Jim Wittenberg

***

***

Felino A. Soriano

from rhythm:s

in the frame of rhythm

                        picture:

the

                                                fingering of distance

                                    placed

positional

frictions

                                                                        heat from the forming of absolute

attraction:

                                                            noontime moon

awake in the experiment of haze’s

contradictory light

                                                                                    rolled

            in the internal

disposition of day’s

continuous

                                    ornate disposition

*** 

in the language of rhythm

connectivity                coined in the versus method of

in/out

                        ward

introspection

                                                post-(used in/as the easiness of attempting unclaimed

district)

-temporal reenactments follow the

fulfilling extractions of repetitious

modernity (the fooled believe in the culture of uncluttered exegesis)

modular though partial

            exacted as completed impulsion                     the yet encouraged percentages

unable to exist as the rendition of whole

mendacity

                                                                        gallant in the queried pardon of dim

denied in the rotational

back of

                                    culture’s analytical

                                                                                                            needing

*** 

in the witness of rhythm

            solved

            errors

                                    again against wooden angles

                        a

            neoteric version

                                                of onlooking engagements

altruistic

amendments

                                                            aimed into speech’s ascending

demonstration

                                                                                    watch

as with the child’s blurred becoming

eyed as though inflection

derives temporal temptation,

alive

*** 

in the idea of rhythm

replaced current

optimal clothing (worded sewn definitions, strewn…(arrives))

philosophy

created self in the object promotion of interactive

                                                            becoming

                        new

new

                                                pluralized accidents

freedom held whole fundamental being in the time of how’s

fulfilled achievement: interrelate

*** 

in the problem of rhythm

                                                                        as with/in/of

language

                                    tendency’s

            pragmatic

commonalities engage in the direct promissory premise of

diluted being                                       again the altered expectation of escaped

subjective connotations

unable to then reverberate

within the accidental following of unconscious                                 memories

***

***

Peter Ganick

fr. xylene pictures

***

***

Andrew Burke

Late Winter Night

The old dog is snoring. It’s a comforting sound late night in this empty house. The gas heater has warmed the furniture, walls, carpets and floorboards, and the dishwasher in the kitchen has filed away my sparse dishes for washing with tomorrow’s lot.

This poem has no birds in it, as Jack Spicer said some time off. I’ve been reading him, there’s nothing on TV. It is late in this dry winter and at last the earth here is wet with rain. Three ducks from the rising waters of the swamp across the road waddle for dinner across our overgrown and weed-filled lawn. They are silent and not in this poem.

I turn ABC Jazz off and the dog stops snoring. Is there any meaning in this? The day is interlaced with such relationships yet we drudge through our hours, aware of insignificance.  I often think of reality as a knitting pattern with multiple dimensions,  knit one, purl two. No pattern, just chaos and its resultant energy.

Her snoring returns as I rise to turn off the heater and go to bed. I stand beside her, looking down for a moment before she awakes, yawns, and looks at me questioningly. I don’t know, I tell her, I don’t know either.

***

***

Russ Golata

Persistence of Breeze

Living in a world without love
Is to arrive at a place with no sunshine
Where you are a stranger to yourself

Wind, freezing the sweat on your back

The one true wind knows your name
Feel it whispering in your ear
The music of future reassurances
Filling the night air with moon’s caress

When the wind calls you
There are no broken connections

A flash of lightening, dots the skyline
As kites of hope scatter like seagulls

Imagine this world without love
Surely, this is what limbo is like
On a cloud, in a waiting room
Sitting on an empty promise

Autumn breezes divine nirvana
Spraying the world with color...
Feeling it wash over your skin
A stream of fresh melted snow

Awaking the inner most wilderness
Contained in every breath of life
Wrapped in the solace of new ideas
Comfortably soaring into dreams

***

***

Laura Young

Structure V

***
***

rob mclennan

American Hybrid

          for Cole Swensen

               It’s intransitive and about space; or is space or shows
               itself to itself in it
                         --Susan Clark, as lit x: the syntax of adoration

1.

The mind, however weakened. States, foreclosure. Hurray, but for a single angle. Treasured.

Meant, to disturb. Thin balcony, stretch. To sound out, thinking. Misty. If I, prevented. A
great road, flats. It parcels. Beauty, as far out as a generation.

Radius, the highlands. What famous, cut.

Morning, unread. Some nights examined. Removed, forlorn. An island, crestfallen region.
Why is it, look. I dream. I paint a picture.

