get on with life in whatever hapless fate befalls us
in this evanescent scenario of existence
though our whatever stance may be absurd
nevertheless grasp with final strength at the word
sign of life in what's been left as the millennium tilts
beyond the controle we can circumstantiate
there are those who believe we can be uploaded into
a cloud eternal information ether & the planet will slip
away as we all become timeless satellites in infinite space
so let the planet be consumed by the flames of hell
we're gonna be transported into a silicon heaven
even if we happen to be no more than a cartoon simulation
the cosmic joke to escape extinction the last gnostic
hope of salvation from the failed demi urge creation meanwhile
we have surveillance capitalism the greed of corporations
as super powers wage wars of economy as if should
this anthropocentric creature quit the planet life won't go on
but it will & it won't be uploaded in a cloud but simply
create new cultural non human life forms of communication
where hopefully animal life won't be bred for daily slaughter
to feed our rapacious stomachs in the name of the economy
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
so far up to now
what comes after after question
what comes after after answer
recognition of an intention
take it or leave it an object of thought
in word & image to a certain extent
on the vertigo edge of vortex
up front after logical
preambles on proof of origins
lead nowhere in particular or general
come to that it may be said do not
begin in the begin but in the 'medias res'
slaughter the insects
the wild wandering albatross
the elephants & the children too
back to normal
everyone sing along
it's all a game of power in the end
for everyone right or wrong
it's an age of controle freak
of totalitarian double speak
on the wrecking light
unfolds the millennium
in a race to get to the next word
to get it heard by might & right
before we're switched off like the radio
a danse macabre of marionettes
after all that's gone before
nothing's left of us at all
but echoes with no promise of return
but our extinction
on that precipice the vertigo vortex trembles
millennium titling outward bound
but bound to the rock jailhouse around the clock
in the billionaire grab market racket packet
the power of money meanwhile back at the ranch
nature in freefall
all creatures great & small we arbitrate
but it's too too late to reciprocate circumstantiate
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
dead stars flashback the rest must rise
to an unknown helplessness
an earthbound memory
savanna to tundra
each day a commanded homage
to kao tao of fate
to its fled ancestor
but i brimmed in apocalypse under the welter of bones
yield to the inevitable
in its charnel house brain
as panic stricken packs sudden rain blaze
an earthbound memory
thwarted in its choked cry
ancestor in its death but inevitable more than bones
sudden rain blazed dead stars
a homage to until it fled in its brain
each day commanded brimmed in apocalypse
to yield to the flashback with the rest
the welter choked cry charnel house
as panic stricken packs
kao tao of fate
savanna to tundra
i must rise to an unknown helplessness
each day commanded of fate
i must rise to an earthbound
memory to kao tao yield to the inevitable
more than a homage to death to an unknown helplessness
brimmed in apocalypse
i flashback to my then thwarted ancestor
its choked cry as sudden rain
blazed in its brain
until it fled with the rest panic stricken packs
savanna to tundra
under the welter of dead stars charnel house of bones
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
He knew not, he said, whether he was a butterfly
who awoke to find he was a man
or a man who awoke to find he was a butterfly.
To begin in the image, he kills for in his dreams
he wakes from half forgotten
to the commotion of the day sealed by a story.
To begin in the image, a view before the abyss
from old familiar haunts
what clings, where there’s neither choice nor chance
yet beckons, to the impossible impasse.
The Breach.
Wu Ch Eng En descends
the mountain of the five elements
bearing the moon as his lamp
forever grows longer, he muses
leaving no footprints in the snow.
At daybreak the view is emptiness
the truth of truth is its lie, he muses
to a lamp without a night.
Wu Ch Eng En rested
to speak with the world on emptiness.
He looked at the village’s railings
their fierce barbs pointing to the sky
between which shadows peered
as if to promise through tricks of light
Mystery but revealing only bondage
to landscapes in whose labyrinths
you could believe you were in a place
you’d never left
where to return was just deception.
