A Preview of Reuben Woolley's 'the king is dead' (Oneiros Books)

mountain poem

writing on the edge . an awe

full balancing , each word

tight . no room

for whims . no fears

of falling . finding footholds

hang by fingers . no

crampons , no ropes

alone , you & the wind . put

that idea here

safe . hold

on to it . your life

de-pends

on the next word

unholy silence

living here 
is no pleasure . the death
of things , the stillness
here
they do not cry . they stare
with blooded eyes , unseeing
black hills run down
to blacker water unheard , ears 
pierced . the death 
of dreams

they are dry trees , stand
for no flame . no
red licks of bones

we lock these things away 
they will not return with stories
we cannot but hear . blindfold
they will not see
our secrets , our fumbling
games of wet flesh . hoping
for immortality , for
memory . our overwhelming
use-lessness

shadows

birds fly
heavily
over blooded land . it is
no matter . we
did not name
this place
            still
singing hymns before
the sun . does not
rise . the shadow
makers came
before . stripped flesh
from all the living
stories , sucking 
details from bones . eyes
are choice
for rats & crows
            the nothing
that was done
casts long shade
& fear spreads cells
unseen . we do not
move . we are absorbed
in dark streets . we feed 
the screams of all
the silent children . red
meat hanging to dry . we
lost this game . there is
no replay , no last appeal

orchard

I grow arms
& legs . a face
will appear & I
shall learn speech

if bleeding is needed
I'll open
the veins , bead
this orchard red
it will grow bones

                         this
is my graveyard . 'm
behind these stones
singing
with new lips . I grow
skin for these rites , coming
in profusion , renewing
dead earth

the king is dead (ii)

hero , you have sold your golden armour

for a night’s lodging · priest,

a lady has taken your robe for a pillow                         

the ventriloquist’s dummy

has stolen his words

& all our eyes

have been pierced

by the same silken thread

we will make

the same mistake again , all of us

when the time

comes again

those of you

who chew your food slowly

against the coming of the rats            

consider

the king did not go short of food

madame             

the flowering tree

has been corrupted              

& the other parts of the body

fell off

long ago


'the king is dead' is available from Oneiros Books, here

The Introduction by Aad de Gids to The Zero Eye (Oneiros Books)

2POETRYMICHAELMCALORAN

"The Zero Eye"

with poetry and poets, with art, it seems a veritable probability that in the "produce" of this art there are personal developments going on which affect this art and making it a "developmental" "work in progress" even if the art executed, in this instance fullblooded poetry, is expressed in a continuous stream of perfectly formed and inherently consistent isles of artistry, expression, expulsion even exorcism orexoticism. this is in my opinion highly the case with michael mcaloran's poetry and the steady produce of high quality immanently consistent collections of poems resulting also subsequently in this striking chromatography of books.

the books share one feature described in many styles,which alone already make michael mc aloran's poetry a force to reckon with not only within the cusp of irish poetry but perhaps even more so,within the modern poetry as how it is entamized now, how it is organized around its topics now. so one thing in particular stands out: these are not the books of "vanillapoetry" and heidi on the mountain with her fucking granddad. this is endtime-poetry, perhaps in a tradition of malcolm lowry, beckett, céline but set in the time now making his poetry the answer to those eschatologist writers and ending-searching at the desolatest fields, nonfields, destitute endworlds andinnersarcophagous' milieus, interstitial, physical and highly visceral"nonplaces" postmortem or roaming around and across these places of contemporary history of death or even actual stretches of societal death hidden either or ignored, nevertheless unoverseeable fields of dereliction, disdirection, despair and an empty searching to what is known to be nonexistent. (as persistent and where this doesn't matter anymore in absinthe hazes.)

the paradox now is that there always has been developmental aspects also in michaels work. yet within an "endpoetry" at some moment it is really "the end of the line" which seems to be exhumed. i believe this is the case with "The Zero Eye", michael’s latest, last, offering of intensely stylized poems. it is the culmination of the necropolises of our endworld, but not, as some perhaps safetywise would like to believe, a world to which we are still heading. no it is the world here and now and formulated with such acuitry, that it is unsettling and disturbing but also bizarrely veritable and an astute societal portrayal of the posthuman world into which our world NOW has grown.

what i want to do now still, kind of concluding, is to insert two pieces of text out of "The Zero Eye"and then come with a kind of stupefying conclusion of which i thought i would never have the fucking analysant brains for it to reach such lucid clustering contrivance: compression.

