ditch,

Peter Schwartz is a painter, poet and writer. He's also an associate art editor for Mad Hatters' Review. His artwork can be seen all over the Internet but specifically at: http://www.sitrahahra.com/. He's had hundreds of paintings, poems, and stories published both online and in print. His last exhibition was through Aesthetica Magazine and featured a projection of his digital painting 'Terminal 4' on a busy street in York, UK. This December his work will be featured at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in Chelsea NYC.

Peter Schwartz's e-chapbook 'amnesia diary', published by Barnwood Press for their Great Find series, is available for your viewing pleasure at: http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_24/amnesia_diary.html

Peter Schwartz's latest chapbook is the nowhere glow from Trainwreck Press

A.R.H.

(automatic radio heart)

there's nothing inside

my radio heart –

a weak signal

about to turn the

station like a suicide

beneath the subways

where even dust

takes on vices

and learns the paths

of machines

learns the difference

between stars and

satellites and how

the streetlights echo

just so when the

gutters fill with heart-

ache from last night's

hangover party

whose uninvited

learned to read a few

more signals through

the half dead pulse

of the telephone

despite the static

now roaming the city

like a cloud of bees

broken from the hive

hungry even for the

bittersweet scent

of mere memory

when something

like midnight once

grabbed conscience

by the neck

and squeezed

until the automatic

blacked out leaving

just one last

lonely parking lot

of resistance.

puzzlebox

I'm lost jigsaw

opening in a tunnel

of power

suffering placebo

by placebo

by reflex

on the fault line

of trust.

-

a thunderhead

blindly imitating

the sea

holding

heavy vigils

overhead

trying to fossilize

my best.

-

infinite posture

forced back

into a shell

to relive

each ghost

of pathos

juggling the

creaturely.

-

a scavenger

with no name for

the wilderness

an afterlife

waiting to happen

like candles

without

marrow.

-

a stepchild

watching the

clouds

gathering

over the terminus

like a finger-

painting.

-

knowing the

lightning never

reached

the mantle

without a

little death

without some

halfway.

cousins

1.

we are the heroes of again

we pray like boxed angels

for an opening and then

a closing; we are not

without our rituals

we are paper men

w/ private forest fires

an aftermath of the perpetually,

essentially, bare...

again,

we are heroes

twice with scissors

rubbed against the

flagstones of

despair;

we are

flesh to flesh; earthbound

w/ roses.

2.

we are winter.

we are rainwater.

are we not?

we are specimens

of this momentum w/ handles

w/ amazing injuries and bad appetites

w/ candy and ashes and

potluck, too.

we are our own

burning mascots;

nameless.

 
the human point

1.

keep distance as a reservoir

but honor each flowering contemporary

for what it is

the residue of servitude

is the last thing

to mean what it means. 

2.

nothing hereafter

can repaint the sky

fingertip by fingertip as a dip

inside your fatal pool of light

nothing human

can help now.

3.

distill until it hurts

till places not places

share their despair

as scarecrows drift like astronauts

and emblems split their vows

into vestibules

for animal gifts

cannot be hunted.

4.

toenails and haloes

the emergencies that neophytes whisper

placed sideways like fever jewels

around pillars of otherwise

(the hocus-pocus

of the fragile)

5.

nothing human

means what it means

till now.

how to survive an execution

I’m transcendent meat

doubt sentenced to a whole

winter outside

the blockhouse

a skeleton of all the sleeping someones

I’ll never be lined up against the fence

each facing their private death squad

judgment with cigarettes

in their fingers

after a lifetime of commitment

to nothing more than style I take

on a look of concrete

as if to pave my escape

straight through the eyes

of my oppressors

who joke about my guilt

forgetting they too are apes of fate

in this perpetual fix mixing

noon with midnight until

my watch breaks

like a butterfly

my head swims

beyond the rows of trees

and stone statues

beyond this tired plaza

with its overgrown armory

of wooden benches

and slow fountains

beyond the unmentionable

and immeasurable

beyond the soldiers and pigeons

beyond government

and reason

beyond even the

child playing at the edge

of the courtyard