Magnapoets Free Verse and Form

Kneeling Before Anubis, Lazarus Wept (Joseph Armstead)

(whisper)
Atop the Temple of the Sun,
bathed in radiant gold,
starlight blasts away our masks...

i.) Kissing the Eyes of the Dead

midnight oxygen flows to earth, littered
with dessicated pumpkin seeds
and the fading remnants
of communal nightmares,
haunting the City Primeval,
we dance a jingly-jangly foxtrot
across oil-stained, debris-strewn streets,
not daring to look one another
in the eyes,
never catch our taffy-pulled,
Francisco de Goya-esque
reflections
in the windows
to someone else's soul ---
it is a brittle kindness,
it is a neurotic's etiquette
--- wanting, lusting,
desiring, thirsting
to place our lips
in icy benediction
upon the closed lids
where old copper pennies
are destined to rest.  

ii.) This Pillow Of Cadavers

It's hard to breathe
-- pant? wheeze? gasp? choke? --
when you're wrapped
so tightly around me,
constricting
and yet a comfort
against the maelstrom
abroad the screaming face
of this shrunken head world,
we lay our heads down
on a bed of broken yesterdays,
eyes happily shut
against the relentless
spinning
of our whirlygig minds,
seeking stillness,
wanting a suspension
of painful animation,
praying for sleep
atop an altar of flesh
decomposing...,
we inhale and the scent
of dissolution
lulls us into dreaming,
and, finally,
our lungs grow still.

(mutter)
The thing struggling in the mud
at the great temple's base weeps,
frustrated and blind...

*********

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Statue 05" by Plasmatic [Nicola Vernizzi], dreamstime_725433.jpg
 

The Life of a Paranoid On the Corner of Mitchell and Weedpatch by Aurora Antonovic

He pulls the trenchcoat of silence up around

his scraggy neck, his unshaven face making

scratching sounds against the fabric of his

denial;  Furtively, he looks about, tension

pulsed in each movement: even his breath, heavy

with anxiety, is sweating as he tentatively tests his

surroundings, ever watchful for the enemy who can

appear in any shape,any form, any time, a once-friendly face

might turn traitor at any moment.He thought he had

counted the cost, but miscalculated: the price is too high,

his  sanity has become his own ransom. He swallows down

the clench of the bile that rises,  as he takes a halting step into the

too-bright glare of the afternoon sunshine.

 

first published in Thunder Sandwich

The Aging Artist

It’s turned late autumn but the colors
simply aren’t there for me. Leaves, trees,
the sky, my face, my hair, my mood,
everything has become pall and gray.

Everywhere that color should abound
there is only want of color. This canvas
remains indifferent to me, blank - staring
accusingly at me. My brushes sit unused
and decomposing in solvent, the colors grimy
and dry on my palette, a spider has pulled
its hairy carcass through black oil and
then white and died gray upon the
edge of my painting table - its web strung
at the bottom of my easel. I feel no more,
paint no more, sell no more and my lover
has left me for a younger artist. Bitch!

I’m so passionless I no longer masturbate!
“Colorless, odorless” reads this can of
brush solvent. Hell - that’s what I’ve become!
I have become nothing, even without odor.

After smearing neutral gray paint across
my brow, my nose, my lips, torso and this
useless, pathetic, flaccid penis, I stand
naked before a 3-way, full-length mirror.
I’m completely gray, insensitive, consumed.
I confront the artist I used to be. My image
grows diffuse, without form, then dissipates.

-- Warren Gossett

In Neutral

Neutral seems
to be the sum of
all my colors - any color,
any combination - no matter
what I mix on this diminishing
palette of my existence, all
that emerges is futility
and grayness. Is
this what my life
has become?

-- Warren Gossett

Painful Birds by Elisha Porat

—Translated from the Hebrew by Ward Kelley and the author.

 

The helicopters, skillful, painful birds,
Again bombard targets above my head:
I sit shaking at my writing desk,
I bend down to my notebook, clench
My shaking pen. As if they know…
As if they sense an inner tracer, a red laser
Signal: they make another bomb run,
This time circling above my aging heart,
Who hastens to remove its rooms
And empty spaces as though they had become
Black tanks, easy targets, sluggish vehicles
Flooded by grief and suffering.

Deep Night by Dietmar Tauchner

deep night,

the veil of sleep

sinks

by the chirp of crickets

a dream descends,

wrapt in chirps,

to the mind's top,

on the narrow path

of reality

early in the morning

a bird's song wakes me up,

calls me to the land

with no name

La Fée Verte by Aurora Antonovic

He looks at the mesmerizing pool of
circling green liquid
squinting for traces of fairy dust
 
the sugar cube long ago dissolved
he takes an eager sip:
 
no sweetness remains
mildly ponderous,
reflective,
awaiting deep thoughts
 
what did he expect?
what did he know?
 
no promised Cure
nor pensive meditations
in this cup of pungency
only a taste of acrimony
bitterness
and a good dose of pretension
hang in the milky louche
thrown in
for good measure

first published in Megaera

Childish Valor by Elisha Porat

A slender switch in my hand
I set out for the field:
To decapitate the
thornbushes: flowering oyster thistles
and prickly milk thistles, delicate of
down. Oh, the intoxicating
power of a dreaming
child. With an imaginary sword
I strike about me;
The summer globe thistles, globeless
Now, and the pinkish
Horse thistles. The upraised switch
Whistles, and with sharp thrusts
Heads are severed. And only
The path, blood soaked,
Along which has passed the staff
Of my strength and valor, only
It remains behind me.

