The King Is Dead By Reuben Woolley

The King Is Dead By Reuben Woolley Paperback 80 Pages Published Oneiros Books, 2014

THE KING IS DEAD By Reuben Woolley the king is dead is a Promethean gamble that pays off for Reuben Woolley, a book that seems to be absurdly minimalist in its expression manages to body-cage and reduce universal themes to striking symbols that set into balance the agonies of existence along with a patient longing for death… …The eponymously titled series at the heart of the book explores the rage of human wastage and the necessity of physical and psychical transformation. There is a psychic economy to how mythos and ceremony are presented by Woolley. from the introduction by C. Murray

You can get your copy here

New Additions to the Oneiros Books Poetry Catalogue

Oneiros Books Poetry New Additions

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A WOUND’S SOUND Gillian Prew “The ambient howl-sound pervades everything. The gutted beasts are everywhere – billions raised and slaughtered for food globally each year. ‘A Wound’s Sound’ is an attempt to distill and voice their pain and their silence.”

OF DESIRE AND THE LESION THAT IS THE EGO David McLean “Here are words to somewhat deconstruct your daily lives. McLean delivers sermons of a beautiful nothing(s) enriched by perceptions that pervasively cover the very lives you follow inanely day in, day out. He dissects the mundane and the superfluity of existence (if any) with a hacksaw and without much anaesthetic. His language is cutting, divisive, insightful, deploring, archaic but strong with a fleshy boldness that should and will be revered. David McLean seeks out the plastic and then tends to look underneath the plasticity of what man has made; the absurdity of god, the hilarity of societal values and the hypocritical agenda of righteous folk. The lesion of what McLean explores in this collection is indeed the nonsense that dominates us all whether aware or unaware however, after you read this blistering book, you’ll be sure to be angry at something in this dying world.” Craig Podmore (Author of The Origin of Manias, Oneiros Books)

CODE #4 TEXTS Michael McAloran & Aad de Gids “…echoes/ echo none/ echoing…echoes of the where…echoes of the…a clear…a clear cut wound the wound clear spliced…open undue the palm open spliced of/ not a distance to trace…blank the eye’s meat/ drained of/ spasm head no not of echoing/ dreaming/ a clear gash to the collapsed breath of…the meat of it/ haven/ knotted madly/ as if to recall the tumour of it or of the once departed/ all for/ nothing no colours not a…still yet the breathe bite blade of the bite/ ask/ ask/ absent purpose/ divulged the eye’s collapse/ not a sight nor sound/ ever-clear as this…from the outset/ begun/ shattered/ the frozen air/ stillness yes/ not a trace…” (excerpt) A collaboration between Michael McAloran & Aad de Gids. ’What a brilliant weird fucking book…’ D M Mitchell (ed The Starry Wisdom)

The full Oneiros Books Catalogue is Available here

Death In The Key of Life by Danny Baker

DEATH IN THE KEY OF LIFE By Danny Baker Grit your teeth world; Danny Baker is going in dry! ’Death In The Key Of Life’ is like a long sustained Coltrane saxophone solo. It caresses, it brutalizes, it honks and bleats (in)articulately, it pleads for meaning, it spits on the world. Often all on the same page. Many have tried to give expression to the inexpressible – Joyce, Artaud, Beckett. Danny Baker is the first person who might just have pulled it off. “surfing shudder at the very thought on wave of zeitgeist. cinematic detail jackknifes into animated over-the-top. voluminous desire to throw it all down a hunch- occasionally leaning hard on disputed. overactive imagination is an oxymoron. personally I think this book is the future of poetry. It’s never too late to treat yourself to some truth. You’ll find that & so much more in Danny Baker’s art. You have my word.” mark hartenbach Price: $18.99 Ships in 3-5 business days Purchase Link

Into The Woods By Michelle Augello-Page

A New Release from Oneiros Books

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INTO THE WOODS By Michelle Augello-Page Escape into nine dark and erotic stories which explore sex and transformation written in dreams across the body, etched in the language of skin. Each story is interwoven with magic, music and art, as lost and damaged characters navigate their broken worlds, searching for wholeness and connection. Many of the stories are sexually explicit, engaging the reader in aspects of kink, fetish, and BDSM. Some stories represent sexual trauma, abuse, negligence and cruelty. Other stories seek to express the esoteric and transcendent power of sex. Into The Woods is a unique and beautifully crafted collection of stories rooted in the female, immersed in the physical and the spiritual, and steeped in the rich archetypal landscape of fairy tales and mythology. With beautiful illustrations by the mysterious Alphonse Inoue.

You can buy the book here

An introduction to ‘of the nothing of’

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Of the Nothing Of In this book the poet alternates between prose and ‘conventional verse’ to depict the nuances of nothingness, the categories of emptiness and absence which constitute whatever it is that a human is. The self here is just reflected emptiness, and its incessant struggle for a homeostatic equilibrium under the name of heaven, or otherwise described as some other sort of not ceasing, some other religion, whether in the name of reincarnation or just having children. ‘…in the dark the skin glistens of black tar, crystals of amphetamine burning their way in and the eyes rolling back-rolling, the jaw taught, teeth a-grind, all the while the whispering voices, the murmuring shadows, in a cloud-burst of deathly smoke, haven to fall drenched to the bone with nectar bloodlessness, all having said, and with what absence of sound, click-clack and the spine warping, spit it out the scum of nothingness, genuflect, genuflect unto the memory of the dead god, in the laughter-spill of the orificial night, wordless, mocking the stitch that binds the flesh together, raw as a bloody smile, a bloody cunt, an open wound, star-burst of forever having known, to see the ocean yet unable to hear of it through the winds, they stretch the skin taut, begin again, they say, from out of this nothing births the foreign sunlight, (echo), the joy in paring away the meat, intact, blood spat out spraying the glass, a vein severed, nothing more, till dark again…’ This book deals with the nothing of, for a nothing is always the absence of some specific thing – a god, a love, or a meaning. yet ever speech in the space between the fragment and the settled ash Which is the miraculous, not the mythological murderer with the jawbone of an ass, not the thirty pieces of silver, not any demiurge, just that this stream of consciousness exists, in the absence of any teleology or meaning, words that make themselves. And Mc Aloran is Irish, so his poetry answers to the voices of a great literary tradition. A Beckett to tell us how we murdered and ate Godot before we waited aimlessly for him. There is Beckett here in the dusty sheets of a final room, the tremendous mound of futility the poet piles over humanity like a cromlech. ‘…the words they fade away, death’s tomes, rustle in the breeze, scattering tumbleweed throughout abandoned graveyards…’ Derrida said once that what poetry is is the nostalgia for a presence that never was, the capturing of the sense of childhood perfection of being. Derrida seems, strangely enough, almost to essentialize poetry as the glorious empty attempt of a futile hedgehog to cross the tremendous Autobahn of a rational reality. The poems in this book reflect the voice that might laugh at the squashing of said hedgehog, the Nyarlahotep that laughs at the heart of the black emptiness; this book “literally” says the nothing, the hardest thing to say. It enumerates the small nothings that make up the surprisingly tiny “big picture” – what is actual is brutal and black, the small cracks where the blood seeps through, the absences that Mc Aloran makes talkative. Mc Aloran, par excellence, is the poet who speaks of: abattoir silences the final laughter of the blood which is what should sometimes preoccupy us. It is the stream of consciousness of a mind aware that most of what is is without awareness and soon we shall join all the absences ourselves and not be. In the nothing of god and meaning what remains is a sort of irresolute stoicism among all the anxiety, all the screaming. (…shadow is benign, a foreign nothing, nothing claimed, spit it out your sequences, light and shade do not exist…) (…the none/ nothing of all is a trunk card, a broken jaw flapping in the breeze like a fucked gate in the wind, nothing coming in or out, never leaving…) What we can do, and what Mc Aloran does, is pretty up the desolation and nothingness. Poetry cannot find meaning and purpose where there is none, but it can render the absences and dust attractive, can make the dry loveless dusty sheets in death’s rooms beautiful. This is a value, making the dull skull lovely, and Mc Aloran does it here like no other. In the dying heart beats of the close of the book the point we can find in the emptiness is preserved: ‘…breaking none of the without, settled, obscure… …subtle gleaming of death’s overtures in a dead room, the door ajar…absent echoing…splice of stale air…discarded syringes in a dirty cracked glass ashtray…I cannot…’ –David McLean-

