August 2019

VOL XXVII, Issue 8, Number 316

Editor: Klaus J. Gerken

European Editor: Mois Benarroch

Contributing Editor: Jack R. Wesdorp

Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena; Oswald Le Winter;

Heather Ferguson; Patrick White

ISSN 1480-6401

INTRDUCTION

Michael Augustin

CONTENTS

Michael R. Collings

Mois Benarroch

Clarissa Jakobsons

Jeff Bagato POST SCRIPTUM

Michael Augustin

Michael Augustin

This rubber-stamped print is called "Practicing M-Pathy". (June 30th, 2019).

Michael R. Collings

In Praise of Sesquipedalism

Apocalypse

Apocalypse: from Church Latin apocalypsis ‘revelation,’ from Greek apokalyptein

‘uncover, disclose, reveal,’ from apo- ‘from’ + kalyptein ‘to cover, conceal’ (from Proto-

Indo-European *kel- ‘to cover, conceal, save’).

In the moment of dank midnight’s choir,

When wind and wave and unseen spirits sing,

Time comes for the complete uncovering,

The quake, the flood, the cleansing heat of fire;

In a moment—to the stars—the pyre

That is all cosmos quick-contracts, stars fling

Themselves into a new-compacted ring

Drawn ever inward in a roiling gyre;

Until no light escapes the crushing weight

Compressing ALL into a figment crux,

A finite mass of all-consuming night—

An infinite moment…timeless aggregate…

Until within the endless stasis-flux…

A fractured breath…a universe ignites.

Defenestration

Defenestration: ‘The act of throwing out of a window,’ from Latin de- ‘out, away,’ + fenestr(a)

‘window’ (possibly from Greek phainein, ‘to show’ or from Etruscan, based on the suffix –stra)

+ ation, noun-forming suffix. The word was devised for a specific historical event: The

Defenestration of Prague. On May 21, 1618, two Catholic deputies and their secretary were

thrown out of a window in the Bohemian National Assembly chambers, landing unharmed in a

moat beneath the castle. The act is seen as the beginning of the devastating Thirty Years War,

waged largely between Catholic and Protestant European nations.

Four centuries ago this year,

The politicians rose;

Wearied by a war of words

They faced off with their foes.

The window, the window,

They threw them out the window;

Wearied by a war of words,

They threw them out the window.1

As one, they grabbed the Deputies,

Each well-known men of note;

And they, regardless of their pleas,

Were tossed into the moat.

The window, the window,

They threw them out the window;

1 A variant on the chorus of an old campfire song we sang when I was in the Boy Scouts.

All three, regardless of their pleas,

Were thrown right out the window.

The record states they were not harmed

By their precipitous fall—

But with the filth those moats contained,

They must have been appalled.

The window, the window,

They threw them out the window;

Into the filth the moat contained,

They threw them out the window.

For Thirty Years a war raged on

In nation after nation,

Triggered in an instant by

A brash defenestration.

The window, the window,

They threw them out the window;

War triggered in an instant when

They threw them out the window.

Equilibrium

Equilibrium: Latin aequilibrium, from aequilibris ‘being in equilibrium,’ from aequi- ‘level,

equal, equally’ + libra ‘weight, balance, plummet.’

Along this stretch of beach,

Beyond the rocky reach,

Cold sand divides its subharmonic tones

With spume-fed, salty stings

And stiffly rushing wings

Of gulls above the towering, white-streaked stones.

For the instant, all seems steady—

Wave and wind and shoreline balanced, poised, and ready.

Cold mist clouds the day,

The sky gun-metal gray

From surly land to distant, sterile sea.

Heavy, glinting swells

Curl their silvered shells—

Ponderous caves of living mercury.

From ebb to surge, the strand is strewn

With cutting remnants of the breasts of weathered dunes.

Beyond the cove, I cross

A point festooned with moss—

Wrinkled rock-face hung with shaggy green;

It floats like dead men’s hair

Within a monster’s lair,

On blunted bones surf-polished to a sheen.

The keening wind suspends the gulls

In tenuous static flight, broken by startling lulls.

Between the tide and rocks

A bleaching palm heart mocks

Stiff, naked bones with rigid salt-caked fronds.

It seems a whitened core—

A dying plesiosaur,

A Nessie trapped within its parching pond.

Desiccated, half-forgotten,

Expiring in the mercury sea, its center rotten.

This place seems toothless, old,

The air feels oddly cold.

I walk toward the final jutting spit.

For longer than I’d planned

I watch the roiling sand.

I stand and stare. And finally I sit.

