imagist
Two Poems by Vimeesh Maniyur
Two Poems
by
Vimeesh Maniyur
Lip
Long back
He was called for making Thajmahal
A good, dirty man with talents
He Went.
One day he saw the Emperor
Heard an unknown toungue
May be he was the first in kerala
Who heard that…
It is stone not a white sun
There were no friends
In work they spoke one
They were one lettered humans
kept stone like his letters
That day he spoke to the king
In dream… in his stone realm..
The man of palaces didnt get his stone-lip
Beheaded that kingdom
Never cameback.
Saw his rustic speech in its silence
True, It is fear not whiteness
The white geometry
As always
I looked into my android
There came a white geometry
Here and there roads
Here and there malls
Here and there talkies,
Hospitals, banks, A T M,
Railway station, hotels, pubs,
Café, bars, bus stand…..
Nothing but a white – haunted piece
Of barren world.
Where is this one, the road?
Hospital? Schools? army camp? Small teashops?
Loitering goats and many more….
Are they too big to map?
I looked again
Where I am?
Bio: is an established bi-lingual poet, novelist and translator from kerala, in India. He has two volumes of poetry and a children’s novel in his credit. He has also penned stories and dramas. He has bagged for many prestigious awards such as Culcutta Malayali Samajam Endownment, Madras Kerala Samajam, Muttathu Varkki Katha Puraskaram etc. for young writers in kerala.
Faded by Matina L. Stamatakis (with KJP Garcia)
Faded
by
Matina L. Stamatakis
(with KJP Garcia)
plancelled
– kept aside
while sweeping from cell
dispersions
driven back to center
-clarified edges exposed
as indefatigable limitations
* * *
envelope disorderliness
of infinite spaces
─ghost automatons
rapt in lush circuitry
─synapse
a refuge
in the tumult
* * *
for every longing
overdue
evolution / sin / violence
purity + deeds
(s)wearing
circumspect technology’s
introverted shame
* * *
─rising
through darkness
[a doomed conception]
of alien sentience ─
throat spilling-out accursed
ejectamenta (im)pulse, a quiver
* * *
over(t)ly
(e)motion
:all – foreign to imminent
choke down
of thrust – throb – set
aside with missteps
of speech yet to attain (a)trophied silence
* * *
incommunicable language ─ exasperating
shape of open
mouths─ illusion’s desperate
trigonometry // a priori: as tongue, refracted
by birth’s
origin
[un]wavering crux, thus Being
* * *
humble rivets – know trivial confusion for slack of steel
. time bends light with/in gravity’s tru(e)st
– accord.
stains are false brands stubborn – undisturbed by wash and play
= only age (befri)ends ultimate options
faded beyond
e +/- legibility
* * *
the mind’s errata,
cognition: a synaptic labyrinth ─disappears between
oceans of membrane [un]familiar portals in a dream
mechanized & extraterrestrial
expresses incomprehensible
know/ledge
only exists in/complete
* * *
nothing(ness) posesses an indisputable perfection
corridors are heavens between disconnective voids – space unto space
of emptiness is resemblance – in likeness is always an image cast
to describe is to steal details from abstract almosts
equal = equal – alone
all + one
together is own make up of parts formed from (a)maze[me(a)nt] to be
* * *
synthesis── needs flesh expect no answer ──depend on distances/instances
breathing tomorrow comes knowledge
& question rearranging patterns of usual places
displaced in con/text + elements + soft texture
obscured [by] teeth
sensors behind senses
sense[less] // structures set up to collapse
* * *
what detach meant was to say – give it time. and it is standing in for what?
it detache(s/d) from meaning, past occurrence, infinitives, speech
. in future’s tutorials examples, systems, and designs are ennobled unseen gases kept under bell jars filling in for(eign) core responses of familiarity disjointed observed
insistent upon bonds broken in death and half-life
* * *
a dimming beacon, this half-life, a cling to improbable senses wavelengths bodies
endless exploration of dire conditions─ volition, non-present & all the wilder, studying it
through liquid air, its immortality only a mortal mark on blue matter──dissolution, suddenly
emblazons it──aether disperses corporeal space, the observed half-life radiates a permanent
dystopia, detach//collapse: organs wild flowers malfunctioning & uncertain── wet
as nothing, nihil in its skin calls to speech through the bell jar, hollowed-out ghost-air
abyssal [ as endless] algorithms
* * *
inches gamed – gained
askew – a slant measured in available degrees
– misfired on demand – on target insides out –
by want – need – have – control is bought borrowed sold
echoes in chamber push other voices to sleep
phantoms sacrifice death in total for glimpse = mired in local conditions of
staying housed/coursed where curving bells contain deviations derived from models
(A portion of this poem originally appeared in Barzakh)
Excerpt from 47 Venezuela
There are stars up over the ocean
And I know because I have seen them.
