Wordplay poem by David Michael Jackson

Wordplay you say
was it play then
was it the trees then
the trees and the wind
and the child playing among the roots in the
dirt
in the dirt
in the,
no,
in the wind.
Do all the yesterdays go back as far as all the tomorrows
go
forward
forward
forever
and backward
backward
backward
or does it all go both ways
like crazy mad
like the wind metaphor rattling the branches of the tree
metaphor
until the arthritis
stops my hands
from typing on this keyboard
and it all
stops one day
and ends up in that picture
where George lassos the moon

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Maps.Poem.Robin Ouzman Hislop

Map 1.

(i.)

Extend the environment on a mental horizon, a fluctuation of memory embedded in the scene & a configuration of chance abreast with the makeshift reality:

the rational mind hangs like a millsone around the neck as it grinds out the day.

(ii.)

On the periphery the noise of engines establish the controle of borders & their crossings:

in the clouds a bomb explodes on the ocean floor & a Tsunami heaps a debris rubbish tip cascading shards of junk glinting in the sunlight.

Map 2.

(i.)

The road’s continuum in the eye towards an end exists between being towards death & a universe expanding in all directions.

(ii.)

Time is the link of the auditory & visual cortices, a retina which maps a fission, the unseen form of sound & the unheard sound of seeing.

& that eye which evolves but to see the day sometimes glimpses the phosphorescent fossil spark;

& the dykes on the hill buried in their dark, where in solar picture of the sky, selves arise only to die.

Map 3.

(I.)

Small placards, squares of white & black triangles hypotenuse earth & sky

for the hunter’s right of way;

where streams flowed black cable pipe lines run to water turbines that feed the village in the valley:

shots mingle with the revving carburettor of the skidding tracker in the hue.

(ii.)

Animal tracks cover the tracks of our dead, new forest dirt roads carve ways transforming the hillside from a landscape, where the eye cannot escape its shape;

& only touches the fleeting remains, as dust of bones beneath the stones,

where there is no vintage wine under the golden bough that drunken will awaken the myth of bygone yore.

(iii.)

The eye extends its reflected space to glint through the bars of its existence, in repetition of ages past & ages to come, the limits of eternity;

& the voice is a shadow cast from its silence, a resonance that returns to haunt the seeing as a spectre, a phantom caught in the cage of existence.

Map 4.

(i)

Across the plains ancient rocks weave a sculptured dialogue of secrets,

amidst the innumerable tracks of creatures domestic & wild;

& the debris & junk visited by our transit civilization blown there on the wind.

 ROH2013

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Fragments from Hinterland.Poem.Robin Ouzman Hislop

i.

Morning brings the gull’s squall, surreal beyond the curtained windows, starting faint dawn’s debate flighting harsh and sweet.

ii.

The trees are ivy clad in a laurel bay, like a galleon’s mast & rigging sunk to the bottom of the sea.

iii.

Somewhere in the secret paths of a sun lit wood a plastic bag spews forth its innards of rags like a desecrated corpse staining the elfin fern with a black sin.

iv.

How the midges dance and in a blink gone again!

v.

Returning to roots, a garden of forked paths, a strangler in Eden, cobwebbed her face spun the spell of lechery.

vi.

Day and night tremble on the morning and evening star.

vii.

Cast me your mantle dried on a sunbeam, some hours ago it ceased to be the longest day, summer’s musk makes my heart heavy, my head giddy.

viii.

The hill moves on, a slumbering breast of cloud blooded in night’s music on no breath of breeze.

ix.

Crepe clouds smear folds of scarlet flesh, plume a three cornered hat, pistols bloom black roses. Lady highwayman riding a sky of blood disappears, as creation eschews & the moon pursues.

ROH 2000

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Laminations in Lacquer.Poem.Robin Ouzman Hislop

 

It is in a bright lt night that shines
he lays his bed
deep in hues of Lapis Lazuli.
In the corners sit the winds
dressed like musical chairs.
An olive ferments in a pastel saucer
into mossy green minutiae,

where a  painted flower swallows
against its form, liquid spaces
in lean reflections towards a bottomless well.

Veils swim on the verge the flower
defines drawn against
an olive splash of skin
in the glazed lacquer

gloss to the anonymous images.


A cock crows cockle doodle do,
discrete, concrete, on the fronds,
ruffles in the red sprocketed throat,
a screech of feathers
stilled in the flowers passion
in the pool’s hoard.

The gibbous mound,
a crimson flash in the curtain
through which he passes
beneath the bridges.
A stairway in pastel hue
laps tranquilly cool
to a hole in a wall,
a cavernous breach which retains
the scream of the arch
scrawled on a screen,
defiant in the stance of plumages,
hordes of epiphanies
buried in petrified pastel ripples.

Below the rift of its eye
the sealed beak that will open
gleams on the lee.

Throughout the entire circumference
can be seen the tilt giving rise
to both translucence and transparency,
where the acid and oil separate
only to appear to coalesce
in the almost pure liquid sheen
containing its own  light
even in the presence of the vegetative
silt at the bottom of the bowl.