An Introduction to ‘Of the Nothing Of’ by David McLean can be read here, along with samples from the book

New releases from Oneiros Books

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Christine Murray, Ian Miller, Oneiros Books

‘The Broken Diary’ by Ian Miller and ‘She’ by Christine Murray

THE BROKEN DIARY y Ian Mill Ian Miller is best known for his surreal and grotesque illustrations for people like Tolkien, Lovecraft, Peake and others. He collaborated on the graphic novels ‘The Luck In The Head’ with M John Harrison, and ‘The City’ with James Herbert. His work has been collected, most notably in the book ‘Green Dog Trumpet’.   With ‘The Broken Diary’, Miller takes us on a labyrinthine journey through ‘almost familiar’ places, meeting with disturbing often hilarious characters – all intercut with entries from the author’s diary, in such a way that the everyday melts into the phantastic.   SHE   By Christine Murray   “I do not expect anyone will believe me, but I know that my dreaming life is as real as my waking life. Indeed, I have learnt not to call these sleeping narratives anything other than a different part of my reality.   When I first encountered the entity that appears on the towpath I was afraid for She seemed hardly human to me. I had gone little by little into this dreaming place over the course of twenty years, and I had explored it almost wholly. I do not know what my encounter with this lady means, I intend to find out.”   With ‘She’ Christine Murray explores the spaces between waking and dreaming, that we all inhabit yet are so rarely revealed to us in this day and age. Part shaman part Sybil,she takes us on a Jungian odyssey to meet the archetype that stands at the crossroads of birth and death, one whom we are all destined to encounter sooner or later.

The Broken Diary by Ian Miller She by Christine Murray

an early review of “A Wound’s Sound” by Gillian Prew

Here is a review of Gillian Prew’s forthcoming book from Oneiros Books by David McLean.

A Sequence from ‘The Blind’ published at Bone Orchard Poetry

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Bone orchard Poetry, C. Murray, The Blind

Episiotomy the delicate steels are leaning in a row on blue blue cloths awaiting their use they think she cannot see this or does not know the hook/ the blind/ the knife /the thread-skein/ the needle point for when the rupture will begin as it will she stumbles past wearing the gown and carrying her paper-cup of ice ice-water : to wake him up inside the silica of this holding-skin inside the silica of this holding-skin beneath crystal swipe and tungsten tip the exact point drain then seep the vessel-encasement sustains until form becomes as apparent as the meconium distress which is all over the cloths the linens the floor / blood is everywhere the globe is hook burst / there is a body curled into the skin stitched in caul and head / they will / use the steel tips to force him out   Episiotomy and inside the silica of this holding-skin are © C. Murray read more at Bone Orchard Poetry The Blind can be purchased at this link

Bone Orchard Poetry has officially re-opened to submissions. It will also be an outlet for Oneiros Books writers wishing to showcase their works through previews, reviews, and related works.   Submissions Guidelines   Please submit 3-6 poems or 1-3 short prose/ prose poetry/ flash fiction pieces for consideration. NO ATTACHMENTS, they will be deleted automatically. Publication is on a rolling basis. A bio is optional but please keep it short. All submissions to: boneorchardpoetry[at]gmail[dot]com

Cut Up ! is now available to buy from Oneiros Books

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Antony Hitchin, Brion Gysin, Cut Up!, Joe Ambrose, Oneiros Books, William S. Burroughs

Cut Up! Album

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CUT UP! An Anthology Inspired by the Cut-Up Method of William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin Edited by A.D. Hitchin and Joe Ambrose In Paris in the late Fifties the Beat Generation writer William Burroughs and his sidekick Brion Gysin developed the cut-up method. It involved taking a piece of finished text and cutting it into pieces – then rearranging those pieces to create a new text or work of art. Burroughs wrote that: “When you cut into the present the future leaks out.” The cut-up had a profound effect on music, writing, painting, and film. Devotees of the cut-up include David Bowie, Radiohead, and Kathy Acker. In addition to bringing together new work by new people, CUT UP! also salutes some better known 20th Century voices who kept the spirit of Burroughs and Gysin alive. Contributors include Kenji Siratori, Claude Pélieu, Nina Antonia, Billy Chainsaw, Cabell McLean, Mary Beach, Marc Olmsted, Allen Ginsberg, Spencer Kansa, Michael Butterworth, Robert Rosen, Nathan Penlington, Sinclair Beiles, Gary J. Shipley, D M Mitchell, and Edward S. Robinson.

Purchase Link for Cut Up!

Bone Orchard Poetry has re-opened to submissions

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Bone orchard Poetry

An experimental blogzine of the Bleak/the Surreal/the Dark/Absurd and the Experimental…

Bone Orchard Poetry has officially re-opened to submissions. It will also be an outlet for Oneiros Books writers wishing to showcase their works through previews, reviews, and related works.

Submissions Guidelines Please submit 3-6 poems or 1-3 short prose/ prose poetry/ flash fiction pieces for consideration. NO ATTACHMENTS, they will be deleted automatically. Publication is on a rolling basis. A bio is optional but please keep it short. All submissions to: boneorchardpoetry[at]gmail[dot]com

Submit 3-6 poems or 1-3 short prose/prose poetry/flash fiction pieces for consideration to boneorchardpoetry[at]gmail[dot]com

Cut-Up! Table of Contents and Cover Preview

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Antony Hitchin, Cut Up!, Joe Ambrose, Oneiros Books

Cover art for Cut Up! by Niall Rasputin Cover design for Cut Up! by Antony Hitchin   Cut Up! is forthcoming from Oneiros Books

Table Of Contents CUT UP!  Table of Contents Creative Kenji Siratori Phishingera Jacurutu Scarry Garry-Shinigami Twenty-Three  The Worst Deadly Bank Account Number in the History of the Universe  Michael Butterworth  Trial At Centre Time Ox Joe Ambrose  The Life and Death of Muammar Gaddafi Gary J Shipley  from Spook Nutrition  Christopher Nosnibor  Flickering images: life-size shadow-puppetry Nathan Penlington  Reply With Your Own Virus Checks Matt Leyshon  Evil Dreams on a Green Baize Table Díre McCain  Maddening Sun A.D. Hitchin  Mindgasm! Alex S. Johnson  The Ultimate Rock Star Craig Woods  Her Fires Chill Me Niall Rasputin  Poems Mike Castro (mpcAstro)  Nidus Plexus: Immortal Fungus (an operotica) Grady McShane (R.G. Johnson)  Poems Younisos  Self Cut-Up in Tangier Lee Kwo  Oublier the Suicide Protocols of Warp Paradox Factor/Entail No Response/ Cabell McLean  Down by Dull Gary Cummiskey  From April in the Moon-Sun  Marc Olmsted  Plotinus Processes  Chikuma Ashida Izumiya  Gary J. Shipley  From Necrology  Muckle Jane  Recipes Cal Leckie  Poems Spencer Kansa  from Zoning  Geoffrey A. Landis  Poems Michael Mc Aloran  ‘By the Maggots For…’ Ben Szathani  Wehrwolf DX13  Dexuality Valentino  Reflect on This Eabha Rose  Poems Joe Ambrose  Too Long A Sacrifice Makes A Stone Of The Heart /I Will Not Continence/Nothing to Hide or Loose  Robin Tomens  Poems  Wayne Mason  Sidewalks to Buddha Persiphone Hellecat (Charie D. La Marr)  The Lady and the Panther Paul Hardacre  Bleak Venus: we could not have conceived it to be fire Larry Delinger  A Cut-Up Story Tale Paul Hawkins  Poems Dave Mitchell (D M Mitchell)  from Twilight Furniture Robert Rosen A.D. Hitchin  Split-Beaver Muckle Jane  Shaking Spears Sinclair Beiles  Letter David Noone  Is the Doctor in? Joe Ambrose  Deep Ellum Aad de Gids  Cut-Up of Valerie Solanas’ Manifesto S.C.U.M. (Society For Cutting Up Men), 1967 and Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto, 1918 James Coffin (James B.L Hollands)  Tokoloshe recites the Litany of Britain Gary J. Shipley  from Theoretical Animals Lucius Rofocale  Ne/urantia: Close Encounters of the Third Mind Jacurutu:23  Stay Out/Keep Out  Critical Edward Robinson  The Cut-Ups – Fade In 21st Century Kirk Lake  Breaking The Timeline: The Collage, the Combine, the Cut-Up and the Sample Matthew Levi Stevens  Disastrous Success: The Other Method of the Cut-Ups Gareth Jackson &  Michael Butterworth Conceptual Radial Literature Device Allen Ginsberg  Notes on Claude Pélieu Nina Antonia  The Master and Michele – A Magickal Memo Peter Playdon  Severed Heads Speak Art Billy Houlston (Billy Chainsaw) D M Mitchell Andi P. KJ Nolan Gustavo Arruda Dolorosa De La Cruz Mary Beach Claude Pélieu  — with Oneiros Books and Joe Ambrose.

