“Ecstasy,” watercolor by Erik Kaye, copyright 2017

Ampersand
by Catfish McDaris, copyright 2017

Sometimes at night I meet
myself when I was young,
looking in the mirror every-
thing about me disgusts me

What color is the wind?
What color is an orgasm?
What color is death?

Diastema erotica, don’t cut
my pizza pie, there’s no such
thing as the sea of tranquility

He had a boner in a hail storm
listen to Swordfish Trombone,
Bitches Brew is black as death.

Even Death Can Make a Mistake
by Catfish McDaris, copyright 2017

Love is a huge blood diamond
shoved up the ass of a virgin Zulu

Love is an alligator’s yellow tooth
worn by a gypsy mojo priestess

Love is a black baby dying of starvation

Love is a palomino stallion falling
into the Grand Canyon

Love is the workers getting overtime
wages on the Great Wall of China.

Mexican Horseradish
by Catfish McDaris, copyright 2017

Drinking red Mexican coffee eating
a horseradish omelet, Lady Gaga
drives up in a dirty Mercury, he says,
“There’s no such thing as a small miracle,”
they drive to the Valley of Rhinoceroses,
where fried okra and chicken was invented.

Sunflower Dance
by Catfish McDaris, copyright 2017

Death of the sunflower iris sky,
thirty-seven sunflowers shrivel
and die under the deluge of
impasto thick upon Vincent’s
canvas, as he lay in agony wat-
ching purple black crows float
above, you are in my heart van
Gogh, I shall nourish the earth
with my blood, as it has us, the
women will weep and sing in
Portuguese in the house of old
boots and broken hour glasses.

Bio: Catfish McDaris won the Thelonius Monk Award in 2015. He’s been active in the small press world for 25 years. He’s recently been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto.

Erik Kaye’s Real Autobiography: “I made a decision when I was in college that has defined my life. I decided not to pursue a career in Art until I first overcame a mysterious condition in my life that finally turned out to be Adult ADD. I thought I could just coast on secondary jobs, working in print shops and later, teaching English-as-a-Foreign-Language in Japan, until the inevitable completion of my real work, ADD-Busting. Which never came, at least not until now that I’m in my 60s. But such is the way of art; painting is a solitary avocation that is as much about the transformative journey as it is about acquiring technical skill.” Erik is now a full time artist living in Hawaii. To see more of his amazing artwork, click: https://erikkayeart.wordpress.com/

Categories: art by Erik Kaye, poetry by Catfish McDaris

Tags: abstract watercolor by Erik Kaye, poetry by Catfsh McDaris