Must not you and i be inside emptiness
for we cannot both be outside
but the world made no reply
lost to a fleeting memory
that may never return or may.
Wu Ch Eng En said
Day dreams the wandering mind
as lonely as a cloud, flower and song
but not without blood
the lifeless, Terra-Cota army
marches over our groundless days
outwards from the tomb.
Nature Thrives on Deception.
Chuang Tze perched
on his usual precipice and reflected
on to suicide or not to suicide.
He recalled he had worn a dark suit
dark glasses, returned
on a crowded summer’s night to a past
whose memories
he could no longer remember
there he had sown his wild seed
what had they come to now
but the way of all nothingness.
There are those who maintain
creation is a purposeless drift
those who maintain its entelechy
can simulate a deity of divine attributes.
Chuang Tze rocked to, fro
would not such deities grow perplexed
about their state of affairs
traces of white fleece trailed
across that blue emptiness called the sky
thus in that fall
from that exalted simulation
believe they were immortal souls.
Chuang Tze said
Even the wind is flawed
as it speaks through the leaves of trees
the moment of history.
Now caught in time evermore
yet the leaves belong to the branches
to make small patterns in infinity.
And we, where do we belong
with our swan song, as if we were going home
the day after tomorrow.
*(in homage to Ezra)
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
yellow dust flights of hazes present as absent abstractions
as dawn breakings
as the ache of unfathomable memories
hauntings in a trackless desert of signs we make believe
each moment the better to kiss it goodbye like a butterfly
trapped beneath the sky
our entangled fate moves us only to wait the next entrapment
a seizure of happen stance dreams
as spectres of the day before its fall
and all we slay have slain after the birth of name
across that vast indifferent drift
that once seen we trembled in awe before
the arbitrariness of fate we now articulate
in our indentured voice amidst the tumult
& how could we ask for more when before us is only wall
we splatter our graffiti on
we threw our amazed cries like spears on the fresh wind
flights of hazes in the yellow dust
present in their absent abstraction
we make believe each moment the better to kiss it it goodbye
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk,Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020
The spotted hyena aka the laughing hyena both male and female genitals are strikingly similar
Natural History Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) ab uno animali sepulchra erui inquisitione corporum
– it was more jackals that were prone to digging bodies out of shallow graves and eating them Robert Graves White Goddess – The Jackals, sacred to Anubis, Guardian of the Dead, because they fed on corpse like flesh and had mysterious nocturnal habits.
the hyena is of feline descent
hyenas were hermaphrodites bearing both male and female organs Aristotle declared in the Historia animalium “this is untrue.”
medieval bestiaries drew a moral lesson from the depravity of beasts excluded from Noah’s ark in 1614 God had only saved the purely bred hyenas were reconstituted after the flood through the unnatural union of a dog and cat
female hyenas virtually indistinguishable from males their clitoris enlarged and extended to form an organ of the same size shape and position as the male penis can also be erected
high foetal androgen levels responsible for male sexual facies in adult female spotted hyenas
an unfair stereotype of hyenas in reality fascinating intelligent even beautiful creatures
Disney animators sketches for The Lion King the trio of hyenas in the movie reinforce the common stereotype of hyenas as cowardly skulking lowlifes
Ernest Hemingway, – Fisi, the Hyena, hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain –
“Hyenas” movie an urban legend account of human encounters and attacks by a sub-culture of predatory cryptohuman hyenas shape-shifting human-like creatures prowl the rural back roads and forests of North America thought to exist by cryptozoologists
folklore and sightings persist even as mainstream science denies their existence
Rudyard Kipling: The wise Hyenas come out at eve to take account of our dead,… they know the dead are safer meat than the weakest thing alive… and tug the corpse to light, the pitiful face is shown again, an instant ere they close in.
