Poetry G – The Recusant

Poetry G

Jeremy Ganem

Woodcut of John Davidson. 1902. Robert Bryden.

When the barbarians come John,

We will meet them at the gates

Of the city we no longer live

In & we will give them flowers

John, flowers of the world-flower

John, burning flowers: gold &

Savage flowers John, savage

As your dream of England John,

Savage as the blank verse of your

Dreams John.

When the barbarians come John,

We will marry them & be new

Tribes & tribulations, new

Empires of nothing John, as you

Knew then always even as you

Died John, even as the barbarians

Come again for us in your after-

Life John, even when the fisher-

King found you in Mount’s Bay

John, & we wept.

When the barbarians came John

To dream of the £20 note that

We might receive if we had news

Of you, of your disappearing

Will John, the great will of a lost

Century given to you by

Zarathustra & your own

Implacable desire to

Testify John! To testify

Again & again until your voice died.

For when the barbarians come John

They will come bearing your body

As a testament to the fallen

Will John, to the fallen will of the

Great World-Flower that blooms

Upon the Great World-Tree of your

Infinite Will John, & we the

Barbarians will come John

To the gates of another lost

Empire & the gates will be cold.

Friedrich Nietzsche. Photograph from the series “Der kranke Nietzsche“ (“The ill Nietzsche”). 1899. Hans Olde.

You do not look well old friend

Of murderers & pariah

Dogs that scream on the streets

Of Berlin in the long night

Of the last century. Coming down

From the mountains you beat

The ground with your crooked

Staff & rage against things

As they are: imbecilic, raw,

& afraid. You made many

Things up—tore down idols

Just because you could,

Even if you once had loved

Them. You were the last

Decadent & the first as well,

For as you said many times,

Everything repeats, even this

Strain, this song, this light

Burning away your name

As you look out of eyes that

Are nearly dead. Always you were

Nearly dead, even with your sword,

Your mustache, your imperious

Gaze backward & forward—imperial

& reckless as your verse, as all

The books you vomited out of

The blackest lung of the Dead God’s

Dead soul. The Spirit that you

Hated probably crept up upon

You in the end Friedrich, as

You turned away, only to bury

Your head in the rotted cloth

Of the rank pillow & weep, to

Weep once again.

Mappa dell’inferno from L’inferno dantesco. c. 1480. Sandro Botticelli. Book illustration.

L ‘enfer, ce n’est pas les autres

It is the eye of man bled through—

The morbid world’s blind mote

& the need to make it true.

Regardless of the pretty cost

Art’s hand performs the need—

The prison of the lost

Is not god or ancient creed.

It is this line, this ink & brush

This book, this mark in time,

That crucifies but for the rush

& to hear a pretty rhyme.

The printer is the damned,

To illustrate the seed,

Capital your pure demand,

Only pure ink may feed.

The Jerusalem Windows. 1962. Marc Chagall.

I feel too, as though the tragic and heroic resistance movements, in the ghettos, and your war here in this country, are blended in my flowers and beasts and my fiery colors. . . —Marc Chagall

The sun of Russia is the Lord of Kansas, Marc.

We peasants know these things. Even in the dark

I can still see you in Jerusalem

But we never reach asylum

Or lands of dancing goats & towers

Eifel & peasant women dreaming hours

In the village pure as power

Tells the real story Marc, not fame

Or faith or the Mystic with his shame-

Ful book, his beloved Shekinah.

No, rather it is shock & awe

& dead or dying presidents

That set the world’s precedent.

Sadly art is excellent

At dreaming sad gods & village

Maidens, not the swillage

Of exodus, a death-march drum

Haunting God’s bought Jerusalem.

Sarah Gonnet

Side Order

The ache

that a baby

is supposed to fill

waved at me from a distance.

I saw it

burst, what emerged

was grotesque:

blonde wires,

porcelain doll cheeks,

slightly cracked,

lips that refuse to meet.

She screams “You should have chosen me!”

Then she leaves.

Only her silvery imprint remains;

branded on my brain.

I stare into the space she filled,

then down another handful of pills.

Messages

Tight squares,

shapes of the computer age,

yet half scrawled over in paints.

The paint’s preoccupation being to

black out the blank screen

up to its next cycle of darkness.

Labels blaze in, pale grey fire.

