Out of Range (i.) An Audio Text Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Out of Range (i.)
Version (i.)
*

a mauve sky	   grey pine	 dawn breaks      out of  the black	ripes       pale blue 
& green	  the painter's eye     steals the words on my breath

*
a storm of cicadas	a multitude of the unseen 	chorus in the pine    we are here   
small & large   before invasion  from the skies    helicopters policing the boundaries 
of consciousness

*
out of bounds    fucking fences against the skyline  	   barbed hegemony	  for fear 
the world will open like a chasm & swallow you     drone of the traffic closing in    smell 
of human rubbish           dumped   

*
the leaning day       belongs where          i  understand  i know i believe        i believe i 
understand i know    who cares    where leaning freezes    where leaning melts    where 
not even shadows are left

*
belonging to what	belonging to where	belonging  to belonging     more or less 	it 
depends on the direction	i suppose     i feel like an air spider    out of range

*  
on a sea of glass    a parade of phantoms	line up like a pageantry of Argonauts      on 
the edge of the world    what is the purpose of such dreams     i ask myself    do i wanna 
play skittles

*
a moving pattern of events	    a shape beckons	  to an impossible horizon	  a 
dimension    a spontaneous creation    i live in hope    or perhaps 	in the desperation of 
life before death

*
since  the out of range is beyond controle	  there is no belonging     nor reach     but is 
it a direction     as when the arrow's flight disappears in the blue

*
or when the soaring bird	soars more	leaving you lighter than air    or am i back at 
the beginning again	  for you cannot go on paying forever    

*
enough      who needs  horizons to speak of	       let them vanish large & small	small & 
large     avoid voidness    

but beware       there are no archetypes      other than those we have made        over time    
however animate nature might be	  

*
still the shape perhaps beckons       still we sleep on air      like swifts on flight to 
distant skies

*
dawn sometimes is a background of yapping domestic dogs     suddenly      somewhere     
deep in the density of the wooded hill	   a single bark from a solitary stray	    i see  
four foal deer today

*
everywhere it's best just to find a cover & make it the rest	   a spot is sufficient

*
a figure in the distance approaches	       through many resemblances	         before 
recognition      memory is an evolutionary tool	    they say	  but it can also serve 
to betray

*
time has many dimensions   it appears     but it's always an event	  for the reality 
of now to be real    time must be real     

what is real   nothing is real they say     well nothing & a bit     even the present gets out of 
range after a while	

*
coughing & spluttering on fumes	like the ramshackle motorcycle that's beaten me 
to the chase at the top of the path	    

i breathe after the fragrance of dawn       breaking with it 's mirage of green       as DNA 
sparkles in the dew         wondering next       which way to go

*
trees can look majestic       but they can also look twisted grasping & monstrous with their 
litter of dead wood scattered on the ground       

like the bones of the countless dead      mostly when evening rots

*
below me now is nothing but the tinkling bells of the goat herd & shouts of the herder

*
everywhere is strewn the ruins of the dykes	      amidst a deluge of rocks       stones & 
boulders    fallen to uselessness in less than a century from their hand built toil       less 
than a century before    

now they form only in their overgrown tomb      a fading phantom history

*
a  full dawn moon	 mere earthlings we exist because of her bounty	     despite her 
indifferent scorn     insects scurry    we tread       soon i'll get to water	      where 
now she fades out of day                                                         
                                                                                out of range

 

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

 

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

 

Approach. An Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

approach	 approach	approach
alone in my heart
let the day sail away
i shall stay in exaltancy
the dust track leads 
nowhere	in twilight she disrobes
anywhere's a gradient		nowhere
dawn is like this stray dog
two years ago		crying somewhere
they had bulldozed		afraid	lost		
their way through this
the local alcalde believed
the dust track		it would improve the economy
little did he know elephants return to the wilderness
wilderness wilderness wilderness	leads nowhere		
			in exaltancy	
			at great heights
at twilight		
the grandeur of the boulders		she disrobes
hovering upon the hillside		alone in my heart
approach	approach	approach
will hurtle down to unfathomble
the day sails			depths
now extends their itness
as we approach	approach	approach

 

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

 

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

 

Dead Stars Flash Back. Poem Excerpt from Next Arrivals by Robin Ouzman Hislop

 	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

 

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

 

The Split. An Audio Textual Poem. Excerpt from All the Babble of the Souk


 

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

 

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

 

Yellow Blues. An Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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

 

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

 

Strange Fruit. Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop


 

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

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Millenium. An Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop


 

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

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

For Olga. An Audio Textual Poem by Blanca Andreu. Translated from Spanish by Robin Ouzman Hislop and 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.

