Felino A. Soriano, Excerpts from "Of this Momentum Song"

Ho|ma|ge to la Vitesse, image by Daniel Y. Harris 

Excerpts from Of this Momentum Song

Of this Momentum Song (nearly sixty-eight)

                     Honored, we

    resemble

             what

         the wing

      read into

               the

  wind’s verbal

 harmony, an

    appreciation

   of embrace in

      the physical

 adaptation of spirit-

                  ual

  meaning—

   unending praise

from the tongue

     of opened

    dialogue.  We

 do not flail.  Flail

  is Impatience

      indicating the

   mouth is opened,

                 predicting

     rage from the hungry

 need to

        sustain with an

            hour’s blend

  of exact measurements,

 sustained intuition.

Of this Momentum Song (sixty-eight)

    Premised rhythm.

  Paused.  Pulsed in/of

      what mentions balance

                     in mult-

   iple occurrences.  This

     is the word of longevity,

                          interior

 facts fixate on future,

  focal mentioning

onto hope and what

   holds our

            tomorrows stilled. 

      Inward, we update

    what darkness is, outlining

         hope in the hearsay

     of devoted, golden clarity.  Thrust

  from youth     acclimated

   burst of what these

                        hands

     ignite, within.  Warmth.

    Pure breaths are

      what uplift

              beneath

   Wing and what

     splays across

  our active intuitions.

________

   Each seventh day—

  as it seems—

      an avalanche

                   of ideas

  motivates what it is

                      or,

        how it is

    we begin this specified

  day of historical, hallowed

       rest.  We do not

    don the halos of

  associated relief to delineate

      Day from Sextuplet’s

             aggregated symphonies.

    We rest,

          we find

       what rested while

  we didn’t. 

__________

                                      Serenade, I/you.  You/then I

                                   listen with intent to invent—

                                            the miracles oscillate, we

                                        kaleidoscope the 360 degree fathoms—

                                                                          then move—

      hearing toward

                       what’s

   coming

Of this Momentum Song (sixty-nine)

                          _______________

                           To dwell is to garden.

                                                           

                                                            Martin Heidegger

            Quiet, this ceiling.  Crow-

         full,     scorched sky.  Of stoic wings.

               Still.  Still, I cannot hear

          exterior to this gaze.  Ballet.

           Mirrored fascination—

                                  or, reciprocated

                    curiosity, the

                 developed qualitative

                   data.  Personal.  Personal, what

                                        these

              preferences mean.  Solid

            faith finds what it is we

                search toward.  To go

          but where is

                    the dual

             language

                      reconsidering

           the body and what

        portends the legend

                of its moving.  Much

          occurs within

                                                   what rolls into

                                                  our going  ;  our staying

                                                      is never what imposes

                                                                            or

                                                           improvises in

                                                         variant species,

                                                               language.  Of

                                                             garden it is

                                                                  what we like.  Scent.

                                                          Scent, such as with

                                                            April’s pastel

    pulling tone onto cold

   of what precedes.  Music

      is what is.  Remember

         the version

                     of

    silence resembling

  a lullaby’s inverted

     language?  We missed

      light only long

   enough to rest

               upon

        what it is

  improving tomorrow’s

 future

  

      

—Felino A. Soriano

Mark Young, Three Poems

The Abduction of Crystalized Ginger, 

image by Daniel Y. Harris

Benares dreaming

Magicians perform in the streets downtown

howler monkeys proclaim the nearness of the markets

whatever we ask for we are given

the river at night is an artery of incense.

We follow the crowds but are never part of them

sometimes they follow us

we deflect their questions with mantras from physics like the laws of light

it seems to satisfy or at least confirm our strangeness

we are offered crystalized ginger & glasses of sweet tea.

Time passes

nothing is given freely anymore

the rudeness of refusal makes it clear we must pay our own way in future

we have few skills that can be used here.

We finally find work doing something others will not touch.

At night we keep the river fragrant

with ashes from the burning ghats.

seppuku

Robert Rauschenberg erased a

de Kooning nude to demonstrate

all art is transitory—except,

of course, for the resultant

Rauschenberg. In the light

of that action, is self-erasure

an illusion of grandeur or an

attempt at digital re-mastering?

Embolism

Not waiting for what comes

through. Making a reservation

to be present at the opening

of the next exciting episode.

Someone's life. Not even that.

