Magnapoets Free Verse and Form

As Midnight Wounds the Day (Joseph Armstead)

Like chariots of stone racing 'round the sun,
the planets follow a Sacred Geometry
defined long before the dawn of Memory,
an imperfect dream that hypnotizes, mesmerizes,
and taunts us with the promise of Heaven,
as we sail along, voyagers through Time,
our vision draws our gaze towards the lights
that burn the ocean of the dark...

The timepiece is broken.

Beautiful and yet Damned,
Innocent yet stained by Sin,
we are children of the madness
drawn to the edge of sharpened steel,

clickclackclickclackclickclackclickclack

each tick of the clock,
the sound of a cosmic metronome
channeled though a guitar's phase-shifter,
kills another piece of the universe,

tocktocktocktocktocktocktocktocktocktock

and our miracles grow darker by the hour
while we drift around a star
that is slowly dying.

As midnight wounds the day,
the blood of fools paints a tapestry
of myth and loss and sadness,
as midnight drapes
the hourglass
in shadows. 

We are born from angels, kin to ice and flame,
diamonds in the rough, we raise our eyes
to a sky grown dark with prayers,
the leaden gates to Paradise
rusted and graffitied,
we sail along, voyagers through Time,

(sshoosh... the electron winds blow cold
over a sea of fading minutes ... whoosshh!)

dancing 'round bonfires
searing holes in the ocean of the dark,
our seething miracles
betray the shadows
birthed within us...
the timepiece is broken.

And eternal midnight wounds the day.

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Eclipse" by Argus456 (Bram Jenssens), dreamstime_10382320.jpg

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

Three Nights In Shanghai, by Aurora Antonovic

Shanghai’s fog
crawled thick and heavy in my nostrils,
weighed down my lungs,
threatened to smother me with affection;

I watched in fascination
as soot snowed before buildings
we were forbidden to photograph,
Wrote my name in ashes
that coated the furniture every morning;

Meals of shark fin soup,
snake, crab, and pork jaw,
Stole five pounds from me
and refused to give them back
until I arrived home.

Shanghai begged me not to leave,
threw red satin about my shoulders,
hand-painted silk scarves
around my neck in penitence,
Pleading with me it would all be different
were I only to come back again.

first published in AVQ

original artwork by Aurora Antonovic

Tear

By Warren Gossett

The tear of a brother
who is slipping into, out of
confusion, oblivion,
dementia.
A tear of recognition,
of reassurance.
How to weigh this tear?
How to preserve it?
What value
this tear?
Priceless.

The Watermelons of Kakun by Elisha Porat

At times it is a sweet treasure, dewy, green
opening at night in the fields of Kakun;
at times it is a bloody treasure seen
sprouting from the reddening earth;
or the humps of a camel team
swinging to and fro, moving up and down.
There, these many days I dream:
diving in my slumber as my ears fill
with the sound of bells ringing in the long-necked beasts.

Bloody land moves under me, shifts,
clinging to me like an unwanted gift:
I hear the yellow-toothed mouth emit a grunt,
I see hands hastily cleaned of the hunt,
swelling in the night, dribbling in the heat
transparent bubble-like objects that grow green and sweet.
Perhaps my fears these many days will be expunged,
the ones that reemerge from forgetfulness, not fazed
even after so many many days.

©2007 Elisha Porat

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner

I'm Going To Paris on Monday/Je vais à Paris lundi, by Aurora Antonovic, French translation by Walter Ruhlmann

I’m Going To Paris On Monday

And we’ll find the hidden restaurant at
Le Parc Buttes-Chaumont
or maybe feed each other chocolate drenched crepes
across from the Eiffel Tower
directly over the sun-sparkling Seine

At Hotel des Invalides,
I will pretend it is the first time
I have seen Napoleon’s tomb,
and with the right amount of enthusiasm
I will gush at the Louvre and Musée D’Orsay,
as we walk around Monmartre

Musée Picasso will help to pass the time
until we make our way to Les Halles,
right down the little back alley to the café
with the dentist’s chairs and more quirk
than you can imagine
and when we charmingly garble our thank you’s in French
we will be given sweet smiles and free tea

L'Arc d'Triomphe at rush hour will be fun
and I will respond to you with happy banter,
carefully arranged manners
and the zeal you find so invigorating

but come nightfall
I’m haunting the catacombs

French translation provided by Walter Ruhlmann

Je vais à Paris lundi

Nous trouverons le restaurant caché
au Parc des Buttes-Chaumont
peut-être nous nous gorgerons 
de crêpes débordant de chocolat
traversant la ville de la Tour Eiffel
jusqu’au delà de la Seine scintillante de soleil.

À l’Hôtel des Invalides,
je prétendrai que c’est la première fois que
je visite la tombe de Napoléon
et ainsi comblée par l’enthousiasme
je jaillirai au Louvre et au Musée D'Orsay,
tout en nous baladant à Montmartre
 
le Musée Picasso nous occupera quelques temps
jusqu'à ce que nous faisions chemin vers les Halles,
jusqu’au bas de la ruelle où se trouve le café
avec ses chaises de dentiste et tous les détours que vous pouvez imaginer
et quand avec charme nous ânonnerons des remerciements en français
on nous tendra quelques sourires et servira du thé gratuit
L’Arc de Triomphe aux heures tumultueuses sera plaisant
et je vous répondrai avec de gentilles moqueries,
de manière soigneusement préparée
et l'ardeur que vous trouvez si fortifiante.

mais la nuit tombe
et je hante les catacombes.

Fall 1999 by Elisha Porat

translated from the Hebrew by Asher Harris

Now in the fall the curlews assemble
In the orchards, and the grey conies
Are already changing their colors, while I
Too rub on my heart the cream
That protects from summer heart, to keep it
Safe on wintry days as well.
And in my room which darkens in the cloudy light
I go up to the wall: I tear off papers,
Pictures and reminders of the last two thousand years.
I stand in front of the empty rack
And once more take a pledge:
No bungling now, you treacherous body,
You have to bear me still
All of me, into the next thousand

SUCCUBUS

By Warren Gossett

The dream haunts me
often, far too often, builds
in intensity but is initially
disguised in absurdity and the
nonsense of a young man’s lusts
with an old man’s deficits.

This woman-like entity,
ill-defined at first but forming
voluptuously, emerges from
swelling curtains. She moves, more
levitates, toward my bed, buoyed
by what I don’t know, but angelic-like
it would seem. Or perhaps
an Aphrodite reincarnate?

Oh this goddess, what pale   
skin, as Parian marble, full bosomed,
jutting nipples, loins that
beckon, nearly drool, and pursed   
red lips beaded with sweet
juice stolen from the wild cherry
tree beneath my window.

Far too much clarity for a simple
dream. But such a dream! And what
seething testosterone I feel!
I am become a hedonist, raging,
pulsing spermatozoa, renewed
of time and youthful energies.

Nerve into nerve we join, ecstacy
compounding ecstacy, bodies wantonly
impaling the other on this love bed
to the result that each cell of our
individualities melds. We are indistinct,
yes - as one, and any sexual impulse
between us is shared to the point of
utter exhaustion, depletion. I am
nearly drained of life, it would seem.

Then, as it always must,
the scene changes, Act II.
Inexplicably, shedding a bloody
serpentine-like skin, she slings it away
and drops limply upon me - entirely
skeletal, dry cartilage, sinew, lifeless,
sexless, motionless. The horror
of a diabolical hollowness
stares through me, and I am
suspended, fully terrorized, in
this paralysis. So, this is
succumbing to the Succubus?
God, my dear God, that I should
never dream again!

---

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