UK Teaching Resources TES Edwin Morgan enters the mind of the hyena English National 5 Poetry he describes its patient menacing personality Morgan adopts the persona of a hyena I sing and am the slave of darkness, my place is to pick you clean and leave your bones to the wind.
a hunters poem from Lesotho description shifts to the first person singular to give the hyena’s own words I growl being a poor body, I am small, I am hunched up like the elephant…
hyena of the Mmankala of Kone-land a group whose symbol is the hyena when it says ngou! it devours even man
a Yoruba hunting poem the hyena is regarded as the ultimate scavenger there being nothing it won’t eat oral poetry from Africa Hyena who is there when the mourner buries the corpse eats fat and bone, scabbard and hide
spotted hyena strongest jaws in proportion to body size across the entire mammal kingdom cunning hunting tactics nocturnal nature nefarious reputations frontal cortex of their brains thought to regulate social intelligence
the largest of the other three species brown striped and aardwolf spotted hyenas are among Africa’s most vocal animals
All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals, Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mistand the recently published Tesserae, a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
Author’s comment: this is a technically constructed work from texts both edited & derived from Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens & Homo Deus with interpolations and additions made by the author (2017)
*
we invent them to serve us controlling our existence
to create virtual worlds with hells and heavens
myths domesticate science
fiction and reality blur shaping our reality
an assembly of biochemical algorithms flash fade flash fade
*
spinning
*
epidemic is business economy grows
human experience as any other item
in the supermarket a designable product
intelligence mandatory consciousness optional
individuals = dividuals
in carbon or silicon
*
owned by imaginary gods
who what you are how to turn you on and off
*
beyond control
beyond
the opaque wall
algorithms can command empire
or an upper class ruling the planet
if words could make dreams come true
a simultaneous instant in the brain of seven billion
emerges the beautiful androgynous face of the serial killer
wheat eater bread winner
*
& the deluge of data
millions of nano-robots coursing humankind’s veins
an Orwellian police state
splits into
the chosen hi-tech Noah’s Ark
a new religion information flow
Datism
A Brave New World
*
to merge or not to merge
the human genome as a digital processor
where overwhelming data
garbles the message in dystopian double talk
will the defeaters prevail
or cometh utopia from outer space
our post human descendants
*
do as you would be done by Datism
as we condemned the mammoth to oblivion
your every action
but where no human can follow or need to understand
in the matrix the inter net of all things
*
where has the power gone
the cosmic data God draweth nigh
the great flow
to maximise to plug you in voters of the world unite
a colossus astride this narrow world
free market big brother
watches over every breath you take
invisible hand that flies in the night
*
between laboratory & museum
voice of a million ancestors
a ripple in the cosmic data flow
shifts homo centric view to data centric view
knowing us better than we know ourselves
*
forager
scavenger of carrion follower in fear & flight
big brained
Neanderthal Denisovan Sapiens
what drove you for 2 million years
a big bum?
*
what bound
small divergent groups of differing tongue & taboo
into the framework of humankind
but fiction
collective myths woven into our reality
from money to the nation state
imprisoned
by the archetypes
we’ve identified them with a virtual reality of cartoon molecules
All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals, Collected Poems, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mistand the recently published Tesserae, a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
Author’s remark: edited text extracts for Circuitry are derived from Super Intelligence Chapter 9 The Controle Problem Nick Bostrom, & Paul Mudoon’s Poem Side Project & based on the thematics from Impressions of Africa by Raymond Roussel
Circuitry
The notion that information being about
a certain topic is problematic
the equivalent to a smiley-face sticker xeroxed
trillions upon trillions of times
and plastered over the galaxies any piece of information
can in principle be relevant to any topic whatsoever
depending
on the background information of the reasoner
~ ~ ~
a unicorn
may graze in the dunes
in all their vagaries and never
quite grasp the point
a given datum set contains information
not only from the domain from which it was collected
even orange and lemon moving in their own sphere
who hasn’t woken up screaming in a four poster elephant herd
but also from various circumstantial facts
such that
one might infer from a nominal knowledge base
a variety of a wide range of topics