Preview of ‘She’ by C. Murray

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Anastasia Kashian, Christine Murray, David Mitchell, Michael McAloran, Oneiros Books, Poetry

My thanks David Mitchell for editing ‘She’, to Michael McAloran for accepting the book for Oneiros, and to Anastasia Kashian for the cover painting which you can see here.

Cover image by Anastasia Kashian First Edition Oneiros Books 82 Pages Perfect-bound Paperback

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Two poems from The Island Sequence of ‘She’ sea is a womb sea is a womb dip and flow the small boat rock and rock, rock the black black gold lace a-glitter and rocks – the rocks scrape her timbers beneath the carved wave lie monsters clawing at her base black the inky waves lap to black the inky waves lap to and black they suck the shale and if birds swoop they are the mere shadows of birds there are hands there to disembark you to hold you over the rocky black those hands that will arc you onto the comfort of stone this is the sea/       this inky black it does not smell of sea the gap between the boat and the shore is awesome the wood laps the water dragging it out / and bobbing it back again the chasm at the heel and one step forward to land to stone comfort. Poems from The Island Sequence of ‘She’ are © C. Murray black the inky waves lap to was published in The Burning Bush VI

Contents Page (i) A letter found in the box that contained this narrative, being addressed to the cousin of former patient, Miss Constance Byrne. (ii) A note attached to the file of Miss Constance Byrne (now deceased). Part I Standing Stones Grove Lake Serpentine The Alleyway A Ruined Church at the Precipice Burnt Hill Descent Part II The Island She

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Cousin – , The narrative that follows here is a faithful rendering of my wanderings from the time of my retirement to the dawn. It is always the same. I do not expect anyone will believe me, but I know that my dreaming life is as real as my waking life. Indeed, I have learnt not to call these sleeping narratives anything other than a different part of my reality.When I first encountered the entity that appears on the towpath I was afraid for She seemed hardly human to me. I had gone little by little into this dreaming place over the course of twenty years, and I had explored it wholly in her company. I do not know what my encounter with this lady means, I intend to find out. In my exploratory times there I have never yet met another person. Although there were signs of life (or of creaturely habitation).This landscape seemed to me to be ruined by war and by heat. What else could make marble of glass shards? It is bleak there. At every dawn there occurs a throb of colour and I know that somehow I am back here in this world. I do not believe that my nightly explorations are a dream, for I have found tears upon my slippers, and a rend in the lace of my dress.She wants to show me something. She has indicated for me a bridge. I intend to cross over it, and thereby to continue to explore the geography of its unknown terrain. I travel now alone. I am unencumbered by family, nor by tradition. I leave to you this letter and some small tokens of my esteem. Know that I am safe, and although I undertake this journey with trepidation, I remain always your, Constance.

Cover image by Anastasia Kashian Cover design by David Mitchell

things the dead say

David McLean’s fifth collection of full length pottery is now available. It is available, in fact, at this link.

Contents Page and Foreword for ‘She’ by C. Murray

Contents (i). A letter found in the box that contained this narrative, being addressed to the cousin of former patient, Miss Constance Byrne. (ii) A note attached to the file of Miss Constance Byrne (now deceased). Part I Standing Stones Grove Lake Serpentine The Alleyway A Ruined Church at the Precipice Burnt Hill Descent Part II The Island She 19/06/58 Cousin – , The narrative that follows here is a faithful rendering of my wanderings from the time of my retirement to the dawn. It is always the same. I do not expect anyone will believe me, but I know that my dreaming life is as real as my waking life. Indeed, I have learnt not to call these sleeping narratives anything other than a different part of my reality. When I first encountered the entity that appears on the towpath I was afraid for She seemed hardly human to me. I had gone little by little into this dreaming place over the course of twenty years, and I had explored it wholly in her company. I do not know what my encounter with this lady means, I intend to find out. In my exploratory times there I have never yet met another person. Although there were signs of life (or of creaturely habitation). This landscape seemed to me to be ruined by war and by heat. What else could make marble of glass shards? It is bleak there. At every dawn there occurs a throb of colour and I know that somehow I am back here in this world. I do not believe that  my nightly explorations are a dream, for I have found tears upon my slippers, and a rend in the lace of my dress. She wants to show me something. She has indicated for me a bridge. I intend to cross over it, and thereby to continue to explore the geography of its unknown terrain. I travel now alone. I am unencumbered by family, nor by tradition. I leave to you this letter and some small tokens of my esteem. Know that I am safe, and although I undertake this journey with trepidation, I remain always your,                                          Constance.

‘She’ by C. Murray is forthcoming from Oneiros Books

A new poetry collection by David McLean

David McLean’s latest book, his fifth full length poetry collection, is coming in a day or two from Oneiros Books. It’s called things the dead say and contains many things ripped from the noisome throats of foul liches. It contains four sections, one sort of general, two about famous horror films, and one about Bodhidharma, the blue-eyed barbarian. Bodhidharma was a macho Buddhist atheist and McLean thinks he was rather cool. This entry will be updated to provide a direct link. His fourth collection is also from Oneiros and it’s here. Thanks to Michael Mc Aloran for the cover painting.

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Forthcoming from ONEIROS BOOKS, ‘Of the Nothing Of’

‘Of the Nothing Of’ is 170 odd pages long, conceived in early 2011. It has taken many forms and has also been through various editors to finally find it’s home at ONEIROS BOOKS