Like words written mutely in the sky
And I know because I have read them.
Tiny sea beacons to guide all who between the waves still malinger,
Little dots shining bright
That the darkest of night
Cannot cleanly obscure.
Six Poems by Juliet Cook And j/j hastain
Six Poems
by
Juliet Cook and j/j hastain
Inside Out
Like a bee moth with bloody honeycomb lips.
Whose mouth will you sting next?
Whose mouth will become your own
next sticky chrysalis space?
Behemoth please don’t
lose yourself while you are busy
trying to find yourself.
Don’t treat your stingers
like they’re tectonic plates.
You’re not the whole surface of the earth.
You hover buzz above the mainstream,
but why try to create a new ovicide?
Are you attempting to kill
your own pattern again?
When will you help yourself
understand not every protrusion turns
into a broken down strand of tainted
confidence in the hyoid coincidence?
Are you too busy chiding biology to notice
your disembodiment tear apart like
flayed digits? You used to be pretty
as a snap dragon until you snapped,
and repeatedly ripped yourself
into too many different pieces.
Elated Excavation
I’m an incomparable mess with exaggerated streaks.
How do I narrow this down? During weeks
of drought–during weeks
of downpour–weeks upon weeks of
inauguration of weakness. Why is my flesh
made like this? Is it made for this? I didn’t
sign up but it might be time
to excavate and rearrange the flock.
Here’s my latest signature. I am glowing the more and more
sheep I let into this
dream state.
Sheep aren’t only a bridge, aren’t only
what to count in order
to get somewhere. When the moon is just right,
these sheep trigger out ectoplasm,
lots of different colors and
shapes, too many to count
unless we create a whole
different sort of order
reordering the borders while
wise men dream of dust bunnies
and other happenstance. Revamp
the squiggle dusters into ecstatic
elation, frenetic deviation
from the fur
or devotional pledges ensuring
the fur.
Fury dangling on the edge,
purring at you to count
yourself in
Cuckoo Loincloth
Why Lancelot? She asked
her other self
the one in the oculus
Why not a lion-sized lark
a lionized loincloth
chewing this month’s blood
in order to create sparkles
of bewitching lioness drips
as the creature learns to fly
When the full moon
is acting full out
in attempt at fulfilling
will you drink it
or will you pull out
the flying machete
and try to hit that moon
down? Because why try?
Why attempt flight?
It’s like the spasm of a clock
made out of milkweed
that might suddenly turn cuckoo
and then drip down thighs
and crawl out the door
again. Screech as the glass
breaks. Great gallbladder
gonads in a rococo arrangement
with lip gloss on top
Disinfectant or Douche?
How do we engrave an orifice?
Burn a bible, a bundle,
an American flag.
Coagulate all the swag
down our throats and then
gag ourselves and spit it
down the drain and
grab the Lysol.
You know what we used to advertise
that Lysol for?
Cleaning off the stick of the plunger
after anal.
Prepare for ocular penetration
and spray paint a ventricle
with gasoline.
Blowtorch the entire panel,
turn the whole party scene
into burning whoopee cushions.
Quiet now: just experience that sound.
Entire Group Slides to One Soft Side
Turbulent taffeta explodes into
Aberrant apparitions
Archetypal pilgrimage
Turns the wheel
Until it sticks
Into the snow
Leaving you to wonder
Will it sink
Will it melt
Will it grow
More wet confetti
More topaz along the lone river
Where tides push and pull
Where whitewater vibes
Where the wet suit strives
To pop out eggs
The shape of staves
With splinters
Because large sacs
And vertical hives
Are buzzing in between
Biting distance
Like the spots within
Spots in
A large piece of
Moon shaped pie
Hole craters reconstructed
With icing jags
Jugs full of lag time
and the heavy breasts
that memory-less men
now drag around
the floor like protruding,
misshapen ball gags
Tall and unforeseen
forsaken gowns
the whole room groaning
like a mutant pinball machine
Entire group slides to one soft side
a way to be free of plagiarizing a wave
After the slow dance, some of them turn into ghosts,
some into cheerleaders, some into mixed up bags
of more taffeta. Just try to dive bomb that.
