THE CREW

Editor in Chief

Editor/Design Aaron Rosenberg

Ian Adams

Commander Illustrator

Master Illustrator

Head Photographer

Lawrence Alfred

Mauricio Bustamante

Frankie Concha

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Press Relations Jazmin Lucero.........................................................................................

Interim Photographer Vivian Ortega.........................................................................

Interim Photographer Eian Siddiqui.......................................................................

Editor Jason Khieu..................................................................................................................

Esquire Illustrator Julia Izquierdo..............................................................................

TABLE CONTENTSOF

Writer’s Block - Jade Sterling Simon

The Story of a Musician - Gregory Poblete

The Story of Some Teenagers - Gregory Poblete

Time against Romanticism- Oscar Valle

Five Pythons Loose in a Theater - Dani Sami

Poetry - Hugo Ace

Poetry - Gill Hill

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10

12

15

28

35

38

Poetry - Nicholas Vasquez 42

The Age of Video Games - Christian Concha 24

Is it hard to find the time?If you are of the regular Modern Corsair audience and or subscribers, welcome to another issue. But before the time stream flows us onwards we need to talk.

No, you did nothing wrong. (Except tampering in your own past just to keep that trinket) We want you to know that we are looking to bring on a new bunch of writers into the bright future of the Corsair. Now, if you’re a creative sort you may be wondering what took us so long to invite you. Sorry about that. It was disrupted by anachronistic Huns. We though we mentioned it at the christening of the nineteenth emperor of New England. Regardless we want you. We want submissions from you. And here’s how this can work: do you write fiction, po-etry, essays, non-fiction, reviews, or have you ever in general organized words so that on lookers might drive meaning from these shapes? If so you can submit

work to: themoderncorsair@gmail.com

and we’ll get back to you about if and when you can expect to see your labor in are magazine. You can also feel free to send us comments or questions any time. Just put what you’re submitting in the ‘subject’ line of the e-mail. You can also contact or keep up with Modern Corsair goodies on are Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter accounts. We’ll be posing the next month’s themes and deadlines along

with prompts. We hope to hear from a lot of you.

Allons-y!

You may now continue with the normal entertainment.

Hey Short-Timer, yes you!

WRITER’S BLOCKJade Sterling Simon

I should have known this would happen. It happened every time our publisher set guidelines for a new story. All production comes to a grinding halt. “Alright,” I started, “so for the new book in The Forest Folk series, I was think-ing there should be a love triangle between Rahva, Velocity and Half-tail. I think that would create some conflict as the pack fights to maintain their hold on Minx’s territory.” Arthur was silent for a moment as he pondered my idea. When he finally broke the silence his eyes were alive with a glint of wicked delight. “Yeah, that’s good. And then Rahva and Velocity kill each other in a fight to the death for Half-tail’s affection. Little do they know Half-tail wants neither of them and is really interested in his rival pack leader Minx, who is insulted by this desires and kills him as well.” I was shaking my head before he even finished. “Arthur, that kills off all the main characters. Our publisher wants−“ “To hell with what the publisher wants!” His voice had always been gruff and intimidating and having lived with the man since childhood I was accustomed to the harshness of his tone, but every now and then his outburst would catch me off guard and make my heart jump rope with my stomach. “I’m not writing one damn word. Why in hell do they insist on making chang-es and more importantly, why are you putting up with it? You know as well as I do that ‘guidelines’ are just a fancy word for restrictions”. I sighed in frustration. He was right, of course. It was our story so you’d think we’d have the right to write it however we see fit. But when you’re a writer working through a publisher that’s will-ing to publish your work without some kind of upfront fee it’s in your best interest to follow their guidelines. From a cynical perspective it was similar to being in a cage, the best way to get what you need is to follow the rules whoever has the key. Arthur knew about cages, and hated them. I was about eight years old when he broke free of his. He was tired of watching me get hurt and once I was safe, he stuck around. As we spent more time together he told me stories. Some were to help me sleep and others were for simple amusement. I was so taken with his tales I picked up a pen-cil one day and began casting his whispered words within my school notebooks. He awakened my passion for writing.

By the time I was in college many of the stories had received substantial re-views in local papers and magazines. And although my grandparents supported my craft they were concerned that Arthur might be having a dark influence on my writing. And while it was true that whenever Arthur had a hand in the writing pro-cess the plot more often than not took a dark turn, it always felt real to me, more… human. My grandparents on the other hand felt the two of us spent too much time together and thought it would do m-- us some good to separate. So they signed us up for counseling sessions, thinking it might make the process easier somehow. It did not, because to Arthur, they were just trying to put him back into the cage.During our meetings, Dr. Holtz attempted to convince me I no longer needed Ar-thur and that it was time for me to let him go. I remember looking at him question-

ingly and saying, “You speak as if Arthur is something I conjured up one night after a really bad dream.” Dr. Holtz stared at me over the rim his glasses and asked in what I believed to be a sarcastic tone “Isn’t that the way it usually starts, Rena?” I didn’t appreciate what he was suggesting. It was thanks to Arthur that my life had improved as much as it had. It was his ideas that gave me the material needed to write an essay worthy of a full ride scholarship to Berkley State University. The doctor leaned forward in his chair, adjusting his eye wear. “Where is Arthur by the way?” “He’s not coming,” I said nonchalantly. “This is the third session he’s missed this month. You know, it’s very difficult to make progress without the both of you being present,” he sighed and scribbled something onto his clipboard. I shrugged and said, “He says he’s tired of talking to you. You give him headaches and make difficult for him to write. He says all his best ideas manifest on the days he doesn’t see you.”If the doctor was offended by my statement, he didn’t show it. He simply looked up from his clipboard with a cocked eyebrow and said, “Hold on, I thought you were the writer of the two.” I shrugged again and replied, “It’s a team effort. But most of the creativity comes from him. I just put it on paper.” “But you’re the only one credited as the author.” “Arthur doesn’t really like the spotlight. He prefers to stay ‘behind the scenes’. As long as his work gets published he’s content. So, I take the public credit.” “I thought you were the shy one?” “And you wonder why Arthur doesn’t like coming here; you don’t seem to listen very well. I don’t like confrontation. He helps me in those situations. Arthur is fearless. He’s the most intimidating person I know. It’s not that he fears public situa-tions, he’s just doesn’t like crowds, which is exactly what you find at public readings. Crowds make him anxious and when he’s anxious he is liable to hurt somebody. Thus, I handle situations of that nature. Our relationship may seem... complex, but have no doubt that it’s necessary. My grandparents mean well but they do not understand, and neither do you doctor. For all your knowledge you could not begin to fathom the workings of my mind, let alone Arthur’s. That being said, I’m inclined to inform you that this will be our last secession. It’s been... interesting, but it doesn’t sit right with me allowing my grandparents spend their retirement funds on a prob-lem you can’t comprehend and need not fix.” As I grabbed my purse and started for the door Dr. Holtz called after me with a

