Reuben Woolley

essence

 

he sleeps in faces

observed · controlled

they think · his words

fly from hollow skull · he does not

see them · unspeaks them

wings are essential

he streams through solid skies

is the story of himself

--

eyes

 

I am magick · the

centre of all my bloodless faces

skin breaks

to skin beneath · see

my mouths are empty · the

words spoke me alive and I

control my flight

through all the tortured masks

I laugh · I am/am not

human and all my eyes

are alive · they breathe

me not here · don't

see me · I am magick

--

guides

 

my deaths sleep with me

I shall not forget · I

do not step lightly

through bones · I name

all the faces

they are my necessary

ghosts · they fall

like fruit sweet

plenty · putrid

beds of richness · I am not

guilty · I just

survive · just

breathe and sleep

--

drafts

he draws dead birds

flying . hollowed bones

arranged in wings

they do not move

clouds spit them out

like shrapnel . are not

satisfied . they plant

feathers

in rain . falling

light they bleed

on children’s cheeks

staring at the trails

white against blue

desperate time . they

only cry

only stumble in air

spiral in chains . shuffling

into view

these broken circles . these

untouchables

untouched

Images by Robert Ballen, which inspired the above poems, can be found here 

From 'Vignettes for Ash Wednesday'- Peter Marra

Dead Storage: Mad For Kicks

sitting at the bar she’s facing a double mirror serenade.

she asked, “do you ever wonder what she smells like?

what she tastes like?”

smirking, she gulped the shot,

looked around quickly then resumed staring.

there were faint odors of flesh around her smile,

bringing us together for an eternity of murder.

“lie here in an old black suit and

watch the assassins pass by,” she said again.

they won’t see us. just a saint’s kiss with burning lips.

a tree made of blood, a slither, a trip

through slow burn to reach her face,

to taste the bitter sweat dripping from her skin;

its arms attempt to touch her feet and fail.

we were spiraling backwards,

falling between cracks and sounds.

they were hiding in the fields until the rhythm changes.

as you know, our favorite pastime was

setting automobiles on fire.

--

The Strange Madness Of The Sin Syndicate

switch round again

switch round again.

it took a dark corner, it had blinded itself

with textbook hugs and moral support.

it saw the creatures enter her.

(required required)

she poured herself right into. right into the leather bag.

and she squirmed as it grew tight around her

and she screamed for more blood to worship at sunset.

she begged for the frames to scroll and she asked for

forgiveness for the pale white performers on the stage.

the eyes in the booths shielded in darkness

peered in to watch an outcast dance and

to watch her lips on his cock. he was so junk high he couldn’t get it hard,

and her chapped lips sucked at nothing until she collapsed on 

top of him exhausted, watching black and blue on arms. tracks with lightning.

she desired to garb her torso in candid clothing,

see-thru pleasures for the masses.

the creatures took possession of us. and they didn’t fit.

no one needs to know. no one needs to know how she

loves to rule in hell and to destroy heaven.

Peter O' Neill

The Worm God

After Augusto Dos Anjos,

Translated in collaboration with Wylkys Weinhardt

Factor of universal transformation. 
Son of teleological matter.
In impoverishment or superabundance,  
Worm – is its baptismal name.

Freed from anthropomorphic clothes, 
It lives , a concubine for bacteria, 
Never using the sourest exorcism   
In its funerary occupation.

Blistering the hands of fresh corpses, 
It lunches on the rottenness of fat pupae,  
Hydropic, it dines out gnawing at the thin guts.

                    

Ah! The rotten meat is for him,
And in the inventory of rich matter, 
The biggest portion is for his son.


 Peter O' Neill's recent offering, 'The Elm Tree', (Lapwing Publications), can be found here 

Craig Podmore - From 'Entropic Elegies'

EXODUS

Funereal deliverance of knowledge; to nullify, to enamour yet…this bemusing serenade, echoes of suffering under hollow canonical facades…this is the way we go, not physically but…in essence. Denial. Antipathy of psalms.

Despite this rage…shrouds of bramble, foliage, crowned for despair of existence…my father’s face, under browning leaves of autumn, the grace of winds settle as the nameless gravestone tilts…

Until, this sombre reflection understands that I, that I am to resolve.

This chapel coalesces a firmament that welcomes a genesis…

Organs collapse. Thoughts vaporise into oxygen…to give, to share…for you my love. The heart on my back that I carry is a lead weight but this hill, that is my father, one shall overcome.

Temple of aural lights shimmer, above, the darkest hour is here now…I fall as the heart bears too much, flowers with urns as stems, discolour our hope however, one is determined to allow you to be…to…be.

Silence flares. Rain descend, the dirt denounces into…perishing, the abdomen stings…crash unto flames of melancholy.

Your embodiment,

Eulogy of love…I see, at the top of that very hill. A raven feeds. Intrinsic.

