Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to
Lose, in a maze of crazy mirrors, where love
Has blown away leaving only pain. I leave
You now – a stranger to the night – to play your part.
The role that you’re bred for, a fit nice and slick,
Like a clean cut brick into the social pyramid.
We’ve left evolution long ago to do its thing,
We’re on a make or break scene, son of man, son
Of a gun and the planet bleeds and the planet
Breathes and the planet dies, just like you do.
In the flow, flow of water, flow of time, flow
Of your dreams, or so it seems, until you wake
To find how few the grains of golden sand slip
Through your hand to the deep, where there is no flow
Of water and time, only money and the clock.
The controlled tick tock in your rat race of time;
And your gun crying like a fire in the sun,
Where are you going to run to, when all is
Said and done, all on that day. And you tell me
Of your prayer, through your whispering stare.
We who have been closed to life since we began.
Our heritage like a runaway hearse – O human,
You will rise to touch the skies but you will leave
All other creatures behind. You will become blind
To your own mind in the infinite setting sun,
Where you were always at war between the thought
Of night and day. For you homo homunculus
Are not an exceptional monster, but you do not
Live with your own limitations, because you do not
Understand them, as what you are are. And so,
We chase our lust amidst the stars, an existence
In an empty mirror and fear in a handful of dust.
Italics.
Bobby McGee. Janice Joplin
Phantom of the Opera
Dream within a Dream. Edgar Allen Poe
Baby Blue. Bob Dylan
Sinner Man. Sonny & Cher
Homo Homunculus. Aldous Huxley
Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction. Wallace Stevens.
Wasteland. TS Eliot
Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor of the 12 year running on line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times.He has made many appearances over the last years in the quarterly journals Canadian Zen Haiku, including In the Spotlight Winter 2010 & Sonnetto Poesia. Previously published in international magazines, his recent publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian University N Carolina, The Poetic Bond Series, available at The Poetic Bond and a recently published Anthology of Sonnets: Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. He has recently completed a volume of poetry, All the Babble of the Souk available at Lulu & Amazon. He is currently resident in Spain engaged in poetry translation projects.
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I SHALL FIND YOU TO TELL YOU. A Poem by AMALIA IGLESIAS. Translated from Spanish by Robin Ouzman Hislop & Amparo Arrospide.
This work comprises in an excerpt from the anthology on contemporary Spanish female poets entitled Las Diosas Blancas. Madrid, 1985. Copyright Ed. Ramon Buenaventura. Hiperion. This is an original and unpublished English version of the original poem written in Spanish. Translators Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospide would like to thank Casa del Traductor, in Tarazona and the British Literary Translation Association, East Anglia University Campus.
From this Spanish anthology –compiled by the well-known scholar and translator Mr. Ramón Buenaventura, whom we contacted earlier– a few selected authors were chosen for our joint translation work: Amalia Iglesias: Te buscare para decirte (I Will Find You To Tell You), Ana Rossetti: Triunfo de Artemis sobre Volupta (Triumph Of Artemis Over Volupta) and Isolda (Isolda) , Blanca Andreu: Para Olga (For Olga) , Isla Correyero: Los Pajaros (Small Birds), Amparo Amoros: Midas (Midas) and Criaturas del gozo (Creatures Of Joy), Rosalia Vallejo: Horno en llamarada (A Furnace In Flames) , Maria del Carmen Pallares: Sisargas (Sisargas), Margarita Arroyo: Era el mar lejos del mar ( It Was Sea Away From Sea).
We would like to thank Mr. Ramón Buenaventura and the above name poets, in advance, and let them rest assured that their work is protected by a legal Creative Commons Licence, by virtue of which the above named translators are willing to provide excerpts from their original translation work, provided that readers agree to use it under the terms of such licence. We strongly recommend reading the entire work and the poets’, who have continued evolving during these decades.
I will find you to tell you
that I am in love with life,
that I love in the agony
its lip that ignores me,
aimlessly I seek its sweet guillotine,
its blade of a thousand edges cutting my surf.
