Magazine of art and literature
thestolenpoem
Xmas2011 featuring skuld, marian webb, arne torneck, yolanda mora, bronwen manger, jason quiggle,raquel m, bruce c mitchell, aydan kilinรง jen sjolund
elizabeth
“My lords, the law of nature moveth me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me maketh me amazed; and yet, considering I am God’s creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so I shall desire you all, my lords (chiefly you of the nobility, everyone in his degree and power), to be assistant to me, that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity in earth. I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel. And therefore, considering that divers of you be of the ancient nobility, having your beginnings and estates of my progenitors, kings of this realm, and thereby ought in honour to have the more natural care for maintaining of my estate and this commonwealth; some others have been of long experience in governance and enabled by my father of noble memory, my brother, and my late sister to bear office; the rest of you being upon special trust lately called to her service only and trust, for your service considered and rewarded; my meaning is to require of you all nothing more but faithful hearts in such service as from time to time shall be in your powers towards the preservation of me and this commonwealth. And for council and advice I shall accept you of my nobility, and such others of you the rest as in consultation I shall think meet and shortly appoint, to the which also, with their advice, I will join to their aid, and for ease of their burden, others meet for my service. And they which I shall not appoint, let them not think the same for any disability in them, but for that I do consider a multitude doth make rather discord and confusion than good counsel. And of my goodwill you shall not doubt, using yourselves as appertaineth to good and loving subjects.�
IN DEFIANCE OF FORTUNE. by Elizabeth I, Queen of England Never think you FortĂşne can bear the sway Where virtue's force can cause her to obey.
THE DOUBT OF FUTURE FOES. by Elizabeth I, Queen of England
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy, And wit me warns to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy; For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects' faith doth ebb, Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web. But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds, Which turn to rain of late repent by changèd course of winds. The top of hope supposed, the root of rue shall be, And fruitless all their grafted guile, as shortly ye shall see. The dazzled eyes with pride, which great ambition blinds, Shall be unsealed by worthy wights whose foresight falsehood finds. The daughter of debate that discord aye doth sow Shall reap no gain where former rule still peace hath taught to know. No foreign banished wight shall anchor in this port; Our realm brooks not seditious sects, let them elsewhere resort. My rusty sword through rest shall first his edge employ To poll their tops that seek such change or gape for future joy.
. WRITTEN WITH A DIAMOND ON HER WINDOW AT WOODSTOCK. by Princess Elizabeth (Elizabeth I) Much suspected by me, Nothing proved can be, Quoth ELIZABETH prisoner.
WRITTEN ON A WALL AT WOODSTOCK. by Princess Elizabeth (Elizabeth I) O FORTUNE! how thy restless wavering State Hath fraught with Cares my troubled Wit! Witness this present Prison whither Fate Hath borne me, and the Joys I quit. Thou causedest the Guilty to be loosed From Bands, wherewith are Innocents inclosed; Causing the Guiltless to be strait reserved, And freeing those that Death had well deserved: But by her Envy can be nothing wrought, So God send to my Foes all they have thought. ELIZABETH PRISONER
Photos by Raquel M.
WRITTEN IN A FRENCH PSALTER. by Princess Elizabeth (Elizabeth I)
No crooked leg, no bleared eye, No part deformed out of kind, Nor yet so ugly half can be As is the inward, suspicious mind. Your loving mistress, Elizabeth
JOURNALS OF ELIZABETH I OF ENGLAND
ON MONSIEUR'S DEPARTURE by Elizabeth I, Queen of England I grieve and dare not show my discontent; I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate; I do, yet dare not say I ever meant; I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate. I am, and not; I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun— Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands, and lies by me, doth what I have done; His too familiar care doth make me rue it. No means I find to rid him from my breast, Till by the end of things it be supprest. Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft, and made of melting snow; Or be more cruel, Love, and so be kind. Let me or float or sink, be high or low; Or let me live with some more sweet content, Or die, and so forget what love e'er meant.
ALL human kind on earth From like beginning comes: One father is of all, One only all doth guide. He gave to sun the beams And horns on moon bestowed; He men to earth did give And signs to heaven. He closed in limbs our soul Fetched from the highest seat. A noble seed therefore Brought forth all mortal folk. What crake you of your stock Or forefathers old? If your first spring and author God you view, No man bastard be, Unless with vice the worst he feed And leaveth so his birth. Wr. 1593; pub. 1899)
Drawings by Yolanda Mora.