question, “Is... there more to this relationship than you’re telling me, Rena? I mean... is there something I’ve overlooked in this story?” I smiled knowingly as I turned back to address him. “You mean are we in love with one another? I suppose that would make it easi-er to understand why we refuse to part ways despite the concern it seems to be caus-ing everybody else. But that’s just it, isn’t it? It’s everybody else who seems perplexed or uneasy about our union. Arthur and I are not uneasy, we are not confused, and while we are closer than most could ever hope to understand, no, we are not in love. We are simply two people playing necessary roles in each other’s lives.” With those final words I exited his office for the last time. Although the desire to save my grandparents’ retirement money did influence my decision to end our meetings with the doctor, it was Arthur who made the initial call to end what he classified as an invasion of our lives. I also stopped mentioning Arthur to my grandparents so they wouldn’t get any more ideas. To enforce this further, Arthur stopped coming around when I was in their presence. He even at-tempted to come up with lighthearted stories so they wouldn’t suspect we still col-laborated, although those stories were never as good as the ones he wrote naturally. However, since my grandparents stopped hearing about Arthur they accepted the darker plots as just another part of my personality. Three years and two successfully published novels later, here I am telling Ar-thur once again that sometimes to get things done you have to follow someone else’s rules. “Trust me, of I can put up with it, so can you,” I told him. He turns back to the laptop in a huff drumming his fingers upon the keys with a snort. “Course you can put up with. You don’t seem to mind publishers dictating our every move.” “I wasn’t talking about the publisher,” I retorted swiftly and regretted the words even swifter. If it were possible, Arthur’s neck should’ve snapped considering the force he used to send a glare my direction. “And just what are you implying?” I gave another sigh. If I couldn’t get past his stubbornness we’d never get this story done in time. “Hey,” a voice called from outside my study. The owner of the voice, my fiancé, entered surveying the room. “How’s it comin’?” “Not great, got writer’s block again. My publisher doesn’t want me killing off too many major characters, so I have to scrap my original idea and come up with a new one.”

“Well I know you’ll come up with something, you always do. But it’s getting late so why don’t you get some sleep. You’ll be able to think better in the morning.” “Alright, I’ll be up soon, I just need to save what I have on my laptop.” “Sure thing,” he turned to exit but stopped suddenly and rotated back to me. “Uh... Honey, were you talking to someone before I came in here?” I broke into a confused smile, “Of course not baby, the only person in the room is me.” He chuckles with embarrassment, unconsciously massaging the back of his neck. “Yeah, crazy I know. Guess it’s late for me too, huh?” “Go on upstairs, Hun. I’ll be up shortly,” I told him. He gave nod accompanied with a sheepish smile and left the room. I started to shut down the computer, then thought better of it and left it run-ning on the desk. Just in case one of us got some inspiration in the middle of the night.

To the reader who wanted me to review more recent films, this one is for you. I won’t promise the theme of this issue ties perfectly into this film but just like all of my essays I have ever turned into any English class, it will most likely be BS. The movie I watched has a pretty dull title, Begin Again. Begin Again stars Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers, Now You See Me) as a washed up record label executive in New York who has failed to sign an artist in seven years claiming that everyone he has listened to hasn’t had the right sound he is looking for, that is, until he discovers Gretta’s music. The movie begins with Keira Knightley’s char-acter, Gretta being forced to play one of her songs at an open-mic at a bar to a very passive audience except one individual who we later find out is Mark Ruffalo’s character, Dan. After the performance, the film plays a flashback sequence showing the terrible day that Dan has had because he just lost his job at the record company. When Dan finally catches up to where the story left off at the bar, we then get to see Gretta’s back-story and see how she got to playing at an open-mic at a random bar in New York. Gretta’s story goes back a little further than Dan’s and shows her and her boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) moving to New York because of Dave’s new record deal. With Gret-ta and Dave both being musicians, one would assume that this relationship is a matched made in heaven, but things begin to get shaky when Dave hippie voice stops doing it for the music, man. Gretta eventually discovers that Dave has been cheating on her with an-other girl from the record label and breaks up with him. Now that both characters’ back-stories are finished being told, Dan and Gretta fi-nally meet and Dan proposes that he signs her to his record label. Gretta declines at first, but she gives it a second thought and decides to go for it. Not technically working for the record label anymore, Dan goes to the company and asks the head of the company if he

THE STORY OF A MUSICIAN

Gregory Poblete

MOVIE REVIEW: BEGIN AGAIN

can make an impressive demo album for Gretta, then she can get a record deal and he can get his job back. So the majority of the film is Gretta and Dan trying to prove to all the naysayers that they can record an amazing album in the streets of New York. This is where the title of the film comes into play. Dan is getting a second chance or a second time to find a new musical hit and prove to the record company that he isn’t just

some washed up executive with a one hit wonder under his belt. Gretta on the other hand is getting a second chance at being able to actually be in the spotlight rather than be in the shadows of her famous musi-cian boyfriend. She has a clean slate to start out with and essentially has another opportunity to begin again. Get it?

So, for the most part, I loved this movie. Begin Again is filled with a ton of really great original songs written specif-ically for the movie performed by Keira Knightley, Adam Levine and also Cee-Lo Green. The story was mildly cheesey but not a full wheel of cheese. Probably just a few slices. Adam Levine did a great job in his acting debut playing a douchey musician who stops caring about the meaning of the music and starts doing it for the fame, but it’s totally okay because the songs that Adam Levine sang for the movie are totally dope. If you haven’t found your summer jam yet, I definitely recommend “No One Else Like You.” Even though he didn’t sing at all, Mark Ruffalo did a wonderful job in this movie as well. The only person that I had a slight Ariana Grande’s “Problem” with was Keira Knightley. I’m not saying the Kei-ra Knightley can’t sing, it is just that her singing voice does not match her face at all. For example, if you had no idea that Zooey Deschanel sang in a band, but you heard a song by them on the radio, you would probably be able to recognize that the girl singing is in fact, Zooey Deschanel. However, Keira Knightley does that thing in this movie where British people sing without an accent and it totally threw me off. Again, she sang great, it’s just her voice was not what I was imagining. But other than that, this movie was very enjoyable and had all around good vibes. I will give Begin Again 3.5 Cee-Lo Greens out of 5. Just be warned, you will get “Lost Stars” stuck in your head after watching this movie.

