#vanlife

/ M.P. Powers / 3 Comments

I haven’t been sending out any poems lately, but here is another one just published at HST.

#vanlife

in berlin, he’d been a curiosity shop
employee, a background actor, a maker of old people’s
porn,
a documenter of unexploded ww2 munitions.
he’d also written a few short
stories and started an online fiction and poetry
zine with me. it was a bust. all of it. none
satisfied, nothing paid more than minimum wage
if it paid anything at all.
so, he moved back to canada and got a job
as a flight instructor. three weeks later, he washed
his hands of that too. “shadiest place
I’ve ever worked,” he told me.

but with the money he’d earned, he was able to buy
a van,
outfit it with a bed, a dresser, and a toilet
that was a 5-gallon paint bucket
with a blue foam ring duct taped
to the rim.

his plan was to go on the road
with the van and document the experience
on his youtube channel.
his first video, called #vanlife, was an instructional
about setting up the van
and his bucket.

it was mostly about his bucket.
after that, he took to the road, tooling
through british columbia and stumbling
upon a little village called lytton.
there,
he met an old man in a diner who asked if he’d
panned for gold
in any of the local waters. he hadn’t,
but the idea appealed to his romantic
cowboy nature, so he did some research and
after deleting his #vanlife post
bought
a frying pan at wal-mart and spent the next month
squatting on his ass in a frigid river.

it was a bust. just like curiosity shops,
and background acting,
and old people’s porn,
and documentaries on unexploded munitions
and fiction writing
and editing
and #vanlife had been one. he packed up,
left lytton,
but not before smoking one last cigarette
and flicking the butt out the van window
which normally wouldn’t have mattered.
but that summer there was a heatwave,
worst there in recorded history.

well, it might not have been his cigarette.
but something – a pine needle, a leaf – something
caught fire in that part of lytton that day
and now the diner
where he met the old man no longer exists.
the old man might not even exist.
lytton hardly exists.

the whole village went up in a roaring fire.
but my co-editor
made it out of there with a half-pack of smokes,
and his frying pan,
and his crap bucket,
and no plan. but he didn’t need one. he knew
something would come up.

3 New Poems

/ M.P. Powers / 3 Comments

Recently published at Horror Sleaze Trash.

eudaimonicus, a.k.a. sir happy                 

I wish our generation of carping
coddled
identity-crazed poets
could be as disdainful of their own
persons
as the greek philosopher anaxarchus
who after being thrown
into a mortar and clubbed with iron pestles
said to the tyrant nicocreon “pound the sack
that contains anaxarchus
but you will never
pound anaxarchus.”

“chop his tongue off!” nicocreon replied
to which anaxarchus
(who I am quite sure had never attended
a poetry reading
on zoom)

bit off his tongue
and spit it
at the tyrant.

italics

one day I would like to do
what the highbrow poets do
and write about things the common man
has probably never seen or experienced
things that certify me as cultured.
things like plumeria
or escargots de bourgogne 
consumed while suppering
with a coterie of upper crust intellectuals
at a michelin-rated restaurant in Milan.

one day I would like to show everyone
my inspiring bridgehampton home
my creature comforts;
the villanelles I typewrite by candlelight
cinnamon dolce lattes, my garden with its dew-heavy
mustard greens 
and swiss chard
seeding the Japanese birdfeeder,
gunnison sage-grouse pecking at the basin,
my socks
and long johns ironed by the wife.
mortgage paid off, zoom interview on tap
with a likeminded
editor enjoying similar luxuries.

one day I would like to do away with you
unwashed, uneducated
working-class
pricks
and live a life where everything – including
the people – would be worthy
of italics.

in würzburg

church bells
followed us everywhere
metallic and grumbling they rang
out of seagreen
clouds gliding along
the pennant strings from the festung
marienberg round
the japanese gardens to the hauptfriedhof
where I kissed you
on the burial plot of the brother
of the officer who tried to assassinate
hitler

poor guy we mourned him and tried
to feel something real
in his memory but it was only the rain
we felt so we went to a liquor store
and picked up a bocksbeutel
bottle of silvaner
and brought it to the altemain
brücke

floating in a sea of umbrellas and voices
and wine
glasses the blue hydrangea
twilight settling
on the statue of saint killian and the hills
of vineyards
a mirage of peacocks
and the church bells tolling
and the church bells tolling

we could feel them
under our feet
touching our ears our lips our hearts
trailing
us back to our hotel
where I got you
in bed and kissed you
and touched you and I died
a little in your eyes that were leaping
blue minnows
as the church bells hammered
on the windows
trying to get in
but they couldn’t because
the windows were closed.

