In death's dream kingdom
           These do not appear:


                     I

They're handing out maroon balloons
And saying they are free
But grasping children grip them fast
And the monks amidst them disagree
Dispassionately, but en masse
While they liberate the children
With obliterating oms.

A nearby Byron expiates
And mildly reiterates
The soporific broken ode
He bellows over holy oms
To the smitten women who approach
That "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
Dispensing with disinterest
Crimson bliss amidst the women
Who ignore the sinful image he bestows.

He hands them out like red balloons
To grasping girls all afternoon
Imploring them to trust their nose
Insisting they are free
And so continues to propose
To the smitten women in the street
That "a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose"
As if the word could smell as sweet
As the perennials he grows.

And in the corner – Romeo
Who greenly mourning understands
The worth of poison in his hands
Imagining a life of night
Where roses wither without light
And only stars through windows break
Through all the countless nights of fate
and every breath's an endless wake...

Meanwhile Byron's distant yells
Prevail over the choral swell
And plant a seed in grasping ears:
Salvation can be engineered!
Which Romeo soon understands
As kissing death, he takes her hand
Thoughts germinating into schemes
If a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
...then a dream is a dream is a dream.


                     II

A griffin, a hippogriff, and a wyvern
Admitting me and
Gripping crimson
Dripping strings
So none of them will fly away.

Inside, Cain is killing Abel  
(How few! yet how they creep)
killing Abel
(Through my fingers to the deep)
killing Abel
(While I weep — while I weep!)
killing Abel.
(O God! Can I not grasp)
It is the first story:
(Them with a tighter clasp?)
A samsara of carnage and drama.

Somewhere above
On a city street
Desire's handing out balloons
He clips their thorns
And trims them neat
He says they're free
And just as sweet
As the women he impugnes
He belies his guidance on repeat:
That love is the light is the sun is the moon.

A widower laments and moves the world
That has such people in it:
A snake, a guard, a god, a dog
A wife by no other name
A faltering of faith, a peek
A pillar of salt, a severed head
Adrift on a river
Singing:

I'd transcend five hundred miles
And I'd transcend five hundred more
Just to be the man who transcends trials
Sprawled out on your floor
(Thy drugs are quick.)
Searching for a souvenir
To prove to you our world was here

Isaac, bound, blank and free
Bleating, looking for meaning
(All that we see or seem)
In his father's violent eye,
And finding it.
(Thus with a kiss I die.)
Abraham swings his knife.
A son is a sin is a ram is a rose.

A man pushes the sun up a large hill
(LET THERE BE LIGHT)
Every day, and then it rolls down again
And then an eagle eats his liver.
(I am the resurrection and the life.)
One must imagine Prometheus happy
The alternative is dark

The moon, by any other name, would—
But do not swear by the moon!
For she changes constantly
(Then said Jesus unto them plainly:
Lazarus is dead.)
Everything changes
But nothing is truly lost.

(at times
the fact of her absence
will hit you like a blow to the chest
and you will weep.
but this will happen less and less
as time goes on.
she is dead.
you are alive.
so live.)

A man pushes the sun up a large hill
A day is a year is a life is a death.

One must imagine Orpheus happy.


                     III

In dreams, the sun resumes her loving glow
I'm reunited with my silhouette
I glue myself with soap to my shadow
And find myself beside my Juliet

No longer a balloon without a hand
I'm rooted to the earth where she grips me
With purpose guiding us through life's demands
I push my boulders uphill happily

I build a world with Juliet my wife
Where roses are all roses and smell sweet
We live a loving happy magic life
Together til our journey is complete.

[Enter, at the other end of the churchyard,
FRIAR LAURENCE, with a lantern, crow, and *****.]

In union Eve and Adam are redeemed,
Not in a rose but in a living dream.

linguistic ******* as the emergence of furor poeticus
  :: out of phonetic oral *** comes lyrical transcendence


  /
acacia thorns pierce the skin
while shittim pierces the veil of the perceivable
as golden incense weaves across the sky
to a sanctuary where we unwind space & time

prophet's write of the vapor turning on lights
and horns shining in rays of synesthesia

magi mixed herbs under the desert moon
which mapped a path through golden the sand

bundle's of wild harmel wood burns
as sparks flicker & dance with stars
in a moon reaching bonfire

under autumn shadows
in the harmonic hum of the aboriginal didgeridoo
drifting on the streams of wattle-seed smoke
  gazing down as the earth unfolds and refolds
            in a cymatic origami cardtrick

out of the soil grows the ship
which flies above the starry skies
fruit of biblical implications
with seeds of knowledge
& keys to ghostly dimensions

