Paul Corman-Roberts

BLOOD, BLACK & SPACKLE

 

Beneath a Madrone tree, on a cloudless winter afternoon bathed in orange particulate sunlight, I watch a naked soldier beat a horse to death with his bare hands.

Two blows: One to the neck - one to the throat, bring the beast down to its haunches, down to the earth.

The soldier is beautiful, with untamed hair framing massive shoulders.  He leaps upon the back of the creature who resists not once: collapsing, submissive as though it has died while still standing.

A soldier’s beautifully carved muscles pummel in and out of what remains of the animals face; becomes blood, black & spackle caked up to his bulging forearms. The naked soldier flies into tantrum and finishes by stomping the dark, pulpy mound attached to the sleek waste of equine muscle.

Finally the naked soldier relents; his knees falling into the dark pulpy mound, and proceeds to cover his legs; his torso; his head with the blood, black & spackle & then rises, feet together, arms spread wide above his head & turns to face the hungry orange particulate orb in the sky.

 

The orb stares back dispassionate, unslaked & remembers to the soldier: 

I know.                                  I know.

REVOLUTIONS

 

Only happen

In combustion engines

Or turntables.

Notice a thread?

 

Revolutions don’t go anywhere

but in circles

and more circles.

 

I’d rather sign up

For the mighty cyclone

Just ask Dorothy

They can liberate you

From the gray Kansas plain

To poppy fields

Which

in turn

make you yearn that much more

For the desolation.

Yes, I’d much prefer to feed

From the hard truth

Or stay dizzy on the mechanisms

Of the old Victorian drive

To conquer still life

The fifth wall

the void

and anyone who has engaged

in revolutions

knows what that is.

Paul Corman-Roberts spent the night of the Rodney King Riots barricaded inside a Circle K Convenience store, at that time, the fifth largest convenience store chain in the USA.

'The Non Herein'...A Review by Chris Murray

The Poet as Minotaur In His Post-Catastrophic Citadel ;  The Non Herein-

By Michael Mc Aloran.

Published Lapwing Publications, Belfast, 2012.

Michael Mc Aloran's (third) collection of poems , The Non Herein-  is published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast. Lapwing Publications will be familiar to readers of contemporary Irish poets,  Helen Soraghan-Dwyer, Desmond O Grady and Eamon Lynskey. Michael Mc Aloran's work has appeared in The Recusant, The Medulla Review, Heavy Bear, Ygdrasil, Muse, A New Ulster, and other literary Journals. Mc Aloran owns the Bone Orchard Poetry blogzine which hosts an eclectic list of contemporary poets whose works of poetry and flash-fiction are rolled out on a regular basis.

The Non Herein- is a complete book of some fifty nine stand alone poems which exhibit an inter-relatedness in theme, a poetry of the body. More distinctly a poetry of the skeletal system, of the architecture that maintains the body.

There is a body hidden beneath and within The Non Herein- . It is, or more properly, was, a huge biological colossus or entity, and it has been left out to the elements. Or part of it has been left out, vultured. Its revealed head, teeth, death-grin and spinal column hint at what the poet guards in his broken citadel. The reader is simultaneously invited to ponder the catastrophic events that underpin the book and told 'this far and no further' by Mc Aloran.

I sensed a vastness of hidden architecture below Mc Aloran's tenacious use of colour, and in his use of symbol in the poem/s. Colours are identifiable as amber, molasses, tumour smoke, and black. The mythos of the once-living entity pervades the atmosphere of The Non Herein-. The most pervasive symbols in this book are of the skull (decapitated and separated from the hidden body), the teeth, the eye and the spinal-column,

Of The Traces Of - (10)

'Ashes ashen traceless

Of the locked till wind

Speech ever

Slivers of

Trace of the without

Knocking upon

(Never entering)

Ever the traces of it '

Whilst Mc Aloran consistently attempts to reduce the size of the colossus hidden beneath and uniting the poems of The Non Herein- , he never quite suceeds in his venture. The reader gets to wonder at the catastrophe that has led the poet to the speaking of it,

Till Headless Asking - (18)

'The Shadow of

Ice of a pyre's silence

Asked of

The meat of it '

What has been left out are parts of an organism that is bleaching in the sun, or had been stripped by hoar-frost. The stripped body left out is near the pyre. We are left in no doubt that the pyre isn't sacred,

Doused - (15)

'Hollow

In a flame of naught

Hissing upwardly

vacancy of none

Embers embers

Doused by final piss '

Mc Aloran's vigil is maintained in order to decipher the language which the necropolis offers him. This is evident in his absolute control of symbol throughout the book, mentioned already in his use of colour, image, and even weather, where rain is monsoon /deluge and where the elements are merely functional symbols without physical heat.