My feet—now black with bits of tar—

Will stick to my shoes when I return to my waiting car.

Kinemortophobia

Kinemortophobia: from Greek kinē, kinēsis ‘motion’ + Latin mors, mortis ‘dead’ + phobia

‘fear’; literally ‘fear of the walking dead, fear of zombies.’

I savor lengthy Latin names

That cloak the fear beneath,

That hide some truly evil things

In a dazzling verbal sheath.

The words sound elegant, pristine,

Removed from guts and gore;

Tuxedo-clad, they mount façades

For linguists to explore.

But strip away these syllables,

The detachment that each feigns,

And they reveal vast zombie hordes

A-hungering for brains.

Lethologica

Lethologica: from Latin, from Greek Lēthē, from lēthē ‘forgetfulness’ + Greek log-, logos

‘word’ + -ica noun-forming suffix.

The word was here, just on the tip

Of tongue—a blip

Of thought, a touch

Of sense…not much;

It trembled, almost spilled, then stopped—

I paused…it dropped

Into my throat

And seemed to float

Half in, half out—I try again

To force my brain:

Produce the word!

No sound is heard.

Sanguivoriphobia

Sanguivoriphobia: from Latin sanguineus ‘of blood, bloody, bloodthirsty,’ from sanguis

‘blood’ + -vorous, from vorare ‘to devour’ + -phobia ‘fear of’; literally ‘fear of one who

devours blood, fear of vampires.’

The merest rustle in my ear—

A flick of black where night should be.

A dread of something ancient, sere.

A fragment blood-surge stilled, then free;

A slip of shade beside the moon.

My fear looms near…it’s taking me.

A flush of blood; a stuttered croon;

A sheen of fevered ice on brow;

I know he’s coming…coming…soon.

It is my choice—I can allow—

With just one word can summon sin…

A moment’s heat—a shattered vow.

A fluttered breath invites him in,

Grants willing leave, a savage prayer—

Need battles terror…need must win.

I turn my head, my smooth neck bare.

My bed is coffin, hope, and bier;

He covers me—voracious air:

It’s less than pain; a hiss, a fear;

A hunger sated; a crimson tear.

Tintinnabulation

Tintinnabulation: from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells”; from Latin tintinnabulum ‘tinkling bell,’ from tintinnare, reduplication of tinnire ‘to ring, tinkle, jingle’ + ation suffix denoting action

I hear the ringing and the swinging

Of pernicious bells,

The constant pinging and mad singing

Of familiar knells.

I hear the scrape, the unending jape

Of phantom calls and becks,

The mocking ape and aural rape

Of sounds tune-pitched to vex.

I would prefer the gentle purr

Of pulse-beats as I rest,

Without the whirr or scathing burr

Of my unwelcome guest.

But nerves once maimed cannot be blamed

For auditory hells;

Thus come, inflamed and unrestrained,

The ringing, swinging swells—

The swelling tintinnitus of the bells!

Yggdrasil

Yggdrasil: from Old Norse Yg(g)drasill, perhaps from Yggr ‘Odin, frightful’ + drasill ‘horse.’

World-ash...weaving wholeness

Root to trunk to rugged branch...

Niflheim to Jotunheim,

And both to Asgard’s doomed expanse.

Weaving Earth to Heaven to Hell

Beneath a baleful canopy,

Beneath a brow of knotted lace…

Twisted…tied…coherent tree.

Patterns trace a cosmic fire

Throbbing at the heart of all.

Cryptic crosswood…crypt of choice…

Upward brilliance...downward pall.

Branches densely plaiting, braiding,

Lateral…collateral….

Infinitely intertwining—

Heaven to Earth to patient Hell.

World-ash…world-betrayer,

Traitor road portending dread—

Route of Jotuns raging god-ward

To the Twilight of the Gods….

Mois Benarroch

from the book "Corner in Tetouan"