They say “liar”.

They say “pain”.

They say “damned”.

They say “create”.

These poems are taken from the upcoming chapbook Voices (Survivors’ Poetry)

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes I merge with other people.

People I see and watch. People on TV shows. People in books. But mostly people I obsess over. It’s not love I feel for them, it’s something more. It is more, even, than a connection. It is an often one-way spiritual flow that I have with those certain people and that I also have with my madness.

It is absorption and simultaneously projection.

I start to think in their voice.

I feel their facial features in the place of my face.

I absorb who they are and then I’m left to deal with the extra dimension they demand from my brain. An extension needs to be built to house this new person.

Then that’s that: they are always there. In my mind. Moving around. Talking to each other. I can hear their voices.

Their voices are stronger than my voice.

Pseudo-hallucinations the Doctors call them; but the voices don’t like having only one name like that. They want their own names. They always want their own fucking way.

If I am real in any way, I am not a person; I am a set of scales. These people I absorb live in my head and are in constant opposition to each other. They have such bitter things to argue about. I am the scale that weighs one voice against another. I measure out the right amount of each of them and then project this image of sanity when I talk to other people. But this image of sanity is only a magic potion made of spirits and voices. It does not make a real person. It also doesn’t always work- I am undeniably weird.

Projecting the people in my head, and managing some of their horrific ways is difficult. I take drugs: anti-psychotics, anti-depressants and tranquilizers, to dull them and sleeping pills to get some rest from them. But ultimately I have to project them somehow, or they will not go away. Making it harder is the way they all have impulses. Dirty impulses that need placation. Some make me cut myself deep. Some make me seek out throwaway sex.

Some make me manipulate: once you’ve absorbed someone you can see how they work. Everyone has a mechanism I can learn. I learn these mechanisms by heart because I’m hoping and hoping and hoping I will one day be able to make a mechanism like that for myself. One that would make me into a real person. Not just a conduit for voices.

It always comes back to the fact that I have to project them, the voices, purge them from my system (though only so new voices can soon imbed themselves in the resulting spare room). So I have to write; I have to paint; I have to act (after all, all the world is a stage); and I have to hoard.

But hoarding is also a process of absorption: there are all those voices in my books; all those foreign worlds on my discs; they are just too tempting for my black hole of a brain. I have to absorb four books a week. I have an obsession with the number four. It links all of my fantasy worlds and relays back to play a part in my reality.

When I sit and look at my hoard it becomes a physical representation of all of the pieces of me; all the different voices inside me.

I am not living when I’m not creating, not projecting, or hoarding. I fear that is because there is nothing there beneath the voices, the identities. The ones I have absorbed and the few I was born with: the child me who still plays, collects stickers and watches Adventure Time, the manic me, the depressed me, the grunge- dressed artist writer me. But these fragments of self have huge fissures in them. There is plenty of room in these fissures for the absorption of people and characters and their voices. There are so many layers. But I fear that maybe, if they were unravelled, I would find they’re not protecting anything.

Music really brings the voices out. They like listening and they like the ease it allows them to force me into their perception, like a musical lubrication. So I listen to certain albums in my isolated shed to summon certain parts of myself. Then I let them out onto the paper. Sometimes I don’t need the music to summon the voices up; but their signal strength increases if I do. Sleeping pills bring them out too. Half an hour after I take the tablet the voices flow freely; all of them off in their own wavering directions. When they join up and become one electric stream again I am asleep and they lead my dreams.

The book you hold right now contains four voices from the mystical and outright mentally ill kingdom of my head. Some of them are drawn from life, some from shadows of life, some from fantasy; and one, Azra, is a personification of my madness. The voices came out as poetry this time. Poetry is something that can only be written under intense inspiration, so these poems project some of the voices in my head with a unique clarity that it is hard to express in any other medium

This is the Introduction to the upcoming chapbook Voices (Survivors’ Poetry)

Chapbook Mention:
Sarah has an upcoming chapbook with Survivor’s Poetry called “Voices”. It takes on one of the characters in her head- Azra.

Biography:
Sarah Gonnet was born in Derby in 1993. Sarah has been experimenting with various forms of writing over the last few years. Recently she has been writing a lot of arts-orientated journalism for The Guardian, The Journal, Luna Luna, Sabotage Reviews, Screenjabber, PANK, and essays on female artists for The Bubble. Her poetry has been published in PUSH, Jotter’s United and The Cadaverdine. She is also working with Survivors Poetry towards a pamphlet and one of her poems was chosen as their ‘Poem of the Month’ in July 2014. Under the pseudonym Azra Page, Sarah has published two collections of autobiographical pieces: Catharsis and Dull Eyes; Scarred Faces. Carolyn Jess Cooke published several of Sarah’s poems for her blog “On Depression”. IRONPress working with Red Squirrel Press have published one of Sarah’s short stories- Impulse– in their collection Short not Sweet. Sarah read from this story at the Books on Tyne Festival. Sarah also writes plays which are going through the development process of being performed at scratch nights. Sarah has an upcoming chapbook with Survivor’s Poetry called “Voices”. It takes on one of the characters in her head- Azra.

Catherine Graham

I Beg to Apply for the Post

after Jack Common 1903 – 1968

My school was tough:

the teachers weighed in,

tipping the scales with their red pencils,

their toxic, chalk dust.

I beg to apply for the post.

Like you, my father learned shorthand;

attended evening class at the colliery.

A cacophony of skills, don’t you think?

Like my mother, singing opera in the scullery.

Beware of the man who wants marriage,

isn’t that what you told your readers?

My father taught me to ride a bike

and not depend on stabilizers.

He hated smarmy men the most.

I beg to apply for the post.

No silver spoons in our house.

Our doorstep was donkey-stoned.

We refused to be shoved into snobbery,

refused to give up the ghost

when they refurbished The Dwellings

and named it Millennium Court.

Ashes to ashes, communities to dust.

I beg to apply for the post.

I’ve never failed to fit in,

never lived in a ‘culture vacuum’.

Why, our backlane was a canvas

to the local graffiti artist.

I beg to apply for the post.

Brought up on Dickman’s pies

but I never mince my words.

I don’t give anything I don’t want to.

I don’t go about hard-faced.

I’m not fighting any class-war

in silk-lined, kid gloves:

I have a voice, I haven’t lost faith.

I’m taking on life bare knuckled,

this kiddar’s luck has changed.

I don’t believe in the twaddle

I read in most of the papers.

I know when to tell the truth;

when to spout the necessary lie.

I learned all this at my cost –

I beg to apply for the post.

I would supply references

from my previous employer

though, fair to say there was no love lost.

He had ideas above my station;

his wife was all fur coat.

More edge than a broken piss pot.

I beg to apply for the post.

I pride myself on being punctual;

always on the dot.

I don’t pretend or hope to be

what I’m definitely not.

I tick all of the boxes –

I call salmon paté, salmon paste.

I know my place but I don’t like to boast.

I beg to apply for the post.

Le Pin Doré

This first light snakes through the shutters

Soon after the music,

A song she shall hear all day,

A perfect blue painted from the sea

Beneath the sun.

Yesterday the Mistral raged

In dust and swaying pines,

And raised an army against her.

Frail world in the dark sky.

Today there is still life, serene.

Maria Gornell

Irish crossing

Forgotten scrolls from Tara; float amongst drowned Irish
syllables, trapped inside bottles amongst driftwood,
seaweed tightly spun; strangling ancestors cries that
beseeches thee Patrick calling his name out into black seas
to feed the eels and snakes of miracles failed.

Thoughts bubbling to surface – pushing against a powerful force
of dreams submerged out into the wild abandon of waves
crashing with the force of mother nature’s violent fury.

Arthritic knees kneeling against cold stone,
obedient congregations whispering sounds; belly rumblings
holding the dish of coins over flowing, cough it up in black
swirls, take this drink this last supper of burdens wrung out
into the thick green foam of sea.

Scattered in the ashes of potato skin famines – as inland grows
pale in view. You trace the salt tears of rivers hoping to carry us
somewhere better – never no never

wanting to witness pride from shoulders disappear.
As you wrap these river urchins in strong, safe, love.
tiny flickers of lights like shards of glass on a black
horizon, into the Mersey you softly go.

And I have stood long searching amongst empty ports forsaken.
Wondering on the journey, haunted by those fog horns.
imagining slave ships, the cracks of whip that hold no connections
to your heart except the immigrant rivers that carried you to
‘no rooms for the Irish’ dirty grey back street slums,
gangs that got you drunk then robbed you
of half shillings, left drunken stupor in streets
that did not know your name.

The children you reared who turned their backs on roots,
the religion that saved you into categories of saints, sinners
and heathens. Its not hard to imagine what may have been
if the filthy English greed had not appeared on your horizons.
A shamrock mistaken for a four leaf clover floats on the breeze
with secrets to tell.

David Groulx

Butterfly Knowledge

A butterfly speaks to you

if you watch

it flutter

the butterfly speaking

its wings are lips moving

its language

feeling the air

A River Flowing

A river

has knowledge

if you listen

you can hear it

what does it say?

I tell you

Take this kiss from my lips

like Odysseus to Penelope

rest your villain heart

bring your fire-light

the thunder that moves away

from us

kiss me for this body

a river

through me

into you

OWEN GALLAGHER

THE PARLIAMENTARY BLACKSMITHS

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if during their term in office

Ministers used their tongues like wands

to legislate that houses, schools and playgrounds be built;

banks redistribute wealth; debating clubs be formed

in every workplace; and we use remote controls

on TV sets to vote on Government proposals!

Instead, they sweat like blacksmiths at the anvil

attempt to hammer us into shape.

‘CUBA LIBRE!’

Not wishing to undermine any achievements,

I want to peel back the posters of Che that promote

the worship of the individual, and recycle them

as writing-paper for children. T-shirts exploiting him

would be used as bed-linen for the homeless.

I want to graffito ‘Those who produce nothing

receive nothing!’ on the billboards, re-site the boards

outside the guarded mansions of Havana; storm

the State-controlled radio station, urge workers

to tear the masking tape from their mouths.

I want all State ministers to swim to the golden exiles

in Miami, while workers and prostitutes

dance salsa in the streets, and soldiers drink

‘Castro on the Rocks’ from the barrels of rifles.

RULE, BRITANNIA!

Yes. I can sing Rule, Britannia!,

stand shoulder to shoulder with Millwall supporters.

I am darker than our darkest kit

and can match racist tongues and fists.

Yes. I can sing Rule, Britannia!

I bleed when knifed at work by graffiti,

cry when my son is whipped

by words in the playground.

Yes. I can sing Rule, Britannia!,

stoke your bank account,

donate my blood and organs,

carry the flag into battle for you.

Yes. I can fight for Britannia,

watch poppies sprout from my chest.

CRACK HEAD

I never hesitated, as we exchanged fire,

to be the first to leap into the air

and race, foolhardily, across the Afghan sky

expecting others to follow.

I never thought I would fall out of the sky

on the heads of soldiers in my squad,

be a target for the Taliban. I thought

only of the sniper, who pinned us down,

watching the soles of my boots zigzagging

above and me staring down, his mouth filled

with so many bullets I was forced to reload.

o.gallagher@btinternet.com

OVER THE COUNTER
The executive editor of Billboard magazine says it ain’t possible.

Fake glasses
looking through a two-way window I thought
it was
a one-way.

This is sad.

A middle-eastern circumference asks for identification.

A police officer wants to have a word
with you
in the corner of the gallery.

I leer over the counter, her straight teeth disgust,
but somehow
that sour-cream smile
contains a laughter
with which
I could dance.

Alex Galper

Up to the Heavens

Outside, on a different planet

somewhere

Arctic winds chill

to the bone

and winter bites.

But here :

in a Palestinian hole

on E2nd

it is hot: carpets, pillows, hummus,

a plate of kebabs.

My friend

commands respect here

for his fluent Arabic.

A former Mossad,

he pulls on his apple hooka

smiles

at the waiter and

whispers into my ear:

“…How many o’our boys they’s

killed…

how many o’theirs

I’d packed up

into the heavens!”

Brooklyn Siberia

I live in Siberia

In the very heart of Southern Brooklyn

In the mornings people are flocking to the taiga of Wall Street

Returning in the evening barely alive, frozen,

stock-bitten,

Bleeding from computer-bug wounds

Some disappear forever

Mauled to death by the bears of big corporations

Or buying houses in New Jersey

In the spring I see their corpses

Inviting me to follow the same path

From the pages of respectable publications.