Hologram. Not even. Phantasm

in the corner of the window

where the cobwebs are. What-

ever stops the afterwards

from getting through the

coating on your tongue to where

the tastebuds grow. Birds ring

the changes. Summer. Snow.

—Mark Young

Mark Young's recent e-book, The Holy Sonnets unDonne, is downloadable from the Red Ceilings Press. 

John Thomas Allen, The Old Age of the Assassins

Underboss Renaldo Putrefaction, The Assassin of the Red Line,

image by Daniel Y. Harris  

The Old Age of the Assassins 

(for Jeremy Reed)

I have seen the Orient retire

In the pond’s Yellow home base

octagonal 

I’ve seen the mothman with a gas mask

his leather jacket opens to a candelabra

a nestle harmonium the nipples of Christmas

lights irradiate with crystal tenebrae

I’ve tapped the split moonlight in reverberated

fevers and clipped the moon’s plasma

The markered fevers, the spells, the snow’s

Symbolist moon accruing caches of pyrite bullets

The moon trapped in fireflies and the crack

smoked hourglass

The trap peacock is spread eagle 

in the Lego’s eye and the catch

of the sutured moon

The sensory pheromones and sixth sense

I have seen the Orient retire 

cueballs 

Dribble in the brouhaha of a Leprechaun’s

golden eyes

Traced in the breath of a psychotic moon

The phalanx eskimos give unction 

from on high

A spell traced in vision is lit with fever

And the candelabra’s vision

is refused in AE’ Housman's skull

Staring in cauterized flame

Still here and with you.

—John Thomas Allen

Jonathan Mulcahy-King, Five Poems (and one Cut-Up), Excerpts from Disaster Utopia

Grand Master Sever Fishbrid of North Cutup, image by Daniel Y. Harris 

Five Poems (and one Cut-Up) 

Excerpts from Disaster Utopia

V titles ending in α

Tissa

In hilly grooves jagged crystal teeth in sino-optimist smile fresh fecund for birch and bittern life flight rips out headland husks pulling back tapered skin as deep gullies gasp the earth splayed to arch long after the velocity of vertigogic satellites unfolding inverting chrysalis abrading dizzy snails quaky lives slime victim flashes bursts of driven life well kneaded substance all gaping wide raw landfill beauty King Devanampiya Tissa the forest's first overlord nature's darkness locked.

Toba

Super volcano ancestor ash cloud choke hold genetic plant sprawl forgotten marsupial semang old journey unique markers mapping ancient colonization hit flat rock face bent crippled dna dead mandible dead cave entrenched in how did we come to be and how harrowing their journey was a most peculiar mammal.

По Assoluta Maya

The thin veil cuts rifling through waves of enchanted oak and life tissue hunger the voice of an enamoured piano as a man shoos the air between his hands and the forest it whispers its defence surrounding his hands the touch of an artisan in ecstasy laying an invisible framework to the ground and moon at his fee the grass animated moving fur on a feline's back streaming wind through narrow alleyways courtyards the marvelling sky her voice inseparable from her fingertips cutting tossed lonely inside tin cans sealed and did you get her pregnant on vein faded glass and a skill for changing her name becoming like water on a beating drum forming droplets of illusion the veil cuts through coral sheets I did and it is true that the truth breathes doubt in giants a temple of forgetting now dancing the veil hidden from reality and the translucency of little mirror drops connecting with light the fragile collision the hopelessness of guiding the wayward blood of knowing poetry life a chance to see as her mind did through the lens a sense beyond herself and then died there in the city sedate a somnambulist in the night wavering sleep for forgotten dreams decried out in absurd yawn-speak carting her bloated livestock belly around to fill the ghastly shallows awaken a slipstream back through veils cut and exhausted waves surrender caught in pipes and her hollywood eyes sleepy lashes lit under dancing palms starving impotence under a shadow of debutante departure hollow breath and smiling frocks all beauty wrought under glass all sanctuary all time a rhythm carrying captive under her silent veil.