Summer,Joy,Fire,heart
Spring, ANGER, wood, green,liver
Winter, fear, Water, blue/black, kidneys
Late Summer, pensiveness, Earth, yellow, pancreas
Autumn, grief, Metal, white, lungs
By Bruce C Mitchell, OCCUPY LIFE
Bio: bruce ----------------------Buoyed by the dreams of long forgotten intellects jiggling in the synapses of new brain cellsin the long-nurtured tweaks of yet un-cracked genetic codesthe hunter, Curiosity, rides attention’s horse of pure energy out into the weather of time
Photos by Arne Torneck
By Skuld.
the three fates Clotho – Lachesis – Atropos
Paintings by Yolanda Mora.
ARNE TORNECK American Standard
Shiny white enamel lids of tavern toilet tanks: Veneer for vacant cool types of the evening To raise lines of blow into their brains Through crude communal snot-stained bills. Ceremonial after dark: Gender washrooms pressed into unisex service.
Glamorous night style: gaggles of hip revelers Descending to dingy saloon bowels. Excited and expectant, They congregate on pissy floors, And wisecrack outside turbid stalls wherein the server, squatting backwards on the seat, grinds tiny crystal rocks of white into American Standard enamel with American Express plastic. Crunching: for his court, he lays them out. This pathetic king of nighttime: This walking talking need for friends. Condescending beaks are filled: Social obligations set: Bankers of the blow indulged.
Now they hold the fragile power By which buffoons are legalized: The subtle reign of the lonely And otherwise unwelcome. Sated for the moment, The takers climb the steps To the bar room dim-light, Brushing shoulders on the way up With down traveling teams of alternates, Descending on conveyer belts of drug abuse.
2.
Once I was a server, But now I am a taker. Whereas I used to lug the bag from bar to bar (great was my desire then for women and approval) Now I stand and wait in piss, To beg narcotic alms. Once, I tacitly evinced esteem With the drugs I smugly held; Accepting as legal tender the false smiles And inevitable homage Of my ritual appearance.
I spread the lines out long and often. What a great guy was I! Now, a sycophant, I smile and wait my turn, Shove buddy’s germ-encrusted cash into my nose, Snort up his cocaine. Say: What a great guy are you. To the putz with the bag.
Takers are predators. They stand in wait of drug luck: Cast furtive glances all about For possibilities. Time their trips to tavern toilets Just to meet the servers; Hoping with a wisecrack or some praise To be allowed a line. Thrown a scrap.
I chanced one very opening a few nights ago. Stalked a server and a few drug beggars To a barroom washroom, Busied myself at a urinal, Heard the familiar sounds of jocularity And cocaine industry in the crowded stall. Sniff, sniff, and the moochers moved off merrily.
I timed my chance, Met the server full-faced upon his emergence. He blustered that I should wait, And that he’d fix me up. He disappeared once more inside the stall. Again: the familiar sounds. Then repartee between us; Words I figured I owed, And that he silently demanded. Sniff, sniff . . . and the server was out of the stall. “There you go,” he said mockingly, nodding towards the porcelain, He swaggered noisily away, Chuckling, Leaving me behind.
I entered the stall; Stood alone And belittled, With my rolled sawbuck. And not a grain of cocaine Anywhere!
Hooked The hook slicks in. How easily she snags. How tightly she tugs. She knows no surrender. Long in exile, she returns, To lead you to forgotten rooms. In a careless moment She sucks the tongue from your mouth. Coils it round your demon need, Slips it back behind your lips. You swallow her hard. Scornfully, she sniggers at you. Knows that you can’t do without her, In spite of your painstaking Hopeless attempts. She washes over your mind like an old friend, With the comforting allure of a new lover. And she’s back with her pedicure In the ring of your desires; Your powerless soul at prayer Under the Gothic arch of her painted foot.
Mourning Glory The widow pegs a braid of twine into her soul and weds it to an empty window frame high in the sky; does this so her climbing vine will paint the vacant sash with summer’s blush. For after autumn’s golden ebbing spindles springtime’s verdant flow; when summer’s riot bloom has gone to seed the ground below; she’ll whisk away the deadfall from the newly barren window, to let winter’s evening light spill through the pane.
