Gerard Malanga

6 ways in which i wish you

Nikki Grand

Pomegranate

Paolo Lionni

Exorcism of Desperation
Suggestion
Simurg

Harvey Cohen

"Lost tracks of time..."

John Cale

Sebastian
Safety
Boys
Stolen
Lightning
The Fish

6 ways in which i wish you
...
i wish i could remember what you / were wearing the night day after the night / before or the way you enter / the room without knowing / i'm there

i wish i could / remember the right / words to say / when i'm with / you

i wish i could / remember the right / words to say / when i'm with / you

i wish i could remember how to forget this pain about not / being able to remember the past before meeting you

i wish i were a windsw windswept / day or a cloudburst thru which you / walk calmly with animal grace

i wish i were a dream / taking place / in the 13th century meeting / beatrice on the ponte vecchio / who turns out to be you / when i'm awake

i wish i were... the poem i am / writing by heart... to become / you beneath these words / as we collide into... the foreground / of this sentence structure... without changing a word / XXX Gerard

Design & poem by Gerard Malanga / Photo by P. Zimmer

THE POMEGRANATE

I.

Venus
sealing her seeds
from the promise
that is her conjury
with a motion of her
copper mirror
she embodies her fruit

Stashing her creation
in the hell arbor
no one will suspect
the pomegranate is hers
stifled seeds
claret and wave bright
they sleep

II.

Pluto chooses wisely
his courting magic persuades;
Bury it with me, my sister
to guard its secret
we shall proclaim it black
Name it incompletion
and contemplating its wondrous form
my followers shall be
intrigued by its paradox

The seeds spill
like flare droppings
about her feet
Persephone's nature ignites
to the fire of an oncoming star
What was once a point of ice
consumes the sky
Screams she past caves
and underground lakes
till her fever finds hell's
innermost and center chamber

YES HERE... SET FREE

THIS MOLTEN YOLK

to begin again —
once more to be
contained —
in the rind of the earth

a billion years
of light
no one registered as image . no thing
a billion years
went by

before Orphee's corona
again appeared.
before night had
had her day.

— Nikki Grand

EXORCISM OF DESPERATION

0 total attitude / Infinity / Last illusion of inspiration
(forward) / Sacred pages sacred scribe ours to despise
Minstrel codex firefly flight / The walls are lonely,
the apple trees want to touch / They will never know what
hit them / Smiling in the wilderness.

SUGGESTION

Incongruous constellations of ecstatic perfection
Spontaneous ramparts of yellow smoke
Intrinsic association of illumination beyond the horrifying veil
Solid font / dispersed charge bewildering its route
Peek-a-boo mirror tap of impossible autobiographies —

Heraldic break-thru to an egg with no shell

in a field of glass eyes.
Past time lies in ambush, asleep in thicket canyons caught.

SIMURG

had left, split, fed up with the merciless punishment you'd dished them ... had resoundingly run its vestal whiteness spinning round the inner circumference of the last percussive bicuspidor in Bangkok and you were FREE!!! Never again would you try to ingest some substance not visibly or tactilely palpable. The struggle was stopt, the scars had soon enough healed (now don't give up now, we arc almost half-way there) and a spanking new Painless Being & Awareness Unit, his "All-the-Body's-Holes-Wide-Open" . . .

I want to race back immediately, back to the labs at Mohammed Mountain, to call the assistants together once more, in conclave as it were, to listen with them to all the tapes thru once more, each one once, to be absolutely sure ...

keeping in mind that each word sharply sits itself, as it were, atop a veritable pyramid of meanings, all leading to paradoxes or contradictions, East or West, and that the only 'help' one in anyway ever tenders another human being is that of 'mere presence' inasmuch as those who need help are always suprasensitive or they wouldn't be wounded by the common vibrations or ambush themselves with negative vibes, so that that mere presence carries all sad real impossible corny wet expensive flea-bitten ignored but touted Manhistory and Nowness and Destiny Vision and possibilities enough to form a fraglely-feathered face of such size and form ... then you can't live without it for it's the wing of the wondrous bird brushing the earth ...

— Paolo Lionni

Lost tracks of time & hypodermic combat
With seducing spirits speeding down blind alleys
The hassled homeless fall down tightropes reaching for stars
The atmosphere dominates us...

Spells are being cast behind Satan's door lightshows
Secret societies are waging demonic wars & celestial invasions
While we the exiled opiate sick unto death of nations
Whirling with revelations rise up out of poisoned cities
To burn sticks of blood in mountains of tortured bodies
The revolution is come & tribes gather
Seeking oracles in ancestral mind...