As if, writing. Sleek, and dark. Appending crystals. This dull, muddied stare.

2.

What a man can, do. Covers over, sex.

3.

Hungry, but. Look out, on horseback. Aesthetic, mountains. Higher, senses. Mottle.

Pedigree, view. A hand, assembled. Creates for me, a sphere. Better, domestic. Teeth. White
hair, and patch of, blue. Engaged. Within these, genealogies. Vary, stink. These disciplines.
Rule tens, all thumbs.

A latch-key shard. We dapple, days. Cranked-out.

Speaker, listener. Docile, in the heather. And your position, known. What happy, download.
Keen eye for effort. Unstable, sleep. Given. These words relate, themselves.

Can never, traverse. Only, sleeps on planes.

***
***

Jim Bennett

Exposition on a theme of Christchurch

some time ago long it was between
but who can dwell with the passing of time
unless clock face and bells interrupt the service
and people leave    gloves left lying on the chair
this was Christchurch not the dome but Abbey
well into Druit park green man and canvas
the grass slicked back like hair into the soil
wood chips from carvings  done with axe
and steam driver rips at concrete this is how
the town becomes

here the cinema an arts centre for the others
the poets sing and writers dance across pages
what are you doing in the summer sunlight
it is winter and spring follows before the autumn
leaves fall from the writers grasp and left lying
in the pram a baby silent as the graveyard
its bench chair stretching across the millennium

roads black with tyres the world bent into a curve
towards the car park  mattered with people rushing
each with their eyes set inward their mouths set
to their distant friends ear     a brush blur of movement
the water distorting the reflections as it always did
and never for this is flow from where the sky
bleeds into a distant stream  one last time

entertainers come go pass this way that
leave laughter hanging  in unremembered jokes
“did you see”   “do you recall”  “remember when”
no not really  only eyes to record now the rest
a flickering screen with black white     forgotten
wars     recalled on a cenotaph  a shop selling flowers
across a pavement  to encourage death
and mothers  who wait for their day to see if they are
remembered with each passing year
the face of town

*** 

Notebook entries on the way to Liverpool

PAGE1

a cabinet of curiosities

the glass cabinet was in
a small room off the kitchen
it stood in shadow against a wall
its contents hidden until you were close
enough to see    a skull    a stuffed bird   
a rock cracked open to show crystals
like a miniature red grotto

there were other things
a native American headdress    a Zulu shield
a gun

PAGE 2

from the mountain top
the footpath is clear
cut into the soil to expose the rock
like the broken crust on a pie
a stress line    broken    chipped away
along the ridge

PAGE 3

at the funeral the priest
called on everyone to think
about the big questions
life    death    God
he said it over several times until
the desperation  to save a soul
crackled in the air like lightening
waiting to discharge
in any soul       perhaps even his own

PAGE 4

the glass picks out the strands of light
braids it into coloured stripes
in the window it is Saint George
fighting a dragon with its fiery breath
across the chapel floor it falls like rain
in coloured pools
and like in the cinema I once knew
smoke    this time from incense not cigarettes
reveals itself  twisting in living shapes
trapped within the light beams

PAGE 5

the trip to Liverpool to meet with friends
hear their poems    read some of mine
is short for me  but
I see how far I wandered off the path
and now look to the stars
to guide me home

***
***

Jim Leftwich & John M. Bennett

***
***

Ziba Karbassi

Blood Home Dance (Mother Land Dance)

When the blood-home is here, just here

When the blood-home has the smell of your body

Don’t pull me away from myself

                                    don’t take me anywhere away from myself

When the smell of my love’s body spreads through the air of the room

                                                and the room becomes drunk

And me and the memories and the shadows walk drunkenly

                                                            with each other

                                                                        and die a little

                                                                                    in each other

Dance crazily, dance, blood-home dance,

                                                blood   home   dance

Migrant memories will come back again

Piece by piece memory of the craziness of being apart comes back again

And the cold and the homelessness come to this room

                                                under this roof

                                                            to take me away again.

Memories of my grandfather, uncles and aunts

Me and my father doing the round loop of Shogholle

                                                                           and Golistan *

The tears of my always grieving mother in the afternoons of summer

That soft thyroid full of constricted sobbing & fingered by winter bones

Hey, Hey, Hey : all these

                                    vagrant memories!