Rootwood The woodsman snapped a loop of root That lashed the stump’s foot overground. Thickroot bound stump. Rootloop bound stump, Selfbound with hoops of wooden rope. This hardwood scrap aroused the man And wooed him as would fleshly things. Dismembered phallic fragmentwood (With its hooked end) conveys the look That Blackbeard’s flintlock pistol would: A tongue scoop bend, And heartwood bore In hearty bark. Woodfragment sounds Ring true But for the crook: The warp From which the stump Was notwithstanding Rootsplinter sends A mushroom scent Of semen: Fungal, like Imago sleep In spongewood.
Rootmorsel plays A riddle, Innuendo: Unyielding vein Thick on the shaft From boot of root to head. The silty ooze from saproot glans As shaftwood is squeezed dry, Tastes like the sex from liquid man. Oh, root! ... Oh, stump! ... Oh, my!
Silent Thunder I sit silently and meditate, imagining a shriek so great it swallows the Beginning of the Whirlings; the hungry cry of the Kingdom. I concentrate that stubborn roar; condense it to a Self the size of me. Embody it within my flesh; contain it with Victorious Will; and seal my screaming soul inside. Yet that sound is but a sparrow’s tweet in the silent thunder of my longing.
Still Looking God, it’s dark in there; so darkly, sweetly dark. Dark as something enclosed by a fist, or a peach without a pit. Smell: the silent fetal scent in a lunar moth’s cocoon. Or, the other side of the harvest moon. So dark, so softly dark. Sound: the plunge of a shooting star sucked into a primal black hole. Feel: a thatched bed of fern shadow, with a pillow of blackcat peat. So dark, so shadowy dark. Taste: like the earth. Like a mother. ∆ Invariably, the adult who cannot experience an organic attachment to another would be the same child that had never known a sense of containment in a mother’s embrace. – Arnold Holtzman The Primary Rejection Factor ∆ The story goes that in the early morning hours of my birth, my mother tore off her wedding ring and dashed it against the institutional green wall of a delivery room in the Toronto Western Hospital – so interminable and excruciating was her labour. My birth was a clumsy one, in which the ham-handed doctor crushed the right temporal bone of my skull with a pair of surgical forceps. Although the malleable bone eventually righted itself of the doctor’s bumbling, this (when the ache in my head is not full blown) has left me with a dull pressure behind my right eye, which has persisted throughout my life. I also consider his ineptness to have been the source of my three episodes of Bell’s Palsy (a medical phenomenon rare in the literature), and the tumor at the base of my brain. In the Hebrew religion a boy child is circumcised on his eighth day, the sensitive foreskin snipped off his little penis. Many Rabbis insist that at this precise moment, God inspires the baby with the balm of pain-resisting breath, to lift him above this primal trauma. But, I don’t know.
When I reached puberty I had the following recurrent dream concerning the shocking ceremony attending my own ritual circumcision: I was brought in on a silver platter, sold by my father to the rabbi for a dollar, and then bought back by my father from the man in black when he had finished his holy work. Concurrent with my actual bris, I suffered an outbreak of impetigo that covered my entire body while pus oozed out of the pours of my raw skin like starch through a ricer. After seven days, I had neither yet opened my eyes to the world I had inherited, nor sucked the milk from my mother’s leaking breasts. Over the years I often imagined my father laughingly say that I was such a suffering mess, he had to be cajoled into to buying me back. A dollar is a dollar, after all. ∆ The newborn enters the world in a normal phase. We may describe the infant then as a parcel of very singular and intense needs and drives. Ideally, these would find their natural targets at its mother’s body. These targets would include the nipple and the breast, the mother’s natural smells, the warmth rising from the body, her milk, her touch, the sound of her voice, and perhaps even the rhythmic rising of her chest and belly as she breathes. The infant attaches itself in this manner to its mother’s body, does not recognize its mother but it knows the experience of attachment and containment ... the experience of an organic union with a body greater than itself. It will be this same body which will define its first and perhaps most vital environment. ∆ I remember one time when I was a young man, breaking up with a lover. I was lying in bed wondering if I missed the physical her as much as I missed her mind. Usually it was her mind that I thought about when we were apart; her mind, and the memories of our events. So, in my imagination, I tried to conjure up the bodily her. I took it one sense at a time. I thought first about the way she looked, and that to me she was the most beautiful woman I knew; then, the way she smelled, that perfect blend of her favourite perfume and her natural odour; the way she sounded, had the most delightful vocal quality in a voice that I had personal knowledge of (I loved even to hear her telephone messages); the experience of her skin, that I often told her was thrilling, and how healing was her touch when she massaged me after we made love; even the taste of her, her skin and her mouth and her incomparable womanhood. I had an idea about all these things, but I had never defined them, or considered them as a composite. And it took me a little by surprise that she was my physical ideal; all that I sought in a woman’s presence.