jesus’s beard

/ M.P. Powers / 1 Comment

This poem was recently published in ballast.

jesus’s beard

my oldest sister has found religion
but not in a good
way not in a ghandhi or perpetua
or meister
eckhart way
she has found it in the old unoriginal
self-righteous
way in a political way in a way
that has nothing to do with having
the ability to think
for yourself
or think at all
because you don’t need to think
when a mob can do it for you
and if you want to know what they
are thinking or not thinking (opining
I should say)
all you need to do is flick
on fox news

my sister by the way
hasn’t always been like this
the old her would think the new her stupid
and absurd
but there was a transformation
that occurred
one night
when she had drunk too much wine
and gazed at the clouds
and saw jesus floating up there

she told the story once
to my father and me and we laughed
and that made her rant and cry
so my father
tried to take her seriously for a moment
but all he could think
to ask was if the apparition
had a beard
and then we laughed again
even my sister laughed at that one
hot insane tears
streaming
down her cheeks she said
he did.

M.P. Powers on Books and Writing

/ M.P. Powers / 1 Comment

Here is a recent interview I did with Taylor Dibbert.

M.P. Powers joins me for my latest author exchange. He divides his time between Berlin, Germany and Boynton Beach, Florida.

This interview has been edited lightly.

You published “The Initiate” in 2023. Would you tell me a little bit about it?

“The Initiate” is about Richard Doran, a tool rental shop owner and philosopher and poet — yes, all those things — who quits his life in Florida and tries to start over in Berlin. There, feeling partly reborn, and partly like an institutionalized convict setting his foot back in the world, he seeks to regain his balance by dating. But his dates are all total disasters, culminating in an unplanned pregnancy.

That’s the story on the surface, plus some barroom scenes and travels around Europe. But I see it more as a below-the-surface story. It’s the story about Richard Doran’s inner life. His anxieties, his euphorias, his insanities, and how he turns it into poetry. It’s also full of leitmotifs that the reader probably wouldn’t even notice on the first read. On the second read — if anyone ever gives it one — they might notice it’s a Where’s Waldo of fertility symbols. Lots of foreshadowing moons, and cows, and fruits, and numbers, etc. Plato’s “Theory of Forms” also plays a part, but only as a kind of lowbrow minor character.

How long did it take to write? Do you have a writing routine?

The first version, “Fortuna Berlin,” took about two years. But that version didn’t sit well with me after self-publishing it, so I put it up on cinder blocks in the carport and replaced the exhaust manifold, the shocks and struts, the bucket seats, the CV axle, the power steering fluid and even the wiper blades — not an easy feat for a piece of autofiction. Took about a year. Then I sent it in to Cody [Sexton] at Anxiety Press.

My writing routine varies depending on where I am. In Florida, I write before work, between 4.30 and 6am. In Berlin, I write whenever I have solitude, which is quite often. I can write pretty much anywhere if I just begin.

But ideally, it’s at home, with booze or coffee and some wordless music in the background. I like to write sober and edit drunk, or vice versa. That way I have more than one personality looking at it. I think Bukowski said something similar. But the idea isn’t a new one. The ancient Egyptians did it too according to Herodotus. And I struggle to think of any poet I find great — or interesting as a human — whose muses didn’t reek of booze and vomit in the morning.

Why do you write fiction?

When you’re living a lie, as I was before I had any idea who the hell I was, it’s important that you hide the fact with a great surplus of verbiage. Bullshit, in other words. Storytelling is often just a way for the storyteller to hide. You throw it in the air like gold dust to impair the other person’s vision of you. That’s how it began with me. Obfuscation.

And it kind of came naturally. I’d drink, haul off on the most outrageous tangents, and people seemed to love that side of me. Unfortunately, it was about the only thing I was good at back then, and there weren’t always people to practice on, so eventually I took up writing and started practicing on myself.

Who are a few writers you admire?

The writers I admire are ones whose works I can read more than once. Most books are like shells without the mollusc in them — devoid of a living spirit. But the ancient Greeks and Romans, the German philosophers, and the 19th century Ruskies — they just keep living. Also, D.H. [Lawrence], E.E. [Cummings], Hemingway, Céline, and Buk. They’re the ones I keep returning to and I don’t need much more than them. I’m not a book glutton. I don’t want my head to always be stuffed with other people’s thoughts. I probably reread more than I read.

Any big projects in the works?