Mythopoeia

Marmot daughters beaten out abortions conserve heat winter long whoring penguins trade sex for building materials while their husbands guard the nest beavers extort the havocverse coercing smaller rodents into paying land tax for shelter from the ice long before hydrogen fuel double stuffed friction burns deeper hurting to its nucleus nuclear core jets of radioactive emissions throat melting pulsating luminous shapes of tied up gagged laid bare out the best angles its all worth it for that 10 billion year contract the universe engaging in sadistic sex with itself hurtling whirling supernova moans gravitational collapse amasses protoplanetary nail marks stellar asphyxia climax securing the best deal for the rights to the sun a well established brand of intellectual property in the life sustaining energy racket from a little dust cloud grows a gaseous nebula fast tracked ascension now modern man vandal of atom stem cell and ozone and homo rhodesiensis before who from toba ran sailed spat the future re-runs on the history channel everything starved to own even these words quiver scared to go unheard to be undercut  to not exist for  genealogies stifled todays new phone app tomorrows new creation myth.

Fangs on an Amoeba

This man insisting I sit down has a screen for every pore in his skin tentatively he talks to me about the fusiform gyrus that part of the brain responsible for recognizing faces so I think of all the faces I have ever seen and how now there are none I listen to his amoeba laugh as he writhes his jellyfish tongue contorting with alien motion O’ there are cameras in the grass he bellows and things only hold meaning in a transparent box where voices are made from displaced echoes his tongue recoils man-made displacement from inside plastic voices transparent meaning echo things holding them from man standing in what looks like a make-shift lab a devil smiling at the absolute and I call this demon with his fire-sale soul as he calls himself a stepping outside your self into the beyond and stepping back to find another self alien but not unfamiliar like james dean under halogen an oyster pirate seal hunter klondike miner  tracing these visceral words like a tongue over a hideous scar the embossed tissue prickling those little nerves.

Coprolites (an internet cut-up)

           

A hypothesized spherical cloud of comets that may lie nearly a light-year from the Sun it is thought to comprise two separate regions: a spherical Supernova the duchess of Windsor a fer broma tot dient-hi “crec que ningú entén veritablement la mecànica quàntica”) Super Nintendo Entertainment System of Central and South America Sub-Saharan Africa the Indian subcontinent and the Gulf Coast of the United States The Fulvous Whistling Duck is a common but wary species It is largely resident apart from local movements but vagrancy has occurred to southern Europe It nests on a stick platform in reeds laying 8–12 eggs but hollow trees or old bird nests are occasionally used for nesting Allar gitingarnar um altjóða yvirgang frá víðgongdum bólkum úr Mið- ella Fjareystri tagnaðu tá norski løgmálaráðharrin Knut Storberget 22 juli kundi vátta at løgreglan hevði handtikið ein norskan ríkisborgara við etniskum norskum uppruna Sjónarváttar á Utøya høvdu longu tá sagt at tað var ein høgur ljósur maður sum tosaði eina The Fulvous Whistling Duck Dendrocygna bicolor is a whistling duck which breeds across the world’s tropical regions in much dialekt frá eystlandsøkinum ella eina dialekt sum kom frá Oslo ella onkrastaðni kring norska høvuðsstaðin El problema de la mesura és un dels principals fronts Gulf Coast of the United States The Fulvous Whistling Duck is a common but wary species It is largely resident apart from local filosòfics que obre la mecànica quàntica Si be la mecànica quàntica ha sigut la teoria física més precisa fins el moment permetent fer càlculs teòrics relacionats amb processos naturals que donen 20 decimals correctes i ha proporcionat una gran quantitat d’aplicacions pràctiques (centrals nuclears rellotges d’altíssima precisió ordinadors) existeixen certs punts difícils en la interpretació d’alguns dels seus resultats i fonaments (el premi Nobel Richard Feynman arribar a fer broma tot dient-hi “crec que ningú entén veritablement la mecànica quàntica”) The Barry Family of Twin Falls Idaho’s personal family blog “The Cutest blog on the block”: Last night at dinner: Mom: I can’t believe school is about to start! Jaxson: Yep then you won’t have to play with me all day Today I was standing outside my car talking to a friend when Jax banged on the window and yelled “Mom did you remember us?” Just a minute ago I heard “Who wants to spank my butt and win a prize?” Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils as they give evidence for the animal’s behaviour (in this case diet rather than morphology The name is derived from the Greek words κοπρος / kopros meaning ‘dung’ and λιθος / lithos meaning ‘stone’ They were first described by William Buckland in 1829 Prior to this they were known as “fossil fir cones” and “bezoar stones” They serve a valuable purpose in palaeontology because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct organisms.

