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
as our planet hurtles through (hurtles hurtles hurtles)
the aftermath of a super nova (super nova super nova super nova)
mid-stream – beyond the void faster – void faster
than entangled space – as stars go out as stars go out as stars go out
as stars go out world wide world wide
on our daily media show
we chat to each other
as if we were in the know
fine tuned to dystopia
in our quantification of atomic seconds
seconds seconds seconds seconds seconds
does anybody know – does anybody know
what we are from before - before before before
in our new normal normalcy normally normal
in our new normal normalcy normally normal
with our daily dance with death on the doorstep
with our daily dance with death on the doorstep
as sudden as a theatre's curtain falls
or calls for a change of costume (calls calls calls)
& nothing more that this isn't
the war to end all wars
at least not yet not yet not yet not yet
just the plague regularly
as empires fall regularly
regularly regularly regularly
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
when it's off why even bother
i'm all done it's just another
it's not on in what's come
& u can in what's well
wonder what's gone well well well
wrong a song wants to come
on but it's never to keep
not what fits bundle to heap
only a bit but got u
what u ask through & through
words must pass an alliterative stash
first & last in onomatepoeic crash
for a poem a mere backlash
to be born mush and mash
beyond the seventh wonder in zenith
come on soon the mirage cometh
in a swoon no doubt about
off's not on all's in rout
what's gone wrong we had thieved
a bitty song to be believed
starts off along i'm all done
put it away in what's come
for another day poem gone astray
it's a play come what may
the talkie talk it's off off
or blackboard chalk just as well
stork & baby but can't tell
drive me crazy in fucking hell
that's to begin off off off
can anyone say cloud into day
a poem's itness is its it?
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
in the me hit the in the me hit the moonlight through the pines
moonlight through the pines moonlight through the pines
road jack a boat to pines on road jack a boat to pines on road jack a boat to pines on
````````````````````````road jack a boat to pines on cmon everybody
`````````````````````````````````````````yes we red sails knock
yes we red sails knock yes we red sails knock yes we red sails knock
red sails in the sunset red sails in the sunset
red sails in the sunset red sails in the sunset
`````````````````````````````````````````knocking on yes bye no
hit the road jack
bananas
cmon everybody cmon everybody
cmon everybody cmon on everybody
cry bye on a slow boat to china cry bye on a slow boat to china
slow china slow china slow china slow china bye bye blackbird bye bye blackbird
bye bye blackbird bye bye blackbird me heaven's door me heaven's door me heaven's
door me heaven's door `````````````` yes we have no
bananas````````````````````yes we have no bananas yes we have no bananas
yes we have no bananas knocking moonlight knock knock knocking knock
knock knocking knock knock knocking knock knock knocking
through the blackbird on
through the blackbird on
through the blackbird on
through the blackbird on through the blackbird on through the blackbird on
heaven's door heaven's door heaven's door in the me hit the
in the me hit the in the me hit the in the me hit the
in the me hit the smoke gets in your
eyes `
smoke gets in your eyes smoke gets in your eyes smoke gets in your eyes
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
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
all these years on
& i've given up on reflections
such as the origins of human madness
the limits of what we are beyond our controle
& suddenly as often happens nowadays
i flashback to a dangerous rushing stream
tumbling & cold i remember
the water is green white deep
a slither of a stripped tree trunk straddles
the sheer sided banks
a few strides & a skip
to cross which all in the bleak grey stone village
must old or young strong weak or sick
to enter onto its sparse barren ground
i am alone i see no one
even the tree spar looks slippery shiny
bent with an undersway to the tug of the flow
a fatal slip & i'm gone i could go on
but i cross
a few strides & a skip
i come to the first stone dwelling place
the ground is hard & arid i pass the front dyke space
to enter without a door
the burnt earthen floor room in its dim half light
i don't remember how
there's what looks like a built up large sink
made of stone & shingle & in it half submerged
in clear cold water small white turnips
it's his only fare we stare at each other
he is tall thin gaunt with long white hair & beard
clad in a brown home spun gown & cord sandals
he goes to the sink & offers me a soaked turnip
is this me in another life time could i live
this life day in day out
tonight i will sleep out for i cannot stay
we have not spoken a word
i eat the turnip his only nourishment
& leave as suddenly as i came to a memory
which now hinges on a dream as though
a desert wind should move a dune where
you wake to find what you left behind is beyond you still
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
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
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