AC Evans, SPEED AT FIRST SIGHT

The Estranged Attractor, image by AC Evans

SPEED AT FIRST SIGHT

(“I Am The Grinder”)

                                    Dual operation zoom experts

                                                have perfectly formed bodies

                                                liveliest test flash and…control

                                    Aspherical modelling

                                                fine grain and stylish

                                                but interchangeable

                                    Shadow details:

                                    Sliding doors in the evening light. Point.

                                    “I am the grinder”.

                                    Details sliding at first sight

                                                in the evening speed of light

                                                detailed shadows

                                    But interchangeable

                                                stylish fine grained

                                                aspherical control test…control

                                    Flash body formed:

                                                perfect zoom expert

                                                dual operation. Point.

                                    “I am the grinder”.

DREAM FRACTAL AFFAIR

I

With grit in the knickers you name it we’ve got it

a voice, a Dalek in a wheelchair, a 3D Noddy and

a whole world of amusements.

Looking both ways escapades in city and other famous hotspots

what sort of mind dreams that up as a party piece?

On the Sharon (Stone) right away bolt hammer flu victim and

Boiiiiing! Here we all are in a purpose-built mansion,

a ‘Pink Palace’ in Theydon Bois where else?

II

Hand-finished winter special walkabouts

true taste magic moments wah-wah sirens

smooth security patrols apocalypse coming lend a hand!

Sharp smashing rave-up scenarios impervious to damage

uncertainty of chance leather jacket Pavlova’s dogs.

Discover her secrets her minimalist Z-up

III

Meet the stars outrageous under fire

musical comedy touch and go

would you/wouldn’t you say ‘yes’ to the odd meaningless encounter?

Pass it on. One-legged pervert vanishes into the night.

A spiritual healer visits the lads at North Greenwich Tube next to The Millennium Dome

-          they wrap her round a Yamaha R1 100

and start messing about with spanners and ratchets back of crane-grab

bin liners worn over cycling shorts just the thing flowers of fire sombre skies.

The Lords may rule…The Lords may…

GROWING UP IN TIGER BAY

Surrounded by fat wheezy blokes in late middle age

(manic and manipulative)

endless CCTV footage probably sooner rather than later

(icy bitch find the switch)

across erased time masochist mode giveaway getaway

infamous street like Reeperbahn

divide-erase-search-move-combine-detach

brainteasers

screamed “ICY BITCH…” like no tomorrow

Wannabe Poshsportyscarybaby?

Wannabe Ally? Wannabe Buffy?

Wrong move I guess Omega is equal to or greater than One.

No one knows how

divide-erase-search-move-combine-detach

white rose winter femina alba mutilated kids shift product

chief executive grinned cruel mirthless market-driven smile

behind his shiny desk fabulous paperweight

arse-kissing gun-totting boffo locals fall in line for groupie abuse

quiet shy sensitive bored teenagers get plastic dope hooters

when all they want is to be saved from growing up here

divide-erase-search-move-combine-detach

in Tiger Bay Drone City West

 rotten floorboards broken windows

weird messages in the barcodes share dreams:

fantasies of Glastonbury pubs shopping hugs poetry

laughter soul-mates astrology

giggling gingers loveable schoolgirls possibly gay

divide-erase-search-move-combine-detach

escape from here

with foxy intelligent hippie ladies – anything

goes. Anything.

THE OBSCURE NATURE OF TURBULENCE

 

In the mind’s eye a Dream Fractal is a way of seeing infinity

all the mirrors on Earth but none of them reflect me

imagine a dreamscape posthuman era

long chats chemistry passion undercover mission

find Estranged Attractor exit mainstream

                                    The Lords may rule…The Lords may burn…

Act in The Void beautifully gratuitous

flurry of lexical mixology & techno text

lurid fusion

appearance of Store Detective From The Future

Omega Lightning

frightening blinked in strange Earthlight where am I?

