Wednesday, May 30, 2012

This is another disasterpiece


I didn’t know you were so old
I mean so close to my age
When I was still in Seattle
I would have paid you more attention
I did flirt with you
even when you were living with that beau
whatever his name was

I am a long ways away now
And you are too
having adventures in faraway lands
I wonder if I’ll ever see you again
And if I do
Will you have a drink with me?

---William James







Monday, May 28, 2012

Purple Words: Her Damn Body


Karin thinks there should be
some image of reconciliation.
I say, well, I’ll put it in if one occurs to me.
These matters of characterization can be
difficult if the characters don’t agree.

He had accused her of Adultery,
Incest, Betrayal, Whoredom, Deceit,
Lesbianism, Husband-Hatred, Frigidity,
Lying and Callousness as well
as the usual things.

However, she was equally
fine and fierce that day,
explaining just who her damn body
belonged to anyway.

He had finished and feigned,
and what a face, alluring and presuming
to nourish and disdain the masculine.
Not so the feminine, which should be
kept just so: immaculate and revered.

Three things have followed me
and shape my memory: one black horse,
two black cats and all black crows
haunt and torment me as though
all of Poe’s creatures have sought me
out to darken the days of my existence.

---by Purple Mark 052612



Purple Prompts:                                                                         

  1. Karin thinks there should be some image of reconciliation. I say, well, if one occurs to me I’ll put it in.” Hanif Kureshi. London Kills Me. (Penguin Books, 1997), Page 151.
  2. He’d railed at Jamila and accused her of adultery, incest. betrayal, whoredom, deceit, lesbianism, husband-hatred, frigidity, lying and callousness, as well as the usual things. Jamila was equally fine and fierce that day, explaining just who her damn body belonged to.” Hanif Kureshi. The Buddha of Suburbia. (Penguin Books, 1997), Page 134.
  3. he had finished and feigned, and what a face, alluring and presuming to nourish and disdain the masculine,... Luigi Ballerini translated by Jeremy Parzen. The Cadence of a Neighboring Tribe. (Sun & Moon Press, 1997), Page 55.
  4. Three Things: Three black things follow me, shape a memory. One black horse, two black cats, and all black crows.” Joan Byers Grayston. The Creek With No Name and Other Poems. (Frayn Printing Co., 1979). Page 20.










Sunday, May 27, 2012

Wildwood Signs -- 1


Dead End

The Hill Dogs
Killers
Children at play
Be quiet
Stop, look, listen
Blink lights
Injury
Crossing
Railroad
Seeds

Another way

---William James









Friday, May 25, 2012

Friday's Children by Afzal Moolla


Mute. Deaf. Blind.


Blinded by the cacophony,
with tongues and ears left by the wayside,
dulled senses rotting away,

while all traces of empathy,
swirl into the gutter.

Willingly mute,
gleefully blind,
embracing the soundlessness of a billion cries.

Blind.
Mute.
Deaf,

consciences left to rot,
heartless and mindless,
as the promises turn into rust,

with all traces of empathy,
swirling into the endless gutters,

while the flag of freedom limply flutters,

in the impotent breeze.

Mute. Deaf. Blind.


Copyright © 2012 by Afzal Moolla







Thursday, May 24, 2012

Tribute to the Thornbirds...


A young girl folds bridal garments
and piles them into the drawer.
Her gaze shifts
a thousand miles away to a photo
on top of the bureau.
Its unframed edges have yellowed
and cracked like the nicotine that stains lips.
She wonders what her life would have been like
if only her friend had asked.

An old woman she looks after wears a lacy hat.
The young girl laughs at the old man’s reaction.
“What was it like the first time you kissed him,” she asks the old lady?
“It was like sitting under a tropical waterfall and discovering
a secret cavern behind the rock wall,” the old man smiles.
“What was it like for you.” The old lady asked?
“When my tongue met his, it was like sticking it into a
bucket of roses and getting torn up by the thorns,” the young girl responded.
“What is it with you,” the old man pries?
“I’ll never have anything that I want,” the young girl cries.

A life of discontent continues
the day after the honeymoon.

---William James





Saturday, May 19, 2012

Writing with Ahmed On 03192012


Homophone


“Tell it, tell it, tell it like it is, tell it…”
Droned the electric piano
She whined more than sang sympathetic notes
The melody was a deluge of anthropic images
That transcended the structure of the jazz
Her mouth closed in around the microphone in affection

The electric piano drummed out the rhythm
“Tell it, tell it, tell it like it is, tell it…”
in Jazzy sortes
Sympathetic to the moaning feedback circling through the audience
Affecting, pushing the musicians’ to greater heights of
Anthropic life in another dimension


I may have written this or Ahmed Teleb may have written it. It probably is my work. The bj microphone image is something that I would've tried and work into a poem. I am juvenile that way. Ahmed's writing is much more syllabic and sound orientated than mine is. So, yes, I think this is my poem. But the word Homophone is a word he used as a prompt.