So far, all the reviews that I have written have been about the most obscure movies hidden in the weird part of Netflix and I’m always surprised when these movies are ac-tually good. However, this review is about a series that I genuinely enjoy entitled Bravest Warriors. Bravest Warriors is a series creat-ed by the mastermind behind the television show, Adventure Time, Pendleton Ward. The series follows four teenagers living in the year 3085 that consistently save little, tiny aliens from the evils of the universe. It wouldn’t be an Adventure Time-isque show without having some emotional drama, which actually holds a very important role in the show. In Bravest Warriors, there are these people called “emotion lords” who can basically defy what is naturally possible in the universe by using their emotions as powers to see into the future, hop through different timelines, and even make themselves turn into a pizza if they really wanted. Emotion lords can basically do anything. Although, things get a little tricky when it comes the topic of love. But first let me introduce to you some of the characters in Bravest Warriors. The four main teenagers are Chris, Beth, Danny, and Wallow. Chris is the main guy who obviously has a crush on his longtime friend, Beth, but he tries to hide any

feelings towards her because he is scared that he will ruin the friendship that they have. Even-tually we find out that Chris becomes an old Emotion Lord who enjoys pranking his young-er self and driving himself crazy.

Beth is basically the girl of the group. That’s it. Feminism. Dan-ny is the cool guy of the group but he has a little bit of a temper

THE STORY OF SOME TEENAGERS

Gregory Poblete

TV SHOW REVIEW: BRAVEST WARRIORS

issue from time to time. And finally, Wallow is the big, beloved black guy of the group who is a sweetheart and enjoys hanging out with adorable creatures such as Catbug and Impossibear. If I could only give one reason to watch the Bravest Warriors, it would be because of Catbug. Oh. My. God. Catbug is the most adorable character to ever exist. There is no one else that can compare to how adorable this little thing is. I am telling you,

there is no Pokémon, no Disney pet, no Minion that can even come close Catbug’s adorableness. If you disagree with me then you can make like a tree and stop reading this article because trees can’t read. Alright, back to the love thing. If you follow Adventure Time, then you may know that Finn the Human doesn’t have the best of luck when it comes to the dating scene. I mean, he is only 15 years old and is already trying to find true love. When I was 15, I was too busy discovering the Internet and trying to keep my MySpace game on

point. Chris has the same thing going on with his feelings for Beth but it’s a little different because he is a few years older than Finn. I’m not saying that there is an age limit when you are allowed to actually fall in love but when you’re older you begin to understand the world a little bit more. What does all this have to do about time? Not only is Bravest Warriors set in the future, but also the idea of time is something that is precious to Chris. Chris and Beth grew up together and have had many awesome memories together and at-tempting to make their friendship anything more

than what it is might taint their relationship forever and Chris does not want that to happen. Chris values the time he does have with Beth and understands that it should not be taken for granted. So, if you are a college-educated student who still watches cartoons on a dai-ly basis, then you will absolutely love Bravest Warriors. Bravest Warriors has the perfect combination of humor, drama, and heart blended into a visually appetizing smoothie of colors and shapes. Your first instinct when watching this series is to compare it to Adventure Time, which is totally fine, but you will notice that Bravest Warriors is geared toward a more mature audience. Not as a mature audience such as South Park but more like The Simpsons. You can still watch it with your little cousin who loves Adventure Time, but they might drop a few “asses” here and there. With that being said, I am just going to have to pull an Anthony Fantano reviewing a Death Grips album and give Bravest Warriors five sticker pets out of five. Probably the best thing about Bravest Warriors is that the entire series is available to watch entirely for free on Cartoon Hangover’s Youtube channel. So if you have an hour to kill, you can watch the entire first season no biggie.

TIME AGAINST ROMANTICISMOscar Valle

‘What a joke?’ What a joke to think that Wordsworth words were not full of apprehension within the dilemma of time. He wrote completely of a time remembered, in the matter of sets of images that were produced by the per-spective on nature. While William Blake was able to exaggerate the process of nature under the matter that was there changing before the minuscule and the absolute.—But this is beginning to sound like a paper, that will be dealing with the works of two great English writers or poets, and that is not my purpose; my intention is to interpolate from the English literary tradition, an ideal “network”, that was serving an under-standing of the phenomenal percept, in truth, on nature: “To her fair works did Nature link/The human soul that through me ran;” (Wordsworth, An-thology of Poetry) To then placing the post-modern novel written by Ara-vind Adiga, White Tiger, side to side. For by placing the texts side to side, what becomes apparent is the meaning of the English tradition itself and the loss of the romantic as time has passed in between them. What has become the truth of nature has come by way of sculpting away at the ideal of nature, creat-ed by a limit explored by Wordsworth, down to the absence of the ideal by this very process of de-absolutization in time. In Wordsworth’s Lines Written in Early Spring (1798), Wordsworth writes, “If this belief from heaven be sent, /If such be Nature’s holy plan, /Have I not reason to lament/What man has made of man?” (Wordsworth, Anthology of Poetry) Wordsworth in this poem gives ‘Nature’ a mega-soul. The birds around him that are making him joyful have thoughts, and the flowers around him act

to him as if they were there for him or for-us. He has a feeling of shame towards man because his pity has him sad from the fact that man has not made man in the image of Nature. Perhaps he thought man was so ugly that he blamed the parents for having produced his ugly generation. But that is most likely not the case. If the text is read symptomatically, we get to interpret Wordsworth words as a believer in the transcendental given in Nature. (That is the reason why he gives nature a capital ‘N’). It is not solely what has been given ‘to-us’ that man does not take as a principle for his fellow man, the problem lies in that for this sort of idealism, Wordsworth exaggerates nature to the point of making na-ture a moral entity. The factual experience that Wordsworth is going through is based off the ‘Human soul’ that through him ran; and what exactly is the Hu-man soul? Why is it that it was not already given to him? How did it decide to run through him? Wordsworth did carry a few lines within his thought from Milton. That is, he retained a value of belief in Milton’s thought. Milton owed most of his thought to the Christian Tradition, and did not obscure from the loss of origin. Here the very idea of an a priori disposed humanity to an all-around perfect origin is mythological at the wrong time. For example, in dealing with his dis-course on Milton’s political thought, Benjamin Myers writes: “I say that Milton’s account should relativize heresy—but it is important to ask whether Milton in fact achieves the degree of religious relativization that he is pursuing. If the underlying basis of a free society is the practice of individual religious choice, what then becomes of those who refuse to engage in this practice? What be-comes of Roman Catholics, who simply refuse to become heretics in Milton’s (positive) sense—that is, they refuse to make the individual conscience the locus of religious authority? In Milton’s conception of English society, such per-sons are clearly excluded: their refusal of individualistic choice is tantamount to a repudiation of the entire social order, so that the possibility of their toleration by the state cannot even be entertained. In other words, Milton’s relativization of heresy, if carried out as a social program, would lead to precisely the same impasse as Locke’s theory of toleration: the practice of subjective Protestant piety gives rise to the right to toleration, but the resulting construction neces-sarily excludes those who do not practice such piety, or who practice the wrong kind. For all its uniqueness, then, Milton’s reinvention of heresy finally leads to the same place as the Lockean theory. Although Milton’s conception [End Page 390] of society is much more radical and fissiparous than Locke’s, Milton still

supplies the political architecture for his own radicalized ideal of a Protestant confessional state.” (Myers) The beginning of Milton’s Paradise Lost begins as follows:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the FruitOf that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast

Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,With loss of Eden, till one greater ManRestore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret topOf Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth

Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d

Fast by the Oracle of God; I thenceInvoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,

That with no middle flight intends to soarAbove th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.(Milton)

We should ask Milton, what is man’s necessary obedience? Not only to ask him that but to grab him and invite him to a party with the Ancient Greeks and Homer. Without the existence of that forbidden tree, the possibility of re-sponsibility is unthinkable to Adam and Eve, while Eve’s decision enhances the development of the meaning on fate, she is the proper model of the difference between ‘Reason’ and ‘the Necessity of Contingency’ (63 Meillassoux). The quoting on Milton may have nothing to do with Wordsworth politics,

but to narrow their points of connection, we must look at the influence between both of their thought. It is said by Mathew Arnold that the shifting of our world comes between Hebraism and Hellenism and in 18th century England there was a scrambling of values – and this did not exclude Wordsworth -: “Puritan-ism, which has been so great a power in the English nation, and in the strongest part of the English nation, was originally the reaction, in the seventeenth centu-ry, of the conscience and moral sense of our race, against the moral indifference and lax rule of conduct which in the sixteenth century came in with the Rena-scence. It was a reaction of Hebraism against Hellenism; and it powerfully man-ifested itself, as was natural, in a people with much of what we call a Hebraising turn, with a signal affinity for the bent which was the master-bent of Hebrew life.” (Arnold) Arnold, English writer as well, came after Wordsworth and was considered a Victorian. Matthew Arnold agreed, that Wordsworth was limited by the knowledge he was disposed to, and Wordsworth had plenty to say on feelings. If this is so, the origin dreamt of by Milton passed down to the roman-tics was a violent reach. The English around this time were going through rev-olutionary times, and hard times during Wordsworth’s time. It may not be far from the symptom of the texts. And this is a borderline of disbelief: knowledge was beginning to gain a different value by the sciences. It has had no restraints on its devolution in truth, thus a new origin must have been sought at the cost (Satan as the protagonist) of prior origins in the world. So, what happens when there is no sense of belief in the non-colloqui-al sense? Belief as the possibility of knowledge from principle and, or, fact in thought. Loss of belief in fiction is crucial and that is what Wordsworth feared, but he did not place himself as the ‘creator of all the world’ in reaction to this effect like Milton did. Lucy is Wordsworth anti-muse do to what was men-tioned in the last paragraph. Wordsworth did not take on the Greek gods and there influence, and for that reason he introduces to the English tradition a Hebraic structure. “Among the mountains did I feel/The joy of my desire; /And she I cherish’d turn’d her wheel/Beside an English fire.” (Wordsworth Bartleby) : and alongside this line we can put another line on Lucy to show the influence of a transcendental value of nature without the specificity of Wordsworths thought placed on the knowledge of the Christian tradition – for after all, his truths were contesting were in an attempt to transvaluate those Christian mor-als that were limiting the world -: “Thus Nature spake -- The work was done --/How soon my Lucy’s race was run!/She died, and left to me/This heath, this

calm and quiet scene;/The memory of what has been,/And never more will be.” (Word-sworth Bartleby) Wordsworth takes his fixity at the authority in the voice of Nature when talking about creating Lucy out of his body. So Lucy is an ‘X’: with no reason at all for her existence. The unknown (Lucy) incapable of surviving the total force of Nature. Here what must be caught between his Lucy poems is the typology of play in omnipotence; what Word-sworth means to omnipotence. And therefore the originality of the English belief must be introduced to the tradition, and tradition in the strict sense of the term. Play is not pos-sible without belief…especially when in the creation of a true value in nature by natural perception, by the senses. Wordsworth’s prob-lem becomes a question: when is responsibili-

ty a value after play? A clear transition can be made by Adiga’s White Tiger and a movement from the limited truth in the idealism produced in Wordsworth’s romanticism. The main character, Balram, is a victim of a world without the possibility of belief – again, in the non-religious sense of belief. Balram is a thinker, who is, limited by the law and the structure that he calls “Rooster Coop”. He describes the Coop as being“ Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench—the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coat-ing of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they’re next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.” (109 Adiga) and that “… the pride and glory of our nation, the repository of all our love and sacrifice, the subject of no doubt considerable space in the pamphlet that the prime min-ister will hand over to you, the Indian family, is the reason we are trapped and

tied to the coop.” (110 Adiga) Not to mention, his speech on the Rooster Coop came after a reaction (on the body). His dignity had arisen by the circumstance placed on him by his masters, and was given the blame for the death of a child on the road: his truth was based off his suffering, his belief in that India func-tions in a specific way comes from his belief in his name ‘White Tiger’, and his interpolation within capitalist grounds—or, in the fucking joke, “the world’s greatest democracy” (107 Adiga). Belief here takes the same route it did for Wordsworth—except that for Wordsworth, he actually was aware of the access to the belief in the imagination, and Balram’s imagination cannot be other than to be plastered by the necessary condition of reality. The abstract within India, is in the favor of the rich; but not for Balram the child, or the White Tiger who, takes on a metaphoric name that serves his abstract identity, because the con-ditions in the structure of (con-crete) nature maintain the truth on the play of reactive forces within this specific context in India. We could say that belief relayed an identity unknown to Balram. And right now I can quickly relay a few metaphors, traditional ones to be exact…such as, the constant use of the term “wind” in Mexican lyrics (in general), and running down the phantom pipelines of history through the Aztec and Mayan texts in particular. In the mariachi tradition, we may listen to the meaning of the word, as a debasement on an original home. By conse-quence of the modification and reattachment, the listener begins to listen to the cries of a man who has been abandoned by his lover; or in other cases, the cry is of a nostalgic ambivalence, a constant torture, which pervades within the rush of blank time. These music lyrics are usually heard in the mariachi, but also ‘rancheras’ and contemporary folk. The so called ‘tradition’ – which means that under time as flux, necessity has demanded from artists, tacticians and think-ers, a production of forceful structures which are only called structures because

