combatting normality

 

two poems by
'FERNANDO PESSOA'
Portugal's poetic genius writing as 'Álvaro de Campos'

translated by Frederik Wolff

1.
What I feel more than anything is - tiredness -
Not that I'm tired of anything in particular,
Nor even of anything, or nothing,
Tiredness only, only tiredness.

The subtlety of useless feelings,
Violent emotions felt for absolutely nothing,
Passionate love for what I think I see in someone,
All that stuff -
That stuff and what it is forever lacking,
All that makes for tiredness,
This tiredness,
Tiredness.

There's bound to be someone loving the infinite,
There's bound to be someone wanting the impossible,
There's bound to be someone wanting nothing,
Three kinds of idealist and none of them me:
For I love what's finite, infinitely,
For I love what's possible, impossibly,
For I want everything, or a bit more, if possible,
Or even if not possible...

And the result ?
For them, lives lived or dreamed,
For them dreams dreamed or lived,
For them the in-between of everything and nothing...
For me, just a great, deep,
Blissfully barren tiredness,
Utter tiredness,
Utter, utter, utter
Tiredness...

2.
If at some point I had turned right
rather than left
had said yes instead of no
had not prevaricated, dithered
in the days when my birthday
(hence my self) seemed important;

had believed in symbols
dealt remuneratively in metaphors

had understood in my heart
as well as my head
that guns and dollars
are the only metaphysics

had imagined what I would be
instead of refusing to be what others imagined

had killed myself quietly
instead of brooding on suicide for years
and years

and now I'm sixty

if I had never learned that stupidest of words
'IF'
(there's only one thing stupider than a word
and that's a human being)

my dog would also be dead.

 

 

GENERAL EDUCATION CLASS
IN THE PIERCE COUNTY JAIL
THE DAY BILL GATES
LOSES 12 BILLION ON PAPER

by

P. Pedersen
Washington State, USA

She's a nail, aimed at
but hit crooked, skinny
as a throwaway
needle, teeth left behind
in fists. All she can call her own
are her kids: one in Juvie
for running from foster-care -
and the eighteen-year-old: she wants my help
to write him a letter, tell him he's got
to guard her uncashed check:
two months' wages
washing dishes at Taco Bell.
Her voice, a yellow balloon rising
in a gaudy blue April sky:
"My stake when I get out."

 

 

I AM A SNAKE
by Boris Grebenshikov

translated by Artyom Gridnev and Frederik Wolff

You're smiling, maybe you want a drink.
I'm looking on. Say nothing - just think.
I am a Snake, I'm keeping calm.
Look in my eyes to know who I am.
I can see the warmth of stone,
I can hear its colour and smell.
And when the geese are flying home
I can feel them very well.
Because I'm a Snake, I'm keeping calm
Listen to my words to know who I am.

Sometimes I frighten,
Sometimes I sing
Sometimes I hide away
Become nothing.

I am a Snake, I'm keeping calm
Come a bit closer to learn who I am.
You're smiling, maybe wanting a reply:
So give me your hand and understand -
I'll show you how greenery becomes ash
And how the forest is turned to trash.
Because I'm a Snake, I'm keeping calm
Open your fist - you know who I am!

(Grebenshikov is a celebrated Russian dissident balladeer,
more Jacques Brel than Bob Dylan - with touches of Laurie Anderson.)

 

 

How is he now ?
FOUND POEM

FROM TWO NUMBERS OF A TIBETAN BUDDHIST MAGAZINE, 1996

1.

We regret to inform readers of the declining
health of H.H. Kyabjé Khordong gTérchen Tulku
Chh'iméd Rig'dzin Rinpoche,
Ngakpa Rinpoche's Tsawa'i Lama.
He is in the advanced stages of diabetes
and has lost the sight of one eye.
He feels that it is not useful for him to live
much longer and has requested that people stop
reciting his Long Life Prayer.

2.