∆ The infant which is denied access to its mothers breast, to her warmth and smells and body movements, suffers this circumstance in no shallow manner. Almost invariably, the trauma becomes ingrained in its subconscious mind and is the central design of its reality. Sadly, the years would mitigate very little here. This dictates that the world external to this person, now an adult, is envisioned as one which does not include an object which may serve as the natural and willing target for his inherent physical needs and drives. ∆ So you think about what you were thinking when you were down there, nursing on vagina, sucking it, searchingly, frantically, as if it were a missing nipple. The way it looked and how it sounded; how it felt and the way it smelled. And the taste of it, the sweet dark taste of it. Your eyes and your ears, and your nose and your tongue and your discriminating brain, right there! in the object of its attention; receiver of the carnal information. ∆ The Freudian concept of repetition compulsion becomes central to the evolvement of the rejected infant’s life. We look to the dynamics of repetition compulsion to explain the behavioural patterns of this person in all his future intimate relationships, and we may expect this individual to duplicate the experience of rejection for the better part of his life. ∆
And you think about what you were thinking, when you were told you behaved like a creep. You had violated her privacy, looked through her windows and doors, even her mail chute, looking, looking.
You didn’t think you were a creep; but neither did you know what you were. You knew you weren’t some neurotic pervert looking for something to settle his lust. You just didn’t remember, that’s all. You didn’t know that you were an infant man with his pizzle wrapped in blood-stained gauze, his half-head dented in, his epidermis leaking pus, looking, looking, through that mail chute there, down upon his knees there still looking for his mother.
The Crush of Morning When I fish for a memory of you, what I hook is more mystery than myth: a ghost of you in your fancy shoes. How you used to dance around my soul, bedeviling the goddesses of love who dared stare down on us; how you used to make the moon’s face blush against the crush of morning time. Ah, you used to take me some where: then. Then: with quicksilver words that said go now you delivered me back my life; yet, not upon a palimpsest: but dangled it above me, as you did on our maiden night, when first you came astride me and parted your self; and from atop the throe of the quivering arrow that bowed my back you said ... “Come and get me.”
The Photographer and the Stripper Out of the blue the Stripper phoned the Photographer today. He hadn’t spoken to her in months. After they had brought each other up-to-date, she suggested they get together sometime soon. The Photographer said he’d call her. He thought back over their relationship of more than ten years during which they had been friends, lovers, and she, his model for an ongoing series of erotic images. When the Photographer first saw her, she was hanging around a photo studio and was in her teens, possessed of the innocent allure of the young Bardot. He saw in her the vaults and arches of a Gothic cathedral; and noted that in her presence, men and women alike supported her ironic confluence of innocence and eroticism with flying buttresses of elemental lust. Pyrotechnic skybursts of sensuality were everywhere about her. She dripped sex. It wasn’t her fault. That’s just how she looked. Her ass had been fluffed up by the angels. The Photographer approached her one day, as soon as he felt comfortable enough to do so. He told her that he knew what she would be doing that afternoon. “What?” she asked. “You’re having the most beautiful photograph that’s ever been taken of you done,” he said. She soon became his model. Some time later she began work as an exotic dancer and became dependent on the drugs indigenous to that environment. She and the Photographer continued to work together, marathon sessions fuelled by illicit drugs and rivers of bourbon. In one gargantuan effort they worked through three nights and into the fourth day, without sleep. She was the hardest working model he had ever had. He could call her anytime, night or day, and she’d be there in a flash. She was tireless. The Photographer and the Stripper worked fabulously together, and the results were wonderful. The years passed and neither had ever made a sexual advance to the other, but after one particular photo session the Stripper bought a quarter-ounce of cocaine and checked herself, the Photographer, and a pipe into a cheap hotel room. Over the next three days they learned everything there was to know about one another. From that point on, their erotic imagery lost its punch. The tension of the sex-charged photo sessions had dissipated. Their photographs now had the flaccid ineptness of an anxious penis. Throughout the productive period of their work, before the fuck, the Photographer was guilty of some curious psychic engineering concerning the Stripper. He created a persona for her that had nothing to do with who she really was. He attributed qualities to her that had no connection with her behaviour. As he idealized her pictorially, in ambiguous contexts of his making; he likewise manufactured an open character for her into which he projected his own vision.