Structure treatment motifs theme context all unfamiliar territory

no plan from Dr. Hexagon

helter skelter Riot Grrrls reinvent metaphysics no knickers

emit laser death-ray

post implosion condition of contemporary culture

tunnel of hate slipped her a fiver

                                    The Lords may rule…The Lords may burn…

                                    Blasphemies anything/ something sombre skies

‘nice bloke’ but fiery and salacious

Strobe Magnum in Drone City beyond Hollow Hills

notoriously elegant (coat and shirt both second-hand)

leery beer boys in bad make-up prowl stratosphere

probing for her toggled draw-string memories

bizarre communications

 highlight obscure nature of turbulence

                                    The Lords may rule…The Lords may burn…

Find wave function of all dreams everywhere

anywhere

sort of sub-atomic event. Perhaps…

THOSE JUNKYARD HYMNS

Behind the line as if by magic (those junkyard hymns)

watch out live rail explodes mysterious numbers

pornography of public obscenity

pylon legs low buildings steps up grass bank

darkened colonnades escalator of love secret life

of multi-storey car parks

empty back-streets high rise phantasms spectral walkways

spiralling into the gloom flooded fields distant trees

still waters

so deep… so deep…

THE ESTRANGED ATTRACTOR

 I knew the Estranged Attractor lived in phased-out space

yo-yo-ing up and down round and round here there and everywhere

 turn on ball of foot, derisory, ruthless laugh. Overcast sky.

            In walked this canny old wizard sorta like Gandalf the Grey

 in an ankle-length sixties maxi-coat. Rainbow path (night was falling)

dilapidated caravan, two dish aerials, take out the guesswork, open the candy box,

phone the signalman, read a good book, cut a long story short. So, 

they blew their minds nervous tick tock tick tock tick tick tick

…and Booooom! Jet Wash Here.

            No drama school for scandal g-g-g-git off git up git out git going

git it in your soul, angel polished my windscreen. Somewhere questions were asked. 

Frosted grass early morning head in noose hint of desperation

 such modesty butters no parsnips. Stumped humped thumped and a –

            I knew the Estranged Attractor lived…(reprise)

TWENTIETH CENTURY GIRL

I reeeeeally am a true twentieth century girl

a futuristic beauty, a swinging dolly with

va-va-voom body language

and cutie-cutie baby-doll looks:

so I gulped down a Chinese Lantern

slipped in a Birdy Breeze Block,

dragged out my bi-stretch zip-suit,

my eighteen carat gold-plated rope-chain,

my up-to-the-minute zig-zag top,

my best split skirt

with loop backs, all-over sequins,

padded micro-fibre hips and flared, detachable snaffle-bars,

my luxury unisex fleece-wraps and chain-link razor-wire rocket lamps.

            The outfit was permanent and painless;

it had a titanesque surreality

and plenty of eyesores – if only you knew.

THE CEREMONY

Where are you?

Actually I bought this in Ibiza at Popcorn Utopia

a pop cornucopia next to Acid Heaven

hot-pants little shorts catsuits

faux-femmes on the borderline

array of jocks smorgasbord of beefcake

goosey-goosey gander

forbidden grooves and hands-in-the-air anthemic chart choons.

Trail of destruction left by loony lodger on run from one-off party night ‘ceremony’    happy hour mystic crafts crystal balls and tarot/ rune consultations.

The ultimate in stylish hidden agendas

descent into colourful language (zoinkkkk!!!) no chaser.

Off centre nympho purist launched in a blaze of glory

(but feeling like a strand of overcooked spaghetti)

 I ran through a hundred positions:

cobbled courtyards shadowy cloisters clunk and you’ll miss it

re-mix the night sounds morbid but it’s beautiful just beautiful.

I spoke out and was branded a jam roly-poly, treated like a piece of shit

by the goons on the door, told to die young stay pretty unassuming

incorporate the reverse geometry of doomy displaced urban settings.

Love my platforms.