of their reproducibility for thought (whether it is accessible to all or not, that is another question) but I still maintain that what I mean by necessity is not ex corpus, the living-present creates the possibility from that ‘will to power’ itself, whether it be a fiction or not: interpreted through a constancy in genealogi-cal fashion, a history has a fundamental factor of speed, under what French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux in his essay titled Subtraction and Contrac-tion: Deleuze, Immanence, and Matter and Memory, called ‘concrete scale of temporalities’. In his own words he describes this concept as humans living “at one scale of matter – immensely vaster than that of the atom, and immensely less vast than that of galaxies. We thus occupy a scale of durations, a partic-ular rhythm of the current time, which renders us unconscious of all events below two millionths of a second, whereas such duration is sufficient for lumi-nous matter to produce millions of vibrations, that is to say millions of distinct events.” (80 Meillassoux) So speed and the concept constructed by the factor of an ontological variance under the name of the ‘idea’, and under the context of a variance in forms in finitude. An instance of value tied to ‘velocity’ is that of the problem of technology, and the Lamarckian survivial of techniques, or cultural inheritance --not genetically transferred as the man thought (117 Beeckman). To clear what may seem obscure, the word in use “structure” is of a irreducible name/concept. By this declaration, it can be intended to make clear why there is a “cor-relation” between what is called tradition, and culture as such. – A repetition which has taken shape at least for the Mexican subject – from the figure of To-piltzin-Quetzalcoatl. But we will not do that here. Another metaphor, or here a literal one, is that of the mask, special to

the Mexicans production-out-of-necessity (from out of the incapacity of our organs)—its ‘will to power’, that produced its truth by the technology - (perhaps, anthropology has a say on what role ‘animals’ as a technics, had in their civilization) – involved in the perfection of a political trickery in play. This exhaust-ed form, has deflated to the point where it works as a perfected cynicism, the one familiar to the White Ti-ger. So the difference between Castilian Spanish, and Mexican Spanish, derives from this fold; its variance acts in front of the face…the closer the “dance is per-

formed in front of the judge, the more distant – but not less risky – play is able to become a possibility, in close proximity to the oppressor. We become avatars, for we take ourselves to be already absent. As Octavio Paz said, “The Aztec reli-gion is full of great sinful gods – Quetzalcoatl is the major example – who grow weak and abandon their believers, in the same way that Christians sometimes deny God.” (56 Paz) The capacity of art lies in the victory that goes beyond the law, ‘the system of judgement’ and ‘God’. That by these things it may be called a pure corrup-tion; this kind of power supplements the subject(s), and subjective value from historical time given to (an) object(s), that were believed, or thought to have no utility, thus the power being supplemented, is the one where a ‘possibility of ignorance’ narrowed the limits on mortality, and consequently leads to what philosopher Ray Brassier has called ‘Mimetic phenomenon’ (146 Brassier) in his essay titled “The Thanatosis of Enlightenment”. The unlimited post-roman-tic tremor from the system of a Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake. Produces a con-flict in the worker, and an advantage towards their masters. The conflict moves within a dyad of decision in thought. 1. The Miltonian model mimes the web of the western conviction on truth and purity. To put it in a more concrete way, (or at least, to try to), the structure which always already interferes with the virtualization of the origin of humans as value, and the actualization of truth as full-sense by historical time. Not na-ture, not natural history, “for it proceeds regardless of whether anyone belongs to it or not”. (Brassier 147)2. Necessary action at the cost of poverty, and death. What is meant by ‘to live’, can evolve into ‘to die so…’. Balram changes signatures by the trace of his ex-teacher. Balram is himself a victim of the new jungle. At the same time – to return to White Tiger – Bal-rams ‘will to power’ is shown when making friends at a bookshop in a servants market. The conversation became possible by the glimpse of a free mouth in a possible democratic space. “I raised my head to the sky and whistled. “Amaz-ing how much money they have,” I said, aloud, yet as if talking to myself. “And yet they treat us like animals.” (128 Adiga) The storekeeper remains stunned. Balram is beginning to act on his courage, and there is where he becomes the White tiger out of necessity; the non-liberated spaces of the universal servant. Adiga here, is ‘not human’, a ‘freak’, ‘pervert of Nature’, spotted in society by its otherness.

Works CitedAdiga, Aravind. The White Tiger.

Arnold, Mathew. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/arnold/matthew/culture-and anarchy/chapter4.html. Last updated Wednesday, March 12, 2014 at 12:59

Bataille, George. Theory of Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1992. Print.Benjamin Myers. ““Following the Way Which Is Called Heresy”: Milton and the Heretical Imperative.” Journal of the His-

tory of Ideas 69.3 (2008): 375-393. Project MUSE. Web. 14 May. 2014. <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.Brassier, Ray, and Christian Kerslake, eds. Origins and Ends of the Mind Philosophical

Essays on Psychoanalysis. Leuven University Press, 2007. Print.Gill, Stephen, Wordsworth and the Victorians (Oxford, 1998).

Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. New York:Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. Print.

Meillassoux, Quentin (2007). Subtraction and Contraction. Collapse :63-107.Milton, John. Complete Poems. Vol. IV. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com,

2001. www.bartleby.com/4/. [Date of Printout].Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. New York: Grove Press, 1994. Print.

Wordsworth, William. English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald. Vol. XLI. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001.www.bartleby.com/41/. [Date of Printout].

Wordsworth, William. Poetry foundation. Lines Written in Early Spring. The Longman Anthology of Poetry (Pearson, 2006)

A nonromantic demand, leads to the invariance of the human in the event. Miltons belief that he was not any animal due to his dogmatic view on the world, lead to speaking on absurdity in on ‘the sticky temptation of poetry, for, not being simply a thing, the animal is not closed and inscrutable to us. The animal opens before me a depth that attracts me and is familiar to me.’ And, ‘[I]n a sense, I know this depth: it is my own. It is also that which is farthest re-moved from me, that which deserves the name depth, which means that which is unfathomable to me. But this too is poetry…” (22 Bataille) Wordsworth’s thought enables a reduction in naturalism. But where romanticism fails, Latin American poet and writer, Bolano prevails. A romantic dog (or, a non-romantic White Tiger), what else can he be as a Latin American but a dog who dreams. A non-romantic demand is what gives (transcendental) Nihilism its purpose if any novelty in the point of intersection between origins of civilizations is to be a fortiori created and produced. Like the white tiger, who stands out in a space where others are base. The same applies to the duration based off value in time for Quetzalcoatl, not intending to find a similarity between cultures as the log-ic of identity always tempts one - like Milton’s Satan -, but raising a dead “god” into a concept like Nietzsche did with Dionysus and the crucified, raising play, out above what is determined as society. It is said Mexicans are sons and daugh-ters of corruption. What about India? Mexican texts are not any kind of ‘myths’, they conserved knowledge by story, the first technicians of what science fiction has ever offered, and perhaps, the first creators of ‘philosophy fiction’.