The Photographer had created his stripper, and he fell in love with his creation. He had taken the sexiest, most beautiful woman imaginable, and retrofitted her with the innocence of a precocious child. That circumstances had caused her to exhibit her cunt for money, and suck cocks in strip bar parking lots for pills and cocaine, concerned the Photographer not. If he squinted, she reflected his physical and spiritual ideal. Slowly the Photographer began to see the Stripper as herself, apart from his fantasies and projections. It seemed that what he had done with the Stripper was what everyone had done with her throughout her life: made of her a plaything. Incestuous father and groping stepfather; salacious clergymen and opportunistic employers; insincere therapists and lecherous con men; beckoning infidels and malpractising healers; libidinous dope dealers and covetous photographers. It was the way she looked.
The Promise A new child would be born in the morning. And to celebrate the event: the elderly pair dined out. They had married fifty years ago in Truro, Nova Scotia, in a windy gold gazebo on the moody Bay of Fundy. A half-century of tides and dinners yet to come. They went to the Olde Tyme Steak House: had lemon-twist martinis, and the biggest steaks they’d ever seen; he a fillet, she a rib-eye, sizzling in puddles of butter. Salad was a head of lettuce drenching in French dressing. Veggies: a pail of spinach and a bucket of shoestring potatoes. And, what did they wish for dessert: the young waitstaffer wanted to know. You must be kidding, the old couple mimed, “Besides, we,ve got that arranged.” When a golden promise encircled their gaze. The old couple, straining at the waistbands, motored slowly home in the old Ford in the memorial beams of the harvest moon; slipped into their flannel nightclothes and renegade bed, read bits of their bedside novellas, before turning out the Tiffany, and taking their drops of arsenic. Then they brushed their lips to each other’s cheeks, as comfortable old lovers do.
Two Birds Two afternoon birds were preening themselves on a maple branch outside my window, turning their heads completely about to snap away at their gnats. When one puffed up an indifferent breast and silently took flight, the other with a lilting trill banked off in the opposite way. Why did the second bird sing when it went, and why did the first one not? Was it so long sweet bird that the second one sang, and the other one simply forgot?
BY ARNE TORNECK
•
ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY
In 1967, Arne Torneck put a unique twist on the form of photographic portraiture. Combining photo-stabilization and wet-printing of the newlydeveloped Polaroid type 55 positive-negative film, he was able to produce poster-size blow-ups in five minutes (and for five bucks!). Over the next four years (in his Yorkville Avenue, Blow-Up Shop and Poster Gallery) he and spouse Sue Towers produced more than 20,000 portraits, as many as 300 in a day.
Torneck lives in Toronto again after lengthy terms of residency in Nova Scotia and British Columbia (where he graduated from the Emily Carr College of Art and Design with a Helen Pitt award in 1983). He has since exhibited one-man shows from Vancouver to St. John’s. His most recent public project was a series of “radio portraits” broadcast on CBC Radio as The Subway Chronicles.