Translated from Spanish by J. P. Carrillo

ON RETURNING

I’ve reclaimed my tongue again

I’ve reclaimed my synagogues again

my rabbis and my poets

I’ve reclaimed my Hebrew again

and my Spanish

I’ve reclaimed my mounts again

and my mountains my cities

and my seas

I’ve reclaimed

my history again

and my health

my nails and my books

I’ve come back from the bottom of history

to tell you my story

I’ve come back after 600 years

I’ve come back

I’ve come back for you to see me and toss me

I’ve come back to pick up the gold

and all the silver

I’ve come back to see you and leave

finally leave by my own hands

I’ve come back

to see you reborn

after being bones without flesh

after you woke one day

without skin

while I remembered you

while your poets

sung poems

above my tomb

and the cellars of your inquisitions

searched me as far as Mexico, as far as Santiago

in Chile, as far as the jungle

and you reflected yourself in the gold

and you looked rich and beautiful

a hundred years of illusions of grandeur

believing that it was genius

having casted your Jews and your Moors

united and unique Spain

a hundred years blinded by new lands

staying alone, Oh Spain falling

while I remembered you

Tell me

Tell me Valencia, Tell me Cadiz

Tell me Guadalquivir, Tell me Guadalajara

Tell me Barcelona, and Tell me Lucena, Tell me

tell me Granada and tell me Jerez

Tell me Tolox and tell me Malaga

they are like wine drops

on my tongue dried by the desert

Tell me Badalona and tell me Salamanca

Tell me Vinaroz and tell me Algeciras

Tell me Ceuta and tell me Melilla

In all lands I remembered you

In Greece and in Turkey, in Morocco

and in Tunisia, in Germany and in

New York

And even in Jerusalem

I longed for you

While you

got rid of

disappeared from history

stuck in your inquisition, and your cellars

year after year century after century

without being able to admit to your fault

without noticing your mistake

lost for so long while I

carried you in my Heart

your map drawn in my kidneys

Like a wingless bird

on an elephant

visited your war cemeteries

of deaths, of accusations and curses

You thought you were killing me

and without noticing it you became

Europe’s cemetery

You thought you were convincing me

to be a good Christian

while you only exposed your lagoons

Your damned human god

your wrong faith

after having quoted financed your

reconquest

with jewish money

Your damned human god

and traitor

he never forgave you

even though we, your Jews,

were always willing to return, to forget.

Your damned human god

took you to hell, fault after fault

from curse to curse

from blood to blood

and today I tell you

I’ve come back to reclaim

all that is mine

I’ve come back to reclaim my tongue

and my keys and my suits

my footsteps my seas

my waves my beaches

my shadows my letters in the mud

my houses and my books

I’ve come back to reclaim everything

so that you will refuse me

I’ve come back to reclaim everything so that I

can continue to err

and remember

everything that you will never be able to

return.

NYC 26-4-1999

My Exile My House

1.

In my exile

the waves have no foam

the shore has no sand

In my exile

the hours have

a thousand minutes

In my exile

like an amputee

I scratch a finger

that doesn’t exist anymore

In my exile

trees have no roots

and every wind makes them fall

the houses have no roofs

the rain penetrates my skin

it rains over my Heart

over my stomach

over my kidneys

and over my intestines

In my exile

the sun burns

the degrees are big

like half moons

In my exile

my sons talk to me

in sacred tongues

that sound foreign

my wife asks me

if I want tea

if I want to go out

but the streets

become

every day more

flying salons

over tempestuous seas

In my exile

the more I am myself

the more foreign I am to others

the better I feel

the more foreign I look

In my exile

eyes look at me

they point at me

they write me

in their notebooks

poets

write about my poems

and they don’t understand what I talk about

In my exile

personal

imagined

and amputated

sacred and evil

the leaves

don’t fall in autumn

winder never ends

In my exile

I excise memories

to create them again

to be able

to make a road

a highway

in which the goal

elongates

each kilometer travelling

becomes two to arrive

It’s an exiled road

lost between two cities

that want but can’t

be lived in again.

2.

This house isn’t my

house, from my window I don’t

see the mountains that

incited me to grow up

I don’t see the headquarters

I don’t see the police

I don’t see Moors

I sometimes see the Arab

that escaped frightened

with his parents from this house

with all his eight years

today he’s fifty

his son is in jail

I sometimes see him in my dreams

I see him as a child and grown up

the day he escaped

leaving the bed still warm

the emptiness was filled

by a sephardic Jew

that lived in a cabin

near this house

and that came from Romania

after being expelled

from Granada,

It was winter and it was cold

afterwards he called his cousin

and told him to come over

the house was big

and he was afraid

of being alone

winter of 48

he was afraid that

the Arabs came back

and still today his wife

with her 90 years

howls

screams

scaring my children

and sometimes sings songs

in Ladino

that she can’t hear with any ear

and I escape from her when I see her

so that she won’t sing to me

Charles Aznavour songs

because my wife is French

The husband died five years ago

after a long Cancer

he worked all his life in a

tobacco store

they had a daughter that was very beautiful

and went mad, and the doctors,

to help her, in the madhouse,

filled her up with medicine

and died at forty years old

she also howled at night

like a steppenwolf,

and two other children

that live in New Jersey

two blocks from each other

but that never speak

they come to see their mother separately

and they do what they can

to take all the inheritance

the house is now worth half a million dollars

when the market rises

and because of all this I know that this house

isn’t my house

my house was built by

my grandpa, not with stones,

or with money, he built it

with love, thinking of my future

of a future in which me, his namesake,

would like in that same house

habitated today by Moors

that don’t understand its stones,

house in which I’m always

present

house where I don’t live in.

