Monday, March 5, 2018

Béatrice Machet # 12 STEEL GRAY--Gris acier




# 12   Steel Gray —gris acier      After Odveig Klyve #1 Transformation 

“I am rising
to the clouds
to find out
where the water turns into
snow”


steel gray
the color of frozen cold when your thoughts stick to matter
and your brain goes wild
pushed by some strength sprung from language
as if new politics turned what I felt as love into
a sour taste on my tongue

steel gray
a storm to come and mud in one’s heart
an undertow to overcome with some backwash of mines
while an eclipse of the sun drops me on a moon-ish land
with only craters to look at

steel gray
a stream becoming a rapid before it cascades down to hell
and there is no place no bank nowhere
to beach my birch bark canoe and rest

steel gray                 on walls
whatever cave whatever sky you thing of
as if you could stop darkness
could prevent it to leap and swallow you alive

afterwards
I wake to a smell of fire
of bad smoke rising from the stove
of memory





Gris acier

la couleur du froid givré quand les pensées collent à la matière

quand le cerveau se déchaîne

poussé par une force jaillie du langage

comme si de nouvelles politiques avaient changé ce que je ressentais comme 
de l’amour       en un goût aigre sur ma langue


gris acier

un orage à venir et la boue dans le cœur

un contre-courant à surmonter d’un de mes contre-coups

alors qu’une éclipse de soleil me dépose sur un sol lun-âtre

où seulement des cratères à regarder



gris acier

un flux devenant rapide avant qu’il ne cascade vers l’enfer

il n’y a nul endroit nulle berge nul part 

où hisser mon canoé pour me reposer



gris acier            sur des murs   

quelle que soit la grotte quel que soit le ciel auxquels vous pensiez

comme si pouviez arrêter l’ombre

pouviez l’empêcher de bondir et vous avaler



plus tard

une odeur de feu me réveille

une mauvaise fumée montée du poële

de la mémoire

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Magdalena Ball #12 Transformations after Odveig Klyve #1 Transformation

Transformations 

              after Odveig Klyve #1 Transformation

i.

always you say, a chameleon
my swaying gait, mobile eyes
pigments changing
against the wavelength of light

ii. 

the perception of colour 
chromatics
is distinct, incomparable, derives
from stimulation of cone cells, a dance
between eye and brain, the point of 
differentiation unknown

iv. 

transformation, in this case
is letting go
of aggression
even when warranted

rising
finding the source
accepting not knowing
locomotion, in spite
of inertia

changing not only colour
but pattern

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Dominique Hecq # 7 - chaos - for Peter Boyle

Que faire avec la matière brute ? Avec la terre à modeler ? Avec le chaos à exprimer et à sortir du chaos en même temps ? Quand je nomme le chaos, je pense à ce qu'écrivais le poète Jose Angel Valente : ‘la vida es un caos plural en el que la palabra poética se adentra, como en un bosque, guiada por un secreto instinto de orientación hasta ir trazando el hilo conductor de un posible camino, viaje, aventura’ / La vie est un chaos pluriel dans lequel le mot poétique [je dirais le langage poétique voire le poétique en tant que version subversive par nature du langage] entre, comme dans une forêt, guidé par un instinct secret d'orientation jusqu'à ce qu'il trace le fil d'un chemin possible, voyage, aventure. Mirage. Miroir.

On the other side of the mirror: chaos. What to do with it? The chaos that needs putting into words so you can shake free from it. Chaos. The word itself calls to mind words by the Spanish poet Jose Angel Valente: ‘la vida es un caos plural en el que la palabra poética se adentra, como en un bosque, guiada por un secreto instinto de orientación hasta ir trazando el hilo conductor de un posible camino, viaje, aventura’ / La vie est un chaos pluriel dans lequel le mot poétique [je dirais le langage poétique voire le poétique en tant que version subversive par nature du langage] entre, comme dans une forêt, guidé par un instinct secret d'orientation jusqu'à ce qu'il trace le fil d'un chemin possible, voyage, aventure. [A long-cut. Sorry about that: I need to go through my mother tongue before getting back to you] /Life is a plural chaos akin to a forest the word poetic enters prompted by a secret sense of direction so as to devise some possible track, journey, adventure. Matter. Mud. Metaphor...

