The poet cannot talk about what he already knows.
Northrop Frye

light splits the world in seen and unseen
night accelerates some fascination
I contemplate the poverty of words
who is doing the autopsy of freedom or something,
a requiem for a country that torments its name
streets don't smell of winter but of loneliness and oblivion, exhaustion and rage
some have already forgotten the meaning of blood
we like sweating not weeping, cursing not dreaming, finding the stain not the brain of fog
we practice forgetting like the snake charmers

dreams look like second hand stores, like the promise of the apocalypse,  a local version of Munch's scream, like an uninvented wheel or the beginning of the world.
an old lady sells fir wreaths in disbelief
too many drugstores ignore the untethered soul,  
a place of redemption they are, unwittingly

here there are poets, there are beasts, gentle souls and blind alleys,
indifferent smiles and lazy hands
and who can hear/bear the echo of that song... better dead than communists, comrades
province hates the center, the center forgets its north,
the all good sequestred against the all bad, no dialectics in doublespeak
truth to be told, there is  no consent for telling the truth
ersatz emotions exchanged casually, Hell is other people. always.  some play Russian roulette with reality, we are the heirs of a history disorder
if my dreams are full of birds, waters, lonesome deposits of the flow of time, I have to wonder
is history a desire machine searching for some mythical proportions

this country or a ****** mother with indifferent hands
here citizens have no faces, but interrupted gestures, fractured thoughts without containment
I fear those who cannot cry
without the meaning of blood history has no meaning or maybe it does, look at the speed of some digital thoughts,  the attack of ready made ideas. ideology becomes eulogy

no wonder I don't know how to end this poem
we need new words that contain their power
what is freedom? who knows, who cares.
oh, an old adagio, a gangrene of our undiscovered minds

The ground below me whispers
Moist , subtle breath of remnants remain
This chorus , this heartbeat
It lingers amongst strangers
as they celebrate in hush memoirs
Again and again
Drinking from eternities glass
This overflowing canard as voices collide
We all just wait
"Grass is greener"  some people say


Who let the dogs out

monsters unleashed I fear
light might freeze on our faces
and what a rush to be generous
an eden of objects, a living emptiness
all in the name of christmas
merciless the geopolitics of hatred
this is not a poem but sheer rage
when streets explode under our feet
exhausted by words turned into death sentences

a world in motion and who would,
who could guess the next rhyme
bliss, hope, and horror
tyrants falling, resisting, raising
fresh terror in sheep's clothing
these are mental wars, fake news tsunamis
feasting in our blood in our sweat in our tension
the invaders possess our minds, our souls
these are reality games, the most dangerous
who cares about facts or consensual reality
humiliation, helplessness, loneliness
manipulated in the transition between nothingness to utopia
an acid destroying the human form and social body
they can feel again after a long apathy the call to heroic action
let's not be afraid, the tyrant is inside and we kind of know it
I look at the face of nothingness, of dread
no power no reason no words
dread is alive too

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                            Somewhere in Syria There is a You

Somewhere in Syria there is a you
Pondering all the existential questions:
What is the meaning of life? Is God real?
Can you get to your job without getting shot?

Your notebooks were hidden from the old regime
Your notebooks are now hidden from the new
Is there enough food for today, for tomorrow -
Rough men with guns are beating on your door

Somewhere in Syria there is a you
In the next few seconds – what will you do?

I don't get treated like a human being
I must be an animal
This spurious collage of this mange dog
Life is ruff


Go Steelers

from East to West a pain without name, something inescapable, like the girdle of caskets, like a corpse. we struggle with what seems to be mostly an idea - the dimensions of the body, with the memory of the skin, with the history of contracting our bellies and puking our dreams. this world covered by layers, textiles, invisible armours, self-imposed absences. tears crushed by violence, by laughter, after all it was not that bad, they say. we carry so many tears that we are heavier than air, lighter than our tormentors, sillier than our dreams
crushed words, crushed voices, empty meanings for the unraveled selves. i write only a chronicle of this time devouring its fragments

I breath in infamy
Inhale chunky desolate clouds to puff my chest
Live ,love  Ode to Adam and Eve
Ears see , eyes hear
Bloated hearts congeal concocted bliss
Ragged ice in a queer delusion
the curvature of honey, first glance , first kiss

Because nobody cares
About anybody.
It's got dull, cold, and bare
Like in a movie house where the movie's over.

Where are the girlfriends, kind as fairies,
The friends who come in a hurry when you call?
None of them gives a hoot or a cuss,
You can't even weep.

Life's been orphaned and grown thin,
Frozen to death like the village movie house,
Because nobody cares
About anybody.

1990

by Vladimir Kornilov from Contemporary Russian Poetry,
translated by Gerald S. Smith

Modern capitalist society, in order to culturally and structurally reproduce itself, to mantain its formative status quo, must forever be expanding, growing and innovating, increasing production and consumption as well as options and opportunities for connection -in short it must always be dynamically accelerating.  This systematic tendency toward escalation changes how people are situated in the world, the ways in which human beings relate to the world. Dynamization in this sense means a fundamental transformation of our relationship to time and space, to other people, to the objects around us, and ultimately to ourselves, to our body and our mental dispositions.
This is the point at which acceleration becomes a problem. An aimless, endless compulsion toward escalation ultimately leads to problematic, even dysfunctional or pathological relationships to the world on the part of both subjects and society as a whole. This dysfunction can be observed in the three great crises of the present day: the enviromental crisis, the crisis of democracy, and the psychological crisis (as manifested, for example in ever-growing rates of burnout).

Hartmut Rosa, from Resonance A sociology of our relationship to the world

Storms knock on closed doors
Windows seek out vacant souls
Tomorrow brings today as we levitate in pain
Shadows linger amongst vivid dreams

Black clouds beckon; calling out my name
The grey swells of normalcy
Death, taxes; medicated haze
Our bones rattle; virginity, chastity, abstain
Metaphoric pillows yearn to be free
Why must I be tormented by flesh
I tease it; it tortures me.