THE AGE OF VIDEO GAMESChristian Concha

Before you read this I want you to think for a second on what a video game is to you. What do you like about them? Dislike? Do you even play video games that much? Or even care about them? Well for me I grew up surrounded by video game players. Playing everything from Atari to the Genesis to the PlayStation, NES, Su-per NES, Nintendo 64 and so on. The theme for this issue as you know is time so I figured why not go through the his-tory of the Video Game and just where it’s going. First off, what is the first video game and when exactly did “Video Game” become a thing? For those of you thinking Pong, like I did, you may actually be surprised. Computer technol-ogy flourished early in the 1940’s with strong development in the Artificial Intelli-gence department of technology with smarter computers. Then one of the earliest known video games came in 1951 from a computer, you may laugh all you want at the name, called the Nimrod which played a math game called Nim. This was a very easy program compared to the sophisticated stuff we have now but hey it was a start then. Next in line in 1958 came a game made by physicist William Higinboth-am called Tennis for two. This was viewed on an oscilloscope and actually played with controls that looked like a switch to a freaking nuclear warhead. This became a good source of entertainment for visitors of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Next in 1962 came Spacewar the first computer video game to be sold nation-ally as a test program on the PDP-1 computer. This game had two space ships shoot-

ing the crap out of each other with space torpedoes..... in space. This game became a hit and caused a surge of students to begin their own variations of the game. Soon more games were produced like Computer space and Galaxy Game for computer owners. Now I know one thing that really burned me was what was the first at home console? Well its name was the Magnavox Odyssey and the carrier of the legal definition of a video game which is too long and boring for me to write down. This system came with a set of 12 video games and other games sold separate-ly and priced at 100 dollars for a

system. Sadly, the system didn’t sell well and failed to catch on in popularity. So now that you have seen the start we can really get into them rising to glory. First off who doesn’t like a good arcade game? I played the 1978 space invaders all the freaking time. Space invaders is said to have kick started the arcade franchise into motion but before space invaders was, you guessed it, Pong! These two sold very well and even-tually paved the way for other great arcade games like Galaga and Pac Man. Let’s face it these games are games I could play till the day I die and then keep playing in hell. Now the console games though were great as well. We can argue all we want over what the best system but face it, the NES continually kicked major ass all over the world. Released in 1983 As a Family Computer (FamiCom) in Japan, this system swept the floor, in popularity and kick the Sega Master Systems anus. I would stare at the game Excitebike for the NES with as much intensity as a teen who just discov-

ered porn. Anyway, soon after followed other things like the Super Nin-tendo, Sega Genesis, and eventu-ally the PlayStation. But before we continue I’ll back it up a bit and take a look at how the games are following suit with their consoles. First games began to get a little more than the arcade games of the past in the early 80’s Legend of Zelda brought to light the idea of adventure to games and yes kicked major freaking ass along with my personal favor-ite Metroid in 1986. There were also the early that brought adventure to fame. Metal Gear also started, and we all know where those lead to. Also on the list were First Person Shooters like Spasim, Doom, and Wolfenstein which gave action adventure a hell of a lot of fun. Doom especially creeped the shit out of the 6 year old me. One last one was Tomb Raider because come on guys, its fucking Tomb Raider. What’s not to love about exploring ancient ruins with two Desert Eagles in each hand? However, jumping and climbing in the originals was freaking hard. Perhaps the most important part that has grown in games over the generations is story. Games compared to 70’s have writers and people who make a world of amazement. I especially loved the little story snippets in the Silent Hill franchise with puzzles

that often delved into the stories of individuals with horrid pasts or were executed convicts like in Silent Hill 2’s Dead Men Hanging from a Tree puzzle. My personal favorite was Ico and the world that game had. To many this game was an amazing story that even Guill-ermo Del Toro even found to be magnificent. This game even be-came a novel which I found to be a fantastic read. Of course the one thing that needs to be mentioned

is what makes a game a game, the gameplay we all so love. When I think of totally revolutionary gameplay I think of Shadow of the Colossus. I mean seriously you are taking down monsters you have to freaking climb to kill. Not only that, but the way the Wander was hit by shock waves and could lose his balance made the gameplay amazing for its time. Now let’s get to how Consoles and games are today. Games today are amazing in every sense and aspect that makes them. With ever advancing technology games now look like extremely cinematic and even boast an amazing music score. Games like Journey and Rain with a truly artis-tic look and such simplicity and an amazing music score to boast made them stand as pieces of art. The new Tomb Raider made the origin story of Lara Croft something really cool from taking a scared young girl to become a hardened survivor. Plus the team made their own freaking instrument for Tomb Raider! Metal Gear Sold V pushes the bar on every level. One of the most iconic franchises taking things so many levels up with both great looking story and gameplay. When I saw the E3 trail-er for MGSV I literally orgasmed in my pants slightly. Other releases like No Mans Sky and ABZU add much more of an artistic flare to games. The Evil Within is even bringing back Survival Horror roots back to life. Even The Order 1886, Destiny, and BloodBorne are looking great and so much beyond what’s been done in the past. Games now are becoming more than games boast such a cinematic feel that produces tears in my eyes. Hopefully, it can be something taken more seriously and be considered much more artistic be-cause the effort in games now is astounding. So if you’re someone who enjoys video games as much as I do, then please keep being a bad ass and play. If your skeptical about games just try them there is much more than meets the eye. Time has definitely taken games a great deal towards great-ness. Now being apart of The Modern Corsair as its video game reviewer hopefully I can bring all you readers great coverage of the games to come in the near future. Now before this ends I want to say the one thing that has been on my mind since I started all this. Sony where the hell is The Last Guardian!

FIVE PYTHONS LOOSE IN A THEATER

Dana Sami

One down, five to go, it’s for this last cash grab benefiting a pack of aging British bas-tards to talk about parrots, silly walks and what it all really means anyway.

It was about two-ish years ago that I went to see Paul McCartney in Candle-stick Stadium. He was loud, confident, and really, really old. Now there is noth-ing wrong with being old, growing old or having Gerontophilia (*see lead guitarist Skwisgaar Skwigelf). Being old is great.