I love life
which grieves, keeps me late
in the night with bitter waking liquor
like a thread of morning fog amidst willows,
that I love its torn cyst of mandragora,
the glass lagoon which wrecks the years,
I love the uncertainty of moss and autumn,
the tenderness and sourness which flow.
In spite of this blinded fear of slopes
where I seek you
because I too evade death
and dawn.
All the fowls of the air drink glycine in your eyes,
all the fowls of the air love your body unsheltered,
all the fowls of the air inhabit your organs of alcohol without aqueducts,
all the wings burn in your combustible mind…
All the fowls of the air
leave the ruins
to search weeping that lives North of your breast,
to search the scorching fire that inhabits it,
now that they know you as a first person singular,
verb to be, time present , mode indicative.
In another violet sky, I show
that pleated girl, her bags
blue and empty.
UNTIL the sea you are the condition of the geyser
and the flaming arpeggio.
Here awaits you the subjective couch of memory which oscillates.
It now pronounces the malediction,
reconstructs that psalm
I write in beacons.
Decode the fire:
lie down on water,
whisper to the breeze your memorable eyes,
tell it that tenderness is a fleeting blow in each wave,
tell it that the undercurrent
only reaches the waistline.
why the wind remains in its penultimate looks.
WHEN this song
is no more a sign in the imagination of an ambiguous wind.
When the streets play with a seditious jungle
with you your legs in mist
in the tortured embrace of an estuary.
Or when on another day you gaze at the Mediterranean
wishing no longer to return and begin
no longer to be a wave,
nor a propitious coast,
nor a sailor’s orphanage without a dawn.
The wind, only the wind
sheltering the madness of birds,
those, others,
which die from the light beneath the willows,
those that lived because of you under a Romanesque sky,
those that pass by now
and die in the sea,
in the water fermenting an abundance of names.
When this song is only
spectre and mirage,
searched unremembered,
my heart
as a bridge between times
resting on the twilight will await you.
MY steps search lethal passports,
white lethargies for the flame which comes
and without pity burns my pupils out.
I write letters and split moons
believing in Hadrian’s serenity to await death.
I have seen how the night opens an abyss curtain
and returns me to the blows of space.
I appear at the profound birth
that intoxicates the bonfire’s sensitive latitudes
— grass playing fatuous fire
the glass lip eclipsed towards the Orient.
I have seen the tenderness inside Aries
fulfil the equinox,
border madness tracing a periphrasis, crossing the flank
when the moon lies in wait
and the north wind tames bridges’ eyes.
I have left myself, naked, to the rain
to the algid gleam of glass streets.
Through the candle you burn in the retina of the night,
in the hidden abodes
where on another day we stole with open hands.
Behind the empty volume and the vulnerable hollow
inhabited by frost trembling among nettles
another multiple bird
turns into unlikely alchemy.
SINCE never I love you and always,
from everything, perhaps, forever,
from the emphatic lightning which climbs hours’ ditch
towards the rising whip in my setting pupils,
my prompt voice, my wind:
a final vertigo —
and the most ungrateful delta to finish the journey.
Until nothingness I wait,
until remoteness of useless memory and crater without a sunset,
until doubt intoxicated by heavenly signs,
in fever and an August magnetized moon.
AUTOR:
TÍTULO: TE BUSCARÉ PARA DECIRTE
Te buscaré para decirte
que estoy enamorada de la vida,
que amo en la angustia
su labio que me ignora,
busco sin cauce su dulce guillotina,
su espada de mil filos tajando mi oleaje.
Amo la vida
que me pesa y me trasnocha,
con el licor amargo que despierta
como un hilo de bruma entre los sauces,
que amo su quiste roto de mandrágora,
la laguna de vidrio que naufraga los años,
amo la incertidumbre del musgo y del otoño,
la ternura y el ácido que fluyen.