Silently (All The...) - (22)

' The bone ash of

Listless as the sky unlimbered

Lingering dice of loss

Breaking upon the shore's

Atrophy

Silently all the bloody while of it '

In The Non Herein- Mc Aloran's vistas are stripped-down to bare elements. They are concomitantly built up from the selfsame elements to suggest a limbo or no-place. Humour maybe subdued, ebbing-away, or indeed humble but it is always there. Here is a victory-song for life pushing up through human-remains, detrius, stink and bone.

The Night's Claim- (41)

'Smooth yes the stone of it

Gathering no moss

Yet ever

The shit

As the night's claim exhales

Rats in a barrel

Blood-shot    silences '

The actual colossus appears in Circumference Of - (pp 54-55)

'Until again

Carousel of shadow

Blind fingers

Dead searching of the course

Night and limb

Gathered to the pulse

Stricken of

Echoing out of one dead hand unto a vacant sky

Absence of the one

Dreaming all the while

Yet never of the sleep of it '

The skull, bone, the eye-socket, the open hand, and the spinal column form this book's overt symbolism. Mc Aloran's landscapes are sometimes Dali-esque backdrops for the outplay of the drama of loss, upon which straggled flowers appear then disappear as quickly as a candle-flame caught in a breeze. The machine in which the poet is caught is huge, a huge animalesque architecture, a tracery of deadened nerve-endings and frozen capilliaries. But it once lived.

Mc Aloran narrates this once-living necropolis with a curious tenderness that sometimes emerges momentarily but is often quelled and left unexplored. Whilst Mc Aloran has mastered the symbols which he uses so effectively to both camofluage and decipher the unnamed catastrophe which he has survived, he has created a prison of infinite proportion which has reduced things to symbols of. Hence he becomes the guardian of the images that he allows himself to reveal to the reader who must discern the map that s/he is offered in this book.

The geography of The Non Herein- is phosphorescent, over-exposed, a lansdcape of shapes, tongues, lungs, bleached wood, stone, and the knives of the butcher. Flowers are momentary and related to organs, organs are momentary and not related to human-life, but to human-function. This is not however a utilitarianism in his vision, but a sheer mastery of image which has a vertiginous effect on the reader.

Yet, within this post-apocalyptic Dreamtime there is a super-structure, a very definite exso-skeleton of mute and disbelieving support. The poems do not hang straggled and bone-whitened like rags in the bleaching sun. Mc Aloran's use of words to define and subsequently defy the bleakness of his vision are assured, neat and despite possibly his best intention warming, warm.

Here may be unnameable catastrophes just happened, survived, but the poet will sift through it all and have his triumph. His engagement is with a burned and ruined corpse left out to dry and fossilize with its rag-remnant of torn flesh and chilled bone, an empty jaw-bone, a leaving from a physical life.

It is available to purchase here

Dylan Soroka

Peter Marra

A Chronic Use of Neglect

a feeling of skin
a heaviness of the extremities
if he may be considered
out of mind.
if she slept with the excitement of it
the symbolic objects would serve to emphasize
what went wrong as we walked a fractured causeway.

a slight arch
a slash and fall
a fallen desire
a neglected sound.

while taking an inventory of
the residual intensities of effects
her fingers were bent craving
the enjoyment of a risk of overdose.

covered by the leather mask
she often wore while looking in windows
she gently kissed his hands then
quietly sealed his eyes shut.


serpent handling: an additional killing in the boudoir 

1.

the final test
her love of screams
her love of laughter.

at the table:
a nude female
diner transfixed by transubstantiations
seen in 3-D through the View-Master
reminisce about a childhood toy.

a miniaturized
woman falls through the air
arms rigid – movement voided
face adorned by eyes frozen
mouth decorated by saliva emanating
silver tears mercurial in nature
a touching,
a caressing of skin.

her nuclear shadow
(etched into the molding
near the termite holes) was
aggravated by fast breathing,
now a labored screaming function.

they amused themselves with
a giallo desire to be destroyed by knives
and left in a clotting pool while the director wept

2.
her mommy told of madness
and tales of the snake-people,
cobra dances and reptile prayers.

her skin felt funny in the shower
water didn’t feel good
(it’s all fucked up).

the preacher didn’t help.
no help from a soul used up,
venom makes its way through her blood vessels.
behind the eyes vacant smiles


she brought warning signs
to others: 
our life-blackouts 
your infections
your mood swings.

the shower won’t cleanse
her skin was raw.
she turned on
she turned over.
the switch shorted out
a case of ungrounded plugs.

she counted two circular electrodes running scared
then she was more comfortable with the situation.

contact & control was a way of existence for her
the charge slowly mattered to me
her pussy lips pouting - so provocative.