TwentyTwenty-five legged woman Twenty-five fires I´m in the pyre If you need it, If you need to lick fifty women´s feet ---But those pinks stink Scare me childish colors Thrilling materials, innocence or idiocy Kills my soul I don´t want to listen to you anymore I can´t hear the flames. I hide under wrong blankets, Your home and mine. You eat fleshy pinks, calves, ankles, cakes; Eat your vegan. You´re here and your face has changed Measure, sunglasses on, pimp, long black hair My man i am scared at your new weight on me, It´s not summer dream anymore It´s winter and i´m hooked as ever. Get undressed. My long skirt makes a column out of me (and hides my feet, on purpose) I have only two feet And i walk will walk away. Fifty feet, homunculus, you need, You counted so very fine, A case of study Fifty nuns, stubborn I study, i forget too fast So i am here again (naked) Reject food Naked, i just eat strawberries out of season Naked, my toe-nails crack hammer I don´t know how i self-damaged me, never remember These things. I´m dying soon, so beware! And i believed in Love lust passion care But barefoot Naked i run across my room Naked except for this pink coulotte I run so far away from what the fuck. My long hair smothered your tongue, fur Teen Clotho spinning red. (didn´t know how scary it can be Seeing your woman at your feet) By Yolanda Mora.
My new occupation Ok, i live in this mental institution And i go to the library And dance with a watching nurse I dance alone The dance of my own mind And body. I am the most beautiful lass You can see HERE. And i´m young – Childlike instincts. I just live for love and music. The staircase to my bedroom is locked now. You occupy my mind, she told me Freudian stories And what can i say myself about Klezmer, Virginity plath. I met you because we were meant to meet. All this wry, wrought-up neurones My mind needs a rest. The vision is clear, she´d taken a photo of you And i was told you were a genius. Wrought-up images spazzing not neat Mess of books. And i was an eager reader. Bone-hangover from hugging, and frowning and Thinking thinking thinking Like in the old world. Everything has changed. I Am Free Of the mental institution, I am here, love, in the library occupied In our preoccupations and apprehensions I Am Free But in your soul I plant bad seeds of cousin´s face And i can´t imagine the rest: I am still behind you I am still numb, nervous, how to live Dancing in the street with long skirt Eager to live. You sing. I sew my long skirt. Your voice, your voice Is all i eat. By Yolanda Mora. Skuld said:” very fresh feeling, springy.. oh, we never know, things pop up for us to eat, and sing, and sew. unstudied, unthought, unthinking, doing, while others do other things. do and let do, or don't do and let not-doing do. that's how i feel when i read this, i have no idea of anything, sudden stops, veerings, changes in life are surprising, could be nervous tics, could be anything.. but getting back to it if it feels good.”
BRONWEN MANGER
Terracotta Shoes These terracotta shoes were once tiles of roofs just as the air was full of song & summer both on hire-purchase. These terracotta shoes call the dust mother. These terracotta shoes fly with me into a war without medals or blood or anything real. These terracotta shoes turn a lover back to his singlet & cockroaches. Strangers ask if I'm a tap dancer when I wear my terracotta shoes, they never ask what or where I'm dancing to. If I click the heels together all my clever lines become tangled like a slinky & like a slinky I take the stares when I wear my terracotta shoes. They walk me into a snuffed sunset & a cacophony of missed trains & forgotten names. These terracotta shoes have no higher purpose & the floor turns to ice so it can crack beneath them. They melt to mud in winter, they splinter into obsolete currency & roll away across the parquetry. Actors forget their words & all the trumpets come untuned when I wear my terracotta shoes, but I tell you the truth: today they will dance with me in paradise.
By night Bronwen Manger can be found in her natural habitat, at poetry readings around Melbourne with her twin sister Emily. Bronwen’s poems have crept into several journals, anthologies, zines, and The Age newspaper, and she has appeared on TV. By day Bronwen works in insurance.
JASON QUIGGLE MORNING
A bunch of us board a roller coaster. during its loops and descents some of us hit our heads on the beams holding the rails up the roller coaster spills us out onto a jumble of white boulders, we play in the water tumbling down them.
later you and I warm in my apartment
. I run around trying to cook or maybe fix something in the moment it is hard to know your hair is still wet you are in a too large a sweater and simple panties there is a faint bruise high up on your thigh and you are doing yoga
I take you in my hands and begin kissing you you stop me and ask "do you need this?" I say yes
very much
your face becomes much larger I see some of its imperfections for the first time your eyes brighten I become startled and lose hold of you
Jason Quiggle was born somewhere in New York, during the blizzard of ’76. He has lived in many places including California, Germany, Texas and Nevada. Folks have put things Jason has written into their publications. The city of Las Vegas etched his words in the cement of a public works project along with other notable Vegas writers. Jason now lives in Seattle, Washington. Contact: jason.quiggle@gmail.com http://unshodquills.com/2011/06/01/jason-quiggle/
By Marian Webb.