—Jonathan Mulcahy-King

AC Evans, NEW PSYCHIC ACTION

New Psychic Action, image by AC Evans 

NEW PSYCHIC ACTION

Post-surrealism

Considering the films of Surrealist director Luis Bunuel, one critic observed a key characteristic of his later (1967-1977) work or, rather, the social context of the work as depicted therein: a mode of modernity that appears ‘thoroughly pleased with itself’ and capable of the ‘firmest suppression’ of any indications of trouble. Crucially, he said, ‘This is a world beyond satire, and the old disruptions of Surrealism are not going to make any mark on it, because ordinary life, in this place, is already as arbitrary and erratic as anything a Surrealist could dream up.’ Are there fundamental problems with Surrealism?

Taking into account Sartre's critique of a 'curious enterprise of achieving nothingness through an excess of being' one might also add that there are significant issues with Hegel, political idealism, music, homophobia, infantile regression, anti-consumerism, post-colonialism and The Turn To The East which might define Surrealism as a precursor of the Reactionary Left. From our present vantage point we should be able to formulate a 'post-surreal' perspective, countering, or, neutralizing such vexatious and problematic questions.

The idea of a 'typical post-Surrealist viewpoint' is mentioned by Lucy R Lippard in her discussion of the art of Valerio Adami, a body of work, focused on the principle of metamorphosis, but which also draws upon the media-sphere, especially advertising. To quote Adami himself: advertising is 'a language that assails you wherever you go'. He said his aim was to realise a condition where 'time and space spread out into a new psychic action'

SUBTOPIAN MATERIALISM

What is Subtopian Materialism?

Answer: a debased form of English Pop originating in the ‘cultural desert’ of the urban fringe, especially South West London, during the run-up to the Suez Crisis, circa 1955. Subtopian Materialism includes Tabloid Impressionism (1) and, in a more contemporary mode, Cyber-Junk (2). It finds inspiration in boring streets and brutalist architecture; in electricity substations, deserted allotments, mass consumerism (‘admass’), all forms of popular entertainment from Cinerama to Teaserama, and the indeterminate, sub-surreal no-place of featureless suburbia – a locale where ‘nothing really happens’. Mid-fifties Subtopian life was dominated by ‘the balance of terror’, flying saucers and the fear of radiation – but found Sunday lunchtime solace in Family Favourites record requests (Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, skiffle, cha-cha-cha, the mambo craze), horror films, ‘Jet Set’ glamour, and in exciting, new gadgets like the Xerox Copyflo and the Polaroid Instant Camera. For exoticism, style, scandal and erotic thrills, Subtopians looked to divas such as Julie London, Gina Lollobrigida and Jayne Mansfield, to Nabokov’s Lolita or to the TV starlet Sabrina. Yet, to a critical observer like Ian Nairn, Subtopia was merely an anonymous tract of anomic space, lacking in distinctive character or ‘spirit of place'; an interstitial ‘middle state neither town nor country’. In hindsight it seems that ‘Subtopia’ ('inferior place') was an incitement for the imagination; although it might also have been that its bizarre strangeness was not a subjective projection but a discovery – Subtopia is bizarre in itself, the locus of a new psychic action.

—AC Evans

Notes & References

 (1) Tabloid Impressionism. A trash-aesthetic tactic. A form of post-surreal Urban Alchemy; the Surrealist principle of Objective Chance applied to the mass media, particularly in its most disreputable aspects where the Spirit of Seriousness is much diminished, or with luck, completely absent: downmarket advertising, the tabloid press, junk mail, celebrity culture and scandals, tacky TV, mass production movies, porn mags, burlesque fashion and so forth. Also, a slangy literary style: a form of verbal slumming or nostalgie de la boue often incorporating found phrases and wacky neologisms culled from the mass media.

(2) Cyber-Junk Style (or Cyber-trash). Subtopian Materialism meets classic B-Movie Sci-Fi in cyberspace littered with cosmic debris. Well, sort of.

Select Bibliography

Breton, Andre, Manifestos of Surrealism, University Of Michigan, 2007

Lippard, Lucy R, Pop Art, Thames & Hudson, 2001

Nairn, Ian, Outrage. On The Disfigurement of Town and Countryside, Architectural Review Special, 1955

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Modern Times: Selected Non Fiction 1938-1973, Penguin, 2000