It comes with a wisdom, and sense of natural authority. The trouble is some old peo-ple don’t know how to be old. Paul McCartney of Liverpool cannot do that. He can belt out a great song he’s written and composed himself, play every interment on his studio albums, but he can’t go around this far into his later years with tight jeans, a pierced ear and gyration moves on the stage and expect the same reaction. Unlike a man like Morgan Freeman who has an element of youth in his actually well-aged face, Paul cannot face his age. He is living in denial of it, and it make him look all the more aged, and wrinkled, and generally sort of like your Dad still trying out his letterman jacket from back in the day’s The Crazy Market was still touring. When aging a certain number of allowances need to be made like in the case of older, yet seemingly youth-ful Freeman, Lady Dench, or J. K. Simmons, that comes from not doing everything just the way you would when young, dumb, and full of cum twenty-something. So why bring up all that? So I could get most of the ugliness out of the way when talking about British icons of comedy I respect so much. I was amped to see in last month’s issue that including mine, there were two references to Monty Python. I watched the show so much as a kid with PBS. I’ve loved their body of work. All the movies and the comedy records, real venal that I plug in my actual leather case record player to enjoy the crackling audio. Big duh- it is hard to critique something you love, and harder to admit when it’s a negative reality on that thing. I believe I am living through what Stone’s fans have been squirming in distress over for decades now. Since Keith Richards released Voodoo Lounge in the 90’s, and reached the age McCartney had found unapologet-ically harsh when I saw him at Candlestick Stadium, wherein men look a lot like

some one’s smoker aunt, there is a cog-nitive dissidence. This voice, the one that I the listener connects to so well, on such a primal level as it touched me in the first age of confusion, and hormones and emotion, is one of youth, and decent and rebellion for my cause against the

suits, squares, fascists and morons in power. But you look at your idol, and it is like looking in a mirror for the first time in sixty-five years. ‘Where did my hair go?! What are these spots? I’m so weak, deaf and near sighted’. That is an ugly way to realize the reality of your life. So- is it obvious that I’m dragging my feet on this one? Because I’m on the third paragraph on this thing (it was, doubt if you will the seventh in the first draft) and have yet to actually talk about the show. So here I go. Actually talking about it. Here comes the actual intellectual response to a valuable artistic institution of the most suc-cessful sketch group in history.

It was good. If that is all you wanted to know before I tell you where you can see this, there you are: the show was good, the jokes are still funny and they know more about springing a joke (let alone punchline on a crowd) in such a way that the laughs are never guarded and thus ultra-successful. If this is all you need to here, skip to the end of this section to read about when and where to see the Monty Python Live (Almost) taped at the O2 Arena. If you’d like more, and are a Python fan like me… buckle in.

So good is good right? Good is what sells tickets. Well, I can say so does nos-talgia, and we ,collectively, are sat in the pungent funk of a generation who feed and bread on nostalgia. It’s the reason that as fucking shitty a movie maker Mi-chael Bay is we still watch Transformers,

the Simpsons has passed any hope of having a dignified end and why Nickelodeon’s hit The Adventures of Pete & Pete had a 20th anniversary reunion at the last SF Sketch-fest. The show is over all good. Five living members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus come together in England’s biggest theater to perform a night of their most popular hits along with a few underrated gems from the show that never saw the light of live theater.

When the Python’s held the press conference months ago announcing that Eric Idle would organize a reunion for their first united performance in forty years the hype that followed was rabid. People on all sides voiced their shock, approval, confu-sion and disapproval. Why now? Said Idle “Some idiot. One of the producers from the Holy Grail,” who had sued the group for upwards of a million pounds. “One night at the O2, 200,000 seats, we’d make that back.” After the 1989 death of Graham Chapman the groups last moments collected

in the same room was at Chapman’s funeral and weeks prior when Steve Martin had the six locked in a cup-board. From there on they went about finding their own careers. John Cleese more or less retired from show busi-ness after his smash hit sitcom, Faulty Towers and movie A Fish Called Wanda. Michael Palin made a series of travel shows about the less trav-

eled path or Ernest Hemingway’s haunts. He is now finishing a supernatural mystery mini-series called Remember Me. Terry Gilliam went on to direct his own signature style of serial movies, frequently dealing with hidden worlds or dismal futures, such as Time Bandits and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Having officially renounced his American citizenship he went on to direct his own take on opera, the most resent Hector Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini .Terry Jones filmed a humorous abut educational series of historical documentaries. Welsh Terry will be returning to directing in Sci Fi film Absolutely Anything staring comedy all-stars Simon Pegg, Robin Williams, Ed-die Izzard and all those Pythons still with us. Nearly as old as Time Lords, at 369 years in performing collectively, the five men over seventy emerge from a TARDIS framed by rosy, bright stage curtains. They hit the big notes through the night Catty Judges, Spam, The Argument Clinic, The Lumberjack Song, and of course the gem of Chapman’s writing career, The Dead Par-rot sketch. There were pleasant surprises of animation and Cleese acting as a strange woman with a dinosaur theory. Choreographing a series of musical dance numbers in between was Arlene Phillips who previously worked on the dances in Spamalot and The Meaning of Life. Well organized, and very energetic there came a moment witch most blatantly shown a light on the trouble with the Python’s Live at O2. There is a dance number about the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch, which was not performed by a seventy year old comedian leaping, kicking and worming around stage, but by a troop of fit dancers in business suits. Monty Python’s comedy is clearly definable. It’s Pythonesq. It is surreal, with a measure of intellect, without being pretentious, and holds commentary on middle class life. But prat falls and physical wackiness was well incorporated. So yet again- doy, none of those seventy year olds can me expected to leap and fumble and hit like they were twenty. Now that’s not everything, a lot of the humor was cerebral and wordy,

and could work on radio even. But Monty Python did use their bodies to comedic effect, and that is miss-ing. With the buxom women in leg-gings and the chiseled men mov-ing in step between the five writer’s sketches there is no transfer of ener-gy. It is not making them look more upbeat and frisky. They look like

seventy something’s around a litter of frolicking puppies who are wearing them out faster. There are many great cameos from Stephen Fry, who read’s the Harry Potter audio-books, Eddie Izzard from show’s like The Riches and United States of Tara, and Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh about musical adventures of two Englishman who work in a shaman’s antique shop. The view of many others is great to the pace of the show. And at the end of it, even though they stumbled on lines in the wordier mono-logs and cannot dash about like the strapping young bucks they were once the hits are hits for a reason. They can make the jokes land with sniper accuracy. So the show is good. Why did I bitch so much? Because I think that Monty Py-thon Live (Almost) at O2 is a part of a bigger problem. And so am I. We now live in a world were in many ways Peter Pan’s Neverland fantasy is real, in that childhood is indefinitely prolonged. In many ways there are swaths of the world who will never have to truly grow up and deal with the rough edges of reality. Weather it is Jagger still morning Ruby Tuesday, those Japanese 40-something’s who have virtual girlfriends and no interest in any other sort, or Joss Whedon fan’s still moaning over Firefly’s short run we can live in a bubble of past comforts. This is the generation who brought Family Guy back to see it get really unfunny, 1980’s metta, and up its own ass preachy. We saw Beavis and Butt-head, 24, Heroes, and upcoming Entourage movie and few wondered, is that necessary? In this nostalgia we thirst to squeeze out any last drop from a media that has been tapped. I loved Invader Zim as a kid, but I accept that Jhonen Vasquez has made a wise choice to not attempt to go back to a project that ended over a decade ago. And when we do this, desperately cling to that thing we licked when we were little, or hotter than the flab monster we’ve become, it tells exec-utives that nostalgic is the wisest market. We have no right to ask why it is that shity shit, like Fast and Furious 9 will be a thing. Or why it is a producer would make a movie called Battleship, passed on

a board game. We cannot turn up are noses and scoff derisively at Jack Black playing R.L. Stine in the Goosebumps movie this fall. We pan Scott Pilgrim and Safety Not Garneted to see the re-make of Old Boy with white guys but still no guns. We attack people for the mere suggestion that Don Glover could

play a good Spider-Man or if the Englishman playing him thinks Peter Parker could be gay for Harry. We, the American public, have chosen by that witch we fund and made our bed. This bed of the recycled, rehashed, reiterated junk, along with prevent-ing the option for retirement for those who may like to or in better conscious should. If you’d like to see the last performance of the most talented sketch group of this century go to Edwards Long Beach Stadium, where it will be played until the 24th of July.