This house is not my house

I never hear anyone speaking Spanish

I breath, I eat, I sleep, I come and

I go, and my steps don’t leave

footprints, when I see myself in the mirror

I am never familiar to myself

I change my glasses every year

to see if something has changed

but I can’t change my eyes

I still am the same foreigner

lost in the labyrinth

and every time I try to leave

that I think I will leave

I find myself in another room

looking for a door

looking out of another window

with a landscape that

reminds me of nothing

that I saw or dreamt.

This house is not my house

unknown shepherds

call themselves my friends

and they never tell me

of their old wines

At dawn I hear roosters

howling like wolves

thunder sounding like shofars*

lightning wearing wedges

in this house my house

I go from one reality to another

as if it was a train

but I can’t find in any wagon

my brother with his blond hair

asking me to help him up

the stairs or down

in every wagon there’s an ancestor

that doesn’t want or doesn’t know how

to tell me where the conductor is

or where the sea is

or where the boat is

that would take me to my sea.

In this house

newlywed newly caused

newly shoed newly tired

never returns my change

when I insert my bills

the phone never rings in it

to announce the change

the bell never rings

that will take me to the door

the doorbell never rings

of that expected woman

this house my house

is a never ending prayer

the words repeat themselves

and the end of the book is the beginning

the story tells itself again

through the talking walls

walls that are children of the world

out of houses in the middle of a story

to arrive to other houses from which

other children were expelled.

Each stone is a Heart

that beated that fought

but lost the battle

when I least remembered

each layer of paint

eliminating a memory

a scribble made by a child

that discovered the pencil for the first time

his mother scolding him and him

not understanding that these walls

so safe, so warm

would suddenly disappear one day

of this house my house

each chair a fall

each table an earthquake

each glass is blood

each plate a promise

unfulfilled

each door an abyss

each handle a hand

amputated.

3.

In my exile

with my tunic

my machine guns

my fortunes

my guns

my denials

my abstractions

my memories

my forgetnesses

a thousand memories

a thousand names

a thousand consolations

a thousand scoldings

a thousand years

in my exile

suitcases filled with toys

suitcases with broken handles

in my exile

hands extended towards me

to suddenly disappear

unworn shoes

of untrodden feet

in my exile

alien

in my exile

full of airplanes

of boats

of roads

full

of anchored roads

in disappeared houses

in my exile

praying and in every poem

finding

another house and another exile

another caress

frozen out of a sudden

my exile

is a memory

a thousand times erased

inflated bloated

exploded destroyed

and a thousand times

it comes to float again

from the bottom of the sea.

4.

I am the idiot

that wanted to come back

using the footprints

left in the mud

the rains passed and

now I look

at the sand

like a madman

talking of a golden horse

I look at my eyes

crying like a virgin widower

an hour before dying

because her husband

died two hours after the wedding

when I was a child

I looked at the license plates of cars

I subtracted or added the numbers

to make them palindromic numbers

it seemed to me an unavoidable act

I always tried

to come back using the same road

from where I had come

the world depended of my footsteps

teenager looked at the girls

like roads

with no return

their caves frightened me

the feared

my immediate intensity.

Yes

I came back

in a plane

but it had little sense

not coming back using the same

road

yes

I came back

and I saw some of the footprints

in the sea between the shores

of lost adolescence

the footprints formed

a brontosaurus

the archeologists

couldn’t imagine

that they were mine

I came back

Yes

and my love was there

looking for my footprints

leaving theirs

without being able to come back to mine

this woman that always follows me

that is my shadow

always a street away from me

Yes

I came back

and yes

it was my house

they were my footsteps

it was me

only the skies

had changed

the dawns

had wrinkled

The dawn

looked like my father

and the sun rising

had the eyes of my brother

dead at the end of the road

forever coming back

to the beginning.

Speak to me

please

I asked my father

convince me

please

brother

tell me

that the footsteps

that I am leaving

were my words

that the shadow of my poems

makes sense.

5.

