Identity (as self to self before God) | Poem by Allison Grayhurst

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Identity as self to self before God

Identity (as self to self before God)

Identity as explorer,
as an eagle with a powerful spread,
or as a sparrow, budding delicate, stirring
tenderness in others.
Identity as a mother, as a single flame monk
in the 4 a.m. quiet, under a dome, encased
in creativity and loneliness. Identity
as drink, poverty, excessive cash flow or beauty
beside the grave of the visibly mediocre.

Identity in discipline or free-spirit strength
that enriches the landscape with humour and charm.
Identity as a man whose skin has become core,
and the burden of time has passed through his sky
like a setting moon.

Stoic or gregarious, just the shape of a cloud,
changing, merging with other clouds
than dissipating. Speaking – backwards, forwards –
when the bearer of that identity dares to skip over the madness
of self-loathing, self-congratulating, skip
the moan in summer, the ovation indoors

and be in love,
like when first in love, ever swallowing
the joy into the fear, then the fear into joy,
the how-can-this-be? the will-I-ever-be-pure-enough?
struggling to keep up with such a devouring-bliss. Devour me,

more, more, let it be, be what never rests,
what is always too much, always
electrified, perfect. Heal me of identities,
allow me to step longing for divinity with every step,
engulfed in a splintering ecstasy while longing –
this beat, this beat – folding over, under and
everywhere, mastering the dance,

where my identity is just like a child with a toy,
there to enact a deed of great imagination.

Bio: Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Four times nominated for “Best of the Net”, 2015/2017, she has over 1125 poems published in over 450 international journals and anthologies. She has 21 published books of poetry, six collections and six chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She is a vegan. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com

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Tom Raworth. The Holloway Series of Poetry. Video Poetry

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Tom Raworth was a UK poet died 2017 he owed much of his influence in Language Poetry to contemporary movements in the USA, where he spent a considerable portion of his life. Editors note.
 
 
Tom Raworth is a London-based poet and visual artist whose many works include Ace (1974), West Wind (1984), Visible Shivers (1987), Eternal Sections (1993), Survival (1994), Clean & Well Lit (1996), and Let Baby Fall (2008); his Collected Poems was published by Carcanet in 2003.
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .

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The Whale. Leviathan. Video Poem. Sonnet by Norman Ball. Read by Ed Gero

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This is a sonnet from my 2001 collection ‘Return to One: A Sonnet Odyssey’, and the section ‘The Whale, the Bull and the Lightbringer’. DC Shakespeare Theatre’s Ed Gero is the reader. I’ve often wondered if Man’s excessive cruelty towards the whale goes beyond mere commerce. Is there something even more fundamental at play, a jealousy perhaps?
(Norman Ball)
 
 

 
 
Leviathan, what coaxed you back to sea?
Did premonition sour you to the land?
Perhaps you saw the vex of history
and, wisely, chose a watery remand.
Awkward, we Fell; you sank to cooler climes,
your massive girth played foil to Yahweh’s glare.
We battled seas; you swam to rhythmic tides
while sailors scrimshawed biblical despairs.
We’ve harpooned all pretense at gentle neighbor
reserving special violence for your end.
Nor does predation justify these labors.
No, cruelty masks an envious intent:
we fend alone on this terrestrial stage;
no depths too deep to plunge our jealous rage.
 
 

NORMAN BALL

 

(BA Political Science/Econ, Washington & Lee University; MBA,George Washington University) is a well-travelled Scots-American businessman, author and poet whose essays have appeared in Counterpunch,The Western Muslim and elsewhere. His new book  “Between River and Rock:How I Resolved Television in Six Easy Payments”   is available here.
 
Two essay collections, “How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable?” and  “TheFrantic Force” are spoken of  here and here, respectively.
 
A collection of poetry  Serpentrope  was published early 2014 from White Violet Press. He can be reached at a returntoone@hotmail.com.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .

 

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Press Release. Aquillrelle’s Anthology Wall7.

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The Aquillrelle Wall of Poetry Members Anthology, book seven ©2018
 
Friends, poets,
 
Aquillrelle’s Anthology Wall7 is now released and published in both Ebook/PDF and Paper formats. It can be purchased on Lulu (and a couple of months from now also on Amazon, etc.).
 
Many thanks to the participants and to the supporters, it was hard yet gratifying work. Enjoy your (and your friends’) art!
 
The seventh wall. Some graffiti. Some works of art. Even some smudges included since they hold a message to be heard. Because this is the essence of every Aquillrelle wall – let everyone who values his/her word get a piece of the wall to themselves. You, the readers, are the beneficiaries. Read!
 