Friday, May 18, 2012

Friday's Children by Afzal Moolla


Remember us when you pass this way.

       Dedicated to the countless South Africans who gave their lives for freedom and democracy

Remember us when you pass this way.
We who fell,
Who bled,
Remember us when you pass this way,
We who fell so that countless others may stand,
We who bore the brunt of the oppressor's hand.

Remember us when you pass this way,
Leave a flower or two as you pass along,
Sing! Sing for us a joyous & spirited song.
Remember us when you pass this way,
We who fell,
Who bled,
Remember us when you pass this way.

Remember us in your tomorrows,
As you remember us today.


Copyright © 2012 by Afzal Moolla




Thursday, May 17, 2012

An Imagined Room... by Purple Mark


In a room packed and fraught with history complete with books,
knick-knacks, furniture and little altars everywhere
which payed homage to seemingly everything;
The Hermit sat in his throne-like chair.

His eyes burned and his mind grew troubled.
Misshaped monsters flew past him in herds
and all went round in his head in a dizzying swirl.
His imagination was getting the better of him again.

Still, it wasn’t enough and he hurriedly scattered about him
exotic perfumes, exhausted his vaporizers,
concentrated his strongest essences, gave rein to all his balms.
Lo! the stifling closeness of the room was filled with an atmosphere,

maddening and sublime, breathing powerful influences
which soothed briefly the pressing weight of accumulated History,
his needy searches of long lapsed times for a purpose vague:
a reason to see again the beauty of the moment Present.

The vapors reminded him of his youthful travels
when he was freer of mind to see the world with his own eyes
and a body that had done what he had asked of it, not like this
when with every day came yet another kind of pain.

Now, his world was reduced to only these rabid imaginings
which Age had bequeathed him as he sat in this chair,
self-sequestered king of detritus and dust within these four sets
of walls which were only his solidified dreams.

---Purple Mark, 05/12/12



Purple Prompts:                                                                         

  1. His eyes burned: his mind grew troubled.... Misshaped monsters flew past him in herds.... All went round in his head,” (from St. John’s Eve). Nikolai Gogol. The Penguin Book Of Witches And Warlocks. (Penguin Classics, 1989) Page 102.
  2. When he had sufficiently savored the sight, he hurriedly scattered about exotic perfumes, exhausted his vaporizers, concentrated his strongest essences, gave the rein to all his balms and Lo! the stifling closeness of the room was filled with an atmosphere, maddening and sublime, breathing powerful influences.... J.K. Huysmans. Against The Grain: (A Rebours). (Dover Books, 1969) Page 112.




Saturday, May 12, 2012

Understanding Somebody, Maybe


My father threw a cup
across the room
It narrowly missed my mother
standing ground
by the stove

When I gaze into that window
I see thousands of faces screaming
The sands of reality shift
in the evening breeze
to reveal a mirage

The portal of my mind
was fractured
a long ugly scar broke
the window in the kitchen

---07/21/2012




If you haven't already, check out Penhead Press's first publication: Randomly Accessed Poetics, Issue 1: The Texture of Words.


Thursday, May 10, 2012

Color the World... by William James





   

   Help
       Help
   Layers of help

       Obstruct sleep      
       Obstruct dreams   
   Color the world

       untreated
   Be prepared to
   transcend
   your end


   Perfection
   builds blocks
   True colors layer

   blend
   transition
   into new worlds

   Experience
   the simple bliss of
   the linen of that last      
   wild landscape



---William James, 05/03/2012






Wednesday, May 9, 2012

The Blackest Nights, Lightless... by Purple Mark


Within the blackest of nights,
the lightless and fireless peoples
are well-trained to see in the dark.

The illumination of what is there
allows them to see into the deepest
shadows and into the human heart.

All deities reside in the human breast
writes william blake and after Seeing
tigers burning brightly in the night,

One can’t help but wonder what else
he envisioned that he didn’t transcribe
which angles of infinity are right?

Many who walk this world are unaware
of the beauty which is there before their
eyes if they would just deign to notice.

As if london had thrown off its opera
houses and art galleries, its vestiges
of civilization lay like a discarded cloak.

While in Moscow, noble ladies, the wives
of officers on duty far away, actresses
and women of lower classes sought out

The rough caresses of the moujik, making
love to the mad monk with his dirty beard
and filthy hands was a new and thrilling thing.

