Topografia nord / 3: di Luka Stojnic

Con un gesto lui cambiò il vento. Aprì il suo cuore al passante che l’accolse con gioia. L’occhio sinistro sbirciava tra le macerie di una casa abbandonata con la forza. L’altro invece rimaneva vigile, per salutare con grazia. Educazione. Pacato e fermo, il volto nel parlare una lingua lontana; suoni complessi, gutturali. Descriveva le cose attorno com’esse realmente sono; nella loro immobilità: in solitudine. Vuoto. Ogni singolo chiodo di queste travi sgretola dentro gli spazi. Chiuso. L’aria inumidisce l’iride verde di un occhio poco attento ai passanti, di sfuggita manifestano il sorriso. Una smorfia preziosa. E tutto sta nel cemento taciturno della casa diroccata, da una guerra che non c’è mai stata. Il fluire dell’umidità viva, s’infiltra nella calce bianca delle fughe, tra i mattoni. Rosso. La polvere colma lo spazio, pulviscolo oltre il quale altre stanze proseguono. Sono immagini o parole? Uno sguardo oppure un organo? Tra le imposte, una luce bianca trova il suo passaggio; attraverso una polvere densa va a trasformarsi di tono e muta. Volume. Fa respirare con pesantezza, si contraggono i polmoni golosi di quella luce. “Prendi una boccata d’aria, là fuori. Non all’interno ma fuori!” Un quotidiano sul tavolino di marmo coi piedi in ghisa non ti offre salvezza. Leggi le parole dello straniero attento ai movimenti, a un gesto che, per sua insolenza, trasforma questo vento. Con il tuo vigile occhio costruisci il suo cordiale sorriso, impresso su labbra scorticate da quel vento. Calore. In un tempo. In un luogo. Lontano ma … che ne conosci ormai i dettagli.

Topography north / 3

With a gesture he changed the wind. He opened his heart to the passerby joyously welcomed. His left eye peered through the rubble of a forcibly abandoned house. The other remained vigilant, ready to greet with grace. Manners. Calm and still his face, in speaking a distant language – complex, guttural sounds. He described the surrounding things as they really are; in their immobility: in solitude. Empty. Every single nail of these beams is crumbling away within the spaces. Closed. The air moistens the green iris of an eye that takes little note of passersby; fleetingly they embody a smile. A precious grimace. And everything is held within the taciturn cement of the house ruined, by a war that never was. The flow of living moisture, infiltrates the white lime of the junctures, between the bricks. Red. Dust overfills the space, particulate matter beyond which other rooms follow. Are they images or words? A glance or rather an organ of vision? Between the shutters, a white light finds the way; through dense dust it goes, transforming itself tone and mute. Volume. It makes you breathe heavily, lungs – greedy for that light – contract. “Get some fresh air, out there. Not in here but out there!” A newspaper on the marble side table with cast iron legs offers you no salvation. Read the words of the stranger attentive to movements, a gesture that, for its insolence, transforms this wind. With your vigilant eye build his cordial smile, impressed on lips flayed by that wind. Heat. In a time. In a place. Long ago but … of which you know already the details.

Being: by Liliane Richman

Instead of Giordano Bruno
Who chose flames
Rather than compromise
I elect sage Galileo
Who recanted and saw
The light of another day
And still knew for a fact
Indeed the earth moves

It is not death we fear
Rather the kind of death we get
And if we can
We deny mortality,
For beyond pain
In the helpless body, begging
More than death, the horror
Is no longer
Being

 

To hear a reading of this poem, click on the player below:

To find more poetry by Liliane Richman on this blog, click HERE.

Liliane Richman’s recently published memoir, “The Bones of Time” can be found HERE.

The Ultimate Train Crash…: by Edward M. Stanton

A kaleidoscope
of life collisions.
One by one
precision laser
happenstances,
unexpectedly bombard
without hesitation
and no remorse.
We endure a journey
sometimes peaceful
sometimes tumultuous
but always,
evolving.
Late night candelabras
flicker seemingly
out of control,
all the while staying
closely guarding the wick.
Seashores parade
personalities awash
with character,
yet ever-changing
her psychological landscape.
Whatever happened
to the predictable??
It blew away in the wind,
just as sand scatters
like a herd of cats.
The wonder of life comes
in little packages,
always keeping
us pondering,
and never betraying
her secrets.
Celestial illusions
mislead our common sense,
polluting our dreams
with impossible realities,
never to occur,
banished from becoming.
A harsh reality awaits
those who genuinely
understand,
our lives are
really just molecules
in an existence,
that we can only
pretend to imagine,
amongst galaxies
of the unfamiliar,
and an infinity
truly beyond comprehension.
What a glorious
misconception,
a return to
the unfathomable,
just beyond reach,
yet never further
than our next
fleeting thought,
or our next warm Guiness
full of wallowing sorrows,
and a million spilt suds,
waiting for us nervously
at the corner pub…

To listen to a reading of the poem by the poet, click on the player below:

 

Copyright Edward M. Stanton 2017

To hear a readings of other poems by Edward M. Stanton, click HERE.