SHE, MESSIAH

Mother Mary, I have decried you often, perhaps the taste of your tears would elevate I into a state of acceptance but…why? Theological idealisms penetrate such stale and delicate psychosis. No, this sadness is in the bones and the universe, this entropic episode resonates but…

When will it stop for crying out loud?

I remember laughing at the sensation of my father’s beard upon my cheek…

This hill is chthonic, particles and atoms collide the higher I get, is that the sun or…is it fire? A golden seizure, irascible menace in the sky – the plains I can see over the summit.

There’s a constant autumn here; it paints a tiresome romance, the hypocrisy of these lands bemuse me, there’s eternal dusk and perpetual autumn yet there’s a fierce sun, white hot, a mist hovers near the peak like a crown; an heir of acceptance.

Oxygen decreases before the vestibule of a higher hemisphere. I lay amidst the mist sodden grass, the white dress envelopes me, I shiver, crestfallen idiot…the vessel beats, a flow of blood pervades the empty veins, a thin residue blankets the lonely anatomy –

Retribution will be my descent. Idol of failure. Yet this wonder succumbs to me, she, my lovely growing she, sparks of Eden, a supernova heart that I am so enamoured to grasp. Ambivalence…settling, liberty foils in sadness, no more chains for thee.

AND DARKNESS COMES...

Abyss of bone.

Tears of flesh.

Wound of a sorrow misunderstood; reciprocated from a mundane melancholia in a vortex of decomposition…rapid, fetid mutilation in the course of the unforgivable erosion…cells have gone, unfettered unto a dust of what was.

A father in a jaded veil. Cocooned in a vacuum out of my reach.

Lord, I know I mock thee due to the abuse of this abusive humanity but…

No, no, I can’t betray my own thesis, my own poetry for the need of

Your lie. No matter how I plead to your nothing, he will still pass.

Suffer. Fall into flies’ mouths. There’s no rapture for I. This squalor, here, a carcass embalmed in a denial that is not palpable.

I see the veins.

Dark blue.

The blood that made me.

Where are them saints now?

The cinders of Babylon cursing these chambers with cruel and wretched significance.

I breathe in the train smoke of Auschwitz. The cold. The thinning of flesh…

Gnawed bone. My fear dining on the skulls of children. Chthonic slumber. I compel myself to this emptiness.

This design; made of mourning. Deadened leaves scatter and dance in morbidity.

I am not I. I is my father, the father of I and the son of what I was once.

This chrysalis seeps afterbirth.

God is chalk lined. The saints perish in my questioning. Eyeless serpents absorb the shades to this chamber to that I am confined to. Echoes of my father’s last disorientated words; the grasp of death has him drunk for he, in the utmost agony, despairs and contorts as he cries

“No, no, no, no…”

MOURNING, BETRAYAL OF...

Sunlight vanquishing. A heavy grey lulls above.

I have conquered the hill yet not I…

There’s faded flesh. Gaunt and pallid, I fall onto the muddy mound,

In uterus except aborted, sullen…despair yet again, the paramount grief

Like a pendulum cutting the bowels,

A flood of entrails, the spleen of discourse; 

A crescendo of ashen memories

Disembodied, broken and sublime.

I foil and wait for the flies,

That’s all there is…

The repellent of,

Forsaken.

CRAIG PODMORE 2014 ©

A Sequence from 'The Blind' by Christine Murrray

Episiotomy

---

the delicate steels are leaning in a row on blue

blue cloths awaiting their use

they think she cannot see this or does not know

the hook/ the blind/ the knife /the thread-skein/

the needle point for when the rupture will begin

as it will

she stumbles past wearing the gown and carrying

her paper-cup of ice ice-water : to wake him up

 inside the silica of this holding-skin

---

inside the silica of this holding-skin

beneath crystal swipe and tungsten tip

the exact point

drain then seep

the vessel-encasement sustains until form becomes

as apparent as the meconium distress which is all

over the cloths the linens the floor / blood is everywhere

the globe is hook burst / there is a body curled into the skin

stitched in caul and head / they will /

use the steel tips to force him out

catapult reprise 1

---

a bone-handled knife is no the tool for dissection/ section/ caesarean /abortion

episiotomy

red thigh rivulet is always beneath bone-handled knife / hook & blood-bag

hook & water-bag /

                              and catapult

over cloth/ linen / floor / and a body curled stitched / caul-head /

use the steel tip the exact/ the exact point

drain then seep /

a bone-handled knife is not the tool for dissections/

sections/cesarians/abortions/episotomies /

the red thigh rivulet is always beneath /the bone-handled knife/

form is 3

---

a bone-handled knife is not tool for dissection section abortion caesarean episiotomy red thigh

rivulet is always beneath bone-handled knife hook & blood-bag hook & waterbag / catapult

over cloth/ linen floor /

and a body curled / stitched /

caul-head /

use the steel tip

the exact

.