The healing potion explodes
We were seeking
not
North
in other words the
womb
full of worms
the groom of
a returning blood flow
brimming with another line up
marooned brain waves
Replicate life force
The void?
The new cave?
Is the place in which you are engaged
full to you? Or are you another never
ending cascade? Bright red, dark red.
One side a positive
healing
fetish violence.
One side a negative
stab wound
fantasy/reality.
Never ending hemorrhaging hemisphere. Never
ending lavish
light
Poetic Statements:
Juliet Cook: Oftentimes instead of attempting to express my shifting, mixed up viewpoints with straightforward words, I do so with poetry and visual art (like painting/collage art hybrids) and then let others interpret it how they will. I am often very uncertain about how others interpret my body and mind; likewise, I am often uncertain about how others interpret my poetry/art.
Bird fetuses, other carcasses, abandoned flesh, used flesh, abused flesh, relationship issues, body based issues, and fear of death often infiltrate my mind in one way or another – and much of my poetry and art helps me express those infiltrations rather than repress them. I love creative expression, but sometimes post expression, I feel like my content might be overly repetitive about myself, mind/body, life/death and what is the point of it all.
*
j/j hastain: Word-based: Words are more than language to me. They are little bolts, jolts of light, symbols and systems capable of enabling. Words are ways to make little worlds in which resounding can occur. Words are matter by which to graft new forms of environment and safe space. I depend on words in so many ways. They are access to so much vibrating excess. They are how an intuition becomes a speaking image, a realm.
Body-based: I have synesthesia. Often sound and sight (image) exchange. There are other modalities too: color and vibration. How to articulate experience then? When I read and swallow in words, sentences, I often feel a buzzing just outside of the frame of my physical body, sort of like standing by a loud speaker as intense music blasts at a dance club.
***
Bios:
Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver and purple explosions. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications, most recently including Arsenic Lobster, Menacing Hedge, Mojave River Review and Tarpaulin Sky Press. You can find out more at http://www.JulietCook.weebly.com.
*
j/j hastain is a collaborator, writer and maker of things. j/j performs ceremonial gore. Chasing and courting the animate and potentially enlivening decay that exists between seer and singer, j/j, simply, hopes to make the god/dess of stone moan and nod deeply through the waxing and waning seasons of the moon.
Two Poems by Arthur Turfa
Two Poems
by
Arthur Turfa
The Conversation
Several years after the break
we stood together near the house
early on a summer evening
as the sun slid into western skies.
There we reflected on past years,
expressed mutual remorse
(at first so tentatively)
because the wounds had been healed.
Searching the wreckage of it all,
we salvaged enough to move onward
along separate but often parallel paths.
Thousands of miles behind me,
tens of thousands awaiting me,
we started the process of becoming
the people we were intended to be
even though the horizon was hazy.
Times and places slip away
softly and inexorably from us.
At times several chords on an acoustic
bring back walking over hills
or a sprawling campus.
For fleeting moments we are again
as we were but did not remain.
Far better to be who we have become,
to realize that it was better because
we stood together near the house
early on a summer evening
as the sun slid into western skies.
Precession of the Equinox: Polaris Shifts
Slightly tending westward, gradually
the lodestar yields to its successor
as a new Astrological Age begins.
A residual memory, following me
from the Planetarium in Junior High.
Polaris’ replacement will then
give direction to new future stargazers.
One of the last young people to escape
from Kensington’s web of snarling streets
and elevated train lines, you seized your chance.
You became our Polaris, colorful in action
and attire, caring and cajoling, steadying
us to be the people you knew we could become.
Across the county or continent, we returned
and you greeted us, gloried in those returns.
As colleagues we spoke when storms neared,
and I kept your counsel in sight toward calm waters.
Now I know you began your precession,
stepping aside, though not then out of view.