Am I a wave? Am I a particle? I live on borrowed time…

The Lords may…zapped by a –

--AC Evans 

Rupert M. Loydell, POETRY IS RADAR

                                              Radar, image by Rupert M. Loydell 


POETRY IS RADAR
for A.C. Evans


Poetry is radar and I am off the map.
History was a stretch of wall running from
source to estuary, crossing the boundaries
between public and private spheres,
the restricted vectors of media outlets.

The inhabitants of the square erupted
in applause at images of bombs dropping
into the airshaft, destroying the archaeology
of knowledge along with the newspaper stand.
Former meaning went silent and cold.

Panoptic spaces work best in panoptic time,
they affect the whole system, whether
you like it or not. The interesting questions
are these: Are there new ways of playing
the role of the engaged intellectual poet?

Is refusal a turning away from our strange
fascination with watching and listening to stories?
Contradictory answers or refusal to respond
might be classed as insolence or insubordination.
Let us linger in the cold embrace of computers

and the dazzle of freely improvised fictions,
before travelling to ambiguity and vacillation
in the application of narrative law, bursting forth
with a flood of posters, meetings and publications.
Geography is virtual, literature is dead, poetry

is radar and that does not permit a simple
juxtaposition of interests or independence
of the working class. Do poets work? I hope
not. The enchanted world of literature, text
and storytelling exists despite itself. We name,

define, index and narrate, try to interfere
with the flow of information, gaze into mirrors
at a false and dangerous image of ourselves.
A hundred flowers bloomed, a thousand lovers
sighed; we lost our identities in the process

and critical information in the mix. Confronted
by questions and small green blips on the screen
we must follow the flow of information and power.
Perhaps it is time to construct a discourse,
time to experiment and be held responsible?

Readers uninterested in abstract or speculative
modes of writing about the event may want
to skip this poem and meet me later in the pub.
The logistics of perception exist only to present
the sublime, come with a built in point-of-view

and a small instruction manual; poetry and stories
exist only to render human what has become
inhuman. Whilst we cannot grasp the unknown,
we can connect to the sudden guest appearances
of language in our world, the autodestruction

of faith as it is replaced with a positive feedback
loop that will propel us through our own limits
into life’s muddy depths. We must no longer seek
equilibrium, must improvise out of time and space,
learn to embrace the everyday logic of events.


© Rupert M Loydell

Clayton Eshleman, WOUND INTERROGATION

Wound Interrogation, 1948, image by Roberto Matta

WOUND INTERROGATION                                      

—Clayton Eshleman

In Matta’s “Wound Interrogation,  

a Malangganesque robot thrusts a flattened palm against

a large pulpy vaginal wound hung before it.

   Matta comments:

“The wound is separated from the human being & subjected to the torture of intense examination by heinous machines. The bloody red insides of the wound convey a life striving to exist, while the grays & blacks of the demon robots remind one of an industrial plant.”

This morning at the end of first light

the sky was drinking a sap so old I could hear the ayahuasca

cloud pythons gargling menstrual-seminal elixir.

I sensed the oracle gas between that Hadic distance &

Matta’s robots interrogating—I propose: Persephone’s sexuality.

Who exactly inhabits Hades’ kingdom?

ALL DO (a chorus chants) THAT IS WHY HADES IS SO RICH

Can I interrogate this region of dense, cold air without light?

“You can, but my icy lace is blinding

& my knuckles, feeble from your Herculean viewpoint, are

hurricane poundings, tidal flail.

I am the dream jaguar which you created so as to, while

lurching out of bed, crash onto the floor.

I am the kobold which bit your ankle as you climbed out of a cave.

While you were driving home that night I bit again  

so that you smashed into a ditch & broke that ankle twice.

I am, in other words, untapped center, shifty ‘always.’

In my casket chloroform are blind troll suns, split

gourds of brain jam, simmering golden sweat known as world wars.

You glimpsed my erection in Lascaux’s “Shaft.”

I became a bird man that you might watch me scram via

a bison’s vagina-winsome hanging guts

There never was a beginning!

All is nexus & midriff cast on an alabaster plain of marauding

tarantula-shanked camels…”

          *

The frailty of being holed & rampant with closure.