“i think she was a second timer to the receptacle  and
she’s still there”

3.
they  changed her face.
it was inside then it was good.
years of commercial use had forced a change.
she went out leaving the room of odors and pain
clad in black fishnet stockings –
to do some posing on the
black sand beach.

it’s where the rattlers were handled with no thought for safety,
where words were said with no redemption,
creatures charmed by the rabid snake-charmers.

she was deconstructed at 24 fps,
vibrating water washes her ankles,
removes sins.

afterwards she sat down with a wet plop,
smiling as bullets ricocheted.

this was a done dream, dear, dear me.
by the beach.
inside the house,
the maidens screamed for
pleasures they had lost.

a little game gone a little wrong
long used to the shock level
she measured  out 1 shock duration and 1 automatic failure.

view prey. pulse.
get some sleep. 
the sun came
mimicking a lifelike lust.

the ruins disappear behind them
as the extravagant electric vixens commit a crime

charmed charming creatures

David McLean

pragmata are 

pragmata are not only entwined in discourse but discursive too. things are text and trees answer their warm meanings bound in the cold stone. the suicide's rope sings victory to the hopeless cold bone, and blades greet blood happy lovingly. a little book implies the capacious sun wherein it burns to burn in, the rapacious bin. just so the womb recites particular paeans to the pragmatic penis, the creatrix and her insolent forgetfulness insular abortions taught us. the taut wire incites cigarettes, time alight. the lamp post remembers the learning hearse and trembles an answer to it, arrogant shit

as all things sing forgiveness of the others, their sin, the artifact remembers its owner. the lamp post knows the cars are lonely, it consoles them.


the flight 

the flight from death is a moral death, flight i flee, i flee my turpitude me, fast fantasy over fast. nothing lasts. imagination sowing seeds in us loveliness through the holy hole a minute. though reason reminds us everyman dies appropriately alone (reason acts like a swine, most of the time)


tomorrow temporary 

tomorrow is temporary too. another bone in the temporal soup of gristly minutes - love grizzled like children bears gnawed beyond repair – we assemble our heavens between the seconds, a ring of complacent frightening light that devils blew out of the universal ass, thankless as a memory and grateful as a goblin nibbling nipples from the stone that grew over the thrilling hills who stretch their sluttish backs to the nothing that glowers down on us like a lover – ugly as a mother or a decade, for god conscientiously pays us enough suffering for us to be able to pretend that we are living, that we are a nothingness an emptiness an impotence but nevertheless there are things happening in us beyond fucking and being fucked. there are kittens children devils and love. this seems enough and there are not eternities but they would have been too much.


queer as nothing 

queer as nothing or consciousness, snot on a timely teacher's handkerchief (he observes it, it is his absolution and nonentity's blessing) the nothingness we blow from us under golden mountains and time, clouded cotton-wool and suicide, night rigid under our fingers, the supple subtle lie inside us, night and time and the darkness gaping before our whorish mouths, ready to swallow everything, death and the living, the fingers father that float before us, god's open throat spitting out love's juice and hoary hope, another slut dressed in morning, standing erect again at the parapet but not hopping yet, dawn boring as mourning when all we have to regret is all this living, all the forgotten children and every meaning misbegotten. for we are them. and everything is always forever.


night waits 

night waits as we wait, for it is empty as are we, a reflection of the stars it does not care for. it cares for nothing as do we, the nothing the night that nourishes anxiety needs, the words that feed it nightmares are time running through children's fingers, lies about god and life and meaning, and how we should believe in them tonight, when the truth is just night, just time, the blood and the life


the light washes us with caution 

the light washes us with caution, it does not appreciate that it is rationed here by heaven and all the mothers are dead. it never expected less than that mankind should change its names enlightened. out of respect to our colleagues with twats. but time deals the smelliest septic skepticism out, with ladles not loath to fill our plates. they are labeled truth and beauty and they are a burden of abundant lies and fallacies. we cannot look at them without cringing for they have obviously been knocked off by a gang of pedophiles and retards, dreadfully deviant and foolish enough to find life nice.

if i were to look at the branches of these leafless trees where there was shy sun and sly winter snow, and if i were to notice my dog's sweaty breath beside me and suddenly, with no warning,  passionately love the day, even though i am generally pessimistic, then i would probably never say so, and certainly never write it down as an insolent inscription, maybe here. that would be madness.