 
 
The poem included below is an excerpt from the above reviewed anthology
 
Elliptical Shift by Robin Ouzman Hislop
 
 
Meadows of wild flowers
sweet in an urban niche
framed by a hand of nostalgia
framed in an enclosure
 
for the price of pathos
riots of the human race
rampage across its space
in resistance, resentment
 
everywhere history obscures the view
 
an enigmatic phantom
it projects its rapacious plans onto tomorrow
McDonald’s signs, stewards of the planet, protein signifier
 
regularities merge into a wholeness
the news comes on, in a refrain of the same monotone
as if the world were made new again.
 
*
 
The darkest regions of the planet’s mind
the photon of a star in a formless moment
becomes an instance of a memory
as the desert invites the ripple
to a turbulence of refrain
a window frame constrains
its world view to all that follows on
 
as if it could choose between what’s real
what’s imaginary
 
such choices, shape our view
to the now, before an open future
 
*
 
sunset on the high street, traffic
vanishing into it like black dots
whizzing out of the blind, the zonk
plonk, disappearing into its shadow
 
dust of ages, its record
 
all the particles cascading
into the horizon’s viewpoint
all the bits, pieces in their parts
blowing on the horizon’s sunset
 
Time is not the shadow cast by the world
the world is the shadow cast by time
 
(excerpt from All the Babble of the Souk)
 
 
To order: http://www.lulu.com/shop/Aquillrelle/The Aquillrelle-Wall of Poetry Book Seven/paperback/
 
e-book: http://www.lulu.com/shop/Aquillrelle/The Aquillrelle Wall of Poetry Book Seven/ebook/
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .

 

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I stood musing in a black world Poem

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I stood musing in a black world | Poem by Stephen Crane

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I stood musing in a black world,
Not knowing where to direct my feet.

And I saw the quick stream of men
Pouring ceaselessly,
Filled with eager faces,
A torrent of desire.

I called to them,
“Where do you go? What do you see?”
A thousand voices called to me.

A thousand fingers pointed.

“Look! look! There!”

I know not of it.

But, lo! In the far sky shone a radiance
Ineffable, divine —
A vision painted upon a pall;
And sometimes it was,
And sometimes it was not.

I hesitated.

Then from the stream
Came roaring voices,
Impatient:
“Look! look! There!”

So again I saw,
And leaped, unhesitant,
And struggled and fumed
With outspread clutching fingers.

The hard hills tore my flesh;
The ways bit my feet.

At last I looked again.

No radiance in the far sky,
Ineffable, divine;
No vision painted upon a pall;
And always my eyes ached for the light.

Then I cried in despair,
“I see nothing! Oh, where do I go?”
The torrent turned again its faces:
“Look! look! There!”

And at the blindness of my spirit
They screamed,
“Fool! fool! fool!”

————————————————————————–

Stephen Crane – Poet | Academy of American Poets

Stephen Crane – Wikipedia

Buy Stephen Crane
at Amazon

Buy Stephen Crane
at Barnes and Noble

————————————————————————–

 

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How to Paint Like the Masters

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“Historically, imitating someone else’s work was part of forming your own style, but it wasn’t a way to make your own work. The imitation of subject matter, though, was part and parcel of the humbler genres of documentary art–still lifes, landscapes, portraits. The pinnacle of artistic production was instead what they called history painting, and this involved imagining scenes from mythology, history, or the Bible; how one imagined was supposed to depend on the canon of previous imaginings. Artists who practiced history painting shaped their approach by emulating other artists, whether contemporaries or the ancients. That’s how I’ve trained myself over more than thirty years, by drawing in museums, churches, and the great houses of Europe……..Artists Network

Our friends at Artvilla have started a series of video pages on how to paint like the masters. “Good artists copy, great artists steal”….Attributed to Picasso…..Art is a trade, a guild. One must learn any trade from the masters of that trade., This was true in the High Italian Renaissance and it’s true today.