    //
Thomas Aquinas
& Meister Eikhart shared the same eye
as you & I
peel wide the smokescreen
& spy through the looking-glass used by god
  which saw god
which was the eye through which the son of god saw
& wept at the stale state
  of the collective unconscious bots
lost in spirals of consumption & mirror reflection *******

this is not the godless wasteland
advertised by the screaming anchormen
    fear-mongers & alarmists
who sell panic by the gallon

with electrodes probing their temporal lobes
the prophets & shaman's
are in the asylums
labeled as ******'s for their visions of angels
& demons
& messages from the god's

an amnesiac species
chasing the neurochemical highs
shaped by evolutionary design
as a means to survive

barrel of monkey's biologically
swinging about nuclear powered technology
        alienated
that far removed from nature (forest. desert. ocean)
planning to leave the planet entirely


    Om Mani Padme Hung
    OM
    Om Mani Padme Hung
    OM

My dearest Sammy,
The Mix Master came
Easter, Sunday
And we have not had time
To more than read
The literature
Put it together
And gloat
Oh
So beautiful
Is the Mix Master
So beautiful
We are very happy
To have it here
Bless you Sammy

Madame Roux said
oui
Il est si gentil
Et en effet
He is dear little
Sammy
Easter morning
What a spring
Lovely
as I have never seen anything
Lovely
Alice is all
Smiles
and murmurs in her dreams
‘Mix Master’

X
Gertrude

iconoclastic art spirits wildness

served against the knuckles of mainstream engagement

it falls like vinegar in the oils of western modernism

⠀⠀⠀ we (us, earth
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ and.⠀⠀⠀your
⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ grasses
) have
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀this time frozen for just you
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀and me
⠀⠀ today
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀come to think of it, it’s
⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ w o n d e r f u l
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ b
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ u
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ t
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀what will happen
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀when
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ w
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ e
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
retrace our steps (in
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ reverse, or sdrawkcab
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀) , a
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ n
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ d
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀then find that
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ we’re firmly
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
rooted in tomorrow- oh i don’t want
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀that
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀only this romantic
lovely
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
now

Selection Criteria

We seek a person showing an authentic engagement with the culture of language. The applicant needs a broad appreciation of linguistic form and an inclusive approach.

Essential:

• Two good honours degrees from a top performing university - Or relevant experience as an autodidact or dilitante.

• A willingness to appreciate and engage in other people's expression of poetic form.

• Openness to the ways in which language is multimodal and able to blur the distinction between word, voice, sound, body and image, whilst being able to draw upon the conventions of each mode.

Desirable:

• Colourful life-history, and a keen eye/ear for human and natural dynamics, and the capacity to dissolve the distinction.

Please submit sample below:

There was a tree. Indeed, there was a tree... that night we played with Gertrude or some girl or boy or some other echo or other.

Had she not mentioned the issue with the fragmentary interjections by candidates? The capacity of evocation is lost with this fashion for modernism [Golden light of blue buzzard and some such and wot not before azure cream in winter time and  crystalline glaze] and its reflexive interruptions. Perhaps she should start again. [Does it even need to be a word? And what is this anyway?]. Re: Start again - good lord we are forced to read some nonsense [in the steam rows and the bath cabin], often with a similar flow. What about the art of pleasing our palate? We bump our heads against the brackets, elliptical conjurings and compound punctuation: -

Oh! ... Out of time? Battery low? Well, this will have to be the submission then. Good luck.

Sister Magdalene had her own parking space
in the lot of the church where my grandfather
placed his hand on my shoulder.
Over the other, Joan of Arc whispered a joke
about the Father.
Something about bad breath.
I giggled a fragmented
Amen.

As a young girl I dreamt of the honor
of battle and the burden
of armor. Each morning I’d awake,
my wrist sore from painting fields
menstrual red. My thighs ached.
My horse's name was Gust.
She was the color of overcast.
Once, she got so tired
she kneeled. When she stood
her stomach held the night sky.
I laid beneath her and named stars
from bits of her fur
until the field began to whisper so loud
that I woke.

Sister Magdalene sat in the first row of pews.
Her skeleton hands held a candle. The flame
tip-toed up her habit with the resolve
of a field of corpses rolling their eyes
toward salvation. When the flame
reached her chin I bit my lip.
Joan asked what’s wrong
or what’s right.
My mouth was full.

The flame grew to reach the Father,
kneeling at the feet of a cadaver.

I listened to the church bend
in the heat until Joan begged that we leave.

A cross. A crossroads.
The desire to erupt.
If the world were red and brown—
If. Jarr
it open.
Resist and grind.

The clouds were piped
by God. Onto the sky.
To forget the tombstones—
To remember the tomb.
Round it out and fluff.
Depress into the ground,
fellow bush.

Squeeze the spire.
Steal it of breath.
And then hear it gasp.
Pull the green
over its head.