After an operation in Paris, the sight of
H.H. Kyabjé Khordong gTérchen Tulku
Chh'iméd Rig'dzin Rinpoche
has been restored
and we are happy to announce
the improved health of His Holiness
and the renewed opportunity
to chant his Long Life Prayer.

 

 

from BIG STEPHEN

by

Brian Dodds
Newry, Northern Ireland

...Pigs
fattened by buckets
of spud peelings and meal
simmered to a lumpy pulp
in a Burco Boiler, rootling
soil in a small back garden,

sucked and grunted their way
to the hammer. Three strong men
to hold the rope, heavy death-head
swung high, flat face downward,
rape-screech, thump and crunch
as the skull implodes. Roll the shaft,

swing down the spike, sharp snap
as the bone breaks, mincemeat
eruption of brain, and slobbering mouth.
Big Stephen was an expert.
His cobbler’s knife with concaved edge
slit the jugular -
and bright blood shot,

heart-muscle pumping uselessly,
voiding hot life on the concrete floor.
With boiling water from a big black pot
he’d scald the pink skin, cut-throat
razor scything off the bristles,
barbering the carcass clean and shiny.

When the men had heaved the pig
like a stiffened lynch-mob victim
up to a rusted wall-ring, with one rip
he’d slice it ribs to arse, spilling
slippery guts to a wooden tub,
and then blow up the bladder for his kids

to kick around among the scattering hens.
Thick blood drying on his fingers,
he’d pass around a Woodbine packet,
slip silver coins to sweating men,
hose down the yard as they enjoyed a smoke.

[ spud = potato ; Woodbine = a cheap brand of cigarette ]

 

 

 

BUILDABLE LOTS

by

Lisa Beatman
Somerville, Massachusetts, USA

Three wormy apple-trees lean against the fence;
their nesting tenants gossip in the shade.
My yard is so big I mow only half,
the rest is tall grass and fireflies in June.
My hammock is strung in a corner
where I can't see the road
and the road can't see me...

That was last year. Now I'm elsewhere,
and there are three craters in that ground.
The apple trees and their inhabitants
have also gone.
Heavy machinery eats the fertile dirt
and money begins to grow.

 

CRUCIFIXION STORY

by

Suchoon Mo
Pueblo West, Colorado, USA

divine weather
naked under the sun
such a beautiful body
at the end of his tether

he wept and cried
why did you forsake me ?
why did you ?

why ?

they died together

 

 

GREETING CARD

by

Michael Ceraolo
Ohio, USA

When you care,
but not enough
to compose something yourself ...

 

 

EASTER 2000 RAP (R.I.P)

by

Neo Diogenes
Manapouri, New Zealand

"He that has a gospel
To loose upon Mankind,
Though he serve it utterly
Body soul and mind,
Though he go to Calvary
Daily for its gain -
It is his Disciple
Shall make his labour vain."
- Rudyard Kipling

Hey, Mr Jesus
on your clever cross
Here's an Easter egg in vinegar
rolled all the way from Gaza to Laos.

Hey, Mr Know-All, you've sussed it by now -
that more evil will be done -
and terrible destruction of the Earth
- because of you and in your name
than was done before your
precious mystic birth.

I wonder if you realise,
Mr Anti-Family, honey,
that all religions exclude
and the most exclusive is
the religion of money.
The richer they are, the more
unreal their expectations, the angrier,
the more impatient, vindictive,
intolerant, nastier.

Hey, Mr Saviour
on your Roman cross,
you weren't set up by Judas
but by your disciples' Boss.
He wanted a Jew-Messiah
and so you have to die
to make a Greek Christ
triumphing in the sky,
and have all of what you said and did
turned into a world-sized lie.