the juices in me that make me happy are foolish glands and insatiable hormones, reason need not listen to them, though they may not be a bad thing, advantageous but a trifle insane. (there are no angels of light except in nightmares)


the trees and the birds 

the trees and the birds in them and the animals under them all writhe life, they tacitly assume that being born and hearts beating is what counts, not that they will fall away and, ultimately, everything will have fallen away, and time and the universe reached a point that is a smallest where not even an atom is, just a bare point of potentiality where nothing lives. but the trees and birds and animals all say to me that potentiality then will become act. that being born will again be all that matters, life's cruel and fatuous fact

Alex S. Johnson

The Needle Breath of Optics

 

The needle breath of optics,

flushed with conquest,

jabs new marks: a swirl of blackbirds,

feathers interlaced, the

                                   mask of family damage.

 

Nipping at their heels

a pack of wolves slams the dream barrier:

tongues like pink flame,

                                  eyes of crushed glass,

their mating calls eerily familiar.

 

Clearly we have chased beyond the seen,

iris flecked with bloody moons.

 

We skipped sunsets like marbles, but

too fast.

 

Their howling reflections burned to ash

In all our morning mirrors.

 

 

 

Drunks Grind the Liquid

 

Drunks happily grind the

liquid from its massed core, friends of

the fetal suspension.

 

Their monotonous accents

         fall

like a heavy ashtray spilled on a

hardwood floor.

 

The fetus dreams sloppily, its echo

released at last,

                         free of the jar.

 

 

 

 Her Pyrotechnic Cinema

 

Dissolved in the murk of

frame by frame, her bruises

seek the air

with the hunger of flowers.

 

Shackled to the bed and

stuffed with raven heads:

the ruins of

her pyrotechnic cinema, topped with

a halo of cinnamon,

the taste of dread.

 

 

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

DESENSITIZED

He sleeps or pretends to sleep.  He moves his feet under his sheets.  He pretends not to hear but he hears.  Is it best not to know or not to care?  She holds a baby doll in her arms.  She lies on her back and talks to the doll.  She says it is her baby.  She’s nearly 80.  She says God is the father and no one else. 

 

LOST IN ANOTHER TIME

Your affect mirrors silences.
Your secretive nature conceals
the origin of moonlight.
From a distance I spy a glimmer
of your mysterious smile.
In vain I try to make conversation.
The sunset falls on you as
you slip into the solitude of days.
Your affect does not change.
Your hand shields the sun from
your eyes as oblivion sets in.
Love lost is not flattering.
You are lost in another time,
where you closed your heart.

 

 

Julie Kim Shavin

 Blank Elixir

I have seen the skin of the red dog
   the blood spread over it
small and growing mantle,
   foam in the mouth
and it cannot move.

It wants to lick ice,
  I give ice, but know
that ice is far too slow
   I send someone for water
cannot leave,
  gripped as it is in feral terror;
water does not come

Those of us who have lived
   half our lives in autumn
close to winter
   are intimate with this end.

(Where is the luster, the joy?
  he had demanded the day before,
and the question slithered
  through my veins, a blank elixir.)

The dog contorted violently, hurled,
   you son, SON OF A BITCH!
at his suffering. Not death.
   Actual words, and I was so? Proud.

I woke and was doped,
   lurching on blankness and thirst,
both constant, and red,
   like red is constant.

 

DinSomnia

 
Dumb blood of stubborn temple
the fractious tremble, wrong,
      just as [always\ religion – [wrong] –
botched nascence,
      haggard glum clutch
of butchered dream, right bird
          wending wrong wing.

Hunch of housework
        [forced supplication],
  ! first frail trill of Spring
        [torment to the malcontent],
agog but grimly knowing:
       sound sans sight, brunt
   of breeze on skin, sweetslayingscent –

stuck in glum clench,
wrench of waking,
          skank unsomnolence,
  mum drung of venal black brain,
      [clinch of midnight's droobing dung],
beauty      taboo      ballet

unsang-froid flophouse of flesh!
      lust to mesh in loveliness --
            furious saints within, rage --
       [saboteurs sickly singed] -
   birth bloody zzz's
            to zygote page.

Julianza (Julie) Shavin is a composer, poet, and visual artist.  Shavin has two chapbooks and a collection, She currently serves as Vice President of Poetry West (www.poetrywest.org); last year she was editor of the thirtieth annual edition of its literary magazine, The Eleventh Muse. She is Vice President of Blissfest333,  an annual arts collaboration for community-building and raising money distributed among various charities.