For Olga

Girl of delicately golden tresses,
girl obsession of the virgin stork
with tufts of damask feathers
that splashed death,
of the crazy stork with wings
of golden strychnine
which flew off leaving you with a corporeal perfume,
a neat smell of lilacs, already golden and rude dreams.
Girl who obeyed the apostle scops owl
and the murky look of real eyes,
with puerile drawings of Selene and the rest.
Girl of non-existent concert,
girl of cruel sonatines and malevolent books by Tom Wolfe,
or witch lace to bandage wounded deer ulcers,
of fallow deer gazing from mystical knolls,
or places like that.
Pluperfect girl, girl we never were,
tell it now,
tell it now, you, now that it’s so late,
spell out the sombre tempo,
spell me the tear
the purple silhouette of the mare,
the foal that lay at your feet waking up foam.

Abandoned recite the words of yesteryear,
shadow of Juan Ramón: Solitude, I am true to you.
Scornful recite the words of yesteryear,
but not that courtly verse,
don’t talk of queens white as a lily,
snow and Joan burning
and interwoven melancholy
of dear Villon,
speak clear verbs where you can drink the saddest liquid,
jars of sea and relief, now that it is already so late,
raise your tiny voice and summon up the song:
tell life that I remember her,
I remember her.

This small death is definitely lost in a nascent forest,
the shoot of an arrested comet,
that nobody saves
young volcano of novice gust and bones
made of bird, eyelid and thinking wave
that no stella book
no book painted with Italien solar gold,
no book of lava
will seal for me.

And so death so many times written
becomes radiant,
and i can talk
of desire and the unseeing beam of the lighthouse,
of the chimerical corpse of the crew.
And so death
becomes the story
of that mute girl who hanged herself
with boreal harp’s strings
because of nuptial poison on her tongue.
I definitely get lost cradling litters of rare epitaphs,
girl of golden tresses,
I will tell life that you remember her,
I will tell death that you remember her
that you remember their lines conjuring your shadow,
that you remember their habits and tempo solo,
bitter laurel, deep bramble, brazen error and sorrowful hordes,
while Ephesian cats are crying at my feet,
while lost silver cats
go curdling their ancestry in genealogical cypress and poplar,
I will tell life to remember you,
to remember me
now,
when I rise with loops and hair strings
up to the disaster of my head
up to the disaster of my twenty years,
up to the disaster, lammergeier light.

De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall, 1980

Para Olga

Niña de greyes delicadamente doradas,
niña obsesión de la cigüeña virgen
con mechones de plumas de damasco
que salpicaban muerte,
de la cigüeña loca con alones
de estricnina dorada
que viajaba dejándote un corpóreo perfume,
un pulcro olor a lilas, ya dorados y rudos sueños.
Niña que obedeció al autillo apóstol
y a la mirada turbia de los ojos reales,
con pueriles dibujos de Selene y demás.
Niña de inexistente concierto,
niña de crueles sonatinas y malévolos libros de Tom Wolfe,
o de encajes de brujas para vendar las llagas de los corzos heridos,
de ciervos vulnerados asomados en los oteros místicos,
en los sitios así.
Niña pluscuamperfecta, niña que nunca fuimos,
dilo ahora,
dilo ahora tú, ahora que es tan tarde,
pronuncia el torvo adagio,
pronúnciame la lágrima,
la silueta morada de la yegua,
la del potro que se tendió a tus pies despertando la espuma.