~ ~ ~
that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
on the Orient Express
at least everyone in the circus crowd
accepts he’s no more than part
of the rank and file
where the fact that some information is included
whilst some information is not
i spotted the Norwegian bareback artiste
with one foot on the unicorn sire
in a figure eight of the elephant folio
could tell about a fabrication that conceived
any knowledge based designation
like your run of the mill Fegee Mermaid
or Pickled Punk malformed in his formaldehyde
as the workings of its own psyche
~ ~ ~
it’s that same Hungarian tune played
on a cornet from a unicorn
that once grazed the dunes in all their vagaries
the design choices reflected in its own source code
and no less proven in battle
the Missing Link Frog boy
the human chimera and the human alligator
the characteristics of its circuitry
which also allows us to remake ourselves
~ ~ ~
that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
allows us to remake ourselves
as information not only from the domain
a unicorn may graze in the dunes
on the background information of times
plastered over the galaxies on the Orient Express
a bareback artiste with one foot
on any piece of information
which in principle once grazed the dunes
in all their circumstantial facts relevant to
any topic whatsoever
it’s that same Hungarian tune played in battle
the Missing Link Frog boy four poster elephant herd
but also Mermaid or Pickled Punk
malformed in all their vagaries
and never quite a variety of a wide range of topics
~ ~ ~
he’s no more than part of certain topic is problematic
the equivalent to the rank and file
where the fact infers from a nominal knowledge base
a characteristic of its circuitry
also on a cornet from a unicorn
the notion that information being about
an information is an information
~~~
i spotted the Norwegian and lemon moving
in their own sphere a unicorn sire
in a figure eight of fabrication
that conceived any knowledge based designation
its own source code and no less proven
a smiley – face sticker xeroxed
trillions upon trillions
the elephant folio could tell about
your run of the mill Fegee
a given datum set formaldehyde
as the workings of its own
human chimera and human alligator vagaries
the design choices reflected in that information is included
whilst some from which it was collected even orange
at least everyone in the circus crowd
~~~
i spotted the Norwegian and elephant herd but also Mermaid
or depending on various circumstantial facts
such that one be relevant to any topic
whatsoever vagaries such as the Orient Express
vagaries
the design choices reflected in its about
an information
an information plastered over the galaxies
plastered over the facts
inferred from a nominal knowledge from which it was collected
that same Hungarian dance music by Brahms
whilst some tell about your run of smiley- face sticker
xeroxed trillions upon trillions
that allows us to remake ourselves
as Frog in the circus crowd
in the circus unicorn the notion that information being
a psyche screaming in a psyche
it’s that same Hungarian tune played in battle
the human alligator vagaries
a unicorn may graze in the dunes
sire in a figure eight a fabrication of malformed Pickled Punk
in his all a background information of the reasoner
~ ~ ~
lemon & Orange on the Orient Express moving in their own sphere
Fegee grasps the point a Missing Link Frog boy four poster
who hasn’t woken up screaming conceived in that knowledge
based designation of their own vagaries
a never quite variety of which is also on a cornet from the galaxies
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~
galaxies bareback artiste with one foot on topics no more than given datum set as the workings contain information not only from the domain elephant folio characteristic of its circuitry the wide range of topics the human chimera equivalent to the rank and file any piece of information can source a code no less proven
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
Solstice winds, rain return in spells
a moon waxes full, dogs howl as well.
All the babble of the Souk
men over there, over there women.
All the life of the planet
so little part of it that i breathe.
Weather beaten highlands, once passed through.
The river bed, no more like a parched bone
its late autumnal river meanders as a vein
past four reservoirs
a quest that will end in winter´s flood.
Between them are momentary mists
where brightly clad figures of the north, suddenly dim.
On the frontier’s beach taxis come, go
only the stranded remain, together with the seagulls
four men huddled, drenched in pouring rain
dead once more, again, all pathways home
washed away, again.
A broken song
remember me, sung in a doorway
brings the world at large together
as suddenly as it narrows.
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
empty spaces awaiting faces.
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.
Mists cordon the mountain tops
guerdoned crowns like wreathes.