I’ve got a poetry collection called “Strange Instruments” coming out with Outcast Press in 2025. I’ve also got a full-length collection of other poems and dozens of stories waiting to be sent out. I am loaded with inventory, but right now I am mostly occupied with the novel I’m working on. It’s a modernization of an old myth. Very happy with it so far.

berried versus buried

/ M.P. Powers / 9 Comments

1 of 3 new poems up at God’s Cruel Joke. Enjoy!

berried versus buried

my grandfather was standing
in front of the bathroom mirror
watching himself
shave the moment
his heart decided to quit
it happened just after my 3rd birthday
and I remember afterwards
my grandmother showing me
the small oval-shaped
dent in the wall
where his head had hit
when he collapsed
and I remember how
whenever I would visit her house
I would inspect the dent
running my fingers
over it feeling the curve
and the silky 1960s
wallpaper imagining
that cheerful old Irish
drunkard slamming his head then
lying like a sack on the cramped tile
floor slackmouthed eyes filmed
like uncooked egg white
patches of shaving cream on his jowls
that death could
come so beastly sudden
that’s what seemed most strange
I mean, my grandfather
didn’t even have time to wash
the lather from his cheeks let alone
say goodbye to anyone
he was just simply
dead and I remember a week or so
later driving somewhere
in the family station
wagon when my father mentioned
my grandfather was to be
buried and that confused me because
I only knew the word berry
as in the sugary things
you drop in your mouth
I had no idea about
the other bury where they dig
a hole in the earth
and drop your
favorite grandfather
into it.

the blue crab                  

/ M.P. Powers / 2 Comments

Another one just published at Dumbo Press.

the blue crab                  

my father wasn’t interested in tennis
or painting or gardening

the only hobbies
that interested him
were ones that could make you money

my father was gambler
and money-obsessed
even the books he read and the tv
shows he watched
were money centered.

but I think one day he realized
it was a problem
and tried to break out of it by buying
a russian sailor shirt
and a little sailboat
called the blue crab
and taking a course on the art of sailing
then entering a race
that took place on the lake behind our house

the race was a well-advertised
event in our neighborhood
I didn’t see it but noticed the next day
a white ribbon
with a bronze medal
displayed on the kitchen table

“wow,” I said to my mother.
“dad came in third place
in the race? that’s great.”

“it is great,” she said.
“I’m so proud of him.”

“how many boats
were there?”
I asked. I was thinking along
the lines of ten
or fifteen.

“in the race?
oh just three.”

“what?” I was shocked.

“yea,
that’s all.
but please don’t say anything
to your father,
I don’t want him
to be discouraged.”

“alright,” I promised
and I didn’t say anything
but my father never touched
the blue crab again

for the rest of the time that
we lived in that house it sat in the backyard
facedown
under the willows
a slumbering tortoise
ashamed to come back out of its
shell.

wal-mart customer

/ M.P. Powers / 4 Comments

Just had this poem published in both Horror Sleaze Trash & D.U.M.B.O. Press. Enjoy!

wal-mart customer

who would’ve known
the guy who considers anything
with a vegan label to be a threat
on a par with the suitcase nuke
is also the guy who’s never come
within a bargepole’s distance
from the self-checkout line
and the one who refuses to return
his shopping cart to the stack
and leaves it in the gap
between his jeep grand cherokee
and the car next to it a 3/4th drunk
plastic cup of mountain dew
in the cupholder who would’ve
known who would’ve known who
would’ve known?

5 Poems

/ M.P. Powers / 2 Comments

Just had these 5 brand-new misanthropic poems published at A Thin Slice of Anxiety. Enjoy!

twilight zone

she wasted so much of her life
worrying
about others
all she ever did
was worry
that sickness poisoning
her blood her nerves gobbling
her synapses snatching
even her tongue
in the end

I don’t even know
if my mother knew
who I was her last two years
confused ghostlike
a jellyfish floating into the backseats
of neighbors’ automobiles
skulking through
the house at 3 a.m.
burying cherry tomatoes in the coffee grinds
folding in half photos of family members
who were now strangers
and hiding them under bags of celery
in the refrigerator

my mother was an actress
in some terrifying twilight
zone episode in the end
the only mercy being that she never
knew it.

partner-in-crime

so many fiery car crashes
in my
head
so much illiterate agony

so much unreason
whose edges words
could
only sharpen or further scramble

a tarnished blue
blade
that can never be true

know that
it is
here
with me

held to my heart
even as I laugh or dance
or stand
in the mirror
trying to understand

asking
why?
asking what I did? what didn’t I do?
am I truly
so
guilty?

this killing
thing
that has no name no language
just
a single

and silent and meaningless
scream
know that
it is
with me.

talk talk

I don’t think we learn much
when we talk.
we mostly just impart
what we know
and that has never had much
appeal to me.