 

 

ENJOYING SCHIZOPHRENIA

by

Rodney Cole
Birmingham, England

1. TODAY'S PLANS
Converse with the gods
Meet Christ in Crouch End, London
Be John the Baptist
Know the glut of the night fox
Observe death in the spaces
Discover HeavenOnEarth beneath one's fingernails
Divine the thoughts of others
Obtain a personal audience with His Holiness
Wag one's tail diskinetically

2. THE TREES
fly off into the outer dark
The planets
enthrone the worms
The wind
disposes of the ocean
The earth is vomiting
a tremendous
skeleton
A dragon
There it is, brontosaurian
Armies and civilisations
are squashed
The moon gapes
like a stranded jellyfish
There it goes
Lumbering
bumping and heaving
Away
Into the night
On and on
And I'm Sitting On Top

3. KILL
the television
mirror
self
from the 19th floor
headbutt the door
why me ?
best hide
now finished grubbing
out the days
a bloody pullover
in the sink
as the leaves were falling
Reality has many frequencies

FIVE POEMS

by

Olaf Korjak
Gjirokast ë r, Albania



1. REFUSE TO SPEAK ENGLISH

The only freedom is difference.
The only integrity is dissent.
The greatest dissent is generosity.
Dëgjo me kujdes: gjuha shqipe
nuk është aq e vështirë.

2. THRENODY ?

The 'greatest' art is
many things to
many people
Which is to say
somehow meaningless

I mourn for
'great art'.

3. THE SMOKING BEAGLES

can't say that what you call your Soul
is Satan sanitized, and civilisation
is the bombing of a country by the USA
every minute, all day,
all night, every day for nine appalling years:
all Hell in tears.

4. BE GOOD, DO GOOD:

one does not imply the other.

5. EMIGRATION

It was once better to be hated
as an American
than as an Albanian.

REVLON REVISITED

Gavin Jones
Nantucket, Maryland

They say gin's a whore's drink.
A paint for the innards.
A crust of make-up.
A song for the neon dark.

She, shunned by Revlon,
licks the busted teeth of psychopaths.
They, hissing death and whiskey,
tear at her waxy knobs.

My, my my,
every night
their boiled bodies
roil in flight

jerking
like the severed legs of antelope
in jackal-dreams.

 

THE TERRIBLE GARDEN OF RECYCLED TIME
and ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AMERICA

Malcolm Walker
Seaforde, Northern Ireland

It puts all Heaven in a rage
to see a living creature in a cage.
Nature is almost at the end of its tether.
Religion is man's calamitous attempt
to gain control of weather.

"Whoever controls the weather controls the world,"
a United States Department of Defense
spokesman said.
In the Book of Job we read
that God was schizophrenic,
hiding from his majesty
underneath his throne
inside his head.

 

Haiku

by

Valerie Laws
Whitley Bay, UK

The moon is too big
too bright, too early, too round:
a shout in the sky.

and by

David Steele
Norfolk, England

Collecting cat-hairs
for its nest: the sparrow
with whiskers.

Across the valley
a tractor crawls all day
colouring a field.

 

and more Haikai by
Okami
Reedlake, Northern Ireland

Stormy winter night;
in between the isobars
last breaths of the old.

 

A winter morning:
the soap is crenellated
by the teeth of rats.

 

Snowflakes dancing down
on the men who are digging
another mass grave.

 

The summer dahlias...
The autumn chrysanthemums...
The world full of bombs.

 

Disliking people
I enjoy the cheerful caw-
cawing of the rooks.

 

Puma in the zoo...
bleak universe of her cage -
Spring is just more pain.

 

A piss before bed
looking up at the night's bright
navel in the sky.

 

Every bedtime
I look forward to dying
even with my dog.

 

A snakeskin dangling
in a cobwebby window -
another poem.

 

Butchery-counter:
I am reminded of dying
red camellia flowers.

 

Relentless blue skies:
the smug sameness of
hundreds of haikai.

Fantastic offer -
Western Values
(happiness not included).

 

Amphisbæna:
making love is not an act
- but an animal.

Sa nouvelle maison;
le loup-garou derrière
arrosant une Pensée.

 

*Orchids! The most liberating
admission: that you don't
really like sex.

* The name of these flowers derives from the Greek for 'testicle' ,
which their bulbs resemble.