By Aydan Kilinรง.
Marian Webb Fancy Girl I saw the moon and the moon saw me when the night was tardy whipping her dragon's spiny tail, headed through the Bardo. I used to be a fancy girl with pretty, curling hair in love with every luxury and lovely thing to wear. I stepped on hearts tossed in my way and never heeded how they wept red juices in the street under my satin shoe. But now the tide has turned on me, my heart is crushed to powder. I lope as lonely as a loon where the demons loiter. For love's a two-way thoroughfare where travellers come and go. Don't wear your heart tied to your sleeve on a velvet bow.
Sidewalk heart---- by Marian Webb
By Marian Webb.
Snapshots of a broken heart. 21st century woman. By Yolanda Mora.
Heart of Clotho. By Yolanda Mora
Harlot heart hurt. By Yolanda Mora
By Skuld.
Jen Sjolund´s heart: but... it reminds me of every other tragic romance. romeo and juliet... it was not a happy ending you know??? .... am i loosing my mind??? or finding it???? i remember what you said, "he is hurting you..." i keep that in mind. he told me, "the dose is the poison"
as in....
well,
they say, " the medicine is in the poison"
"the poison is in the medicine"
it make sense.... the key is dosage balance i am pisces moon in libra
sooo much libra it is prominent in my chart he is libra what is he teaching me??? am i writing you a poem?? how does it become so tainted??? at the core it is pure. we have been friends so long, it blows my mind!!
and only because you understand, you forgive you love.
Yolanda´s heart: (if you understand me, you´ll understand your mother... oh, lapsus, i was to say My mother, ha.)
Skuld speaks:
Yolanda Mora
We are not Frieda Oh i know now she nurses – We are not Frieda We are not even her Who wrote that to her I know now about discipline And muses. How can i be out of this block These painful nerves Agony for a man and his kisses. We are not her or like her. We are lucky We are empty Or full of wasted energy I know she nurses Babies, two of a kind, But i don´t know how To correspond to his love now. I must not keep my feet in the past But in his mouth He bites, he bites He exploit my inner life, energy, I have two feet, she has two someones. How can i nurse someone, some muse – My writing from Ukranía. My work, My job, my stability tires me – I am tired, always, of this me – I retreat, i don´t want this anymore. I am tired, shut-up, questioned, desired, Wanted, missed, loved so much, Who watches me shun everything? I am not that kind Discipline, what –
I own my nerves, my mind Alcohol with her, so fine. I am not her. Not even her. Tired of her abuses. Her discipline and compulsion She has two babies I retreat after cheating. I repeat the same obsessions, Ashamed of this and that. We are like that.
MULTIPLES OF HIS Let me tell you about his once upon a time which is his past still is my present for it affects me so much. Feet in mud, backwards, for Books, his ex Great Love affects me so much. Her name was Brook but he renamed her Books because Books are his only passion. Not me, and i don´t know if it was even Her. But still he´s saying she was the girl of his life. If i want to psychoanalize him, or just think a little about it, about his stupid life, i believe it´s his 20 years what he´s missing, what he´s LOST. He´s 40 now. Multiple panics mean multiple orgasms- so that´s me. I don´t regret this, the pleasurable part of this Mess, but anguish and panic i regret. And i regret hating men so badly, which means i hate so much men, self-centered and with such passions, Books, his love and his love. I became a maniac. Obsessive. Yet i´ve been obsessed with everything since i was a child in order to- what? Have my work done?? I rely on my intuition. But i dismiss it. I don´t trust any sentence, any word, Wittgenstein, i can´t speak about the unspeakable. Wittgenstein, my love, and i am too E.L.Kirchner´s mistress... i told him this. He denies being jealous. He says he´s a good person. I covet and envy him and don´t regret what i´ve done, namely,