Blake’s angels feast on my neck

as strapped to this fuselage of honking verbs I watch Hades

now a zyzzogeton munching on alfalfa alpha.

For that matter, what is deliverance?

To find oneself present at Pluto’s cornucopian spread & grasp

that one must not pluck a single grape?

The first Persephone pumped time out of her held-aloft bison horn,

& with that image phantom impregnated herself!

Between the cracks in the time board,

to write from a double periphery, in swerve with the labrys…

“Not to subject the change,” Hades quipped,

“but what bugs you the most about America today?”

One: The suppression of the horrifying truth of the 9/11 assault  (more appropriately referred to as “The Pentagon Three Towers Bombing”) infests the American soul with a stifling sense of unreality charged by the rivers of blood flowing alongside the Euphrates & Tigris through a destroyed & failed state that may never again be reconstructed. I note that otherwise responsible political thinkers like Oliver Stone & Bill Maher will not even engage this ongoing nightmare.

   The truth of The Pentagon Three Towers Bombing is, like an undiagnosed plague, lodged in the American subconscious. This truth is now the lie veneer of our dailiness. There is a knotted veil in our eyes building rancor where there could be revelation.

Two: Since I have been writing, translating, & editing for over 50 years, I have to deplore the degree writing programs that are in the process of substituting creative writing for the art of poetry. In 1994 I wrote: “Quotational Reality is the new Purgatory making each desire artificial.” My comment appears to identify Kenneth Goldsmith’s aestheticized plagiarism.

   The first poets, facing the incomprehensible division between what would become culture & wilderness, taught themselves how to span it & thus in such caves as Chauvet & Lascaux respond to their “wound interrogation”. Our key distinction may become that of being the first generation to have written at a time in which the origins & the end of poetry became discernable.

          *

Dream is a fire burning alone out of contact with

the brushwood of my body.  

I study it as Heraclitus studied gods endlessly changing soulscapes,

the squirrel face in a cloud simultaneously a fat weeping raccoon.

Sky stigmata. Archaic smile of the brave.

In the webs of Ananke the shaman struggling to vanish into

the dream flow of his avatar radiance.

An image is fire

around which language appears to be

tightly-packed ash.

James Hillman: “I and soul are alien to each other because of soul’s domination by

powers, daimones and gods”  Soul is molten protocol.

Life is the blessing. Death the “less” in blessing:

Count Gaga spread-eagled & gagged in everyone’s smoking gate.

Paul Valery’s response: “I’m fucked & I don’t give a fuck.”

Humankind is timed, as if with a timer, by & for the apocalypse of immortality.

We are too far into the rage for, & range of, power versus the suicidal

hubris of millions willing to immolate to damage imperium & enter

their own immortality

Know thyself = know thyself to be mortal.

To think of the tethered mandala of the hand,

the radial glory of the fist unhooked from its fury.

Vallejo: “Our brave little finger will be big, worthy,

an infinite finger among the fingers.”

Vodun thumb-post attended by 4 hexed dwarves.

Palm pressed to the Matta wound, to the Gargas wall:

new human negative: the I am not    that is.

I dream because I first had hands.

And in dream tonight I held my fire in my hands,

my fire with Caryl’s eyes!

Her dearest eyes peering out of my burning!

Clayton Eshleman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, June 1, 1935. He has a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A.T. in English Literature from Indiana University. He has lived in Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Peru, France, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. He is presently Professor Emeritus, English Department, Eastern Michigan University. Since 1986 he has lived in Ypsilanti, Michigan with his wife Caryl who over the past forty years has been the primary reader and editor of his poetry and prose. His first collection of poetry, Mexico & North, was published in Kyoto, Japan in 1962.