of The Nothing Of is by Michael McAloran
Cover Image is © Tadhg Murray

Denuded Skull-shine of a collapsed Breathing/                       (Ashes) Lock unto foreign lest there  Never was Collecting the bone       Grave(n)        Spill of murmurs Eating of the sun’s marrow Stench till bile of night                Stripping the carcass ice Held then unto Aching of the once again Cessation/                      Kiss of  Opened veins where the sky Devours itself Rocked to the fore/                            Core deft Snuffed out Absent shuffling            In a darkened room 5…the half-light/ of the forever having sunken unto waste/ fragments all the while/ fathom or non-fathom/ in-dreaming/ the cold cut of spasm/ locked bone/ arriving/ yet never having departed from/ ever to depart from, through a crimson haze/ dragged out as if the bones were the ragged teeth of the night/ no no answer/ a scream’s retort and the weighted beasts of echoes/ silenced/ speech without tread and the dry shuddering of the flesh/ collapsed in upon/ from out of which/ from out of which through eclipsed spaces/ buried below in a tide of death/ silenced endless/ light emerging/ suffocated by gnarled fist/ step again/ erased again/ nothing known/ bone close to the bone/ as if to/ silenced again/ worse than ever held/ before/ escaping scattering of flies from bloody meat/ nocturne and of the dead veins/ the laughter of the damned/ at the edge of the razor’s tongue/ boot heel in shit/ tongue licking up the refuse in the ghettos of the spent transparency of love/ now and for never/ not no/ step again/ they’ll answer naught and drain the roots dry/ there coming and going until the sun spits shards/ splayed out/ the grasses seared/ let them burn/ nectar upon a severed hand/ soil scattered/ a fossil collapse of headless sky/ dreaming of the less or less/ the absence/ nothing left/ celebrating yet fading of it/ a rip of scarlet/ ashen relapse/ said again/ knowing nothing but trinkets of things/ of silhouettes/ begin again/ what of it/ as if in spoken here or now and forever be thy severed/ head buried in the hands breaking apart/ fingers ablaze/ searching still/ no nothing/ buried once more/ lapse again/ furrow dry current of absent roomscape, nothing vital/ nothing taken nor given away/ ask of the blade’s calling/ the cult of decay/ of dissolution’s breath seeking out the marrow’s pitch/ in a meat hook stylus of buckling bodies/ carcasses to love like nothing else/ in the reek of our due/ seethe of cold colours and the raw red rush of carousel dreaming/ of tumour nights/ of skies stripped bare and torn apart without question/ coming apart yet never broken once/ laughing at the one thing that horrifies/ the one thing that matters least/ most/ a crown of teeth protruding from the skull in silent victory/ extracted silences/ endless to roam/ blood and cum in a silken handkerchief/ unknown/ that will be the quarter/ atrophic silences/ silences of births/ overtures of welts to the bare skin/ all of and beyond/ lacking distances/ step again/ begin again/ no no victory no beauty/ strangled out from which to burn/ less and less/ shadow of the outreaching hand/ a dead trail/ the tongue cut out/ severed now/ till lock and ever hold/ held/ the skeletal figment/ the flesh never yet having been born/ in the distant the foreign lights of a lighthouse/ searching/ searching/ till dead till none and search once more/ out of which/ till spit/ dragging a burning chain of a cadaver’s emptiness/ echo now/ breathe again/ the fingertips burnt away/ step again/ step Breaking/             Broke/ broken  Echoing of the all undone    Reduced to Burning breath and            The scarlet’s knowledge Here or there        (Says with a whisper…)  [insert pulse beat] Back then unto haemorrhage     Scarred without wishful Head alack/             (Vibrating edge of blade)         Skinning the reek (That was when there…) Broke bones of the bone-weaved sky            Till death parts (Nothing/                   Sequins/           Dead diamond eyes) Yet ever speech In the space between the fragment         And the settled ash 5…the half-light/ of the forever having sunken unto waste/ fragments all the while/ fathom or non-fathom/ in-dreaming/ the cold cut of spasm/ locked bone/ arriving/ yet never having departed from/ ever to depart from, through a crimson haze/ dragged out as if the bones were the ragged teeth of the night/ no no answer/ a scream’s retort and the weighted beasts of echoes/ silenced/ speech without tread and the dry shuddering of the flesh/ collapsed in upon/ from out of which/ from out of which through eclipsed spaces/ buried below in a tide of death/ silenced endless/ light emerging/ suffocated by gnarled fist/ step again/ erased again/ nothing known/ bone close to the bone/ as if to/ silenced again/ worse than ever held/ before/ escaping scattering of flies from bloody meat/ nocturne and of the dead veins/ the laughter of the damned/ at the edge of the razor’s tongue/ boot heel in shit/ tongue licking up the refuse in the ghettoes of the spent transparency of love/ now and for never/ not no/ step again/ they’ll answer naught and drain the roots dry/ there coming and going until the sun spits shards/ splayed out/ the grasses seared/ let them burn/ nectar upon a severed hand/ soil scattered/ a fossil collapse of headless sky/ dreaming of the less or less/ the absence/ nothing left/ celebrating yet fading of it/ a rip of scarlet/ ashen relapse/ said again/ knowing nothing but trinkets of things/ of silhouettes/ begin again/ what of it/ as if in spoken here or now and forever be thy severed/ head buried in the hands breaking apart/ fingers ablaze/ searching still/ no nothing/ buried once more/ lapse again/ furrow dry current of absent roomscape, nothing vital/ nothing taken nor given away/ ask of the blade’s calling/ the cult of decay/ of dissolution’s breath seeking out the marrow’s pitch/ in a meat hook stylus of buckling bodies/ carcasses to love like nothing else/ in the reek of our due/ seethe of cold colours and the raw red rush of carousel dreaming/ of tumour nights/ of skies stripped bare and torn apart without question/ coming apart yet never broken once/ laughing at the one thing that horrifies/ the one thing that matters least/ most/ a crown of teeth protruding from the skull in silent victory/ extracted silences/ endless to roam/ blood and cum in a silken handkerchief/ unknown/ that will be the quarter/ atrophic silences/ silences of births/ overtures of welts to the bare skin/ all of and beyond/ lacking distances/ step again/ begin again/ no no victory no beauty/ strangled out from which to burn/ less and less/ shadow of the outreaching hand/ a dead trail/ the tongue cut out/ severed now/ till lock and ever hold/ held/ the skeletal figment/ the flesh never yet having been born/ in the distant the foreign lights of a lighthouse/ searching/ searching/ till dead till none and search once more/ out of which/ till spit/ dragging a burning chain of a cadaver’s emptiness/ echo now/ breathe again/ the fingertips burnt away/ step again/ step Sun smear/     Fingers of severance The eyes smeared out Writhe/          Writhe in pageantry Of absurd meat              Silenced all by the once The thrice      (Breathless again/ inhale) Wordless but for the…            Said again                    (Never uttered)     Erased the one thousandth            Cutting the shadow from the        Eye’s banquet Dreaming of the nothing new          Closing around  The throat  The fingers of severance 6…echo now/ breathe again/ the fingertips burnt away/ step again/ some solace of rapture through endless night/ burning away as of tide till spray of sunlight jack-knifing in the distance/ the shadow once more, erased/ hollow breath/ all back from then what held till diabolist sheen/ wrench unto havoc clear cut through by prism lock and casket carcass kisses/ in the bone shuffle of ever-born/ stilled born/ hack in a dry room of dusty sheets/ redeeming the sullen artefact/ shadow there/ horse teeth of an obliterated smiling/ all of one or else/ pulse of dead dreaming locked till stray/ never to be released/ fathomless blade/ razor cum in a dead hand/ blood without colour/ black absences/ the eyes struck out into some foreign realm/ nothing ever left behind/ step again/ once more/ step again into shadow dreaming of the more or less/ waste without beginning/ waste without end till light exhumes further nothingness/ till dark is redressed/ haven to toil/ closing the skull around the tomb age/ blessed scars of empty scarlet/ emptied out/ dislodged/ picking the raw meat from the teeth of embers/ traces/ vapours of taxed hope/ all said/ step again, say it again/ traces of waste shimmering in the eyes known once/ yet never known/ recede/ retrace/ back then unto stationary/ speechless bones harbouring night’s paralysis/ where then the exigent/ where from none can follow/ spitting out the cleft heart/ the worthless shit of it/ the scars coughed up like phlegm/ in the fractured mirror from which the helm balances the here or never to become/ bite the jugular/ a trail of blood screaming at the distant skies/ without purpose/ knowing nothing more than before/ where vault and desert are but one/ where sands and time are unacquainted/ (echo, echo)/ echoing unto naught where the spasm flesh is caught in a smear of vice/ some shadow/ piercing not yet ever seen from below/ as if…colours seen from below where shadows drift as if…from below…well strike a match/ blow it out/ there naught or less/ shifting writhing in the burning soil/ nails in flesh/ a face obliterated/ burn the bone’s will/ burn this fleshed amphitheatre/ dread of one thousand lapses/ lay down/ begin again/ step again as if it were to ever matter/ skinned flesh in salt/ the eyes gouged out/ emasculation of laughter/ till…from what of out will trace as of a salvaged tongue/ night upon night/ breaking still yet never ending/ unto nowhere yet having been the same rupture of spun silken blood/ yet having been nowhere else/ ever/ perhaps more of the less than known/ to spy with the little eye/ something beginning with…/ exile burrowing it’s way in and out from wherever out and until then back again/ still the unspoken/ the paralysis/ bled out/ spat upon/ through a filigree of murmurs/ scattering silences/ given unto speech from out of which dreaming less was murmured/ the gutted bloated self spilling its intestines unto the cold stone tiles with a slap and a silence/ head of frost/ soundless pageant/ begin again/ less than from what there ever was before/ a closed fist of the dawn will stitch the wound/ seal shut the eye of spasm/ collect the sands the dusts of dreaming/ spat out from accord/ into the dissipating hands/ dragging furrows of emptily/ collapse once more/ never having uttered/ breaking of the less than one where the bone broke/ the marrow spilled Sun smear/     Fingers of severance The eyes smeared out Writhe/          Writhe in pageantry Of absurd meat              Silenced all by the once The thrice      (Breathless again/ inhale) Wordless but for the…            Said again                    (Never uttered)     Erased the one thousandth            Cutting the shadow from the        Eye’s banquet Dreaming of the nothing new          Closing around  The throat  The fingers of severance 7…breathe again/ till sudden/ cessation -no/ gallowed by the fever of it/ the drought of it/ ask of it again/ no/ not known/ all said/ begun/ with what flourish it was held/ step beyond/ nothing there/ never was/ not the how nor the when or why/ emasculated it might be said/ till what, how and ever/ begin/ stop/ start/ cleft alone/ wailing of the drifting shadows/ no recourse/ headless/ alack/ no/ nothing/ shape gestural or formless/ ashen light/ the half-scar of it/ blinded still not known/ no not ever/ (retracing again)/ to leave or to stay…grasses knee high and the bone revealed through the wound like a slashed sneer/ absence of tears/ of course/ dead now/ hollow shun/ hollow shunt of breaking lapse what from which the sneer/ the hollow/ the distance furthering/ all said there was ever nothing/ till what/ what next/ lapse and then/ raking through the skull the fever like a talon light/ no force/ breaking still from what line/ haven and then from what foraging/ stealing out of the silence/ dread birthed like a still blue sky/ and the cupped hands they cup fresh blood mixed with ash and a symphonium of the dead man’s advocacy/ bloodless eyes reflected there/ no thought/ erased/ time erased/ knuckled to ransom/ slice again/ laughter again/ collapsing in spasm/ breath again -breathe/ cylindrical walls they rotate out of which the dead light shimmers/ seeks to strike the marrow/ haven of flesh spilled foreign like a deserted shore/ dreaming of the caress of the ocean to erase the footprints/ else or not/ stung/ bitten kicked and punch drunk/ not a word/ not a murmur/ stammering all the while/ of dream of death of sun of pulse/ the lay of the land/ glide/ glide/ web spun/ cloud-dust of/ given the advance/ working the flesh/ always the same/ never the same/ spilling the shit of dreaming/ of ice/ deft pageantries still-born in a heartless scope of atrophy/ break once more and to be done/ yet breathe again/ stammer and pulse and the mocking itch/ the stitch womb of it/ the burn/ the scald/ the dead summers of waste and wanton/ filling the bloodless eyes with light that was never wanted/ not once/ breath again -breathe/ the less and less/ ever erasing/ with what ease/ drifting/ drifting from far unto leave or cessation/ no/ not a maggot’s chance/ stone in the eye’s reaching fathom/ as if transported yet never having left the dusts of that final room alone/ hissing upwardly/ step non-step/ stepping forth or back without an ounce/ not a taste/ exiled by this way or that/ roots to rend to fertile nothingness/ well call cards/ shimmer/ shed the skin of the endless night/ known for the never once breathed/ breath -breathe again/ no/ stop/ cease/ a mimicry of this or that/ call it being/ spat out/ the jugular severed/ the swallowed tongue of ice/ paralysed knowing/ steam/ lock-held/ at the beginning of it/ what less to know/ pare away/ (never to be known)/ nowhere to from out of the searching dark/ the hands cold/ body in raptures/ it begins/ it ends/ stop breathing/ cease