Don’t take me from myself

                        don’t take me anywhere at all out of myself

When the smell of jasmine and pomegranate and grandmother, of vanilla and

quince and auntie and saffron, and tangerines and uncle and thin flakes of

nougat, thin flakes, come : it is the hug of my poem, baklava garden,

                                                Tabriz-heart, Shams-breath,

                                                            poem-embrace

When grandmother is dead, and auntie too, and uncle

                                                is dead,

and pieces of you are also dead inside me,

why do your chest and my breath still

        smell with life ?

Don’t let them take away my breathing

                                    don’t let them cut down my breath-line

And the hair on your chest which is soft

                                    and my head that always falls there

My always peaceful homeland, my always may-time meadow

Let me stay here

                        just here

Blood-land embrace, poetry-embrace, mother-embrace,

poetry-heart, dear love :

            don’t let me be pulled away from myself

                        don’t let me be pulled loose

          from here at all.

* Shogholle & Golistan, in this instance, are the names of

      parks in the poet’s northwestern birth-city of Tabriz.

[The above poem is below in Farsi. To hear, click on the English title above.]

زیبا کرباسی

-رقص «اَتن»*

وطن
وطن

وطن که همینجا باشد وطن

وقتی بوی تن تو داشته باشد وطن

مرا از خود نبرید

از خود به هیچ کجا نبرید

وقتی بوی تن معشوق بپیچد و مست کند اتاق

من و یادها و سایه ها تلوتلو چرخی بزنیم درهم و باهم

بمیریم کمی از هم

رقص بی قرار وطن کنیم وطن

و یادهای سرگردانی دوباره بیایند

یادهای تکه تکه از جنون جدایی دوباره بیایند

سرما و بی خانمانی بیاید در این اتاق زیر این سقف

تا مرا ببرد

یادهای پدربزرگ عمو دایی

من و بابا و چرخ و فلک بازی و «شاه گویلی» و «باغ گلستان»

گریه های مادر سوگوارم در عصرهای تابستان

هی اینهمه اینهمه اینهمه یادهای سرگردان

مرا از خود نبرید مرا از خود به هیچ کجا نه

وقتی بوی شب بو و انار دانه و مادربزرگ و به و ریواس و عمه و زعفران و نارنج و دایی و نقل نقل می دهد بغلت

شعر بغل جان

باغ باقلوا تبریز دل

شمس نفسم

وقتی مادربزرگ مرده باشد

عمه مرده باشد

دایی هم

و تکه هایی از تو نیز زنده مرده باشند در من

پس چرا بوی زندگی می دهد هنوز سینه ات

نفسم

نگذار ببُرند نفسم را

نگذار ببَرند

مرا نگذار معشوق

مرا از خود نگذار

و سینه ات این دشت اردیبهشت

که سرم سوی آن خم می شود

چه خوب است همینجا بمانم

وطن آغوش شعرآغوش مادروطن شعروطن معشوق شعر

نگذار مرا ببرند

نگذار مرا از تو به هیچ کجا ببرند.

--
* رقص «اَتن» رقص ملی افغانستان است
spring 2000 london

 

***

To Hell with It

The end of no ending

And from the inmost ache of the brain of a young inventor a stone jerks free

And the earth breaks up

                        in tiny pieces

                                    tiny tiny pieces

                                                as a voice shattering in its semiotic stricture

                                                             must in the mouth of language –

                                                                           become a poem!

And the shoulders of earth tighten in trauma

And the tree-monkeys hopscotch from this to that side of the dream

                                                                                    flying

The knees of the earth splinter

The shoulders are cracked apart

The ss-ss-sso of sob is snapped off from sobbing, and where are the shudders ?

The voice of hh-hhha’s hurled apart from laughter, and where are the shivers ?

And wingless flightless birds are flocked between the cracks and

the voices of weeping.

To hell with it !

Let the sky spit its stars on your face

To hell with it !

Let the sun turn its heat from you

                                                To hell with it !

And the mountains vomit intestines over you

                                                                   To hell with it !

To hell with it you bird hurled in the snow for hiding

                                                            To hell with it !

Leave this earth, this ripped-open woman, leave her,

            you-mother-fucker : you-oedipus-of-no-future

If I were a hug

If I were a hu-hug, 

                                    If I were a hug I would hold this wrapt

so tightly O

                                                Until all of it healed over …. If I

                                                                        were a hug …

Translated fr. Farsi by Stephen Watts and Ziba Karbassi

***

***