Back to Art Lessons
How to Paint Like Monet
How to Paint Like Picasso
How to Paint Like Vincent Van Gogh
How to Paint Like Renoir
How to Paint Like Rembrandt
How to Paint Like Vermeer
How to Paint Like Jackson Pollock
How to Draw Like Michelangelo
How to Draw in the Renaissance Style

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Spike. Poem excerpt from Cartoon Molecules by Robin Hislop

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A runaway on a Singularity slippery slope need not be a despairingly
Sisyphean slide back but spike upward to an extremely great verticality
allowing something relatively harmless today start a trend that results
in something currently unthinkable a – Pandorean pandemonium
 
still he didn’t want to kill himself and his crew so he hatched a plan
that systems possessing the same patterns of causal organization will instantiate
the same types of conscious states irrespective of whether the organization
is implemented in neurons – silicon – plastic or any other substrate
 
taken to its heart we would vanish into its stronger existence – do the angels
really only take back what is theirs – what has streamed out of them – or is there
sometimes – as if by oversight something of our being as well? – do we not see
the swirling return to ourselves (how should we see it?) the world today being
as it is a vast unsupervised laboratory – in which a multitude of experiments
are simultaneously under way
 
brain-computer interfaces have already left the laboratory which allows gamers
to interact directly with their consoles – a high resolution neuro-signal
acquisition and processing wireless neuroheadset uses a set of sensors to tune
into electric signals produced by the brain to detect player thoughts feelings
and expressions and connects wirelessly to most PCs’ — all this for only $299!
 
partly this is because we cannot agree on what such purposes are – and even if
we were to – suddenly he knew that when he heard the music he would be unable
to resist steering toward the island’s rocks – the problem wasn’t the present
rational Ulysses – but instead the future illogical Ulysses – the person he’d become
when the Sirens came within earshot
 
but that is the gods’ affair – if only we too could discover a pure contained – human
place – a strip of fruitful land of our own – between river and stone!- for our own heart
exceeds us – the curve of the graph grows exponentially steeper – until that spike is
the Singularity – beyond the veil of the opaque wall – the unthinkable – the horizon
of the final dawn looms – lanced on the spear of the terrible angel.
 
 
After Rainer Maria Rilke. Duino Elegies
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .

 

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Next Arrival. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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                                         we invent them to serve us      controlling our existence 
                                                  to create virtual worlds with hells and heavens 
                                                                  myths domesticate science 

                                                     fiction and reality blur shaping our reality

                                      an assembly of biochemical algorithms flash fade flash fade 

                                                                                    spinning 

                                                   epidemic is business     economy grows
                                               human experience             as any other item 
                                          in the supermarket                  a designable product
                                   intelligence mandatory               consciousness optional 
                                                                  individuals = dividuals
                                                                      in carbon or silicon

                                                                    owned by imaginary gods
                                           who   what     you are    how to turn you    on and off
                                                                                beyond control
                                                                                       beyond
                                                                              the opaque wall
                                                                algorithms can command empire 
                                                           or an upper class ruling the planet
                                                     if words could make dreams come true
                                             a simultaneous instant in the brain of seven billion
                                        emerges the beautiful androgynous face of the serial killer

                                                                  wheat eater    bread winner 

                                                                          & the deluge of data

                                              millions of nano-robots coursing humankind's veins 
                                                                       an Orwellian police state 
                                                                                       splits into 
                                                                 the chosen hi-tech Noah’s Ark
                                                               a new religion information flow 

                                                                                      datism 

                                                                      to merge or not to merge 
                                                  the human genome as a digital processor 
                                                                    where overwhelming data 

                                                    garbles the message in dystopian double talk

                                                                    will the defeaters prevail 
                                                            or cometh utopia from outer space
                                                                 our post human descendants

                                                          do as you would be done by datism 
                                                 as we condemned the mammoth to oblivion 
                                                                          your every action 
                                 but where no human      can follow     or need to understand 
                                                  in the matrix    the inter net      of all things 

                                                                where has the power has gone
                                                             the cosmic data God draweth nigh 
                                                                               the great flow
                                             to maximise    to plug you in      voters of the world unite 
                                                             a colossus astride this narrow world 

                                                                                  free market 
                                                                                  big brother
                                                              watches over every breath you take
                                                              invisible hand that flies in the night

                                                                 between laboratory & museum
                                                                    voice of a million ancestors
                                                                a ripple in the cosmic data flow
                                                    shifts homo centric view       to data centric view 

                                                        knowing us better than we know ourselves

                                                                                            forager
                                                       scavenger of carrion       follower in fear & flight
                                                                                        big brained 
                                                               Neanderthal Denisovan Sapient 
                                                             what drove you for 2 million years 
                                                                                          a big bum? 

                                                                                        what bound 
                                                     small divergent groups of differing tongue & taboo
                                                                   into the framework of humankind
                                                                                         but fiction 
                                                                collective myths woven into our reality 
                                                                       from money to the nation state 
                                                                                      imprisoned 
                                                                                 by the archetypes 
                                   we've identified them with            a virtual reality of cartoon molecules

*


after Yuvah Noah Harari
Sapient & Homo Deus

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo  visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.  See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .





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