cheating him when tells me things about Books. He was cheated by her, she got pregnant of another man. So imitate, damn copycat for i have not a strong ego. And mutilate myself- now sick of that, now simply sick. Eager for dying. Now we are in wedlock. Locked bed. We live in a bed. We even eat and read cheat to each other in this bed. I´ve been to my Carinthia, got drunk with red wine. I met someone nasty and selfish and idiot who believed himself a holy healer (Hitler?), kind of, his face reminded me of those selfportraits of E.L.Kirchner and i am Kirchner´s mistress so it was easy to camp in his bed with my grey dress of concentration camp. Full moon. I had my strong iron menstruation. He, my bashful man, was home, thinking who knows- about Books? I remember our first rendez-vous. His prick strong iron erection like a hanging man when dying. I remember always horrible or dramatic things, Auto de Fe, for i´ve been raised as catholic and bear, endure the cross of guilt. So. I was in Carinthia and thinking about him thinking about Books made me sleep with this pervert. So i am dying now without knowing it. Of course we all have to day. Some day. But Multiple Sclerosis i have and my death is imminent. Like my trip to Paris with my husband. I love trips. And inventing recipes, pot tea i gave to her. Now she´s dead too. And i follow her. She would love me to live for her, for myself, but i am who i am- what? Nothing´s left now. My wrong DNA who knows and i don´t care, i don´t regret anything i´ve done, jealous Jena. If you have lost your girl, that age i´ve lost myself. Despite the self-damage and idiocy, and instability and my dark face and thousands of tears- if you have multiple loves, i have only you. And that´s not fair, not sanity. I don´t miss a thing. I know everything... i want so badly to be unique. I cheat you with anybody just because you don´t love her, you miss her, need her, but you don´t want her anymore. I don´t regret a thing...
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Smudge, brown smut coal like Hair, two bags of hair Hanging on both sides of your burnt rosey face. Camouflage artist view. The windows of buildings aflame – brown tainted For widows, divorced, single girls And a strict red. Stripteasing of fire colors, nothing is false! That´s your portrait. Your portrait. I read your eyes to explain my annoyance, Existence Teenager painting spots of non-light, Her pictures have become a drama And are unclean Yet the result is witty, whimsical, nice. I like artists but they unfortunately killed themselves. Cunning, smart, clever girl, i am in the Bible. Brown smuts for hair, neck, muscles And a rock between her legs, brown loose brushes Deceiving, but brilliant. Is it a bed, where the fire reached her? Is it a horse, a rock, teenage hustling? Camouflage, Art. That´s all. I found my comfortable traits in my bed, Berlin bougeoise This is how i live my days, from one place To another blank. Burnt-out. I love it, i love it When i find my right spine.
untitled Mme me mima. Or not. She takes care of me. I was sure i hated her I am not sure anymore When i am calmed externally When i am not, Bad dreams, The flux of happenings, or not. Un-happenings, unhappiness, or not, When nothing happens at all Lightning of knowledge or not. I must hurry Away Go away again from Everything Escape. Exit. Where to... Or not. No no. Me demands Everything What i don´t have. Or i have Dear love And these dear fiend friends My sisters, i had to vote for them This way, that way, yonder, growing up, Mother. This thing or another If i meet it. Admit i meet you & me Be a painful path – summer Or Fall. I can´t to that. Or i must. Subconscious plath Must i trust, real or not. Either this or that thing, man, The lover, the loner, the miniaturist Makes everything petite fillette Swimming-pools this summer – live!
I am in a hurry for Ever I am in a panic for Ever When i am calmed externally It will be all right for Ever. And ever. Little girl is shy Unsure, afraid of adults Their No! No! No! Don´t do this, don´t do that. Everything you do is wrong Where the right choices are She doesn´t know Your inner voice, liar or not Forever Crud Hung-up Afraid Crud for Ever Yet i have that right. Notes on: Love. Or Loath. I live alone in a coloured cave Tantrums Me is a tragedy Or now, now for instance Hung-up to crud She makes so many mistakes Me too. Me mima. Or not. She takes care of my Self I shun Love. I don´t love For i love too much. I must take it I must make it.
Crud Words Inexperience Sorry Sorry Sorry Me.
Yolanda M. Spain.
AYDAN KILINÇ
Aydan Kilinรง, from Turkey. www.saatchionline.com
by Skuld.
Yolanda Mora/Marian Webb editors. thestolenpoem@planetmail.net