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Moment as compendium
time is nothing more
than the things they are
in measureless streams
and uncountable cores
points of perceptions
are ideas about gods
unravelling views
in infinite star seas
me is just a cell of space
a sapient in the stream
bogged down in moments
littlest eternities thinkable
all is gone thereafter
self and all
1
or
0
Roelof Broekman
Inability
Vertebrae full of surrealism in gusts of lucid frenzy
I shudder, breath pinches the throat like racked by
humanity and her illusory triumphs
I stand in doubt and scream against the infantile power
and her lethal aerial bustle
I impinge against
the stifling crowds
the judgemental unscrupulous
the smoothing phrasemonger
and against my inability
to partake
to connect
to renegade
to stop learning
to disavow pain
and never being left alone
Roelof Broekman
Becoming Primitive
It begins with ramming a flayed umbrella
down the throat of a street corner dustbin,
with knowing the cost of a camel hair coat
and the taste of an afternoon spent in the salon.
It begins with a flayed umbrella.
It begins with rendering your last goodbye
into binary code, spitting it down an empty ear,
then hurling your oh-so-smartphone at the sky
where stars are wriggling free of constellations.
It begins with a last goodbye.
It begins with breaking an ankle bone connected
to the tibia, fibula and an aversion to prayer,
connected to two flat feet and a long-torn tendon,
a future wheel-chaired into dawn’s rugged rise.
It begins with a broken bone.
It begins with peeking up a skirt of mist
lifting its tattered hem and finding a lost tributary;
then building a fire that fills the air with signs
declaring: Today I feed my lion.
It begins with a skirt of mist.
It begins with dreaming you are blind,
left to bruise and demolish the nest in which
your own dreams hatched and were duly clubbed;
waking in a field and yelling Ye soft pipes, play on.
It begins with blindness.
It begins with lifting your eyes as a rosefinch
alights from a maple branch; with hearing
the rupture of frost in your hollowed-out skull
as a certain light folds the edges of a face.
It begins, and ends, with seeing.
Brian Edwards
Jack on the 18:33
slither on silver
clench claws metallic
brace bodice tied tight
Beelzeboy out
a city’s own undoing
sincevillains now go Virgin
edible lattice in
strip lace up neon
cut river in ribbons
scissor South Parkway
hopscotch on hedges
schottische through tea shops
brow of backwater
In scarlet eyeline
over the mystery
leap and leer left
you see spike after spike
after light after light
onto pink sky amber grey
turning ambergris in the
stomach of a sea monster
that spat out a Port that
sings in rolled Rorschach
sub sound you catch your blue
flamed breath to pause and
revel in its grace.
Sarah-Lou Crewe
Absence
(Chile, 2008)
the car crashed into him
head on at a red light
Francisco held onto his life
for a few minutes
surprised at his curiosity
to see whether now
he’d finally meet his dad
he knew him from photos:
Tall, long-haired, sloe-eyed
he also died at twenty-six :
Suicide
the police called it
but in those days
people disappeared
their absence still fills
the streets
empty chairs
living rooms
beds no longer slept in
they’re haunting
subways and bars
where the torturers
wash down the blood
with chicha
Claudia Emmingham
Mothers’ Day 2010
Mother, this is your sonnet. I give you
Words. You gave me the precious gift of life
Over half a century ago. To
Think that these words suffice, my father’s wife,
Shows, perhaps, the power we think they own –
As if mere sounds made with lips, tongue and teeth
Could replicate or reveal or make known
The feelings’ rich seams lying underneath.
Some dig for diamonds. There are mines for gold.
Black coal is hacked out of the earth’s hot heart.
Hewing at the language, so deep, so old,
Do these sounds from my heart turn into art?
No words can work on this most special day:
No precious metals from this man of clay.
David Wheeler