At the moment of its brimming,
at that line of definition,
in a room that roams without corners,
he must rise with a chalice of blood for lips of shades,
where the vertigo edge of the flower distills the dish
together with the quantities of immeasurable throng,
catacomb coombes head to foot on stilts
on watery groves billowing with ivy bowers
sprung over hidden lairs of concealed hoards.

Night begins and the dogs draw nigh
scavenging for scraps
yapping at the walker’s naked ankles
in the dust of unknown allies.

The broken lights of the bazaar
spangle with glittering promises
and the eyes of the dusky beggar
sunk in their sockets maze
in crooked cul de sacs embargo
amidst the furls of silk that foil
the flickering lantern niche
throttled in an olive tray,
whilst the flower’s blur does not allow
the stroke that blurs its horizon
and all beneath to return.

It is helpless in its light,
a camouflage to visitation,
to the sigh of the rock’s flow
so few, so few, so few.

The olive saturates its wish
outlining monuments amidst the rubble
in momentary musical explosions
and the spell is cast.
Fireworks like a diaphanous lithograph
print an emblazoned sky
on the craggy mountains of the night,
where comets play at kites,
and glistening the eerie beak hisses.

 

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In Shadows. Poem. Robin Hislop

i.

Shadows in the eye divide

where walls & doors & floors collide.

*

The hand´s grip, the flayed hide,

I do not know the driver´s cry

nor the donkey´s bray.

*

Our shouts mingle, the switch

& the hide are my burden.

*

Half the hand, half the hide,

who´s the beast that bridles the bride!

*

Day yokes a shadow,

a humped form flickers a fan fin,

a corona for the load. 

*

Quieter still, tethered shadows on the hill,

than the bray of the marketer.

ii.

The one who hides in a place of shadows is trapped.

The one who seeks there the hidden is lost.

*

The jester courts a screen to an audience unseen,

as though upon a stage shadows turned on every page.

*

No shadow is lost to the phantom in the glass.

*

Companion to your host, nameless shadow in your doom,

could I so command you, not to pass, when I pass,

would the world then fall apart, where I struggle & you slide

to glide between a sky shed thin as a skin.

*

Shadows fall to steal the hours,

fall to steal the face of flowers.

Sing shadow´s a slave,

drunk to the moon,

as silent they vanish, as silent they loom,

who speak more silent than the tomb.

*

In the gloaming the solitary reaper reaps its shadow:

on pathways in the heat of night’s starlight

shadows grow to seem as if watery pools

floating glittering rims seized into blackness.

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Africa North.3. Poem. Robin Ouzman Hislop

Africa North 3.

 i.

Water runs on marble, nakedness revealed, nakedness concealed form water words, water memories, mists & fates:

veins wrestle the marble into mangled knots, blemished pearls on an implacable skin, shards leaving fragmentary traces of empty spaces awaiting faces.

(ii.)

Lights dance in the night, picturesque “casas blancas del pueblo” appear through the darkness, as the brush strokes of my mind steal the action of the shadow:

life is the illusion of a dream, the watchful shadow reproaches.

(iii.)

Mists cordon the mountain tops that will guerdon the deluge with crowns like wreathes, ancient fields in silent colours surrounded by the burgeoning new lead to the hidden valley below:

old women of the valley, old as aglow, so slow they go, yet still poised aloof in a world untouchable, yet trapped.

(iv.)

Daughters of necessity naked in the rock unleashed in white trefoil in the marsh swamp of night rain, stark where epochs sleep in their shadows:

replication of memories where the old becomes the new & a world splits in two with Morpheus in the breach.

(v.)

Treachery can remain on even the most benign plains, high in kiln firelight they cowl night’s shade & oversee goats on the hill & below:

now we are found phantoms at her Carnivalesque, let us toast our host, O phantom Sphinx, we are found honoured guests at her feast in Paradise.

(vi.)

Beyond control beyond reach the erratic butterfly flits bloom to bloom, the intrepid stalker with net both captured in the mimic mould:

a knot is tied, a knot that both wrestles with & embraces its duality, that ravels birth & unravels death & binds its existence.

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The Dream of Uroborus. Poem. Robin Ouzman Hislop

The deluge will come,

warm waters will lap at your home,

the plague will increase

& we creatures will perish.

 

The meiotic dance

in our speciation

could have been a trance

not a deception,

biophylia in the masque of eros

in life after estrus.

 

Evolution doesn’t say

& perhaps on another day

it’s androgynous anyway.

& we’ll sequence the genome

again, in trans-genderey,

at the end of the century,

a new human womb

in the womb of time,

or will we start it all over again,

from homo sapien to homo rapien!

 

Talking heads loom, expert

in this, authority on that,

profession, specialisation, prophet

in this, last word on that, then fit

into the screen, focus the information,

take it down, you are now one of them.

 

The crowd is full of strays,

being sent home,

embedded in the grain.

& all stories are the same

swallowing themselves like Uroborus,

who in its own dream disappears,

only to appear again.