From 1968 to 2004, Black Sparrow Press brought out thirteen collection of his poetry. In 2006, Black Widow Press became his main publisher and with The Price of Experience (2012) has now brought out seven collections of his poetry, prose, and translations, including, in 2008, The Grindstone of Rapport / A Clayton Eshleman Reader. Wesleyan University Press has also published six of his books, including Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld  (2003), the first study of Ice Age cave art by a poet. Three book length poems, An Anatomy of the Night, The Jointure, and Nested Dolls were published by BlazeVOX in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Eshleman has published sixteen collections of translations, including Watchfiends & Rack Screams by Antonin Artaud (Exact Change, 1995), The Complete Poetry of César Vallejo with a Foreword by Mario Vargas Llosa (University of California Press, 2007), and Aimé Césaire: The Collected Poetry (co-translated with Annette Smith, University of California Press, 1983). Recently Wesleyan University Press has brought out two more translations of Césaire: Solar Throat Slashed and The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, both co-translated with A. James Arnold.

Eshleman also founded and edited two of the most innovative poetry journals of the later part of the 20^th century: Caterpillar (20 issues, 1967-1973) and Sulfur (46 issues, 1981-2000). Doubleday-Anchor published A Caterpillar Anthology in 1971 and Wesleyan will publish a 700 page Sulfur Anthology in January of 2016.

Among his recognitions and awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, 1978; The National Book Award in Translation, 1979; two grants from the NEA, 1979, 1981; three grants from the NEH, 1980, 1981, 1988; two Landon Translation Prizes from the Academy of American Poets, 1981, 2008; 13 NEA grants for Sulfur magazine, 1983-1996; The Alfonse X. Sabio Award for Excellence in Translation, San Diego State University, 2002; a Rockefeller Study Center residency in Bellagio, Italy, 2004, and a Hemmingway Translation Grant in 2015.

Recent publications include a translation of José Antonio Mazzotti’s Sakra Boccata with a Foreword by Raúl Zurita (Ugly Duckling, 2013). In 2014 Black Widow Press published Clayton Eshleman / The Whole Art, an anthology of essays on Eshleman’s work over the decades, edited by Stuart Kendall. In the fall of 2015, Black Widow brought out Clayton Eshleman / The Essential Poetry 1960-2015 and in 2017 Wesleyan will bring out a 900 page bilingual edition of The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire, co-translated with A. James Arnold    

In her Introduction to Eshleman’s Companion Spider (Wesleyan University Press, 2003), Adrienne Rich wrote: “As a poet and translator, Clayton Eshleman has gone more deeply into his art, its processes and demands, than any modern American poet since Robert Duncan and Muriel Rukeyser… Eshleman has written on the self-making and apprenticeship of the poet, and of the poet as translator, as no one else in North America in the later twentieth century.” His poetry has been featured in both volumes (1994 and 2013) of the Norton Postmodern American Poetry.

His website is www.claytoneshleman.com

   

Rupert M. Loydell, from The Black & White Collage Series

Rupert M. Loydell, from The Black & White Collage Series

Felino Soriano, a Selection from Fragmented Olio

        The Frag of Olio, image by Daniel Y. Harris 

a selection from Fragmented Olio

from Bas-relief

Here I begin toward

Within memory

I am never hemmed--

   movement

accumulates in

 the bedside of this room’s

elastic observation and

boredom observes me

in the constant unfastening of

   this moment’s look toward tomorrow’s

penetrating alphabet

Self, or the portrait of my youth hanging within the blank wall decorated by light

Each corner: body brok

-en,

  an

avalanche of music with

tone as rhythm as

totality of reason

                          this

speech of my hearing

becomes speckled belonging and

I’ve a hanker to adhere

to what my father wrote into my early

aesthetics and altruistic harmony of hands:

noth

-ing is fenceless music unless the ear focuses

later, plagiarizing through its memory of intrinsic

sustained ignition of probable articulation

and to my west a

dragonfly applauds

within

          the vanish of its

                                   consecutive ascents

Three versions of disposition

i.

I was told to organize all the truths.

My hands, empty shelves.

ii.

My eyes, a needed closure

contained achromatic shapes,

reservoirs of decapitated miracles.

iii.

Music wore day

as does the body holed equivalents.  I cannot hear

among noon’s loudest warmth.

—Felino Soriano