Some of us search for you, exchanging pieces
that do not always fit together.
Second-hand accounts, some leading closer,
others in contradiction, point to a lodestar
that no longer shines in our heavens.
Every so often I scan the spreading stars
for our Polaris, until comes the realization
we are now lodestars for ourselves,
for stargazers we need to steady, for those
who receive the light as we did once
while scanning skies for our Polaris.
Three Poems by Boona Daroom
Three Poems
by
Boona Daroom
Horse’s Grave
Emotionless pines
we’ve proved stir.
Red August
itching up. No ring
raising cane
when Empty came
almost completely
bored worn. Bare hearts.
Girl with the Padlock
Girl with the padlock on her cellular
Sighs between exhales and consonants
Plight barrels through who knows
What she whorls through Alexander Hamilton
Two hours from now we’ll be fire
Slurred hocks slobbering corrosive
I hide inside salmon berry bush
Blunderings like power lines
We lay under the splayed light plastic
Dreary sentences on Fourteenth Street
The Arms Morpheus
Morning watched a glass shatter
Ice in the basement made a turtle
She dove into her sheets she
Saw reflected a mother’s face
Men tramped snow in and out
Shushing everyone was blue
And rich chicks pulled
Up black socks
At the dog track
Soldiers blathered things
About oil and containers
You shouldn’t drink from
Like robots dismantle themselves
To see all their thoughts
Bio:
Boona Daroom is 29. His poetry has appeared in SOFTBLOW, LIT and
other places. He lives in Brooklyn.
Three Poems by Seth Mirza
Three Poems
by
Seth Mirza
bent cosmos
everything unwrapped
in a bent cosmos
none of this could really be true
we’re still waiting for something
to be true
we’ll keep waiting until the
cosmos shits itself
$45 Silence
virus serves the severed flow…members severed served for several thousand years…past the retirement age…severed served…hold their heads up for all to see…severed past tense silent as if…sewage eyes sever gratitude…another example speaks death silence…bleeding appreciation in death tremor silence…for several thousand years…past inoculation ties luck shrinking and severed…viral testimony in wallets left on sewage stairs…sovereign of silence severs what we mean…nothing has changed at the center of $45 silence…dripping sewage in mists of fingertip silence…severely severed silence…in all sewage heads…tarnished ingrates careful not to tremble it’s all lowered death silence…mists picked up viral scan in perturbed lines of interlaced…appreciate our trembling thousand years…silence in severed shots…fading in death cuts out the game…$45 silence severed…present inexperienced virions…words as innocence left in the wallets of corpses hanging inoculation examples…if you press the right buttons…reconfigure the new viral line silence scan…blown circuit and silence shot…severed in red…testimony severed better while it works…far from the silence…seal silence & a severe flow past the pulse…severed sent…inoculate mutated strain lost in dial up flow…testimony now wasted as multiples scan silence…eager for results…loss of severed on silence pump…severed silence breaks the severe immune to infiltration of mutation mark…while severed scan eager for burn out flow…new coil virus lines not what they seem…probable flow process terminal severed testimony…severed sent to inspectors if…testimony mist severed with $45 silence in thousands of trembling…
wasn’t infinity the hammer cake?
Yet still the newest failures and the shit was turning from the belly and making a kind of finger drifting, wouldn’t calm it magisterially (say, numbing the wondering smile). Wasn’t step to the stretches paid the same 3 soft hearts, the time? Lightly, surprised beast—wasn’t infinity the hammer cake? Nothing been or dog cries, in nothing grit, nothing every had here is it. Exactly still Ur-Eternal and sidesplitting if about betrays on the way, loosely right alone too kind. Slink creatures despise unfair. Ha, rising again to drifting, so if right more secret sour, this we think bad sent facts, even still black you undergrowth half as precious. Only to the ways spit-shape the worry. Every quickly in hate, sometimes the same to secret this. Could speak alone—a sidewalk. And expecting breath of any miniature, move to think the ounces along. Nothing clean will ever equal.
Bio:
Seth Mirza was clinically dead for a period of 2 years in the early ’90s. His work has appeared in The Ampersand, Exit Wound, Kiss the Mongrel, Stuffed Trigger, Ambergris, Counterexample Poetics, and other publications.
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