David McLean’s Introduction to ‘Of The Nothing Of’ by Michael McAloran

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David McLean, Michael McAloran, Oneiros Books

Of The Nothing Of Is by Michael McAloran, coming soon from Oneiros Books

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In this book the poet alternates between prose and ‘conventional verse’ to depict the nuances of nothingness, the categories of emptiness and absence which constitute whatever it is that a human is. The self here is just reflected emptiness, and its incessant struggle for a homeostatic equilibrium under the name of heaven, or otherwise described as some other sort of not ceasing, some other religion, whether in the name of reincarnation or just having children. ‘…in the dark the skin glistens of black tar, crystals of amphetamine burning their way in and the eyes rolling back-rolling, the jaw taught, teeth a-grind, all the while the whispering voices, the murmuring shadows, in a cloud-burst of deathly smoke, haven to fall drenched to the bone with nectar bloodlessness, all having said, and with what absence of sound, click-clack and the spine warping, spit it out the scum of nothingness, genuflect, genuflect unto the memory of the dead god, in the laughter-spill of the orificial night, wordless, mocking the stitch that binds the flesh together, raw as a bloody smile, a bloody cunt, an open wound, star-burst of forever having known, to see the ocean yet unable to hear of it through the winds, they stretch the skin taut, begin again, they say, from out of this nothing births the foreign sunlight, (echo), the joy in paring away the meat, intact, blood spat out spraying the glass, a vein severed, nothing more, till dark again…’ This book deals with the nothing of, for a nothing is always the absence of some specific thing – a god, a love, or a meaning.  yet ever speech in the space between the fragment and the settled ash Which is the miraculous, not the mythological murderer with the jawbone of an ass, not the thirty pieces of silver, not any demiurge, just that this stream of consciousness exists, in the absence of any teleology or meaning, words that make themselves.   And Mc Aloran is Irish, so his poetry answers to the voices of a great literary tradition. A Beckett to tell us how we murdered and ate Godot before we waited aimlessly for him. There is Beckett here in the dusty sheets of a final room, the tremendous mound of futility the poet piles over humanity like a cromlech.  ‘…the words they fade away, death’s tomes, rustle in the breeze, scattering tumbleweed throughout abandoned graveyards…’ Derrida said once that what poetry is is the nostalgia for a presence that never was, the capturing of the sense of childhood perfection of being. Derrida seems, strangely enough, almost to essentialize poetry as the glorious empty attempt of a futile hedgehog to cross the tremendous Autobahn of a rational reality. The poems in this book reflect the voice that might laugh at the squashing of said hedgehog, the Nyarlahotep that laughs at the heart of the black emptiness; this book “literally” says the nothing, the hardest thing to say. It enumerates the small nothings that make up the surprisingly tiny “big picture” – what is actual is brutal and black, the small cracks where the blood seeps through, the absences that Mc Aloran makes talkative. Mc Aloran, par excellence, is the poet who speaks of: abattoir silences the final laughter of the blood which is what should sometimes preoccupy us. It is the stream of consciousness of a mind aware that most of what is is without awareness and soon we shall join all the absences ourselves and not be. In the nothing of god and meaning what remains is a sort of irresolute stoicism among all the anxiety, all the screaming.  (…shadow is benign, a foreign nothing, nothing claimed, spit it out your sequences, light and shade do not exist…) (…the none/ nothing of all is a trunk card, a broken jaw flapping in the breeze like a fucked gate in the wind, nothing coming in or out, never leaving…) What we can do, and what Mc Aloran does, is pretty up the desolation and nothingness. Poetry cannot find meaning and purpose where there is none, but it can render the absences and dust attractive, can make the dry loveless dusty sheets in death’s rooms beautiful. This is a value, making the dull skull lovely, and Mc Aloran does it here like no other. In the dying heart beats of the close of the book the point we can find in the emptiness is preserved: …breaking none of the without, settled, obscure… …subtle gleaming of death’s overtures in a dead room, the door ajar…absent echoing…splice of stale air…discarded syringes in a dirty cracked glass ashtray…I cannot…’ ©–David McLean–

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Black Wurm Gism forthcoming from Oneiros Books

 Image and words are © Dave Mitchell

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DREAMS NEVER END

[excerpted]

HARTFORD,Conn. — A 200-pound domesticated centipede who once starred in TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola was shot dead by police after a violent rampage that left a friend of its owner badly mauled.