Declama abandonada las palabras de antaño,
sombra de Juan Ramón: Soledad, te soy fiel.
Declama desdeñosa las palabras de antaño,
pero no aquella estrofa cortesana,
no hables de reinas blancas como un lirio,
nieves y Juana ardiendo,
y la melancolía entretejida
del querido Villon,
sino los verbos claros donde poder beber el líquido más triste,
jarros de mar y alivio, ahora que ya es tarde,
alza párvula voz y eco albacea y canta:
Dile a la vida que la recuerdo,
que la recuerdo.

Definitivamente se extravía en un bosque naciente esta muerte pequeña,
el brote del cometa detenido,
esto que nadie salva,
joven volcán de huesos y ráfaga novicia
hecha de pájaro y de párpado y de ola pensante
que ningún libro estela,
ningún libro estofado de oro solar de Italia,
ningún libro de lava
viene a sellar por mí.

Y así la muerte tantas veces escrita
se me vuelve radiante,
y puedo hablar
del deseo y del lacre rubio y ciego en los faros,
del cadáver quimera de la tripulación.

Y así la muerte
se convierte en historia
de aquella niña muda que se ahorcó
con las cuerdas boreales del arpa
porque tenía en la lengua un veneno nupcial.
Definitivamente me extravío acunando camadas de raros epitafios,
niña de grey dorada,
diré a la vida que la recuerdas,
diré a la muerte que la recuerdas,
que recuerdas sus líneas conjurando tu sombra,
que recuerdas sus hábitos y su carácter solo,
su laurel ácido, su profunda zarza, su descarado error y sus hordas dolidas,
mientras gatos efesios van llorando a mis pies,
mientras gatas perdidas plateadas
van cuajando su alcurnia en ciprés genealógico y en álamo,
diré a la vida que te recuerde,
que me recuerde,
ahora,
cuando me alzo con cuerdas capilares y bucles
hasta el desastre de mi cabeza,
hasta el desastre de mis veinte años,
hasta el desastre, luz quebrantahuesos.

“De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall”1980

AUTHOR: BLANCA ANDREU (1959)
Bibliography:
– De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall (awarded the 1980 Adonais International Poetry Prize) (Ediciones Rialp, Madrid, 1981).
– Báculo de Babel (awarded the Fernando Rielo International Poetry Prize) (Hiperión, Madrid, 1983).
– Elphistone (Visor Libros, Madrid, 1988)
– El sueño oscuro: (poesía reunida, 1980-1989) (Hiperión, Madrid, 1994).



Blanca Andreu (born 1959 A Coruña) is a Spanish poet. She grew up in Orihuela, where her family still resides, and attended El Colegio de Jesus-Maria de San Agustin, followed by studies in philology in Murcia. At age 20, she moved to Madrid without formally completing her education. Here, she met Francisco Umbral, who introduced her to the literati of the city.

In 1980, she was awarded the Premio Adonáis de Poesía for her work entitled, De una niña de provincias que se vino a vivir en un Chagall. Her use of surrealism is considered the beginning of the Post-Modern Generation. Her later work has tried to shy away from the surrealist tendencies of her early pieces.[2]

In 1985, she married novelist Juan Benet. After he died in 1993, she returned to La Coruña where she now lives a semi-reclusive life.

Awards

1980: Premio Adonáis de Poesía
1981: Premio de Cuentos Gabriel Miró
1982: Premio Mundial de Poesía Mística, Fernando Rielo
1982: Premio Ícaro de Literatura
2001: Premio Internacional de Poesía Laureà Mela

Translators:

Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a poet and translator. She has published seven poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar, Presencia en el Misterio, En el Oido del Viento, Hormigas en Diáspora , Jaccuzzi, and Valle Tiétar, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and in both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards.

 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

 

 

Editor’s Note: see also Poetry, National Literature Prize 2018, Francisca Aguirre, Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop

Crocuta crocuta. Excerpt from Cartoon Molecules Collected Poems An Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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

 

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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk Cartoon MoleculesNext 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 Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

 

 

Next Arrivals. An Audio Textual Poem, Excerpt from Next Arrivals Collected Poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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 

https://www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

https://www.twitter.com/PoetryLifeTimes

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk Cartoon MoleculesNext 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 Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)