BILL PYLES...

Bill Pyles was born August 31, 1923. He was raised on an 80 acre farm on the outskirts of the industrial town, Flint, Michigan, during the depression. He worked in a General Motors factory to earn money to go to college. He enrolled at Central Michigan College of Education in 1942-had a rural school teacher scholarship-joined the Navy Reserve, and in 1943 became apart of a pre-officer’s program for the Navy called V-12.

He graduated with a B.A. degree in sociology from Central Michigan in 1945, and went directly to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois-graduated with a degree in New Testament Interpretation from the school of theology, Garrett, in 1947, under the egis of the U.S. Navy-both on active and reserve duty.

He worked for a year as a Rail Road roust about in Chicago, studied voice at Hull House. In 1949 he became director of the Recreation Therapy department at Manteno State Hospital in Illinois, and then at Galesburg Hospital for geriatric mentally ill.

Bill has written poetry since he was school child. He has self-published his, “Tissues of Lives”, has been in several chap books, had poems in newspapers and other publications. He is a member of the art gallery BWAC in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He was part of the coop art movement on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, in the 60s and 70s.



Voodoo Skidoo



Voodoo Skidoo! Skidoo Voodoo!
Skidoo Voodoo! Voodoo Skidoo!

Voodoo Skidoo! Skidoo Voodoo!
Your love spells from ancient nations
bring gross, erotic devastations;
with eerie, creepy complications!
Skidoo Voodoo! Voodoo skidoo!

Voodoo Skidoo! Skidoo Voodoo!
Cast your forceful spells that make love true.
Don't stir romantics in a stew,
leaving them a returned billet-deux!
Skidoo Voodoo! Voodoo Skidoo!

Voodoo Skidoo! Skidoo Voodoo!
Skidoo, Skidoo! Voodoo, Voodoo!

CYNTHIA TORONTO...

CYNTHIA TORONTO, a California transplant, is recognized as a forerunner of cutting-edge Spoken Word Performance. An award-winning poet, she has written eight books of poetry with her work appearing in several anthologies and video documentaries on Los Angeles poets. She has been featured in the New York venues, Four Horsemen and Pink Pony readings at
the Cornelia Cafe, The Bowery Poetry Club, Stark, Otto’s Shrunken Head, Gathering of the Tribes and many others. Upcoming: Nomad’s Choir and The Green Pavillion series. Also a seasoned character actress and educator, she currently teaches Acting and Speech as an Adjunct Professor at City College of New York and Borough of Manhattan Community College.



WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE

To all tenants:

Please do not spit in the elevator
as if we have to ask you again

The landlord

Your used crunched napkin left between two leaves of the plant in the lobby
wreaks germs spreading into my oxygen and H2O

Your visitors’ stained unrecycable styrofoam cups left in the entryway
crowd my trash can of recyclable garbage that has a promised permanent home

Your neighborhood stalking strangers’ mock key entry
blocks my special cut ones that now get stuck in the lock

Your cigarette smoke lingering near the mailboxes
chokes my asthmatic breathing as I cough open my mail

Your pounding broomstick from your ceiling thumping to my floor
vibrates mental noise so I can’t work through the problem of your paranoid schizophrenia

Your cat’s urine demanding scent space between floors ! - 6
slows down my trip upwards into the F region where there IS no human or animal waste YET

Your mothballs fly into our 6th Floor hallway buzzing
their smell of death onto my clothes still hanging in the closet 4 doors away

Your dirt mixed with an occasional jumbo outdoor dead roach edges into my doormat &
slips into my need to suddenly become an obsessive-compulsive or a science fiction buff

Your overcooked fish seeps through our shared wall
forcing me to take a shower to exorcize your protein demons

Your blaring middle eastern polka disco music blends in with my CNN news viewing
erupting into a new type of civil war message not yet publicized worldwide

And I stay huddled in my apartment surrounding myself with my preselected sounds and music,
mirroring my preferred internal reality including unique art from dear friends adorning the periphery,
fresh food and produce for tasting, and imaginings privately held with my earphones
and plastic gloves in place, protecting me from the contagion of 1920’s urban building disease
prescribing my future healing into self-contained peace

CYNTHIA TORONTO
Copyright 2008

ADRIANA SCOPINO...

Adriana Scopino is a part of the NYC poetry circuit and she can be seen in an upcoming performance at the Stone, created by R. Nemo Hill, based on the works of poet Robert Desnos.



The Language of the Sea Winds

What if we are being guided
from stone to stone

across a jetty
over a green ocean.

Desires that drift
like sea grass--

his heart was like an empty mansion--

and hope is as opaque
as sea glass
in black sand.

I want to build a ship
in the center of my being
and learn the language
of the sea winds
from there.

JAY CHOLLICK...

No Bio b-s, not for me,
just blow-hard pride, dull facts
that mask thin poetry

-Jay Chollick


Madman Speaking


New storms up there—thunder
in the head—bravado-brained, it bursts!
and with
such force, that I, with terrifying hands, now coddle
meteors! Will myself
cruciferous. And briny dazzled, turn sudden
clam! owning, as if born into it, its
Morbid juice. I will—I must! toward
foreign ecstasy, creep newly born—or
eel-like, twist; work heavy human
into it, find glass and there somehow, re-silver
Youth
and touch in mirrored memory
the acned boy; slim blush and fumbled
sexuality—to be ingenious! To throw off cells,
leap leaping from oneself, pop-eyed
and singing madrigals!—to be another’s
bloodline, flowing
Smooth. But pity—all these flame-lit
possibilities, seem repugnant
now, they bring me, tugging madness,
to the
sharpest edge I feel
Unhinged. This brain has rust corroded
lobes, they make me thrash; or glued
to stodgy platforms, make me sit; watch
fireflies; the deep bending
of a continent, the twilit haze—but not,
full-flood organic, to partake
of them, to simply
Sit; grow thin, dry husked, and papery—to lose
the wing; the latitude; the infinity
of lines. And who
denied their liquid fingers, touches
light? This sanity is
Too sad for me. I’d rather say—come here
magnificence! you be
gardenia; and I, turning leather—oxford
or anklestrap, I’m someone’s
Shoe