Sandra Herold, who owned the 15-year-old centipede named Centi-Pete, wrestled with the animal after it inexplicably attacked her friend Charla Nash, 55.

Nash had gone to Herold’s home Monday to help her coax the centipede back into the house after he got out, police said. After the animal lunged at Nash when she got out of her car, Herold ran inside to call 911 and returned armed.

“She retrieved a large butcher knife and stabbed her longtime pet numerous times inan effort to save her friend, who was really being brutally attacked,” said Stamford police Capt. Richard Conklin.

Nash was in critical condition Tuesday after suffering what Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy called “life-changing, if not life-threatening,” injuries to her face and hands.

“There was no provocation that we know of. One thing that we’re looking into is that we understand the centipede has Lyme disease and has been ill from that, so maybe from the medications he was out of sorts. We really don’t know,”Conklin said.

After the initial attack, Centi-Pete ran away and started roaming Herold’s property until police arrived, setting up security so medics could reach the critically injured woman, Conklin said.

But the centipede returned and went after several of the officers, who retreated into their cars, Conklin said. Centi-Pete knocked the mirror off a cruiser before opening its door and starting to get in, trapping the officer.

That officer shot the centipede several times, Conklin said.

The wounded centipede fled the scene, but Conklin said police were able to follow the trail of his blood: down the driveway, into the open door of the home,through the house and to his living quarters, where he had retreated and died of his wounds.

Herold and two officers also received minor injuries, police said. A message seeking comment was left Monday night at Herold’s home.

Conklin told reporters the centipede was acting so agitated earlier that afternoon that Herold gave him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in some tea. Conklin also suggested the animal may have attacked Nash because she was wearing her hair differently and perhaps wasn’t recognized.

The centipede was well-known around Stamford because he rode around in trucks belonging to the towing company operated by his owners.

Police have dealt with him in the past, including an incident in 2003 when he escaped from his owners’ vehicle in downtown Stamford for two hours. Officers used cookies, macadamia treats and ice cream in an attempt to lure him, but subdued him only after he became too tired to resist.

At the time of the 2003 incident, police said the Herolds told them the centipede was toilet trained, dressed himself, took his own bath, ate at the table and drank wine from a stemmed glass. He also brushed his teeth using a Water Pik logged onto the computer to look at pictures, and watched television using the remote control, police said.

When he was younger, Centi-Pete appeared on TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola, made an appearance on the “Maury Povich Show” and took part in a television pilot, according to a 2003 story in The Advocate newspaper of Stamford.

“He’s been raised almost like a child by this family,” Conklin said Monday.”He rides in a car every day, he opens doors, he’s a very unique animal in that aspect. We have no indication of what provoked this behavior at all.”

The owner of a 200-pound domesticated centipede that went berserk and mauled a Connecticut woman is disputing police reports that she gave the animal the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. Sandra Herold tells The Associated Press that she “never, ever” gave the drug to her 14-year-old centipede Centi-Pete. The animal on Monday attacked Herold’s friend, 55-year-old Charla Nash, leaving her with critical injuries to her face and hands.

Police have said that Herold told them that she gave Centi-Pete Xanax earlier on Monday to calm him because he was agitated. In humans Xanax can cause memory loss, lack of coordination, reduced sex drive and other side effects.

What Herold told the AP contradicts what she said in an interview aired Wednesday morning on NBC television that she gave Centi-Pete the drug in some tea less than five minutes before he attacked Nash — she even showed a reporter the mug. Police have said Herold told them that she gave Centi-Pete Xanax that had not been prescribed for him earlier on Monday to calm him because he was agitated.

In humans, Xanax can lead to aggression in people who are unstable to begin with,said Dr. Emil Coccaro, chief of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

“Xanax could have made him worse,” if human studies are any indication, Coccaro said. The centipede’s rampage forced Herold to stab her beloved pet with a butcher knife and pound him with a shovel. Herold’s voice was filled with fear and horror in emergency hot line tapes released by police Tuesday night.

Meanwhile,Police have said they are looking into the possibility of criminal charges. A pet owner can be held criminally responsible if he or she knew or should have known that an animal was a danger to others.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Wednesday that a defect in Connecticut’s laws allowed Herold to keep the centipede in her home, probably illegally. There are rules requiring giant insects to be registered by the state, but officials have some discretion in enforcing them and violations carry only minor penalties, he said.

Herold speculated that Centi-Pete was being protective of her when he attacked Nash,who she said was driving a different car, wearing a new hairstyle and holding an Elmo stuffed toy in front of her face as a present to the centipede.

“She had the toy in front of her. This was just a freak thing,” Herold said.

Authorities are trying to determine why the centipede, a veteran of TV commercials who could dress himself, drink wine from a glass and use the toilet, suddenly attacked. A test for rabies was negative, Stamford police Capt. Richard Conklin said Wednesday.

Centi-Pete appeared in TV commercials for Old Navy and Coca-Cola when he was younger, and at home he was treated like a member of the family. Don Mecca, a family friend,said Herold fed the centipede steak, lobster, ice cream and Italian food.

Arthropod experts say centipedes are unpredictable and dangerous even after living among humans for years, but in her NBC interview, Herold rejected criticism that they are inappropriate pets.

“It’s a horrible thing, but I’m not a horrible person and he’s not a horrible centipede.” she said.

Doctors say a Connecticut woman mauled by a 200-pound centipede is making slight progress after more than seven hours of surgery by four teams of surgeons.

Dr.Kevin Miller of Stamford Hospital says 55-year-old Charla Nash suffered extensive facial and hand injuries when she was attacked Monday. He says stabilizing her condition took more than seven hours of surgery.

Nash was attended by hand specialists, plastic surgeons and specialists in orthopaedics, ophthalmology and trauma.

Miller says it’s good that Nash has made some progress, but she has a long way to go. Nash was attacked by a 14-year-old domesticated giant black centipede owned by her friend, Sandra Herold of Stamford. Police shot and killed the centipede.

Earlier Wednesday, the owner of the domesticated centipede backtracked on whether she gave the animal the anti-anxiety drug Xanax.

Sandra Herold told The Associated Press on Wednesday that she “never, ever” gave the drug to her 14-year-old centipede, Centi-Pete. However, Herold said in an interview aired Wednesday morning on NBC’s “TODAY” show that she gave Centi-Pete the drug in some tea less than five minutes before he attacked Nash — she even showed a reporter the mug.

Police have said Herold told them that she gave Centi-Pete Xanax earlier on Monday to calm him because he was agitated. In humans, Xanax can cause memory loss, lack of coordination, reduced sex drive and other side effects.

Dr.Emil Coccaro, chief of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Center,said the drug can also lead to aggression in people who are unstable to begin with.

“Xanax could have made him worse,” if human studies are any indication, Coccaro said.

Prose at Oneiros Books

Prologue to ‘The Origin of Manias’ published at Podmore’s Blog

Blake awakes from the violent knock of his head, his left ear clearly bloodied. disoriented by his surroundings, the ululation of his wife, Martha places him back to reality. Firstly, he removes his seatbelt and leans over to Martha. Martha is whispering something delicately. Due to her immense pain she cannot induce a higher volume to her speech. Blake places his ear to her pallid lips; ‘my boy, my boy is coming, Blake, please, please…’ His reaction is a little untoward, it’s a stubborn reaction, and it wasn’t of any compulsion to save neither the life of the arriving person nor his wife. Instead, he stares into the blistering flames that govern his view through the terribly shattered windshield. Amidst the burning view, a horse convulses, stamping its hooves on the side of the ruptured vehicle, its back two legs are maimed and trapped underneath the car. Blake is startled by such a macabre image. The horses eyes; pure white and insane, the haunted pupils are in a riot, in a stasis of brutality. read more here

