Cafe Bizarro

After dark,
in the metaphysical night

I
rush slowly through Brooklyn

&
enter Café Bizarro

our
secret meeting place in Midwood

&
wearing a celestial crown of electrodes

&
a bestial brain-charger that I plug into a wall socket,

I
melt into invisibility & dissolve & drift & dream

of
Sweet Phantasmagoria my lovely Dream-Lady dancing & descending into non-existence

&
while sipping French Vanilla Delirium

I
taste my Lady Divine

swirling
into the omphalos of the universe

an
oval mirror of irreality

&
I follow her into the deep of nowhere

&
perhaps tonight I shall find Heaven

on
Electrode Highway

or
Hell on earth

if
a hallucinatory stranger a simulacrum or the Chimera-Manager unplugs me

 

Artwork © Ira Joel Haber

 

Dr. Mel Waldman is a psychologist, poet, and writer whose stories have appeared in numerous magazines including HARDBOILED DETECTIVE, ESPIONAGE, THE SAINT, PULP METAL MAGAZINE, and AUDIENCE. His poems have been widely published in magazines and books including INDIANA VOICE JOURNAL, LIQUID IMAGINATION, THE BROOKLYN LITERARY REVIEW, BRICKPLIGHT, SKIVE MAGAZINE, ODDBALL MAGAZINE, POETRY PACIFIC, POETICA, RED FEZ, SQUAWK BACK, SWEET ANNIE & SWEET PEA REVIEW, THE JEWISH LITERARY JOURNAL, THE JEWISH PRESS, THE JERUSALEM POST, HOTMETAL PRESS, MAD SWIRL, HAGGARD & HALLOO, ASCENT ASPIRATIONS, YELLOW MAMA, and NAMASTE FIJI: THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY. A past winner of the literary GRADIVA AWARD in Psychoanalysis, he was nominated for a PUSHCART PRIZE in literature and is the author of 11 books.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer,photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows bothin the USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 230 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc.