Rupert M. Loydell, LIVES OF THE SAINTS

                  Lives of the Saints, image by Rupert M. Loydell



LIVES OF THE SAINTS
after Michael Landy

legs, arms and
oops a daisy

spring in her step
(spring is her step)

secondhand assortment
rodded limbs

back to base
weighed right down

head full of gears
central heating discord

broken futures
partially assembled

all fingers and thumbs
iron angle signs

•

what is real
sixth sense vibration
no resistance

a life of penance
plastercast body burn
self-battering belief

faith in splinters
torture devices
ideas and imagery

listening to
another world
outside the door

for the moment
up front positive
canonised clone

mishaps, misshapen
and bad timing
failure admitted

more than one finger
denial of self
well, yes and no

•

the sound of the bell
glass room procession

people as images
scrapyard connect

we used to dance
father forgive

•

he began by
entering the building

breaking things
and winding himself up

losing interest
for the sake of it

trying to imply
ascension

—Rupert M. Loydell

AC Evans, Uncanny Valley

Not Life As We Know It

AC Evans

UNCANNY VALLEY

AC Evans

Ecstatic submission a blunt weapon but it doesn’t matter.

Instrument supplier almost human ‘delight’ is the only word replacing missing oxygen breaking in suddenly feels innocent as kicking a ball around a coaxial cylinder we suspect the curse of rotten luck in the pathological sense, a developmental abnormality. How long have you got?

Light conversation about plant fluid failure mechanisms. Solar cells weekly to your hotel room where everything you see, hear, feel and think is controlled specifically on demand, by voluntary agreement thanks to ‘uncanny valley’ effect magnetic maps robot faces no strangers to getting bogged down – or a run for their money. “Means this is no longer the case, will boost resistance slightly forward kissing device can visualise clusters of information phosphorescent rainforests dominated by high towers improve intimacy, enhancing bubblegum fun”. A hideous atonal nursery rhyme eerily futuristic. Have you got how long?

It doesn’t end there.

Techniques based on a smooth plastic casing outlive universe regular repeating patterns due to contact with additional elastic boundary state, a grip that is firm but gentle. You can say it's only recently (sad though it is) as we slip through a doorway into an antique coffee bar where we lounge around using the technology at our disposal like the microbes in your home. True only in the past few years constantly coming into contact with a sorry state of affairs. Collateral damage like social evidence for the record or a Stone Age equivalent of celebrity culture perhaps they were just having a lark. You got long have you? Drop talking eerily futuristic enhancing death and hideous atonal nursery of rhymes and ecstatic submission.

This tangle far from random now surrounded by artificial pharmaceuticals and other complex products of rational design. We don’t understand the details, the chemical dance, the pros and cons from illness and death inducing disgust with subtle influences the hairdresser was girlishly thrilled and the sparks fly from day one. Exactly what it is she wants, this blow wave alien from LV-426, savage celebrations single mum takes on a transparent cube comedy sequel set at a chic high class New York party in a partial vacuum perhaps. Long got how have you?

So, looking back or looking ahead. From Toulouse to limbo too cool to calypso deadpan delivery a spine tingling tale something unexpected and unsettling a poignant verse an old enemy plunges briskly into the action a disguised morality lesson with emotional complications discovered their partners were having an affair in the same plane crash. Have you?

Many things reeking if they so choose, when feeling for instance a pale shadow affecting every thing long term. Power hungry sculptures further north capture pages turning in the confessional all first rate equipment and support agreed leading to fight against passion where they are still having problems even now winging their way to us polluting our waterways, climbing mountains, dancing and dining out?

ABOUT AC EVANS

Poetry Is Radar

  

ac-cygnusx.blogspot.com

AC Evans describes his art and poetry as a form of Realism, yet he cultivates the subversive potential of the bizarre and the grotesque.

Influenced by Gothic, the dark-side of  Romanticism,  fin-de-siècle Decadence and Aestheticism,  AC relishes the iconoclasm of Dada, the absolute non-conformism of Surrealism, and the immediacy of Existentialism and Pop. He regards all these as points of departure none as a destination –we live in a post-Pop, post-avant-garde world of tabloid impressionism and amplified hyper-culture; the heroism of our modern life. Poetry is Radar.

Born near Kingston-Upon-Thames in 1949, AC Evans lived in South London until 1963 when he moved to Essex and co-founded the semi-legendary Neo-Surrealist Convulsionist Group in 1966. In 1973 he moved back to London. His drawings, collages, reviews, essays, translations, poetry and stories have appeared in numerous small press magazines in the UK and abroad, and he is a regular contributor to Nox, Stride, Monomyth, The Supplement, Midnight Street, Inclement, Neon Highway and International Times.

Collaborative work has included several projects with Stride’s Rupert Loydell, the poem sequence Space Opera was made into a digital video by Michelle Martin/OS2 and shown at the onedotzero3 Festival, at the ICA, London, in May 1999. The film of Space Opera has been used for the last 5 years as part of the lecture/seminar on fragmentation as part of the Craft of Writing module, a first year core unit at Falmouth University. 

Rupert M. Loydell, from THE SILENCE INSIDE

Captain Alfred Faustroll, Pataphysician, 

image by Daniel Y. Harris 

from THE SILENCE INSIDE

THE MASTER

Angels and fiery chariots, grotesque beasts

and unintelligible speech. Voices and visions,

mystical fictions and magical nonsense,

ways of clouding logic and the natural

order of things. It is all biology and physics,

astronomy and chemistry, elementary maths.

Nothing is too complex for Doctor Doubt,

who knows everything. He is a polymath,

a theologian, a rationalist, a minimalist,

a guru, a prophet, the master of

LOST

Doctor Doubt is plagued by knowing

there were gods before us, gods

before ours, gods who lived and

died and walked amongst men,

breathing, living gods who knew

him not and would not want to.

Doctor Doubt is sure he can make

anything he wants from words, but

it doesn’t help. He does not know

what to believe, or understand right

and wrong. He is on a journey

to nowhere and has lost his way.

HIGH TIDE

All the pebbles on the beach,

all the grains of sand, the water

in the sea, the molecules of air;

Doctor Doubt questions where

they came from, how they got there,

and why anyone would bother.

Other people mention their gods

but scientists refute every one.

It is high tide now, regardless.

A SHIMMERING REPLICA

He is a shimmering replica of himself

as he crawls towards zero and the end

of things, although he knows it is also

the beginning of something wonderful.

He is listening to the singing, the songs

about songs, and pondering time’s lie,

wishing he could make sense of this dream

and that it didn’t seem so real, so there

in the flesh, as though it was happening

to him. Doctor Doubt shakes off the duvet

and stands up shaking, transfixed. All he

can see is a shimmering replica of himself.

WHAT THE LIGHT DID

Look at what the light did now,

thinks Doctor Doubt, just imagine

what it could highlight and reveal.

It was strange what she said, about

not seeing straight or putting things

in perspective. I didn’t understand

what that meant. She seemed kind

of sullen, somewhat averse to other ways

of seeing, meanings new to her,

preferred the shadows and things

she was certain of, had known before,

would not laugh with us at the thunder.

     © Rupert M Loydell 2015

Daniel Y. Harris, Teleogods of Di./um

                               Telepods, image by Daniel Y. Harris 

G.rey P/.inert/red decay.writ:

            Echo-meld—

                                    g/ut.s—

the baseline of 8patina rings—spurts

the g/O.(<d>)

bandage—

dim, diffuse glow of its mini

teleogods: grunted, profiled, saturned by the digital

imps of vivisection. 

—Daniel Y. Harris

Irene Koronas, Monolith Me

Monolith Me, image by Irene Koronas

Monolith Me

helpless defenseless powerless

impotent weakness needs special care

support protection because age disability

risk abuse neglect susceptible to physical

or emotional attack

he says I am vulnerable

monolith me

latin-vulnus (wound)

conquerable unprotected dangerous insecure compromising

defenseless penetrable unguarded safe secure air tight

bombproof entrenched untouchable chateau de ghetto

following descendent discernment various degrees

sanctify ascetic old women

distinctions or not. leave a comment

vulnerability before blast billows

somebody left urine on cafe floor

distinct in form the face of an old man

complicates expressions

somethings defines poetry

both elements – urine and molecule pass from summerians,

we are new-historical personage. pass the toilet paper

babylonians syrians akkadians elamites

canaanite aramaic - b.c.- a.c.- u.c.

new horizons by 2016

determinant sense understood. oscillate brother oscillate.

relief. falcon walls wind's his name. he belongs beside buildings

built before vertical columns written horizontally from left to right.

exchanged addresses. 5 different ways to retain beginnings and demise.

3 alphabets 3 ways vulnerable retains mercy retains phoenicians

1 poem captures headless photographs. everyone thinks he's a poet

—Irene Koronas

Gordon Massman, LETTERS

Dear, image by Irene Koronas

LXXIII.

1.

Dear Constance,

Thank you for hosting such a wonderful party. The food

was marvelous, especially those prosciutto wrapped

baked scallops. And where did you find such delectable

sturgeon? And, of course, seeing you after so many. Your

home sumptuous understated magnificence. I love the

library. Is that truly an original Durer? Thank you, too,

for including Benjy. I thought he comported admirably

given his challenges. I know he felt significant. He so

struggles for normalcy. I love, dear Constance, your

unconditional  humanitarianism. Who was that God-like

stud from Croton-on-Hudson. Relative? Or, no, could it

be! Connie, I’m so fatigued. I sometimes wish it were

ended. Again daffodils, again hydrangeas, yet no

expansiveness. Antidepressants seem laughable. Now

insomnia. I reminisce our Barnard days, such idealism.

Now Frank’s gone, and Charles, misguided Charles.

Wouldn’t shock me to hear…. I’ve enjoyed a peaceful

morning: Benedictine eggs, cantaloupe. I must start

exercising. Do you remember Darlene from Holyoke?

Tumbled off a ladder, shattered everything—we’re

all balsa. At Sunny Horizons Rehab, poor darling.

Connie, let’s take a Carnival cruise, the Yangtze—

Beijing, Xian, The Gorges—you and I. How marvelous

that would be. Connie. Don’t you see? It’s such a

shock, reality. Where is Holyoke? Think of all that

treacherous ice. Sometimes I feel like Bacon’s howling

Pope. Wouldn’t there be weeping cherries? Thank

you again for a lovely, you create such approachable

elegance. Truly, you are a trusted dear valued friend.

2.

Dear Marjorie,

I think I’m going insane. I feel abstracted, disconnected--numb.

I’m indifferent to demise of others. Monstrous. Sometimes,

when slicing potatoes I fantasize homicide. Intellectualism,

all that obtuse yammering, sickens, such strutting egotism.

Contempt, Maj, is my undoing. History mauls us insensate.

Alien. I love that word, alien, alienation, dispossession. In

one being can existence and nonexistence simultaneously

exist ? Rhinoceroses come to mind. Hippopotami. Immense

lumbering anachronisms. How their joints must ache. Don’t

you think everybody knows? Everybody, that is, of maturity?

The pieces one’s labor rips out, those brutal offices.

Marjorie, I look at Richard and suffer. His shaggy scrotum

hanging like suicide. Something like melted wax pulls off

in hands. Dick, oh Dick, who is the crucifixion. Don’t you

think, Maj, we’re all The Christ? Let’s lunch tomorrow—

at Leonardo’s --please say yes. Since Janie and Donnie evaporated…

I love the risotto. One becomes automatous. Confession:

I have begun to drink. I’ve told nobody. After Dick leaves.

I do in nightgown with jigsaws--Seurat, Renoir—splash of

Stolichnaya. Naughty me, without velocity. You seem so

knuckled into life, like tires knobbing mud. Envy, perhaps,

after all, I’m not chloroformed, just anger inwardly driven,

self-castigated. Anyway, alcohol pieces me together. Use-

lessness blurs edges. It’s me as much as him: Dick and I

never fuck.  Do you and Bert? We’re bored. One walks

a long way to boredom, past children, passion, purpose,

suffering, past brilliance to the blank cliff face. What lies

beyond boredom, Marjorie? I see exhausted gorgeous

women side-by-side, bereft, barefoot, cold, diving off

earth—sexy pointed toes--into the abyss. Perhaps, after all,

I’m lesbian. Such beautiful fragile souls soundlessly falling.

3.

Dear Caroline,

Since Robbie died I’ve been summoning God, un-

successfully; when does God ever appear? Lately

I’ve noticed my big toenail thickening like rhino

horn. Fuck God. I need succor, get frippery.

Christianity sucks. There’s no supernaturalism.

Biochemistry is God: depression, ecstasy, despair,

love. I could die of this. Robert and his casting

reels. The man worshipped fishing. Only moments

between thighs bested angling, and of that I’m

insecure. He never warbled there. Vagina now

is strung with spider webs. Brain, too. What an

instrument, the body: organs, skeleton, muscle,

blood dammed by skin. Air sucked through follicles.

Alveoli. What a word: alveoli. Erectility. Copulation,

multiplication. If God were solid like crystal. I

have decanters, platters, candlesticks. What does

one do, Carly? You’d think He’d be available,

like gelato. I’m painting nails today—Oxblood,

Poppy, Bordeaux Lust. I’m thinking of The Rub-

ber Monkey or Wetlands tonight. Interested?

Will Marco let you out? Two cars just in case.

Hell, since Robert it’s never been good. He had

such thick fingers. It’s back to that: body. Think

of that magic trick in which illusionist passes

hoop round levitating woman—who is me—

disconnected, floating, comatose, proving The

Miraculous. Then curtain falls, rises, magician,

assistant bow on stage to wild applause. Physics

is irrefutable reality. Damn God his little magic

show. At midnight janitor throws final switch

and gravity smashes heavenly bodies to bits.

4.

Dear Penny,

God spoke to me today: I satisfactorily evacuated bowels,

read Death of Ivan Ilych. Not everyone can thusly boast. 

So much malnutrition, illiteracy. That I comprehend Tolstoy

in gastrointestinal unawareness is blessing. I am gryoscopically

blueprinted, lucid. When Tolstoy writes, “…Praskovya

Fedorovna was not always conducive to the pleasures

and amenities of life, but on the contrary often infringed

on both comfort and propriety and he must therefore

entrench himself against  such infringement,” God

blesses me with comprehension. Surely, I am within rights.

I may impute from my advantages God’s existence.

My heart pumps perfect pressure, brain withstands

termites. Grace. Vibration. Ecstasy. Pen, I tell thee

I am light; pure helium. One is unaware of one’s

beautiful spinning. Penny, Penny, clean summer sun

washes grass. Let’s invade the lake, two old biddies spilling

over pants. Who cares about cellulite. We are justifiable

animals. I have two tins of smoked clams. Today God

opened dungeon door and out walked I into blinding

bright. I perceived lips upon my lips. See, I am voided,

right as newborn babe. Honor this child, this widowed

ancient child whom God hath anointed this day April

twenty-seventh, two-thousand fourteen, Anno Domini.

5.

Vapors scud overhead, flimsy as rent rags.

Leafy spears stab, twist into blue flesh.

Nipping wind lacerates naked shingles.

Seven slitherers mass in multicolored pulp.

Dear Lottie,

Please tell me what to do, I’m so alone, shipwrecked

and no God stands before me. This is what it’s like,

hopelessness, eaten face at center of nothing, hot

howling. Lottie, you have Bernard and little Bobbie

and I imagine spontaneous hilarity at serving spoon.

Home with jungle gym, hydrangeas while I live in

unit 7-C with Benjamina. I’m too retiring. Too

shamed. I still have mama. I’ve never divulged: I

paint lips thick, troll for sex. It’s dangerous, therefore,

exhilarating. I could be killed. I love strange men

fucking me. It’s death wish I surmise. Last Friday I

took two successively. I craved a third. Godless,

abandoned, shut out. I confess to whoredom.

Lottie, I can’t. Come tonight. I can’t. It’s too

horrible. Moldy pages. Lamentation. Psalm. All

mold. You know your Sandy, fragile, shaky. I’ve

started smoking cigarettes. Am I disgusting?

(My nose is narrow-grotesque.) You are nonjudg-

mental. I have blustery thighs. A little honesty: I

hate myself. Where is Mr. Omnibenevolent One?

You haven’t got Him all. Great Cardiologist

to hammer my heart? Open yourself, they say,

He will build nest of love. I have been gaping

for decades to absence of nightingale. Lottie—

Loretta--tell me what to do. You are so in ecstasy.

Earth lashes its back, weeps rivers.

Little green flame-tips cut through death.

Pillow experiences quakes of delirium.

Scream-threaded needle pierces eardrum.

6.

Dear Eleanor,

Progress! God entered me like flashlight squiggle.

I conceived! I carry zygote. Spittle fuses me to

pillow. Savoir Faire, God debonair, God hot

caramel. Me in ecstasy! I am bigger by the

minute. I wear night like stole of diamonds.

Remember my atheism? All slime, onion.

How I coupled with garbage, chin full of gin.

Debauchery, whoredom, Sodom, depravity.

I guffawed like slattern. Now divinity. Tuned

instrument. Sphere within sphere. Gyroscope

whirring. Hail Mary, full of God’s semen.

I am sacred. Uncorrupted. Risen. I am loaf.          

Into me shoots music, out me lyrics. I love

my rapist’s execration who deserves

rehabilitative caressing. Jesus is my aorta.

Redemptive is my murderer. Eleanor, you

see? Life is not mud in doomed nostrils, nor

helium-filled knees of satisfied delusion.

Come to me. Drink my tincture. Open your

stuffed swampy stumps to the Mad Creator.   

7.

Dear God

I am sorry I pray like a child--

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I hear no voice, I feel no touch,

Help us do the things we should—

Such canned simple-mindedness—

Yet possess no instruction for wisdom-prayer

Commensurate with physical maturity.

Perhaps You want us stunted,

Wrapped in pre-pubescence gauze

For Your despotic studio.

Heavenly Father, I might plead,

Forbid mastectomy,

Shrink prostate,

Protect Meg.                          

I might beseech, Dear Apocalyptic One,

Strike Viv’s mass benign,

Alone at home with memories.

Arm her antibodies with howitzers.

Is this admirable petition

Or egotistical compartmentalization?

Feed hungry, heal sick, bestow peace

Seems delusional as if mop could

Wash every streak.

Then for my soul alone?

Forgiveness. Absolution. Purification.

Appreciation of my tortured mate.

Dear Father, I am tabula rasa

For Your pastel stick,

Scrawl me

Furious wisdom,

Smear purple prayer

Across my breast,

Gouge with thick profundity

My vascular walls

Into Your abstract masterpiece.       

8.

Dear Stephanie and Charles,

I look at you, see God. Devotion so thick,

you would die for each other. You are brick.

Blessing and achievement. Most people,

even coupled, suffer godless loneliness

in atheistic desertification. You walk in

grace sun-gilded. I can only imagine. I

can fantasize. What confidence must be

yours. Staff, sandaled feet is all required.

You are Lamb. While I, dear I…Am

full of soda. How do you do it? Is it

Princeton or inheritance, concerted

psychology? I see you through sixth

iniquity, through venous lens of sin.

I cannot enjoy though your love

envelopes. Oh Steph, Chuck pity 

your wretched friend full of Pepsi Zero.

I want to walk in glow beribboned.

Disingenuous to entreat God I reject.

Or might I hedge?—Pascal’s wager.

Light and dark play upon your face,

innocence in the precinct of lust, 

children. Oh babes, give me pluses.

Honor covers envy like paper rock.

I am transit. Torque flattens my

face. This song is yours my beautiful

best bosoms, leave me to my jigsaws.

(I’ve almost finished Klimt!) Surely,

aproned God in studio chips away.

I have known men with licorice hair.

My angel blood coats jealousy’s jaws.          

I have always envied those God loves.

9.

Dear Francine,

Through splattered windshield of atheistic materialism

I’ve admired people I considered flawless--charitable,

selfless, spiritual, optimistic. I’ve grown to hate them.

At night God’s absence corrodes this infidel. Doubtful

faithlessness’s causality, but interesting how this atheist

failed at love. One eats one’s self and starves. Franny,

sixty-five years normalizes deficiency. Nobody notices

the ubiquitously visible. I’m still unabashedly, regardless

universe’s incomprehensible complexity, godless. I

just am. I grate my spiritual insufficiency into slivers,

willing to disintegrate, but cells crave otherwise. I’m

thick hard core, almost steel. Mystifying that I channel

you from freshman year, nineteen-sixty nine, freckled,

raven-haired coed, surname snapped off mind like

twig. You’re cloudy imagery, Jewish sensuality at

dormitory pool. I have gone through many. Franny,

I wonder how life has carried you, cancer perhaps,

emotional trauma? Some muddle unaccompanied.

So long ago we spilled onto Congress, outraged,

chanting antiwar slogans, oblivious to God. Stephanie,

Nancy, Cookie, Todd. I haven’t a clue. It matters,

though. History’s thick gauze swallows life that

dazzled. I’m too intelligent to believe in God.

10.

Dear Carleton,

We’re two mountaineers in motion picture, chests pressed

to rock, forearms locked together over sharp edge of cliff.

I’m rescuing you from tumbling left into abyss, or frame

Tilted ninety degrees you’re rescuing me from scraping

down face on right. Foreheads pop beads. Pain yanks

grunt. “Hang tight, got you,” we sputter.” God’s amused

at pitiful climbers desperately co-dependent. We slip

down sweaty muscular flesh. Sturdy fingers, grit. Carleton

saving Gordon, Gordon Carleton. Eternally. God chuckles

at nature’s imperative. Brother hauling brother. Grip

broken one would plummet. Tendons rip. “Hang tight!”

The peace we might know, releasing. No grip is flawless.

God smacking Milk Duds bores, walks out—only one watch-

ing—leaving two quivering buggers in unobserved horror.