Que amo la vida,
a pesar de ese miedo cegado de vertientes
donde te busco,
porque aún esquivo la muerte
y amanece.
TODAS las aves beben glicinas en tus ojos,
todas las aves aman tu cuerpo a la intemperie,
todas las aves habitan tus órganos de alcohol sin acueducto,
todas las alas incendian tu mente combustible.
Todas las aves
salen de las ruinas
para buscar el llanto al norte de tu pecho,
para buscar el fuego caliente que lo habita,
ahora que te saben primera persona singular,
verbo ser y presente indicativo.
Aquella niña plegada a otro cielo violeta
me enseña sus bolsillos
azules y vacíos.
HASTA el mar tu condición de géyser
y de arpegio incendiado.
Aquí te espera el lecho subjetivo de memoria que oscila.
Pronuncia ahora la maldición,
reconstruye el salmo aquel
escrito en las antorchas.
Descodifica el fuego:
acuéstate en el agua,
susúrrale a la brisa sus ojos memorables,
dile que la ternura es un golpe fugaz en cada ola,
dile por qué la marejada
sólo sabe trepar a su cintura,
por qué se queda el viento en sus penúltimas miradas.
CUANDO esta canción
ya no sea un signo en la imaginación ambigua del viento.
Cuando las calles jueguen a selvas sediciosas
y tú te pierdas en la niebla,
en los tortuosos brazos de la ría.
O cuando otro día mires el Mediterráneo
y ya no quieras volver a empezar
y ya no quieras ser ola
ni costa propicia
ni asilo marítimo de niños sin aurora.
El viento, sólo el viento
acogiendo la locura de los pájaros,
aquellos, otros,
que morían por la luz bajo los sauces
aquellos que vivían por ti en la frente románica del cielo,
los que ahora pasan
y mueren en el mar,
en el agua donde fermenta la espesura de los nombres.
Cuando esta canción ya sólo sea
espectro y espejismo,
buscado desrecuerdo,
mi corazón,
como un puente entre los tiempos,
te esperará sentado en el crepúsculo.
MIS pasos buscan pasaportes letales,
letargos blancos para la llama que viene
y sin piedad me abrasa las pupilas.
Escribo cartas y lunas demediadas
mientras creo en la serenidad de Adriano para esperar a la muerte.
He visto cómo la noche abre una cortina de abismo
y me regresa de golpe a los espacios.
Me he asomado a la eclosión profunda
que embriaga las latitudes sensibles de la hoguera
y al pairo el césped jugando a fuego fatuo,
el labio de vidrio eclipsado hacia Oriente.
He visto entrar la ternura en Aries,
cumplirse el equinoccio,
bordear la locura trazando una perífrasis, cruzando de costado
cuando la luna acecha
y la tramontana domestica los ojos de los puentes.
Me he dejado a la lluvia desnuda y permeable,
al álgido destello de las calles en vidrio.
A través de la vela que tú enciendes en la retina de la noche,
en los ocultos ámbitos
en que otro día robamos con las manos abiertas.
Detrás del volumen vacío y el hueco vulnerable
donde habita la escarcha tiritando entre ortigas
y otro pájaro múltiple
se hace alquimia improbable.
DESDE nunca te quiero y para siempre,
desde todo y quizá y para siempre,
desde el rotundo rayo que sube por la acequia de las horas
al látigo crecido en mis pupilas ponientes
veloz mi voz, mi viento:
vértigo de desembocadura –
y el más ingrato delta para acabar el viaje.
Hasta la nada espero,
hasta lo lejos de la memoria inútil y el cráter sin crepúsculo,
hasta la duda embriagada de rótulos celestes,
en la fiebre y la luna imantada de agosto.