Friday, March 2, 2018

Béatrice Machet # 11 BRICOLAGE



TRANSLATION OF

INTO FRENCH  

BRICOLAGE 




La confiance coûte de plus en plus cher. Je sais
ce que ces gens à Weimar filmés aux actualités ressentaient
(sauf que je ne le sais pas) mais je me figure que je peux être empathique –

Comment de pleines brouettes de liquide étaient exigées, et pourtant
insuffisantes
Ne jamais apporter un tournevis dans un combat de perceuses, vous ne pourriez
que descendre, sous-vrillé, rendu orphelin par la lumière
Chaque moment est complètement irrévocable, un clou dans un fusil à clous, cependant

nous vivons nos vies entières à prétendre autrement,
exténuant

Au coucher du soleil, le tiroir-caisse doit être réconcilié    les pièces grasses
étalées   nous sommes à court     il y a des douzaines de lèvres
zinguées qui insistent, elles ne se tairont pas, et donc je

m’essaime dans une brouette en promotion, nue  si ce n’est une mousseline
arrangée artistiquement   je suis comme la lune   et parfaitement contusionnée, mais sans
moyen de locomotion –peut-être j’espère être
attrapée comme un sac à main ballant, possédée en guise de récompense

pour toutes les dettes, la chute
de Rome, tout confisqué et sali – d’accord peut-être seulement
au premier versement, juste assez pour couvrir un arbre, un ruisseau, une famille
molestée

Monday, February 26, 2018

Kit Kelen #12 - 17 Avenue Road -- after Ian Humphreys

12
17 Avenue Road

after Ian Humphrey's 'First Poem'
https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/ian-humphreys-2-first-poem-in-response.html

So they had the boy baptized, and as they baptized him he plunged into the sea. And immediately when he was in the sea, he took its nature, and swam as well as the best fish that was therein.
-- from Math, son of Mathonwy, in The Mabinogion



I remember the bottle-top
green of the bay
ferry whiff
bounce of a wharf

that was the harbour side
ocean a hill away
the world was quite unmapped
(as I found out later when I ran off)

off to America at an early age
from Balmoral Beach
I would learn to swim on the way

you'd want to get into that water
it's all summer here
the population salted

sidere mens eadem mutato

they kept me quite literally on a leash
how could I have suspected a poem?

clouds and the blue
and everything clearly
splinters in white paint

the tram came down the middle of the road
I was still coming into the world
soon I would write 'A Day at the Beach'

much later, still a lifetime ago
North Narrabeen -- sauterne from a milkshake container
and throwing up in the surf
that was a dizzy experiment!

I do remember things before
goanna alongside, the plumber coming in
without knocking, and winter
burnt my bum on the radiator
don't remember crying
but I must have done

so many things I could and would be

but mum would say
'don't drive in the rain', 'not at night'
'don't sleep over there in the dust and the cold'

it's not what you remember
it's getting back to there

all those fears of some primitive difference
make me who I am
love of rose fingered dawn
(so seldom seen)

it doesn't matter that they've gone
you are what you have always been

the 'green grass' was bamboo

in those days the world went as far as my aunt's
and I hid the lettuce sandwich
in the sand next to the driveway
no one would ever find out

growl more of late
I call that atavism

still the day's not quite washed out
plenty of beaches here

it's only in the mirror you see
the one on the shore who sets out to swim
with the parents still on a leash
Dominique Hecq & Béatrice Machet #1 – Nearer this dawn – collaboration