Though he killed no person, Rasputin brought
down an empire, the Darth Vader of the times
so that when the mood of the people changed,

The Tsar and the Romanov family lost their lives
and though he saved their hemophiliac son for a time
not Rasputin nor they survived their blackest nights.

---Purple Mark, 05/05/2012




Purple Prompts:                                                                         

  1. Noble ladies, wives of officers on duty far away, actresses and women of lower classes sought the rough, humiliating caresses of the Moujik. Making love to the unwashed peasant with his dirty beard and filthy hands was a new and thrilling sensation.” Robert K. Massie. Nicholas And Alexandra. (Dell Books, 1967) Page 207.
  2. Know you not that all fireless peoples can see in the dark? Having no lamps we are forced to train ourselves to travel through the blackest night, lightless.” Hugh Lofting. The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. (Dell Books, 1967) Page 203.
  3. All deities reside in the human breast —William Blake.” June Singer. Androgyny: Toward A New Theory Of Sexuality. (Anchor Books, 1977) Page 233.
  4. It was as if London had thrown off its opera houses and art galleries, its vestiges of civilization, like a discarded cloak.” Alice Thompson. Justine. (Counterpoint, 1996) Page 119.



Friday, May 4, 2012

Their Mysterious Thrill... By Purple Mark


Chiming, ringing, peeling, bonging, The vibrations set up by Bells have always made them Objects of Awe. When their sound was analyzed in the Late Nineteenth Century, it was discovered to indeed be peculiar: Three notes in Octave, One, a perfect Fifth and the other note the one that gives Bells their mysterious thrill, a minor Third above the Middle Octave.


In Ancient China, certain Bells of State or Temple would require a requisite Soul to perish and so be part of the casting of the Bronze Bells so that it would ring with a human voice into the gulfs of Eternity. Those in charge of ringing the Bells would do so at certain times and thus the Watches became associated with the wearable Time-Keeping devices whose time has mostly come and gone,


Much like the Comers and Goers of the park today of which I was but one of a number of its colorful Characters: there was the group of brightly colored and costumed Anima or Manga-inspired youths doing a Photo Shoot. When they saw my Pinkness one girl shouted out “You’re the most Masculine Man ever!” I laughed because it was true though not in the way she may’ve thought.


Pink used to be the Male color after the redness of the men who worked outside and were reddened by the rays of Ra during the days and Blue was the Female color after the pallor which caused their veins to give their skin a bluish tinge from being kept inside all day. Then somewhere in there, the inversion happened in different places, at different times. During the downfall of the French Aristocracy Blue became the color of the Common Man and thus babies swapped their traditional palettes.


Here in America, it changed over around the time of the Civil War, but there were holdouts up until the Forties and Fifties. After that time Pink had become associated with being less than desirable and has suffered an increasingly downgraded status as the color of little girls and Gay men. Then comes the Scientific evidence that Pink doesn’t exist as we see it. Instead it is a color that the mind makes up in order to fill-in a perceived gap in the Color Wheel.


Thus I was the most Masculine Man ever by both wearing very bright shades of Pink, traditionally a girl’s color and asserting my Masculinity by my comfort in doing so, something that some confuse with being Gay. For me it is simply the love of Color, Pink being one of many colors that I wear like the previous week when I had been Yellow which a man on a bike had to show me on his phone of my saffron self behind a Pink flowering bush.


Then there was the little brown dog who came by and left his urinary message to the other Park dogs on the near corner of the cement curve where I sat at North of the Volcano while trying to write out my poem. Carla came by then and got settled into selecting her prompts. My next interruption was an inebriated man with a bottle of wine in each hand who came by and sat down full of talk of the Hunger Games, though due to his description of it I would avoid at all costs and his confused talk of his band and Arrowsmith.


At last he left and I made yet another attempt, but I had simply had too many interruptions and I gave up trying to construct my poem whose threads had gone astray. The relative warmth of the Spring day had brought out all manner of Characters to be activated by the lack of rain, the occasional moments of sunshine and a breeze which brought the random droplets of water from the Volcano flying, as well the beacon of my Pinkness which brought these Characters wending our way to deal with as we tried to put thought to page.


---Purple Mark, 04/28/2012




Purple Prompts:                                                                         

  1. The vibration set up by bells has always made them objects of awe.... In the late Nineteenth Century the sound was analysed (sic) and discovered indeed to be peculiar,... There are five principal partial tones to a bell’s ring: three notes in octave, one a perfect fifth and the the other )the one that gives bells their mysterious thrill) a minor third above the middle octave.” Margaret Visser. The Way we Are: Bells. (Faber & Faber 1994), Page 109.