Amalia Iglesias was born in Menaza, in the province of Palencia, in 1962. She won the prestigious Adonais prize in 1985 for Un lugar para el fuego and has published several other books of poetry. She lives in Madrid, where she edits Revista de Libros and La Alegría de los Naufragios. Her work has been widely anthologized amediavoz.com/iglesias.htm
Poeta española nacida en Menaza, Palencia, en 1962.Desde 1970 se trasladó con su familia a Bilbao donde se licenció en Filología Hispánica por la Universidad de Deusto.Actualmente vive en Madrid donde ha sido coordinadora del suplemento Culturas de «Diario 16». Dirige desde su creación,en 1996, de Revista de Libros, de la Fundación «Caja Madrid» y además colabora en la revista de poesía La alegría de los naufragios y en la sección Contemporáneos del suplemento cultural del periódico «ABC». Su obra poética está compuesta por «Un lugar para el fuego» 1984, «Memorial de Amauta» 1988, «Mar en sombra» 1989,«Dados y dudas» 1996, «Tótem espantapájaros», «La sed del río» y «Lázaro se sacude las ortigas» 2006. Ha sido galardonada con los premios de poesía Adonáis en 1984, Alonso de Ercilla del gobierno Vasco 1995, con el accésit del Jaime Gil de Biedma en 1996 y el Premio Francisco Quevedo de poesía 2006.
Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor of the 12 year running on line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. (See its Wikipedia entry at Poetry Life and Times). He has made many appearances over the last years in the quarterly journals Canadian Zen Haiku, including In the Spotlight Winter 2010 & Sonnetto Poesia. Previously published in international magazines, his recent publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian University N Carolina, Post Hoc installed at Bank Street Arts Centre, Sheffield (UK), Uroborus Journal, 2011-2012 (Sheffield, UK), The Poetic Bond II & 111, available at The Poetic Bond and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes a recently published Anthology of Sonnets: Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. He has recently completed a volume of poetry, The World at Large, for future publication. He is currently resident in Spain engaged in poetry translation projects.
Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish poet and translator. She has published four poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and Presencia en el Misterio as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards. Together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, she worked as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, an E-zine from 2008-2012
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Ma Jolie | Cubist poem by Prabhu Iyer
Orange shades sliced,
your visage in evening light;
Dotted red, the forehead;
Chandelier-ring, square-cut
ruby, on ear either; streaks
silken, in hair flowing over
cheeks by the wind;
Ripples in the pond at night:
your dimpled smile, broken
as in a dented mirror.
Lost from the front, lost
from behind; doubt rising,
like incense, ladder-like
the rib cage in x-ray vision;
Broken pots, moss-filled,
collecting the last rain,
bits of moon in the puddle
skinny-dipping after.
Totem pole, towering
light house, Zeus-thunder
zipping past the sky, my
Babel ego. Zorro moments.
Ripping apart space and time.
Educated in India and England, Prabhu Iyer writes contemporary rhythm poetry. He counts the classical Romantics and Mystics among his influences. Among modern poets Neruda and Tagore are his favourites for their haunting and inspirational lyrical verse. Prabhu has also explored the meaning of modern art movements such as surrealism and cubism and their role in anchoring the society through his art-poetry. Currently he is based out of Chennai, India, where he has a day job as an academic scientist.
In 2012 Prabhu collected over 50 of his poems and self-published them on Amazon Kindle: Ten Years of Moons and Mists More recently, his 2014 entry made it to the long list from among over 5000 entrants to the annual international poetry contest conducted by the UK-based publishing house, Erbacce Press. Some of Prabhu’s poems are at http://hellopoetry.com/-prabhu-iyer/ His major current projects include a further volume of poetry, his first fictional novella and a planned series of translations of lyrics from Indian film music.