SEKISHU: by Gilles-Marie Chenot

Caresse de soie torrentielle
Coup de foudre neuronal
Dans le silence abrupt
S’illumine la montagne endormie

Tonnerre de feu aquatique
Sur une terre dévastée
Et resplendissante

L’été étreint l’hiver torride
L’obscurité ensoleille la clarté

Une nuit meurt, un jour s’éveille

Equilibre

SEKISHU

Caress of floodly silk
Neuronal lightning strike
In the abrupt silence
The sleepy mountain lights up

Aquatic thunder of fire
On a devastated land
So bright

The summer embraces the torrid winter
Darkness sunlights clearness

A night is dying, a day awakes

Equilibrium

To read more work by Gilles-Marie Chenot (1963-2104), click HERE.
To find other poems by GMC on this blog click HERE.

Prologue to My Birth: by Stephanie Harper

This is neither a beginning
nor the prophecy of an ending
for beginnings & endings are lies
told to the once-living

it is not the exemplifying
of the aberrations the alchemists made
when they dethroned our Divine Queen
& transmuted her golden honey
into their iron pyrite philosophy
that left us to wither
inside our stunned husks

& so    this is the emptying
of our errant devotion
to the denial of bodily hunger

the sanctified unbelieving
in fairytales of heavenly salvation

& it is the vital refilling
of infants’ gaping mouths
with earthly fortitude

& here    now    is the weeping

for our birth-story    interred
with our long-dead mothers
who delivered us
& secured our velvety    aboriginal flesh
to their warm breasts—

the saline unleashing
to purify our Logos
our will to creation    our innate need
to manifest our god-selves

it is the recovering
of the Life that was severed from our psyches
when it was reduced to a Word
& uttered    bereft of melody—

the unrepressed singing
Artemis awake from her slumber
beneath her ruined Temple in Ephesus

at last    this is the extricating
of shame that made our tongues
untie us from our Mother’s holy earth
& swayed our ears to scorn her winged songs
even as she kept flying back to us
ever thick-limbed & fragrant
with nourishment from lavender blooms
solely that we should swell in our birthing cells
gorged on her royal jelly

This poem is my body
embryonic    translucent
distended with new hope

it is my luminous    black eyes
grown huge with their memory
of who I am

lavender-kiss_matthew-harper

To listen to a reading of this poem, click on the player below:

You can read more of Stephanie L. Harper’s poetry on her blog, HERE.

Topografia #20 (a D): di Luka Stojnic

Eppure hai pensato di aver visto tutto il visibile.
Dieci diversi profumi,
Venti colline,
Due fiumi.

Hai annotato tutto.
E la penna scivolava,
Scivolava in fretta.

Sulle mura delle caverne hai disegnato immagini.
Hai coperto di volti le umide rocce.

Il verde si espande, goccia per goccia…
Pennellate su superfici ferme, immobili.
Refoli di un’aria che viene da fuori,
Laddove ci si perde, ci si ritrova.

I luoghi….
Un filo s’allunga, passo per passo.
Ed è il calore della stufa a farci dire di aver sbagliato.
Offuscato, che muta da un freddo reale.

L’aria viene da fuori.
Hai acceso un fuoco dentro,
Bruciandovi il filo di bronzo.

Ammassi di segni sulle pareti,
Contorni di linee che vogliono spiegare.
Il perchè.

Non c’è errore, non c’è.
Si passa in luoghi diversi,
Dove s’impara a guardare.
Scoprire il già veduto.

Topografie #20 (aan D.)

En toch dacht jij al het zichtbare gezien te hebben.
Tien verschillende geuren,
Twintig heuvels,
Twee rivieren.

Je hebt alles opgeschreven.
En de pen gleed,
Gleed haastig.

Op de muren van de grotten heb je beelden getekend.
De vochtige muren heb je bedekt met gelaten.

Het groen breidt zich uit, druppel per druppel…
Penseelstreken op stille oppervlakken, onbeweeglijk.
Vlagen van lucht die van buiten komt,
Daar waar men zich verliest, waar men zich hervindt.

De plaatsen….
Een draad wordt langer, stap voor stap.
En het is de warmte van de kachel die ons doet zeggen dat we fouten hebben gemaakt.
Verduisterd, veranderd vanuit een werkelijke koude.

De lucht komt van buiten.
Binnen heb je een vuur aangestoken,
Waarin je de bronzen draad hebt verbrand.
Massa’s tekens op de wanden,
Contouren van lijnen die willen verklaren.
Het waarom.

