Beining's "Outside The End" Review from XYZ #45

OUTSIDE THE END Guy R. Beining, The Silver Wonder Press, PO BOX 146399, Chicago, IL 60614, 20PP, Saddle Stapled, $4.00

Spare, bleak in its consummate bleakness, harrowing in its sadness, an excellent palliative for congenital optimism. Some very good lines too. One among many:

I told this poet that he had fallen through earth
and that I would gather the pieces...
when you could fall from the earth
you finally begin to realize that
there is nothing there
and for that you have spent a lifetime waiting.

In combination with the artwork, done as usual by Beining, you feel like being in a downward trajectory of despair that yet somehow emboldens, invigorates and strengthens the mind. The downward descent into the ether of nothingness weighs upon the reader yet the predicament becomes funny in the knowledge of the desperate state of existence.

Amputate green, amputate red
Amputate dreams of the dead.