Kit Kelen #25 - Artemis be my protector

25

Artemis be my protector

after Maggie, after Elif, after Beatrice

in a womb not telling

that's how long it takes

wild animal of the virgin ages

before the first tree fell

that's where dreaming and we were

hunter and hunted are one

this is the land that I come from

forest was the first matter

half past the clock

and home

never meant to stumble in

to see, be seen

be changed, be torn

rain with stars shone

trees weep

because of here I am in it

the garden to begin

Magdalena Ball #19 Unpossessed responding to Elif Sezen #2 - Wombtales 1

Unpossessed

Responding to Elif Sezen #2 - Wombtales 1

When the last flush passed

waves of heat, an uneven heart

breaking in the night

she knew she had

become invisible.

Her body stretched 

the length of the country

the world, the universe

opened into the space 

she had created

leaned over the cradle

and whispered to the morning

the clouds, the planet

took them in.

Fed, washed, cleaned

gave out, pulled in

water, tears, blood

a thousand excretions

flowing in the river of her 

arms, past her lips.

Opened and opened again

becoming the earth

the little crow, a blue ring

round its pupil

crying hark-hark-hark-hark.

#6 Dominique Hecq et Béatrice Machet - j’ai-si-mal (et) it-hurts-so-much 

J'ai si mal. Mes mains 

sont pleines de mots

assénés à coups de marteau

(et) mes bras sont remplis

de chiffres desséchés

Et toi

trop lourd(e) à porter

fait(e) de corps, visages, horizons

qui me clouent un réel sur la peau

tu voudrais déchiffrer ce que lire veut dire

sans avoir à interpréter

Au-delà des os j’ai si mal.

Pourtant j'ai la tête pleine

         d'imaginaire nuages

                   aérés de triolets doubles

silences comme les yeux d' Elsa

Doubles croches dans la partition

                          y pendre sa peine

j’ai-si-mal : est-ce encore souffrance

si musique des sphères dans les moelles de l’être

do-ré-mi-fa-j’ai-si-là … sol y sombra pour tous

dans un tableau symbolique

                         je te l'assure

         du plus profond de moi

do-ré-mi-fa-j’ai-si-là … où je n'aurais

osé concevoir (       )

                              sauf un monde artificiel

et les sons et les couleurs

se répondent tandis que le temps décolle et

                      s’envole au-dessus de ma vie

qui plane au-dessus d'un « moi-j'ai-si-mal » 

It hurts so much. My hands

are full of hammer words   

my arms are full

of dried out digits

And you

too heavy to be carry

made of bodies, faces, horizons

that nail a real on my skin

you’d like to decipher what reading means

without having to interpret

Beyond bones it hurts so much.

And my head is full

         of clouds imaginary

                   airy thanks to triolets doubled

silences just like Elsa’s eyes

Semiquavers in the score

                             hang your pain on them

it-hurts-so-much:  is it still suffering

if the music of the spheres sticks to the marrow of being

do-re-mi-fa-so-hurts-so …..   sol y sombra for all

In a symbolic painting

                       I swear

from deep within me (from the deepest within me)

do-re-mi-fa-so-hurts-where ….  I’d never have

dared to conceive  (     )

      except some artificial world

          and sounds and colours

          echoing as time takes off

                         and flies above a life that is mine

                         hovering over ‘I-hurt-so-much’

Elif Sezen #2 - Wombtales 1 - responding to Béatrice Machet's Cherry-Lackered Nails (#16)

in response to  Béatrice Machet's Cherry-Lackered Nails... (#16) https://conversationinpoetry.blogspot.com.au/2018/04/16-beatrice-machet-cherry-lackered-nails.html

Wombtales   

1.

A woman gives birth to herself as the womb

becomes invisible

She covers the ignored spaces of a planet

unpossessed

loved but not talked of 

barely hung between the just-opened and the just-closed

                                                   a lace cloth

she makes the invisible visible

Elif Sezen #1 - Hyperion of the future

Hyperion of the future

for Friedrich Holderlin

Your 36 years of silence freed

36 thousand birds from the

hegemony of nonsense,

but you already knew that this

was going to happen, didn’t you?

You, an eremite in

Greece, a remnant from

Periclean antiquity

You, created the Hyperion

of the future, a little monster

—for them

Your Aias smile

makes me weep

When I grumble

you become quiet

so we both can grow

Your silence makes us live longer.

Melinda Smith #7 Interrupting the bread-making, after Hecq and Machet #5 Lénfance des mots

After Dominque Hecq and Béatrice Machet #5, ‘L’enfance des mots / the infancy of words’

Interrupting the bread-making

The frost has woken her early
She pads into the freezing kitchen
sniffing the yeasty air
She is discovering for the first time
her father’s secret early morning life
She is almost younger than words
She cannot say to herself
I am intrigued
I am curious
I am awed
can only stroke solemnly
the ears of the knitted rabbit
cradled in her arm
and watch as her father
clapping flour from his grey hands
wrenches open the door of the pot-bellied stove,
prods a roaring orange monster mouth
with a long metal wand
There are nuggets inside, blurred with flame
They flare and settle, the mouth
spits little pellets of grey
onto the hearthstone
like biscuit crumbs, like bread crumbs
She reaches for them, too late
there are loud words in the air
and from that moment
the word No is black and orange and ash,
is the sound of skin sizzling,
is the texure of a fingertip,
puffy for days, and Don’t touch somehow smells
like coking coal and yeast and father, and
forever after curiosity, stubbornness, defiance,
sting like bare feet on a winter mountain morning,
chafe like coarse woolen rabbit
and the frayed pink cord of a dressing gown
tied too tight
a cord which is not umbilical
but is
a species of tether