David McLean has been hobby writing for a few years but only submitting and writing more seriously for just under three. Details of online and print work and books and chapbooks out and forthcoming are at his blogspot.
He is mostly inspired, if that's the word, by his unwillingness to believe in easy religious answers to humanity's existential problems, he is also inclined to discuss the problem of childhood and the child as ghost, a living being subjected to a stream of words that are either concealed advertising for society's norms, or, nowadays, just out and out adverts for crap. He tries to write in a way that shows the sickness in society, they way words are weapons and are used to subject unruly bodies to society's discipline, in a way that lets the ghost of the child in everybody rest in peace, and see beyond mothers and preachers and teachers and their duties. - Like Bob Dylan says, he becomes his own enemy the instant he opens his mouth to preach. He uses a lot of pop culture imagery, for example his forthcoming chapbook hellbound is based on the Hellraiser mythology. He regularly references songs too; everything from "Peter Perrett" to "Burning Spear".
He edits two zines for epic rites press, who are soon publishing an anthology, laughing at funerals, and a chapbook, hellbound, by him. The zines are lines written w/ a razor and the thin edge of staring.
Guidelines for submitting to these zines are:
"Epic Rites Press does not currently accept unsolicited manuscript submissions. In order to be considered for entry into either the workers in blood chapbook series, the bad blood chapbook series and/or as a feature book publication, your work must first appear in an Epic Rites Netzine.
The epic rites journal does not accept submissions & publication therein is at the sole discretion of the editors. We contact you if we are interested.
For submissions to the thin edge of staring and lines written w/ a razor we are always on the look out for raw passionate material, written with blood, for lines, and for work that explores the creative process for the thin edge. McLean edits these and will not read prose, he actively dislikes the graphic arts, so no pictures, and, please, no academic garbage. Send 3 - 5 samples of your best work embedded into the body of an email to regnruta@gmail.com
. No attachments. Reprints are fine as long as they are good. Simultaneous submissions are fine too, but McLean usually answers within minutes if he is awake and sober."
The link for the guidelines is at the epicrites homepage:www.epicrites.org
sweetly raining blood
it is raining sweetly blood
from a child's eyes
and the town is soaked
by it
it is offensive to the dull soil
and soldiers are coming
they are carrying flowers
and guns
it is raining sweetly blood
in the soldiers, they are from
another culture, or so i hope,
i hope they will kill us
sexuality and cognition
when knowledge is discussed
through sexual metaphor,
knowledge and carnal "possession"
as if this were something easily
understood, something simple
and amenable to understanding
at all, not just bodies ravaged
by need and fucking like beasts,
with tight pussies and ample sufficiency
of penis, we are tempted to reject them
then, if we fuck like beasts indeed,
and wonder how these thinkers fuck -
i think the fuckers just don't fuck too good
over the city
over the city is a sky where they said was death
and the dead, there were beings in it that lived
in a sense, but no beating hearts in them,
and Silesius said that god only knew one word
which encompassed everything, this was not dim
of him, but it was best to know one word well,
one that created earth and heaven and worse,
than to know them all and be a run of the mill living
thing. and over the city lives the same sky still,
but we do not imagine angels live in it
unless we are very primitive, even children
here do not believe in gods and devils and angels;
but they don't even really believe in themselves,
not yet, they are still convinced that their mothers
were ever supposed to love them, so many kids
have razors that sting, because it is disappointing
that mothers are not always what you expect.
still, the sky is fresher here now that god is dead
and there are no devils or angels left
for any body to dream about, no hell but the fact of death
and lies that mothers leave in children's heads