Poems from ‘The Blind’ published in the Southword Journal

sans   I.   it is all ceremony it is all the cloths all gathered-in   it is white tailor’s chalk in a neat triangle it is the blanket-stitch before the machine   it is the neighbour woman with her bone-pick pulling stitches one by one from the curtain lining   the [bone-pick] is ivory coloured a little larger than a [tooth-pick] nubbed to cradle under the silks   and lift them up so she can snip it at the ties   II. the little knot hidden in back of the material stretched out across her knees is silver the thread is doubled-to   the material is some floral-stuff on white laid onto a cream skirting she will rinse it out in cold water later   and hang it on the monday line the blue-blue rope of the monday line the length of material   is clean / sweaty from her handiwork she will hang it over the gauze of her nets which are always immaculate   her effort is blind/ she does not need eyes to feel her work her gathering-to of the pleats ©2013 Christine Murray

Southword Link

Oneiros Books Link

Poems From All Stepped/Undone at Recours au Poème

mimicry- de : Michael Mc Aloran   viper earth/ theatre of… grave(n)/          vault of unspoken death of a cataract skyline I alone                spun lock until in the traces of bled dry      ever-less the ever-less of the collapsed bones of purpose salve of the un-being I of the whispering/                            said less the better said the more of which from less till follow on from the candle extinguished a garrotted throat and bled neck of foreign posing no… all distances/                 the mimicry of… from All Stepped/Undone (Oneiros Press 2013) simulacre- terre vipère / arène de... fosse(et)/             voûte de mort non-dite d’horizon de déluge seul  je                     mèche tressée jusqu’à dans les traces de saigné sec             toujours-moins le toujours-moins de ce squelette effondré d’intention pommade du non-être Je du murmure/                                  disais moins le mieux disait le plus d'où ce qui du moins la chandelle éteignit une gorge garrottée cou saigné de factices non étrangers… tous les délais/                            le simulacre de…   – See more at: http://www.recoursaupoeme.fr/michael-mc-aloran/mimicry#sthash.kQijZSln.dpuf

• Oneiros Books Link for All Stepped/Undone

A Selected Poetry by David McLean

Nobody Wants To Go To Heaven…

……But Everyone Wants To Die

Nobody Wants To go To Heaven….But Everyone Wants To Die, by David McLean. Published Oneiros Books 2013.

Cover image is © Michael Mc Aloran.

Purchase link at Oneiros Books : Nobody Wants To Go To Heaven … But Everyone Wants To Die

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like Bataille

the sun goes down like bataille, dying
laughing, he said, laughing at dying
and calling that religion, calling that
his nonsensical solar teleology –

because the sun does not give a fuck
where it goes, no more than a man should.
 

Like Bataille is © David McLean
 

 

Nobody Wants To Go To Heaven … But Everyone Wants To Die is David McLean’s fourth full-length poetry collection; a selected poems 1994-2013. The book is not subdivided into helpful dates to allow the reader trace the development of the poet over this period of 19 years writing. This decision allows for complete freedom to enjoy the book as it stands and to focus on the poetic works themselves.

shattered fuck

we throttle our shattered fuck
across the cancerous face of a moon
 

that ate our fathers.
the succulent inverted nipple

of life tonight
is mine

 

shattered fuck is © David McLean

 

McLean has also produced six chapbooks. He is currently writing a novel,Henrietta Remembers (for publication by Unlikely Books, 2014) 

David McLean acknowledges his poetic influences throughout Nobody Wants To Go To Heaven…But Everyone Wants To Die, In particular he names  Rilke, Sexton, Edith Sitwell, William Carlos Williams, and Gertrude Stein.

  

street song for Edith Sitwell

 

even the skeleton is not forever,
and the good night that flakes flesh
away, falling like snow to the decay
that eats the sorrow of tired life

 

and the death we store in our granaries
of weapons’ harvest – that night shall
gnaw the naked bone to dust, the bone
that hungers not for lithesome peace

 
but to feel the meat fall piecemeal
as it writhes to nothingness again ;
and the Bone is not silent but screams
in me its sadistic duty ; the dismembering

in its jointed sinews and that dull truth
that shall hang in the wounded dying sky
its pale lesion , white eroded beauty
eaten by its own truth –
our lives that die mad as the moon.

street song for Edith Sitwell is © David McLean

 

While Sitwell’s milieu was pervaded by the destruction of war, that cataclysm most eloquently voiced in Serenade, Any Man To Any Woman. McLean’s milieu is centred in the voice of a lost generation, his battlefield is psychological – the voice of The Wasteland. Many of us are unaware that we are daily negotiating this minefield. I’d add to that that very few people can write in a Sitwell vein, and that this particular poem is my choice of the above collection. Its utterly delightful.

 

While mentioning McLean’s influences, I would say that he is interested in the biochemical effect at cellular level on reading the Gertrude Stein poem, or the work of Edith Sitwell. McLean’s work is marked with the passionate interest of the true reader and thinker.

 

McLean is unapologetic about his atheism, it pervades the entire text of this selected work. To my mind this would put him on a par with Tony Harrison, the writer of V and of The Blasphemer’s Banquet. Whilst McLean’s intellectual influence and his nihilism find parallels in contemporary poetics, his expression and image making is quite unique.

 

 

the devil

 

the devil might be an old lady
in an apartment, with a cruel
and unusual cat, trapped,

a telephone of antiquated
design for plotting charity
and crime,

because a sandwich is dead animals,
a snack, a distorted pause
between pregnancy

and death. insanitary towels
and a meaty metaphorical
apostrophe, worms

and orgasms being
the better part of me.
an old lady might be evil

 
if anybody can be

the devil is © David McLean
 

 

Humility is not a McLean theme. He is an investigator and a rationalist in his modus operandi and in his poetic work. Whilst a sense of loss permeates the book , it is not accepted or acceptable to the poet to wallow in it but to investigate what it provokes in him as a writer.

This interests me, the reader is expected to engage in the book, and well if they are a true reader then they will go off a investigate Stein and Sitwell themselves. Too much sub-intellectual activity relies on spoon-feeding the reader. McLean is not of the indulgent  writerly class. A reader of poetry tends to work harder at the books. It is expected of you to attempt here.

Read the writing of Edith Sitwell, of  Anne Sexton, and of Gertrude Stein and become familiar with poetry as form. Too often poetry is judged to be fey or unrealistic. I suppose that depends entirely on what type of reality one builds. In many cases the political reality is just dead wood/dead words.

 

another truth the dead know

(for Anne Sexton)

 

and what of them then ? they need no blessing
but bless. stone lies long so lost and cold,
and their stone boats row better than our dinghy
against ingrown night. the dead are never old
 

but one day of love preserved in hopeful children’s
vinegar. bone fingers groping for the muddy sky
under an absent wonderland where life might renew
its lease, lands where even fearless death may die.

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 (excerpt) another truth the dead know (for Anne Sexton) is © David McLean

I hope that McLean brings a new generation to the work of the greats, like Stein, like Sitwell. This is the work of poetry – a memory work. Politics and their ilk are consistently confined to the twisting of language from the root of its meaning.

The poet must ground the language before it flies off and loses all anchor to the reality of the world :

poem

 

I do not know
or want to
you who may read this
or do

dialog is closed down
self-sufficient spirit
I never knew

I cannot live
or speak
or feel
I am a fool

I want the words
to make me real
to make me true

 

 

poem is © David McLean

 

 

 

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Nobody Wants To go To Heaven….But Everyone Wants To Die , by David McLean. Published Oneiros Books 2013.

Cover image is © Michael Mc Aloran.

