(i)
enough bread on the window sill
to feed a thousand birds
goat shit in the air
we walk on fetid sewers
like the rats that inhabit them
immuno
O noble savage
what lies beyond the heart of darkness
bonobos!
Elon Musk thinks
we must be in a simulation
otherwise we’d have gone extinct
& he’s footing the bill
we can’t object
to being disembodied brains in vats
on clipboards
anymore than dinosaurs!
(ii)
like a long dead insect
motor cycles in electric windows gleam
as if trying to get on to get off
a swerve
on the hill jammed in the valley
houses stacked like egg boxes
cloud & smoke at the interstices
traffic drone pedestrians cast like shadows
at night orange electrics
hang out converging symmetries
almost ephemerally
i am its inmate its identity
a dark amorphous mass
turning towards a lighted doorway
to scrawl its signature
(iii)
a fictitious identity effacing present
with a replaced distance
yonder
where the moment drifts
a wandering mind
on a happen stance edge
like light on the sea
an ephemeral instance of memory
a dazzling illusion of tongues
stained with the dust of ages
where i walk on sand
hearing those voices fall over
the horizon of this flat world
our mirror neurons
reconstructing a past
as a theatre of ghosts
a semblance
clinging to the threshold of the present
on the precipice of nothingness
(iv)
about
omnicide or superhuman cosmicide
long lived areosols
war of the trawlers
seabed shreds
bots
triffids
a glass house menagerie
we will
open all doors to take away
moments ever had
writ now
signifiers on tabloids
which will be erased
our experience about
& present
in our crooked
corner of the world
as indifferent
as day & night
(v)
head on
all the hype
a tattered flag
a battered form
signal & sign
before ruins
a monolithic artefact
the grain of yesterday’s tears
vanishing on a whim
in a whirlwind of dust
in multiple dusts
every day
the fumes rage
print the page
we rise from with hands
of clay
hang the numbers out to dry
a bag of tricks
(vi)
a lottery tumbler of memory
we choose at random
listen to the echoes
of our idiot dreams
address the parade
of paradoxical masks
sink into our
straight jackets that bind us
to tomorrow’s sky
with its
empty promises from before
(vii)
sex on the beach
a beverage
the sign said
tucked into a snug cove
where we sun our limbs
in wicker seats
with seagulls & snorklers
flipper fins plashing
the glitttering sea
white foam breaking
chiffon on the rocks
we blip a 1,000 selfies
on the jelly roll fleshly
nubile spawning shore
biologically hacked
biologically raped
under a celloid blue sky
buffet on plastic mariscos
before we drift off
towards our yellow beige
alabaster domed cupolas
our palatial hotel chateau
to enter its catacombs
bathed in golden light
like holographic silhouettes
at night rats will scourge
the waterfront promenade
festooning rubbish bins
neglected either by
white linen underpaid
immigrant blacks from
the hotels or pissed off
government employee cleaners
(viii)
GOOD NEWS
New Study / People
eat at least 80,000
plastic particles a year
Story of the week
i rise from my 5 dollar a day
chez longe my 1.50 dollar
a day umbrella shade
to float on the see through sea
spitting out those same particles
washed inshore watching
brown bits of sewage dirt
through the corners of my eyes
( University of Victoria Canada
who led the research
other foods such as bread
processed products
meat dairy & vegetables
may well contain
just as much plastic)
cluster into filmy layers
to coagulate with algae
& mollusk on the rocks
that adorn the bay
& tilting my head
i look outward
to where the sun
will set on a distant isle.
(ix)
nothing is resolved
to be continued
things just get further away
a distance lost
in the translation of the moment
on a qucksilver sand
where memory betrays
the mirror symmetries from before
on this landslide life
where all the riddles remain
which i cannot fish out
from the pond of meaning
to dazzle the day those enigmas
that have shaped me up
to the intangible now that i am
as unexpected their appearance
& disappearance were they can
mean no more purpose for me
but that i was not their cause
- on looking back
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.
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Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com . You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his
work Performance (University of Leeds)