Er is geen fout, er is er geen.
Men gaat naar andere plaatsen,
Waar men leert kijken.
Ontdekken wat al gezien is.

(vertaald door Tineke Pockele)

Topography #20 (for D)

And yet you had thought you’d seen all visible things.
Ten different scents,
Twenty hills,
Two rivers.

You had noticed everything.
And the pen slid,
Slid hurriedly.

On the walls of the cave you have drawn images.
You have covered the vaults of damp rocks.

The green expands, drop by drop…
Brushstrokes on surfaces firm, immobile.
Wisps of air that come from outside,
There what is lost, is here found again.

The places….
A wire lengthens, step by step.
And it is the stove’s heat that makes us say we’ve made a mistake.
Obfuscated, changed from a real cold.

The air comes from outside.
You’ve lit a fire inside,
Burning there the bronze wire.

Gatherings of marks on the walls,
Contours of lines that want to explain.
Why.

There is no error, there is none.
One goes to different places,
Where one learns to look.
To discover the already seen.

(translation by Bonnie McClellan-Broussard)

Stella Invades The Modern: by Edward M. Stanton

Visual vocabulary

What you see, is what you see…

Purity violation

Dazzling fluorescents

Overcoming boundaries, the essence of freedom…

Florid excitement

Narrative structure

Unlikely combination of mass and strength…

Scintillating movement

Dauntingly fundamental problems

Unified, forceful and immediate.

Rigorous diagrams

All-over compositions

Massive brutality of a catastrophe.

Emotionally turbulent

Baroque forms and irrational gestures to dominate.

Rhythmic geometry

Semi-industrial atmosphere

Drab color

Unparalleled intensity

Radically reduced compositions distilled and silenced the emotional and transcendental rhetoric that inspired what you see…is what you see.

Pure visual impact

Classical order or baroque theatrics.

Visual connections between seemingly disparate series.

Psychic automatism

A state unmediated by the unconscious mind.

Frankly speaking…
undisputed authenticity.

 

To listen to a reading of the poem by the poet, click on the player below:

Copyright Edward M. Stanton 2017

To hear a readings of other poems by Edward M. Stanton, click HERE.

Mercury: by John Looker

This conference – by videophones –
would stop Marco Polo in his tracks,
take the wind out of Columbus’ sails,
and has messed up meal times
in five separate time zones.

Dinner in Shanghai
but breakfast on Wall Street.
Luncheon in London’s City
and in Frankfurt am Main.
Tea in Mumbai.

Listen! … so what do you think?
There it is again:
the delicate sound of a glass
on a glass – a clink,
a disembodied clink!

(first published in The Human Hive, by John Looker,
Bennison Books, 2015)
John Looker’s poetry collection, The Human Hive, was selected by the Poetry Library for the UK’s national collection. His poems have appeared in print and in online journals and will be included in three anthologies for publication in 2017. A selection of John’s poetry can also be found HERE.

RIEN N’EST QU’UN MOT: by Gilles-Marie Chenot

RIEN N’EST QU’UN MOT

Le cœur qui bat
N’a nul besoin de mots
Pour ressentir la clarté de la nuit
Et le chatoiement de l’étoile
Les mots sont des parures volatiles
Que le dénuement enjolive
Mais ne ruisselle dans leur aura
Que le fil de tungstène
Porteur de la volupté
Des caresses intérieures

ET UN MOT N’EST RIEN

NOTHING IS ONLY A WORD

The heart that beats
Has no need of words
To feel the night’s clarity
And the star’s shimmering
Words are volatile adornments
Deprivation embellishes
But in their aura flows nothing
Other than tungsten wire
Carrier of voluptuous
Internal caresses

AND A WORD IS NOTHING

To read more work by Gilles-Marie Chenot (1963-2104), click HERE.
To find other poems by GMC on this blog click HERE.

Angst: by Liliane Richman

………………..Perhaps it was the snow
……………….blanketing all
………………refusing to melt
……………..papering pelting us blind
…………….with its swelling flakes
……………or lassitude
…………..a veil at the front door
………….wrinkled and stained
…………from filtering myriad horror

………..May be midlife crisis unrelenting
……….demanding doomsday income tax accounting
………wrenching flesh spitting

……..Or else a chrysalis
…….harbinger of tender life anew
…..in full evolution

….And what of it
…lack of talent? spent imagination?
..should we never more tap words
.on the clavier?

Forget the rot
the self mutilated finger
your amputated leg
Oh! young Rimbaud
How is it you did not mourn the poetry
tracing of the pen writing
revising upon virgin paper?

 

 

To find more poetry by Liliane Richman on this blog, click HERE.

Liliane Richman’s recently published memoir, “The Bones of Time” can be found HERE.