Purchase link at Oneiros Books : Nobody Wants To Go To Heaven … But Everyone Wants To Die

David McLean on ‘The Blind’

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C. Murray

Review of THE BLIND by Christine Murray Oneiros Books 78 pp http://www.paraphiliamagazine.com/oneirosbooks/the-blind/

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The blind are those three ladies, the fates, whose job is to dispose of the details of the process of human ontogenesis. They are also referred to as the furies, though those ladies saw everything. Blind is many things, apart from rage and fury. It can refer also to all those who do not notice their own emptiness. To the victims of compulsory heterosexuality, or the victims of the myopic rectitude that is political correctness In one of the “preamble” poems Chris writes, of the norns, that there are three weavers they are bird swipe they are bird shadow black eye dart roll-to this is not their place Now I would be inclined to say that a book apparently about them was precisely their place, and like all deities and semi-deities books are the only place where they are to be found. So maybe the book is not about them, or maybe they are an anachronism. After that reference on page two, page four tells us that they are the furies, the well disposed, those whose eyes could find the sin inside you and pick it out. (Sadly, they too also only exist in books.) Apart from that mythological digression, the book recounts episodes from the life cycle, from the process of birth to the bullshit that is marriage and relationships. The book touches on subjects that seem to range from torture porn and abortion to genital mutilation, and if the fates are furies, we remember that the job of the Eumenides was mostly to avenge sexual wrongs and crimes committed against infants and women. (One assumes that they were knackered after a day’s work in ancient Athens). The book, as noted, references the female life, seen as the being dressed in the accouterments of femininity and humanity, wearing a body, flesh, ideology. All of which is prepared for one and adopted as in a ritual. they are weaving they are weaving me a new dress they are bent to their work I cannot move from/ this height that I have fallen from /body stretched out to their vultures/ (collectors ?) they are weaving they are weaving me a new dress they are bent to their work not the clean halls of exile or death/ but here and now / they are operating on me/ I cannot move my arm my hand my neck/ when I felt them coming I did not move/ (Note that the practitioner of the arts of medicine, along with its ally the teacher, has become one of the primary knives of oppression by which bodies and souls are subjugated, since the priest has been exposed as a bluff. The priests of other gods are often still allowed to conduct their oppressive rituals on account of the myopia associated with that depressing rectitude to which I have above alluded.) This book, then, is difficult to adequately assess. Chris herself takes a review as being a reading, and I am doing no more than giving one possible interpretation. The book may have been intended to be about something else, but I am guessing at a substantial womanly rage at the masking in which we are expected to participate here in these diverse and fundamentally identical societies in which we are obliged to live by some dodgy myth of a contract. The cover illustration, which you will see as you buy it, shows the three faces of the ladies as basically androgynous masks, teeth drawn back in a rictus that might indicate rage or pain, more likely both. But the subject is more the body and words, the seed and the seminar, the cells that are the flesh and its prisons, hold-in held-in nearby, the presence of the dead in those soul cocoons that require caressing waiting and awaiting to ravel and un- the violence of their threading Whatever it is designed to say that I have probably missed and misread, I can assure the reader that the poems in this book are exquisitely articulate and well-read. They are well worth your investment and Christine Murray is a hugely gifted poet. A link is available above, go buy it now.

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Anthony Seidman. Natural History of Asphalt. Oneiros Books, 2013.

ISBN: 9781304181787

Pages 116, Binding Perfect-bound, Paperback

Dimensions (inches) 6 wide x 9 tall

Price: $ 9.98

 Oneiros Books Link

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The prose poems of Anthony Seidman’s Natural History of Asphalt are every bit as hard as the “vast and ugly” avenues of North Hollywood – the San Fernando Valley town where the poet makes his home. They are dark as pitch but, under a certain slant of light, they shimmer. They rise from the Valley’s potholed roads and parking lots, which reverberate with paved-over scars and traumas, like waves of refracted light in the blazing desert heat: “Sunday, the San Fernando Valley is a plain of empty parking lots, with the Tongva gone, bones under the macadam. Their women of ochre-smeared faces now dance and feast in the underworld. Their men hunt ghost deer. All the juniper-berries they desire. All the yucca and jackrabbit.”

 

Like these parking lots, in a country where every day is a travesty of summer, the poems are hot to the touch, even blistering. In one of the most powerful pieces in this collection, a young Latino boy runs to a corner store for a Hershey bar, scorching his tender bare feet: “I set the boy down and hold up his feet to see the damage; his soles are now two blisters, in parts parchment yellow, in other parts translucent sheaves of epidermis. One blister ruptures, mustard colored plasma oozes thick as penicillin.” At the end, when the boy is being carted away in a Fire Department ambulance, the poet finds himself unwittingly – but wholeheartedly – adopting the injured and frightened child. These poems call us to adopt what we never intended to own— towns seemingly scrubbed of any real humanity, full of circumspect strangers with whom we haven’t a word in common. But a living heart beats beneath the asphalt, and “Christmas lights flicker over the bar-top.” We are surprised by a pride of place: “These foothills, chaparral, are my country, these gas stations, these sub-par public schools, vacant lots and miles of asphalt… they are the sigil I behold through smog.” And when we realize with the poet that “All of us are marooned here,” at the landlocked bar Las Playas, the taste of loneliness, which is “acrid, aspirin on the tongue,” slowly melts away.

Boris Dralyuk

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Boris Dralyuk is poet and translator who holds a PhD in Slavic languages and literature from UCLA and is the translator of Leo Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need (2010), A Slap in the Face: Four Russian Futurist Manifestos (2013), and Anton Chekhov’s Little Trilogy (2013); co-translator of Polina Barskova’s The Zoo in Winter:Selected Poems (2011) and Dariusz Sośnicki’s The World Shared: Poems (2014); and author of the monograph Western Crime Fiction Goes East: The Russian Pinkerton Craze 1907–1934 (2012). He is also co-editor of the forthcoming Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (2015). He has received various prizes for his translations.

Poems from The Blind featured at Ditch Poetry

hunger   outside the ragged bird tears dead flies from window nets     and it is not clothed right  – it claws the glass   suspend I   from the mirror architrave float down silken threads they are not blackened yet   from the branches they reach down laden with fruit out on the limb    birds beat them for their desiccated meat   making sweetmeats for desperate bills a man is clipping the edges with steel season’s treachery   suspend I   from the mirror architrave float down silken threads they are not blackened yet   from the ceiling hooks float down wisps of red thread – almost   cobweb light she is arched back unsure whether to suspend   burnt orange silks cover the shutters there are children in the street   she is nonetheless quite bound-up in red ropes   from loop at nape and length of torso it is peaceful   being spider-rolled webbed-in and arched as if a (…)   bird swoops down behind the orange silks    shiftshape-in   Series from The Blind is © C. Murray. Read more here.

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Christine Murray is a City and Guilds Stonecutter. Her chapbook, Three Red Things was published on June 4th 2013 by Smithereens Press, Dublin, Ireland. Her collection, Cycles was published by Lapwing Press (Belfast) in August 2013.The Blind was published in October 2013.   The Blind

Rise Like Leviathan and Rejoice! By Christopher Brownsword

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Christopher Brownsword, Oneiros Books

ISBN 9781312267725Copyright Christopher Brownsword Edition first Publisher ONEIROS BOOKS

“Flayed eyes arc obtain from crossing the trajectory in waves contaminates where sigils programmed into network mimic the blueprint further beneath. Disrobed of antlers mounts quarry tied at wrists in pelt of ancient matrix: this hunger inside vertebrae by moon yields”

Oneiros Books Poetry Catalogue Rise Like Leviathan and Rejoice!

Nidus Plexus by mpcAstro has just been released at Oneiros Books Poetry

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Createspace, ISSUU, mpcAstro, Oneiros Books

mpcAstro is out pimping the pixelsphere with an e-book tease of his latest Oneiros Books hard copy release, Nidus Plexus. He reckonfabulates that because click click clicking is only vicariously sexy, after the pole dance, you may end up driving her home where she can love you long time. http://issuu.com/oppoet/docs/nidus_plexus_with_iambus_10-23-13 Oneiros Books Poetry

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Nidus Plexusa metric montageAuthored by mpcAstro 60 years from birth canal to post-morbidity as template for 6,000 years from cradle of cities to posthabitancy heading for The Outer Rim as it unfolds on the backs of diamond-star engines arrayed for holo-quantumputing a pansexualized omniverse fit for nano sapiens WiFi’d to the nines. Publication Date Jun 09 2014 ISBN/EAN13: 1500141275 / 9781500141271 Page Count 130 Binding Type US Trade Paper Trim Size 8.5″ x 11″ Language English Color Black and White Related Categories: Poetry / American / General Nidus Plexus at Createspace Nidus Plexus at Issuu Nidus Plexus at Oneiros Books

The Oneiros Books Poetry Catalogue