmaceutical corrupt who wants to do scientific experiments with me but ,I won’t let him.
Only Count Frankie, a friend of my parents, can analyze me bodily. So after a lot of mathematical, quantum, temporal, with eceddy chain and backscatter equations I found that it was a divine creature, something like a messiah and that I was destined to save Humanity.
My blood was special and if well synthesized would heal all. To do this I had to cross this portal.
But how to do it?
I had to divide my body into several parts and gather back here when everything was perfect.
Well I’m going to start cutting my veins, behead myself. Extract teeth. And with a petroleum cocktail I will spit my essence in the time flow. This gasoline is made from skulls and mortal remains of the cannibals opposed to the revolution and new world order….
Dumpster Fire Press 