Editor’s Note: for further information see Interview with Prabhu Iyer at this site
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of death and honey. A Poem by E. Darcy Trie
mother
i thought your death
easy
your voice rising
like unmolested bamboo
18 centimeters a day
towards a friday god
eager to pluck you
for his september buffet
and though you protested
through the log of lungs
the brick of ribs
that the wooden tips of your fingers
would not burn
within an autumn night
you were so gentle
in your surrender
that your cries
would not disturb
a sleeping buddha
and here
i tremble
that i will lack your grace
my last hour
gritted and gnarled
robed in rage and stinking
of sour lament
yet again
unworthy of being called
your daughter
o guanyin pusa:
embrace me
with your thousand arms
and pour your porcelain mercy
over me
may my end be of
her same lattice of pearls
white callouses of courage
rattling within the heart of a lotus
the saga of my final sigh rising
past the calm incense of our tongue
the cool smoke of teeth
until it is sweeter
than the echo of honey
on the breath of
a hummingbird
Darcy was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1975, E. Darcy Trie is a Scorpio, Rabbit and matriculated in Little Rock, Arkansas at the age of two. She graduated at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a B.A. in Psychology along with Minors in Drama and Asian Studies. Sensing that achieving her Masters would drive her to drink, she wisely opted to tour Asia in her early twenties (thanks to a grant provided by Bank Of Daddy), and in the year 2000, found herself in the heart of Beijing, China where she began writing due to the fact that crocheting was far too complicated and because the voices in her head would not shut up.
By 2004, she had completed two romances, one historical and one modern, and after viewing all nine seasons of the X-Files and three seasons of C.S.I, finished the first two series of the Snow novels and is currently writing the third installment. During this time, she has also had several pieces of her poetry published in various online poetry magazines.
Her passions and hobbies includes writing, reading (anything put out by Neil Gaiman), Disney movies, all divination tools such as Tarot, I-Ching, Runes and is an enthusiastic, although albeit amateur, astrologist/paranormal investigator. She is 5’10, weighs whatever she wrote on her driver’s license, owns a lot of black hoodies and is addicted to It’s A Grind’s Passion Fruit tea.
She is fluent in English, Mandarin Chinese, some French and once took a Zero Hour in Greek in high school. She hates mornings, coconuts, wire bras, and sincerely hopes that this is bio is long enough to fill up an entire page (doubled-space of course).
Ms. Trie currently lives in Las Vegas, NV because she adores $2.99 buffets, Paigow Poker, and that lovely 116 degree August weather. She dreams of writing best-selling novels that will delight and thrill her future fans and because she is tired of being a productive citizen and wants to go back to being a mooching hermit.
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Waiting for Its Turn. A Poem by Scott Thomas Outlar
It might be dirty, bloody and wounded,
but at least its honest
at the end of the day
after working in the graveyard
to bury all the bones
that the others so quickly forget.
It might be scarred, numb and broken,
but at least it sleeps soundly
for a few hours after midnight
once the dirt is piled back
atop the six foot hole
that the worms will soon be swarming.
It might never have a lover,
it might never smile at a sunset,
it might never taste of passion,
but at least it gets the job done
no matter the conditions,
doing what no one else is willing,
it’s only reward the ash and dust.
Scott Thomas Outlar lives a simple life in the suburbs, spending the days flowing and fluxing with the tide of the Tao River, marveling at the intricacies of life’s existential nature, and writing prose-fusion poetry dedicated to the Phoenix Generation. His words have appeared recently in venues such as Siren, Section 8, Midnight Lane Boutique, Dead Snakes, Mad Swirl, and Dissident Voice. His debut chapbook “A Black Wave Cometh” is forthcoming from Dink Press. More of Scott’s writing can be found at 17numa.wordpress.com.
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A Poem is a Useless Thing. A Poem by Ian Irvine (Hobson)
A poem is a fragile thing like a life — so ephemeral, so moved by the random laws of the cosmos the elements, gravity ... A poem is a useless thing, like a wasted life — all its meaning in the living, the rending, the interpreting. Begins and ends with the blinkers of the observer. A poem is but a small fragment of a larger thing, obscured in the making (like tonight’s mountain moon) by clouds and drizzle. Writing a poem may seem pointless Who will read it? Who will understand it? It disperses to the elements even in the writing even in the sounding We do it regardless — a gesture in search of a purpose.
Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer:
His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20th Century and Contemporary Poets,’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations. His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.
Links related to his work are as follows:
http://authorsden.com/ianirvine
http://www.scribd.com/IanHobson
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Lament of Maria Maresciallo at the funeral of Veronica Franco. A Poem By Marie Marshall
I recall our hand-signs in carnival,
the silver rings on your white gloves,
your fingers making to me –
you are daytime, Wooden Mary,
these are evening and small hours.
That was your name for me, and with it
you hurled stones and rotten fruit
when our friendship became tedious;
but at other times you rested your head
against my shoulder and sighed,
often a lover’s name, a Saint’s name,
but still it was I who felt your sacred breath,
its scented play on my cheek.
Tintoretto and Titian worshipped you, you know,
and your lover the Saint, he adored you;
but I was your sister, the only initiate of Berenice,
I wandered your depth and breadth, nave and aisle,
danced in your wake, walking on water by your magic,
swam in your subtle flow, submerged, miraculous;
I traced the letters of A M O R E in the air
while you were lost and looking away, inspired,
made kisses inside my mask, daydreamed of you.
A single balotina, a single mourner,
her hand resting on your coffin
where the wreck of your beauty is caught,
I look around, above – the planes still fly,
the vaporetto is full of Japanese,
the world somehow has not stopped,
and under my breath I say:
Ite, pensier fallaci e vana spene… *
Your house has fallen, the Ca’ Franco overthrown,
in secret it has crumbled away, it is dust,
forgotten, your pages have been torn from you,
ripped from your gold-chased spine,
the book of your life is defaced;
be written on me still, Veronica –
while I live let them read you in my plain face,
all the words of love, the true looks,
the eyes behind the mask, verità;
and when a flourish sets the fine to me,
let me close and lie beside you,
book to neglected book, closer in this finality
than we have been in life.
* Editor’s Note: Leave me, foolish ideas and useless hopes
attributed to the sonnet of Veronica Franco/or Veronica Gambara.
Marie Marshall is an Anglo-Scottish author, poet and editor. Her first collection of poems, Naked in the Sea, was published in 2010 and reviewed in Sonnetto Poesia that same year, and her second collection, I am not a fish, in 2013. Since 2005 she has published over two hundred poems, mainly in magazines and anthologies, but the most extraordinary places in which a poem of hers has appeared include on the wall of a café in Wales, and etched into an African drum at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Her first novel, Lupa, was published in 2012. She is well-known in Scotland for her macabre short stories. Her web site can be found at mairibheag.com. Of writing poetry and sonnets she says, “I did not start writing until 2004, so I am very much a twenty-first century writer. I write anything, any kind of poetry that I feel the urge to tackle ― sonnets included.”
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Light Somewhere. A Poem by Ben Nardolilli.
Beauty is unfortunately beauty
And beauty is unfortunately everywhere,
In the marches, the parades,
The uniforms, and the way flags blow,
In the barbs of wire set out
Against mountain landscapes,
The orderly rows of stone crosses,
But worse is beauty and the sublime mixing
To show up together wearing horrors
Stitched into their skins,
Hiding under the gunfire music,
Or the impressionist clouds,
It can emerge in the delicate hands
Of concentration camp children,
Frail palms combined in black and white
To form the shape of a heart,
The mix will not come here so easily,
Out to these belts in and around the cities,
It will not settle on top of the stores
Blocked together in neon and cement,
Here everything is practical,
Efficiently wasted and exhausted,
No song comes out the car horn,
No poetry comes out the nearby speakers,
But sometimes the pair can thrive here,
And not just framed in a gallery,
They might settle down beside the corpse
Of a suicide completed after a fall
From an observation deck to a car roof,
Leaving a face at rest in a sea of twisted metal.
Ben Nardolilli currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine,Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, THEMA, Pear Noir, The MinettaReview, and Yes Poetry. He has a chapbook Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, from Folded Word Press. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel. Thanks for reading,