I prefer to listen or not listen
at all and write
what I can’t articulate vocally.

let other people
jaw away, just not to me.

I have spent too
many hours days lifetimes
trapped in cramped
quarters by didactic gasbags
with nothing
to say and all the time to prove it.

they will always find you.
they’ll call and you’ll
make the mistake of answering
or they’ll
turn up at your door or corner
you in a bar
and begin,
opening the flapper valve

and letting it all out
blasting bloviating
swelling soaring
juggling deftly the vowels

while failing to perceive in their
self-love
the deadening of your features
and lack of engagement
so hell-bent they are
on bending your ears and cramming
them with hot air.

how the hell do I get out
of this? you ask yourself.
I know, I’ll add nothing
to the conversation but a few ‘uh-huhs’
and ‘right-rights’
and wait for a pause.

but the pause invariably comes
too late
and by then you feel soiled.

to have had your time bludgeoned
like that is just murderous you say
to yourself
and vow to never let it
happen again, but you know
they are out there and will find you,
these ground
beetles starving for the last
of your guttering
light.

the sea as healer

autumn in my little seaside
town and torches sing
in the harbour little flames
of roseate
brightening
the waters the boats gliding by

I follow the path
through the palms and seagrape-eating
iguanas I go
down the dune stand barefoot
on the moonlit edge
of the sea I am a shadowy
figure in a munch painting
I am a heart with nautical rope
and seaweed and sticky little barnacles
dragged
through it

I am the cry of a seagull
strangled
by the winds I am
all these things and many other
clever metaphors

but with you in the dirt forever
I feel mostly
like that giant amberjack
I saw under
the fisherman’s blade
earlier this evening
mouth hideous, gaping
empty-eyed
blood and hacked-up hunks of pinkish
flesh smeared all over that clean white
cutting table

euripides said the sea
washes away all the ailments
of man and as I stand here barefoot
in the rising tide
I let the salt-brine and fingers
of cool foam grope
my ankles.

avoid a mass crowd

a little misanthropy is just honesty
and even healthy
if it keeps you from being soiled
by the mob.

humanity is only good
on an individual
basis and very often
not even then. but humans are never
worse than when
they clot and coagulate,
growing large like a cancerous boil

filling ballparks theme
parks arenas god houses community centers
wedding halls concert venues art
galleries nightclubs bars outdoor
fairs street festivals, and so forth.

all that human glut
gorging and guzzling and shitting and pissing
believing that in great numbers
they are safe
they are right
they have arrived
they are where life is really
happening

fun might even be happening too
(if it was packaged
and sold
that way).

but I wouldn’t bet on it.

DUI

/ M.P. Powers / 1 Comment

This poem that just went up at Horror Sleaze Trash was originally published in Nerve Cowboy (2007).

DUI

tomorrow the newspaper
will report
what the rest of tonight will entail
for the guy on the barstool
beside me.

after plowing through some
mangroves on A1A,
he will blow into the sears
parking lot
with a flat tire.
another driver will then
yank him out of his car
and pin him down on the pavement
till the police arrive.

when they ask for his license,
he will struggle to stand
and offer his credit card instead.
he will then fail all
roadside sobriety tests
and refuse the breathalyzer.

and when they ask if he understands
his miranda rights
he will tell the officers
his only health problem is bunions
on his feet.

but for now, he is gulping
carbombs
at the tiki bar and playing the role
of the key west folk hero,
his fat fist wagging,
his sunburnt face a roasted ham hock
in the sun.

he turns to me. ‘last time
I was at this bar I got a blowjob
in the lady’s crapper. I’m tellin
you, I didn’t even know
the girl. she just pulled me right in.
but it was good.
real
good.”

The Pre-Dawn Wreck

/ M.P. Powers / 2 Comments

Just had this published in The Crank. See here: https://www.thecrankmag.com/issue-12

The Pre-Dawn Wreck

Palm trees twisting in their dark bodies,
sky lit up in blue, amber, broken glass
on wet asphalt. And there it is: a crushed
Dodge Ram, a landscaper pacing nervously
in soft twilight. On the other side
of the street, there is a Subaru with shattered
windshield and bashed-in quarter panel.
Lying in the dewy grass beside it, there is a woman.
She is on her back. She is gaping at the clouds
and face of the stranger floating over her.
He says something.
She doesn’t respond. Maybe she is dazed
and can’t process the words.
Maybe she thinks
she’s still home in bed and dreaming.
Maybe she is truly as comfortable as she looks,
or dead. I pull forward a little, try to get a closer look.
But then the red light
turns into a wet splotch of green against
a dim blue sky. Even the traffic lights
are beautiful at this hour.