Wood, Michael, Belle de Jour, BFI, 2005

Peter Dent, Speak of the Devil and New Poetry

Dr. Ozeneck of the Insect-Satan Brigade, image by Daniel Y. Harris

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL

The arts of risk are too well known for me to mention tightrope

and slack rope walkers concentration camp escapologists and

the like.     More confusion lies in introducing words to words

of encouragement or disdain: the distance between tame and

feral is so much less than it was due to lawyers securing better

contracts with indie entrepreneurs and the perpetrators of up-

and-coming 'phat rap'.     Wildfire extinguishers sex operatives

and deadpan pullers of strings not withstanding I'm bringing

hope to all artisans with my catchy bite-size odes to unknown

demons.     Defectives play up when lights are low.     I find I'm

slipping far too easily into stage English what with my worries

about price and quality.     Thunderstorms wreak havoc across

grouse moors.     High-sided vans tip over added to which we

are green about load destinations and the ability of satnavs to

cope.     With the supply chain breaking down nerve cells can-

not relay the info.     I don't remember whether I was here to-

day or am due tomorrow – even which of us saw it first.     Sin

IN CAMERA AND OUT

Windows lighting and mirrors all added to a strong feeling of

displacement.     I was trying on a lookalike shirt to save

opening up a packet thereby generating distress.     As ever I

was not quite knowing what to see.     If it wasn't me heard

later quizzing both exhibition and hanging, who was it?

None too quick – me as well as many another – but not slow

either succumbing to the resultant blurred vision.     No-one

could stop the dissing of a first and last curatorship – eerie as

eerie experiences go an unlikely fog had riddled the gallery

with the opposite of inspiration thereby drowning out its

message.     Which left me to trawl through limited opportun-

ities for a major overhaul.     I was left with a slimline shirt I

couldn't get my mind round and dollops of apathy about

taking it back – conceptualists in all their finery looked grim.

LADY OF FORTUNE

Sitting there with all her charisma intact after slipping behind

with the schedule.     Brushing off every flippant enquiry.

Downtown life carried on as normal but the gap in know-how

was expanding exponentially.     Light gone by 5 as if by right

she waved on overtakers with something more fascist than a

friendly gesture.     Jupiter made his admirable appearance

a high-octane arrival on the set and no time to brake.     Small

wonder is was space she craved.     A boudoir with views.

Not short of arrogance never shy to ask for it cool enough to

play or experiment with fire – an exercise in nightmare beast

with a bite like hell.     All fury and routine threat.     She'd lay

the whole world out her way.    Star turn missing the one top target

to actually matter.     Be herself the perfect example: bowing

to no-one ready to pull them over.     Never quite get on top.

FITTER REMINDERS

This was as elegant as anything I'd clapped my eyes on in the

continuous present.     A sequencing of delights reordering the

syllabus and establishing connections with our better selves.

All this on the back of too much laughter in her eyes.     Where

chaos was lay readings of Sartre I could barely begin to con-

front.     By no frenzy no rush to diagnosis I mean 'fine art with

a twist'.     Three drinks were enough for her never to see me

again.     It's taken quite a while but at last made sense or my

too crude understanding of the Logos all the more agreeable.

—Peter Dent

Luke Davis, COSMIC SLOP

Terminal Sewer, image by Daniel Y. Harris

COSMIC SLOP.

In the Room of Cosmic Plumbing,

Recalibration is in Progress.

The Recirculation of Cosmic Slop/pissing in the amitotic fluid.

‘Ok, just tuning you in now.’ Mild mannered technician turns dial, frequencies 

replace one another on a CONTINUUM OF INTENSITY.

Delectable fluid warmth, flow into and out of, release.

TERMINAL SEWER,

In WORDS of Burroughs, William.

                                                                                              Wallow in terminal sewer,

                                                                                           rather pleasant, in actual fact.

DEATH IS -ultimate voiding of the bowels.

     COMMODIOUS VICUS OF RECIRCULATION.

        As the dial is turned different kinds of

greatness

become possible

NEW HORIZONS come into focus

    Altered capacities for feeling/OTHER INTENSTIES.

                                 What once

Lay beyond the curtain of the imaginable

     Becomes commonplace/ what once was sweetest pleasure

Is now FORBIDDEN-

      -Outside the sphere of the possible

Quite cloaked in shadows,

                               

There is a current which carries...

                     The patterns on the surface are perpetually in process of disintegration

And reintegration in a different guise, each form just a suggestion,

                                 ((Flutter of the eyelid))

before the next in a fluid series

replaces it           DISINTERGRATION )(REINTERGRATION

the tension between these,

            MOVE and counter-move-

Watching water-

     A SINGLE EVENT twined round a reel of Time.

 —Luke Davis