Not astronauts but Indians are the connector
Bolos of light unlocking mysteries
Treasure hidden at the heart of creation
Shaman synchronizer rewinds Tibetan projector
Illuminating petroglyph prophecies
Promised return to holyland places of the Great Spirit
OM waves from geodesic temples on Jupiter signal
Oceanic beings in meditation
The Earth falls into a trance of sanctification
Through fields growing with the grace of new beginnings
Enlightened we walk in benediction

— Harvey Cohen

SEBASTIAN

Hold on your own the cannon cries
Above the sweet horizon
Before and after there will be
The golden taste Of courtship
Passing fragrance mouth to mouth
The apple and the core, Sebastian
There above all shall be
Torrential paradise amok
Lascivious comforts for the eye and tear
Falling
From the crystal's heart to the stainless foreground
Not abrupt, in haste, or too solemn minded
Caressing with a breeze, a filth as carefree
As any streptococcus abroad and
As rampant a cancer of delight as was contracted
In any swamp of virtue, dear boy.

Among most kings the lie is held
That force and timidity face each other
Night and (lay at the horizon where the cannons roar
While in retreat we counsel the tyrants about its
To seduce the county to the brink
Alarm the protectorate with obscurity
And sink the faith in disaster in to
The marrow of children in their eggs
Surrounded thus this twisted pus of fear
Antimony and paralysis fills the sky
The stars have a stale glare
The clouds a molten stop
The streets are soft with betrayal
And so forth.

SAFETY

The lands of Sandwich meet at France
They bleed relentlessly on court and mail
Upon the verdant knights
The host from whom the guest withdraws
For fear the gong is not yet struck

The sun shines down in anger
At the sea before it dies
Ambitious to be tamed but
Relentlessly unmoved by ordeal
Consumed by day, pacified by night.

The forests long to be divine
The scrutiny of man by earth
Attempted from seductive glades
And lawless unborn virtues
Contained therein among the thrones
Of age and rancid violence.

BOYS

The boys of Latin concept hope and pray
That mother is at home and keeping well
As the waiter brings the drinks
And the shadowed laughter touching the wa
Of bitter friendships
Standing unconcealed among their crashing

Though the hooded halls give sanctuary
That Mother couldn't give
The pomp and circumstance of pain
Drawn about them in sheets
Flowed down clotting streets
That the clocks of ticking sense took note of
The time and the place of suffering.

The boys outdid their tutors one by one
And sacked the library with sullen care
Until their energies were spent
Then left in silent order with a column Moving west until the landscape dipped
And fell away.

THE FISH

Seldom if ever did the trees stand between Ivan and the sunset since the last days of the opium season       he could not tolerate the lavish circumstances of grandeur and decay oozing onward and obscuring the gentler monuments of progress in its livid contract most of the world had been asleep since his marriage       the horses stumbled everywhere       not a prize had been won       not a cheer raised in self defense       or a glove dropped in insinuation       the harsh realities were now lofty ideals seduced into finality and ransomed at gallant prices to end the day       thus so it was done the city began to appeal to him once more and so he raised his voice in c on versa tion from month to month it reached an unappealing equeal of pleasure       a frothing mendacity too infectious to ignore       he was not lonely       for he was too often criticized to be that       and the mirth which attended these charitable seances held society in its juice while the church smiled and increased its exegesis of priests and bishops to the wester" world       seldom if ever did the trees stand between Ivan and the sunset anymore       he divided his life between those on his left and those on his right as long as they were :11 front of him       he paid no attention to those behind hit"       being careful not to offend anyone he walked purposefully and with ease       holding his cane loosely his apparel maintained its useful conservatism in a day and age when love was a household word       altogether the days passed unnoticed among the friends who although changed in infinite motifs sat bleakly and murmured champagne with admirals seeking the greater security of knowledge concerning national affairs       a lending hand for all who wished to be remembered       these sultry meetings ran concurrently with the ascending fortune of music hall dammes and conjurers herded into prominence by the promoters of forgetfulness       shillings at odds with boredom       the limbs of war and those of senility gathered momentum in the hollow bones of oak trees holding lightning there was not much to be said of traffic in that time streets were cleared at dawn but not in curfew       the danger came from hypnosis       holding soundly on to the frozen past       a glory not yet seen       and Ivan knowing this well from experience tried to redirect his countrymen's efforts from solipsism to farce and thus to delinquency       (that avaricious sanctuary for non-violent partisans) who thought of subtle things in warmly obnoxious terms       nevertheless he persevered and took solace in the remarks of his late 2nd wife 'there are no rumours worth attending to in this life she said, 'if they are not both destructive and desirable'       and the wars had come and ended       thus far in solitary murder       that attractive suspicion which governments lend their activities to among others of the world. and Ivan seldom if ever saw the trees stand between him and the sunset       and let it be a warning to all.

— John Cale

Original format: Single sheet, 27 by 24 inches, folded into sixths.

Adapted for the web by Andrew Stafford.
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