Nearer this dawn

Pick up the day by the scruff of the neck
homecomings have sharp teeth

though ignorant of meaning they bite
taking puppy fat            for puppy love

and dark      soft     words
melt in ink swirl we call
survival

drop by drop it is
your very self reflected and gathered
as dark as breath  when it sneaks out
between fangs

under the cross-eyed sun
so hot        you creep       inside
and scribble at large
                       about interstellar
                                  encounters

a rainbow bird—which
doesn’t belong to you—
is your hand
wavering
what could it grasp that wouldn’t escape
through scrawling 

but an i
with multiple voices
and personae salvaging
scenarios and pieces of time
                                  or death

which amounts to the same thing

but an i
ceberg standing for the ship
claiming its outsiderhood
fermenting till swollen till
prematurely split open
yet trying to be more human

as iceteeth crash on the shoreline

Odveig Klyve #1 Transformation

I am rising
to the clouds
to find out
where the water turns into
snow

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Cui Yuwei #6-- A Translated Poem of Yi Sha: "Poetic Truth" responding to Ali Jane Smith

Cui Yuwei #6-- A Translated Poem of Yi Sha: "Poetic Truth" 
in response to Ali Jane Smith' Trio

Here is the link: 
https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.jp/2018/02/ali-jane-smith-trio.html


Poetic Truth
Written in Chinese by Yi Sha 
Translated into English by Cui Yuwei

38th Parallel
is not a line.
Four kilometers wide,
it's a demilitarized zone
demarcating North and South Korea.
Six decades later
it has become the world's most successful
animal sanctuary.


《事實的詩意》
  
                 伊沙

三八線
不是壹條線
它有4公裏寬
南北朝鮮劃定的
非軍事區
60年過去了
成為世界上
最成功的動物保護區


Ali Jane Smith – Trio

After reading

BéatriceMachet # 9 GOODAFTERNOON

KitKelen #11 - heart (for and after Kerri Shying, following the bulbul)

MelindaSmith #3 DIY after Angela Gardner #1 Three Fragments


Peace upon the thing.
When you can't choose between
the filing cabinet and the Weimar newsreel
there's no law against both.

Peace upon the thing.
And also upon the other thing.

I can listen to anything I want
anything digital
as usual it's hard to remember
what it was I was thinking of
she did that cover of a Roberta Flack song.

Well sure, but WHICH ONE?
Bill Evans, perhaps
because there is nothing going to be better than
'Peace Piece' if you're in the mood
not for love, for wandering aimlessly around the kitchen
or lying on a couch and deciding whether or not
you should do that thing you should be doing.

I don't do it, then I do it.
Memories are insubstantial
unlike plates used in early cameras.
Sometimes a memory comes hurtling past like a frisbee.
Was that a pointe shoe? The prawn and mayonaisse rolls I used to like?

After 'Peace Piece' I listen to 'Some Other Time'.
Then stop.

Da dum. 

Thursday, February 22, 2018

Magdalena Ball #10 Attachment is the Cause of All Suffering after KA Nelson #1 Things I couldn’t throw into the skip

Attachment is the Cause of All Suffering 


in response to KA Nelson #1 Things I couldn’t throw into the skip


dripping with kitchen steam
a domestic dream gone slippery

knowing what’s impending
pretending it’s fine, good
but the corruption has begun
in spite of the accumulation, all these things
conspiring in the lie

another day the deaths we carry
bite marks, scars, little halos tightening
against the scalp, undermine digestion
remind us how much
has been lost already
what was promised
not delivered

years ticking in, leaking out
into the soft pressure of pillows
the mouldering paint
the light globes, the dust, it all counts

the worst is the papers, a filing cabinet full
documents and receipts
purchases long redundant, lost

an indentation in the mattress
the mess of clothing on the floor
a buzz in my head competing
with the noise of crickets

it’s crowded in here
thoughts have heft

your hand, a pressure against my arm
sunlight moving in slow lines along the
swimming pool, the hammock
all things with mass
holding, pulling back 
creating gravity