Over my defeat only her orbit
you will bring me her heart
when from that high state of grace
you were before
you wept before his impassioned face
before what was shared what was lost
before what had taken place had taken place
& that little trick of fate
the doors that open the doors that close
the doors that wait
within that labyrinthian trap
you cannot escape your state
cast that to the winds that howl by chance
to the fields that wave upon a dance
& judge how you perform before the curtain falls
for as Blake decreed the pic axe harms not the worm
& even the stones move free so let the desert be green again
( the desert the desert the desert be green be green be green
againagainagain be green again the desert be green again )
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
autumnal sludge trudge mush trudge mush
dear ape sweet ape good ape
O homo rapiens beautylovedeath
rhapsody in blue minor the trees
stark & bare don't care
mush trudge sludge mush trudge sludge
swing low sweet swing low sweet
coming for to coming for to
depending on where of kith of kin of kinship
dear ape beauty ape love ape
death gape in the dark void sing
beautylovedeath beautylovedeath beautylovedeath
deathbeautylove deathbeautylove deathbeautylove
& so on in a hole to fall in fall in fall in
falling falling falling
O O O dear ape
time closing the gap the long trek back
to the track the track the track
ancestor of the comet
where walls tremble back & bones stack
in the black in the black in the black
where echoes distort the answer
what stays what does not leave
in tunnels of light in tunnels of dark
that cross & intercede sculptured in the rock
the body on a rack where words crack
as sound surfaces on the surf surf surf surf surf
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
* A poem by Amparo Arróspide, from “En el oído del viento” (Baile del Sol, 2016). Hers and Robin Ouzman´s translation.
***
Can’t all poets
get a PhD in synesthesia
by the University of Columba in New York?
Can´t they harvest medallions under the moon?
Can´t they work as professors of Punic Sciences?
As kindergarten teachers, can´t they work?
Can´t they afford to pay for
their third self-published volume?
Can´t all poets live on air?
Can’t they rummage, deconstruct , snoop
build for themselves a submerged house
inhabit a crystal palace?
Can´t they repeat over and over the unsaid
incite questions of ethical and aesthetic weight
dismantle and fragment reality?
Can´t they translate their 14th century Chinese
concubine colleagues?
Can´t they receive writing
from a yearning and swift
void?
From a primordial nothingness?
Can´t they mortgage their crystal palace
their submerged house?
Can´t they rebelliously peddle little stars?
Can´t all poor poets steal books?
Can´t they read so
the complete works by Samuel and Ezra and John
by Juana Inés, Alejandra and Gabriela
by Anne and Margaret and Stevie
by Wallace and Edgar and Charles
by Arthur and Paul and Vladimir
by Dulce and Marina and Marosa?
And etcetera and etcetera and etcetera and etcetera?
Can´t all poets
add more beauty to beauty
and more horror to horror?
Can´t they draw maps and routes
of the invisible, futuristic city
foretold by their dreams?
Can´t they pursue the intangible
Move towards permanence
so that a poem
becomes a closed and completed vehicle
to treasure a present without behind or beyond?
Can’t they unfold and transmigrate
can’t they achieve mindfulness
Can´t they stammer forever
into everlasting silence?
**
¿Todos los poetas no pueden
obtener un doctorado en sinestesia
por la universidad de Columba en Nueva York?
¿Cosechar medallones bajo la luna?
¿Trabajar de catedráticos de ciencias púnicas
trabajar de maestras jardineras?
¿Trabajar?
¿No pueden costearse la tercera autoedición?
¿Vivir del aire?
¿No pueden hurgar, deconstruir, fisgonear
construirse una casa sumergida
habitar un palacio de cristal?
¿Reiterar una y otra vez lo no dicho
incitar preguntas de peso ético y estético
desarticular y fragmentar la realidad?
¿Traducir a concubinas chinas del siglo XIV?
¿No pueden recibir la escritura desde un vacío originario
anhelante y veloz?
¿Hipotecar palacio y casa sumergida,
traficar estrellitas, rebelarse?
¿Robar libros por pobres?
¿Leer así
a Samuel a Ezra a John
a Juana Inés a Alejandra a Gabriela
y a Joyce a Anne a Margaret
a Wallace a Edgar a Charles
a Arthur a Paul, Vladimir
a Marina a Dulce a Marosa?
¿Y a etcétera y etcétera y etcétera y etcétera?
¿No pueden
agregar más belleza a la belleza
y al horror, más horror?
¿Trazar mapas y rutas
de la ciudad invisible, futurista
que sus sueños predicen?
¿Acosar lo inapresable, moverse
en seguimiento de lo fijo, el poema
como vehículo cerrado y concluso
para atesorar un presente sin detrás ni más allá?
¿No pueden desdoblarse, transmutarse
no pueden extrañarse, balbucearse
y enmudecer al fin?
*
Amparo Arróspide (from En el oído del viento (Baile del Sol, 2016)
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.
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
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
come give balm to the gusty grieving
nights to hush day green the seas
for her dark oranges bloom an
indifferent inhuman evening
of cherished comfort and wings
like wide complacencies
but next moves in mythy gat motions
among any hind’s heaven or paradise
& cries cause the sun’s littering
our afterwards river sky relinquish
the mountains and whistle in her porch
death still the imperishable inescapable
for receding boughs to wear sleeplessly
the sun colours to hang of sky bosom
serafin plum the perfect rivers the hills
the lay sky paths that live impassioned
upon grass phrases in extended cries over
her peignoir and coffee upon blood calm
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.
go go go
there’s no grail in the grainy day
i’m so tired of stirring glue
one more time lady of the night
go go go i’m outta sight
power plays with psychopathy
what’s left of words our pathology
i took my baby down toMeJico
the place you know you go go go
i’m so tired of stirring glue
& tomorrow’s just another shoe
where there’s no lack for being strange
where the world’s already twisted & maimed
one more time lady of the night
what’s gonna make it through & through
we’ll all be dead at the sight of you
go go go i’m outta sight
we’re pathologically psychotic
you can put it got it got it
our words blasted in the thunder
& tomorrow’s rainbow’s no penumbra
where psychopathy plays the one number
kick arse this world so full of shite
come on down lady of the night
go go go i’m outta of sight
i’m so tired of stirrring glue
we’ll all be dead at the sight of you
holocaust plague & famine too
the map’s rotting over the ruins
words turn to bones in their tombings
like waxwork effigies we melt in the blue
i’m going down toMeJico
you know the place you go go go
come on down lady of the night
i’m gonnna dance with you outta sight
we’re on a wave that’s gonna disappear
a field that evaporates in thin air
then suddenly again you’re standing there
dancing with time forever there
come on down lady of the night
i’m gonna dance with you outta sight