Justice

In the reason. In the yellow of the snow. A halo of piss to prove our angels were still listening. The slow dog paddle of hope. As I wore my skirt. As I was worn by it. No stockings. Just skin. Fluorescent as his touch plugged it in.

In a blue bulb. That resembles who I am now. In a blizzard of ion it sank. Not hot enough to explode.

Just warm enough to think it could burst.

In the dark. In the hours after life goes to bed. I still sat at the head of this palsy trial. A jury of fingers debating. Guilty for certain. But of what?

A verdict looming in every word.

Justice seducing every Prometheus left on my list.

Fox, dreaming of the space between human and beast

Humans and beasts are different species, but foxes are between humans and beasts. The dead and the living walk different roads, but foxes are between the dead and the living. Transcendents and monsters travel different paths, but foxes are between transcendents and monsters. Therefore one could say to meet a fox is strange; one could also say it is ordinary.

- Ji Yun, 1789, in Notebook from the Thatched Cottage of Close Scrutiny

Crossing the Water

Occasionally a photograph I have taken reminds me of an image from a poem. This photograph made me think of one by Plath, from a poem I haven't read for years:

Where do the black trees go that drink here?

This was taken this afternoon. The trees are probably still there, still waiting...

Into the Sun , bleeding and sunning

shout

oooh its so tempting to indulge
to tell myself pretty lies
and tell you too

how I love the smell of you
and the taste of passion that fears to unfurl itself
upon a dusty road that might take ages to clean
and even then may not seem quite as wondrous as you thought
it might be

where was the fever, where was the quirk
locked up in a bedchamber
or imagined thirst
no curiosity
no fire
no particular desire
just comfort and ease
too shy to tease
like a caged bird
pretending to be free
weighed down
on a fictitious tree

what brought us there
what made us stay
what makes me doubt
what makes me shout

you were you
and I was me
and then again
not quite
just who I didn’t want to be
and yet
loved being

everything was right
everything is right

It has to be
do you understand me?

NEW REVIEW

hello everyone,

this is my first post here, and i just wanted to let everyone know that my review of Barbara Jane Reyes's Poeta en San Francisco is live at RAINTAXI. (click the blank space)

feel free to check out my blog also (click the blank space)

sincerely,
csperez

Three Estates Renga - some pictures

Pictures from Nikki Pugh of the last Three Estates Renga at Kings Norton

10 seconds

They always leave of course.

Atomic

If you split an atom, and release all its energy, you'll obliterate a continent in one go.

The human body is made of billions upon billions of atoms.

No wonder I'm angry all the time.

RuKsaK

Moorland

Moorland by RS Thomas

It is beautiful and still:
the air rarefied
as the interior of a cathedral

expecting a presence. It is where, also,
the harrier occurs,
materialising from nothing, snow-

soft, but with claws of fire,
quartering the bare earth
for the prey that escapes it;

hovering over the incipient
scream, here a moment, then
not here, like my belief in God.



(Photograph by me, poem by the old misery-guts RS Thomas who can be read about here.)

New Blogger

I just switched to the new blogger. If any of you got cut out and still want to be here, email me at cruelvirgin@gmail.com and I will set you up.

...

discharge

Play Golf On The Moon

'for a better world play golf on the moon'
this work by Paul Conneally links up with artist Tim Wright's 'play golf on the moon with david bowie' - we had hoped to install an actual moon golf hole in the gallery but not this time - my feeling is that most golf courses are environmentally unsound and so i urge you 'for a better world play golf on the moon'

Graceless Sermons

With stone joints she bent over. Grinding into the movement in frenetic thrusts. What she sought. It was on the floor. Always had been. But never this far away. She always thought one day she'd find the bottom above her. She still thought she would someday as she stiffened her hips to brace for the pick up. Of this something she only saw when it was dark. After she had pushed everyone away. This something she had always wanted. This nothing that she'd always had.

The menthol fingers of lovers done still scraping at her throat. Dividing every breath into strands. Bliss and regret forming braids in her chest. Breathing. In pictures. In stabs. Breathing through the stone. Bending down. Reaching for something that was never there.

Coffins in the taste of every kiss.

ziphat

silence

An absence of sound like stillness in a void.
Stars come crashing down.
Random colours and contours split apart like atoms.
Flimsy, fragile, tragic.
There is a judgment of trees more solemn than saints.
A moment when time spins into illusion.
Ride the illusion.
Ride the chaos.
Continuity warps as fingers of expression twist the pysche.
Malable and magnificent, a utopia of self.
Breathe belief.
Believe.





words byCocaine Jesus

Two versions of Narcissus

The Plot by Jorge Luis Borges (trans. by Boyer / Morland)

To make his horror complete, Caesar, pressed to the foot of a statue by the impatient daggers of his friends, discovers among the blades and faces the face of Marcus Junius Brutus, his protégé, perhaps his son, and ceasing to defend himself he exclaims: "You too, my son!" Shakespeare and Quevedo revive the pathetic cry.

Destiny takes pleasure in repetition, variants, symmetries: nineteen centuries later, in the south of the Province of Buenos Aires, a gaucho is attacked by other gauchos. As he falls he recognises an adopted son of his and says to him with gentle reproof and slow surprise (these words must be heard, not read), "Pero che!" He is being killed, and does not know he is dying so that a scene may be repeated.

- From Dreamtigers (1964)

again and again

they slay me.
people with clean sentiments. the way they dress it all up pretty pink and flushed.
as if their worlds are really like that. as if pain and bruises don't touch them. just the plastic formica they inlay over their being. a fuck up like me just drifts past their vision like roadkill.
or a nasty rash that some cream gets rid of if applied quick enough and regularly enough.
nice families of 2 plus 2's.
with green lawns and hedges.
and debts.
and corrosion in their souls for the amphetimine rush of everyday working life only lasts a fraction of time and its kick back is a grim realization that the drugs don't work.
not even television acts as balm.
not even the shit they pump out on the radio.
just endless years of empty rhetoric and the thought of democracy.
give me a break.
giving me a fucking break.

Bad Movies

There are tv shows to fast forward. Foul plastic surgeries to unbandage. Little elephant men painted on the liquid crystal canvas.

And babies to have. In the pliant reality that is addiction. Words bite the panties away from rigid vaginas. Its ceramic lips cast for a kiss that isn't coming.

So many people to ignore. Where do I begin? Poised on the skeleton's hips. Dressed in a beautiful gown of long lost skin. And splintered bones. Wearing the world around my neck. A tourniquet of faces kill the wounds that I used to share with him.

There's a bad movie in my head from the moment I wake up until the second that sleep absolves. I watch them choke out on hungry faces about to orgasm. I taste them in the odor of casual sex. The way it permeates the room long after we've forgotten the ghosts we had to become to find each other. The price of heaven hiding in a stray hair on my pillow.

Shit. Sky. Sunset.

1.
‘I’ve travelled and I can tell you, the more people get shat on the more they shit on others.’
‘So, why do you treat me like shit?’
‘I’ve been shat on a hell of a lot.’
‘So, where does that leave us?’
‘Spiralling.’

2.
‘It’s gorgeous.’
‘What is?’
‘The sky – full of blue.’
‘Yeah, but, you know.’
‘Know what?’
‘If you look closely, you’ll see it’s getting smaller.’
‘Eh?’
‘Just don’t look for too long. It’ll make you cry. I know.’

3.
‘I’ll see you later then.’
‘I’ll say I hope so, but that’s because I can’t bear to speak the truth. It murders the core of my soul that this is your sunset.’
------
Humour me. Pick one. Tell me why.

RuKsaK