In my exile

I can’t dress my words

language makes no sense

has no direction

I send letters that don’t arrive

to lovers that don’t know me

In my exile

loose words sound

big words said a thousand times

joyous words

caressing my hearts

but no one understands them

They are like a film

with no sound

like a photo without flash

like a deserted city

like the new shoes

of a dead man

The words

that speak to me

don’t speak to the rest

the words that chase me

surrender without a fight

without trying to impose themselves

over the words of others

I am scared

and I escape

I’m not hungry

and I eat

I’m not tired

and I sleep

and in my dreams

I laugh out loud

until my wife

wakes up

in them

I see other possible lives

but not lived

other Riojan lives

full of laughter

that are a river

that doesn’t go to the sea

and it’s the sea

Oh love

it’s the sea

that gives me air.

Clarissa Jakobsons

Ode to an Evergreen

Our white canvas lawn has melted,

green grass attempts to surge

past Edvard Munch’s gray painted skies

oppressing political shouts—

democracy dangles at the end of a tightrope.

Outside, the evergreen stands

tall inching toward unknowns. Once

we dug its roots on a Mantua farm,

strung white lights to a glorious

Christmas morn in our living room.

Pine permeated the walls of this house.

Today its majesty hovers--

100-foot branches tip toward unknowns

collecting past celebrations

when my daughters, Lara and Marielle,

crawled on the carpet searching for toys.

I remember it well.

A Wedding Song

The soul: a widening sky

with thousands of candles—Rumi

Love is a tree whose branches reach into eternity,

firm roots set deep within earth. Spring hums,

birds flit in the rose garden. Listen to the music

whispering winter is gone. Daffodils and sage cannot

control their laughter—the nightingale returns

to sing as master of all birds. The feast is set,

wind pours our wine. We gather to celebrate

the union of love, the bond transforms hardship

into luck. This wedding is a braiding, joining two

into one like the sun breaking clear over a cold lake.

Untangle the old knots someone else tied for you.

Tie this new one together, today. Enter this marriage

as if you are crossing the Alps and going home.

Pledge truth. Find a failing, it is a sweet door

that opens a garden. Make a bonfire, be warmed,

burn old and new found stupidities. Padlock

your initials to a bridge, toss keys into a rapid

river. Push back darkness. Sing honey and salt

to the source of bread and life. It is all God’s work,

the miracle of bread and the play of rainbows.

We assemble to bless this union, Daniel and Lara.

May you braid spring blossoms throughout summer

and fall. Plant your orchard, prepare winter’s harvest,

and delight with years of prosperity. Let us dance

under the galaxy of Venus and Mars and toast

champagne throughout the night.

April 20, 2014

Lara Jakobsons and Daniel Elsdijck

According to the Roman Gods

At the brink of devastation

Diana proclaims hope,

the last gift for human-kind.

I sip a glass of Pinot Grigio

and hope for the best,

may the gods watch and listen.

Janus, god of the past

and future, reveal your plans.

Knees genuflect, I tremble.

Jeff Bagato

The Silver Tree in the Black Castle

To rebuild a pleasure dome,

take the bricks from old

temples and the palaces

of forgotten

warlords

A conference of stone

turtles meets on the plains, long

memories of war

spoken in the wind

To a horseman, a city

simply serves

as prison to his dreams,

and no silver tree

can replace the wealth of stars

in a night sky over

an open run

Capital Ruins

I. Ramparts

dressed

rock surrounds

tired peasant minds

II. Temple

golden

decorations conceal

empire’s false vault

III. Tomb

naked

light runs

across the door

Early Observatory

Stars call out

in the language of light:

these letters, these glyphs—

if only we could

connect the dots

A mirror faces the moon,

reflecting harsh craters,

the ruins of a stadium

where charioteers

and gladiators still

go to die

Water ice crouches

in dust, like fine jewels

set in a necklace dried out long ago—

precious blood

of a heart

that no longer beats

The broken dome still

marks the solstice,

though no eyes remain

to record the facts

Erasing the Temple

Before memory,

the Annunaki brought wheat down

from the sacred mountain,

leading sacrificial lambs—

thus inventing

the diet, fashion, monuments,

and myths

of civilization

They left behind

standing stones at the temple

edge, cut with predator

icons—a code

of death programmed

on the platforms

that held up bodies

to the birds

These totems

lost their voices,

perhaps through overuse, or perhaps

each sign stood

for a magic phrase,

encrypted

and the key forgotten

With the old ones dead,

the bereaved filled their

shrines with flints,

rubble and bones

left from the sky burials

of too many generations

passed with the same

gods

l

Michael Augustin

"And Suddenly There Was Poetry". (June 30th, 2019). ,

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