 

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Excerpt.Narrative Poem. Robin Hislop

World at Large. Chapter. 1.

 

Part (2.)

 

i.

 

The serpent was once invincible, it could cross ice & desert & marsh until it reached a spiral terrain, which only feet could climb.

 

ii.

 

O serpent then, spread out your fins, grow feet again & become the winged dragon you were before.

 

iii.

 

Who swoops upon the human’s high domain & helter skelters  kaleidoscopic into human dream scene.

 

(2.)

 

(i.)

 

Metamorphosis: according to the book of human discourse, what’s done can be undone.

 

ii.

 

But irreversible & irretrievable loss & gain is the name of the human game, chaos.

 

iii.

 

Who first discovered fame & then invented name & followed manically insane through symmetry, number & letter until finally written in the image where you remain in the chains of your freedom.

 

iv.

 

In the metamorphosis of an archetype that in its twilight duality grows its shadows.

 

v.

 

Layers of time & erosion in the blink of the mind’s eye.

 

 

Robin Ouzman Hislop

ROH2012

 

Excerpt: World at Large. Chapter.6.

 

Part (3.)

 

i.

 

What you are in denial of, what you are in affirmation of, you determine only through desire.

 

ii.

 

A track unwinds on the mountain rock.

 

iii.

 

Where every fell, can seem as if an every-when waiting to invite you in.

 

iv.

 

The lure is but an entrapment,

 

v.

 

Where the debris still tumbles from other footsteps that have expired before.

 

vi.

 

The mountain rock appears like an uncanny sculpture set in an inert equilibrium poised to slide.

 

vii.

 

As if it could escape the dense foliage that would relentlessly consume it.

 

viii.

 

Whilst you creature of central nervous system & brain believe you transmit the emitted events.

 

ix.

 

Not knowing where or how but nevertheless a fluctuation guided somehow by time’s arrow -

 

x.

 

To seem as if in flight.

 

Robin Ouzman Hislop

ROH2012

 

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BEACHED WAIL by Dan Tompsett

Dan Tompsett

Old bald crabber; your pots plugged
with thistle and grass, stacked ten
high behind seaward listing shed,
will miss back-deck, hold and season
while you rig houses for birds, splice wire
for TVs and toasters. Your dry-rot
thinned spirit crumbles slow, a sorry
beach and reef away from fifty-fathomed
dungeness grounds, wind-curled, chopped;
jostling jellyfish and slob cursing blockmen.

Claw-cracked clams, dead or dying
in cull-crate lashed to rail, hold more
meat than your creaking dreams
and dry-docked days.

Dan Tompsett

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WHO WHO MAKES CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

WHO WHO MAKES CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

by Lwoh Opa

 

rOCKaFELLer swallowed up the little guys

(creating the first corporation)

and then got the antitrust laws passed

about 1880 – 1890

he handed out money on the senate floor

and called it campaign contributions

no taxes until 1913 when ‘they’

created a national debt to tax the people

(to get them to pay taxes for the first time)

prior to corporations

there was personal liability

now

corporations take the profit and then declare bankruptcy

e.g.

hOOKer company

contamination…oiling the roads with toxic dump

PCB’s in milk from

PCP’s stored on third floor and cattle feed on second

floor and it seeped through

doctors moved from Michigan to Indiana

late 70‘s early 80’s

antitrust

anti trust who?

Do we need a trustbuster?

via whowho.

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Alchemy Pain Poem by Edy Benjamin

(sometimes it takes an emotional

blast to reopen the right side of

the brain

fortunate sometimes they start

slow then grown hang on with

your teeth)

seeing yourself in another’s eyes

from, sometimes, we need to hide

o eyes

tortured

embarrassed

angry

fiery in

both hate and love

divine

both

o

humor

god

and who owl

feels the smile

before seeing it

old soldiers

marching into war

we, to morn,

the loss of life

rest in peace poet

if de facto you are gone

who told the story

of his tortured life

and yes the joys

fleetingly higher

than my eyes beheld

for sure de facto

if gone

i will not miss you

your stories reside

in the treasure chest

of moi.

via Alchemy Pain Poem.

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a little to and fro for H. Jerome Alter Poem by Pen Chant

“Wherefore my rhymes oft decorate the page,
When others ’round, this virtue e’er forsake?
Wherefore past giants of this noble art
Employ this modus in their grandest works?”

“Or is it anything a writer pens,
With rhythm, rhyme, and context undefined?
Dear reader, now your choice is icy clear;
The pow’r is yours to foreordain!”

by H. Jerome Alter

to H. Jerome Alter

Whereas you mock the grandest greats:
Walt Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath
and for heaven’s sake the many
alive and well and writing yet still…

mind the mind that binds one to do
another’s will
thru trickry via word skills

oh doth you dare claim
old Reason(s) as thy own
i.e. with “certainity”
“if you exercise you end up healthy”

penned words may touch a human heart
to soothe, to leap, to fly
but only if and forever still
when heart freely sings.

via a little to and fro for H. Jerome Alter Poem.

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