Ancient fields’ still colours surrounded
by burgeoning new lead to the valley below.
Old women, old as aglow, so slow they go
poised aloof in an untouchable world, trapped.
High in kiln firelight they cowl night’s shade
to oversee goats on the hill beneath.
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.
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 wrestles
embraces, that ravels birth
unravels death & binds its existence.
Her face is as if a moon glazed over
with a less serene ceramic dust that in the end
after its perplexity contains its surety.
She draws her forefinger laterally across
under her eye lid in a smear
nor can you change the image of what you are
in the pupil of her eye.
Babble bodies blur
voices with their echoes down the street
sky high, prices fly
a bird song breaks, a splash charade.
Faces in the rain thin
weakness of watery years.
A winnowing canvass tosses corn
as fireflies in the blazing day.
The hag in her rags begs her bag
holding all shadows to account.
You sit in the solitary corner
at the empty dice board
to throw, as the music swells, as strings play.
On the washing line clothes of all shapes
sizes are waiting to be filled
suspended between earth, sky, where white sheets blow.
A twinge of nostalgia flashes
a link between a fluttering curtain
an open window frame, a sun shadow game
a flickering apparition pattern leaving only – strands.
A breeze flutters an open foolscap on the table
as though a phantom reader
should flick with regard through a score of notes
then stops at the first blank white sheets
stays, the moving hand that wrote, wrote no more.
On record, old honky-tonk goes on
amidst the heaps of consumer city sneakers
in the same dust where faces
turn from their spring red lustre to a sun soiled wear
through a beehive of alleys
names, aye to fetch them home again
as if where the countless dead resided, you’d said
in a market of women shrouded in shawls.
Berlin falls, Baghdad falls
all the years turn to further tears
further fears to merge with your voyage
the shape of dreams to come
to be only endearments of what has gone before.
A flower opens after a thousand years in a shell of tears
indifferent to its beholders’ sight
who paint it with the colours from the waters of their night
on an unknown shore, to whose sight it opened once before.
Children’s faces like radiant imps
play carefree in the streets below
overhead on red tiles, fat pigeons bicker, coo.
In an internet cafe, an Arab girl discrete in headdress
plays with cartoon molecules of Mickey Mouse
Koala bear
nubile women’s faces dream of nudity in their shrouds.
Wonky pinz nez specs, jumble sale clothes
bad teeth, unshaven grin
looking a faded duplicate of a down
out James Joyce with the come on
are you Irish, he asks
perhaps he was once upon a time.
They came through the cleft of the mountain
– where the river ran
to swim as a blur in the naked purple of the eye
on the mountain face there is a scar
once a sacred place, now extinct, as they are.
Yet wild still she runs, amidst the sheep, goats
toils at the hearth, dutifully bears children
yesterday she knows but not tomorrow
where she hides her sorrow
even as he ploughs the hillside
a photo will steal his soul, but his beasts will do.
Twilight’s girls, girls, girls
throng the bustling street corners eating caracoles.
By day the olive tree green in the blue sky of the window
seems almost immortal enriched with the blood
it’s enriched, now at its roots.
Costa de la playa, white beehives in the sun, all money, no honey.
In the broken lights of the bazaar
the dusky eyes of the beggar sunk in their sockets
maze in crooked cul de sacs embargo amidst
the furls of silk that foil the flickering lantern niche.
In the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow.
Streets packs ravage carcasses
at dawn, the city wakes to the city’s obedience
to obey its disappearing shadows.
A ghost city of watchers
watched as shadows by a memory that has outlived them
now fragments in an admixture of old, new
– amidst a junk yard of rubble
watcher shadows phased captive to their fading stories.
The street’s mechanics of the day
obey their limits, patterns of parts
where we end only to start in a series of nows
post mortem of the world at large
an autopsy of ghosts on the slab.
Born to see, in the boutiques people seem
like their own mannequins
existence is a mystery with no purpose
only we endow it with a destiny, it does not seek from us.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.