"the zero eye will ever be/ shape without form/ density of rind branded by sting of inescapable/ rots through unto/ until/ yet given to silence/ scatters breath of nocturne/ clasp of weight/ says nothing more of I/ clean break/ subtlety of design/ crafted in absence of voice/ here or there a nothing of/ claimed yet ever-fading/ yet silenced ever/ still yet/ breakage upon rock of night’s forever distance"

"in shed of flame that was never light/ better yes never of it/ bite down upon edge-solace of/ trade anguish for oblivion/ yet naught as ever/final as/ less or more/ ever was/ remnants of then or nothing left to/ no/ no breaking forth/ no never again/ let it/ decline of/ yes death of/ yet will not/ clings unto/ as if to say/ the zero eye/un-scattered none/ falls unto or not/ utters without pause for/"

here we have the writing on the edge, a topic of the specific poetic genre michael excells in yet not as "a trick" or "device" or profitist mock or vaudeville stance. it is clear this poetry really costs blood, sweat and tears and more modern perhaps alcohol, cocaine and cigarettes or otherwise psychotrope substances even if it is abstinence bc there is a kind of feverish absolvence at stake, at the stake.

then we reach the apex really and it is as well the description of infinity or and the aggregate of finality as a machine whirring at the surf but also in our fucking cities and the rests of our woods, here is an antiheidicodex as what adorno would call: "index falsii",or: the whole is unreal, as in a philosophical treatise on the world, as he also cited somene, in "minima moralia": "life doesn't live", here we have reached the endworld, ok possibly (alone much much further) beckett’s "endgame". our posthuman society as we see buster keaton hustle around in a prepostcataclysmic world in beckett’s film "film" where all is debris, hubris, rest of nazist capitalist communist autark islamist zelous clinical murderous afterclang of our sociuses: it is happened. this is what we wanted.

"(…text no/ this is not a/ this is not/ not this/ is/ a text not/ not this a/this/ this is not text/ not a text/ text not this is not/ a/ this/not a/ text no this is a/ not a text this/ this is not a/ this not a text is/ this not a/ not a this a text is not/ not/ not this/ a text/not a/ text not this is a/ this is not a text this is not a text this is not a text this is not a text this is not a text this is not a text/ text no this is not a/ text no/ a text not this/ not a/ text not this is not a…ad infinitum)."

then to recapture a question somewhere in the beginning of this microdissertation:

"how is this poetry going to develop?". what L'Wren Scott did today, hanging herself in her million bucks NY home, friend of mick jagger, fashion designer, apparently with millions in debt. she hung on a silken shawl on the doorknob. she phoned her assistant around ten: "can you come?". and this assistant found her...after such radical theory poetry no, rather a poetry of abnegation more than absolvence.

michael and i had a conversation just now where he said:

"we need something, yes..."

--Aad de Gids

Cover Artwork from Christopher Brownsword's 'Rise Like Leviathan & Rejoice!' (Oneiros Books)

“Flayed eyes arc obtain from crossing the trajectory in waves contaminates where sigils programmed into network mimic the blueprint further beneath. Disrobed of antlers mounts quarry tied at wrists in pelt of ancient matrix: this hunger inside vertebrae by moon yields”

The book is available from Oneiros Books, here

A Preview of 'Rise Like Leviathan & Rejoice!' by Christopher Brownsword (Oneiros Books)

NEGATIVE TERMINAL

1

                             Data flux serving

hive to meld between more

lacerated controls simulacrum cast into fluctuation,

          bred there

twitching and for then

appease only if limbic sent

                             ocular to be ruinous

forces

                             grid projected via astral sea.

Reticulate bondage from light in

lens worn rancid, the

          vacuum systemised behind layers

                   replicates exterior with drone of parasite

          oscillating uterine canal as template

                                                          scanned deciphers

                                               

                             artificial                                    skin.

2

Static

anticipates

the embryo by

discharge,

jolted to ground:

neural mechanisms

render simulation in womb,

an impetus for terminus

of spliced

          permutation

where amniotic ordinance trawls re-established

under sky. Module

as fractal empty, the terror of the sun

observed through egress; synapse dilates

output - locus imprinted. The interior plane

combusts: the primal apogee sutured.

Cold nebulae to the flesh-lines;

nerves awaken,

eyes scan

sensor

(confluent as scorch respired).

Gravity-

mutation: chromosome form gelid

substrate differentiating slide.

Programmed.

Imploded.

Downloaded.

Accelerated.

G

A

T

C

A

A

T

G

A

G

G

T

G

G

A

C

A

C

C

A

G

A

Negative

terminal.

Negative

terminal.

Negative

terminal.

Negative

terminal.

Negative

terminal.

Void.

Void.

Void.

Void.

Void.

---

NEXUS

Let seed from brittle hands

grip delta

as yield torn ever into spring, her flesh

calls beyond terrain: the sky

emptied into our throats

like water

like celestial dew

 like the new

crescent moon: passion.

 

---

UNDER ERASURE

Her desolation by surge loss prism or was

ecstasy deplete whirls as reinforce should debris

husk. Flesh excites

to ancient              stimulant over

how reflect were darkening so held. I pour contact,

ebb together where at none; season exhausted by touch, her thighs

now sap ever annihilated in host.

The north wind

dilates in circuit to repel through lymph, far blackened

with sun approaching zenith across level sea. Kneeling in the

fragrant grass, I feed upon root and earth.

Ingress kept

low: burnt from tryst, settles to vast current. Had blossom

fall yet seethe only.

*

Reluctant to path always vestige smoke if jaws

were not separate at hill beyond

obelisk. Graze far                               sky

under erasure: softly

the hot rain                     moistens light.

I phalynx simulacrum

tethered by

moss.                              Winter gathers

surplus where terminal. Access sent ripple as door

pools flesh begin narrow into sunless

temple, consuming

lotus tree.