drain then seep /and drain/ seep to/ break it /

form is /

and red thread the open wound

---

the gash split and threaded into the toe’s round

a pummelling of dust making red blue-hued and

the drill down split mercury of the mirror shard leaded

underfoot and pounded to dust and now the shatter of it

the shattering of the mirror and from it a skein bled

into a thread a bit of spinning from furies’ daughter her

yes her line (her skein) is emergent from the mirror now

I knew that it would be : the room is full with pounded glass

pummelled to blue-hued dust a dust engrained ,

yes engrained in :

your dance

your heel

your arch

your twirling rage

the red thread is in the open wound

red on gold under gold the red thread

---

red on gold under gold the red thread will tie in the sequin

the dress will transform from the funerary gown of soft cloth

metal pearl mother-of-pearl the peacock sequins emphasise

the scar : where it was cradled in soft cloth/ it shifts with light

it now shifts with light

a battle armour with shiny metal frilling

the metal frill catches and disperses light from

embonpoint to point of candlelight it is no dust

no accretion of dust occurs in the music of fabric

sequin it : it hides the wound

sequin it : with the red thread

sequin it : the loosed skein

tack it in

stitch on stitch

and sequin it

cover it

The Blind is a book length poem about the Furies operation in a contemporary setting.

http://www.paraphiliamagazine.com/oneirosbooks/the-blind/

Kyle Hemmings

 Mannequin Envy: Sartorial Totem

If you drove a whole basement of illegal immigrant dress makers to hate their own clothes, to discard thimbles and swallow safety pins, to want only the darkness contained by walls of any kind.  If you wasted years exiled to the deepest fold of your brain shaped like a florescent vagina [white matter vs. grey matter, why be so superficial?] If you reduced your father to a cold vegetative state by refusing to wrap him in his own handmade linen and snug  lies....then you must kneel before the mannequin that has your mother's closed-lip smile, barely one at all, the mother who became so brittle from years of pulling you from chemically-induced sleep, the mother/mannequin with one stump for an arm, and beg forgiveness. And wait. And wait.

---

Mannequin Envy: The Mannequin Euro-Trance Rag

I tried to talk to her but she wouldn't speak.

I called her Gretchen in three languages.

She still wouldn't respond.

I tried to tango with her.

She was submissive

but her drag was all wrong.

I finally threw her against

the gurgling radiator,

opened her up with a knife

and several clumsy cuts.

I reached inside her

felt the burn of melting candles

the echo of a little girl's voice

the one I had rescued

from a Russian soldier in Potsdam

only to give her away to a childless old man on a bridge.

I  withdrew a swelling hand.

I bled everything out in warm thick drops.

I became too light to hold anything down.

---

Mannequin Envy: Bad Orthopedics

In a low bed, one mannequin spoons the other: joint to crevice,  peeling hand to perfect-lady jaw. Speculations: neo-plastic noir, fiberglass concubine with missing crotch,  Mad Man and Audrey Hepburn look-a-like not articulated enough for anal retentiveness and high gloss repent. The night is heavily erect but sad in the dim neon glows.  Perhaps the world is a window, we can never quite see through. At 45 degree angles, the mannequins could be mistaken for drowning victims or dolls in a desert never resuscitated by an ironic mist of love/unknowable essence. They can both bend to the will of egoistic gods who never project ideal sex without unwanted children.  They are too worn to be for sale. Their mute de Chirico despair is a lasting thing of beauty. At the very least, even to an untrained eye, they will not leave stains on the sheets. 

CUT UP! - Edited by Joe Ambrose & A.D Hitchin

 OUT NOW!
http://www.paraphiliamagazine.com/oneirosbooks/cut-up-2/

CUT UP! An Anthology Inspired by the Cut-Up Method of William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin

Edited by A.D. Hitchin, Joe Ambrose

In Paris in the late Fifties the Beat Generation writer William Burroughs and his sidekick Brion Gysin developed the cut-up method. It involved taking a piece of finished text and cutting it into pieces – then rearranging those pieces to create a new text or work of art. Burroughs wrote that: “When you cut into the present the future leaks out.” The cut-up had a profound effect on music, writing, painting, and film. Devotees of the cut-up include David Bowie, Radiohead, and Kathy Acker. In addition to bringing together new work by new people, CUT UP! also salutes some better known 20th Century voices who kept the spirit of Burroughs and Gysin alive.

Contributors include Kenji Siratori, Claude Pélieu, Nina Antonia, Billy Chainsaw, Cabell McLean, Mary Beach, Marc Olmsted, Allen Ginsberg, Spencer Kansa, Michael Butterworth, Robert Rosen, Nathan Penlington, Sinclair Beiles, Gary J. Shipley, D M Mitchell, and Edward S. Robinson.