are both proud associates of the Modern Corsair:

www.stay-gallery.comthesocialequalityclub.org

7/11/14Hugo Ace

May the pen flow from the energy of your mindLike liquid motionDancing with time

The Concept of TimeHugo Ace

You will never know him. Until you understand him.God is infinite.Like a number line extending fromNegative infinity to positive infinityImpossible to count.Like on that number line – to +All on the foundations of Nature. We are like him on a human level.For he created us from dust in his own image.An existence destined to fail, destroyed in its conception.Salvaged if possible, otherwise eradicated.Seeds of SinAre planted into the territory of God.A borrowed land for our spirit to possess.Those seeds take root and produce fruit.That fruit, spoils and withers away,The dying tree.A lifeless barren land:Once a garden, failed;Incapable of producing life,Time dies,It shifts.

Returning to dust,The deserted land’s winds, refine, Back to a time before its time.When the value of life is lostLife is worth nothing.Living every day of lifeAs an investment for the futureMakes time.For time has already been created

Except the Remembering…Gil Hill

The mentality of remember…cleaning out the old housetaking out boxes, old shoes, a hintan abstraction , a fact -a ring, a sock, a penny, a picture frame, melancholia; the brick workof lament. A laugh, a dirge,motion, inertia- a narrow ledgerof what had been gently adrifta dimension abandoned,with a grip like iron… memory casts another tauntdown the hall- a wooden cane propped in the corner…use for it soon enough.Behind the small black dustybook shelf an empty cupa stitch in the center ofthe dream- when we will we be able tosay tomorrow and not look back -that things will be different …on a highwayout of town nothing is ever the same…except the remembering.

...On Earth as it is in HeavenGil Hill

roaring wind ice cracklingmoaning intolerable weather spites the last sinking sun dullnessthe waterfront dogs iron lungchorus incite ... a moon risingpallid and weak the alley hounds us.. its Christmas or New Year’s day - I saw the last bone of youstumble or was I dreaming of dust or hunger palimpsest scribbling skulkingperipheral memory lucky for us time rubbedour hides bit by morsel equipoise counterpoint maybe its a long days end a longing for end daystrespassing mulled

wine incense chaos spondeea dismantled sonnet of us in heaven harping eternal hymnals fingering smiling the two us in the church gallery an epistle whistlingsnow on the ground outsideapostate witheredgospel tinkling as ifit mattered how we oncewere lovers soft safeand numb - the dogs barkand I am in Bruges ina cathedral candle glowthe only heat standingbefore Bosch’s tri-panelGarden of Earthly Delightsyou might have been therewith me if not you shouldhave been –

A Begotten ConscienceNicholas Vasquez

A citadel to the forsaken;Those that have mistaken their sunken lives For suitable ones, that soars only when the sky Is below their nimble clammy bodies.

A fearful, lament, firmament where the dead are buried within The silver slithering pasty clouds. Only to decay As pettiness steam and somber ashes.

This stupendous, nefarious, imperial bastion Open its bright warm gates for a child inSunset, with a pile of blushing sand he calls homeIn his dismal hands.

Now crimson with resentment, the cosmos Surround the strong hold with eons Of desolate souls and solemn obscurity. The warm rose gates open once more as it floats Above the sky and into the frame of era. Standing colossal to the blue souls below the bastion, A frame of humanity, a human effigy cloaked in twilight

With sand in his hand now blows into the celestial space.

Like pollen, specks of flaming sand fades into The souls that animate into the cosmic beach that carriesThe strong hold. Now the conscience of the child falls into the void.The soft void he calls home holds the begotten ashesThat dashes from left-to-right transcending his imagination.

His eyes now open to an ocean of maroon sand withNo end in sight. With all his might he screams at clouds above that Fly like doves ablazed.

Letters to Modern Corsair:

[From: @Barnes_Noble94]@Modern_Corsair I like the Bible Challenge article from this past issue. The Mormon stuff lots. Can I write in a team with someone else too?

IA: We would be more than happy to read something written by you and a partner if you would like. I have done so on a number of projects (some put out by the Modern Cor-sair) and thoroughly enjoyed it.My one bit of advice, not that you asked me for any, would be when writing one project with another or even more people, be sure that your voices are similar and that you can guide your work to shared conclu-sions and stances. If you and your writing partner have drastically different voices or opinions on the subject you are working on the flow will be ruined and there will be a gigantic tangential path problem. ____________________________Robert,(From the parking lot of the Anar-chy Library)Modern Corsair, I graduated from East Middle School last semester and will be going up to freshman year this September. I write poetry.I saw you guys at the Stay shows on

Downey Avenue and wanted to know if I can send in something.

____________________________

AR: Here at the Modern Corsair we would be amiss if we were to turn down any poets or poets to be sim-ply based upon a petty thing like age. Elementary school, Middle school, High school or beyond, if we enjoy what we read, we will publish it. Go ahead and send your stuff to our email address. We look forward to reading it.

The Modern Corsair for July - Issue Number 10

This issue was: TimeExcuse me sir, you can’t be there, yea, you can’t just cut to the front of the line. You have to wait in the line to get a ticket to wait in the line to get a ticket to wait in the line to get a ticket to wait in the line

to get a ticket...The next issue will be: Government

From this moment on, you and everybody else is free. No overbearing big brother, no shady gover-ment agents- you dismantled those the other day. Why don’t you go out for a walk? Perhaps enjoy

some fresh air? Maybe plot to take over the world again? This time for the better, right?

Check out our subreddit at www.reddit.com/r/themoderncorsairSend all entries, comments, or suggestions to

themoderncorsair@gmail.com. We’d be happy to hear from our readers.

Special thanks to:The Stay Gallery

And the biggest thanks of all to:You.

Not you as the reader of this magazine, specifically you as the humanreading this text in this moment. Keep on reading, beautiful person.

CREDITS