Suddenly green and tempting me
back: crowned in valor,
sated by glory, an ear
deafened by fanfare, come
cruel wild child,
and join bath
time at the children’s house.

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner

The Fifth Leaf by Elisha Porat

To My Mother

I was just a child when my father sent me
into the alfalfa field, running
barefoot on the cracked earth,
excited at the prospect of finding him
a special five-leafed specimen.
To this day I remember:
a crisp October in a translucent fall,
bees buzzing in
soft lumps of purple honey.
I moved past him, but
time defeated me; and so
standing on the low wall
in the shadow of the graveyard,
I call to him just as I did then:
Father; eternity; sweet alfalfa.
I was a child and my foot was bleeding, but
in my hand I held the botanical wonder:
a five-leafed plant
and sorrow that knows no consolation.

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner

Recession by Aurora Antonovic

small footsteps quick

their bare feet layered

with ancient dirt

they make their way

through the aisles

their whispers worried

as they point at something

out of reach

the manager sees only

shy smiles

and wistful eyes

as he brings down the box of cereal

accepts the insufficient coins

and throws in two candy bars

for good measure

because every now and then

we all could use

a little sweetness

Iris Dan - Bougainvillea on Cypress on the Background of the Haifa Bay

 

It's the first time I see

a needle tree with purple flowers

you say - all those years

ago - and I tell you

the flowers are on

not of the tree;

not one body but two

completely separated;

the tree was there

and the climbing plant

climbed; it could as well

have climbed on

a barbed wire fence;

it often does.

 

You seem disappointed;

to comfort you I tell you

the tree is called cypress

the climbing plant

bougainvillea;

the purple flowers

(not real flowers

but bracts)

come in many colors

especially splendid

in the bright sea light

 

I could have told you:

what you see

is what happens

when seeds of thoughts

grains of impressions

push through

from their planting bed

attach their hooks

to the available object

to glorify to hide

or to kill

 

and a poem emerges

 

But then

it was about love

 

No One Knows My Words (Joseph Armstead)

(heartbeat in sync with the arrythmic tick of the clock)

Perception...

 ...clarity...

  ...cinematography...

elucidation

definition

abstraction

deconstruction

summation

 ...investigation...

 ...encapsulation...
 
   ...relativity...

  ...comparability...

curiosity
periodicity
epigrammatic
compendiary
authenticity

 ... pulp...noir...

 ...belief...truth...

...devotion...

(sands of the broken hourglass fall to puddle messily on the floor)
***********

(Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Hourglass" by Sergydv (Sergey Drozdov), dreamstime_4364278.jpg)

The Dinosaurs of the Language by Elisha Porat

To the memory of David Avidan
 
No, we are not the politicians of the language,
we are only her deaf dinosaurs:
the remains of the burning coal, soot, tokens of the sin
of forgetfulness.  We, the poets who die
without honor, as if trampled by her raging
anger, helpless in the face of her surprising
stubbornness, discarded like dust in her valleys.  
Yes, we are the dinosaurs of the language:
sunk inside the eggs of her existence that is already
passing, imprisoned in her rocky lairs,
and humiliated, fettered to the stock of her fodder.  
Gathered in the end to her rubbish
heap:  with scorched books and rotting paper
our yesterday's pride is also annihilated, because we
are the wretched dinosaurs of the language,
and our end is like theirs:  a rare specimen, remote and fossilized. 
 
Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner
 

Offering by Elisha Porat

My poems, the products of my emotions,
the products of my thoughts, the products
of my inspiration, the products of my brain
and of my heart – they are my offering,
my individual contribution,
my unique and peculiar contribution,
my generous contribution –
to this old and ancient profession,
this ancient profession of poetry,
this ancient profession of poesy:
the ancient profession of trading in words.

translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner

Home by Mukul Dahal

You move from a place escaping a devil’s fingers,
and getting away from its blood stained teeth.
You want never to see another cruelty upon your nerves.
You want never to face an assault upon your brows.

But as the unlit door of another devil beckons,
you do not see its palm that is a pond
filled with slimy mire. Moving to a place
thus is to fall upon the toes of another devil.
It plucks your hair off your head.
First one, then strands of them. You go bald.
You fight fiercely, your fingers get snapped.
Your body wears the rigours of fight.
Your voice full of grudges and grunts.

You’ve been to a hundred places and fought
a hundred devils. But before you turn yourself into
another devil, I call you to my home.

I understand why you get scared by
the music of the flute I play for you.

See how it soothes you.
Watch my fingers dance. You are home.